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Derrick Rose’s career would have declined regardless of injuries
2023.05.29 18:36 Apart-Plankton9951 Derrick Rose’s career would have declined regardless of injuries
I’m my opinion, Derrick Rose’s play-style would only be successful for the early 2010s up to the 2015-16 season at best. The game was changing with 3-ball after that season with the success of the Warriors, Rockets and Cavaliers. Rose never had a jump shot that would translate well for pull ups, slightly contested 3 pointers and catch and shoot opportunities. He never developed it at a high level even with his injuries. Even my definition of success is a little broad. I think we would have seen him in a conference final or two but never in a finals. Even in 2011, he was shooting inefficiently in the playoffs. His best chance to win make it to the finals would have been during the Lebron Cavs era because the Miami Heat with lebron were too dominant. Even then, the lebron led Cavs would have beaten the bulls every year, expect possibly 2018 but I still give the edge to that version of lebron. Then again, that bulls roster would have probably not survived by 2018 if they kept losing in the eastern conference. Derrick Rose was also a below average defender even though he was athletically gifted. The team he is on would have to create a tailored roster around him to make things work. This was also the case for Harden and Curry but both were better playmakers than Rose (I count Curry’s off ball ability as playmaking), better ball handlers and most importantly they were better floor spacers. Rose’s value as a difficult paint area shot creator would have been diminished because of the increased floor spacing. A lot more guards would be able to put up his level efficiency in that area with decent volume.
I think that Rose’s injuries helped his legacy. People only speculated the best case scenario for what his career would have looked liked without them. They ignored his flaws and how they would have been further exploited in the mid-to-late 2010s
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I think that Rose’s injuries helped his legacy. People only speculated the best case scenario for what his career would have looked liked without them. They ignored his flaws and how they would have been further exploited in the mid-to-late 2010s
2023.05.29 18:34 Frank_Leroux Molossus, Chapter Fourteen
First Chapter
Chapter Thirteen
Corporal McCoy had figured out the best reason for getting in good with an udhyr. They had four arms, therefore the hugs were twice as nice. They now lay in her room, with him lying on her bed and her lying on top of him, with her ensconced in the aforementioned hug-squared. She’d been able to get ahold of her Switch, and at the moment was in the midst of some happy early-morning gaming. Takh’s head rested upon hers with a gentle and welcome pressure while he watched her play. By now she was so used to him that even the little random clicks of his mandibles didn’t cause her any fear.
She was still trying to figure out if she and the alien XO were an ‘item’ or not. Zawahir had, with his usual enthusiasm, explained to her that both the udhyr and knuall-toua were pretty much like humans, with equal numbers of both males and females who reproduced sexually. He hadn’t gone into details on how exactly Tab A fit into Slot B, but the overall idea was clear. The auhn were a little more complicated; the ratio of females to males was more like seven or eight to one, plus there was the added wrinkle that the males were non-sapient and about as smart as the average pet dog. That had resulted in a very matriarchal society, of course, one based around clans of females protecting their stable of fertile males with appropriately auhn-like ferocity. The spider-like xyrax were…well, both. Completely hermaphroditic; there was quite a complicated social dance before they reproduced as to who was going to bear the resulting egg. McCoy was sure that, however it worked out, it would look adorable.
“So this Kirby can eat anything?” asked Takh, breaking into her ruminations.
McCoy tapped at her controls on autopilot, hoping that the damned thumbsticks wouldn’t break. Again. “Yep. Fun fact, waaay back in the 80s, Nintendo got sued by Universal Studios, who claimed that Donkey Kong was a ripoff of King Kong. John Kirby was the attorney who successfully defended them in court, and in gratitude they named this character Kirby.” She continued her tapping. “I think they gave him a sailboat as well.”
“Mmm, I must admit a sailboat sounds nice right about now. This place is very nice, but it’s a bit too cold.”
She wriggled against him. “You said it. You and me, off the coast near Nice? Floating in the warm azure waters of the Mediterranean? I can wear a nice little bikini I’ve got saved up for just such an occasion.”
“Oh! Uh, well, yes. That does indeed sound quite nice…”
She grinned. Takh was a dork, but a giant lovable dork and it was always great to get a reaction like this out of him. Even if it didn’t lead anywhere there. As far as she knew, the udhyr reproduced like frogs. Maybe she should discreetly quiz Zawahir on the whole Tab-A into Slot-B thing, just to make sure she wasn’t setting herself up for disappointment.
Of course, she’d just managed to get to the final boss of this particular level when the siren howl of the alarm went off. Haley McCoy blinked as she went from supine four-armed cuddling to standing in an instant, placed upon the floor by Takh’s upper arms.
“The unholy hell?” she muttered, but she was already in motion as she sprinted towards her gear, laid out so as to ensure maximum efficiency in getting it all put on. “Takh?” she called out as she started strapping her armored vest on.
“Yes? What do I do?”
“Simple. Anyone comes through that door who you don’t recognize, kill ‘em.”
“I…I don’t know, I’m still understanding how different humans look from each other, I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“You’ll know,” she said with finality as she picked up her carbine and racked the slide. “Okay. Follow me…”
The door to her room smashed in as a figure clad in black armor came through screaming “Earth belongs to HUMANS!...”
That was all he got out before Takh grabbed the man’s head and simply hurled the offending figure over McCoy and into the far wall. The window set in that wall shattered with the resulting impact, making the corporal duck.
“Fuck me, Takh.” She looked at the broken figure of the oh-so-very dead intruder, then back up to the worried-looking XO. “I mean, not literally. Okay, well you can if you want to, and I for sure would like you to…you know what? Let’s put that whole discussion off to the side for now until we can sit down and have ourselves a nice long chat, okay?”
“That sounds like a very wise strategy, Haley. What do you need from me?”
She finished putting on her headset and helmet. “Right now? You need to stick right behind me while I get you to the bunker.”
“You want me behind you?” Takh’s mandibles quirked in a grin. “That sounds like a very nice place to be.”
“Stop distracting me, you giant dork.” McCoy moved towards the door with a grim set to her shoulders, ignoring the lovely fact that her alien maybe-boyfriend was now checking out her ass. She swept the outside hallway….nothing visible. Then she heard some commotion from off towards the kitchen area.
__________
Martinez surged to his feet upon hearing the alarm, his half-eaten horizontal-cut pimento sandwich now forgotten. “What the fuck…?”
Matt was on his feet as well, with a strange look in his eyes that the corporal had never seen before. “You two. Corner. Now.” He pointed at the corner farthest from the two entrances to the kitchen.
The corporal was on the smaller side, even amongst his fellow humans, but something in the Marine’s tone made him turn and tackle the huge alien. Kexal, to his credit, somehow knew that Something Was Up and accepted the tackle, otherwise there was no way in hell that Martinez could have moved the giant creature.
Just as he did so, he caught a glimpse of a dark form, clad in full armor, holding a rifle, gliding around one of the entrances to the kitchen. In a panic, he fumbled for the pistol at his hip.
Martinez prized himself on his reflexes. But still, he had time for one blink of astonishment as Toke all but teleported himself across the ten feet of intervening space, pushing the intruder’s rifle up towards the ceiling and out of battery as his own arm flashed in a wicked arc. The corporal caught the merest glint of a small but cruelly-curved knife, like a predator’s claw, in the Marine’s fist.
There followed quite the epic spray of blood from underneath the attacker’s armpit, followed up by a few more cruel swipes which made sure that the tendons in that shoulder were destroyed and useless. Toke pulled the rifle away from the now-dangling limb.
Somehow, the black-armored attacker managed to speak in spite of what must be massive pain. “Earth will NEVER submit to…”
Toke’s voice was as hard as granite. “Tell your shit to someone who cares.”
Two more vicious swipes across the man’s throat resulted in a cascade of crimson down his black-armored front, and the would-be assassin toppled to the wooden floor.
“Martinez.” Toke’s robotic voice shocked him back into awareness.
“Y…yeah?”
“Got a pistol?”
“Of course.” He checked to make sure that he had it in his hand. Huh, that was strange. He didn’t remember drawing it, but there it was.
“Good.” The lean man tossed the purloined rifle towards Martinez, who caught it automatically in his off-hand. “Take this. Check this dead motherfucker for extra mags, and take ‘em. You’re on Kexal, understand? Get him safe to the bunker. Anyone you don’t know personally comes at you, you shoot ‘em.” His black, mechanical gaze shifted towards the alien. “Kexal? If Martinez goes down and someone attacks you, you have my permission to yank their arms off.”
The giant planetologist stared in horror at the bleeding and probably-dead sapient before him, then shook himself. “Of course. Yes. I’ll protect myself.”
“No need,” said Martinez as he looked back at his newly-christened charge. He racked the action on his just-acquired rifle, which looked to be a standard AR-platform civilian carbine. The corporal wished for something full-auto, but this was at least better than a pistol in terms of range and punch. “I’ll get you to safety, sir.”
He turned back to ask Matt just what the fuck was going on…but he only saw empty air.
__________
Cécile Savoie was not having a good day. She’d accepted the position of overall chief of security at Camp David with delight…at first. Dealing with the day-to-day of protecting one of the most targeted people on the planet, that she could deal with no problem. Because it was one person. It was an unspoken agreement between all of the agents that SAILOR was the priority. Even the First Husband could be sacrificed if need be.
But then she’d had a bunch of damn aliens dropped in her lap, along with an equally weird group of special-forces types. The latter were what really ground her gears; the aliens were genuinely nice and apologetic about being such a bother, but the human soldiers were the types who would crash on your couch, drink all your beer, and then steal your sweetheart when you weren’t looking.
She crouched behind a little berm to the west of Camp David, the other members of her patrol stretched out alongside her in a roughly north-to-south line.
“Moseby! Report!” she yelled.
She heard a few thumps, then a few cracks in her earpiece which were followed up by echoing reports from the building behind her. Thankfully she heard her agent’s voice in her earpiece. “Shit! Wow, um, you’re really good with that knife…”
She then heard a muffled phrase that sounded a bit like ‘give it to me, son’, and the next voice in her ear was one she was unfamiliar with.
“This is Captain Matthew Tocco, USMC, whom am I speaking with?” The voice sounded as if generated by an AI.
“I’m Agent Savoie,” she responded. “I’m in charge of the Camp David security detail, who are you?”
“I just told you who I am, Agent Savoie. And I just saved the life of one of your agents. Now. Let’s cut through any sort of jurisdictional bullshit. We have at least two confirmed active hostiles in the complex, two more are confirmed down. We’re sweeping the compound to make sure there are no others, plus making sure that our esteemed guests are safe inside the bunker. Where are you located? We need to coordinate our defenses.”
The information made her see literal red. The attackers had made it into the compound? How? There must be some angle, some safe passage made by somebody. She was going to find out who had made that safe passage, and those people would burn. Oh yes, they were all going to burn…
“West of the complex,” she snapped. “We’ve set up a perimeter along the ridge there.”
“Got it, Agent Savoie. Oh, and please don’t shoot me when I show up.”
She ran through various scenarios for the next few minutes, trying to figure out who on the team had betrayed them. And there must have been such a betrayal in order to get armed hostiles into the actual buildings. Her further musing upon vengeance was cut short as a tall, lean man seemed to all but materialize next to her. He held a small, curved blade in a reverse grip in his right hand; that blade dripped red blood. She almost pointed her gun at him, then relaxed. “Captain Tocco, I presume?”
“Call me Toke.” The guy sounded like he was out for a day on the beach.
“Who the hell are you…wait, you’re with the group in there, right?”
Matt nodded. “Yep. The rest of us are in there bundling up our guests and making sure they’re all safe and sound. Actually, by now Corporal McCoy should be…”
Agent Savoie flinched again as a small but very stacked woman seemed to suddenly appear like condensing smoke at her other side, out of the brush. “Speak of the Devil, and she shall appear.”
The tall man grinned at her. “You are pretty damn good, corporal.”
“Hell that means a lot coming from you, Toke. By the way, that’s a nice kerambit. Anyways, everybody on Team Alien is tucked in and unharmed. I got Takh in there fine. Martinez even tagged a couple more bad guys while he was escorting Grakosh to the bunker. Fair warning to everybody listening on this channel, he’s gonna be aaaall sorts of smug about that and it’s gonna turn into a story of taking out four dudes before this week is out. But, right now, it looks like only four of the OPFOR made into the complex…however they did that…so the rest must be out there.” She pointed towards the leafless woods beyond the little rise.
“Any word from Shaw?” asked Toke.
Savoie narrowed her eyes. “Something bad happened in DC. Sounds like an artillery or mortar attack.”
“Shit.” McCoy looked troubled. “This is serious business, then. State player?”
“Maybe,” said Toke. “But it could be some private group with some proper funding behind ‘em. Agent Savoie, do you have any word of a helicopter or plane going down nearby?”
“A Chinook,” she replied, “Went down about thirty minutes ago thataways.” She motioned to the west, out into the wintry forest. “Then we had one of our patrols out in that direction go silent. That’s what triggered the alarm.”
Matt grunted. “Yeah, that’s how I’d do it. Make it look like a crash and infiltrate that way. Right.” He touched his ear. “You just keep this channel open, right?”
“Where are you going?” asked McCoy.
“Out there. You need eyes on assholes, and I’m gonna give that to you.”
McCoy tossed him her carbine. “At least have a gun on you, dude.”
He caught it with his off-hand, since his main hand still held the dripping-red kerambit. He grinned at her. “All right. You got a pistol?”
“Of course.” She pulled it out and racked the slide.
He tossed the rifle back to her. “Give me that instead. We’re gonna need to concentrate some proper firepower here. This might be a proper light-infantry invasion in progress. We need to organize ourselves into a skirmish line running along this ridge, south-southwest to north-northeast. Get whoever you can on your team in there out here to bolster our firepower, understand? Dig in.”
“Got it.” The little corporal’s eyes blazed with purpose as she handed her pistol to Matt. “Now go get you some.”
“Believe me, I will.”
Savoie blinked in astonishment as the tall man vanished again.
“Yeah, he kinda does that,” said McCoy. “Dude could give sneaking-around lessons to fucking Batman.” She pulled a map out of one of the pockets on her cargo pants. “Now, Agent Savoie, how many people do we have available? Let’s get ourselves properly set up.”
__________
Wade stepped carefully over a fallen branch, his boots making almost no noise at they met the soft mulch covering the forest floor. From the curt statements in his headset, it sounded like the four heroes who’d been infiltrated into the devil’s nest had been cut down. There was no word yet if any of the alien menace had been eliminated. That was a shame, but hopefully it drew attention away from his own unit. He and his comrades made up the secondary and much more armored thrust, one which not even the vaunted Secret Service could counter. The latter were armored, yes, but only armored against pistols and they only wielded pistols themselves. He and his team had rifles, level-four body armor, helmets, and most importantly proper communications.
A voice crackled in his ear. “Hold position. The security detail is forming into a defensive line. It looks like they know we’re here.”
“Set timer?” Wade whispered into his headset. His team had a set time to accomplish their mission, before the entirety of the United States military-industrial complex landed upon their heads like the proverbial Wrath Of God.
“Yes, set timer. Twenty minutes.”
There was a soft chorus of “Twenty minutes, aye,” in Wade’s ear as he tapped his own smart-watch to start the timer. “Twenty minutes, aye,” he murmured. As he made to step over another downed branch, he paused.
Something was off. He couldn’t say why, but the air itself seemed a little more still than it should be. He turned to his left and saw a blur heading for him…he tried to raise his rifle, but it was too late…
__________
Cécile Savoie’s head snapped up as she heard a few cracks from the treeline which could only be the sound of firearms. “Anyone see anything?” she whispered into her earpiece.
There followed a myriad of “No, ma’ams” in her ear. “Keep a sharp eye,” she murmured. “Don’t fire on anyone not in black. We do have a friendly out there, he’s supposed to be giving us intel…”
Matt’s voice sounded in her ear. “Indeed. Bagged one of ‘em, on the outer edge of the advancing force. Looks like civvie gear, carbine is only semi-auto. This is a well-funded civilian effort, not a state actor.”
She checked her watch. “Got it. Fifteen minutes until we get backup in place, what do you need from us?”
“Hmm, that explains the ‘twenty minutes’ thing. Right, they know they’re on a timetable. You all need to be, and I hate to put it this way, the meat shield. It looks like they’re going for a solid push towards you, no stealth. Fourteen hostiles all told, and if this guy’s gear is any indication they’re all up-armored. Class Four. Center of mass is no good, go for head or limbs.”
Savoie’s mouth was now dry. “Understood.”
“Don’t worry, Agent. I’ll be behind them, and I’ll do what I can to sow some dissention in the ranks.”
__________
“Wade, report!” hissed Horace into his microphone.
No reply.
He took in a breath to issue another demand when a voice sounded in his ear. Horace had once gone swimming in the ocean off of Florida, and had by pure chance come across a great white shark. He still remembered the vacant gaze of the giant predator, who was probably idly wondering if Horace would make a good snack for today.
This voice brought up once again that dread; it was the voice of a pure predator. “Who is this?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“The one who just took down…Wade, was it?”
“Sidney, get eyes on Wade!”
“Will do…” There followed a long, long silence before that shark-like voice spoke again.
“You just got Sidney killed too, asshole. Care to keep going? I got no problem with that. Or do you all want to call this a day? You can do that too, you know.”
“Everybody down!” Horace snapped before going prone himself. That taunting voice still sounded in his ear.
“Okay, now you’re all down and less of a target. What now, genius? You got…hmmm…about twelve more minutes before all of the backup in the world arrives. And they will find you. You know what? You’d better hope they find you instead of me. Because I give less than two shits about that whole ‘Geneva Convention’ crap.”
“Maintain radio silence,” said Horace, as he tried to wriggle his way forward.
“Oh, you’re still trying, Mister Leader? How cute. Let me put it this way to you fourteen…sorry, thirteen, assholes. You’re done. Nailed. The best you can hope for is to get some lawyers who want to make a name for themselves. Worst case? You get put in a room with me, and if you have any sense in what passes for your brains you will spill your guts. If I’m honest, I kinda hope you put up a brave front and don’t say anything. It’s been a very long time since I got to cut loose. Gotta keep up that certain set of skills, yanno what I mean?”
“Maintain radio silence,” grated Horace, as he continued to wriggle forward.
Then, all of a sudden, he realized he was looking at boots. A pair of boots, planted in front of him like a goddamn World War Two commando movie. He glanced upwards, hoping against hope that it would turn out to be a gag like that one comedy where it was just boots…
No.
It wasn’t just boots.
Horace looked up into a man with the eyes of a shark, as well as the quite threatening muzzle of a pistol.
“Hey there, my Little Buddy-O,” said Matt. “Whatcha doin out here?”
__________
Milton came to with a gasp. “Shaw…”
A gentle hand laid upon his shoulder. “Shh, dear. He’s fine, everyone’s fine.”
He gazed up at the white-tiled ceiling above him. “But…” He turned to look into the face of the one person he loved above all else…well, her and Johnny. “He’s okay?”
“He’ll live. Just like you. You big doofus.” Teresa leaned forward to kiss his forehead. “I saw the footage. You threw yourself at all of those senior citizens, which might just count as assault with a deadly weapon. Then you went and managed to get all the way across the stage towards Sadaf. You really don’t know when to give up, do you?”
“Guess I don’t”, he chuckled, then glanced down at his arm. His former arm. “Whoof. That medic was really quick with the tourniquet, I’ll give him that.”
“With you and with Sergeant Shaw,” said Teresa. By now she was pretty much clambered on top of him, tucking his big head into the nape of her neck; it was his favorite place to be. He inhaled her scent with relish, before suddenly realizing someone was missing.
“Johnny?” he asked.
“Oh, right,” she said, before making an imperious snap of her fingers to someone out of his line of sight…right before a little ball of energy burst its way into his room.
“DADDY!” yelled the little firebrand, before smacking into his side. Milton hugged them both to himself, realizing that, no matter what happened next, he was right now in the best place possible.
“Keep it all down to a dull roar, okay?” said a voice off to his left. A very recognizable voice.
He picked his head up to stare in that direction. “Shaw?”
The sergeant gave him a casual wave from his own hospital bed. “Hey, slick. Good ta see ya up and about.”
Milton grinned. “You too, you old fart.”
“Aw hell, I ain’t that old. So. Just out of curiosity. Did that torniquet on your arm hurt like hell?”
The agent cuddled his son closer. “You better believe it.”
“Okay, got it. Just for reference, if you get one on your leg it also hurts like a motherfu…uh, hurts like crazy.”
Milton winked at Shaw. “Don’t worry, my son has heard worse. Why are you here?”
“They put you both in one room,” said Teresa. “Something about it being easier to guard. There was an assault on Camp David too, from what I’ve heard.”
“What?” Milton tried to pry himself up off of the bed before getting a mutual shove-down from his wife and son.
“Relax, my man,” said Shaw. “Toke was there. He and my peeps took care of it.” The sergeant looked at the acoustic tiles above him. “Gonna have to promote McCoy and Martinez. They both really stepped up to the plate.”
__________
President Correa rubbed at her temple. “This ‘Toke’ is a menace.” She was seated behind the famed ‘Resolute’ desk while still trying to show the appropriate deference to the barrel-chested man in front of her, clad in a crisp dark-blue dress uniform.
“Let’s be fair, ma’am,” replied General De Vries, “He helped this situation become less complicated, not more. None of our alien…refugees? I suppose that’s a good a term as anything. None of them got killed, hell none of them even got injured. We collected the thirteen of those remaining while trying to assault Camp David. Overall we have ten dead, including the four who somehow made it into the complex and the Secret Service patrol. The attackers had top-of-the-line gear, civilian but first-rate.”
She slammed her fists into the desk-top, making a nearby mug filled with coffee jump. “I fucking VACATION there, General! Me and my family, understand?”
“I know, ma’am. Do you want me to do this questioning…properly?”
She somehow picked up what he was putting down. “No. You have my permission to go off the chain.”
“Then consider me and Toke off the chain, ma’am.”
“Wait…you’re going to use him?”
“He has had experience in similar matters, ma’am. If you prefer, I don’t need to use him.”
She shook her head. “No. We need intel, and fast, on how the fuck this happened. Plus not to mention we somehow had an artillery attack in the midst of goddam DC.”
“I cannot speak for the FBI,” said De Vries with deceptive calm. “But believe me, we will find out how this all happened. And it will never happen again, of that you have my solemn word.”
The president slumped in her seat. “What about those injured in the DC attack?”
“It was a precision single artillery strike, ma’am. Probably GPS or maybe laser-guided, we’re still trying to figure out which. If Sergeant Shaw hadn’t intervened as he did, Captain Sadaf would be nothing but pulverized meat right now.”
She looked up at him with a cynical quirk to her eyebrow. “Did his saving her get caught on film?”
“Oh hell yes. Footage from several phones, it’s all gone viral.”
“Good, make sure it continues to go viral. How is Shaw? And Agent…um…sorry, my brain is going twelve different ways…sorry, Agent Milton Vila, right?”
“You are right, ma’am. Both are still in the hospital, but both are stable. Milton lost an arm, and Shaw lost one of his legs below the knee.”
“Fuck.” It was one of the rare times that De Vries had heard the president swear. “Both can be helped with prosthetics, right?”
“Not my area of expertise, ma’am, but yes. They’ll both live, and we’ll make sure they have the very best technology available.”
President Correa suddenly grinned with an expression that the general somehow knew was going to lead to Complications in his near future.
“You mean the best human technology, don’t you?” she asked, with deceptive calm.
“Well…yes, of course. I mean, Zawahir Ibn Harith is still trying to make sense of how the aliens heal themselves. It’s true regeneration, if I understand it right. Damage to the central nervous system is still kind of hard for them to deal with, but otherwise they can pretty much heal anything.”
The president examined her fingernails. “So…growing back a limb or two should be the proverbial walk in the park, yes?”
“Um…” The general’s eyes widened. He now realized why this unassuming lady had won two terms to the highest executive office in his particular country. “Oh, yes! Of course!”
“The plans for repair efforts on the Rithro have costs which are already pretty much alongside the Manhattan Project,” said President Correa. “Why don’t you appoint Zawahir as the lead of this particular effort? We’ll call it Manhattan-Light.” She fixed General De Vries with her eyes. “Imagine it. Two people, grievously wounded in the line of duty while protecting one of our alien refugees, an effort which was caught on multiple cameras…imagine them then walking out onto a stage with intact limbs.”
“It will make quite the photo op, ma’am.”
“Indeed. I’m glad we understand each other, General.”
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Chapter Thirteen
Corporal McCoy had figured out the best reason for getting in good with an udhyr. They had four arms, therefore the hugs were twice as nice. They now lay in her room, with him lying on her bed and her lying on top of him, with her ensconced in the aforementioned hug-squared. She’d been able to get ahold of her Switch, and at the moment was in the midst of some happy early-morning gaming. Takh’s head rested upon hers with a gentle and welcome pressure while he watched her play. By now she was so used to him that even the little random clicks of his mandibles didn’t cause her any fear.
She was still trying to figure out if she and the alien XO were an ‘item’ or not. Zawahir had, with his usual enthusiasm, explained to her that both the udhyr and knuall-toua were pretty much like humans, with equal numbers of both males and females who reproduced sexually. He hadn’t gone into details on how exactly Tab A fit into Slot B, but the overall idea was clear. The auhn were a little more complicated; the ratio of females to males was more like seven or eight to one, plus there was the added wrinkle that the males were non-sapient and about as smart as the average pet dog. That had resulted in a very matriarchal society, of course, one based around clans of females protecting their stable of fertile males with appropriately auhn-like ferocity. The spider-like xyrax were…well, both. Completely hermaphroditic; there was quite a complicated social dance before they reproduced as to who was going to bear the resulting egg. McCoy was sure that, however it worked out, it would look adorable.
“So this Kirby can eat anything?” asked Takh, breaking into her ruminations.
McCoy tapped at her controls on autopilot, hoping that the damned thumbsticks wouldn’t break. Again. “Yep. Fun fact, waaay back in the 80s, Nintendo got sued by Universal Studios, who claimed that Donkey Kong was a ripoff of King Kong. John Kirby was the attorney who successfully defended them in court, and in gratitude they named this character Kirby.” She continued her tapping. “I think they gave him a sailboat as well.”
“Mmm, I must admit a sailboat sounds nice right about now. This place is very nice, but it’s a bit too cold.”
She wriggled against him. “You said it. You and me, off the coast near Nice? Floating in the warm azure waters of the Mediterranean? I can wear a nice little bikini I’ve got saved up for just such an occasion.”
“Oh! Uh, well, yes. That does indeed sound quite nice…”
She grinned. Takh was a dork, but a giant lovable dork and it was always great to get a reaction like this out of him. Even if it didn’t lead anywhere there. As far as she knew, the udhyr reproduced like frogs. Maybe she should discreetly quiz Zawahir on the whole Tab-A into Slot-B thing, just to make sure she wasn’t setting herself up for disappointment.
Of course, she’d just managed to get to the final boss of this particular level when the siren howl of the alarm went off. Haley McCoy blinked as she went from supine four-armed cuddling to standing in an instant, placed upon the floor by Takh’s upper arms.
“The unholy hell?” she muttered, but she was already in motion as she sprinted towards her gear, laid out so as to ensure maximum efficiency in getting it all put on. “Takh?” she called out as she started strapping her armored vest on.
“Yes? What do I do?”
“Simple. Anyone comes through that door who you don’t recognize, kill ‘em.”
“I…I don’t know, I’m still understanding how different humans look from each other, I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“You’ll know,” she said with finality as she picked up her carbine and racked the slide. “Okay. Follow me…”
The door to her room smashed in as a figure clad in black armor came through screaming “Earth belongs to HUMANS!...”
That was all he got out before Takh grabbed the man’s head and simply hurled the offending figure over McCoy and into the far wall. The window set in that wall shattered with the resulting impact, making the corporal duck.
“Fuck me, Takh.” She looked at the broken figure of the oh-so-very dead intruder, then back up to the worried-looking XO. “I mean, not literally. Okay, well you can if you want to, and I for sure would like you to…you know what? Let’s put that whole discussion off to the side for now until we can sit down and have ourselves a nice long chat, okay?”
“That sounds like a very wise strategy, Haley. What do you need from me?”
She finished putting on her headset and helmet. “Right now? You need to stick right behind me while I get you to the bunker.”
“You want me behind you?” Takh’s mandibles quirked in a grin. “That sounds like a very nice place to be.”
“Stop distracting me, you giant dork.” McCoy moved towards the door with a grim set to her shoulders, ignoring the lovely fact that her alien maybe-boyfriend was now checking out her ass. She swept the outside hallway….nothing visible. Then she heard some commotion from off towards the kitchen area.
__________
Martinez surged to his feet upon hearing the alarm, his half-eaten horizontal-cut pimento sandwich now forgotten. “What the fuck…?”
Matt was on his feet as well, with a strange look in his eyes that the corporal had never seen before. “You two. Corner. Now.” He pointed at the corner farthest from the two entrances to the kitchen.
The corporal was on the smaller side, even amongst his fellow humans, but something in the Marine’s tone made him turn and tackle the huge alien. Kexal, to his credit, somehow knew that Something Was Up and accepted the tackle, otherwise there was no way in hell that Martinez could have moved the giant creature.
Just as he did so, he caught a glimpse of a dark form, clad in full armor, holding a rifle, gliding around one of the entrances to the kitchen. In a panic, he fumbled for the pistol at his hip.
Martinez prized himself on his reflexes. But still, he had time for one blink of astonishment as Toke all but teleported himself across the ten feet of intervening space, pushing the intruder’s rifle up towards the ceiling and out of battery as his own arm flashed in a wicked arc. The corporal caught the merest glint of a small but cruelly-curved knife, like a predator’s claw, in the Marine’s fist.
There followed quite the epic spray of blood from underneath the attacker’s armpit, followed up by a few more cruel swipes which made sure that the tendons in that shoulder were destroyed and useless. Toke pulled the rifle away from the now-dangling limb.
Somehow, the black-armored attacker managed to speak in spite of what must be massive pain. “Earth will NEVER submit to…”
Toke’s voice was as hard as granite. “Tell your shit to someone who cares.”
Two more vicious swipes across the man’s throat resulted in a cascade of crimson down his black-armored front, and the would-be assassin toppled to the wooden floor.
“Martinez.” Toke’s robotic voice shocked him back into awareness.
“Y…yeah?”
“Got a pistol?”
“Of course.” He checked to make sure that he had it in his hand. Huh, that was strange. He didn’t remember drawing it, but there it was.
“Good.” The lean man tossed the purloined rifle towards Martinez, who caught it automatically in his off-hand. “Take this. Check this dead motherfucker for extra mags, and take ‘em. You’re on Kexal, understand? Get him safe to the bunker. Anyone you don’t know personally comes at you, you shoot ‘em.” His black, mechanical gaze shifted towards the alien. “Kexal? If Martinez goes down and someone attacks you, you have my permission to yank their arms off.”
The giant planetologist stared in horror at the bleeding and probably-dead sapient before him, then shook himself. “Of course. Yes. I’ll protect myself.”
“No need,” said Martinez as he looked back at his newly-christened charge. He racked the action on his just-acquired rifle, which looked to be a standard AR-platform civilian carbine. The corporal wished for something full-auto, but this was at least better than a pistol in terms of range and punch. “I’ll get you to safety, sir.”
He turned back to ask Matt just what the fuck was going on…but he only saw empty air.
__________
Cécile Savoie was not having a good day. She’d accepted the position of overall chief of security at Camp David with delight…at first. Dealing with the day-to-day of protecting one of the most targeted people on the planet, that she could deal with no problem. Because it was one person. It was an unspoken agreement between all of the agents that SAILOR was the priority. Even the First Husband could be sacrificed if need be.
But then she’d had a bunch of damn aliens dropped in her lap, along with an equally weird group of special-forces types. The latter were what really ground her gears; the aliens were genuinely nice and apologetic about being such a bother, but the human soldiers were the types who would crash on your couch, drink all your beer, and then steal your sweetheart when you weren’t looking.
She crouched behind a little berm to the west of Camp David, the other members of her patrol stretched out alongside her in a roughly north-to-south line.
“Moseby! Report!” she yelled.
She heard a few thumps, then a few cracks in her earpiece which were followed up by echoing reports from the building behind her. Thankfully she heard her agent’s voice in her earpiece. “Shit! Wow, um, you’re really good with that knife…”
She then heard a muffled phrase that sounded a bit like ‘give it to me, son’, and the next voice in her ear was one she was unfamiliar with.
“This is Captain Matthew Tocco, USMC, whom am I speaking with?” The voice sounded as if generated by an AI.
“I’m Agent Savoie,” she responded. “I’m in charge of the Camp David security detail, who are you?”
“I just told you who I am, Agent Savoie. And I just saved the life of one of your agents. Now. Let’s cut through any sort of jurisdictional bullshit. We have at least two confirmed active hostiles in the complex, two more are confirmed down. We’re sweeping the compound to make sure there are no others, plus making sure that our esteemed guests are safe inside the bunker. Where are you located? We need to coordinate our defenses.”
The information made her see literal red. The attackers had made it into the compound? How? There must be some angle, some safe passage made by somebody. She was going to find out who had made that safe passage, and those people would burn. Oh yes, they were all going to burn…
“West of the complex,” she snapped. “We’ve set up a perimeter along the ridge there.”
“Got it, Agent Savoie. Oh, and please don’t shoot me when I show up.”
She ran through various scenarios for the next few minutes, trying to figure out who on the team had betrayed them. And there must have been such a betrayal in order to get armed hostiles into the actual buildings. Her further musing upon vengeance was cut short as a tall, lean man seemed to all but materialize next to her. He held a small, curved blade in a reverse grip in his right hand; that blade dripped red blood. She almost pointed her gun at him, then relaxed. “Captain Tocco, I presume?”
“Call me Toke.” The guy sounded like he was out for a day on the beach.
“Who the hell are you…wait, you’re with the group in there, right?”
Matt nodded. “Yep. The rest of us are in there bundling up our guests and making sure they’re all safe and sound. Actually, by now Corporal McCoy should be…”
Agent Savoie flinched again as a small but very stacked woman seemed to suddenly appear like condensing smoke at her other side, out of the brush. “Speak of the Devil, and she shall appear.”
The tall man grinned at her. “You are pretty damn good, corporal.”
“Hell that means a lot coming from you, Toke. By the way, that’s a nice kerambit. Anyways, everybody on Team Alien is tucked in and unharmed. I got Takh in there fine. Martinez even tagged a couple more bad guys while he was escorting Grakosh to the bunker. Fair warning to everybody listening on this channel, he’s gonna be aaaall sorts of smug about that and it’s gonna turn into a story of taking out four dudes before this week is out. But, right now, it looks like only four of the OPFOR made into the complex…however they did that…so the rest must be out there.” She pointed towards the leafless woods beyond the little rise.
“Any word from Shaw?” asked Toke.
Savoie narrowed her eyes. “Something bad happened in DC. Sounds like an artillery or mortar attack.”
“Shit.” McCoy looked troubled. “This is serious business, then. State player?”
“Maybe,” said Toke. “But it could be some private group with some proper funding behind ‘em. Agent Savoie, do you have any word of a helicopter or plane going down nearby?”
“A Chinook,” she replied, “Went down about thirty minutes ago thataways.” She motioned to the west, out into the wintry forest. “Then we had one of our patrols out in that direction go silent. That’s what triggered the alarm.”
Matt grunted. “Yeah, that’s how I’d do it. Make it look like a crash and infiltrate that way. Right.” He touched his ear. “You just keep this channel open, right?”
“Where are you going?” asked McCoy.
“Out there. You need eyes on assholes, and I’m gonna give that to you.”
McCoy tossed him her carbine. “At least have a gun on you, dude.”
He caught it with his off-hand, since his main hand still held the dripping-red kerambit. He grinned at her. “All right. You got a pistol?”
“Of course.” She pulled it out and racked the slide.
He tossed the rifle back to her. “Give me that instead. We’re gonna need to concentrate some proper firepower here. This might be a proper light-infantry invasion in progress. We need to organize ourselves into a skirmish line running along this ridge, south-southwest to north-northeast. Get whoever you can on your team in there out here to bolster our firepower, understand? Dig in.”
“Got it.” The little corporal’s eyes blazed with purpose as she handed her pistol to Matt. “Now go get you some.”
“Believe me, I will.”
Savoie blinked in astonishment as the tall man vanished again.
“Yeah, he kinda does that,” said McCoy. “Dude could give sneaking-around lessons to fucking Batman.” She pulled a map out of one of the pockets on her cargo pants. “Now, Agent Savoie, how many people do we have available? Let’s get ourselves properly set up.”
__________
Wade stepped carefully over a fallen branch, his boots making almost no noise at they met the soft mulch covering the forest floor. From the curt statements in his headset, it sounded like the four heroes who’d been infiltrated into the devil’s nest had been cut down. There was no word yet if any of the alien menace had been eliminated. That was a shame, but hopefully it drew attention away from his own unit. He and his comrades made up the secondary and much more armored thrust, one which not even the vaunted Secret Service could counter. The latter were armored, yes, but only armored against pistols and they only wielded pistols themselves. He and his team had rifles, level-four body armor, helmets, and most importantly proper communications.
A voice crackled in his ear. “Hold position. The security detail is forming into a defensive line. It looks like they know we’re here.”
“Set timer?” Wade whispered into his headset. His team had a set time to accomplish their mission, before the entirety of the United States military-industrial complex landed upon their heads like the proverbial Wrath Of God.
“Yes, set timer. Twenty minutes.”
There was a soft chorus of “Twenty minutes, aye,” in Wade’s ear as he tapped his own smart-watch to start the timer. “Twenty minutes, aye,” he murmured. As he made to step over another downed branch, he paused.
Something was off. He couldn’t say why, but the air itself seemed a little more still than it should be. He turned to his left and saw a blur heading for him…he tried to raise his rifle, but it was too late…
__________
Cécile Savoie’s head snapped up as she heard a few cracks from the treeline which could only be the sound of firearms. “Anyone see anything?” she whispered into her earpiece.
There followed a myriad of “No, ma’ams” in her ear. “Keep a sharp eye,” she murmured. “Don’t fire on anyone not in black. We do have a friendly out there, he’s supposed to be giving us intel…”
Matt’s voice sounded in her ear. “Indeed. Bagged one of ‘em, on the outer edge of the advancing force. Looks like civvie gear, carbine is only semi-auto. This is a well-funded civilian effort, not a state actor.”
She checked her watch. “Got it. Fifteen minutes until we get backup in place, what do you need from us?”
“Hmm, that explains the ‘twenty minutes’ thing. Right, they know they’re on a timetable. You all need to be, and I hate to put it this way, the meat shield. It looks like they’re going for a solid push towards you, no stealth. Fourteen hostiles all told, and if this guy’s gear is any indication they’re all up-armored. Class Four. Center of mass is no good, go for head or limbs.”
Savoie’s mouth was now dry. “Understood.”
“Don’t worry, Agent. I’ll be behind them, and I’ll do what I can to sow some dissention in the ranks.”
__________
“Wade, report!” hissed Horace into his microphone.
No reply.
He took in a breath to issue another demand when a voice sounded in his ear. Horace had once gone swimming in the ocean off of Florida, and had by pure chance come across a great white shark. He still remembered the vacant gaze of the giant predator, who was probably idly wondering if Horace would make a good snack for today.
This voice brought up once again that dread; it was the voice of a pure predator. “Who is this?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“The one who just took down…Wade, was it?”
“Sidney, get eyes on Wade!”
“Will do…” There followed a long, long silence before that shark-like voice spoke again.
“You just got Sidney killed too, asshole. Care to keep going? I got no problem with that. Or do you all want to call this a day? You can do that too, you know.”
“Everybody down!” Horace snapped before going prone himself. That taunting voice still sounded in his ear.
“Okay, now you’re all down and less of a target. What now, genius? You got…hmmm…about twelve more minutes before all of the backup in the world arrives. And they will find you. You know what? You’d better hope they find you instead of me. Because I give less than two shits about that whole ‘Geneva Convention’ crap.”
“Maintain radio silence,” said Horace, as he tried to wriggle his way forward.
“Oh, you’re still trying, Mister Leader? How cute. Let me put it this way to you fourteen…sorry, thirteen, assholes. You’re done. Nailed. The best you can hope for is to get some lawyers who want to make a name for themselves. Worst case? You get put in a room with me, and if you have any sense in what passes for your brains you will spill your guts. If I’m honest, I kinda hope you put up a brave front and don’t say anything. It’s been a very long time since I got to cut loose. Gotta keep up that certain set of skills, yanno what I mean?”
“Maintain radio silence,” grated Horace, as he continued to wriggle forward.
Then, all of a sudden, he realized he was looking at boots. A pair of boots, planted in front of him like a goddamn World War Two commando movie. He glanced upwards, hoping against hope that it would turn out to be a gag like that one comedy where it was just boots…
No.
It wasn’t just boots.
Horace looked up into a man with the eyes of a shark, as well as the quite threatening muzzle of a pistol.
“Hey there, my Little Buddy-O,” said Matt. “Whatcha doin out here?”
__________
Milton came to with a gasp. “Shaw…”
A gentle hand laid upon his shoulder. “Shh, dear. He’s fine, everyone’s fine.”
He gazed up at the white-tiled ceiling above him. “But…” He turned to look into the face of the one person he loved above all else…well, her and Johnny. “He’s okay?”
“He’ll live. Just like you. You big doofus.” Teresa leaned forward to kiss his forehead. “I saw the footage. You threw yourself at all of those senior citizens, which might just count as assault with a deadly weapon. Then you went and managed to get all the way across the stage towards Sadaf. You really don’t know when to give up, do you?”
“Guess I don’t”, he chuckled, then glanced down at his arm. His former arm. “Whoof. That medic was really quick with the tourniquet, I’ll give him that.”
“With you and with Sergeant Shaw,” said Teresa. By now she was pretty much clambered on top of him, tucking his big head into the nape of her neck; it was his favorite place to be. He inhaled her scent with relish, before suddenly realizing someone was missing.
“Johnny?” he asked.
“Oh, right,” she said, before making an imperious snap of her fingers to someone out of his line of sight…right before a little ball of energy burst its way into his room.
“DADDY!” yelled the little firebrand, before smacking into his side. Milton hugged them both to himself, realizing that, no matter what happened next, he was right now in the best place possible.
“Keep it all down to a dull roar, okay?” said a voice off to his left. A very recognizable voice.
He picked his head up to stare in that direction. “Shaw?”
The sergeant gave him a casual wave from his own hospital bed. “Hey, slick. Good ta see ya up and about.”
Milton grinned. “You too, you old fart.”
“Aw hell, I ain’t that old. So. Just out of curiosity. Did that torniquet on your arm hurt like hell?”
The agent cuddled his son closer. “You better believe it.”
“Okay, got it. Just for reference, if you get one on your leg it also hurts like a motherfu…uh, hurts like crazy.”
Milton winked at Shaw. “Don’t worry, my son has heard worse. Why are you here?”
“They put you both in one room,” said Teresa. “Something about it being easier to guard. There was an assault on Camp David too, from what I’ve heard.”
“What?” Milton tried to pry himself up off of the bed before getting a mutual shove-down from his wife and son.
“Relax, my man,” said Shaw. “Toke was there. He and my peeps took care of it.” The sergeant looked at the acoustic tiles above him. “Gonna have to promote McCoy and Martinez. They both really stepped up to the plate.”
__________
President Correa rubbed at her temple. “This ‘Toke’ is a menace.” She was seated behind the famed ‘Resolute’ desk while still trying to show the appropriate deference to the barrel-chested man in front of her, clad in a crisp dark-blue dress uniform.
“Let’s be fair, ma’am,” replied General De Vries, “He helped this situation become less complicated, not more. None of our alien…refugees? I suppose that’s a good a term as anything. None of them got killed, hell none of them even got injured. We collected the thirteen of those remaining while trying to assault Camp David. Overall we have ten dead, including the four who somehow made it into the complex and the Secret Service patrol. The attackers had top-of-the-line gear, civilian but first-rate.”
She slammed her fists into the desk-top, making a nearby mug filled with coffee jump. “I fucking VACATION there, General! Me and my family, understand?”
“I know, ma’am. Do you want me to do this questioning…properly?”
She somehow picked up what he was putting down. “No. You have my permission to go off the chain.”
“Then consider me and Toke off the chain, ma’am.”
“Wait…you’re going to use him?”
“He has had experience in similar matters, ma’am. If you prefer, I don’t need to use him.”
She shook her head. “No. We need intel, and fast, on how the fuck this happened. Plus not to mention we somehow had an artillery attack in the midst of goddam DC.”
“I cannot speak for the FBI,” said De Vries with deceptive calm. “But believe me, we will find out how this all happened. And it will never happen again, of that you have my solemn word.”
The president slumped in her seat. “What about those injured in the DC attack?”
“It was a precision single artillery strike, ma’am. Probably GPS or maybe laser-guided, we’re still trying to figure out which. If Sergeant Shaw hadn’t intervened as he did, Captain Sadaf would be nothing but pulverized meat right now.”
She looked up at him with a cynical quirk to her eyebrow. “Did his saving her get caught on film?”
“Oh hell yes. Footage from several phones, it’s all gone viral.”
“Good, make sure it continues to go viral. How is Shaw? And Agent…um…sorry, my brain is going twelve different ways…sorry, Agent Milton Vila, right?”
“You are right, ma’am. Both are still in the hospital, but both are stable. Milton lost an arm, and Shaw lost one of his legs below the knee.”
“Fuck.” It was one of the rare times that De Vries had heard the president swear. “Both can be helped with prosthetics, right?”
“Not my area of expertise, ma’am, but yes. They’ll both live, and we’ll make sure they have the very best technology available.”
President Correa suddenly grinned with an expression that the general somehow knew was going to lead to Complications in his near future.
“You mean the best human technology, don’t you?” she asked, with deceptive calm.
“Well…yes, of course. I mean, Zawahir Ibn Harith is still trying to make sense of how the aliens heal themselves. It’s true regeneration, if I understand it right. Damage to the central nervous system is still kind of hard for them to deal with, but otherwise they can pretty much heal anything.”
The president examined her fingernails. “So…growing back a limb or two should be the proverbial walk in the park, yes?”
“Um…” The general’s eyes widened. He now realized why this unassuming lady had won two terms to the highest executive office in his particular country. “Oh, yes! Of course!”
“The plans for repair efforts on the Rithro have costs which are already pretty much alongside the Manhattan Project,” said President Correa. “Why don’t you appoint Zawahir as the lead of this particular effort? We’ll call it Manhattan-Light.” She fixed General De Vries with her eyes. “Imagine it. Two people, grievously wounded in the line of duty while protecting one of our alien refugees, an effort which was caught on multiple cameras…imagine them then walking out onto a stage with intact limbs.”
“It will make quite the photo op, ma’am.”
“Indeed. I’m glad we understand each other, General.”
2023.05.29 18:07 liquidwyzard Passers with tight stance and upright posture
I'm seated, and the passer is coming in with a narrow stance that denies any inside controls on the legs (sometimes as narrow as knees touching), and also difficult to get a good hook for DLR. They're also keeping a good posture that makes collar grips a big reach. Often seen it as a bit of a flex, but feel like I'm taking the bait and then going for suboptimal attachments that end up with me getting passed, and all the while he essentially just walked upright into me.
I've tried shin on shin type attachments, but struggle to get a good elevation into single leg X when he's got a strong base.
On reflection, I suspect I need to aggressively wrestle up in these positions, maybe with a double or low single, but any other specific would be helpful!
Any tips on general for folks that take a narrow passing stance would be helpful, especially as someone who prefers inside-control guards like X guard
submitted by liquidwyzard to bjj [link] [comments]
I've tried shin on shin type attachments, but struggle to get a good elevation into single leg X when he's got a strong base.
On reflection, I suspect I need to aggressively wrestle up in these positions, maybe with a double or low single, but any other specific would be helpful!
Any tips on general for folks that take a narrow passing stance would be helpful, especially as someone who prefers inside-control guards like X guard
2023.05.29 18:02 DrAndytown 1983-84 Jazz - thoughts and questions
In 1983, the Utah Jazz were probably the laughing stock of the league, and they had competition. They had never made the playoffs in eight years of existence. Moving from New Orleans to Utah in 1980, the moniker "Jazz" seemed extra silly: there are few places that seem to embody that sound rather than Salt Lake City. They were coming off a 30 win season that was their best since 1978, when they had Pete Maravich and Gail Goodrich and were sort of competitive (38 wins, a then-franchise best). For the 83-84 season, SI predicted them to be dead last: https://vault.si.com/vault/1983/10/31/midwest-division. Part of this was because Adrian Dantley had missed most of the 82-83 season, but even he was seen as a superstar scorer who wasn't a winner. The bigger story was that the Jazz would play several "home" games in Las Vegas to drum up support.
But the 83 Jazz were strong on paper, with defensive Rickey Green, former NCAA champ Darrell Griffith, emerging giant Mark Eaton, and Dantley. They went 11-2 in December and were outpacing the Lakers by the All Star Break enough that Frank Layden got to coach the West.
But the second half found them struggling through a bad February and a just okay March and early April. Still, they were atop the Midwest at 45-37 with the third best record in the West. From there, they'd win at tight series against Denver and lose to Phoenix in an upset against a lower seed (Phoenix caught on fire in the playoffs, beating higher seeded Portland and pushing the Lakers to six games)
In 84-85, the Jazz were worse at 41-41, but upset Houston in the first round before getting beat up by Denver. And then in 85-86, Dantley was still scoring at will but the road was paved with some guard and forward they had drafted in consecutive years.
Anyway, I've always been interested in that Jazz team that surprised everyone, but then sorta collapsed. It would have been an interesting WCF if the Lakers played against Dantley and co, but they just floundered against the Suns (a game or two of that series is on youtube)
Any thoughts?
submitted by DrAndytown to VintageNBA [link] [comments]
But the 83 Jazz were strong on paper, with defensive Rickey Green, former NCAA champ Darrell Griffith, emerging giant Mark Eaton, and Dantley. They went 11-2 in December and were outpacing the Lakers by the All Star Break enough that Frank Layden got to coach the West.
But the second half found them struggling through a bad February and a just okay March and early April. Still, they were atop the Midwest at 45-37 with the third best record in the West. From there, they'd win at tight series against Denver and lose to Phoenix in an upset against a lower seed (Phoenix caught on fire in the playoffs, beating higher seeded Portland and pushing the Lakers to six games)
In 84-85, the Jazz were worse at 41-41, but upset Houston in the first round before getting beat up by Denver. And then in 85-86, Dantley was still scoring at will but the road was paved with some guard and forward they had drafted in consecutive years.
Anyway, I've always been interested in that Jazz team that surprised everyone, but then sorta collapsed. It would have been an interesting WCF if the Lakers played against Dantley and co, but they just floundered against the Suns (a game or two of that series is on youtube)
Any thoughts?
2023.05.29 18:00 adobecrack Adobe Photoshop 2022 Crack (Windows & MacOS) (Full Download) (100% Working)
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submitted by adobecrack to u/adobecrack [link] [comments]
Adobe Photoshop 2022 Full Download + Review
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2023.05.29 17:44 autotldr Malaysia detains Chinese vessel for looting WWII shipwrecks
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 35%. (I'm a bot)
Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: coast#1 ship#2 Chinese#3 vessel#4 believed#5
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.
submitted by autotldr to autotldr [link] [comments]
Malaysia's coast guard said Monday it has detained a Chinese vessel believed to have been involved in plundering World War II shipwrecks.
The Maritime Enforcement Agency said in a statement that the bulk carrier, registered in Fuzhou, China, and its 32 crew members were detained Sunday for anchoring in waters off the eastern coast of Malaysia's southern Johor state without a permit.
The coast guard also said they found on the ship cannon shells that are believed to be from sunken British World War II battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.
Japanese bombers sank the two ships in 1941 off the east coast of Malaysia in the South China Sea.
The New Straits Times, a local newspaper, reported that local fishermen had seen the Chinese salvage vessel, identified as Chuan Hong 68, at the location of the shipwrecks since last month.
In an article published last Tuesday, the English daily said after dredging up the remains of the battleships, the Chinese vessel unloaded the haul at a private jetty in Johor with a scrapyard that can store and melt down metals.
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.
2023.05.29 17:42 UnknownChaser [US-MD] [H] TCG Single/Speed Duel OCG CR Sleeve, Deckbox, Mat July OCG Pre-Order [W] Paypal
Sale Pics
TCG cards are valued at 85% verified lowest TCGplayer
OCG Goat singles - ask for what I have and price
OCG CR singles - ask for what I have and price
Battle Shogun of the Six Samurai FC - 100
Amanda Lapalme FC - ask
Key charm - 20
On hand orica_TCG's FC/Token - 25
SSB Acrylic stand - 15
OTS 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 - 6s, all are unscaled/unweight and were my tournament winning
Astral Pack 2 - 10
Duel Disk pillow - 185
Official Kagari sleeves - 285
Kaiba baseball sleeves - 40
Doujin sleeve - 30
Fire Emblem Cipher sleeve - 30
CNC Judge Duel City Sleeves 15x for any - 35
Other deckboxes - 35
SSB Storage box - 20
Emperor's Key - 70
Slifer Red storage box - 90
Crimson Dragon storage box - 120
Demon Slayer deckbox - 100
Dueling Guard The Struggler - 120
Korea OTS Champion Aromage - 350
2018 OCG WCQ Crusadia Vanguard - 350
Eldlich Rank Up League Season 1 - 225
Pvramid The Wyrmaidens of the Manor - 225
Pvramid The Unspoken One UV Gatcha - 225
Amanda Lapalme Series 1 single cloth mat REDMD - 125
Other TCG cards - ask
July OCG Pre-Order
Taking pre-order for OCG event stuff, these will arrived in June/July with my next shipment. Prices are shipped in the US. Pm if interested. These will also be available for pickup at Nats and have pick up prices. Also have access to other OCG products as well.
https://imgur.com/a/nYJIElU
Broccoli Emboss/Clear S Sleeve BSP-13 - 30
AFD/PTD/RDA/BWD sleeve and deck divider - 22
BRD/SD sleeve and deck divider - 33
Konami "Not-GEM" deckbox - 85
Konami Shop Whirlwind of Gusto - 95
Ranking Duel Nina - 95
Asia 3v3 Dinomorphia Rextrum - 100
YCSJ Exosister - 110
Ranking Duel Flame Wingman - 160
Ranking Duel Jaden - 170
YGO Day Traptrix - 180
YOT 2015 Nekroz - 200
Asia CE Raidraptor - 200
Thai Festival Rilliona, the Magistus of Verre - 200
Ranking Duel 2014 Stellarknight - 200
Asia CE Evil HERO Adjusted Gold - 225
NECH HERO Sneak - 225
YGO Day Live Twin - 250
Thai Festival Evigishki Nereimanas - 250
KCS Wake Up Your E HERO - 275
Ranking Duel League Runick Fountain - 300
I am taking order for orica_TCG's products, a Korea-based orica maker that I have an upcoming order from. These will arrived in July.
Field Center: https://imgur.com/a/06wym2W
Double sided Field Center: https://imgur.com/a/DDJzxq0
Token: https://imgur.com/a/wIpwPci
Deck Divider: https://imgur.com/a/UFtDKc8
Sleeves: https://imgur.com/a/H2Zy920
All are 25 shipped each, with any additional token/field centedeck divider being 20.
All double sided Field Center are 30 each, with any extra being 25.
The sleeves are all pack of either packs of 15x for 35 shipped.
If want to see the high quality of his products, OzoneTCG has a video showing it off; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Pj3JoJSEQ
Prices are shipped. Tracking is $5 and free tracking on anything over 30. Price are before fees.
submitted by UnknownChaser to YGOMarketplace [link] [comments]
OCG Goat singles - ask for what I have and price
OCG CR singles - ask for what I have and price
Amanda Lapalme FC - ask
Key charm - 20
On hand orica_TCG's FC/Token - 25
SSB Acrylic stand - 15
OTS 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 - 6s, all are unscaled/unweight and were my tournament winning
Astral Pack 2 - 10
Duel Disk pillow - 185
Kaiba baseball sleeves - 40
Doujin sleeve - 30
Fire Emblem Cipher sleeve - 30
CNC Judge Duel City Sleeves 15x for any - 35
SSB Storage box - 20
Emperor's Key - 70
Slifer Red storage box - 90
Crimson Dragon storage box - 120
Demon Slayer deckbox - 100
Dueling Guard The Struggler - 120
2018 OCG WCQ Crusadia Vanguard - 350
Eldlich Rank Up League Season 1 - 225
Pvramid The Wyrmaidens of the Manor - 225
Pvramid The Unspoken One UV Gatcha - 225
Amanda Lapalme Series 1 single cloth mat REDMD - 125
Other TCG cards - ask
Taking pre-order for OCG event stuff, these will arrived in June/July with my next shipment. Prices are shipped in the US. Pm if interested. These will also be available for pickup at Nats and have pick up prices. Also have access to other OCG products as well.
Broccoli Emboss/Clear S Sleeve BSP-13 - 30
AFD/PTD/RDA/BWD sleeve and deck divider - 22
BRD/SD sleeve and deck divider - 33
Konami "Not-GEM" deckbox - 85
Konami Shop Whirlwind of Gusto - 95
Ranking Duel Nina - 95
Asia 3v3 Dinomorphia Rextrum - 100
YCSJ Exosister - 110
Ranking Duel Flame Wingman - 160
Ranking Duel Jaden - 170
YGO Day Traptrix - 180
YOT 2015 Nekroz - 200
Asia CE Raidraptor - 200
Thai Festival Rilliona, the Magistus of Verre - 200
Ranking Duel 2014 Stellarknight - 200
Asia CE Evil HERO Adjusted Gold - 225
NECH HERO Sneak - 225
YGO Day Live Twin - 250
Thai Festival Evigishki Nereimanas - 250
KCS Wake Up Your E HERO - 275
Ranking Duel League Runick Fountain - 300
Field Center: https://imgur.com/a/06wym2W
Double sided Field Center: https://imgur.com/a/DDJzxq0
Token: https://imgur.com/a/wIpwPci
Deck Divider: https://imgur.com/a/UFtDKc8
Sleeves: https://imgur.com/a/H2Zy920
All are 25 shipped each, with any additional token/field centedeck divider being 20.
All double sided Field Center are 30 each, with any extra being 25.
The sleeves are all pack of either packs of 15x for 35 shipped.
If want to see the high quality of his products, OzoneTCG has a video showing it off; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2Pj3JoJSEQ
2023.05.29 17:36 rotterdamn8 I just finished a great trip; includes off the beaten path places, art museums, super fun bike rides, and plenty of sashimi and sake
Hi. I just came back from a two week trip. I lived in Osaka and Tokyo some years ago so this trip was really meeting up with old friends again and also going for some new adventures.
It's so affordable now (if you have USD, which is strong against the yen). I ate and drank so well! I went to a lot of izakaya, tried various local and regional specialties (unagi around Hamamatsu, akafuku in Ise, for example). All for waaaayyyyy cheaper than what I spend at home in Philly or NYC.
I also did a bit of biking. In Japan you often get a mamachari, which is like "your momma's chariot", or a bike your Mom would ride. With a basket. But hey they're fun for just cruising around! I've decided biking around the countryside is one of my favorite travel activities.
The main idea of this trip was:
Tokyo
Ask me any questions. Thanks for reading.
submitted by rotterdamn8 to JapanTravel [link] [comments]
It's so affordable now (if you have USD, which is strong against the yen). I ate and drank so well! I went to a lot of izakaya, tried various local and regional specialties (unagi around Hamamatsu, akafuku in Ise, for example). All for waaaayyyyy cheaper than what I spend at home in Philly or NYC.
I also did a bit of biking. In Japan you often get a mamachari, which is like "your momma's chariot", or a bike your Mom would ride. With a basket. But hey they're fun for just cruising around! I've decided biking around the countryside is one of my favorite travel activities.
The main idea of this trip was:
- Tokyo - catch up with friends and visit my favorite hang out places and restaurants.
- Hamamatsu - I went to a beach at 7am, rented a bike, and biked around the Lake Hamana area. I took three trains, two buses, and a ferry to Ise. Yes obviously it takes longer than shinkansen to Nagoya, but this is the scenic route lol.
- Going to Ise was about Ise-jingu, of course.
- One night in Nabari. I wanted to see Akame 48, where there are a bunch of waterfalls.
- Nara - last time I was there was 19 years ago. I spent just one day doing the usual stuff in Nara-koen and two days doing a bunch of other things on the outskirts.
- Osaka - it was great to be back, but mainly I was there to get shinkansen back to Tokyo.
Tokyo
- I splurged and stayed at the Shiba Park Hotel. Shiba Park is near Hamamatsu-cho, which is easily accessible from Haneda via the monorail.
- I went to a Kanda matsuri (festival) that involved people parading around omikoshi (portable shrine). They're really fun if you haven't seen. While there, by chance I came upon a kabuki theater and an usher convinced me to buy a ticket. Really colorful and dramatic.
- I hit up some museum favorites such as the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Ebisu (I used to live across the street) and Ōta Memorial Museum of Art in Harajuku (all ukiyo-e, which I love).
- Tip: if you are in Tokyo Station, have time to kill, and like art, there's a gallery near the north gate. Currently it's Japanese Paintings of Modern Osaka.
- Probably not on most people's radar, it's not a must-see city. I took a local train to Maisaka, walked to the ocean, walked around more, and found a bike rental place in Bentenjima.
- Biked up to Hamanako Garden Park. It's all about flowers. Then biked farther up to Kanzanji-cho and ate some delicious unagi (eel).
- The city is not super exciting but the Museum of Musical Instruments is really cool. They have a room with instruments you can rock out on. I banged on a djembe and plucked a koto.
- As part of the scenic route to Ise, I took trains and buses out to Irago, then ferry across to Toba, and local Kintetsu train up to Ise.
- Stayed in a ryokan near the train station. The main thing here is Ise-jingu, the most sacred shrine in Japan, the holiest of holies. Took advantage of lingering jet lag to wake up early and get in at 6am. It opens at 5!
- The early morning hours are great. The main strip leading up to Geku wasn't that crowded even in the afternoon, although the main strip outside Naiku - okage yokocho - started to get busy after 9am.
- A small town in Mie-ken. I had always heard about Akame 48, where there are supposedly 48 waterfalls. The day was totally rained out. I took a local train and then bus to the visitors center but the rain wasn't letting up. I had a long chat with a friendly young Japanese guy who worked there. He doesn't see many visitors lately so I think he was glad for the opportunity to chat.
- Stayed at a guest house near Nara-machi. This area is so cool - some tourists visit but still very local. Great for strolling around and checking out the shops. I did the usual Nara Park stuff for one day - Daibutsu, Nara National Museum, etc.
- I rented a bike and headed out to Toshodai-ji and Yakushi-ji. It's a slight trek but there's a small river you can bike along which was cool.
- I tried and failed to finish the yama-no-be-no-michi ("mountain area path"), as detailed in the LP book. I started too late and it was too hot. There are sign posts here and there but notably lacking where there are some forks in the road. You start from Tenri station and takes at least 30 minutes walking just to get to the start of the trail. Better planning next time.
- Stayed at APA Hotel in Umeda, rented a bike and went out to the aquarium. That's a bit of a slog but still worth it. At night walked around the usual places like Shinsaibashi, Ame-mura, etc.
- I had time to kill before catching the shinkansen back to Tokyo so I rented a bike from the Shin-Osaka station and biked along the Yodo River. It's so nice - wide paths and great scenery.
- Tip: I was reminded of how confusing it is to navigate Umeda on the street. Don't bother. If you have to find a station or something, go underground and follow the signs!
- Airfare: $1500
- Hotel: $1200
- Food and drink: $700, which is simply amazing. And I ate so well!
- Transportation: $325
- Various activities: $300
Ask me any questions. Thanks for reading.
2023.05.29 17:35 adobecrack Adobe Premiere Pro 2022 Crack (Windows & MacOS) (Full Download) (100% Working)
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Although this software is often used, it is now quite outdated in terms of features. Especially now that there is the latest Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 version.
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😍 Support us guys and help to grow this community :
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submitted by adobecrack to u/adobecrack [link] [comments]
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to avoid errors like system compatibility report or error code 195 or quit unexpectedly mac applications , INCOMPATIBLE M1 or M2, If you have Chip M1 or M2 use the following instructions to Install Adobe After Effects on Chip M1 or M2 and more follow those instructions.
Attention 😱 ! Before you start install process you should first install Adobe Flash Player 2023 ✅ Latest version to do not face any future issues while using Adobe Premiere Pro also to accelerate rendering.
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Maccleaner Review (How to Clean your mac) : https://youtu.be/lBPRghwT3Zc
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2023.05.29 17:35 TheScribe_1 [The Book of the Chosen] - Chapter Eleven - The Room of Doors
Previous Chapter - Read 10 weeks ahead on Patreon - Read the story so far on Royal Road
*
Chapter Eleven - The Room of Doors
‘Get moving!’
Sara watched the men readying their horses, squinting at the brightness of the stone. The courtyard was full of the sound of boot-steps and creaking leather. Overhead, a thin veil of rippled grey hung over the early winter sky, and the dawn sun tugged gleaming at its edges. Overhead, the dull black shape of an old stormtower bled the sky. Empty, just like the rest of them. There was something very jarring, Sara decided, about the worn jerkins and stubbled cheeks of her father’s men, ensconced in a pillared courtyard of vast stone. They were out of place, and they had been every moment since arriving in Uldoroth, she realised. They didn’t belong here. Her own anxiety was mirrored imperfectly with the relief on their weary faces, and the dark rings under their eyes seemed just a little less deep. There may be Black Hand to deal with, back in the Westmere, but it was home. At least there your enemies had the decency to show themselves. Sara realised she was chewing her lip. At her back, two of the Black Guard waited wordlessly in their gold-touched armour, much more in keeping with the finery of the courtyard, and everything else in the capital. They were waiting to escort her away to the Queen, unaware they found a girl not so eager for the honour as she had been, just a few days before.
‘Father!’ She called out, spying him across the writhing mass of men in their moss green cloaks, but he seemed not to hear her. He was standing near the arched cloister at the far side of the square, cloaked and ready for travel, in hurried conversation with a shaded figure standing beyond the marble facade. She squinted, trying to make out the other man, but there was nothing but a dark shadow to trace.
‘Well then, M’lady.’ A voice said beside her, and she turned to find Halin looking down at her, a kind smile on his broad face. ‘You’ll be a right proper Princess when I next see you, methinks.’
Sara smiled at him and shook her head sheepishly. ‘Uldoroth is not my home, yet, Halin. I won’t forget.’
‘Be careful you don’t, Lady Sara.’ Halin glanced distrustfully at the Black Guard behind her. ‘Lots of fancy folk here. Fancy folk with fancier lies.’
‘I’ll be careful, Halin.’ She told him seriously.
He smiled again, and the sternness dissolved away from his face.
‘Take care, M’Lady.’ He told her, dipping his head politely. She returned the gesture, dropping into a small curtsy.
‘Look after my father, will you?’
‘Always, M’Lady.’
Halin hurried off into the throng in the square, and Sara watched him go, feeling her the knot in her belly tighten. The conversations with her unexpected visitors had left their mark, a nagging uncertainty gnawing at the excitement that had carried her through her first few uneventful days in the capital. The little comfort she had taken in the presence of her father and his men was a loss she could ill afford. She watched her father’s back, frowning softly to herself. Her thoughts were not what she had imagined, when she had thought of him leaving. A hundred different times, and more. Had she expected tears, grief at the parting? Relief? Instead, there was only the fear, a dull, leaden weight in her belly, clammy-cold as marsh-water.
‘Come on, you whoresons! I want to be on the road before lunch!’ Halin roared, and the men quickened their work. Her father had not moved, still deep in conversation, just out of sight. She peered a little closer, and for a moment the pale sunlight crept over the top of the square, flashing against a colourful doublet marked with a silver brooch. The Fox’s lips barely moved as he spoke from the shadows of the cloister, and her father was scowling. Sara frowned.
‘Mount up!’
The ornate wagon that had been her home all those weeks trundled into the square, then, drawn by a pair of stout horses. Sara saw her father turn reluctantly towards it, striding out into the square. Sara peered past him into the cloister, and for a moment Lord Bywood’s sharp eyes caught hers. Then he smiled, dipping his dark, smooth head, and vanished himself away into the shadows.
‘Father!’
Sara hurried out into the crowded square, leaving her escort behind, darting between the shifting limbs of the horses. Her father turned towards her as she approached, and smiled small smile, in two parts, one weary, one sad.
‘Sara.’
She threw her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest for a moment, and he put an arm around her shoulders. She knew her role, and the knowing of it made her safe for a moment. Then she stepped back, looking up at him.
‘I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘I… There was much preparation to do.’
Sara did not reply. His eyes had that same distance that they had had since they arrived in the capital. Uldoroth had worn at him, as if all the brightness and finery had made his skin dull, eyes darkened like the contrast of shadows in bright sun.
‘Will you write?’
He blinked as she spoke, then smiled, and the tiredness fell away from him for a moment. He took her chin gently in one hand, tilting it up to meet his eyes.
‘Yes, I will write.’ He told her, and she saw again that fierce ambition in his eyes, the look she had known so well on their journey from the Westmere. Swollen around the soft, lazy ease of diminished strength. ‘And I shall expect news in return. The Rose of Westmere will show these fools how a real lady charms.’
Sara smiled and lowered her eyes self-consciously.
‘I… I will not disappoint you, father.’ She said quietly, and found, in spite of herself, that there were tears in her eyes.
‘See that you do not.’ He replied. Then he let go of her chin and climbed quickly into the carriage. He leaned out from the window for a moment, before they were gone, banging a hand against the wooden panels of the door impatiently.
‘Move out!’
‘You heard him!’ Halin bellowed in response, holding his horse in check beneath him. ‘Back to Westmere, before your wives go straying!’
With that, her father’s men spurred their horses away into the white corridors of the citadel, bound for the sky-cages and the city below. They had arrived on foot, leading their steeds, but they left by horseback, hurried by grave purpose towards the long road west. She watched the window of the carriage as it trundled away with the horses, but her father did not appear again. She stayed there, staring after them, until the party were out of sight and the great gate of the keep heaved closed behind them, slamming into the distant stone with a resounding thud.
‘M’Lady.’
She turned to find the Black Guard waiting, watching her with dark eyes through the narrow slits of their polished helms. For a moment, the suddenness of the departure threatened to overwhelm her. What was it he had told her, slurring over his unfinished dinner, in the pristine perfection of their lodgings, surrounded by invisible eyes? Power belongs to the strong. To those who take it. Just then, standing in the courtyard, watching alone as her father departed, she realised that he was right. And he wasn’t strong enough. She took a deep breath, smiling for the Black Guard, and followed them out of the ancient courtyard into the halls beyond.
*
The broad, open avenues and garden-ways of the Keep of Eranor closed in to interior corridors rather quickly, when you knew the way, and soon Sara was following her black-gilded escort through pale passageways lined with statuettes and tapestries, ceilings lost far overhead to the flickering light of amber flames. An occasional glimpse of pale sunlight leaped out across the stone floor, shimmering through shifting motes of dust. Sara was her Lady-self again, graceful and poised, gliding over the polished floor after her escort. The giant corridors were a maze of twists and turns, past fragment-views of gardens and libraries and sitting-halls and galleries, but she was dimly aware they were moving towards the Hall of the King. The thought made her a little giddy.
‘Will I be received in the King’s Hall?’ She asked as they walked, but the Black Guards didn’t reply, and their armour clinked in the quiet. Sara frowned, following them. The passage curved, rising, and she found that the wall on her right side suddenly gave way to the hall below. One of the galleries, set high in the rafters of the King’s Hall. She stopped, putting her hand on the balustrade and peering out over the ledge, into the vaulted, silent emptiness of the hall. Some fifty foot below, the patterned black and white marble of the floor gleamed in flashes of reflected amber, quiet and empty. At the far end, pale sunlight caught the Night Throne, setting fire in the mirrored stone. Overhead, the matching nightglass ceiling gleamed like a lake in starlight, and swirling figures swept back and forth across it in the shifting light of the chamber. Sara felt a little thrill run over her neck.
‘Sara.’
Sara blinked, starting, and found Dana standing beside her.
‘Sister!’ Sara took hold of her sister’s hands and rose onto her tiptoes, pressing a kiss against her cheek. ‘Here to welcome me into the fold?’
She was struck again by the strangeness of her sister, the difference in her. Dana wore black, a dress of simple lines and inlaid jet, at once relaxed and taut as a lute string. Her pale hands were folded over her belly, and her muddy dark hair was pulled back into a bun. The Black Guards halted behind her, waiting.
‘I am to escort you to the Queen’s chambers.’ Dana said simply. With that she turned and began to walk away along the balcony, towards a closed door at the throne-end of the hall. Sara frowned, hurrying after her.
‘Do the King and Queen not share chambers?’ She asked as they walked, and the hall below drew on beside them.
‘Their Majesties prefer… to keep their own space.’
The Black Guard fell into step at a respectful distance behind them, armoured heels clicking against the stone.
‘How many others are there?’
‘How many what?’
‘Handmaidens. How many does her Majesty keep?’
Dana did not break stride. ‘Two others, and the Matron.’
‘I suppose we shall not have servants of our own.’ Sara said quietly, eyeing the shadows shifting over the nightglass ceiling. ‘No need to spy on us when we are so close.’
‘Sara-’ Dana began, but Sara cut her off.
‘Father is gone, you know. This morning.’
‘I know.’ Dana replied, looking ahead.
‘You did not come to see him.’
Dana did not turn.
‘I’m sure he will miss you terribly, sister.’
Sara bristled suddenly, grabbing her sister’s arm.
‘I did not ask for it!’
Dana looked down at the hand on her arm, frowning. ‘What?’
‘Any of it!’ Sara told her, angry now, her whisper cracking. ‘I didn’t ask to stay. I didn’t ask him to send you away. I would have given anything to go with you. I thought he would never let me leave.’ She lowered her voice, flicking an eye back towards the waiting guards. ‘I did not ask for the way he… the way he…’
She took a breath, swallowing, and straightened, looking her sister in the eye.
‘There are worse things than being ignored, Dana.’
Dana’s hand folded over hers.
‘Let’s… let’s put it behind us.’ She said quietly. ‘You are here, now.’
Sara blinked at her, nodding. She wanted to say more, but her words would not come, locked away from her tongue by the choked gulping of her breath. She lowered her eyes, and Dana squeezed her hand.
‘Sara, listen to me.’ Dana murmured, leaning close. ‘You must be careful. The Queen-’
The door at the far end of the gallery swung open, creaking on its hinges. The pair fell silent, frozen, and whatever Dana might have said, she held instead.
*
‘Wait here.’
The Matron, the head of the Queen’s Keepers, was an elderly woman with rounding hips and hair the colour of ash tied into a tight bun behind the worn-leather creases of her forehead. She was wearing black, same as Dana, though her smock was somehow plainer, when she opened the door onto the gallery, ushering the sisters wordlessly into the corridor beyond. Dana had bowed her head deferentially, withering under the Matron’s hard eyes, and quickly disappeared into one of the many doors of the hallway. Sara almost asked for her to stay, but instead she steeled herself, remembering her lessons, and followed the stern old woman down the long, flickering hallway. The corridors of the keep were all severe, all lit by weak, flickering torchlight and gleaming the gleam of cold stone, but here they were particularly bare. There were no busts, no tapestries, no mosaics. Nothing but cold, dead rock, lent a little life by the dim thrustings of infrequent braziers. In her own apartments, she had understood the quiet, but here, in the keep proper, there was an eery silence to the corridors that jarred with Sara’s anticipation. Where were the nobles in their gay clothes, where was the music and laughter of a King’s Hall? Sara frowned to herself, and kept walking.
The room at the end of the hallway was broad and rounded, like a kind of circle made out of many flat edges, each holding the low light of a brazier. The marble floors were black and white and patterned like a gamesboard, empty but for a broad nightwood table at its centre, matching the room itself for its odd roundness. On the far side, a wall of shutters opened out onto a large, bare balcony, and over the intricately wrought stone balustrade, Sara could see the City of the Moon below, sweeping away towards the edge of the Heartspire, empty stormtowers stabbing black into the sky. Beyond, the great emerald plains of Valia stretched out into the west, past the fiery line of the river Arq, scored with jagged, dark rock and silver streams. Sara swallowed, realising she’d never been so high up.
‘Wait here.’
‘But-‘ She protested, frowning, but the Matron was already gone, turned on her heel and disappeared back the way she had come. Sara flinched as the door slammed shut behind her, and the silence of the room prickled at her skin. The breeze rustled over the balcony, swirling about the pillared windows, but the air inside was still as the grave. She stepped slowly over to the table, touching the polished wood. This much nightwood would have cost more than a wagonload of gold. She traced the knotted lines across the black surface, trying to ignore the cold weight churning in her gut.
Time stretched on around her, and the minutes dragged by like years. Despite the open air flooding through the windows, the chamber was not cool, warmed by the subtle glow of the braziers, and she felt a little wetness beginning to build under her arms. She looked about herself, trying to calm her heart. There were four other doors in the room, besides the one they had entered through, all dark and heavy looking, and each bore a pattern of silver on its face. There was a cradle, and opposite it, a pendant with teeth like a wolf. Beside the cradle door, a small drinks table, a glass jug of purple wine atop it, with a pair of matching glasses. The two doors closest to the balcony bore a sun and a crescent moon. She looked a little closer, and realised that the markings were not moonsilver, merely an imitation in gleaming silver paint, and the door she had entered through bore no markings at all. Sara watched them, imagining the rooms that lay behind each. Which one was the Queen behind, she wondered, and her heart quickened at the thought, stomach churning. She was stranded, here, now, in the capital. What if the Queen didn’t like her? What if she said something wrong? Would she be sent away again, back to her father?
‘Lady Westmere.’
The crescent moon had swung open, and the Queen glided through, a beautiful shadow in a studded black dress, arms glistening with little sharpened sequins the colour of midnight. Her hair had been contorted into an elaborate maze of raven curls over her pate, and her pale skin took on a translucent sheen in the pale light from the balcony doors. The throat of her dress was open, as it had been in the King’s Hall all those days ago, and she wore the same golden necklace, its myriad points sharp like daggers with their drops of ruby blood.
Sara blinked, then remembered herself, and dropped into a low curtsy, bowing her head.
‘Your Majesty.’ She said quietly, keeping her eyes on the floor.
The Queen did not reply. Sara was dimly aware of her shadow moving across the floor, crossing to the drinks table beside the cradle door. Sara risked a glance up, then, and found the Queen’s slender back to her. When she at last turned, she had a glass goblet of wine clutched in her narrow fingers. Sara lowered her eyes again.
‘You are a pretty one, aren’t you.’ The Queen said quietly, as if to herself. Her voice was cold, like ice leaking over lakewater, deep and still. She took a sip from her cup, and Sara could feel the cut of her eyes against her skin. ‘What did the Weasel of Westmere do to sire such a pretty daughter. Your sister, maybe, I understand, but you…’
Sara forced herself not to frown.
‘Well trained, I see.’ The Queen murmured, smiling coldly. She took another sip of her wine. ‘Your mother’s touch, I assume, not your father’s.’
Sara hesitated. She glanced up at the Queen, then lowered her eyes again, nodding.
‘I hear she is unwell.’
Sara looked up again, braver this time, and found the Queen’s dark eyes watching her over the rim of her glass.
‘She has an affliction, Your Majesty. She does not eat, and rarely sleeps. The Keepers say it is a disease of her mind.’
‘The one thing none of us can escape.’ The Queen sighed, toying idly with her glass and looking out of the window over the city below. ‘Still, there are worse places to be sickly than a Lord’s hall.’
‘I suppose… I suppose that is true, Your Majesty.’
The Queen raised an eyebrow. ‘Suppose, do you?’
Sara squirmed for a moment under the weight of her eyes, but then the Queen turned away, stepping slowly around the edge of the table till she was standing beside the open windows. She took another sip of her wine, back to Sara again.
‘Your sister met you, this morning.’
Sara hesitated, thrown for a moment by the abruptness of the statement.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘And she came to you yesterday, in the apartments Bywood found for you.’
‘Yes.’ Sara felt the cold weight return in her belly. She thought of what the Fox had warned her. There is always someone watching. She cast her mind back to her conversations with Dana. Gods. What had they spoken of? Had she said something out of turn?
‘Curious, that she did not seek out your father.’
Sara let out her breath slowly. That was not a particularly well-hidden curiosity.
‘Dana must have been very busy, Your Majesty.’
‘She is as busy as I make her, and that is rarely too taxing.’
Sara sighed. ‘They have… sometimes not seen eye to eye.’
‘And you?’ The Queen turned as she spoke, fixing her eyes to Sara’s again. Behind her, the distant sounds of the city drifted lazily up through the air, swirling around far-off columns of wispy smoke. ‘What do you say of him?’
Sara hesitated again, stuttering. ‘He is my father, Your Majesty. I trust that he always knows what is best for his daughters.’
‘In my experience it is fathers who know the least about their own daughters.’ The Queen replied dryly, sipping again. ‘Come, let me look at you, then.’
She came back around the nightwood table, her long, narrow limbs gliding over the polished floor, and stopped in front of Sara, setting her glass down beside them. She took Sara’s chin in two spindly fingers and tilted it upwards so that she was looking her in the eye, only a few inches from her face. Sara realised again how tall she was, as tall as her father, at least, though her slender frame made her seem much smaller. She tried not to squirm, but she found that the Queen’s fingers dug uncomfortably into her chin, dark eyes flitting back and forth across her face like a hungry wolf.
‘Yes, very pretty.’ She said at last, not releasing her chin. Sara could feel her breath on her face, smelling softly of dark wine. ‘No wonder. You look like her, you know.’
‘Who-‘ but the Queen had already turned away, back to the table, picking up her wineglass in one bone-stretched hand.
‘The Matron will meet you outside. She will give you your tasks and show you to your chamber. You will begin tomorrow.’
Sara flinched, realising she had been holding her breath. She curtsied to the Queen’s back, suddenly a little giddy.
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’
‘You may go, girl.’
Sara turned to go, not at all sure what to make of the encounter. She paused at the door, looking back over her shoulder, but found the Queen looking out over the city silently again, wineglass in hand, black dress glistening with jet. Sara hesitated a moment longer, then hurried out into the corridor beyond the unmarked door, closing it behind her.
*
The night before her father leaves, she wakes in darkness.
She does not open her eyes, but she knows it is not yet dawn. The sounds of the garden beyond her shutters are soft and murmuring, wind-stirred and drip-spotted.
She can feel him over her, the tense stillness of him, closer than shadows. He smells of wine. Sweat. She is cold, but she does not move. She dares not move. She can feel the weight of his eyes, dulled with drink, tracing the lines of her. His breathing sounds like anger.
She does not know how long she waits there, frozen. But she does not open her eyes. Not once. Time stretches out before her in that moment, an eternity of breathless terror.
Then he leaves. The smell of him lingers long after the door has closed behind him. She lays there a while longer, motionless, dead as stone. Then she curls into her own arms, and weeps silently until the dawn.
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*
Chapter Eleven - The Room of Doors
‘Get moving!’
Sara watched the men readying their horses, squinting at the brightness of the stone. The courtyard was full of the sound of boot-steps and creaking leather. Overhead, a thin veil of rippled grey hung over the early winter sky, and the dawn sun tugged gleaming at its edges. Overhead, the dull black shape of an old stormtower bled the sky. Empty, just like the rest of them. There was something very jarring, Sara decided, about the worn jerkins and stubbled cheeks of her father’s men, ensconced in a pillared courtyard of vast stone. They were out of place, and they had been every moment since arriving in Uldoroth, she realised. They didn’t belong here. Her own anxiety was mirrored imperfectly with the relief on their weary faces, and the dark rings under their eyes seemed just a little less deep. There may be Black Hand to deal with, back in the Westmere, but it was home. At least there your enemies had the decency to show themselves. Sara realised she was chewing her lip. At her back, two of the Black Guard waited wordlessly in their gold-touched armour, much more in keeping with the finery of the courtyard, and everything else in the capital. They were waiting to escort her away to the Queen, unaware they found a girl not so eager for the honour as she had been, just a few days before.
‘Father!’ She called out, spying him across the writhing mass of men in their moss green cloaks, but he seemed not to hear her. He was standing near the arched cloister at the far side of the square, cloaked and ready for travel, in hurried conversation with a shaded figure standing beyond the marble facade. She squinted, trying to make out the other man, but there was nothing but a dark shadow to trace.
‘Well then, M’lady.’ A voice said beside her, and she turned to find Halin looking down at her, a kind smile on his broad face. ‘You’ll be a right proper Princess when I next see you, methinks.’
Sara smiled at him and shook her head sheepishly. ‘Uldoroth is not my home, yet, Halin. I won’t forget.’
‘Be careful you don’t, Lady Sara.’ Halin glanced distrustfully at the Black Guard behind her. ‘Lots of fancy folk here. Fancy folk with fancier lies.’
‘I’ll be careful, Halin.’ She told him seriously.
He smiled again, and the sternness dissolved away from his face.
‘Take care, M’Lady.’ He told her, dipping his head politely. She returned the gesture, dropping into a small curtsy.
‘Look after my father, will you?’
‘Always, M’Lady.’
Halin hurried off into the throng in the square, and Sara watched him go, feeling her the knot in her belly tighten. The conversations with her unexpected visitors had left their mark, a nagging uncertainty gnawing at the excitement that had carried her through her first few uneventful days in the capital. The little comfort she had taken in the presence of her father and his men was a loss she could ill afford. She watched her father’s back, frowning softly to herself. Her thoughts were not what she had imagined, when she had thought of him leaving. A hundred different times, and more. Had she expected tears, grief at the parting? Relief? Instead, there was only the fear, a dull, leaden weight in her belly, clammy-cold as marsh-water.
‘Come on, you whoresons! I want to be on the road before lunch!’ Halin roared, and the men quickened their work. Her father had not moved, still deep in conversation, just out of sight. She peered a little closer, and for a moment the pale sunlight crept over the top of the square, flashing against a colourful doublet marked with a silver brooch. The Fox’s lips barely moved as he spoke from the shadows of the cloister, and her father was scowling. Sara frowned.
‘Mount up!’
The ornate wagon that had been her home all those weeks trundled into the square, then, drawn by a pair of stout horses. Sara saw her father turn reluctantly towards it, striding out into the square. Sara peered past him into the cloister, and for a moment Lord Bywood’s sharp eyes caught hers. Then he smiled, dipping his dark, smooth head, and vanished himself away into the shadows.
‘Father!’
Sara hurried out into the crowded square, leaving her escort behind, darting between the shifting limbs of the horses. Her father turned towards her as she approached, and smiled small smile, in two parts, one weary, one sad.
‘Sara.’
She threw her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest for a moment, and he put an arm around her shoulders. She knew her role, and the knowing of it made her safe for a moment. Then she stepped back, looking up at him.
‘I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘I… There was much preparation to do.’
Sara did not reply. His eyes had that same distance that they had had since they arrived in the capital. Uldoroth had worn at him, as if all the brightness and finery had made his skin dull, eyes darkened like the contrast of shadows in bright sun.
‘Will you write?’
He blinked as she spoke, then smiled, and the tiredness fell away from him for a moment. He took her chin gently in one hand, tilting it up to meet his eyes.
‘Yes, I will write.’ He told her, and she saw again that fierce ambition in his eyes, the look she had known so well on their journey from the Westmere. Swollen around the soft, lazy ease of diminished strength. ‘And I shall expect news in return. The Rose of Westmere will show these fools how a real lady charms.’
Sara smiled and lowered her eyes self-consciously.
‘I… I will not disappoint you, father.’ She said quietly, and found, in spite of herself, that there were tears in her eyes.
‘See that you do not.’ He replied. Then he let go of her chin and climbed quickly into the carriage. He leaned out from the window for a moment, before they were gone, banging a hand against the wooden panels of the door impatiently.
‘Move out!’
‘You heard him!’ Halin bellowed in response, holding his horse in check beneath him. ‘Back to Westmere, before your wives go straying!’
With that, her father’s men spurred their horses away into the white corridors of the citadel, bound for the sky-cages and the city below. They had arrived on foot, leading their steeds, but they left by horseback, hurried by grave purpose towards the long road west. She watched the window of the carriage as it trundled away with the horses, but her father did not appear again. She stayed there, staring after them, until the party were out of sight and the great gate of the keep heaved closed behind them, slamming into the distant stone with a resounding thud.
‘M’Lady.’
She turned to find the Black Guard waiting, watching her with dark eyes through the narrow slits of their polished helms. For a moment, the suddenness of the departure threatened to overwhelm her. What was it he had told her, slurring over his unfinished dinner, in the pristine perfection of their lodgings, surrounded by invisible eyes? Power belongs to the strong. To those who take it. Just then, standing in the courtyard, watching alone as her father departed, she realised that he was right. And he wasn’t strong enough. She took a deep breath, smiling for the Black Guard, and followed them out of the ancient courtyard into the halls beyond.
*
The broad, open avenues and garden-ways of the Keep of Eranor closed in to interior corridors rather quickly, when you knew the way, and soon Sara was following her black-gilded escort through pale passageways lined with statuettes and tapestries, ceilings lost far overhead to the flickering light of amber flames. An occasional glimpse of pale sunlight leaped out across the stone floor, shimmering through shifting motes of dust. Sara was her Lady-self again, graceful and poised, gliding over the polished floor after her escort. The giant corridors were a maze of twists and turns, past fragment-views of gardens and libraries and sitting-halls and galleries, but she was dimly aware they were moving towards the Hall of the King. The thought made her a little giddy.
‘Will I be received in the King’s Hall?’ She asked as they walked, but the Black Guards didn’t reply, and their armour clinked in the quiet. Sara frowned, following them. The passage curved, rising, and she found that the wall on her right side suddenly gave way to the hall below. One of the galleries, set high in the rafters of the King’s Hall. She stopped, putting her hand on the balustrade and peering out over the ledge, into the vaulted, silent emptiness of the hall. Some fifty foot below, the patterned black and white marble of the floor gleamed in flashes of reflected amber, quiet and empty. At the far end, pale sunlight caught the Night Throne, setting fire in the mirrored stone. Overhead, the matching nightglass ceiling gleamed like a lake in starlight, and swirling figures swept back and forth across it in the shifting light of the chamber. Sara felt a little thrill run over her neck.
‘Sara.’
Sara blinked, starting, and found Dana standing beside her.
‘Sister!’ Sara took hold of her sister’s hands and rose onto her tiptoes, pressing a kiss against her cheek. ‘Here to welcome me into the fold?’
She was struck again by the strangeness of her sister, the difference in her. Dana wore black, a dress of simple lines and inlaid jet, at once relaxed and taut as a lute string. Her pale hands were folded over her belly, and her muddy dark hair was pulled back into a bun. The Black Guards halted behind her, waiting.
‘I am to escort you to the Queen’s chambers.’ Dana said simply. With that she turned and began to walk away along the balcony, towards a closed door at the throne-end of the hall. Sara frowned, hurrying after her.
‘Do the King and Queen not share chambers?’ She asked as they walked, and the hall below drew on beside them.
‘Their Majesties prefer… to keep their own space.’
The Black Guard fell into step at a respectful distance behind them, armoured heels clicking against the stone.
‘How many others are there?’
‘How many what?’
‘Handmaidens. How many does her Majesty keep?’
Dana did not break stride. ‘Two others, and the Matron.’
‘I suppose we shall not have servants of our own.’ Sara said quietly, eyeing the shadows shifting over the nightglass ceiling. ‘No need to spy on us when we are so close.’
‘Sara-’ Dana began, but Sara cut her off.
‘Father is gone, you know. This morning.’
‘I know.’ Dana replied, looking ahead.
‘You did not come to see him.’
Dana did not turn.
‘I’m sure he will miss you terribly, sister.’
Sara bristled suddenly, grabbing her sister’s arm.
‘I did not ask for it!’
Dana looked down at the hand on her arm, frowning. ‘What?’
‘Any of it!’ Sara told her, angry now, her whisper cracking. ‘I didn’t ask to stay. I didn’t ask him to send you away. I would have given anything to go with you. I thought he would never let me leave.’ She lowered her voice, flicking an eye back towards the waiting guards. ‘I did not ask for the way he… the way he…’
She took a breath, swallowing, and straightened, looking her sister in the eye.
‘There are worse things than being ignored, Dana.’
Dana’s hand folded over hers.
‘Let’s… let’s put it behind us.’ She said quietly. ‘You are here, now.’
Sara blinked at her, nodding. She wanted to say more, but her words would not come, locked away from her tongue by the choked gulping of her breath. She lowered her eyes, and Dana squeezed her hand.
‘Sara, listen to me.’ Dana murmured, leaning close. ‘You must be careful. The Queen-’
The door at the far end of the gallery swung open, creaking on its hinges. The pair fell silent, frozen, and whatever Dana might have said, she held instead.
*
‘Wait here.’
The Matron, the head of the Queen’s Keepers, was an elderly woman with rounding hips and hair the colour of ash tied into a tight bun behind the worn-leather creases of her forehead. She was wearing black, same as Dana, though her smock was somehow plainer, when she opened the door onto the gallery, ushering the sisters wordlessly into the corridor beyond. Dana had bowed her head deferentially, withering under the Matron’s hard eyes, and quickly disappeared into one of the many doors of the hallway. Sara almost asked for her to stay, but instead she steeled herself, remembering her lessons, and followed the stern old woman down the long, flickering hallway. The corridors of the keep were all severe, all lit by weak, flickering torchlight and gleaming the gleam of cold stone, but here they were particularly bare. There were no busts, no tapestries, no mosaics. Nothing but cold, dead rock, lent a little life by the dim thrustings of infrequent braziers. In her own apartments, she had understood the quiet, but here, in the keep proper, there was an eery silence to the corridors that jarred with Sara’s anticipation. Where were the nobles in their gay clothes, where was the music and laughter of a King’s Hall? Sara frowned to herself, and kept walking.
The room at the end of the hallway was broad and rounded, like a kind of circle made out of many flat edges, each holding the low light of a brazier. The marble floors were black and white and patterned like a gamesboard, empty but for a broad nightwood table at its centre, matching the room itself for its odd roundness. On the far side, a wall of shutters opened out onto a large, bare balcony, and over the intricately wrought stone balustrade, Sara could see the City of the Moon below, sweeping away towards the edge of the Heartspire, empty stormtowers stabbing black into the sky. Beyond, the great emerald plains of Valia stretched out into the west, past the fiery line of the river Arq, scored with jagged, dark rock and silver streams. Sara swallowed, realising she’d never been so high up.
‘Wait here.’
‘But-‘ She protested, frowning, but the Matron was already gone, turned on her heel and disappeared back the way she had come. Sara flinched as the door slammed shut behind her, and the silence of the room prickled at her skin. The breeze rustled over the balcony, swirling about the pillared windows, but the air inside was still as the grave. She stepped slowly over to the table, touching the polished wood. This much nightwood would have cost more than a wagonload of gold. She traced the knotted lines across the black surface, trying to ignore the cold weight churning in her gut.
Time stretched on around her, and the minutes dragged by like years. Despite the open air flooding through the windows, the chamber was not cool, warmed by the subtle glow of the braziers, and she felt a little wetness beginning to build under her arms. She looked about herself, trying to calm her heart. There were four other doors in the room, besides the one they had entered through, all dark and heavy looking, and each bore a pattern of silver on its face. There was a cradle, and opposite it, a pendant with teeth like a wolf. Beside the cradle door, a small drinks table, a glass jug of purple wine atop it, with a pair of matching glasses. The two doors closest to the balcony bore a sun and a crescent moon. She looked a little closer, and realised that the markings were not moonsilver, merely an imitation in gleaming silver paint, and the door she had entered through bore no markings at all. Sara watched them, imagining the rooms that lay behind each. Which one was the Queen behind, she wondered, and her heart quickened at the thought, stomach churning. She was stranded, here, now, in the capital. What if the Queen didn’t like her? What if she said something wrong? Would she be sent away again, back to her father?
‘Lady Westmere.’
The crescent moon had swung open, and the Queen glided through, a beautiful shadow in a studded black dress, arms glistening with little sharpened sequins the colour of midnight. Her hair had been contorted into an elaborate maze of raven curls over her pate, and her pale skin took on a translucent sheen in the pale light from the balcony doors. The throat of her dress was open, as it had been in the King’s Hall all those days ago, and she wore the same golden necklace, its myriad points sharp like daggers with their drops of ruby blood.
Sara blinked, then remembered herself, and dropped into a low curtsy, bowing her head.
‘Your Majesty.’ She said quietly, keeping her eyes on the floor.
The Queen did not reply. Sara was dimly aware of her shadow moving across the floor, crossing to the drinks table beside the cradle door. Sara risked a glance up, then, and found the Queen’s slender back to her. When she at last turned, she had a glass goblet of wine clutched in her narrow fingers. Sara lowered her eyes again.
‘You are a pretty one, aren’t you.’ The Queen said quietly, as if to herself. Her voice was cold, like ice leaking over lakewater, deep and still. She took a sip from her cup, and Sara could feel the cut of her eyes against her skin. ‘What did the Weasel of Westmere do to sire such a pretty daughter. Your sister, maybe, I understand, but you…’
Sara forced herself not to frown.
‘Well trained, I see.’ The Queen murmured, smiling coldly. She took another sip of her wine. ‘Your mother’s touch, I assume, not your father’s.’
Sara hesitated. She glanced up at the Queen, then lowered her eyes again, nodding.
‘I hear she is unwell.’
Sara looked up again, braver this time, and found the Queen’s dark eyes watching her over the rim of her glass.
‘She has an affliction, Your Majesty. She does not eat, and rarely sleeps. The Keepers say it is a disease of her mind.’
‘The one thing none of us can escape.’ The Queen sighed, toying idly with her glass and looking out of the window over the city below. ‘Still, there are worse places to be sickly than a Lord’s hall.’
‘I suppose… I suppose that is true, Your Majesty.’
The Queen raised an eyebrow. ‘Suppose, do you?’
Sara squirmed for a moment under the weight of her eyes, but then the Queen turned away, stepping slowly around the edge of the table till she was standing beside the open windows. She took another sip of her wine, back to Sara again.
‘Your sister met you, this morning.’
Sara hesitated, thrown for a moment by the abruptness of the statement.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘And she came to you yesterday, in the apartments Bywood found for you.’
‘Yes.’ Sara felt the cold weight return in her belly. She thought of what the Fox had warned her. There is always someone watching. She cast her mind back to her conversations with Dana. Gods. What had they spoken of? Had she said something out of turn?
‘Curious, that she did not seek out your father.’
Sara let out her breath slowly. That was not a particularly well-hidden curiosity.
‘Dana must have been very busy, Your Majesty.’
‘She is as busy as I make her, and that is rarely too taxing.’
Sara sighed. ‘They have… sometimes not seen eye to eye.’
‘And you?’ The Queen turned as she spoke, fixing her eyes to Sara’s again. Behind her, the distant sounds of the city drifted lazily up through the air, swirling around far-off columns of wispy smoke. ‘What do you say of him?’
Sara hesitated again, stuttering. ‘He is my father, Your Majesty. I trust that he always knows what is best for his daughters.’
‘In my experience it is fathers who know the least about their own daughters.’ The Queen replied dryly, sipping again. ‘Come, let me look at you, then.’
She came back around the nightwood table, her long, narrow limbs gliding over the polished floor, and stopped in front of Sara, setting her glass down beside them. She took Sara’s chin in two spindly fingers and tilted it upwards so that she was looking her in the eye, only a few inches from her face. Sara realised again how tall she was, as tall as her father, at least, though her slender frame made her seem much smaller. She tried not to squirm, but she found that the Queen’s fingers dug uncomfortably into her chin, dark eyes flitting back and forth across her face like a hungry wolf.
‘Yes, very pretty.’ She said at last, not releasing her chin. Sara could feel her breath on her face, smelling softly of dark wine. ‘No wonder. You look like her, you know.’
‘Who-‘ but the Queen had already turned away, back to the table, picking up her wineglass in one bone-stretched hand.
‘The Matron will meet you outside. She will give you your tasks and show you to your chamber. You will begin tomorrow.’
Sara flinched, realising she had been holding her breath. She curtsied to the Queen’s back, suddenly a little giddy.
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’
‘You may go, girl.’
Sara turned to go, not at all sure what to make of the encounter. She paused at the door, looking back over her shoulder, but found the Queen looking out over the city silently again, wineglass in hand, black dress glistening with jet. Sara hesitated a moment longer, then hurried out into the corridor beyond the unmarked door, closing it behind her.
*
The night before her father leaves, she wakes in darkness.
She does not open her eyes, but she knows it is not yet dawn. The sounds of the garden beyond her shutters are soft and murmuring, wind-stirred and drip-spotted.
She can feel him over her, the tense stillness of him, closer than shadows. He smells of wine. Sweat. She is cold, but she does not move. She dares not move. She can feel the weight of his eyes, dulled with drink, tracing the lines of her. His breathing sounds like anger.
She does not know how long she waits there, frozen. But she does not open her eyes. Not once. Time stretches out before her in that moment, an eternity of breathless terror.
Then he leaves. The smell of him lingers long after the door has closed behind him. She lays there a while longer, motionless, dead as stone. Then she curls into her own arms, and weeps silently until the dawn.
2023.05.29 17:33 autotldr 'Russian spy' whale spotted off Swedish coast
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 70%. (I'm a bot)
Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: Kosovo#1 Serbs#2 ethnic#3 tensions#4 protect#5
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Russia's top diplomat made the comments as ethnic Serbs tried to violently storm a public building in northern Kosovo.
Ethnic Serbs clashed with police in northern Kosovo on Monday as they tried to prevent a newly-elected ethnic Albanian mayor from entering office.
Kosovo declared independence from old foe Serbia in 2008.
Ethnic Serbs form a majority in northern Kosovo, the epicentre of tensions.
On Monday, Kosovan police and the NATO-led Kosovo Force were seen guarding municipality buildings in Zvecan, Leposavic, Zubin Potok and Mitrovica, four areas in the north that held early elections last month.
They were largely boycotted by ethnic Serbs, with only Albanians elected to mayoral posts.
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2023.05.29 17:33 TheScribe_1 [The Book of the Chosen] - Chapter Eleven - The Room of Doors
Series Page - Read 10 weeks ahead on Patreon - Read the story so far on Royal Road
*
Chapter Eleven - The Room of Doors
‘Get moving!’
Sara watched the men readying their horses, squinting at the bright-ness of the stone. The courtyard was full of the sound of boot-steps and creaking leather. Overhead, a thin veil of rippled grey hung over the early winter sky, and the dawn sun tugged gleaming at its edges. Over-head, the dull black shape of an old stormtower bled the sky. Empty, just like the rest of them. There was something very jarring, Sara de-cided, about the worn jerkins and stubbled cheeks of her father’s men, ensconced in a pillared courtyard of vast stone. They were out of place, and they had been every moment since arriving in Uldoroth, she real-ised. They didn’t belong here. Her own anxiety was mirrored imper-fectly with the relief on their weary faces, and the dark rings under their eyes seemed just a little less deep. There may be Black Hand to deal with, back in the Westmere, but it was home. At least there your ene-mies had the decency to show themselves. Sara realised she was chew-ing her lip. At her back, two of the Black Guard waited wordlessly in their gold-touched armour, much more in keeping with the finery of the courtyard, and everything else in the capital. They were waiting to es-cort her away to the Queen, unaware they found a girl not so eager for the honour as she had been, just a few days before.
‘Father!’ She called out, spying him across the writhing mass of men in their moss green cloaks, but he seemed not to hear her. He was standing near the arched cloister at the far side of the square, cloaked and ready for travel, in hurried conversation with a shaded figure stand-ing beyond the marble facade. She squinted, trying to make out the oth-er man, but there was nothing but a dark shadow to trace.
‘Well then, M’lady.’ A voice said beside her, and she turned to find Halin looking down at her, a kind smile on his broad face. ‘You’ll be a right proper Princess when I next see you, methinks.’
Sara smiled at him and shook her head sheepishly. ‘Uldoroth is not my home, yet, Halin. I won’t forget.’
‘Be careful you don’t, Lady Sara.’ Halin glanced distrustfully at the Black Guard behind her. ‘Lots of fancy folk here. Fancy folk with fan-cier lies.’
‘I’ll be careful, Halin.’ She told him seriously.
He smiled again, and the sternness dissolved away from his face.
‘Take care, M’Lady.’ He told her, dipping his head politely. She re-turned the gesture, dropping into a small curtsy.
‘Look after my father, will you?’
‘Always, M’Lady.’
Halin hurried off into the throng in the square, and Sara watched him go, feeling her the knot in her belly tighten. The conversations with her unexpected visitors had left their mark, a nagging uncertainty gnawing at the excitement that had carried her through her first few uneventful days in the capital. The little comfort she had taken in the presence of her father and his men was a loss she could ill afford. She watched her father’s back, frowning softly to herself. Her thoughts were not what she had imagined, when she had thought of him leaving. A hundred dif-ferent times, and more. Had she expected tears, grief at the parting? Re-lief? Instead, there was only the fear, a dull, leaden weight in her belly, clammy-cold as marsh-water.
‘Come on, you whoresons! I want to be on the road before lunch!’ Halin roared, and the men quickened their work. Her father had not moved, still deep in conversation, just out of sight. She peered a little closer, and for a moment the pale sunlight crept over the top of the square, flashing against a colourful doublet marked with a silver brooch. The Fox’s lips barely moved as he spoke from the shadows of the cloister, and her father was scowling. Sara frowned.
‘Mount up!’
The ornate wagon that had been her home all those weeks trundled into the square, then, drawn by a pair of stout horses. Sara saw her fa-ther turn reluctantly towards it, striding out into the square. Sara peered past him into the cloister, and for a moment Lord Bywood’s sharp eyes caught hers. Then he smiled, dipping his dark, smooth head, and van-ished himself away into the shadows.
‘Father!’
Sara hurried out into the crowded square, leaving her escort behind, darting between the shifting limbs of the horses. Her father turned to-wards her as she approached, and smiled small smile, in two parts, one weary, one sad.
‘Sara.’
She threw her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest for a moment, and he put an arm around her shoulders. She knew her role, and the knowing of it made her safe for a moment. Then she stepped back, looking up at him.
‘I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘I… There was much preparation to do.’
Sara did not reply. His eyes had that same distance that they had had since they arrived in the capital. Uldoroth had worn at him, as if all the brightness and finery had made his skin dull, eyes darkened like the contrast of shadows in bright sun.
‘Will you write?’
He blinked as she spoke, then smiled, and the tiredness fell away from him for a moment. He took her chin gently in one hand, tilting it up to meet his eyes.
‘Yes, I will write.’ He told her, and she saw again that fierce ambi-tion in his eyes, the look she had known so well on their journey from the Westmere. Swollen around the soft, lazy ease of diminished strength. ‘And I shall expect news in return. The Rose of Westmere will show these fools how a real lady charms.’
Sara smiled and lowered her eyes self-consciously.
‘I… I will not disappoint you, father.’ She said quietly, and found, in spite of herself, that there were tears in her eyes.
‘See that you do not.’ He replied. Then he let go of her chin and climbed quickly into the carriage. He leaned out from the window for a moment, before they were gone, banging a hand against the wooden panels of the door impatiently.
‘Move out!’
‘You heard him!’ Halin bellowed in response, holding his horse in check beneath him. ‘Back to Westmere, before your wives go stray-ing!’
With that, her father’s men spurred their horses away into the white corridors of the citadel, bound for the sky-cages and the city below. They had arrived on foot, leading their steeds, but they left by horse-back, hurried by grave purpose towards the long road west. She watched the window of the carriage as it trundled away with the horses, but her father did not appear again. She stayed there, staring after them, until the party were out of sight and the great gate of the keep heaved closed behind them, slamming into the distant stone with a resounding thud.
‘M’Lady.’
She turned to find the Black Guard waiting, watching her with dark eyes through the narrow slits of their polished helms. For a moment, the suddenness of the departure threatened to overwhelm her. What was it he had told her, slurring over his unfinished dinner, in the pristine per-fection of their lodgings, surrounded by invisible eyes? Power belongs to the strong. To those who take it. Just then, standing in the courtyard, watching alone as her father departed, she realised that he was right. And he wasn’t strong enough. She took a deep breath, smiling for the Black Guard, and followed them out of the ancient courtyard into the halls beyond.
*
The broad, open avenues and garden-ways of the Keep of Eranor closed in to interior corridors rather quickly, when you knew the way, and soon Sara was following her black-gilded escort through pale pas-sageways lined with statuettes and tapestries, ceilings lost far overhead to the flickering light of amber flames. An occasional glimpse of pale sunlight leaped out across the stone floor, shimmering through shifting motes of dust. Sara was her Lady-self again, graceful and poised, glid-ing over the polished floor after her escort. The giant corridors were a maze of twists and turns, past fragment-views of gardens and libraries and sitting-halls and galleries, but she was dimly aware they were mov-ing towards the Hall of the King. The thought made her a little giddy.
‘Will I be received in the King’s Hall?’ She asked as they walked, but the Black Guards didn’t reply, and their armour clinked in the quiet. Sara frowned, following them. The passage curved, rising, and she found that the wall on her right side suddenly gave way to the hall be-low. One of the galleries, set high in the rafters of the King’s Hall. She stopped, putting her hand on the balustrade and peering out over the ledge, into the vaulted, silent emptiness of the hall. Some fifty foot be-low, the patterned black and white marble of the floor gleamed in flashes of reflected amber, quiet and empty. At the far end, pale sun-light caught the Night Throne, setting fire in the mirrored stone. Over-head, the matching nightglass ceiling gleamed like a lake in starlight, and swirling figures swept back and forth across it in the shifting light of the chamber. Sara felt a little thrill run over her neck.
‘Sara.’
Sara blinked, starting, and found Dana standing beside her.
‘Sister!’ Sara took hold of her sister’s hands and rose onto her tip-toes, pressing a kiss against her cheek. ‘Here to welcome me into the fold?’
She was struck again by the strangeness of her sister, the difference in her. Dana wore black, a dress of simple lines and inlaid jet, at once relaxed and taut as a lute string. Her pale hands were folded over her belly, and her muddy dark hair was pulled back into a bun. The Black Guards halted behind her, waiting.
‘I am to escort you to the Queen’s chambers.’ Dana said simply. With that she turned and began to walk away along the balcony, to-wards a closed door at the throne-end of the hall. Sara frowned, hurry-ing after her.
‘Do the King and Queen not share chambers?’ She asked as they walked, and the hall below drew on beside them.
‘Their Majesties prefer… to keep their own space.’
The Black Guard fell into step at a respectful distance behind them, armoured heels clicking against the stone.
‘How many others are there?’
‘How many what?’
‘Handmaidens. How many does her Majesty keep?’
Dana did not break stride. ‘Two others, and the Matron.’
‘I suppose we shall not have servants of our own.’ Sara said quietly, eyeing the shadows shifting over the nightglass ceiling. ‘No need to spy on us when we are so close.’
‘Sara-’ Dana began, but Sara cut her off.
‘Father is gone, you know. This morning.’
‘I know.’ Dana replied, looking ahead.
‘You did not come to see him.’
Dana did not turn.
‘I’m sure he will miss you terribly, sister.’
Sara bristled suddenly, grabbing her sister’s arm.
‘I did not ask for it!’
Dana looked down at the hand on her arm, frowning. ‘What?’
‘Any of it!’ Sara told her, angry now, her whisper cracking. ‘I didn’t ask to stay. I didn’t ask him to send you away. I would have given any-thing to go with you. I thought he would never let me leave.’ She low-ered her voice, flicking an eye back towards the waiting guards. ‘I did not ask for the way he… the way he…’
She took a breath, swallowing, and straightened, looking her sister in the eye.
‘There are worse things than being ignored, Dana.’
Dana’s hand folded over hers.
‘Let’s… let’s put it behind us.’ She said quietly. ‘You are here, now.’
Sara blinked at her, nodding. She wanted to say more, but her words would not come, locked away from her tongue by the choked gulping of her breath. She lowered her eyes, and Dana squeezed her hand.
‘Sara, listen to me.’ Dana murmured, leaning close. ‘You must be careful. The Queen-’
The door at the far end of the gallery swung open, creaking on its hinges. The pair fell silent, frozen, and whatever Dana might have said, she held instead.
*
‘Wait here.’
The Matron, the head of the Queen’s Keepers, was an elderly wom-an with rounding hips and hair the colour of ash tied into a tight bun behind the worn-leather creases of her forehead. She was wearing black, same as Dana, though her smock was somehow plainer, when she opened the door onto the gallery, ushering the sisters wordlessly in-to the corridor beyond. Dana had bowed her head deferentially, wither-ing under the Matron’s hard eyes, and quickly disappeared into one of the many doors of the hallway. Sara almost asked for her to stay, but instead she steeled herself, remembering her lessons, and followed the stern old woman down the long, flickering hallway. The corridors of the keep were all severe, all lit by weak, flickering torchlight and gleaming the gleam of cold stone, but here they were particularly bare. There were no busts, no tapestries, no mosaics. Nothing but cold, dead rock, lent a little life by the dim thrustings of infrequent braziers. In her own apartments, she had understood the quiet, but here, in the keep proper, there was an eery silence to the corridors that jarred with Sara’s anticipation. Where were the nobles in their gay clothes, where was the music and laughter of a King’s Hall? Sara frowned to herself, and kept walking.
The room at the end of the hallway was broad and rounded, like a kind of circle made out of many flat edges, each holding the low light of a brazier. The marble floors were black and white and patterned like a gamesboard, empty but for a broad nightwood table at its centre, matching the room itself for its odd roundness. On the far side, a wall of shutters opened out onto a large, bare balcony, and over the intricate-ly wrought stone balustrade, Sara could see the City of the Moon be-low, sweeping away towards the edge of the Heartspire, empty stormtowers stabbing black into the sky. Beyond, the great emerald plains of Valia stretched out into the west, past the fiery line of the river Arq, scored with jagged, dark rock and silver streams. Sara swallowed, realising she’d never been so high up.
‘Wait here.’
‘But-‘ She protested, frowning, but the Matron was already gone, turned on her heel and disappeared back the way she had come. Sara flinched as the door slammed shut behind her, and the silence of the room prickled at her skin. The breeze rustled over the balcony, swirling about the pillared windows, but the air inside was still as the grave. She stepped slowly over to the table, touching the polished wood. This much nightwood would have cost more than a wagonload of gold. She traced the knotted lines across the black surface, trying to ignore the cold weight churning in her gut.
Time stretched on around her, and the minutes dragged by like years. Despite the open air flooding through the windows, the chamber was not cool, warmed by the subtle glow of the braziers, and she felt a little wetness beginning to build under her arms. She looked about her-self, trying to calm her heart. There were four other doors in the room, besides the one they had entered through, all dark and heavy looking, and each bore a pattern of silver on its face. There was a cradle, and opposite it, a pendant with teeth like a wolf. Beside the cradle door, a small drinks table, a glass jug of purple wine atop it, with a pair of matching glasses. The two doors closest to the balcony bore a sun and a crescent moon. She looked a little closer, and realised that the markings were not moonsilver, merely an imitation in gleaming silver paint, and the door she had entered through bore no markings at all. Sara watched them, imagining the rooms that lay behind each. Which one was the Queen behind, she wondered, and her heart quickened at the thought, stomach churning. She was stranded, here, now, in the capital. What if the Queen didn’t like her? What if she said something wrong? Would she be sent away again, back to her father?
‘Lady Westmere.’
The crescent moon had swung open, and the Queen glided through, a beautiful shadow in a studded black dress, arms glistening with little sharpened sequins the colour of midnight. Her hair had been contorted into an elaborate maze of raven curls over her pate, and her pale skin took on a translucent sheen in the pale light from the balcony doors. The throat of her dress was open, as it had been in the King’s Hall all those days ago, and she wore the same golden necklace, its myriad points sharp like daggers with their drops of ruby blood.
Sara blinked, then remembered herself, and dropped into a low curt-sy, bowing her head.
‘Your Majesty.’ She said quietly, keeping her eyes on the floor.
The Queen did not reply. Sara was dimly aware of her shadow mov-ing across the floor, crossing to the drinks table beside the cradle door. Sara risked a glance up, then, and found the Queen’s slender back to her. When she at last turned, she had a glass goblet of wine clutched in her narrow fingers. Sara lowered her eyes again.
‘You are a pretty one, aren’t you.’ The Queen said quietly, as if to herself. Her voice was cold, like ice leaking over lakewater, deep and still. She took a sip from her cup, and Sara could feel the cut of her eyes against her skin. ‘What did the Weasel of Westmere do to sire such a pretty daughter. Your sister, maybe, I understand, but you…’
Sara forced herself not to frown.
‘Well trained, I see.’ The Queen murmured, smiling coldly. She took another sip of her wine. ‘Your mother’s touch, I assume, not your fa-ther’s.’
Sara hesitated. She glanced up at the Queen, then lowered her eyes again, nodding.
‘I hear she is unwell.’
Sara looked up again, braver this time, and found the Queen’s dark eyes watching her over the rim of her glass.
‘She has an affliction, Your Majesty. She does not eat, and rarely sleeps. The Keepers say it is a disease of her mind.’
‘The one thing none of us can escape.’ The Queen sighed, toying idly with her glass and looking out of the window over the city below. ‘Still, there are worse places to be sickly than a Lord’s hall.’
‘I suppose… I suppose that is true, Your Majesty.’
The Queen raised an eyebrow. ‘Suppose, do you?’
Sara squirmed for a moment under the weight of her eyes, but then the Queen turned away, stepping slowly around the edge of the table till she was standing beside the open windows. She took another sip of her wine, back to Sara again.
‘Your sister met you, this morning.’
Sara hesitated, thrown for a moment by the abruptness of the state-ment.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘And she came to you yesterday, in the apartments Bywood found for you.’
‘Yes.’ Sara felt the cold weight return in her belly. She thought of what the Fox had warned her. There is always someone watching. She cast her mind back to her conversations with Dana. Gods. What had they spoken of? Had she said something out of turn?
‘Curious, that she did not seek out your father.’
Sara let out her breath slowly. That was not a particularly well-hidden curiosity.
‘Dana must have been very busy, Your Majesty.’
‘She is as busy as I make her, and that is rarely too taxing.’
Sara sighed. ‘They have… sometimes not seen eye to eye.’
‘And you?’ The Queen turned as she spoke, fixing her eyes to Sara’s again. Behind her, the distant sounds of the city drifted lazily up through the air, swirling around far-off columns of wispy smoke. ‘What do you say of him?’
Sara hesitated again, stuttering. ‘He is my father, Your Majesty. I trust that he always knows what is best for his daughters.’
‘In my experience it is fathers who know the least about their own daughters.’ The Queen replied dryly, sipping again. ‘Come, let me look at you, then.’
She came back around the nightwood table, her long, narrow limbs gliding over the polished floor, and stopped in front of Sara, setting her glass down beside them. She took Sara’s chin in two spindly fingers and tilted it upwards so that she was looking her in the eye, only a few inches from her face. Sara realised again how tall she was, as tall as her father, at least, though her slender frame made her seem much smaller. She tried not to squirm, but she found that the Queen’s fingers dug un-comfortably into her chin, dark eyes flitting back and forth across her face like a hungry wolf.
‘Yes, very pretty.’ She said at last, not releasing her chin. Sara could feel her breath on her face, smelling softly of dark wine. ‘No wonder. You look like her, you know.’
‘Who-‘ but the Queen had already turned away, back to the table, picking up her wineglass in one bone-stretched hand.
‘The Matron will meet you outside. She will give you your tasks and show you to your chamber. You will begin tomorrow.’
Sara flinched, realising she had been holding her breath. She curt-sied to the Queen’s back, suddenly a little giddy.
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’
‘You may go, girl.’
Sara turned to go, not at all sure what to make of the encounter. She paused at the door, looking back over her shoulder, but found the Queen looking out over the city silently again, wineglass in hand, black dress glistening with jet. Sara hesitated a moment longer, then hurried out into the corridor beyond the unmarked door, closing it behind her.
*
The night before her father leaves, she wakes in darkness.
She does not open her eyes, but she knows it is not yet dawn. The sounds of the garden beyond her shutters are soft and murmuring, wind-stirred and drip-spotted.
She can feel him over her, the tense stillness of him, closer than shadows. He smells of wine. Sweat. She is cold, but she does not move. She dares not move. She can feel the weight of his eyes, dulled with drink, tracing the lines of her. His breathing sounds like anger.
She does not know how long she waits there, frozen. But she does not open her eyes. Not once. Time stretches out before her in that mo-ment, an eternity of breathless terror.
Then he leaves. The smell of him lingers long after the door has closed behind him. She lays there a while longer, motionless, dead as stone. Then she curls into her own arms, and weeps silently until the dawn.
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*
Chapter Eleven - The Room of Doors
‘Get moving!’
Sara watched the men readying their horses, squinting at the bright-ness of the stone. The courtyard was full of the sound of boot-steps and creaking leather. Overhead, a thin veil of rippled grey hung over the early winter sky, and the dawn sun tugged gleaming at its edges. Over-head, the dull black shape of an old stormtower bled the sky. Empty, just like the rest of them. There was something very jarring, Sara de-cided, about the worn jerkins and stubbled cheeks of her father’s men, ensconced in a pillared courtyard of vast stone. They were out of place, and they had been every moment since arriving in Uldoroth, she real-ised. They didn’t belong here. Her own anxiety was mirrored imper-fectly with the relief on their weary faces, and the dark rings under their eyes seemed just a little less deep. There may be Black Hand to deal with, back in the Westmere, but it was home. At least there your ene-mies had the decency to show themselves. Sara realised she was chew-ing her lip. At her back, two of the Black Guard waited wordlessly in their gold-touched armour, much more in keeping with the finery of the courtyard, and everything else in the capital. They were waiting to es-cort her away to the Queen, unaware they found a girl not so eager for the honour as she had been, just a few days before.
‘Father!’ She called out, spying him across the writhing mass of men in their moss green cloaks, but he seemed not to hear her. He was standing near the arched cloister at the far side of the square, cloaked and ready for travel, in hurried conversation with a shaded figure stand-ing beyond the marble facade. She squinted, trying to make out the oth-er man, but there was nothing but a dark shadow to trace.
‘Well then, M’lady.’ A voice said beside her, and she turned to find Halin looking down at her, a kind smile on his broad face. ‘You’ll be a right proper Princess when I next see you, methinks.’
Sara smiled at him and shook her head sheepishly. ‘Uldoroth is not my home, yet, Halin. I won’t forget.’
‘Be careful you don’t, Lady Sara.’ Halin glanced distrustfully at the Black Guard behind her. ‘Lots of fancy folk here. Fancy folk with fan-cier lies.’
‘I’ll be careful, Halin.’ She told him seriously.
He smiled again, and the sternness dissolved away from his face.
‘Take care, M’Lady.’ He told her, dipping his head politely. She re-turned the gesture, dropping into a small curtsy.
‘Look after my father, will you?’
‘Always, M’Lady.’
Halin hurried off into the throng in the square, and Sara watched him go, feeling her the knot in her belly tighten. The conversations with her unexpected visitors had left their mark, a nagging uncertainty gnawing at the excitement that had carried her through her first few uneventful days in the capital. The little comfort she had taken in the presence of her father and his men was a loss she could ill afford. She watched her father’s back, frowning softly to herself. Her thoughts were not what she had imagined, when she had thought of him leaving. A hundred dif-ferent times, and more. Had she expected tears, grief at the parting? Re-lief? Instead, there was only the fear, a dull, leaden weight in her belly, clammy-cold as marsh-water.
‘Come on, you whoresons! I want to be on the road before lunch!’ Halin roared, and the men quickened their work. Her father had not moved, still deep in conversation, just out of sight. She peered a little closer, and for a moment the pale sunlight crept over the top of the square, flashing against a colourful doublet marked with a silver brooch. The Fox’s lips barely moved as he spoke from the shadows of the cloister, and her father was scowling. Sara frowned.
‘Mount up!’
The ornate wagon that had been her home all those weeks trundled into the square, then, drawn by a pair of stout horses. Sara saw her fa-ther turn reluctantly towards it, striding out into the square. Sara peered past him into the cloister, and for a moment Lord Bywood’s sharp eyes caught hers. Then he smiled, dipping his dark, smooth head, and van-ished himself away into the shadows.
‘Father!’
Sara hurried out into the crowded square, leaving her escort behind, darting between the shifting limbs of the horses. Her father turned to-wards her as she approached, and smiled small smile, in two parts, one weary, one sad.
‘Sara.’
She threw her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest for a moment, and he put an arm around her shoulders. She knew her role, and the knowing of it made her safe for a moment. Then she stepped back, looking up at him.
‘I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘I… There was much preparation to do.’
Sara did not reply. His eyes had that same distance that they had had since they arrived in the capital. Uldoroth had worn at him, as if all the brightness and finery had made his skin dull, eyes darkened like the contrast of shadows in bright sun.
‘Will you write?’
He blinked as she spoke, then smiled, and the tiredness fell away from him for a moment. He took her chin gently in one hand, tilting it up to meet his eyes.
‘Yes, I will write.’ He told her, and she saw again that fierce ambi-tion in his eyes, the look she had known so well on their journey from the Westmere. Swollen around the soft, lazy ease of diminished strength. ‘And I shall expect news in return. The Rose of Westmere will show these fools how a real lady charms.’
Sara smiled and lowered her eyes self-consciously.
‘I… I will not disappoint you, father.’ She said quietly, and found, in spite of herself, that there were tears in her eyes.
‘See that you do not.’ He replied. Then he let go of her chin and climbed quickly into the carriage. He leaned out from the window for a moment, before they were gone, banging a hand against the wooden panels of the door impatiently.
‘Move out!’
‘You heard him!’ Halin bellowed in response, holding his horse in check beneath him. ‘Back to Westmere, before your wives go stray-ing!’
With that, her father’s men spurred their horses away into the white corridors of the citadel, bound for the sky-cages and the city below. They had arrived on foot, leading their steeds, but they left by horse-back, hurried by grave purpose towards the long road west. She watched the window of the carriage as it trundled away with the horses, but her father did not appear again. She stayed there, staring after them, until the party were out of sight and the great gate of the keep heaved closed behind them, slamming into the distant stone with a resounding thud.
‘M’Lady.’
She turned to find the Black Guard waiting, watching her with dark eyes through the narrow slits of their polished helms. For a moment, the suddenness of the departure threatened to overwhelm her. What was it he had told her, slurring over his unfinished dinner, in the pristine per-fection of their lodgings, surrounded by invisible eyes? Power belongs to the strong. To those who take it. Just then, standing in the courtyard, watching alone as her father departed, she realised that he was right. And he wasn’t strong enough. She took a deep breath, smiling for the Black Guard, and followed them out of the ancient courtyard into the halls beyond.
*
The broad, open avenues and garden-ways of the Keep of Eranor closed in to interior corridors rather quickly, when you knew the way, and soon Sara was following her black-gilded escort through pale pas-sageways lined with statuettes and tapestries, ceilings lost far overhead to the flickering light of amber flames. An occasional glimpse of pale sunlight leaped out across the stone floor, shimmering through shifting motes of dust. Sara was her Lady-self again, graceful and poised, glid-ing over the polished floor after her escort. The giant corridors were a maze of twists and turns, past fragment-views of gardens and libraries and sitting-halls and galleries, but she was dimly aware they were mov-ing towards the Hall of the King. The thought made her a little giddy.
‘Will I be received in the King’s Hall?’ She asked as they walked, but the Black Guards didn’t reply, and their armour clinked in the quiet. Sara frowned, following them. The passage curved, rising, and she found that the wall on her right side suddenly gave way to the hall be-low. One of the galleries, set high in the rafters of the King’s Hall. She stopped, putting her hand on the balustrade and peering out over the ledge, into the vaulted, silent emptiness of the hall. Some fifty foot be-low, the patterned black and white marble of the floor gleamed in flashes of reflected amber, quiet and empty. At the far end, pale sun-light caught the Night Throne, setting fire in the mirrored stone. Over-head, the matching nightglass ceiling gleamed like a lake in starlight, and swirling figures swept back and forth across it in the shifting light of the chamber. Sara felt a little thrill run over her neck.
‘Sara.’
Sara blinked, starting, and found Dana standing beside her.
‘Sister!’ Sara took hold of her sister’s hands and rose onto her tip-toes, pressing a kiss against her cheek. ‘Here to welcome me into the fold?’
She was struck again by the strangeness of her sister, the difference in her. Dana wore black, a dress of simple lines and inlaid jet, at once relaxed and taut as a lute string. Her pale hands were folded over her belly, and her muddy dark hair was pulled back into a bun. The Black Guards halted behind her, waiting.
‘I am to escort you to the Queen’s chambers.’ Dana said simply. With that she turned and began to walk away along the balcony, to-wards a closed door at the throne-end of the hall. Sara frowned, hurry-ing after her.
‘Do the King and Queen not share chambers?’ She asked as they walked, and the hall below drew on beside them.
‘Their Majesties prefer… to keep their own space.’
The Black Guard fell into step at a respectful distance behind them, armoured heels clicking against the stone.
‘How many others are there?’
‘How many what?’
‘Handmaidens. How many does her Majesty keep?’
Dana did not break stride. ‘Two others, and the Matron.’
‘I suppose we shall not have servants of our own.’ Sara said quietly, eyeing the shadows shifting over the nightglass ceiling. ‘No need to spy on us when we are so close.’
‘Sara-’ Dana began, but Sara cut her off.
‘Father is gone, you know. This morning.’
‘I know.’ Dana replied, looking ahead.
‘You did not come to see him.’
Dana did not turn.
‘I’m sure he will miss you terribly, sister.’
Sara bristled suddenly, grabbing her sister’s arm.
‘I did not ask for it!’
Dana looked down at the hand on her arm, frowning. ‘What?’
‘Any of it!’ Sara told her, angry now, her whisper cracking. ‘I didn’t ask to stay. I didn’t ask him to send you away. I would have given any-thing to go with you. I thought he would never let me leave.’ She low-ered her voice, flicking an eye back towards the waiting guards. ‘I did not ask for the way he… the way he…’
She took a breath, swallowing, and straightened, looking her sister in the eye.
‘There are worse things than being ignored, Dana.’
Dana’s hand folded over hers.
‘Let’s… let’s put it behind us.’ She said quietly. ‘You are here, now.’
Sara blinked at her, nodding. She wanted to say more, but her words would not come, locked away from her tongue by the choked gulping of her breath. She lowered her eyes, and Dana squeezed her hand.
‘Sara, listen to me.’ Dana murmured, leaning close. ‘You must be careful. The Queen-’
The door at the far end of the gallery swung open, creaking on its hinges. The pair fell silent, frozen, and whatever Dana might have said, she held instead.
*
‘Wait here.’
The Matron, the head of the Queen’s Keepers, was an elderly wom-an with rounding hips and hair the colour of ash tied into a tight bun behind the worn-leather creases of her forehead. She was wearing black, same as Dana, though her smock was somehow plainer, when she opened the door onto the gallery, ushering the sisters wordlessly in-to the corridor beyond. Dana had bowed her head deferentially, wither-ing under the Matron’s hard eyes, and quickly disappeared into one of the many doors of the hallway. Sara almost asked for her to stay, but instead she steeled herself, remembering her lessons, and followed the stern old woman down the long, flickering hallway. The corridors of the keep were all severe, all lit by weak, flickering torchlight and gleaming the gleam of cold stone, but here they were particularly bare. There were no busts, no tapestries, no mosaics. Nothing but cold, dead rock, lent a little life by the dim thrustings of infrequent braziers. In her own apartments, she had understood the quiet, but here, in the keep proper, there was an eery silence to the corridors that jarred with Sara’s anticipation. Where were the nobles in their gay clothes, where was the music and laughter of a King’s Hall? Sara frowned to herself, and kept walking.
The room at the end of the hallway was broad and rounded, like a kind of circle made out of many flat edges, each holding the low light of a brazier. The marble floors were black and white and patterned like a gamesboard, empty but for a broad nightwood table at its centre, matching the room itself for its odd roundness. On the far side, a wall of shutters opened out onto a large, bare balcony, and over the intricate-ly wrought stone balustrade, Sara could see the City of the Moon be-low, sweeping away towards the edge of the Heartspire, empty stormtowers stabbing black into the sky. Beyond, the great emerald plains of Valia stretched out into the west, past the fiery line of the river Arq, scored with jagged, dark rock and silver streams. Sara swallowed, realising she’d never been so high up.
‘Wait here.’
‘But-‘ She protested, frowning, but the Matron was already gone, turned on her heel and disappeared back the way she had come. Sara flinched as the door slammed shut behind her, and the silence of the room prickled at her skin. The breeze rustled over the balcony, swirling about the pillared windows, but the air inside was still as the grave. She stepped slowly over to the table, touching the polished wood. This much nightwood would have cost more than a wagonload of gold. She traced the knotted lines across the black surface, trying to ignore the cold weight churning in her gut.
Time stretched on around her, and the minutes dragged by like years. Despite the open air flooding through the windows, the chamber was not cool, warmed by the subtle glow of the braziers, and she felt a little wetness beginning to build under her arms. She looked about her-self, trying to calm her heart. There were four other doors in the room, besides the one they had entered through, all dark and heavy looking, and each bore a pattern of silver on its face. There was a cradle, and opposite it, a pendant with teeth like a wolf. Beside the cradle door, a small drinks table, a glass jug of purple wine atop it, with a pair of matching glasses. The two doors closest to the balcony bore a sun and a crescent moon. She looked a little closer, and realised that the markings were not moonsilver, merely an imitation in gleaming silver paint, and the door she had entered through bore no markings at all. Sara watched them, imagining the rooms that lay behind each. Which one was the Queen behind, she wondered, and her heart quickened at the thought, stomach churning. She was stranded, here, now, in the capital. What if the Queen didn’t like her? What if she said something wrong? Would she be sent away again, back to her father?
‘Lady Westmere.’
The crescent moon had swung open, and the Queen glided through, a beautiful shadow in a studded black dress, arms glistening with little sharpened sequins the colour of midnight. Her hair had been contorted into an elaborate maze of raven curls over her pate, and her pale skin took on a translucent sheen in the pale light from the balcony doors. The throat of her dress was open, as it had been in the King’s Hall all those days ago, and she wore the same golden necklace, its myriad points sharp like daggers with their drops of ruby blood.
Sara blinked, then remembered herself, and dropped into a low curt-sy, bowing her head.
‘Your Majesty.’ She said quietly, keeping her eyes on the floor.
The Queen did not reply. Sara was dimly aware of her shadow mov-ing across the floor, crossing to the drinks table beside the cradle door. Sara risked a glance up, then, and found the Queen’s slender back to her. When she at last turned, she had a glass goblet of wine clutched in her narrow fingers. Sara lowered her eyes again.
‘You are a pretty one, aren’t you.’ The Queen said quietly, as if to herself. Her voice was cold, like ice leaking over lakewater, deep and still. She took a sip from her cup, and Sara could feel the cut of her eyes against her skin. ‘What did the Weasel of Westmere do to sire such a pretty daughter. Your sister, maybe, I understand, but you…’
Sara forced herself not to frown.
‘Well trained, I see.’ The Queen murmured, smiling coldly. She took another sip of her wine. ‘Your mother’s touch, I assume, not your fa-ther’s.’
Sara hesitated. She glanced up at the Queen, then lowered her eyes again, nodding.
‘I hear she is unwell.’
Sara looked up again, braver this time, and found the Queen’s dark eyes watching her over the rim of her glass.
‘She has an affliction, Your Majesty. She does not eat, and rarely sleeps. The Keepers say it is a disease of her mind.’
‘The one thing none of us can escape.’ The Queen sighed, toying idly with her glass and looking out of the window over the city below. ‘Still, there are worse places to be sickly than a Lord’s hall.’
‘I suppose… I suppose that is true, Your Majesty.’
The Queen raised an eyebrow. ‘Suppose, do you?’
Sara squirmed for a moment under the weight of her eyes, but then the Queen turned away, stepping slowly around the edge of the table till she was standing beside the open windows. She took another sip of her wine, back to Sara again.
‘Your sister met you, this morning.’
Sara hesitated, thrown for a moment by the abruptness of the state-ment.
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘And she came to you yesterday, in the apartments Bywood found for you.’
‘Yes.’ Sara felt the cold weight return in her belly. She thought of what the Fox had warned her. There is always someone watching. She cast her mind back to her conversations with Dana. Gods. What had they spoken of? Had she said something out of turn?
‘Curious, that she did not seek out your father.’
Sara let out her breath slowly. That was not a particularly well-hidden curiosity.
‘Dana must have been very busy, Your Majesty.’
‘She is as busy as I make her, and that is rarely too taxing.’
Sara sighed. ‘They have… sometimes not seen eye to eye.’
‘And you?’ The Queen turned as she spoke, fixing her eyes to Sara’s again. Behind her, the distant sounds of the city drifted lazily up through the air, swirling around far-off columns of wispy smoke. ‘What do you say of him?’
Sara hesitated again, stuttering. ‘He is my father, Your Majesty. I trust that he always knows what is best for his daughters.’
‘In my experience it is fathers who know the least about their own daughters.’ The Queen replied dryly, sipping again. ‘Come, let me look at you, then.’
She came back around the nightwood table, her long, narrow limbs gliding over the polished floor, and stopped in front of Sara, setting her glass down beside them. She took Sara’s chin in two spindly fingers and tilted it upwards so that she was looking her in the eye, only a few inches from her face. Sara realised again how tall she was, as tall as her father, at least, though her slender frame made her seem much smaller. She tried not to squirm, but she found that the Queen’s fingers dug un-comfortably into her chin, dark eyes flitting back and forth across her face like a hungry wolf.
‘Yes, very pretty.’ She said at last, not releasing her chin. Sara could feel her breath on her face, smelling softly of dark wine. ‘No wonder. You look like her, you know.’
‘Who-‘ but the Queen had already turned away, back to the table, picking up her wineglass in one bone-stretched hand.
‘The Matron will meet you outside. She will give you your tasks and show you to your chamber. You will begin tomorrow.’
Sara flinched, realising she had been holding her breath. She curt-sied to the Queen’s back, suddenly a little giddy.
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’
‘You may go, girl.’
Sara turned to go, not at all sure what to make of the encounter. She paused at the door, looking back over her shoulder, but found the Queen looking out over the city silently again, wineglass in hand, black dress glistening with jet. Sara hesitated a moment longer, then hurried out into the corridor beyond the unmarked door, closing it behind her.
*
The night before her father leaves, she wakes in darkness.
She does not open her eyes, but she knows it is not yet dawn. The sounds of the garden beyond her shutters are soft and murmuring, wind-stirred and drip-spotted.
She can feel him over her, the tense stillness of him, closer than shadows. He smells of wine. Sweat. She is cold, but she does not move. She dares not move. She can feel the weight of his eyes, dulled with drink, tracing the lines of her. His breathing sounds like anger.
She does not know how long she waits there, frozen. But she does not open her eyes. Not once. Time stretches out before her in that mo-ment, an eternity of breathless terror.
Then he leaves. The smell of him lingers long after the door has closed behind him. She lays there a while longer, motionless, dead as stone. Then she curls into her own arms, and weeps silently until the dawn.
2023.05.29 17:32 immacamel Defending the Draft: 2023 Green Bay Packers
A new era is under way in Green Bay, and there's a lot to cover about this offseason. First, let's set the stage.
Key Signings:
KR Keisean Nixon- the return dynamo who renewed my will to live after watching Amari Rodgers play football. Signed again on a 1 year deal worth up to $4m. And he figures to have a larger role on defense this season. This was one of the biggest wishes for packer fans this offseason, as it finally shows a dedication to building the ST unit.
S Rudy Ford- he had himself a nice 2022 and got re-signed for his efforts. It's a one year deal, and he will compete for the starting safety spot as of now.
CB Corey Ballentine- a reserve CB who I will always have a soft spot for due to his tragic draft night story. Ballentine has been re-signed and will compete for snaps in an unsettled secondary.
S Dallin Leavitt- a Rich Bisaccia re-signing. Leavitt was a quiet killer last season as a special teams ace, and he returns in that role this season.
OT Yosh Nijman- a developmental prospect that has blossomed into an serviceable swing tackle, I thought Nijman would get more on the open market than his RFA tender price. He will be back with the Pack in a LT2 and RT2 role for 2023.
Key Departures:
DT Dean Lowry- Lowry gave the Pack his best and we appreciate him, but his ceiling was evident and achieved. Devonte Wyatt was drafted as a high upside replacement. Lowry signed with the Vikings on a 2 year deal.
WR Allen Lazard- Aaron Rodgers's latest security blanket, Lazard is rejoining Rodgers on a 4y, 44m deal with the New York Jets. A quiet, consistent performer for the Packers throughout his tenure, Lazard will continue to be a sure-handed possession receiver in New York, transforming the slot position previously occupied by Elijah Moore into more of a big slot. He will also continue to mug people in the run game.
TE Robert Tonyan- Bobby Tonyan heads south to Chicago to be TE2 behind Cole Kmet. Packer fans love Tonyan for bringing pride back to the position in GB, and I honestly feel bad for him. He likely missed on his chance for a big pay day after tearing his ACL in 2021 and having a down year coming back. Now he's pushing 30, but he still provides excellent hands for the position and a great work ethic. Godspeed, buddy.
DL Jarran Reed- the big man returns to Seattle this season on a 2 year deal. Reed was just about what we expected in Green Bay- not great, not bad. He was a placeholder in a spot that Wyatt hopefully can take over.
Free Agents yet to be signed:
WR Randall Cobb, S Adrian Amos, TE Marcedes Lewis, K Mason Crosby
All members of the old guard. Cobb recently had surgery, and is a contender to rejoin Rodgers in NY. Amos had a down year, but could still have some left in the tank. I'm guessing he has an offer from GB and is weighing his options. Lewis also could be weighing his options between retirement, the Jets, or sailing into the sunset where it all began for him in Jacksonville. Mason Crosbys wife seemed to confirm on social media recently that the Packers have little interest in re-signing their all time leading scorer. Crosby made some clutch kicks for us over the years, and if this is the end, the Silver Fox will never have to buy a beer in Titletown again.
2022 season review: Record: 8-9 Oh man. 2022 was the year it all came crashing down. Green Bay tried to keep its veteran core together for a few years, appeasing Rodgers and navigating the salary cap reasonably well. But they never achieved that brass ring. Minus Davante Adams and working with a broken thumb, Rodgers struggled the most he has since his inaugural season as a starter. It's now time to address Rodgers in this post; I could write an entire entry solely on Rodgers and this past season, but I'll leave it at this: Aaron is my favorite football player of all time. He led the Packers to their greatest stretch of sustained excellence since Vince Lombardi roamed the sidelines, often with depleted rosters around him. In my opinion, hes the most talented QB to play the game. It seems a majority of Packer fans were ready to move on from the man and soured on him this offseason. Personally, I think he will be an MVP contender in NY next year and still love him. But it was time. The Jordan Love era needs to happen, if only for the front office itself needing to justify their faith in the Love pick. Rodgers and the Packers were operating on different timelines the past few years, stuck somewhere between going all in and resetting. The front office has put all their chips in on Jordan Love.
The defense was expected to be a top 5 unit, but regressed heavily. Joe Barry was under scrutiny all year long, seemingly incapable of putting his plethora of first rounders in positions to succeed. A late season push did just enough to save his job (apparently).
Favorite win: Dallas Most frustrating loss: Detroit, week 18
Rodgers's exit also raises an interesting thought: will we see the True Matt LaFleur Offense this season? Offensive deficiencies have been blamed on Lafleur himself or Rodgers's hesitancy at transitioning from a traditional west coast offense to a Shanahan-esque, motion based attack. The answer will be uncovered this year, with Jordan Love having 3 years of experience in the scheme and a first round pedigree. As a Love truther in the pre draft season who hated the pick for the Packers, I am fascinated. This pick will make or break Gute's and Lafleur's tenure.
Aside from the quarterback situation, there are lingering questions concerning LaFleur's ability to lead the team in general. The Packers have consistently laid an egg in one game every season of his tenure and have come up short in the playoffs, with some head scratching decisions rearing their head in crunch time of big games (the end of the Bucs NFC championship the most glaring). I also have questions on his staff hirings/retentions. LaFleur hired 2 dogshit ST coordinators before making the obvious choice of Basaccia. He also chose to retain Joe Barry, noted football terrorist, as defensive coordinator. I've read rumblings that Gute has more say over the staff than the head coach, which is unconfirmed but concerning. I don't mean to dump on LaFleur in this piece, only to emphasize how big of a year this is for him. I think his scheme is sound and the guys play hard for him. With Rodgers gone, I think we see less RPOs and inside zone handoffs to AJ Dillon out of shotgun. The offense will have more identity. But if there are 2 more years without the playoffs in Green Bay, the Cheeseheads will advocate for a new coach.
2023 Draft:
Positions of need: S, TE, WR, DT
Round 1, Pick 13: Lukas Van Ness, Edge, Iowa With the world expecting Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Gute stuck true to his type and drafted athletic freak LVN out of Iowa. Van Ness profiles as a Rashan Gary clone, with a high RAS score and unrefined repertoire of pass rush moves. If he works out like Gary, this is a massive hit. In the pre draft process, the only guy who could have realistically been there for GB that I had above Van Ness was Peter Skoronski. He wasn't there, and there was no doubt in my mind Gute was going for LVN afterwards. He'll rotate with Gary and Preston Smith this year, and will kick inside on certain packages. He makes Smith expendable in the future.
Round 2, Pick 42: Luke Musgrave, TE, Oregon State Musgrave has the size and athleticism to be a game changer at tight end. His tape was short but encouraging. His biggest questions are durability and how he will develop, given his late breakout and immediate injury afterwards. My comparison to his playstyle was Travis Kelce, and if he can approach even 70% of Kelce's production in a season, this is a great pick. The biggest hole on the roster was TE, and I have a feeling Gute got the top one on his board.
Round 2, Pick 50: Jayden Reed, WR, Michigan State The process of this pick was nerve wracking. I was one of many fans pounding the table for Brian Branch, the S out of Alabama. When Gute traded down instead, I was telling friends I hoped he took Jayden Reed, and that's what happened. Reed is smaller receiver who plays bigger than his size on contested catches. He carried the Michigan State offense last year after Kenneth Walker jumped to the NFL. My comparison for him is Tyler Lockett. In Green Bay, Reed will take over the slot role, and I expect him to see around 60% of offensive snaps.
Round 3, Pick 78: Tucker Kraft, TE, South Dakota State Another tight end added to a barren room. The former Jackrabbit is similar to Musgrave in a lot of ways- big, athletic, and a willing albeit unrefined blocker. Kraft's addition along with Musgraves could push the Packers into more 22 personal this season, something LaFleur wants to run but hasnt had the personnel for, and I would not be surprised to see him outsnap Musgrave if he develops quickly. I'm really hoping this is the pick that breaks Green Bays 3rd round curse (seriously look it up its so bad).
Round 4, Pick 116: Colby Wooden, Edge, Auburn A former 4 star recruit at Auburn, Wooden collected 17 sacks as a 3 year starter in the SEC and showed inside/outside versatility. He shows an ability to rush with speed and power, but is inconsistent in his pad level and technique. He anchors well in the run game and showed great gap discipline. I don't see him getting many snaps this year, but if he does I think he takes Kingsley Engabare's role on run downs.
Round 5, Pick 149: Sean Clifford, QB, Penn State A perplexing pick until I saw this man somehow has a 9 RAS. Clifford is an experienced college starter who plays with a clear understanding of his role and a passion for the game. My issues with him were accuracy, arm strength, pocket presence, and decision making. You know, playing quarterback. I did not give Clifford a draftable grade and would have preferred Jaren Hall or Max Duggan. But this is really nit picking over a 5th round pick who was drafted to be a career backup. If the staff sees something in him, I'll give it a chance.
Round 5, Pick 159: Dontayvion Wicks, WR, Virginia A 6'1, 206 lb vertical threat, Wicks was inconsistent in his career at Virginia. If he replicated his 2021 production last year, he might have found himself as a day 2 pick. Alas, a new offense and drops led to his availability at this spot. Wicks has a good release package and the ability to stack DBs and get vertical. His tendencies as a body catcher led to drops last year, and he doesn't provide much after the catch. With his profile, he'll be a WR4/5, but could be a special teams ace very early in his career.
Round 6, Pick 179: Karl Brooks, DL, Bowling Green A bit of a tweener, Brooks is a high motor, high effort pass rusher. He flashes great technique and seems to rush with a plan. He can get washed out in the run game, and will need to commit one way or another to defensive end or defensive tackle. He graded very high from PFF, so that's something. To get on the field, he'll have to show more consistency and ability when anchoring down in the run game.
Round 6, Pick 207: Anders Carlson, K, Auburn Apparently, Mason Crosby's replacement. Anders is the brother of Las Vegas kicker Daniel Carlson, who's pretty damn good. There is a connection with Basaccia there, who's known Anders since high school. I wasn't encouraged by his stats at Auburn, but I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in scouting kickers. If Basaccia says he's that dude, then that dude he is.
Round 7, Pick 232: Carrington Valentine, CB, Kentucky Valentine is a WR convert with a long, slender frame. He is at his best in press man, where he has a variety of ways to get hands on the receiver and reroute him. Unfortunately for Vallentine, Joe Barry hates press man and will kill my family if I suggest it again. Valentine's frame can lead him to get bullied by bigger WRs at times, but he is physical at the catch point. He also brings experience as a productive kick returner, something that could be helpful in the future or even this season if the staff wants to keep Nixon fresh for defensive snaps.
Round 7, Pick 235: Lew Nichols, RB, Central Michigan A big back with some intriguing traits, Nichols enjoyed a very productive 2021 before injuries hampered his 2022. Nichols has good vision, contact balance, and power as a north-south runner. He was productive catching out of the backfield, but wasn't asked to run many routes beyond that. His biggest hurdles in the NFL are going to be elusiveness and speed. He lacks both, but should be a decent backup. For the Packers, they used their RB3 less than maybe any team in the league last year. This will be the Jones&Dillon show again in 2023.
Round 7, Pick 242: Anthony Johnson Jr, S, Iowa State Johnson Jr is a converted cornerback who plays with rare physicality for someone of that description. He did his best work in the box or in the slot at Iowa State, and that may be where the Pack will try to get him some snaps this year. He can be over aggressive in his pursuits at times and take bad angles, but that is coachable. Given the state of the safety room, the 7th round rookie may find himself starting some games this season.
Round 7, Pick 256: Grant DuBose, WR, Charlotte DuBose comes from UNC Charlotte, where there apparently is a football team, and he was 2nd team all C-USA last season. DuBose has excellent size at 6'2, and I love his agility on in-breaking routes crossing the face of safeties. He has experience both outside and in the slot, and is an interesting addition to the WR battle at the bottom of the roster, which is going to be highly competitive. It may come down to how good he can be on special teams. Coaches and teammates rave about his work ethic and love of football, and he worked at Walmart while keeping himself in shape during the Covid year. I'm optimistic he can carve out a role for himself and make the team.
Overall, Gutekunst drafted for need at times in this draft, but still stuck to picking guys that fit his type: big, athletic, and versatile. My biggest shock was not taking a safety until the 7th round, but I think it just never lined up with his board. There was an obvious effort to surround Love with talented pass catchers, which is a breath of fresh air from this team. I was surprised that they didn't take a single offensive linemen, given this is almost certainly Bakh's last year in the green and gold and question marks surrounding some of our young guys, but we drafted 3 linemen last year and the staff may have high hopes for Zach Tom to be the next left tackle. The franchise has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to scouting and developing OL.
All told, 2023 is the most excited I've been for a Packer season in a few years. There are so many unknown variables surrounding the team, from Jordan Loves development to LaFleur's offense to Joe Barry's pending glue eating scandal. Media pundits have them ranked somewhere between 20 & 26 in the league hierarchy heading into the year. Personally, I'm a little higher on the Pack, and they will shoot up these rankings if Jordan Love delivers. There's a lot on Love's shoulders. This is the season we've been waiting for with baited breath for 3 years, the post-Rodgers era, and now it's here, for better or worse.
submitted by immacamel to NFL_Draft [link] [comments]
Key Signings:
KR Keisean Nixon- the return dynamo who renewed my will to live after watching Amari Rodgers play football. Signed again on a 1 year deal worth up to $4m. And he figures to have a larger role on defense this season. This was one of the biggest wishes for packer fans this offseason, as it finally shows a dedication to building the ST unit.
S Rudy Ford- he had himself a nice 2022 and got re-signed for his efforts. It's a one year deal, and he will compete for the starting safety spot as of now.
CB Corey Ballentine- a reserve CB who I will always have a soft spot for due to his tragic draft night story. Ballentine has been re-signed and will compete for snaps in an unsettled secondary.
S Dallin Leavitt- a Rich Bisaccia re-signing. Leavitt was a quiet killer last season as a special teams ace, and he returns in that role this season.
OT Yosh Nijman- a developmental prospect that has blossomed into an serviceable swing tackle, I thought Nijman would get more on the open market than his RFA tender price. He will be back with the Pack in a LT2 and RT2 role for 2023.
Key Departures:
DT Dean Lowry- Lowry gave the Pack his best and we appreciate him, but his ceiling was evident and achieved. Devonte Wyatt was drafted as a high upside replacement. Lowry signed with the Vikings on a 2 year deal.
WR Allen Lazard- Aaron Rodgers's latest security blanket, Lazard is rejoining Rodgers on a 4y, 44m deal with the New York Jets. A quiet, consistent performer for the Packers throughout his tenure, Lazard will continue to be a sure-handed possession receiver in New York, transforming the slot position previously occupied by Elijah Moore into more of a big slot. He will also continue to mug people in the run game.
TE Robert Tonyan- Bobby Tonyan heads south to Chicago to be TE2 behind Cole Kmet. Packer fans love Tonyan for bringing pride back to the position in GB, and I honestly feel bad for him. He likely missed on his chance for a big pay day after tearing his ACL in 2021 and having a down year coming back. Now he's pushing 30, but he still provides excellent hands for the position and a great work ethic. Godspeed, buddy.
DL Jarran Reed- the big man returns to Seattle this season on a 2 year deal. Reed was just about what we expected in Green Bay- not great, not bad. He was a placeholder in a spot that Wyatt hopefully can take over.
Free Agents yet to be signed:
WR Randall Cobb, S Adrian Amos, TE Marcedes Lewis, K Mason Crosby
All members of the old guard. Cobb recently had surgery, and is a contender to rejoin Rodgers in NY. Amos had a down year, but could still have some left in the tank. I'm guessing he has an offer from GB and is weighing his options. Lewis also could be weighing his options between retirement, the Jets, or sailing into the sunset where it all began for him in Jacksonville. Mason Crosbys wife seemed to confirm on social media recently that the Packers have little interest in re-signing their all time leading scorer. Crosby made some clutch kicks for us over the years, and if this is the end, the Silver Fox will never have to buy a beer in Titletown again.
2022 season review: Record: 8-9 Oh man. 2022 was the year it all came crashing down. Green Bay tried to keep its veteran core together for a few years, appeasing Rodgers and navigating the salary cap reasonably well. But they never achieved that brass ring. Minus Davante Adams and working with a broken thumb, Rodgers struggled the most he has since his inaugural season as a starter. It's now time to address Rodgers in this post; I could write an entire entry solely on Rodgers and this past season, but I'll leave it at this: Aaron is my favorite football player of all time. He led the Packers to their greatest stretch of sustained excellence since Vince Lombardi roamed the sidelines, often with depleted rosters around him. In my opinion, hes the most talented QB to play the game. It seems a majority of Packer fans were ready to move on from the man and soured on him this offseason. Personally, I think he will be an MVP contender in NY next year and still love him. But it was time. The Jordan Love era needs to happen, if only for the front office itself needing to justify their faith in the Love pick. Rodgers and the Packers were operating on different timelines the past few years, stuck somewhere between going all in and resetting. The front office has put all their chips in on Jordan Love.
The defense was expected to be a top 5 unit, but regressed heavily. Joe Barry was under scrutiny all year long, seemingly incapable of putting his plethora of first rounders in positions to succeed. A late season push did just enough to save his job (apparently).
Favorite win: Dallas Most frustrating loss: Detroit, week 18
Rodgers's exit also raises an interesting thought: will we see the True Matt LaFleur Offense this season? Offensive deficiencies have been blamed on Lafleur himself or Rodgers's hesitancy at transitioning from a traditional west coast offense to a Shanahan-esque, motion based attack. The answer will be uncovered this year, with Jordan Love having 3 years of experience in the scheme and a first round pedigree. As a Love truther in the pre draft season who hated the pick for the Packers, I am fascinated. This pick will make or break Gute's and Lafleur's tenure.
Aside from the quarterback situation, there are lingering questions concerning LaFleur's ability to lead the team in general. The Packers have consistently laid an egg in one game every season of his tenure and have come up short in the playoffs, with some head scratching decisions rearing their head in crunch time of big games (the end of the Bucs NFC championship the most glaring). I also have questions on his staff hirings/retentions. LaFleur hired 2 dogshit ST coordinators before making the obvious choice of Basaccia. He also chose to retain Joe Barry, noted football terrorist, as defensive coordinator. I've read rumblings that Gute has more say over the staff than the head coach, which is unconfirmed but concerning. I don't mean to dump on LaFleur in this piece, only to emphasize how big of a year this is for him. I think his scheme is sound and the guys play hard for him. With Rodgers gone, I think we see less RPOs and inside zone handoffs to AJ Dillon out of shotgun. The offense will have more identity. But if there are 2 more years without the playoffs in Green Bay, the Cheeseheads will advocate for a new coach.
2023 Draft:
Positions of need: S, TE, WR, DT
Round 1, Pick 13: Lukas Van Ness, Edge, Iowa With the world expecting Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Gute stuck true to his type and drafted athletic freak LVN out of Iowa. Van Ness profiles as a Rashan Gary clone, with a high RAS score and unrefined repertoire of pass rush moves. If he works out like Gary, this is a massive hit. In the pre draft process, the only guy who could have realistically been there for GB that I had above Van Ness was Peter Skoronski. He wasn't there, and there was no doubt in my mind Gute was going for LVN afterwards. He'll rotate with Gary and Preston Smith this year, and will kick inside on certain packages. He makes Smith expendable in the future.
Round 2, Pick 42: Luke Musgrave, TE, Oregon State Musgrave has the size and athleticism to be a game changer at tight end. His tape was short but encouraging. His biggest questions are durability and how he will develop, given his late breakout and immediate injury afterwards. My comparison to his playstyle was Travis Kelce, and if he can approach even 70% of Kelce's production in a season, this is a great pick. The biggest hole on the roster was TE, and I have a feeling Gute got the top one on his board.
Round 2, Pick 50: Jayden Reed, WR, Michigan State The process of this pick was nerve wracking. I was one of many fans pounding the table for Brian Branch, the S out of Alabama. When Gute traded down instead, I was telling friends I hoped he took Jayden Reed, and that's what happened. Reed is smaller receiver who plays bigger than his size on contested catches. He carried the Michigan State offense last year after Kenneth Walker jumped to the NFL. My comparison for him is Tyler Lockett. In Green Bay, Reed will take over the slot role, and I expect him to see around 60% of offensive snaps.
Round 3, Pick 78: Tucker Kraft, TE, South Dakota State Another tight end added to a barren room. The former Jackrabbit is similar to Musgrave in a lot of ways- big, athletic, and a willing albeit unrefined blocker. Kraft's addition along with Musgraves could push the Packers into more 22 personal this season, something LaFleur wants to run but hasnt had the personnel for, and I would not be surprised to see him outsnap Musgrave if he develops quickly. I'm really hoping this is the pick that breaks Green Bays 3rd round curse (seriously look it up its so bad).
Round 4, Pick 116: Colby Wooden, Edge, Auburn A former 4 star recruit at Auburn, Wooden collected 17 sacks as a 3 year starter in the SEC and showed inside/outside versatility. He shows an ability to rush with speed and power, but is inconsistent in his pad level and technique. He anchors well in the run game and showed great gap discipline. I don't see him getting many snaps this year, but if he does I think he takes Kingsley Engabare's role on run downs.
Round 5, Pick 149: Sean Clifford, QB, Penn State A perplexing pick until I saw this man somehow has a 9 RAS. Clifford is an experienced college starter who plays with a clear understanding of his role and a passion for the game. My issues with him were accuracy, arm strength, pocket presence, and decision making. You know, playing quarterback. I did not give Clifford a draftable grade and would have preferred Jaren Hall or Max Duggan. But this is really nit picking over a 5th round pick who was drafted to be a career backup. If the staff sees something in him, I'll give it a chance.
Round 5, Pick 159: Dontayvion Wicks, WR, Virginia A 6'1, 206 lb vertical threat, Wicks was inconsistent in his career at Virginia. If he replicated his 2021 production last year, he might have found himself as a day 2 pick. Alas, a new offense and drops led to his availability at this spot. Wicks has a good release package and the ability to stack DBs and get vertical. His tendencies as a body catcher led to drops last year, and he doesn't provide much after the catch. With his profile, he'll be a WR4/5, but could be a special teams ace very early in his career.
Round 6, Pick 179: Karl Brooks, DL, Bowling Green A bit of a tweener, Brooks is a high motor, high effort pass rusher. He flashes great technique and seems to rush with a plan. He can get washed out in the run game, and will need to commit one way or another to defensive end or defensive tackle. He graded very high from PFF, so that's something. To get on the field, he'll have to show more consistency and ability when anchoring down in the run game.
Round 6, Pick 207: Anders Carlson, K, Auburn Apparently, Mason Crosby's replacement. Anders is the brother of Las Vegas kicker Daniel Carlson, who's pretty damn good. There is a connection with Basaccia there, who's known Anders since high school. I wasn't encouraged by his stats at Auburn, but I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in scouting kickers. If Basaccia says he's that dude, then that dude he is.
Round 7, Pick 232: Carrington Valentine, CB, Kentucky Valentine is a WR convert with a long, slender frame. He is at his best in press man, where he has a variety of ways to get hands on the receiver and reroute him. Unfortunately for Vallentine, Joe Barry hates press man and will kill my family if I suggest it again. Valentine's frame can lead him to get bullied by bigger WRs at times, but he is physical at the catch point. He also brings experience as a productive kick returner, something that could be helpful in the future or even this season if the staff wants to keep Nixon fresh for defensive snaps.
Round 7, Pick 235: Lew Nichols, RB, Central Michigan A big back with some intriguing traits, Nichols enjoyed a very productive 2021 before injuries hampered his 2022. Nichols has good vision, contact balance, and power as a north-south runner. He was productive catching out of the backfield, but wasn't asked to run many routes beyond that. His biggest hurdles in the NFL are going to be elusiveness and speed. He lacks both, but should be a decent backup. For the Packers, they used their RB3 less than maybe any team in the league last year. This will be the Jones&Dillon show again in 2023.
Round 7, Pick 242: Anthony Johnson Jr, S, Iowa State Johnson Jr is a converted cornerback who plays with rare physicality for someone of that description. He did his best work in the box or in the slot at Iowa State, and that may be where the Pack will try to get him some snaps this year. He can be over aggressive in his pursuits at times and take bad angles, but that is coachable. Given the state of the safety room, the 7th round rookie may find himself starting some games this season.
Round 7, Pick 256: Grant DuBose, WR, Charlotte DuBose comes from UNC Charlotte, where there apparently is a football team, and he was 2nd team all C-USA last season. DuBose has excellent size at 6'2, and I love his agility on in-breaking routes crossing the face of safeties. He has experience both outside and in the slot, and is an interesting addition to the WR battle at the bottom of the roster, which is going to be highly competitive. It may come down to how good he can be on special teams. Coaches and teammates rave about his work ethic and love of football, and he worked at Walmart while keeping himself in shape during the Covid year. I'm optimistic he can carve out a role for himself and make the team.
Overall, Gutekunst drafted for need at times in this draft, but still stuck to picking guys that fit his type: big, athletic, and versatile. My biggest shock was not taking a safety until the 7th round, but I think it just never lined up with his board. There was an obvious effort to surround Love with talented pass catchers, which is a breath of fresh air from this team. I was surprised that they didn't take a single offensive linemen, given this is almost certainly Bakh's last year in the green and gold and question marks surrounding some of our young guys, but we drafted 3 linemen last year and the staff may have high hopes for Zach Tom to be the next left tackle. The franchise has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to scouting and developing OL.
All told, 2023 is the most excited I've been for a Packer season in a few years. There are so many unknown variables surrounding the team, from Jordan Loves development to LaFleur's offense to Joe Barry's pending glue eating scandal. Media pundits have them ranked somewhere between 20 & 26 in the league hierarchy heading into the year. Personally, I'm a little higher on the Pack, and they will shoot up these rankings if Jordan Love delivers. There's a lot on Love's shoulders. This is the season we've been waiting for with baited breath for 3 years, the post-Rodgers era, and now it's here, for better or worse.
2023.05.29 17:27 chadisdangerous Can we please just relax about this silly beef?
This whole drama keeps getting sillier to me the more I think about it.
Like, isn't it obvious that bad festival management is really at the core of what happened?
Osees are rightfully annoyed that BCNR's performance cut into their soundcheck but it's not BCNR's fault that this time crunch had happened in the first place. BCNR are rightfully annoyed that their complex chamber pieces were interrupted by a raucous band soundchecking their drums within earshot, but again, that time crunch was ultimately outside of Osees' control and they had every right to take their own performance seriously as well. It's not a competition.
Like, aren't both bands upset at the exact same thing when you really break it down? We're talking about a bunch of seasoned professional musicians getting upset because they felt they weren't given the best opportunity to meet the high standard of performance their fans expect. Why should there be ANY beef?
I don't think either band looks good by stirring up this drama publicly when a simple conversation should have sufficed, either with each other or the festival organizers. I also don't think either fanbase looks good by shitting on the other band's music or status in the industry: Osees aren't some dumb "old guard" ruining shit for no reason and BCNR aren't just a bunch of pretentious music school kids upset they couldn't get their own way. Like, by all accounts everyone involved are lovely and incredibly talented people!
I don't know, maybe I'm part of the problem for typing a big screed about this but there's just so many avoidable bad vibes clashing at the same time. Both fanbases are in this for the love of the music and I feel like we should just take a step back and realize we have far more in common than whatever superficial silly differences are being dredged up in all of this.
submitted by chadisdangerous to BlackCountryNewRoad [link] [comments]
Like, isn't it obvious that bad festival management is really at the core of what happened?
Osees are rightfully annoyed that BCNR's performance cut into their soundcheck but it's not BCNR's fault that this time crunch had happened in the first place. BCNR are rightfully annoyed that their complex chamber pieces were interrupted by a raucous band soundchecking their drums within earshot, but again, that time crunch was ultimately outside of Osees' control and they had every right to take their own performance seriously as well. It's not a competition.
Like, aren't both bands upset at the exact same thing when you really break it down? We're talking about a bunch of seasoned professional musicians getting upset because they felt they weren't given the best opportunity to meet the high standard of performance their fans expect. Why should there be ANY beef?
I don't think either band looks good by stirring up this drama publicly when a simple conversation should have sufficed, either with each other or the festival organizers. I also don't think either fanbase looks good by shitting on the other band's music or status in the industry: Osees aren't some dumb "old guard" ruining shit for no reason and BCNR aren't just a bunch of pretentious music school kids upset they couldn't get their own way. Like, by all accounts everyone involved are lovely and incredibly talented people!
I don't know, maybe I'm part of the problem for typing a big screed about this but there's just so many avoidable bad vibes clashing at the same time. Both fanbases are in this for the love of the music and I feel like we should just take a step back and realize we have far more in common than whatever superficial silly differences are being dredged up in all of this.
2023.05.29 17:00 newslooter Best Mullvad VPN Alternatives
Mullvad has now blocked port forwarding due to people abusing it.
I would guess this is finally one of the cons of their great anonymous user account system is that it's super easy to abuse. I wouldn't be surprised to see more repercussions as MV grows or even a rework of the system since it can be hard to kick off abusers which means people who obey the TOS might be impacted.
Here are my top alternatives to Mullvad as someone who has used 50+ VPNs.
TorGuard
+Has port forwarding
+Cheaper than even Mullvad long term (use code "vpncomparison")
+Fastest vpn in my tests (and in some global speed tests I've run in the past)
+Court proven not to collect logs
+12 years in business and no security vulnerabilities or issues
+Only VPN that v2ray support, works insanely good in places like Iran or China
+Socks5 support is really good for torrenting
+Linux GUI
-Not open source or audited
Hide.Me
+Has port forwarding
+First VPN to be audited
+Cheaper than Mullvad long term
+Socks5
-A bit slow in specific regions (like pacific northwest)
-No Linux GUI
ProtonVPN
+Has port forwarding
+Best "on paper" privacy due to Open Source / audited
+Speeds are 4/5 not 5/5 like TorGuard
+Great looking UI
+Still developing some features like socks5 / dedicated ips
+Linux GUI
-Pricey
submitted by newslooter to vpncomparison [link] [comments]
I would guess this is finally one of the cons of their great anonymous user account system is that it's super easy to abuse. I wouldn't be surprised to see more repercussions as MV grows or even a rework of the system since it can be hard to kick off abusers which means people who obey the TOS might be impacted.
Here are my top alternatives to Mullvad as someone who has used 50+ VPNs.
TorGuard
+Has port forwarding
+Cheaper than even Mullvad long term (use code "vpncomparison")
+Fastest vpn in my tests (and in some global speed tests I've run in the past)
+Court proven not to collect logs
+12 years in business and no security vulnerabilities or issues
+Only VPN that v2ray support, works insanely good in places like Iran or China
+Socks5 support is really good for torrenting
+Linux GUI
-Not open source or audited
Hide.Me
+Has port forwarding
+First VPN to be audited
+Cheaper than Mullvad long term
+Socks5
-A bit slow in specific regions (like pacific northwest)
-No Linux GUI
ProtonVPN
+Has port forwarding
+Best "on paper" privacy due to Open Source / audited
+Speeds are 4/5 not 5/5 like TorGuard
+Great looking UI
+Still developing some features like socks5 / dedicated ips
+Linux GUI
-Pricey
2023.05.29 17:00 AutoModerator Daily Questions Thread - May 29, 2023
This thread is for individual style questions that you may have, especially those that don't warrant their own thread. We all want a diversified opinion, so feel free to answer any questions (of which you know the answer).
To get the best responses, please include any relevant details such as your budget, where you live, and what stores are available to you.
Example questions:
submitted by AutoModerator to femalefashionadvice [link] [comments]
To get the best responses, please include any relevant details such as your budget, where you live, and what stores are available to you.
Example questions:
- Are there any basic crewneck white t-shirts that are opaque and do not have cap sleeves for <$25 available in Australia?
- Is this dress and shoes suitable for an evening wedding with a cocktail dress code taking place in a [venue type]?
- If I like the outfits in this [imgur album / pinterest board], what are some specific items I can look into to start dressing like that, and brands with this look that carry plus sizes?
- Does this outfit look neater with the pants cuffed or uncuffed?
2023.05.29 16:58 FloatingTriangles Experimental Trial 12-2 - Preview 1: The Old Game's Remains
Last time, at the beginning of the new era of killing games, seventeen familiar players were given a choice…
On the one hand, today we’ll indeed be playing the standard killing game you’re all oh-so used to by now. Kill someone and get away with it at the trial, blah-blah-blah, you win the prize and everyone else dies. The spotless prevail, and they win their continued survival only.
The prize?
You’re making it sound like we’ve got another choice. Just say it already!
Get out of this Ultimate Academy through the underground hatch, and everyone here gets to stay alive another day.
Puhuhu…the prize for the blackened who wins their trial…is this world.
Everyone, there’s nothing to think about. We’ve never had an alternative like this before, and we can’t waste it! We just need to find all the Monokubs and escape!
With the games put in motion and mass execution on the line, they did their best to get out without bloodshed…
Papa Kuma, I-I’ll do better! Gaaaaaahhh! I’ll…I’ll conform!
Daddy, no, please don’t! I don’t want to die again! I did everything you asked…!
What the hell?! H-how’d you three chumps get in here?
THEY-WILL-NOT-TAG-YOU, BROTHER.
Run, run!
But what kind of killing game era ends without any killing?
...
And what kind of killing game doesn’t have a Class Trial?
You know, there's actually one person outside the Dream Team who knew Makoto was going to be in the Library.
You. Madam Prime Minister. Kirumi Tojo.
No signs of a struggle... Hmph. I don't see how someone could've gotten the drop on him if he was already standing guard. He was planning to meet the person who did him in.
...
Yes. I did kill Makoto. But, I did not lie about my motives. I intend to claim the Administrator title and create a world for you all that is free of Monokuma. Because, Mukuro is right. We must vote for Kokichi to ensure that this game ends here and now. To ensure that nobody else suffers.
And so, just as it began, in the end, they were left with another choice to make…
This wasn’t a unanimous vote by any means, but your decision is clear: Kokichi Oma killed Makoto Naegi…Nope, that’s wrong!
The spotless have ultimately chosen to sacrifice themselves. After their deaths, the blackened will become the new Administrator of this simulation.
Congratulations, Kirumi Tojo. You win…
Kirumi's strategy paid off, leaving the rest to be punished in her place. But this killing game couldn’t just end there.
Celeste, about those vampire butlers and your castle…
What the hell did you do to Kirumi, Monokuma? Where is she?! Get back here and answer me!
Huh. You guys don't look happy. I thought you wanted this ending.
We didn’t vote for this! We voted to get rid of you! We voted for her to win!
Whatever. Bottom line is, Kirumi’s won her prize. However, you guys still need to be here.
Isn’t this a virtual world? Why do we “need” to be here, anyway?
You guys voted to sacrifice yourselves, remember? It’s time for your punishment.
...
Ah-hahahaha! By the time this baby’s done with you, you’ll be lucky if you remember your own name!
Now, fifteen players remain, and it’s time for their next chapter. What will become of them?
Puhuhuhu…perhaps a better question is, who will they become?
In the Ultimate Entomologist Research Lab, a small girl in an orange kimono cowered behind the large tree-like table. At the sound of the door opening, she flinched and unleashed a verbal assault on the new arrival.
Stay away from me, you creepy pervert murderer! D-don’t come any closer! Just leave me alone and go kill yourself already!
...Sorry.
The small boy dressed in a prisoner’s jumpsuit paused, and then shut the door again. The chain attached to the cuff around his left ankle clattered ominously as he walked away.
A floor above them, another confrontation was about to take place. A green-haired boy and a redheaded girl carefully watched a girl with short black hair. She was armed with a knife, and demanding answers.
What the hell is this place? Talk. Now.
I-I...
Look, this is a sketchy situation for all three of us. Why don’t you put that knife away so we can actually talk?
Elsewhere in the Academy building, someone had gotten hurt. A blonde girl wearing a backpack exited a classroom, rubbing her head. A blue-haired girl in the hallway saw her.
Hey there, are you okay?
Y-yeah, I will be. It’s a little embarrassing to just admit this, but I fell out of a locker…
Others were alone.
A boy with one arm out of a sleeve of his pink jacket stared at the Ultimate Astronaut Research Lab around him.
Whoa...
A girl with twin-drill pigtails waited at the Casino reception desk. No one seemed to be coming.
...Ugh.
At the underground hatch, an innocent-looking boy eyed a colorful control panel, one that begged for someone to input a five-digit code. Only the gatling gun pointed at the panel gave him pause.
Huh...
A girl with a diamond-flecked ribbon in her hair raced through Hotel Kumasutra, searching for a way out.
...!
A pink-haired boy was restrained to the bed in the Ultimate Inventor Research Lab. Despite his attempts to get free, he was seemingly trapped.
Someone, anyone, goddammit, get me outta here!
A blue-haired girl walked down the First Floor hallway, towards the basement. At the top of the staircase leading down, she paused, but eventually put one foot in front of the other.
...
Down in the basement, she tried the door to her right, and ended up in the Library. There were three people inside.
...
...
Two of the three, a boy and a girl, stared down at the third person. The third person’s eyes were closed. There were bruises visible on his neck.
...
He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
DING DONG BING BONG!
A black-and-white bear was suddenly on every screen in and around the Ultimate Academy.
Mic check, mic check! Can you all hear me? Everyone, head on down to the Library in the Academy building’s basement. See you soon!
Soon enough, the fifteen who were scattered around all made it down to the basement Library. One in particular, upon seeing the dead boy, took the horrible sight particularly hard.
H-he was one of my middle school schoolmates…
The fifteen were not by themselves among the dead for too long, however. Two bears stood in the doorway. One they recognized from the earlier message.
Hiya!
Until now, it had been mostly quiet in the Library. The bears’ arrival opened the floodgates.
Shut up! Just shut up! I-I want out of this stupid shithole!
What, exactly, is this place?
Who cares about that? We're all getting out of here!
You two talking bears have anything to do with what happened to this poor guy?
You do, don’t you? Y-you probably killed him!
These demands and questions were ignored.
My name is Monokuma. Welcome to the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles!
...
...?
Oh! And my name is Monotaro, you bastards!
What Monokuma had to say next was enough to get everyone else to stop talking.
You’re all here to take part in a killing game. That boy dead on the floor was, too…well, until the mastermind behind all of this murdered him.
It’s horrible, isn’t it? Being killed right when you’re in the prime of your life?
But…your own deaths could be right around the corner. We’ve already got today’s victim, but our mastermind’s not about to stop there. They’re gonna kill another person tomorrow, and one person the next day, and the next, and so on…
The only way to stop the mastermind’s killing spree is for someone else to kill someone first. If not, I’m sure the mastermind’s got a whole lot of other murders planned. You could be stabbed, poisoned, electrocuted…well, you get the idea! Here today, gone tomorrow!
Horror was reflected on many faces in Monokuma’s audience. But, then, there was an abrupt change of topic.
Say, I know you all know me and my precious Kub Monotaro…but what about you guys? Anyone here know their name?
Silence.
No one answered him. It seemed everyone had forgotten.
Collective amnesia, huh? How strange and mysterious. But, let’s not dwell on it. Instead, to make it easier for everyone, go ahead and think of a cool codename for yourself! No pressure!
So suddenly confronted with this new reality, the fifteen killing game participants were forced to then somehow think of suitable codenames for themselves. What names would they choose?
Who would they become?
Hey everyone, Tri here. I'm very glad to be able to actually host this second Tri-al. Just like with the first one, I hope I've put together something you all can enjoy.
More previews are on the way, but I don't know exactly when they'll be ready. I'll be reaching out to the original cast soon to see who's available to return. A signup date and time for any open roles will be posted in a later preview.
More to come. :)
submitted by FloatingTriangles to DanganRoleplay [link] [comments]
On the one hand, today we’ll indeed be playing the standard killing game you’re all oh-so used to by now. Kill someone and get away with it at the trial, blah-blah-blah, you win the prize and everyone else dies. The spotless prevail, and they win their continued survival only.
The prize?
You’re making it sound like we’ve got another choice. Just say it already!
Get out of this Ultimate Academy through the underground hatch, and everyone here gets to stay alive another day.
Puhuhu…the prize for the blackened who wins their trial…is this world.
Everyone, there’s nothing to think about. We’ve never had an alternative like this before, and we can’t waste it! We just need to find all the Monokubs and escape!
With the games put in motion and mass execution on the line, they did their best to get out without bloodshed…
Papa Kuma, I-I’ll do better! Gaaaaaahhh! I’ll…I’ll conform!
Daddy, no, please don’t! I don’t want to die again! I did everything you asked…!
What the hell?! H-how’d you three chumps get in here?
THEY-WILL-NOT-TAG-YOU, BROTHER.
Run, run!
But what kind of killing game era ends without any killing?
...
And what kind of killing game doesn’t have a Class Trial?
You know, there's actually one person outside the Dream Team who knew Makoto was going to be in the Library.
You. Madam Prime Minister. Kirumi Tojo.
No signs of a struggle... Hmph. I don't see how someone could've gotten the drop on him if he was already standing guard. He was planning to meet the person who did him in.
...
Yes. I did kill Makoto. But, I did not lie about my motives. I intend to claim the Administrator title and create a world for you all that is free of Monokuma. Because, Mukuro is right. We must vote for Kokichi to ensure that this game ends here and now. To ensure that nobody else suffers.
And so, just as it began, in the end, they were left with another choice to make…
This wasn’t a unanimous vote by any means, but your decision is clear: Kokichi Oma killed Makoto Naegi…Nope, that’s wrong!
The spotless have ultimately chosen to sacrifice themselves. After their deaths, the blackened will become the new Administrator of this simulation.
Congratulations, Kirumi Tojo. You win…
Kirumi's strategy paid off, leaving the rest to be punished in her place. But this killing game couldn’t just end there.
Celeste, about those vampire butlers and your castle…
What the hell did you do to Kirumi, Monokuma? Where is she?! Get back here and answer me!
Huh. You guys don't look happy. I thought you wanted this ending.
We didn’t vote for this! We voted to get rid of you! We voted for her to win!
Whatever. Bottom line is, Kirumi’s won her prize. However, you guys still need to be here.
Isn’t this a virtual world? Why do we “need” to be here, anyway?
You guys voted to sacrifice yourselves, remember? It’s time for your punishment.
...
Ah-hahahaha! By the time this baby’s done with you, you’ll be lucky if you remember your own name!
Now, fifteen players remain, and it’s time for their next chapter. What will become of them?
Puhuhuhu…perhaps a better question is, who will they become?
Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles, morning
...In the Ultimate Entomologist Research Lab, a small girl in an orange kimono cowered behind the large tree-like table. At the sound of the door opening, she flinched and unleashed a verbal assault on the new arrival.
Stay away from me, you creepy pervert murderer! D-don’t come any closer! Just leave me alone and go kill yourself already!
...Sorry.
The small boy dressed in a prisoner’s jumpsuit paused, and then shut the door again. The chain attached to the cuff around his left ankle clattered ominously as he walked away.
A floor above them, another confrontation was about to take place. A green-haired boy and a redheaded girl carefully watched a girl with short black hair. She was armed with a knife, and demanding answers.
What the hell is this place? Talk. Now.
I-I...
Look, this is a sketchy situation for all three of us. Why don’t you put that knife away so we can actually talk?
Elsewhere in the Academy building, someone had gotten hurt. A blonde girl wearing a backpack exited a classroom, rubbing her head. A blue-haired girl in the hallway saw her.
Hey there, are you okay?
Y-yeah, I will be. It’s a little embarrassing to just admit this, but I fell out of a locker…
Others were alone.
A boy with one arm out of a sleeve of his pink jacket stared at the Ultimate Astronaut Research Lab around him.
Whoa...
A girl with twin-drill pigtails waited at the Casino reception desk. No one seemed to be coming.
...Ugh.
At the underground hatch, an innocent-looking boy eyed a colorful control panel, one that begged for someone to input a five-digit code. Only the gatling gun pointed at the panel gave him pause.
Huh...
A girl with a diamond-flecked ribbon in her hair raced through Hotel Kumasutra, searching for a way out.
...!
A pink-haired boy was restrained to the bed in the Ultimate Inventor Research Lab. Despite his attempts to get free, he was seemingly trapped.
Someone, anyone, goddammit, get me outta here!
A blue-haired girl walked down the First Floor hallway, towards the basement. At the top of the staircase leading down, she paused, but eventually put one foot in front of the other.
...
Down in the basement, she tried the door to her right, and ended up in the Library. There were three people inside.
...
...
Two of the three, a boy and a girl, stared down at the third person. The third person’s eyes were closed. There were bruises visible on his neck.
...
He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
DING DONG BING BONG!
A black-and-white bear was suddenly on every screen in and around the Ultimate Academy.
Mic check, mic check! Can you all hear me? Everyone, head on down to the Library in the Academy building’s basement. See you soon!
Soon enough, the fifteen who were scattered around all made it down to the basement Library. One in particular, upon seeing the dead boy, took the horrible sight particularly hard.
H-he was one of my middle school schoolmates…
The fifteen were not by themselves among the dead for too long, however. Two bears stood in the doorway. One they recognized from the earlier message.
Hiya!
Until now, it had been mostly quiet in the Library. The bears’ arrival opened the floodgates.
Shut up! Just shut up! I-I want out of this stupid shithole!
What, exactly, is this place?
Who cares about that? We're all getting out of here!
You two talking bears have anything to do with what happened to this poor guy?
You do, don’t you? Y-you probably killed him!
These demands and questions were ignored.
My name is Monokuma. Welcome to the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles!
...
...?
Oh! And my name is Monotaro, you bastards!
What Monokuma had to say next was enough to get everyone else to stop talking.
You’re all here to take part in a killing game. That boy dead on the floor was, too…well, until the mastermind behind all of this murdered him.
It’s horrible, isn’t it? Being killed right when you’re in the prime of your life?
But…your own deaths could be right around the corner. We’ve already got today’s victim, but our mastermind’s not about to stop there. They’re gonna kill another person tomorrow, and one person the next day, and the next, and so on…
The only way to stop the mastermind’s killing spree is for someone else to kill someone first. If not, I’m sure the mastermind’s got a whole lot of other murders planned. You could be stabbed, poisoned, electrocuted…well, you get the idea! Here today, gone tomorrow!
Horror was reflected on many faces in Monokuma’s audience. But, then, there was an abrupt change of topic.
Say, I know you all know me and my precious Kub Monotaro…but what about you guys? Anyone here know their name?
Silence.
No one answered him. It seemed everyone had forgotten.
Collective amnesia, huh? How strange and mysterious. But, let’s not dwell on it. Instead, to make it easier for everyone, go ahead and think of a cool codename for yourself! No pressure!
So suddenly confronted with this new reality, the fifteen killing game participants were forced to then somehow think of suitable codenames for themselves. What names would they choose?
Who would they become?
More previews are on the way, but I don't know exactly when they'll be ready. I'll be reaching out to the original cast soon to see who's available to return. A signup date and time for any open roles will be posted in a later preview.
More to come. :)
2023.05.29 16:56 bimbo_wannabe_ [I Accidentally Joined The Mafia In South Brooklyn] Chapter 6: On The Organizational Habits of Unrested Spirits and The Taste of Demon's Blood, Part 1.
![[I Accidentally Joined The Mafia In South Brooklyn] Chapter 6: On The Organizational Habits of Unrested Spirits and The Taste of Demon's Blood, Part 1.](https://preview.redd.it/8u7ykhosst2b1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=5b744f64a6da09632ac427471bc1cbaa47eb9911 "[I Accidentally Joined The Mafia In South Brooklyn] Chapter 6: On The Organizational Habits of Unrested Spirits and The Taste of Demon's Blood, Part 1.") | Previous Part: https://www.reddit.com/redditserials/comments/13trg6g/i_accidentally_joined_the_mafia_in_south_brooklyn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button submitted by bimbo_wannabe_ to redditserials [link] [comments] Becca invited me to her apartment when we made it back, sent me through the alley behind the building to keep the prying eyes at the minimum. That was fine with me as I was a lot more noticeable than I liked to be, at the moment. I had already lit a cigarette by the time she opened the back door of the stairwell to let me in. It was the last in the pack, and I'd only opened it this morning. The temperature on my phone screen had finally hit zero. "You're gonna have to give me a second, B, I don't wanna smoke around you in your condition but I really need one." She gave me another watery grin. "Little too much blood in the nicotine system, huh?" "Exactly, my young friend, exactly that." She propped the door open and sat herself down on the ground. I could tell the high heels were starting to hurt her because she kicked them off and set them neatly to the side, though I knew the concrete had to be freezing her feet off. She tucked her skirt between her legs and sat with her back against the wall, her elbow propped on her bent knee, the other leg stretched out straight before her. It was exactly how what was left of Antoni had been sitting beside me less than two hours ago. I was getting a little tired of all the patterns appearing in my life these days. I flipped to my news app, as was my habit. There was an article at the top of page about the preparations the SDNY were making to get ready for the coming storm, but frankly I didn't really give a fuck so I just kept scrolling. "Your old neighborhood is in the news, B." "You ain't had enough bad news?" Beccs asked with a rueful laugh. "Eh, I like to stay abreast of current events. I mean, you got me pegged, B. I'm a nosy fuck. But, uh, fifteen years on the inside, you learn that it pays to pay attention to the shit other people don't notice, cause you never know when the information you pick up is going to end up being the information you need." She gave me a look that said she had to yield to my point. "So what's the news from Koreatown?". "Somebody shot a wedding up, apparently. Says seven were killed, including the bride and groom and the bride's father, as they was leaving the reception. You know, most of these names are Rhees. Ain't nobody you know, is it? Kinda feel like you've had enough death for the day, kid." There was another look on her face, one I couldn't quite read even with all my people-watching prowess. "Lemme take a wild stab at it. Two of those names are Rhee Seong-Min and Rhee Bong-Cha." "Yeah," I nodded. "You do know 'em. I'm sorry, B." She gave a low, almost rumbling, chuckle. It gave me a little shiver, not from the cold, and not one of enjoyment, either. She flashed a sign, one I'd seen her flash before, but it wasn't from any gang I knew personally, and lacking any official affiliation of my own, I'd dealt with my fair share of different gang members in the Upstate Correctional Facility. Double E's, one backwards, one forwards, three quick shakes of each hand. "God bless old K-town. But you ain't got to worry about it. I'll not shed a tear over any of them. They's family, but they ain't exactly family, you know. I might tell you about it one day." The last sentence had a note of finality to it, so I didn't ask any further questions in that regard, but I was still as curious as always. "If all your family has Korean names, how the hell did you end up as Rebecca and your Dad as Sam?" "My Dad's name is Park Kyung-Sam. Just Sam was easier to tell people and he, uh, he wanted me to have the same benefit of blending in in American society, and he liked the name Rebecca. So, Rhee Rebecca Hyo-Jin. My Mom's name was Rhee Chung-Cha, but everybody just called her ChaCha, like from Grease." "So your Mom was the Rhee?" She made an affirmative noise and nodded. "She didn't exactly wanna give up her family name, and… my Dad didn't exactly give a fuck cause he was in love with her crazy ass. You know, that's where I get this from. Except my Moms, if she was still around she'd make me look like I grew up to be a calm, quiet girl." I'd hate to see what was worse than Beccs. "You done?" Becca asked. I nodded, tossed my cigarette into the sand-filled bucket we kept here for just that purpose. I followed B inside and we climbed the stairs to the third floor. I leaned against the wall as she pulled a ring of keys from her coat pocket and waited while she unlocked the knob and the three deadbolts on her door. "Pretty serious about your home security, B?" She shot me a look but didn't say anything as she opened the door. A steady beeping greeted us, and Becca stopped just inside and punched in a code on a security panel. As I stepped around her and entered the apartment, I understood why. Do you know that part in Coming To America where Akeem comes home to his dilapidated Queens apartment and realizes Semmi has filled it with expensive furniture? Well, it was exactly like that. Becca locked the door back behind her, threw her stilettos onto the shoe rack, and hung her coat on the brass tree beside it. I did the same, removed my boots to place them on the rack as well. "Jesus Christ, B, this place looks amazing." There was a gray suede sectional in the center of the living room, a 152 inch Panasonic plasma bolted to the wall. The coffee table, the wool Oriental rug beneath it, and the end tables looked antique, as well as the green velvet chaise set near one window. There were three ornately-carved bookcases set against the far wall between the two windows facing the street, one filled with DVDs, and on the other two almost all the books were old and leather bound. The kitchen was open to the room, separated by a butcher block bar from the living room, all matching stainless steel appliances and black marble countertops. All along the walls were family pictures dotted between massive paintings held in golden Baroque style frames. They were… stunning was the only word I could think to describe them. Most of them were portraits done in a slightly impressionist style, impasto if my memory served me, seemingly random strokes of thick paint that somehow managed to form the perfect images of faces and a few nudes. "Jesus Christ, these paintings must have cost a fortune alone." Becca stepped beside me, her arms crossed over her chest as she surveyed the painting I was looking at. It was done in mostly black and red, the image of a sleeping nude man, one arm tucked behind his head, his other draped across his stomach, his hips and legs covered with a sheet. If I touched it, I could have felt the wrinkles in the bunched fabric. There was something oddly familiar about it. "They didn't cost shit," she answered. That made me look away from the painting and back to Beccs. "What the hell? Did you rob a gallery?" "No, you mook, I painted them. They didn't cost anything but the price of the canvas and the paint, which, you know, I stole most of that from school." "You painted them," I repeated, looking back. As I looked closer at the canvas, I realized why it was familiar. The sleeping man was our dear friend Antoni Zabrowska. I had mistaken his tattoos for shadows, though I had to admit I had never seen him look quite so relaxed. As I glanced around the room, I realized I recognized many of the paintings. I was able to pick out her father's face, Rossi's, and I realized the model for the two female nudes was none other than Nia Bianchi. There was one of a woman in white with bloody skeletal wings that bore a strong resemblance to Becca and I imagined that was the infamous ChaCha. "That's what I go to Columbia for. Visual Arts." "You're a goddamn genius, B." She scoffed. "No, I'm fucking serious, kid. My sister collects art, and she refuses to go for the big names. Shit like this, she pays 10 to 20 grand for a painting half this size, more if it's one of the artists she likes." Now she snorted. "What? Your sister got a money tree?" "No, my older sister Aurie's a writer. She wrote her first book when she was ten. She's published 20 so far, but she's got 30 or 40 more in backlog that she's still tweaking. She's kind of a perfectionist when it comes to writing, but I guess it pays off. Her books sell like fucking hotcakes everytime she puts one out, two of her series got picked up by Netflix, and Lion's Gate turned her seventh book into a movie. She even got to be involved in the productions. "She's got a penthouse on the Upper East Side that she bought about six years ago. That's where I lived when I got out of the Upstate. Aurora, she's a fucking Saint, you know. I mean, I had a shitty PO that was up my ass every five minutes but Aurie never said a word about it. She just… always told me she was glad I was home, which, you know, was nice to hear considering that according to my grandparents I died 19 years ago. She was the one that helped me get this place down here, paid in full for a two year lease." Becca raised an eyebrow at me. "No offense, Tony, I can tell you're crazy about her, but she couldn't have picked a better place for you than this hell hole?" I laughed as softly as I could, to save the muscles in my stomach. "I picked this place myself, B. Cheapest apartment I could find in any of the boroughs, and it even had three bedrooms. I was thinking about having space for a library and a home gym." Becca snorted. "Yeah, it's cheap cause the fucking place is about 90 years old. Nobody's been able to get a hold of the slumlord who owns it for repairs in 8 months, but I bet you the motherfucker still collects the rent checks we deposit in his fucking bank account every month." "Yeah, I figured that out just about as soon as I moved in, but beggars can't be choosers. Besides, Antoni always used to help me out whenever something broke." Becca gave a small smile. "They did that for everybody. I used to call them the apartment elves, cause instead of making shoes they were skittering around fixing fucking toilets and sinks, and rewiring burned up outlets and bringing in new refrigerators and stoves when shit broke in everybody else's places. And they bought it all with their own money. Everybody tried to pay them, but they never took a dime for any of it. Ironically enough, Pops used to talk about Antoni all the time because of all the money he'd spend over there every week. Said he had a good heart, just no good sense when it came to what was his responsibility and wasn't. You know, I had my own opinions about Antoni's heart, but I kept them to myself." "I really wish I had paid more attention when Antoni was working on the boiler, though. Instead of just passing him tools and running my mouth." "Yeah, you're good at that," she replied with a smirk. "And fuck you, too, Miss Rebecca. You might be the strong type, but you're not exactly silent yourself." She laughed. "Make yourself comfortable. I'll be right back." I nodded and obeyed as she exited into what I saw was the bathroom as she opened the door and closed it behind her. The sectional was goddamned heaven, and she'd said make myself comfortable so I kicked out the recliner and leaned back. I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed, and when I opened them I nearly jumped out of my skin. I barely managed to stop myself from letting out a yell as I jerked back up to sitting. Antoni's corpse was standing by the picture wall, looking intently at a photo of a child Becca wearing a ruffled, cream colored dress with a ribbon in her long black hair. It was the picture of her first Communion. "Goddamn, you can't give somebody a warning before you do that?" He neither answered me nor turned to look at me because he was using the stumps of his wrists to adjust several of the frames back straight again. "Fucking neat freak," I laughed. "She wasn't lying." He finally turned toward me. You ever seen a corpse try to look annoyed when he's missing about a quarter of his face? I mean, what am I saying, you probably haven't, but suffice to say, it's pretty fucking funny. He raised his left wrist, and if he had hands, he'dve been shooting the bird. Almost hysterical laughter burst out of me as Becca exited the bathroom. "Least the pipes ain't frozen yet," she muttered. She gave me a strange look. "Who are you talking to out here? And what's so funny?" I glanced back to Antoni, but he was gone again. "Don't mind me, B, I'm pretty sure I got a concussion. I'm pretty much seeing pink elephants at this point." Or, you know, the mutilated corpse of my best friend, but it's probably best I leave it at elephants. "Yeah," she answered, and crossed the room to hand me something. "Speaking of." It was a mouth guard. "What is this for?" She didn't answer me, but headed to the kitchen and opened a cabinet, withdrawing a cut crystal scotch glass and then opening the refrigerator and withdrawing… two bags of blood. Nia's blood, to be exact. She unscrewed the cap at the bottom of one, punctured the seal with a fresh insulin needle, and to my supreme discomfort squeezed some into the glass. The mouth guard suddenly made sense. It was so I wouldn't break my teeth or bite my tongue off when the convulsions started and my jaw locked down from consuming demon blood. "Oh no, B, I don't want that." "Yeah. That's why I didn't tell you why I wanted you over here, cause I knew you was gonna be a pussy about it." I tried one more last-ditch effort. "You need that more than me, B." "I can just take my next dose early, but you, you can't go down and see Ma looking like that. She's gonna ask too many questions." That one stopped me. "I've had enough of interrogations for one day, B." "There ain't no interrogation when it comes to Ma. She just puts it in your head that you ain't got no choice but to tell her the truth, and you do. She's made state witnesses get up on the stand and confess their own crimes, pleading the fifth be damned." She screwed the cap back onto the bag and carried them and the glass over to the coffee table and set them down. She walked over and opened a closet door, pulling out an IV pole with a little box attached to it, and grabbed a small cardboard box from off a shelf and what looked like a tackle box. She set it on the coffee table after she pulled the pole over to the sectional and plugged it into the wall, opened the cardboard box and removed a cassette from inside and inserted it into the box on the pole. "What's that?" "It's a blood warmer for rapid transfusions, so I don't go into hypothermia or hemolysis. Little bastard cost 137 thousand, but at least you can buy them online. You put a fresh cassette in every time, the blood runs through it, by the time it gets to my arm it's body temp." She opened the tackle box and removed two fresh lines, attaching one to the bottom of the warmer and one to the top, hanging the bags of blood but not connecting the first of them yet. The top had a drip chamber with a filter, and the bottom held the flow regulator and the hypodermic needle with the cannula inside. "You know, it's not fucking fair, B, you shouldn't have dealt with half the shit in your life that you have." She snorted and her lips pursed with anger as she sat down beside me. "You sound like Rossi with that shit. That's why he wouldn't let me die, said it wasn't fair. I was ready to go into hospice, fuck it, I was ready to see my Mom again. But I'll tell you the same thing I told his stupid old ass. Life ain't fair. Cause if it was I'd have my mother and my baby's father and Jimmy's ass would be the one laying in the morgue. You think it's fair you almost lost a finger because of what he ordered?" I laughed. "No, I actually think that's pretty fair. That's karma, B. I was usually the one doing the beating. How do you think I ended up in prison?" She looked hard at me for a moment. "I mean, you never told me. You were pretty open about having gone to prison, but you never said why." "Well, I learned to be open about it. Some people get real upset when they find out they're dealing with someone who's been through the system, so I didn't really wanna go through that again. So now I just tell people up front, let them decide for themselves if they wanna deal with me or not. That way they can't throw it back in my face, say I lied to them." Becca let out a bitter chuckle. "So what's your story?" "Well, we still ain't finished your story, yet, but we'll take a detour. The whole thing started my Senior year of high school. First game of the year, I blew my knee out, big as a bitch, tore everything there was to tear, shit was basically hanging on by the skin alone. Orthopedics said I had two choices, keep playing football or, retain the ability to walk on that leg, so… there went all my big dreams of college ball and making it onto the Giants." "Linebacker?" I nodded. "Middle linebacker. I was good at it. 6'7, 265 pounds but light on my feet, all muscle. Back then I was running 7 percent body fat, and wasn't even trying. Shit just… all came natural to me. It all blew up in my face. Shitloads of surgery and physical therapy, and then one day the pain pills stopped but the pain didn't. Everyday, every night, I was still hurting." She nodded. "I know about bone pain. I could always tell when I needed to up the dose when my bones started hurting. When I started out all it took was an insulin needle. Now I take so much, I'm not even sure I qualify as human. But I guess I won't be much longer. That's always been the plan. Just keep me alive till 30 and Ma's gonna make me like her. That's the preferred age for the Entrance, something to do with the Trinity." I nodded. "I started asking around school if anyone knew where to get some Percs but pain management keeps that shit so tight I could only get a few at a time. Not only was they expensive, it wasn't enough. I got hooked up with this kid named Alessandro, he told me if I really wanted to control the pain, he could get me something better and cheaper. He took me to meet his uncle, Colombian guy named Marco. First shot is free and it was… it was beautiful. Everybody always gets sick the first time, but I didn't. And then after that, all my free money from my after school job started going to horse, and uh, I got my last six months off school. I already had all the credits I needed from AP classes, started working full time. They didn't piss test. But, my tolerance was rising faster than my income was." I took a deep breath. "I'd been buying enough that Marco was offering me fronts but I never took it. So next time I went, I asked him for my usual and I asked how much it would be for two O's on the front, cause I knew a lot of other users and I was thinking of starting to sell myself. So, he told me he'd give me a pound, and we could settle up at the end of the month." "Jesus Christ, if you were selling a pound a month you must have been making bank." I shook my head. "I wasn't in it for the money. I was in it to keep myself supplied. If I kept my prices right, I could use for free, and I had enough left over to pay my portion of the rent and help pay for the groceries. I got good at it, I'd take a shot, and nod out for a few minutes, then get up and start walking the streets." Becca snorted. "You wasn't standing on a street corner?" "Fuck no. Too visible. I did all my business by phone. I had a burner and gave everyone the number, and when they needed some they'd give me a call and I'd meet them or they'd meet me. I had ethics. I used to have people offering me fucking blowjobs for a bag, but I always said no, shit felt wrong. All they had to do was pay me by the end of the month but, sometimes…" She gave a grin. "But sometimes, 'Bitch, where's my money?'" "Yeah, sometimes people would try to skip out, so I had to apply a little pressure to persuade them to pay. I never killed nobody, it's hard as hell to get money out of a dead man. But, black a few eyes and break a few bones and suddenly they had money they didn't before. Being my size, there wasn't many of them that could fight back. But, I fucked up the wrong lowlife. "There was this prick, he'd been dodging me for weeks. He owed me like two grand, I'd given him that much because I knew he had money, so when I finally caught up to him, I was pretty mad and, the bitch, he told me he wasn't going to pay me. Thought he was better than me, thought he could fuck me and get away with it. So I beat the mortal hell out of him, took his wallet. He had five grand in there but I figured, 3K surcharge for wasting my time." I shook my head. "But I should have done some better research on who I was going after. Turned out the little prick had a socialite for a mother and his Daddy was a hedge fund manager and… I'd hurt him pretty bad. First three months, not only was I dealing with DTs, I was waiting to see if they were going to add Murder to my charges. He was in a coma for that long, and when he woke up, he had to learn to walk again, how to feed himself. I beat him so bad I gave him brain damage." "Goddamn, Tony." "Apparently his parents knew their son's habits and knew exactly who I was, cause they went straight to the police, and two days later SWAT showed up, turned the house upside down. I smashed my phone into pieces, flushed it so they couldn't get my contacts, but I didn't think about the fact I still had the wallet with his driver's license in it. My grandparents disowned me, right then and there. I had just reupped so they caught me with 14 ounces, all it takes is 8 for Class A felony possession. I spent 13 months in Rikers, but my sister got me a good lawyer, he knew the judge and the prosecutor personally, golfed with them, so he got me a plea deal. I was looking at life in prison, but he argued that I was a good student that had made a bad mistake because of a chronic pain issue, and they were both first offenses, so if I pled guilty, agreed to go through a substance abuse program and anger management, then they'd give me the minimum sentence. "15 years, Class A Felony Drug Possession, 3 years, Class B felony First Degree Assault, intentionally causing grievous bodily harm while in the commission of another felony. But, at my sentencing, the judge said I was a big guy, with a big anger problem. I hadn't killed anyone, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Said I was a danger to society, so when I got to the UCF, they put me in dark red." "Supermax?" I nodded. "23 hours a day in a box by myself, no visitors, barely saw the guards. But, I stayed quiet, made no problems. Prison was overcrowded so I ended up with a cellmate, and I was glad to see him. It could have been Hannibal Lecter and I would have gave him a hug. He might have been a murderer but he was actually a decent guy. Him and his crew had knocked over some jewelry stores in Manhattan, last job went bad. He'd killed three cops, so he wasn't never getting out. Neither was his wife. Life in Bedford Hills." "That's where they was gonna send me if Ma hadn't got the jury to give me a Not Guilty verdict." I knew Becca had a tendency to get in trouble because beside the cheerleading pictures in the bodega, there was also a mugshot. "What did you do?" She gave a bitter chuckle again. "Unlike you, I killed someone. 2021, this fucking crackhead tried to rob the store. He shot the customer that was in there, old guy named Mickey, killed him. He used to live in your apartment. Tried to shoot me, too, but the gun jammed and I had the aluminum baseball bat under the counter. I just started swinging. He went down, but I jumped the counter, and hit him again. Blood lust is a real thing. Once I saw he was bleeding, I wanted to see more. I beat his brains out, literally, he was dead long before the cops ever got there. Bat looked like a toothpick when I was done. "They arrested me, and the DA himself showed up at my arraignment. Said self defense didn't apply, sent me straight up to Murder 2, requested I be denied bail because I had a passport and plenty of money so I was a flight risk. But we all knew the truth. He was still pissed that he hadn't been able to send Rossi away for longer, and I was the next best thing. Ma had to pull a lot of strings to make sure I still got my transfusions when I was in lockup. I was in Rikers for four months, had my eighteenth birthday sitting in the Singer Unit." "Goddamned patterns," I muttered, then raised my voice again. "You, me, and Antoni all got that in common, except he wasn't like us. He was already in prison. That's what the rose meant, turned eighteen in prison. Life sentence, triple murder." "He told you that?" She looked betrayed, so I was quick to answer. "No, the tattoos told me that. Google is my best friend, B. That's what the skull and crossbones, and the coffins on his arm meant." She swallowed, and nodded again. "But, I moved down," I continued. "Went to orange when they moved me to Gen Pop, and I had friends waiting for me. Marco was very appreciative of me keeping quiet about my source at trial, so outside Abuela Bogota's was where I hung out the most. But I had friends all over. My sister was smart. She always put way more in my account than I could spend, so whenever I heard that somebody needed something, I'd go to the canteen and buy it myself and pass it to 'em. Nobody had to owe me shit. All I wanted was to be left alone, so I had people watching my back from all sides. I ended up in blue, got moved to the dormitory, started working in the kitchen, ended up running it, cause I was a 'model prisoner.'" "You ever fool around with any of your cellmates?" Becca asked with a grin. "Cause I did." I gave an uncomfortable laugh. "I mean, yeah. 15 years is a long time to be alone. I don't consider myself bisexual even, but if somebody offers, you know…" I shrugged. "I think the word you're looking for is heteroflexible. That's how Antoni referred to himself. He had a thing for you, you know." That stopped me dead. "You're fucking with me, B." "Nope. He asked me once if I'd mind if he ever got the chance to hook up with you, and I told him no, as long as he didn't mind I still hooked up with my old girlfriends from high school. But he never asked you, said he loved you too much, was afraid of ruining your friendship." "Jesus Christ," I shook my head, finally decided I needed time to process that, and moved on. "But, my last year there, Covid hit, and, I volunteered to work in the infirmary, but pretty soon the infirmary was filled, they started keeping people in the hallway, and finally they just ended up leaving them in their beds, I was all over the place. People dropping like flies. Everytime someone coughed or sneezed, everbody'd get nervous. I been smoking since I was 16, so I cough my lungs out every morning. "People was looking at me like I was Death Incarnate. But I never caught it, not even once. And I was all around the sick, I was taking the bodies out to the truck outside the gate. Could've run but I didn't. Only had a few years left. It worked in my favor. They cut the last three years off my sentence, put me on supervised release and now, here I am, 36 years old, and just starting my adult life." "Rossi got let out of lockup right before lockdown, poor bastard. Me, him, and my Dad all quarantined at Ma's, but of course, you know, me and Dad was essential workers so at least I got to get out of the house everyday. I graduated early, at 16, been working seven days a week since." I glanced at the glass on the table. "So let's get back to your story." She shook her head, lips pursed again. "Uh-uh, you're not wasting anymore time. Take the blood, but first," she reached out, quicker than I could even register, and used her thumbs to set my broken nose back straight. I let out a yell, momentarily unable to see as my eyes filled with tears. "Jesus wept, Becca, fucking hell, goddamn." "Sorry. It would've hurt more if you'd known it was coming. Besides, you're a good looking guy, Tony, you don't wanna ruin your face." "Thanks, B," I muttered as I pressed the toilet paper back to my freshly bleeding nose, tears streaming down my cheeks. "Need a haircut though." "Nah, you oughta keep it. It's very The Dark Knight Joker, just black, not blonde and green." I laughed quietly. "Not sure that's the best association, B. A little too psychotic and violent." She raised an eyebrow at me. "Alright, alright. It's probably an accurate association, just a little less arson and murder." I sighed and looked at the scotch glass. "So how do I do this, B?" "Think about it like a tequila shot. Take the shot and then slip the guard in quick. Then sit back, try to relax." I nodded and grabbed the glass before I lost my nerve. I raised it in her direction. "Saluti." "Geonbae." She responded. |
2023.05.29 16:55 bloxka Thick arm hair
I have fairly thick arm hair and that’s been the problem for me in terms of self confidence and being able to portray myself specially now that summer is upon us!
I usually wear long sleeves but often times I feel I’m doing injustice to myself on hotter days.
Trimming may not be the best idea or would it be?
https://i.imgur.com/PuLnooU.jpg
submitted by bloxka to malegrooming [link] [comments]
I usually wear long sleeves but often times I feel I’m doing injustice to myself on hotter days.
Trimming may not be the best idea or would it be?
https://i.imgur.com/PuLnooU.jpg
2023.05.29 16:55 cruisingNW Foundations of Humanity 26 (First Impressions) - an NoP fanfic
Foundations of Humanity 26 (First Impressions) - an NoP fanfic
Thank you u/SpacePaladin15 for establishing the Nature of Predators Universe, and for allowing Fanfics to flourish!
Thank you again, u/Braquen, u/Acceptable_Egg5560, u/Liberty-Prime76 and u/BiasMushroom721 for proofreading! This is my side of the Nature of a Giant crossover!
Huu boi this got to 34k characters, so had to split the chapter. Hooray making a backlog!
First - Previous - [Next]
Memory transcription subject: Valek, Venlil tourist
Date [standardized human time]: Sept 11th, 2136. Middle of 3rd Claw
I thought of happy memories of the last time my class and I had visited, “I couldn’t figure it out last time, but I was just a pup with a bunch of other pups back then. I know it has something to do with reattaching lines in the right configuration, but every time I got close--”
A black mass. A yawning, toothy pit! Hungry barks! “Teeth! TEETH! PREDATOR!”
I could see the beast’s gaping maw crawling forward to swallow me whole! I couldn’t let it get me! It would eat me! I couldn’t stop my momentum; I just kept getting closer to the inky void and gnashing teeth! I collided with the predator and thrashed and flailed against its wild mane, before my back legs found purchase and I launched myself back from whence I came.
Maeve’s voice shouted from behind just before her arm wrapped around me and halted my retreat, “What the hell, Valek? There’s no Predators he-EOLY SHIT!”
Finding sanctuary against my mate, I found my voice once more. “Big! Teeth! Call the Exterminators! Help! Teeth!” I thrashed in Maeve’s arm, trying to scratch at my prowling assailant.
A voice echoed from near the threat as another form appeared. “What happened?” A human? Another threat? He’s near the predator! He was looking at us! “Y’all okay?” His head turned toward the beast. “You okay?”
“I’m fine! Mostly surprised!” It imitated a Venlil with its movements, but I knew better! “It’s okay! I’m not here to hurt you!”
It was toying with us! Trying to get us off-guard! “Don’t eat us!” Protect your mate! “She’s dealt with Predators already! You’ll be sorry!”
I suddenly felt Maeve shake me. “That’s enough, Valek; get a hold of yourself.”
Get a hold of myself? Doesn’t she realize the threat? The-
“You forgot to say I should be set on fire, or that I’m a freak of nature.” I heard the beast say, now grabbing the edges of the hallway. “In case you need suggestions for insults.”
My voice faltered as I tried to understand it. The words were there, but my mind just couldn’t accept them. Maeve fell silent above me, but continued to hold me fast.
The other human brought itself beside the giant, “Oh my! ‘Nother human! Howdy there!” He raised his hand to his head, touching two fingers to his forehead, then flicking them in our direction. A gesture of greeting.
My ears snapped to the human as I tried to reconcile the friendly gesture amid my panic. Maeve, however, was undeterred and floated past me, coming closer to the monster. Alvi held my shoulder, and supported us against a nearby rope.
“Wow! You… You’re huge!” She had that same wonder in her voice that she always had when she found something new.
In response, I heard the familiar whistle of a Venlil laugh. It was coming from the… it’s a Venlil? “Yes. It’s a condition.”
Maeve continued her approach. She didn’t look the least bit afraid. Even though her arm remained in a cast; a cast given to her by the last predator she tangled with. But continue, she did. “I didn’t know Venlil could display gigantism! That’s incredible!”
I blinked. Gigantism? The translator was unhelpfully vague, something about making things big. The giant seemed similarly confused, “I’m sorry, my translator didn’t quite get that. Display what?”
Maeve reached back to us and I took her hand, and Alvi’s in my other, before she pulled us with her along the corridor. “Gigantism. It’s when a tumor grows on the pituitary gland controlling growth hormones, which causes it to overproduce. It can cause people to grow extremely tall.”
The creature’s confusion seemed to grow, though its body wobbled along with its tail; excitement? “Humans have Marklen-Jauntes syndrome??” Maeve asked for clarification before it continued, “Marklen-Jauntes Syndrome, named after twin giants. Its symptoms are basically exactly what you described!”
Maeve clapped her hands together with a quiet snap, “Oh! It sure sounds like it!”
The giant pushed off from the doorway, and Maeve pulled us into the boxy junction. Their conversation faded in my ears as the realization hit me. It was a syndrome. A medical condition. Maeve had moved to float around the giant as she and the other pair began talking in earnest. I felt Alvi squeeze my paw. “Valek. You okay there?”
My ears fell in worry, “I… I don’t know. I mean look at it! How can Maeve not be terrified of that?”
Alvi ran her paw through the fur on my shoulder, “I think she may have seen worse by now.”
The memory of those shadestalkers on the ground, and Maeve’s shriek of furious pain on the wind sent a chill down my spine. “But shouldn’t that make her more cautious? Make sure that doesn’t happen again?”
Alvi tapped the tuft of her tail against me, a lilt of humor on her voice, “If Maeve were cautious, do you think she would have joined the program? Or came to the Berrypatch?”
I pulled Alvi tighter against me; she was absolutely right. My attention drifted back to their conversation; they were talking about the medical issues of giants. I fully focused on what they were saying as Maeve was finishing her thought,
“... Hopefully, with the Venlil's help, that will change!"
The giant’s ears fell in...shame? It has shame? “You would have to keep it secret. If it was known it was to help giants, the Venlil might refuse.”
Hold on, we would gladly help! “W-we wouldn’t!” The giant’s eyes and ears focused on me, while Maeve and the other human turned to face me. "Our people wouldn't keep secrets like that just because they're big! We may not be the ones in the clinic, but we would gladly offer medicine and equipment.”
The giant let out a deep huff, as if I told a bad joke! “Sir… I’m guessing you haven’t heard of me. Is that correct?”
“N-no?” My tail curled around Alvi and I at my admission. “Should I…?”
The giant’s massive tail swayed behind them, “I guess introductions are in order. My name is Tarlim.”
“The Venbig!” The human announced with a flourish while he slowly floated past ‘Tarlim’s’ front, while the latter whistled in amusement.
“Yes. The ‘Venbig.’ And the Texan there is Jacob.” I saw his tail wag at the name. A sign of fondness for a friend. “May I know who all of you are?”
“I am Maeve, a pleasure to meet you,” She nodded, as she shifted her grip on the rope to reveal Alvi and I behind her. “This is Valek, my exchange partner,” I reflexively flicked my ears in acknowledgment, “And this is Alvi, a close friend of ours.”
Alvi hadn’t moved much beyond floating. She had one eye turned to stare fully at the giant, but otherwise seemed to have locked up, as she had before.
The giant, Tarlim, returned our greeting with a polite bow as he steadied himself on some overhead netting. “Good to meet you. Now, the reason I asked is this: I was imprisoned in a correctional facility before I was able to escape.”
Escape?! I exclaimed, in thought and in voice, “Y-You escaped??”
The giant tried to deceive us, but it couldn’t keep its condition a secret! I put myself between it and Alvi, “Get away from him! He’s dangerous!”
Maeve tried to be kind, “Valek if he’s here I would hardly think-”
But she didn’t know what that meant! We made a promise that we would teach each other about our people, even the bad parts. I had to warn her about it! “Correctional Facilities are where we put dangerous Venlil! People with Predator Disease who have shown themselves to be a threat to the Herd! We try to teach them how to live with the Herd, but if he escaped? He's gotta be dangerous if he had to break out!” I kept the threatening beast in my sight as I put myself between them and my herd.
The beast crouched threateningly, Fixing me with a predatory stare as its ears locked onto me, “Dangerous? Do you know what they put me through in there? The people running those places are monsters!”
“They help people!” I protested, amazed that someone could see their own care as harmful. “They treat people so they are safe around the herd!”
“Oh, HA!” The beast’s face cracked in an angry snarl, “You must feel so safe when we’re strapped into chairs and electrified! Or jammed into rooms where the only safe floor is too small for everyone! It must be soooo perfect to hear about that!”
“Th… That…” They WHAT?! No! “No! Even if that were true, it would be to teach you to stick together! They… They wouldn’t do something like that if it didn’t work!” …right?
A tiny voice spoke behind me, but the beast bore down on my senses, “Stick together! Suuuure!” It’s tail lashed behind it. It was going to pounce! “That’s why they tried to kill me for making sure more people could fit in the Circle! And obviously the electric chair was for proper fear response! That's why they commissioned a chair with enough voltage to fry me from the inside out!”
“Electric chair? You were in an electric chair?” That same tiny voice. Alvi’s words pulled me from my maelstrom and I reached for salvation. I needed Maeve.
“Yes!” The Giant had turned his attention to Alvi as I flew towards my human. “I have been put in that-”
“I saw you on the TV!”
I was wrapping myself around Maeve when Alvi said that. She… saw him? He was on TV? All of us had fallen silent to watch her, including the giant.
“Which part?” It asked with a heavy breath. “The final judgment? The election debates?” I heard a whimper coming from its throat. “When… when my father…?”
Father? It had a father? Wait, why is that a surprise? They were born, so they must have had one.
Alvi spoke with what kindness she could, “I don’t remember much. I was still just a pup when the trial started, but I remember seeing your photo on the TV. My parents didn’t let me watch it after that. I started to research it after I moved out, that’s when I saw the Chair.”
I heard the giant growl. “That Brahking photo! They were so proud to hold me up even though I couldn’t!” Their attention swung back to me. “I don’t suppose, mister Valek, that was also justified?”
I stood tall at the challenge. This… They would not get past me. “I…! I don’t know about any photo! My Family doesn't have a TV, just a radio.”
They flicked their ears dismissively, before bringing them back to Alvi. Was it… kinder? When it was addressing her? “So you saw the chair.” They sighed. “It was only shown after the trial was done. Then you had to have seen what that management did. Instead of letting the place be investigated, they drove all the inmates outside so they could cause chaos! And slipped away while everyone was trying to figure out what happened!” It whistled a derisive laugh, “What about the crimes revealed? Producing and testing drugs to sell on the streets? How the sessions were altered for higher voltage? Oh! And do I even need to mention what happened to the women there?”
Its eye never left me, and I shrunk beneath it while Alvi spoke behind me, “No. No you don’t. What happened there was terrible, there’s no grooming that!”
“Worthy of the Arxur!” It huffed again. “What a title for that place. And you know what the worst part is?” It pointed directly at me with its primary claw; the insult clear in its seething voice. Singling me out as outside of the Herd. “I was in there because of that! Not some test, not Predator Disease, just stupid people Scared. O-Of. My. Size!!”
The rage in its throat was broken by its sobs, as its eyes bubbled with gathered tears, unable to fall for lack of gravity. This thing was crying? It had family, and it cried from remembered pain?
Maeve pushed off of her line, and drifted to the giant, her hand curling around their pointed claw and putting its paw back to their chest. Her words were quiet, a sharp contrast to the giant’s anguish. “I think that’s enough of that. I’m sorry that we had a rough start. We were in the wrong, and it wasn’t, and isn’t, ok for us to react like we did.”
We weren’t wrong! Look at it! How can we be wrong to be careful around something that could eat us without a thought?
I bet your dad thought the same thing.
The thought stopped my heart and flared my wool. When I saw it - No. Saw Him. - when I saw him I scratched and kicked, and I came out unscathed. He hadn’t so much as taken a single step toward us. Only talking. What happened? Why was I so afraid…
Maeve’s voice continued as my thoughts swirled, “We… are sorry for what happened, and want to make it right. I don’t want to intrude any more on your day with your partner, but can we treat you to something here? Valek tells me they have really good fried veg? I’ve never had Venlil Tempura before.”
Why is this familiar? What about this fear… The Meetup.
It-He… Tarlim? Heaved and hacked against waning sobs, barely croaking, “Y-You…you can’t make it right,” the words were only a whisper; barely captured at this distance. “This, all this, just made you more afraid of me. E-Every moment would be forced and shamed. Not genuine.”
This is the same fear I felt when I met Maeve. The same fear that was wrong. Fundamentally and completely. This fear…
Maeve answered without pause, “I think we could surprise you. But I won’t press it. Before I let you go, I’d like to end on a good…noooote…” Maeve checked her empty pockets, as her voice grew a more boisterous timbre, “ah man, I left my pad in the locker. Anyway, you’re way fluffier than the average Venlil, aren’t you? Well, humans have recorded something else called Hypertrichosis; Jacob may know it as Werewolf Syndrome. It manifests in humans as rapid and thick hair growth over their entire body! Jacob can show you when you get back to your pads. ”
Tarlim’s tail thrashed in distrust, but it-NO! HIS! ears fluttered, giving away their conflict. Maeve turned away and pulled herself back down the corridor we came from, scooping up Alvi and I as she passed. But I pulled away from her hand, meeting the eye of the giant.
Nothing about this fear is real. Who I am and what I do is MY CHOICE, and I had the gall to forget that.
“I reacted to you the same way I reacted to seeing Maeve for the first time - well, her hair, anyway. I’ve tried to be better, but I mess up sometimes. I’m… I’m sorry I messed up with you.”
I pushed off down the hall, and met my herd before we continued on.
“Wait!” We found our anchors, and turned to meet the bellowed plea. Tarlim dried his tears on his wool, before looking back at us. “There's a food court near the arcade.” Barely a pause as Tarlim took another breath; the same one I take when I make a Choice. “If we see each other there maybe… maybe we can start over…”
My mouth cracked in a human smile, and my tail swayed at the invitation. “I think I’d like that.”
Tarlim returned our kindness as we floated back down the corridor.
I wanted to just get back to having fun. I had come here with Maeve and Alvi to get away from reactions like that! Not… Not Be the reaction! This was- this was a vacation! Please just…
Breathe.
In. and Out. The Paw is not gone. We can make this work.
“Hey, Valek?” It was Maeve. My love, and my Choice. Her mask met my eye as I spun to meet her. “Are you OK?”
“I will be. I’m sorry for how I reacted.” I feigned a joyful flick and invited them to follow, “Come on! We can take another path and find something fun that way.” I floated ahead of my herd and led the way.
I checked behind me at the next turn and they were following a distance behind. Alvi showed her concern with her tail, while Maeve was unreadable through her mask. It was ok, we can put this behind us once we find something else to occupy us.
Well that was a disaster.
The Maze was more of a problem then I expected it to be. The maze itself was easy enough, but the ‘puzzle rooms’ turned out to be all of the rooms, but they were randomly activated. Sometimes we would fly into a room and it would shift color, pulling the supports into the wall and starting to list the game rules. The last room before we got out kept shifting the gravity, so by the time we made it to the exit we were exhausted in mind and body. Well, Alvi and I were. I don’t believe I had seen Maeve so energized.
“Wanna go again?!” Her voice was bubbling with sarcasm, and she couldn't contain her mischievous cackle when Alvi and I met her mask and signaled an emphatic No! In unison.
She pulled Alvi against her and asked her to hold on, quickly doing the same to me. She pushed off from the Maze exit to the open air in the center. She did the same kick as back in the maze and we started to spin, at which Maeve let go of the two of us to slow our inertia. We spun there together, holding paws and hands, before I spoke into the space between us.
“I’m sorry that I ruined the day. I thought we could go back to having fun, but I spoiled the mood.”
Maeve spoke first, “It’s alright Valek,”
Then Alvi, “It may not have been the best start, but he offered to try again.”
Maeve squeezed my paw and met my eye, “And I look forward to it. That's all we can really do: move forward.” She pulled us back into a tight hug, “Thank you, both of you, for a wonderful day.”
An angry gurgle bubbled up from our embrace, and Maeve continued, “But I could really do with a proper meal. Valek, you mentioned something about fried veg?”
I pulled away and looked around at the various signage, pointing at the exit we had entered from. “The food court connects with the Visor Arcade, so we can go out the way we came in.”
“Alright! Alvi, you hold on, and Valek? Don’t.”
“What?”
Maeve kicked her legs again and set us spinning quickly, before flinging me in the direction of the exit, and she and Alvi the opposite way. I may or may not have squealed in terror during my hasty flight.
I was able to catch a support line as I passed. I looked out to see that Maeve had done the same, and was just pushing off to come my direction; Alvi was completely wrapped around her torso, like she was caught out in Galetime.
My tail thrashed behind me in admonishment when Maeve was in ear-sense. “You evil woman! You could have killed me!”
I could hear her - no, Alvi! - giggling as they floated over! She was having the time of her life! Maeve defended herself breathlessly, “Oh, come on, that was barely a brisk walk. I knew you’d correct yourself, that’s why I threw you instead of Alvi.”
I hit the pad and opened the bulkhead as they met me, Maeve barely correcting against a passing line to float cleanly through the threshold. Alvi disengaged once we were all inside. “Also because I’m her favorite.”
I flattened my ears in playful anger while she stuck her tongue out at me, and Maeve spoke up from the button. “Now, now, children, I love you both equally. One is just a little more biblical than the other.”
A little more religious? What?
“But I think it is time to come back to earth.” her hand hovered over the button while Alvi and I found our supports.
A button pressed, a growing hum, and our feet met the floor … Eventually. We had forgotten to remember that the floor was White, so we all collapsed on the semi-soft ground head-first. Thank the Sun for padding!
“Okay!” I heard Alvi comment, “Seems we’ve been re-educated on where the ground is.” She stood, shaking her wool. “Wish it hadn’t been a crash course.”
Maeve cackled from the floor as I stood, “HaHa! Multilingual pun! I love it!”
She was still giggling when we walked over to help her up. We were just dusting ourselves and flattening errant tufts when the exit hatch opened, and we stepped outside.
Alvi was last to step over the bulkhead, nearly tripping as her paw caught its lip. Having recovered, she asked, “Anything else you would like to do before lunch Maeve?”
Maeve took a quiet breath as we all waved an excited goodbye to Shishi, cold can of Sprunk in paw. “Speaking from experience, if we wanna do VR, and I kinda do, eating before may be unwise.”
Having reached our locker, I waited for Maeve to don her burka, “The Visor Arcade is on the way, and I’d love to show you this quick sightseeing game. It’s pretty basic, but it will show a few other Federation Homeworlds too!”
Maeve’s voice lit up, and I regretted that her eyes were hidden, as I knew they were shining! “I can see More worlds?! Yes, please! Let’s do that!” Maeve bounded forward almost to around the corner. “Uh… Where is it?”
I flicked my tail teasingly, “It is where we are going. You shouldn’t go running off, you know how strangers are.”
Maeve stood at the corner with her good hand on her hip, “Well then be a good boy and lead the way!”
I could feel my snout quickly blooming.
Oh, that’s not fair.
First - Previous - [Next]
submitted by cruisingNW to HFY [link] [comments]
Thank you u/SpacePaladin15 for establishing the Nature of Predators Universe, and for allowing Fanfics to flourish!
Thank you again, u/Braquen, u/Acceptable_Egg5560, u/Liberty-Prime76 and u/BiasMushroom721 for proofreading! This is my side of the Nature of a Giant crossover!
Huu boi this got to 34k characters, so had to split the chapter. Hooray making a backlog!
First - Previous - [Next]
Memory transcription subject: Valek, Venlil tourist
Date [standardized human time]: Sept 11th, 2136. Middle of 3rd Claw
I thought of happy memories of the last time my class and I had visited, “I couldn’t figure it out last time, but I was just a pup with a bunch of other pups back then. I know it has something to do with reattaching lines in the right configuration, but every time I got close--”
A black mass. A yawning, toothy pit! Hungry barks! “Teeth! TEETH! PREDATOR!”
I could see the beast’s gaping maw crawling forward to swallow me whole! I couldn’t let it get me! It would eat me! I couldn’t stop my momentum; I just kept getting closer to the inky void and gnashing teeth! I collided with the predator and thrashed and flailed against its wild mane, before my back legs found purchase and I launched myself back from whence I came.
Maeve’s voice shouted from behind just before her arm wrapped around me and halted my retreat, “What the hell, Valek? There’s no Predators he-EOLY SHIT!”
Finding sanctuary against my mate, I found my voice once more. “Big! Teeth! Call the Exterminators! Help! Teeth!” I thrashed in Maeve’s arm, trying to scratch at my prowling assailant.
A voice echoed from near the threat as another form appeared. “What happened?” A human? Another threat? He’s near the predator! He was looking at us! “Y’all okay?” His head turned toward the beast. “You okay?”
“I’m fine! Mostly surprised!” It imitated a Venlil with its movements, but I knew better! “It’s okay! I’m not here to hurt you!”
It was toying with us! Trying to get us off-guard! “Don’t eat us!” Protect your mate! “She’s dealt with Predators already! You’ll be sorry!”
I suddenly felt Maeve shake me. “That’s enough, Valek; get a hold of yourself.”
Get a hold of myself? Doesn’t she realize the threat? The-
“You forgot to say I should be set on fire, or that I’m a freak of nature.” I heard the beast say, now grabbing the edges of the hallway. “In case you need suggestions for insults.”
My voice faltered as I tried to understand it. The words were there, but my mind just couldn’t accept them. Maeve fell silent above me, but continued to hold me fast.
The other human brought itself beside the giant, “Oh my! ‘Nother human! Howdy there!” He raised his hand to his head, touching two fingers to his forehead, then flicking them in our direction. A gesture of greeting.
My ears snapped to the human as I tried to reconcile the friendly gesture amid my panic. Maeve, however, was undeterred and floated past me, coming closer to the monster. Alvi held my shoulder, and supported us against a nearby rope.
“Wow! You… You’re huge!” She had that same wonder in her voice that she always had when she found something new.
In response, I heard the familiar whistle of a Venlil laugh. It was coming from the… it’s a Venlil? “Yes. It’s a condition.”
Maeve continued her approach. She didn’t look the least bit afraid. Even though her arm remained in a cast; a cast given to her by the last predator she tangled with. But continue, she did. “I didn’t know Venlil could display gigantism! That’s incredible!”
I blinked. Gigantism? The translator was unhelpfully vague, something about making things big. The giant seemed similarly confused, “I’m sorry, my translator didn’t quite get that. Display what?”
Maeve reached back to us and I took her hand, and Alvi’s in my other, before she pulled us with her along the corridor. “Gigantism. It’s when a tumor grows on the pituitary gland controlling growth hormones, which causes it to overproduce. It can cause people to grow extremely tall.”
The creature’s confusion seemed to grow, though its body wobbled along with its tail; excitement? “Humans have Marklen-Jauntes syndrome??” Maeve asked for clarification before it continued, “Marklen-Jauntes Syndrome, named after twin giants. Its symptoms are basically exactly what you described!”
Maeve clapped her hands together with a quiet snap, “Oh! It sure sounds like it!”
The giant pushed off from the doorway, and Maeve pulled us into the boxy junction. Their conversation faded in my ears as the realization hit me. It was a syndrome. A medical condition. Maeve had moved to float around the giant as she and the other pair began talking in earnest. I felt Alvi squeeze my paw. “Valek. You okay there?”
My ears fell in worry, “I… I don’t know. I mean look at it! How can Maeve not be terrified of that?”
Alvi ran her paw through the fur on my shoulder, “I think she may have seen worse by now.”
The memory of those shadestalkers on the ground, and Maeve’s shriek of furious pain on the wind sent a chill down my spine. “But shouldn’t that make her more cautious? Make sure that doesn’t happen again?”
Alvi tapped the tuft of her tail against me, a lilt of humor on her voice, “If Maeve were cautious, do you think she would have joined the program? Or came to the Berrypatch?”
I pulled Alvi tighter against me; she was absolutely right. My attention drifted back to their conversation; they were talking about the medical issues of giants. I fully focused on what they were saying as Maeve was finishing her thought,
“... Hopefully, with the Venlil's help, that will change!"
The giant’s ears fell in...shame? It has shame? “You would have to keep it secret. If it was known it was to help giants, the Venlil might refuse.”
Hold on, we would gladly help! “W-we wouldn’t!” The giant’s eyes and ears focused on me, while Maeve and the other human turned to face me. "Our people wouldn't keep secrets like that just because they're big! We may not be the ones in the clinic, but we would gladly offer medicine and equipment.”
The giant let out a deep huff, as if I told a bad joke! “Sir… I’m guessing you haven’t heard of me. Is that correct?”
“N-no?” My tail curled around Alvi and I at my admission. “Should I…?”
The giant’s massive tail swayed behind them, “I guess introductions are in order. My name is Tarlim.”
“The Venbig!” The human announced with a flourish while he slowly floated past ‘Tarlim’s’ front, while the latter whistled in amusement.
“Yes. The ‘Venbig.’ And the Texan there is Jacob.” I saw his tail wag at the name. A sign of fondness for a friend. “May I know who all of you are?”
“I am Maeve, a pleasure to meet you,” She nodded, as she shifted her grip on the rope to reveal Alvi and I behind her. “This is Valek, my exchange partner,” I reflexively flicked my ears in acknowledgment, “And this is Alvi, a close friend of ours.”
Alvi hadn’t moved much beyond floating. She had one eye turned to stare fully at the giant, but otherwise seemed to have locked up, as she had before.
The giant, Tarlim, returned our greeting with a polite bow as he steadied himself on some overhead netting. “Good to meet you. Now, the reason I asked is this: I was imprisoned in a correctional facility before I was able to escape.”
Escape?! I exclaimed, in thought and in voice, “Y-You escaped??”
The giant tried to deceive us, but it couldn’t keep its condition a secret! I put myself between it and Alvi, “Get away from him! He’s dangerous!”
Maeve tried to be kind, “Valek if he’s here I would hardly think-”
But she didn’t know what that meant! We made a promise that we would teach each other about our people, even the bad parts. I had to warn her about it! “Correctional Facilities are where we put dangerous Venlil! People with Predator Disease who have shown themselves to be a threat to the Herd! We try to teach them how to live with the Herd, but if he escaped? He's gotta be dangerous if he had to break out!” I kept the threatening beast in my sight as I put myself between them and my herd.
The beast crouched threateningly, Fixing me with a predatory stare as its ears locked onto me, “Dangerous? Do you know what they put me through in there? The people running those places are monsters!”
“They help people!” I protested, amazed that someone could see their own care as harmful. “They treat people so they are safe around the herd!”
“Oh, HA!” The beast’s face cracked in an angry snarl, “You must feel so safe when we’re strapped into chairs and electrified! Or jammed into rooms where the only safe floor is too small for everyone! It must be soooo perfect to hear about that!”
“Th… That…” They WHAT?! No! “No! Even if that were true, it would be to teach you to stick together! They… They wouldn’t do something like that if it didn’t work!” …right?
A tiny voice spoke behind me, but the beast bore down on my senses, “Stick together! Suuuure!” It’s tail lashed behind it. It was going to pounce! “That’s why they tried to kill me for making sure more people could fit in the Circle! And obviously the electric chair was for proper fear response! That's why they commissioned a chair with enough voltage to fry me from the inside out!”
“Electric chair? You were in an electric chair?” That same tiny voice. Alvi’s words pulled me from my maelstrom and I reached for salvation. I needed Maeve.
“Yes!” The Giant had turned his attention to Alvi as I flew towards my human. “I have been put in that-”
“I saw you on the TV!”
I was wrapping myself around Maeve when Alvi said that. She… saw him? He was on TV? All of us had fallen silent to watch her, including the giant.
“Which part?” It asked with a heavy breath. “The final judgment? The election debates?” I heard a whimper coming from its throat. “When… when my father…?”
Father? It had a father? Wait, why is that a surprise? They were born, so they must have had one.
Alvi spoke with what kindness she could, “I don’t remember much. I was still just a pup when the trial started, but I remember seeing your photo on the TV. My parents didn’t let me watch it after that. I started to research it after I moved out, that’s when I saw the Chair.”
I heard the giant growl. “That Brahking photo! They were so proud to hold me up even though I couldn’t!” Their attention swung back to me. “I don’t suppose, mister Valek, that was also justified?”
I stood tall at the challenge. This… They would not get past me. “I…! I don’t know about any photo! My Family doesn't have a TV, just a radio.”
They flicked their ears dismissively, before bringing them back to Alvi. Was it… kinder? When it was addressing her? “So you saw the chair.” They sighed. “It was only shown after the trial was done. Then you had to have seen what that management did. Instead of letting the place be investigated, they drove all the inmates outside so they could cause chaos! And slipped away while everyone was trying to figure out what happened!” It whistled a derisive laugh, “What about the crimes revealed? Producing and testing drugs to sell on the streets? How the sessions were altered for higher voltage? Oh! And do I even need to mention what happened to the women there?”
Its eye never left me, and I shrunk beneath it while Alvi spoke behind me, “No. No you don’t. What happened there was terrible, there’s no grooming that!”
“Worthy of the Arxur!” It huffed again. “What a title for that place. And you know what the worst part is?” It pointed directly at me with its primary claw; the insult clear in its seething voice. Singling me out as outside of the Herd. “I was in there because of that! Not some test, not Predator Disease, just stupid people Scared. O-Of. My. Size!!”
The rage in its throat was broken by its sobs, as its eyes bubbled with gathered tears, unable to fall for lack of gravity. This thing was crying? It had family, and it cried from remembered pain?
Maeve pushed off of her line, and drifted to the giant, her hand curling around their pointed claw and putting its paw back to their chest. Her words were quiet, a sharp contrast to the giant’s anguish. “I think that’s enough of that. I’m sorry that we had a rough start. We were in the wrong, and it wasn’t, and isn’t, ok for us to react like we did.”
We weren’t wrong! Look at it! How can we be wrong to be careful around something that could eat us without a thought?
I bet your dad thought the same thing.
The thought stopped my heart and flared my wool. When I saw it - No. Saw Him. - when I saw him I scratched and kicked, and I came out unscathed. He hadn’t so much as taken a single step toward us. Only talking. What happened? Why was I so afraid…
Maeve’s voice continued as my thoughts swirled, “We… are sorry for what happened, and want to make it right. I don’t want to intrude any more on your day with your partner, but can we treat you to something here? Valek tells me they have really good fried veg? I’ve never had Venlil Tempura before.”
Why is this familiar? What about this fear… The Meetup.
It-He… Tarlim? Heaved and hacked against waning sobs, barely croaking, “Y-You…you can’t make it right,” the words were only a whisper; barely captured at this distance. “This, all this, just made you more afraid of me. E-Every moment would be forced and shamed. Not genuine.”
This is the same fear I felt when I met Maeve. The same fear that was wrong. Fundamentally and completely. This fear…
Maeve answered without pause, “I think we could surprise you. But I won’t press it. Before I let you go, I’d like to end on a good…noooote…” Maeve checked her empty pockets, as her voice grew a more boisterous timbre, “ah man, I left my pad in the locker. Anyway, you’re way fluffier than the average Venlil, aren’t you? Well, humans have recorded something else called Hypertrichosis; Jacob may know it as Werewolf Syndrome. It manifests in humans as rapid and thick hair growth over their entire body! Jacob can show you when you get back to your pads. ”
Tarlim’s tail thrashed in distrust, but it-NO! HIS! ears fluttered, giving away their conflict. Maeve turned away and pulled herself back down the corridor we came from, scooping up Alvi and I as she passed. But I pulled away from her hand, meeting the eye of the giant.
Nothing about this fear is real. Who I am and what I do is MY CHOICE, and I had the gall to forget that.
“I reacted to you the same way I reacted to seeing Maeve for the first time - well, her hair, anyway. I’ve tried to be better, but I mess up sometimes. I’m… I’m sorry I messed up with you.”
I pushed off down the hall, and met my herd before we continued on.
“Wait!” We found our anchors, and turned to meet the bellowed plea. Tarlim dried his tears on his wool, before looking back at us. “There's a food court near the arcade.” Barely a pause as Tarlim took another breath; the same one I take when I make a Choice. “If we see each other there maybe… maybe we can start over…”
My mouth cracked in a human smile, and my tail swayed at the invitation. “I think I’d like that.”
Tarlim returned our kindness as we floated back down the corridor.
I wanted to just get back to having fun. I had come here with Maeve and Alvi to get away from reactions like that! Not… Not Be the reaction! This was- this was a vacation! Please just…
Breathe.
In. and Out. The Paw is not gone. We can make this work.
“Hey, Valek?” It was Maeve. My love, and my Choice. Her mask met my eye as I spun to meet her. “Are you OK?”
“I will be. I’m sorry for how I reacted.” I feigned a joyful flick and invited them to follow, “Come on! We can take another path and find something fun that way.” I floated ahead of my herd and led the way.
I checked behind me at the next turn and they were following a distance behind. Alvi showed her concern with her tail, while Maeve was unreadable through her mask. It was ok, we can put this behind us once we find something else to occupy us.
The Maze was more of a problem then I expected it to be. The maze itself was easy enough, but the ‘puzzle rooms’ turned out to be all of the rooms, but they were randomly activated. Sometimes we would fly into a room and it would shift color, pulling the supports into the wall and starting to list the game rules. The last room before we got out kept shifting the gravity, so by the time we made it to the exit we were exhausted in mind and body. Well, Alvi and I were. I don’t believe I had seen Maeve so energized.
“Wanna go again?!” Her voice was bubbling with sarcasm, and she couldn't contain her mischievous cackle when Alvi and I met her mask and signaled an emphatic No! In unison.
She pulled Alvi against her and asked her to hold on, quickly doing the same to me. She pushed off from the Maze exit to the open air in the center. She did the same kick as back in the maze and we started to spin, at which Maeve let go of the two of us to slow our inertia. We spun there together, holding paws and hands, before I spoke into the space between us.
“I’m sorry that I ruined the day. I thought we could go back to having fun, but I spoiled the mood.”
Maeve spoke first, “It’s alright Valek,”
Then Alvi, “It may not have been the best start, but he offered to try again.”
Maeve squeezed my paw and met my eye, “And I look forward to it. That's all we can really do: move forward.” She pulled us back into a tight hug, “Thank you, both of you, for a wonderful day.”
An angry gurgle bubbled up from our embrace, and Maeve continued, “But I could really do with a proper meal. Valek, you mentioned something about fried veg?”
I pulled away and looked around at the various signage, pointing at the exit we had entered from. “The food court connects with the Visor Arcade, so we can go out the way we came in.”
“Alright! Alvi, you hold on, and Valek? Don’t.”
“What?”
Maeve kicked her legs again and set us spinning quickly, before flinging me in the direction of the exit, and she and Alvi the opposite way. I may or may not have squealed in terror during my hasty flight.
I was able to catch a support line as I passed. I looked out to see that Maeve had done the same, and was just pushing off to come my direction; Alvi was completely wrapped around her torso, like she was caught out in Galetime.
My tail thrashed behind me in admonishment when Maeve was in ear-sense. “You evil woman! You could have killed me!”
I could hear her - no, Alvi! - giggling as they floated over! She was having the time of her life! Maeve defended herself breathlessly, “Oh, come on, that was barely a brisk walk. I knew you’d correct yourself, that’s why I threw you instead of Alvi.”
I hit the pad and opened the bulkhead as they met me, Maeve barely correcting against a passing line to float cleanly through the threshold. Alvi disengaged once we were all inside. “Also because I’m her favorite.”
I flattened my ears in playful anger while she stuck her tongue out at me, and Maeve spoke up from the button. “Now, now, children, I love you both equally. One is just a little more biblical than the other.”
A little more religious? What?
“But I think it is time to come back to earth.” her hand hovered over the button while Alvi and I found our supports.
A button pressed, a growing hum, and our feet met the floor … Eventually. We had forgotten to remember that the floor was White, so we all collapsed on the semi-soft ground head-first. Thank the Sun for padding!
“Okay!” I heard Alvi comment, “Seems we’ve been re-educated on where the ground is.” She stood, shaking her wool. “Wish it hadn’t been a crash course.”
Maeve cackled from the floor as I stood, “HaHa! Multilingual pun! I love it!”
She was still giggling when we walked over to help her up. We were just dusting ourselves and flattening errant tufts when the exit hatch opened, and we stepped outside.
Alvi was last to step over the bulkhead, nearly tripping as her paw caught its lip. Having recovered, she asked, “Anything else you would like to do before lunch Maeve?”
Maeve took a quiet breath as we all waved an excited goodbye to Shishi, cold can of Sprunk in paw. “Speaking from experience, if we wanna do VR, and I kinda do, eating before may be unwise.”
Having reached our locker, I waited for Maeve to don her burka, “The Visor Arcade is on the way, and I’d love to show you this quick sightseeing game. It’s pretty basic, but it will show a few other Federation Homeworlds too!”
Maeve’s voice lit up, and I regretted that her eyes were hidden, as I knew they were shining! “I can see More worlds?! Yes, please! Let’s do that!” Maeve bounded forward almost to around the corner. “Uh… Where is it?”
I flicked my tail teasingly, “It is where we are going. You shouldn’t go running off, you know how strangers are.”
Maeve stood at the corner with her good hand on her hip, “Well then be a good boy and lead the way!”
I could feel my snout quickly blooming.
Oh, that’s not fair.
First - Previous - [Next]
2023.05.29 16:31 SleeplessFromSundown The Séance Club - The End of Windhaven Manor [Final]
This post is the final part of this story. Sorry it has taken so long to get through. And I'm not sure I even understand all of it yet. If you're new, this all started here. The previous part (Part 7) is here. Thank you to everyone who followed along.
-----
“Do you see her?” I asked in a meek voice.
“You mean that girl in black?” Harvey answered.
It was her, in the flesh. Her lips parted and formed a malevolent smile. Her dark eyes fixed on mine. My legs turned to solid lead. My feet refused to move. The anxiousness to reach Parker and Juliet and Beth in the cellar crumbled like the wood turning to ash behind us. She demanded my attention.
A hand rocked my shoulder. Harvey. I pushed him away.
“You have to go. Help them. I’ll take care of her.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
A mirage of Harvey flitted past Ally and disappeared into the kitchen. Everything blurred, everything but her.
She tilted her head to one side and bridged the gap between us with four slow and deliberate steps. She pushed her right hand out from a long sleeve and ran the black painted nail of her index finger across my cheek, the smooth lacquer cold against my skin. I shuddered as the chill spread like ice creeping up a window.
“It is such a shame to be losing you so soon. We’ve only just met, and yet I feel like we’ve known each other our whole lives. Do you feel it too?”
I shook my head. “Let me go.”
“We’re past that now Sam. I considered if we could coexist, you and I. It gave me a thrill knowing there is another one out there like me. But you insist on meddling with my work.”
“You mean locking all those girls in that filthy dungeon where they met their end? And Jane here.”
“The work is sometimes unpleasant.”
“But the pay is good?”
“This isn’t about money Sam. You and I are the same. The pain you felt from not fitting in. The lonely nights lying awake, wishing you could be like everyone else. The stares and the whispers. The rejection from those who are supposed to love us the most. I too know. But where you hid, I searched out a path where my talents were appreciated and rewarded. You don’t hate me Sam. You hate yourself for not thriving like I have.”
“Thriving? Is that what you call it?”
“By all measures yes. I am good at what I do. The best. The only. Or so I thought. And then there is you. A naïve, sheltered little boy who can barely put on his own pants in the morning. It is such a shame. And these so-called friends of yours, that was always doomed to failure. Oh and if you harbour any thoughts of them escaping, know that we blocked the little secret entrance the stable boy showed you. There’s no escape except through the fire. When they pick through the ashes of this building they will find their bones, and yours. Is this how you imagined it turning out?”
I flexed the muscles in my legs, but they refused to move. Ally smiled.
“It’s useless now Sam.”
I heard the faint whisper of Juliet’s voice in my head. She pleaded with me. Come on Sam, you can do this. I remembered the last encounter with Ally, outside the wall separating Windhaven Manor from the world. Ally had put me in the white room. I had broken free. I had overcome her power once. I had to do it again.
I took a deep breath in through my nose and cried out and willed my feet to move. Electricity coursed through my body and I directed it down to the floor. My left heel separated from the floor and that set the whole thing in motion. The dam burst. I lurched forwards and overbalanced and sprawled to the floor.
Ally crouched beside me and chuckled. “Some would call it a tragedy for a child to die so soon after learning to walk.”
I looked back towards the front of the house. The fire burned hot. Thick black smoke circled up the huge open space of the gallery. Portraits hanging on the wall bubbled and curled as flames consumed them.
A figure appeared at the foot of the staircase. The spectre of Crown. The goons had dragged his lifeless corpse out of the house, but stood before me was the spirit with unfinished business. The ugliness of his actions showed through now in death. His skin was sallow and wrinkled. His head too big for his body and his teeth yellowed. A grotesque monster made worse by his mortal demise.
Ally whispered in my ear. “He knows it was your meddling that brought about his end. I’ll leave you two alone.”
She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand and stood. As she walked away leather straps materialised out of thin air and pinned my body to the floor.
The spectre of Crown grew before me, swelling in size until he had to crouch to stay below the chandelier. He clenched his fists and with burning red eyes let out a guttural growl that skipped my ears and penetrated directly into my skull.
I tried to pull my hands to my ears but they would not come. It made no difference. The roar coming from Crown stabbed the inside of my head like a thousand daggers. I lifted my head and the growl grew to a scream that ricocheted around the inside of my skull. I couldn’t take much more. It felt as though my head would explode.
Guilt bubbled up and mingled with the fear and I shrank into the floor and wished for it to swallow me. They were down there, the only friends I had known, banging against a locked door denying their escape. I sobbed. I sobbed like I had the night my parents turned from me.
In the pit of my stomach something else grew. A seed of frustration born of a lifetime existing in a world that didn’t make sense. A world where I had no idea who I was and what I could or should do. A world in which I hid. I couldn’t do that now.
Juliet’s voice as clear as day, cutting through the racket of Crown’s scream. Do it Sam. I gritted my teeth and electricity buzzed somewhere deep inside, at first dull and imperceptible, and then amplified and resonating until it peaked into a deafening roar.
Above Crown the bulbs in the chandelier glowed white. He swivelled his head and watched them dumbly.
I concentrated, felt the energy forming an extra limb. Like the arms and legs of a newborn it flailed spasmodically. I fought to control it, to turn it to my will. I focussed on the straps pinning me to the floor. The electricity fed into the straps and turned them hot. For a moment I feared they would scold my skin, and then in a moment of release they split and flung upwards.
I picked myself up off the floor and faced the spectre of Crown. Like a spent boxer throwing one final punch I threw out my hands and screamed, willing Crown to be quiet and be still. Demanding he be so.
The floor shook. The dozens of bulbs in the chandelier shattered. The giant spectre of Crown diminished and the screaming inside my head softened until it was no more. Crown’s eyes opened wide as his mouth stitched together and his arms wrenched behind his back. I flicked my hand like I was swatting a fly and Crown flew into the corner of the room and slumped to the floor.
I bent over and rested my hands on my knees. My muscles ached, like I had run a marathon. Shadows played on the floor. I sucked in air and smoke and spluttered and coughed.
In the hallway the silhouette of Ally. She turned and shook her head. The heat of the fire intensified and crackled at my skin. If we were to make our escape, she could not be here to block us. I straightened and strode towards her.
I cycled furiously through the events of the last few days, searching for something to defeat Ally. I had to do to her what she had done to me. The time for running and breaking her spells was through.
I closed my eyes and concentrated. I stripped away everything except for the two of us. The crackle of the fire replaced with silence. The smell of the smoke disappeared. The heat washed away. One by one I shut down all my senses. When I opened my eyes a monotone room of white. Sterile calm had replaced the burning insides of Windhaven Manor.
Her eyes scanned the room and she giggled. “Cheap tricks won’t get you far,” she said. “And you learned this one from me.”
The white rippled as if the walls were made of water. She was fighting it. I concentrated, focussing all my energy, all my will. The ripples slowed and then stopped.
“You’re a fast learner,” she said. “But I have been doing this for more than a weekend.”
Strips of colour permeated the white. A rectangle of tile appeared on the floor. And then some blue from the curtain. Enough of a smouldering wall to let in some smoke. The acrid smell reached my nose and I spluttered. As each wedge of colour appeared, I filled it back in white. But it was a sinking ship and the pail I held to bail out the water would not be enough.
Ally grunted under her breath. A grunt of frustration. The white room shook and made a sound like a train bearing down.
I had to bind her. I raised my palm and coils of rope rose from the ground and oscillated like snakes around her. She swatted them away and wrenched them from the ground and flung them at my feet, limp and unmoving.
“It won’t be that easy,” she sneered.
My arms jerked behind my back. She bound my wrists and then my ankles. She pursed her lips and blew as if extinguishing a single candle on a birthday cake, and it was enough to send me to the floor. I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed help.
I shut my eyes and concentrated my energy not on my bindings, but on the woods at the back of Windhaven Manor. On the girls who escaped the dungeon and now roamed the forest, watching the house burn from behind the barrier Ally constructed.
I fed the energy coursing through my body into the giant snowdome structure until it burned hot and then like the globes in the chandelier, it cracked and exploded into the night sky. The spirits of the girls watched the shards disappear and then strode towards the Manor.
I turned my attention to the tiny room beside the pantry, where Jane Laughlin lay bound to the bed. I stood beside her and lay my hand on the shackles binding her to the bed. She shuddered as the mask came free from her mouth and then stood as the shackles broke.
I opened my eyes and the white of the room flickered off and then back on again like bad reception on a television. I had to keep the white walls up long enough for them to draw near. For them to be ready when the façade fell. Ally strode towards me, exuding confidence.
“You can’t beat me Sam.”
Ally squeezed her hands into fists and screamed. In a burst of energy she wiped the white room clear and we were back in the burning house. The air was thick with smoke. Behind me a timber beam tumbled from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. The heat and smoke sucked the moisture from my insides and I heaved out a series of coughs.
Ally opened her eyes and smiled. She had bested me. But then they came. The girls from the dungeon and Jane Laughlin surrounded her. The sum total off all the pain and hurt inflicted in this place. Everything Ally had worked to keep hidden from the world.
They lurched at Ally. She raised her hands and pushed them back one by one as they went for her. She spun on the spot, trying to keep them at bay. She could not hold them all back. The sheer weight of numbers overwhelmed. They leaned in and pushed their heads into hers and showed her what those men had done. Made her feel it. The fear and despair and anger of each individual stacked together and Ally crumpled to the floor holding her head.
“Make it stop,” she said.
They kept at her.
Jane Laughlin sidled over to the base of the stairs where Crown sat, bound and with his mouth stitched. She considered him, restrained and helpless on the floor as she had been. He fought with his restraints, and then whimpered, as she had. As I ran for the pantry and the wine cellar, the corridor filled with the muffled sound of his screams.
The door to the cellar stood open and I made the descent of the stairs in three leaps. The enclosed space already full with smoke. At the end of the long corridor leading outside, Parker and Harvey shouldered the door. Juliet and Beth screamed encouragement. The door would not budge.
“We can’t go that way,” I yelled.
They raced back up the long corridor. A sudden rush of emotion bubbled up to the surface. I was so happy to see them all still alive. My lower jaw rattled and my hands shook. I fought to hide it.
Beth reached me first. “Sam, you’re ok.”
I blubbered a response and took in a lung full of smoke. We had to get out.
The fire raged outside the kitchen door. A wave of flame climbed up and spread across the ceiling. A subtle cracking sound from above intensified and a chunk of the upstairs floor came crashing down through the ceiling, blocking the rear door. We couldn’t get out the back. The only way now was back through the house. A ball of flame whooshed through the doorway and I put my arm up too late, my eyebrows wilting in the heat.
We crouched together in the middle of the kitchen, lowering our heads to get the last of the remaining oxygen. Malicious red flames and choking black smoke surrounded us on all sides.
“Where do we go now?” Parker’s words came out between coughs. Tears streaked down his cheeks. Soot covered his brow. I wished I had an answer.
Then he was there, standing over Parker’s shoulder. Leon. With the protective bubble gone, he too was free to come in the Manor.
“The fire has not yet consumed the dining room. But you don’t have long.”
I looked vaguely in the direction of the kitchen door and blinked back the stinging from the smoke. “I don’t think we can find it in this.”
“Follow me.”
I pulled my shirt up over my head. “We have to go. The dining room, we can make it. All together on three.”
I shouted out the numbers, the sound drowned out by the roar of the fire. I grabbed Beth’s hand and yanked her into action. Leon led the way and I kept my eyes on his heels. Together we were a flurry of arms and legs bounding for the dining room. I gritted my teeth against the heat. We burst through the doorway and everything turned orange.
From below the sweater pulled tight down over my hair, I shot a glance over to the floor of the grand gallery where I had left Ally writhing on the floor. She was not there now. Nor were the spectres of the girls.
I followed Leon’s heels into the dining room. The great wooden table smouldered in the centre of the room. Brilliant orange flames consumed the thick curtains. Parker spotted his camera still atop the tripod and set to pulling the camera free before Harvey grabbed his arm and yelled something that sounded like ‘leave it’.
Harvey grabbed one of the heavy chairs with their high backs and velvet cushions and heaved it at the window in the back corner of the room. The chair disappeared into the darkness of the night and Harvey kicked at the glass shards left behind. Parker joined. We piled out the opening.
I drank in the fresh cool air of night, staggering over the narrow path beside the house and to the small strip of grass beyond. Parker collapsed beside me and pulled the laptop out from under his shirt. He tapped at the casing and for a moment a brief smile flashed across his face, but it did not last long. He wiped soot and sweat from his face with shaking hands.
Harvey checked us all in turn, like a parent fussing over their children. We had scrapes and bruises and our skin was red and raw, but we were alright. We had survived. He ran to the front of the house and came back with palms held out by his sides. The man in the black suit, the goons Ponytail and Beanie, and Ally were all gone, along with the black van and the BMW.
Huddled together, we watched the fire consume Windhaven Manor, bright reds and oranges lighting up the windows and thick black smoke tumbling into the purple haze of sky. It was almost morning, the horizon signalling the coming of the sun.
Leon stood apart on the grass. I went to him.
“Thank you for coming back for us.”
He shrugged. “It’s something. It isn’t enough to make up for the rest.”
“You saved our lives. And those girls, they had their chance to meet their tormentors. That’s something too.”
He nodded. “What happens now?”
I turned my head sideways. “I’m still learning how all this works.”
The red of the fire reflected in his eyes. “Me too. I might go for a walk in the woods. I always liked it out there.”
He glided across the lawn and entered the trees and was gone.
The sound of sirens fought with the crackle of the fire. The fire brigade and the police. I got to my feet and shuffled to the front of the Manor. The burnt out carcasses of our cars stood by the low height wall. Black soot smudged the stone façade above the windows and the doors.
By the oak tree on the ocean side of the house stood Jane Laughlin. She peered down into a hole dug at the base of the tree. A pale and withered hand poked up out of the dirt. Her hand. They had meant to remove the body, but had aborted the task and fled.
A fire truck appeared at the head of the driveway and then another. They sped down the gravel and came to a sliding stop. A lone police car followed. Harvey sidled over.
Jane looked to the horizon. Out on the cliff edge stood a figure in a red dress. She recognised her sister Kylie immediately and ran down the slope. The two sisters embraced in the first light of the sun. I turned to the whoosh of water through a hose from the fire trucks and when I turned back, the Laughlin sisters were gone.
The members of The Séance Club, which I now consider myself a part, sat together on the low-height stone wall as the firefighters extinguished the flames consuming Windhaven Manor. The house was quiet now. The nausea and vibration I had felt that first night replaced with calm.
The police stripped the compound clean for the best part of a week. They identified Kyle the sketch artist and Hugo from the teeth that survived the fire of the hovel built over the dungeon. Hugo’s wife lay on the back lawn where Beanie and Ponytail had left her. But as to specific evidence of the crimes that occurred, they could not find enough to put a case together.
The two fires and the disappearance of Crown made some headlines, but there wasn’t enough to hang anyone else. The police claimed publicly that there was no link between the fire at Windhaven Manor and the fire at the squalid residence over the back fence. At Harvey’s behest they searched the area with cadaver dogs for the remains of the girls, but they found nothing.
Parker turned his laptop over to the police. They identified the two goons, Ponytail and Beanie, low level thugs who had disappeared from the streets years earlier. Those in the know presumed them dead. It made tracing them almost impossible. Tracing their vehicles lead to a dead end.
The man in black the suit on the other hand might as well be a ghost. On him they found nothing. They have a face, but nothing else.
As for Ally, the girl somehow managed to always turn her face away from the cameras, as if she knew where they were.
I sat in a small room at the police station for three days with Harvey putting the pieces together. He showed me a photograph of an old and gaunt man with a bent back, the last owner of Windhaven Manor before it was sold after his death. He had to be the man with the bent back from the ceremony in the dungeon, but I could not be certain. I never saw his face. Of the faces I did see, we knew Crown and Kyle and Hugo, but the others were harder to pinpoint.
At the end of it all Harvey sighed. There was nothing more we could do. But we could rest on the knowledge that the key players in the ceremony were all now dead.
Questions nagged at me. Where was Ally and what was she doing? Would she try to find me? Who was she working for?
That was the biggest question of all. Who was at the top and pulling the strings? Harvey wasn’t giving up. He was a dog with a bone at the best of times, and now he had a taste of blood. He refused to go back to the police even after Crown’s departure, which he described as the removal of a cancerous limb.
Harvey called me after the dust settled on everything. I told him that the trail had gone cold and I had no idea where Ally was. For all I knew she had evaporated into thin air. Harvey thought it unlikely, and I agreed. He told me it was time for some old-fashioned detective work. The names of the goons would be a start.
And there was something else Harvey mentioned, something that I had almost forgotten. He had always believed that his investigation into the disappearance of the girls was the reason one of his colleagues was murdered. Crown confirmed as much in the bedroom right before he was shot. Harvey thinks there is something to it. Another thread to pull, and he has a hunch. For now he’s keeping his cards close to his chest until he has some proof. I almost pressed him on the issue but decided I’d rather put it all behind me.
The story made headlines in the local press for a while, but ultimately it fizzled into a non-story, quickly forgotten by a public with a short attention spans. We all waited for a reckoning from within the police ranks, but it never came. Harvey predicted that’s the way it would go, and he was proven right.
The one item they did recover was a gold necklace with a heart pendant. The necklace Jane Laughlin wore the night of her death. The police found it where the black van had parked. After a few days in the possession of the police, Harvey arranged to have the necklace released to the family of its former owner.
The following day Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin appeared on the local news, thanking the efforts of those who recovered the remains of their daughter. It was closure, though not the kind they had hoped for. Both their girls were dead.
A week later The Séance Club convened in Beth’s apartment. Parker and Juliet were already there when I arrived. It was cathartic to talk about the events at Windhaven Manor, to compare stories and scars. I guess that’s why they have the saying about a problem shared.
After a brief silence, Beth asked, “Are you going to talk to the parents of Jane and Kylie?”
I shook my head. “What will I tell them?”
“That their daughters found each other out by the cliff edge.”
“And what about the agony of their deaths? Should I tell them that too? Besides, it doesn’t feel right. None of this feels right to me yet. And what weight do my words hold over those of some Priest talking about how he knows their souls are at rest.”
“Because you really do know.”
I shrugged. “I can’t prove any of it.”
Truth was I had no idea how to integrate the things I could see and do into my life. From childhood all I had wanted was to be like everyone else. For people not to stare or whisper as I walked by. To find acceptance. Sitting with my three new friends at Beth’s tiny kitchen table, with our shared experience behind us, I finally had it. This could be the start of something.
Parker was already planning the next Séance Club trip. An abandoned farm up north with mysterious sightings going back centuries. Juliet was already on board. I told them to wait. I couldn’t jump back in right away.
I was the last to leave, Beth and I sipping mug after mug of coffee and sharing comfortable silence. When I sighed and told her I should go, she grabbed my arm.
“I’ve never had a real family, and then I found Juliet and Parker. The Séance Club became my family. Whatever happens we are there for each other. And we mean it when we say we want you to join.”
I thought about that all night, unable to sleep.
The next morning I called Parker.
An abandoned farm up north you say?
* * * *
I navigated to the narrow alley and checked the time. The Exchange should be open. It looked out of context in the Saturday morning light. No bright light spilling from the window. No surge of Friday night after work traffic.
I slipped in the front door. A lone man lifted upturned stools down from the bar. He had his back to me and I crept across the hardwood floor in the direction of the stairs down and the bathrooms.
The vibration swelled in my chest, but I did not fear it. A dull pain rose in the base of my skull, but I gritted my teeth. A man wearing a pair of rough leather shoes came from the other end of the corridor and stopped before me.
“Are you here to help?”
I nodded.
X
submitted by SleeplessFromSundown to nosleep [link] [comments]
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“Do you see her?” I asked in a meek voice.
“You mean that girl in black?” Harvey answered.
It was her, in the flesh. Her lips parted and formed a malevolent smile. Her dark eyes fixed on mine. My legs turned to solid lead. My feet refused to move. The anxiousness to reach Parker and Juliet and Beth in the cellar crumbled like the wood turning to ash behind us. She demanded my attention.
A hand rocked my shoulder. Harvey. I pushed him away.
“You have to go. Help them. I’ll take care of her.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
A mirage of Harvey flitted past Ally and disappeared into the kitchen. Everything blurred, everything but her.
She tilted her head to one side and bridged the gap between us with four slow and deliberate steps. She pushed her right hand out from a long sleeve and ran the black painted nail of her index finger across my cheek, the smooth lacquer cold against my skin. I shuddered as the chill spread like ice creeping up a window.
“It is such a shame to be losing you so soon. We’ve only just met, and yet I feel like we’ve known each other our whole lives. Do you feel it too?”
I shook my head. “Let me go.”
“We’re past that now Sam. I considered if we could coexist, you and I. It gave me a thrill knowing there is another one out there like me. But you insist on meddling with my work.”
“You mean locking all those girls in that filthy dungeon where they met their end? And Jane here.”
“The work is sometimes unpleasant.”
“But the pay is good?”
“This isn’t about money Sam. You and I are the same. The pain you felt from not fitting in. The lonely nights lying awake, wishing you could be like everyone else. The stares and the whispers. The rejection from those who are supposed to love us the most. I too know. But where you hid, I searched out a path where my talents were appreciated and rewarded. You don’t hate me Sam. You hate yourself for not thriving like I have.”
“Thriving? Is that what you call it?”
“By all measures yes. I am good at what I do. The best. The only. Or so I thought. And then there is you. A naïve, sheltered little boy who can barely put on his own pants in the morning. It is such a shame. And these so-called friends of yours, that was always doomed to failure. Oh and if you harbour any thoughts of them escaping, know that we blocked the little secret entrance the stable boy showed you. There’s no escape except through the fire. When they pick through the ashes of this building they will find their bones, and yours. Is this how you imagined it turning out?”
I flexed the muscles in my legs, but they refused to move. Ally smiled.
“It’s useless now Sam.”
I heard the faint whisper of Juliet’s voice in my head. She pleaded with me. Come on Sam, you can do this. I remembered the last encounter with Ally, outside the wall separating Windhaven Manor from the world. Ally had put me in the white room. I had broken free. I had overcome her power once. I had to do it again.
I took a deep breath in through my nose and cried out and willed my feet to move. Electricity coursed through my body and I directed it down to the floor. My left heel separated from the floor and that set the whole thing in motion. The dam burst. I lurched forwards and overbalanced and sprawled to the floor.
Ally crouched beside me and chuckled. “Some would call it a tragedy for a child to die so soon after learning to walk.”
I looked back towards the front of the house. The fire burned hot. Thick black smoke circled up the huge open space of the gallery. Portraits hanging on the wall bubbled and curled as flames consumed them.
A figure appeared at the foot of the staircase. The spectre of Crown. The goons had dragged his lifeless corpse out of the house, but stood before me was the spirit with unfinished business. The ugliness of his actions showed through now in death. His skin was sallow and wrinkled. His head too big for his body and his teeth yellowed. A grotesque monster made worse by his mortal demise.
Ally whispered in my ear. “He knows it was your meddling that brought about his end. I’ll leave you two alone.”
She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand and stood. As she walked away leather straps materialised out of thin air and pinned my body to the floor.
The spectre of Crown grew before me, swelling in size until he had to crouch to stay below the chandelier. He clenched his fists and with burning red eyes let out a guttural growl that skipped my ears and penetrated directly into my skull.
I tried to pull my hands to my ears but they would not come. It made no difference. The roar coming from Crown stabbed the inside of my head like a thousand daggers. I lifted my head and the growl grew to a scream that ricocheted around the inside of my skull. I couldn’t take much more. It felt as though my head would explode.
Guilt bubbled up and mingled with the fear and I shrank into the floor and wished for it to swallow me. They were down there, the only friends I had known, banging against a locked door denying their escape. I sobbed. I sobbed like I had the night my parents turned from me.
In the pit of my stomach something else grew. A seed of frustration born of a lifetime existing in a world that didn’t make sense. A world where I had no idea who I was and what I could or should do. A world in which I hid. I couldn’t do that now.
Juliet’s voice as clear as day, cutting through the racket of Crown’s scream. Do it Sam. I gritted my teeth and electricity buzzed somewhere deep inside, at first dull and imperceptible, and then amplified and resonating until it peaked into a deafening roar.
Above Crown the bulbs in the chandelier glowed white. He swivelled his head and watched them dumbly.
I concentrated, felt the energy forming an extra limb. Like the arms and legs of a newborn it flailed spasmodically. I fought to control it, to turn it to my will. I focussed on the straps pinning me to the floor. The electricity fed into the straps and turned them hot. For a moment I feared they would scold my skin, and then in a moment of release they split and flung upwards.
I picked myself up off the floor and faced the spectre of Crown. Like a spent boxer throwing one final punch I threw out my hands and screamed, willing Crown to be quiet and be still. Demanding he be so.
The floor shook. The dozens of bulbs in the chandelier shattered. The giant spectre of Crown diminished and the screaming inside my head softened until it was no more. Crown’s eyes opened wide as his mouth stitched together and his arms wrenched behind his back. I flicked my hand like I was swatting a fly and Crown flew into the corner of the room and slumped to the floor.
I bent over and rested my hands on my knees. My muscles ached, like I had run a marathon. Shadows played on the floor. I sucked in air and smoke and spluttered and coughed.
In the hallway the silhouette of Ally. She turned and shook her head. The heat of the fire intensified and crackled at my skin. If we were to make our escape, she could not be here to block us. I straightened and strode towards her.
I cycled furiously through the events of the last few days, searching for something to defeat Ally. I had to do to her what she had done to me. The time for running and breaking her spells was through.
I closed my eyes and concentrated. I stripped away everything except for the two of us. The crackle of the fire replaced with silence. The smell of the smoke disappeared. The heat washed away. One by one I shut down all my senses. When I opened my eyes a monotone room of white. Sterile calm had replaced the burning insides of Windhaven Manor.
Her eyes scanned the room and she giggled. “Cheap tricks won’t get you far,” she said. “And you learned this one from me.”
The white rippled as if the walls were made of water. She was fighting it. I concentrated, focussing all my energy, all my will. The ripples slowed and then stopped.
“You’re a fast learner,” she said. “But I have been doing this for more than a weekend.”
Strips of colour permeated the white. A rectangle of tile appeared on the floor. And then some blue from the curtain. Enough of a smouldering wall to let in some smoke. The acrid smell reached my nose and I spluttered. As each wedge of colour appeared, I filled it back in white. But it was a sinking ship and the pail I held to bail out the water would not be enough.
Ally grunted under her breath. A grunt of frustration. The white room shook and made a sound like a train bearing down.
I had to bind her. I raised my palm and coils of rope rose from the ground and oscillated like snakes around her. She swatted them away and wrenched them from the ground and flung them at my feet, limp and unmoving.
“It won’t be that easy,” she sneered.
My arms jerked behind my back. She bound my wrists and then my ankles. She pursed her lips and blew as if extinguishing a single candle on a birthday cake, and it was enough to send me to the floor. I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed help.
I shut my eyes and concentrated my energy not on my bindings, but on the woods at the back of Windhaven Manor. On the girls who escaped the dungeon and now roamed the forest, watching the house burn from behind the barrier Ally constructed.
I fed the energy coursing through my body into the giant snowdome structure until it burned hot and then like the globes in the chandelier, it cracked and exploded into the night sky. The spirits of the girls watched the shards disappear and then strode towards the Manor.
I turned my attention to the tiny room beside the pantry, where Jane Laughlin lay bound to the bed. I stood beside her and lay my hand on the shackles binding her to the bed. She shuddered as the mask came free from her mouth and then stood as the shackles broke.
I opened my eyes and the white of the room flickered off and then back on again like bad reception on a television. I had to keep the white walls up long enough for them to draw near. For them to be ready when the façade fell. Ally strode towards me, exuding confidence.
“You can’t beat me Sam.”
Ally squeezed her hands into fists and screamed. In a burst of energy she wiped the white room clear and we were back in the burning house. The air was thick with smoke. Behind me a timber beam tumbled from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. The heat and smoke sucked the moisture from my insides and I heaved out a series of coughs.
Ally opened her eyes and smiled. She had bested me. But then they came. The girls from the dungeon and Jane Laughlin surrounded her. The sum total off all the pain and hurt inflicted in this place. Everything Ally had worked to keep hidden from the world.
They lurched at Ally. She raised her hands and pushed them back one by one as they went for her. She spun on the spot, trying to keep them at bay. She could not hold them all back. The sheer weight of numbers overwhelmed. They leaned in and pushed their heads into hers and showed her what those men had done. Made her feel it. The fear and despair and anger of each individual stacked together and Ally crumpled to the floor holding her head.
“Make it stop,” she said.
They kept at her.
Jane Laughlin sidled over to the base of the stairs where Crown sat, bound and with his mouth stitched. She considered him, restrained and helpless on the floor as she had been. He fought with his restraints, and then whimpered, as she had. As I ran for the pantry and the wine cellar, the corridor filled with the muffled sound of his screams.
The door to the cellar stood open and I made the descent of the stairs in three leaps. The enclosed space already full with smoke. At the end of the long corridor leading outside, Parker and Harvey shouldered the door. Juliet and Beth screamed encouragement. The door would not budge.
“We can’t go that way,” I yelled.
They raced back up the long corridor. A sudden rush of emotion bubbled up to the surface. I was so happy to see them all still alive. My lower jaw rattled and my hands shook. I fought to hide it.
Beth reached me first. “Sam, you’re ok.”
I blubbered a response and took in a lung full of smoke. We had to get out.
The fire raged outside the kitchen door. A wave of flame climbed up and spread across the ceiling. A subtle cracking sound from above intensified and a chunk of the upstairs floor came crashing down through the ceiling, blocking the rear door. We couldn’t get out the back. The only way now was back through the house. A ball of flame whooshed through the doorway and I put my arm up too late, my eyebrows wilting in the heat.
We crouched together in the middle of the kitchen, lowering our heads to get the last of the remaining oxygen. Malicious red flames and choking black smoke surrounded us on all sides.
“Where do we go now?” Parker’s words came out between coughs. Tears streaked down his cheeks. Soot covered his brow. I wished I had an answer.
Then he was there, standing over Parker’s shoulder. Leon. With the protective bubble gone, he too was free to come in the Manor.
“The fire has not yet consumed the dining room. But you don’t have long.”
I looked vaguely in the direction of the kitchen door and blinked back the stinging from the smoke. “I don’t think we can find it in this.”
“Follow me.”
I pulled my shirt up over my head. “We have to go. The dining room, we can make it. All together on three.”
I shouted out the numbers, the sound drowned out by the roar of the fire. I grabbed Beth’s hand and yanked her into action. Leon led the way and I kept my eyes on his heels. Together we were a flurry of arms and legs bounding for the dining room. I gritted my teeth against the heat. We burst through the doorway and everything turned orange.
From below the sweater pulled tight down over my hair, I shot a glance over to the floor of the grand gallery where I had left Ally writhing on the floor. She was not there now. Nor were the spectres of the girls.
I followed Leon’s heels into the dining room. The great wooden table smouldered in the centre of the room. Brilliant orange flames consumed the thick curtains. Parker spotted his camera still atop the tripod and set to pulling the camera free before Harvey grabbed his arm and yelled something that sounded like ‘leave it’.
Harvey grabbed one of the heavy chairs with their high backs and velvet cushions and heaved it at the window in the back corner of the room. The chair disappeared into the darkness of the night and Harvey kicked at the glass shards left behind. Parker joined. We piled out the opening.
I drank in the fresh cool air of night, staggering over the narrow path beside the house and to the small strip of grass beyond. Parker collapsed beside me and pulled the laptop out from under his shirt. He tapped at the casing and for a moment a brief smile flashed across his face, but it did not last long. He wiped soot and sweat from his face with shaking hands.
Harvey checked us all in turn, like a parent fussing over their children. We had scrapes and bruises and our skin was red and raw, but we were alright. We had survived. He ran to the front of the house and came back with palms held out by his sides. The man in the black suit, the goons Ponytail and Beanie, and Ally were all gone, along with the black van and the BMW.
Huddled together, we watched the fire consume Windhaven Manor, bright reds and oranges lighting up the windows and thick black smoke tumbling into the purple haze of sky. It was almost morning, the horizon signalling the coming of the sun.
Leon stood apart on the grass. I went to him.
“Thank you for coming back for us.”
He shrugged. “It’s something. It isn’t enough to make up for the rest.”
“You saved our lives. And those girls, they had their chance to meet their tormentors. That’s something too.”
He nodded. “What happens now?”
I turned my head sideways. “I’m still learning how all this works.”
The red of the fire reflected in his eyes. “Me too. I might go for a walk in the woods. I always liked it out there.”
He glided across the lawn and entered the trees and was gone.
The sound of sirens fought with the crackle of the fire. The fire brigade and the police. I got to my feet and shuffled to the front of the Manor. The burnt out carcasses of our cars stood by the low height wall. Black soot smudged the stone façade above the windows and the doors.
By the oak tree on the ocean side of the house stood Jane Laughlin. She peered down into a hole dug at the base of the tree. A pale and withered hand poked up out of the dirt. Her hand. They had meant to remove the body, but had aborted the task and fled.
A fire truck appeared at the head of the driveway and then another. They sped down the gravel and came to a sliding stop. A lone police car followed. Harvey sidled over.
Jane looked to the horizon. Out on the cliff edge stood a figure in a red dress. She recognised her sister Kylie immediately and ran down the slope. The two sisters embraced in the first light of the sun. I turned to the whoosh of water through a hose from the fire trucks and when I turned back, the Laughlin sisters were gone.
The members of The Séance Club, which I now consider myself a part, sat together on the low-height stone wall as the firefighters extinguished the flames consuming Windhaven Manor. The house was quiet now. The nausea and vibration I had felt that first night replaced with calm.
The police stripped the compound clean for the best part of a week. They identified Kyle the sketch artist and Hugo from the teeth that survived the fire of the hovel built over the dungeon. Hugo’s wife lay on the back lawn where Beanie and Ponytail had left her. But as to specific evidence of the crimes that occurred, they could not find enough to put a case together.
The two fires and the disappearance of Crown made some headlines, but there wasn’t enough to hang anyone else. The police claimed publicly that there was no link between the fire at Windhaven Manor and the fire at the squalid residence over the back fence. At Harvey’s behest they searched the area with cadaver dogs for the remains of the girls, but they found nothing.
Parker turned his laptop over to the police. They identified the two goons, Ponytail and Beanie, low level thugs who had disappeared from the streets years earlier. Those in the know presumed them dead. It made tracing them almost impossible. Tracing their vehicles lead to a dead end.
The man in black the suit on the other hand might as well be a ghost. On him they found nothing. They have a face, but nothing else.
As for Ally, the girl somehow managed to always turn her face away from the cameras, as if she knew where they were.
I sat in a small room at the police station for three days with Harvey putting the pieces together. He showed me a photograph of an old and gaunt man with a bent back, the last owner of Windhaven Manor before it was sold after his death. He had to be the man with the bent back from the ceremony in the dungeon, but I could not be certain. I never saw his face. Of the faces I did see, we knew Crown and Kyle and Hugo, but the others were harder to pinpoint.
At the end of it all Harvey sighed. There was nothing more we could do. But we could rest on the knowledge that the key players in the ceremony were all now dead.
Questions nagged at me. Where was Ally and what was she doing? Would she try to find me? Who was she working for?
That was the biggest question of all. Who was at the top and pulling the strings? Harvey wasn’t giving up. He was a dog with a bone at the best of times, and now he had a taste of blood. He refused to go back to the police even after Crown’s departure, which he described as the removal of a cancerous limb.
Harvey called me after the dust settled on everything. I told him that the trail had gone cold and I had no idea where Ally was. For all I knew she had evaporated into thin air. Harvey thought it unlikely, and I agreed. He told me it was time for some old-fashioned detective work. The names of the goons would be a start.
And there was something else Harvey mentioned, something that I had almost forgotten. He had always believed that his investigation into the disappearance of the girls was the reason one of his colleagues was murdered. Crown confirmed as much in the bedroom right before he was shot. Harvey thinks there is something to it. Another thread to pull, and he has a hunch. For now he’s keeping his cards close to his chest until he has some proof. I almost pressed him on the issue but decided I’d rather put it all behind me.
The story made headlines in the local press for a while, but ultimately it fizzled into a non-story, quickly forgotten by a public with a short attention spans. We all waited for a reckoning from within the police ranks, but it never came. Harvey predicted that’s the way it would go, and he was proven right.
The one item they did recover was a gold necklace with a heart pendant. The necklace Jane Laughlin wore the night of her death. The police found it where the black van had parked. After a few days in the possession of the police, Harvey arranged to have the necklace released to the family of its former owner.
The following day Mr. and Mrs. Laughlin appeared on the local news, thanking the efforts of those who recovered the remains of their daughter. It was closure, though not the kind they had hoped for. Both their girls were dead.
A week later The Séance Club convened in Beth’s apartment. Parker and Juliet were already there when I arrived. It was cathartic to talk about the events at Windhaven Manor, to compare stories and scars. I guess that’s why they have the saying about a problem shared.
After a brief silence, Beth asked, “Are you going to talk to the parents of Jane and Kylie?”
I shook my head. “What will I tell them?”
“That their daughters found each other out by the cliff edge.”
“And what about the agony of their deaths? Should I tell them that too? Besides, it doesn’t feel right. None of this feels right to me yet. And what weight do my words hold over those of some Priest talking about how he knows their souls are at rest.”
“Because you really do know.”
I shrugged. “I can’t prove any of it.”
Truth was I had no idea how to integrate the things I could see and do into my life. From childhood all I had wanted was to be like everyone else. For people not to stare or whisper as I walked by. To find acceptance. Sitting with my three new friends at Beth’s tiny kitchen table, with our shared experience behind us, I finally had it. This could be the start of something.
Parker was already planning the next Séance Club trip. An abandoned farm up north with mysterious sightings going back centuries. Juliet was already on board. I told them to wait. I couldn’t jump back in right away.
I was the last to leave, Beth and I sipping mug after mug of coffee and sharing comfortable silence. When I sighed and told her I should go, she grabbed my arm.
“I’ve never had a real family, and then I found Juliet and Parker. The Séance Club became my family. Whatever happens we are there for each other. And we mean it when we say we want you to join.”
I thought about that all night, unable to sleep.
The next morning I called Parker.
An abandoned farm up north you say?
* * * *
I navigated to the narrow alley and checked the time. The Exchange should be open. It looked out of context in the Saturday morning light. No bright light spilling from the window. No surge of Friday night after work traffic.
I slipped in the front door. A lone man lifted upturned stools down from the bar. He had his back to me and I crept across the hardwood floor in the direction of the stairs down and the bathrooms.
The vibration swelled in my chest, but I did not fear it. A dull pain rose in the base of my skull, but I gritted my teeth. A man wearing a pair of rough leather shoes came from the other end of the corridor and stopped before me.
“Are you here to help?”
I nodded.
X
2023.05.29 16:30 kcr141 Searching For Common Threads 9: The Dark Forest
First Previous Next
Esen:
When we landed at the primary research site, it was quiet at last. As I unstrapped myself and began to stand up, I started forming a list in my mind of all the tasks that would need to be completed.
As a first order of business, I walked over to the other side of the flight deck and began to inspect the hull breach. The hole that had been formed in the side of our ship was smooth on the inside. There was no evidence of any tearing or fragmenting, rather, the metal appeared to have been melted.
“You know,” I said, “I don’t think this was from kinetics fire. It looks like a laser did this.”
“It was a laser,” Tsavolyn replied. “I could see the beam.”
“I mean, it makes sense ‘cause we were moving away from them so quickly.”
At this, commander Taylor spoke up:
“That reminds me, did I hear you correctly when you said that those attackers were pulling twelve G’s?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“They… that’s not… they can’t do that, that should be lethal!”
“I know,” I said. “Maybe those two ships never had a crew to begin with, however, they weren’t acting like they were computer controlled either. Honestly, I’m even more impressed they didn’t damage their warp drives or stall their reactors pulling those kinds of maneuvers.”
“Unfortunately, we’ll have to worry about that later,” commander Taylor responded, “right now, we need to get our own drive back in order.”
The three of us began to make our way down to the cargo hold. Once there, I found the nearest control panel and instructed the cargo bay doors to open. Sunlight flooded into the compartment.
The first thing that jumped out at me was that, unlike Earth’s spaceports, our landing pad seemed to be entirely makeshift. The bay doors led directly out onto a platform surrounded by guard rails and supported by a steel lattice structure. From there, a set of stairs connected the platform to the concrete floor below. Besides the platform in front of us, there was a concerning lack of service structures.
Then, I saw the rest of the world beyond the guard railing. The human-built structures gave way to rolling grassy hills with forests and mountains visible in the distance. From our vantage point, an abandoned alien city could be seen as well. The city was the reason for the outpost’s construction and was also the only obvious indicator that this was not Earth.
“It may not be quite what you’re used to,” commander Taylor said, “but according to the outpost’s inventory, everything you need should be here.”
I went over my mental checklist again before speaking:
“Alright. So… I need to swap out proto-segments three, seven, nine, fourteen, and… eighteen. We should probably start with three since that one’s kinda the whole reason we landed at all.”
“What is special about segment three?” Tsavolyn asked.
“Proto-segment three is all the way inside of the warp drive’s primary ring,” I answered. “We experimented with other designs that were easier to service, but none could match the efficiency of our current approach. So unfortunately, in order to get to segments one through four, you have to partition them and extract the surrounding buffer. It takes special machines to do this because the drive becomes inoperable if the buffer leaks out.”
“Plus,” I added, “that stuff is toxic and it aerosolizes at standard pressure.”
“We didn’t pack our own equipment because it’s very heavy and we wanted to stay maneuverable in order to give ourselves the best chance of survival,” Taylor said plainly.
The three of us climbed down to the ground and began our preparations.
“I’m going to need some way to get up top to the primary ring,” I remarked.
“There should be an articulated lift here somewhere,” commander Taylor responded. “I can get that set up while you go find any other tools you might need.”
“Alright,” I said. The three of us parted, Tsavolyn traveling with Taylor while I headed in the opposite direction towards the edge of the spaceport. The researchers had set up a collection of temporary shelters and storage units. These structures were built out of flexible plastic supported by metal framework, they were more like habitats than buildings.
Once inside one of the shelters, it was obvious that the outpost was abandoned in a hurry. A variety of tools and electronics lay strewn about on top of a foldable table along with a half eaten bowl of oatmeal and a tablet.
Out of curiosity, I picked up the tablet and powered it on. When the screen lit up a dim orange color and displayed alien text, I realized that the device was of tynaksian design; evidence of the expedition’s cooperative nature.
After turning the tablet off, I set it back where I found it and then got to work. I managed to find a small tool bag and began packing it with everything I would need. I took a set of wrenches, a small flashlight, and a multitude of powered screwdrivers. I also packed a set of pliers along with extra bolts and wires in case any got lost or damaged. As I was searching through various storage drawers, I caught a glint of something gold and shiny. I reached in and produced a roll of PI tape. Remembering the hull breach on the flight deck, I packed the tape as well.
The next couple hours were spent tediously replacing each of the modified warp drive components. Accessing proto-segment three was a delicate process that involved attaching several cables and hoses to the drive’s primary ring, engaging multiple safety mechanisms, and then having commander Taylor activate the extraction machine from the ground.
After segment three, the rest were fairly straight forward. I would simply unbolt a panel somewhere, replace the proto-segment, and then put the panel back. When that was done, I went back inside the ship and used the PI tape to patch up the hole in the side of the flight deck. I also realized, upon further inspection, that the laser beam responsible for the hull breach had continued on its path and damaged one of the control interfaces.
To prevent any complications, I disconnected the damaged interface and then began a diagnostic on each of the components that had been replaced. After that, I headed back outside, finding commander Taylor and Tsavolyn admiring the alien landscape.
“I’m running a diagnostic on each segment,” I told them. “Once that’s done, we should be good to go!”
“Alright,” Taylor responded, “let me know when—”
As he spoke, the commander turned around to face me before stopping mid sentence.
After a moment of silence, I realized that Taylor was staring at something behind me. Cautiously, I turned around and followed his gaze.
An alien stared back at me. Their skin looked like it was composed of very small scales, so they definitely weren’t tynaksian. Looking directly at them, their scales were a crisp white color, however, when the sunlight hit them at an angle, they took on a faint violet hue. The alien wore a strange cyan-colored uniform inscribed with markings that were barely visible, and they seemed to be carrying a small crate full of electronics.
Since they weren’t tynaksian, that currently only left one option:
This was a raknin, probably one from the enemy fleet.
As soon as I had that realization, the alien dropped the crate they were holding and bolted in the opposite direction.
“Hey, wait!” commander Taylor shouted before taking off after them.
The raknin had already reached the other end of the launch pad by the time I recovered from my initial shock. I too began to chase after the commander and our alien visitor with Tsavolyn following close behind.
The concrete floor ended and our chase continued through the tall, lush grass. The ground grew steeper and before I knew it, the raknin and commander Taylor had both disappeared over the top of a hill.
Reaching the top of the hill myself revealed both a large valley as well as the alien’s intended destination. A raknin spacecraft sat tucked away at the bottom of the valley, concealed previously by the surrounding hills.
Taylor was gaining on the fleeing alien, and as they neared the bottom of the hill, the commander leapt forward. He collided with the raknin and the two of them tumbled the rest of the way down.
The alien quickly recovered and continued running. Commander Taylor took longer to get his bearings allowing me and Tsavolyn to catch up with him.
From there, it was a dead sprint to the spaceship.
When they reached the base of the rocket, the raknin scaled a ladder leading up to the cargo hold.
We weren’t far behind.
When I made my way to the top, officially boarding the alien craft, I was greeted with the sight of commander Taylor tackling the alien to the ground.
The alien tried to escape but couldn’t. As they struggled, the commander managed to look at me and shout:
“Tape! Tape! Give me the Tape!”
Tape?
And then I remembered: I still had the polyimide tape!
I opened the tool bag and retrieved the roll of tape I had used to repair the hull breach. I tossed the roll to Taylor and then helped hold the raknin down while he restrained them.
Once the alien was immobile, I stood up and took a step backwards. As I did so, my hand collided with a hard surface and I cried out in pain.
I turned around to see what I had hit, but there was only empty space in front of me. Confused, I looked down at the back of my hand.
There were burn marks.
Tsavolyn:
While Esen and Taylor were handling the fleeing raknin, I had the wherewithal to check if there were any other crewmates aboard the rocket.
I had been on a couple of raknin spacecraft before, but this one was different. It was like the whole interior had been emptied out and replaced with a strange metal lattice. This lattice was densely packed with hundreds of some kind of tetrahedron-shaped device. These devices covered every wall and ceiling. Even the floors were nothing more than a thin metal grating with more of the strange instrument underneath.
It looked like this vessel had been turned into some kind of detector array. I wasn’t sure what kind of array this was or why this had been done, but I figured the flight deck might hold some answers.
Besides us, the ship turned out to be empty; the raknin we encountered had flown here alone. When I reached the bridge, the first thing I noticed was a message displayed on several of the control interfaces warning of damage to the electrical systems.
I picked one of the control interfaces and sat down. As I was in the process of opening the diagnostics menu, Esen came in.
“Hey, do you think you can communicate with our new friend?”
“Probably,” I answered, “but I can’t guarantee that she’ll cooperate”
“I’m hoping they’re at least willing to tell us what they have down in the cargo hold,” He said.
“If you’re referring to all the devices on the walls, I can probably figure that out from here. I have some experience with these ships from before our falling out with the raknins. If I open the diagnostics interface, it will list every subsystem on the ship’s network.”
“Yeah, finding out what those are would also be helpful,” Esen said.
“Also? I thought the hold was otherwise empty.”
“Oh no,” Esen replied, “there’s definitely something in the middle of the cargo hold. We’re not sure what it is because it’s invisible.”
“Invisible?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “It’s surrounded by some kind of cloaking field. Also, the field isn’t safe to touch.”
Esen held up his hand revealing burn marks on both sides.
“Okay, that’s strange. Wait, you touched it twice?” I asked.
“Science has to be repeatable,” he said with a chuckle.
“Okay, I have the diagnostics menu up. It looks like they have… actually I’m not sure how to say this in English. It’s a type of particle, low mass, no charge, emitted during nuclear processes…”
“It’s not in the nucleus of atoms, right?” Esen asked.
“That’s right,” I answered.
“You’re probably thinking of neutrinos then.”
“That sounds correct,” I responded. “In that case, this ship has an array of neutrino detectors.”
“That’s probably what the things on the wall are for then,” Esen said.
“That would be my guess as well. Okay, this I don’t recognize.”
“What is it,” he asked.
“It’s a system listed as ‘frame capture,’ and I have no idea what that means.” I said.
“Could that have to do with our strange object?”
“Maybe?” I answered. “I’m not sure though because this is listed along with the warp drive and the drive complement.”
After a moment of contemplation, I selected ‘frame capture’ and ran a basic, full subsystem diagnostic.
After a few moments, I heard the ship’s reactor change output modes followed by the unmistakable rumble of the warp drive activating. This was confirmation that whatever the frame capture system was, it had something to do with the FTL drive, however that still left a lot of questions unanswered. I had never encountered it before, so it was either new technology or something that had been kept secret.
The diagnostic continued without issue until suddenly, a warning flashed on the screen. I didn’t have time to read it before the control interface went dead. The warp drive powered down along with the reactor leaving us in total silence.
“Hey!” commander Taylor shouted from below, “You two should get down here!”
Esen and I made our way down to the cargo hold. The spaces between the flight deck and the hold were dark now as, apparently, the entire spacecraft had lost power. Fortunately, the cargo bay doors were still open and thus the deck was illuminated with sunlight.
When we reached the hold, we both stopped in our tracks. Something was definitely different.
“Whatever you did caused it to become visible,” commander Taylor said.
He was right. In the center of the room sat a strange metallic object. It had a thick outline in the shape of a dodecahedron, however, the space in the middle was filled with a forest of thin metal strands. It was spiky, messy, and in some way, almost organic.
“Can you ask the raknin what this is?” Taylor asked.
I glanced over at the pilot thoroughly restrained with the shiny, high performance tape. She was staring at the now-visible object, and the fear in her eyes was contagious.
I looked at her and saw myself as a kid lost in the woods.
“Hey, are you alright?” the commander asked.
“Sorry, I’m fine,” I said. “I think the silence is getting to me again.”
submitted by kcr141 to HFY [link] [comments]
Esen:
When we landed at the primary research site, it was quiet at last. As I unstrapped myself and began to stand up, I started forming a list in my mind of all the tasks that would need to be completed.
As a first order of business, I walked over to the other side of the flight deck and began to inspect the hull breach. The hole that had been formed in the side of our ship was smooth on the inside. There was no evidence of any tearing or fragmenting, rather, the metal appeared to have been melted.
“You know,” I said, “I don’t think this was from kinetics fire. It looks like a laser did this.”
“It was a laser,” Tsavolyn replied. “I could see the beam.”
“I mean, it makes sense ‘cause we were moving away from them so quickly.”
At this, commander Taylor spoke up:
“That reminds me, did I hear you correctly when you said that those attackers were pulling twelve G’s?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“They… that’s not… they can’t do that, that should be lethal!”
“I know,” I said. “Maybe those two ships never had a crew to begin with, however, they weren’t acting like they were computer controlled either. Honestly, I’m even more impressed they didn’t damage their warp drives or stall their reactors pulling those kinds of maneuvers.”
“Unfortunately, we’ll have to worry about that later,” commander Taylor responded, “right now, we need to get our own drive back in order.”
The three of us began to make our way down to the cargo hold. Once there, I found the nearest control panel and instructed the cargo bay doors to open. Sunlight flooded into the compartment.
The first thing that jumped out at me was that, unlike Earth’s spaceports, our landing pad seemed to be entirely makeshift. The bay doors led directly out onto a platform surrounded by guard rails and supported by a steel lattice structure. From there, a set of stairs connected the platform to the concrete floor below. Besides the platform in front of us, there was a concerning lack of service structures.
Then, I saw the rest of the world beyond the guard railing. The human-built structures gave way to rolling grassy hills with forests and mountains visible in the distance. From our vantage point, an abandoned alien city could be seen as well. The city was the reason for the outpost’s construction and was also the only obvious indicator that this was not Earth.
“It may not be quite what you’re used to,” commander Taylor said, “but according to the outpost’s inventory, everything you need should be here.”
I went over my mental checklist again before speaking:
“Alright. So… I need to swap out proto-segments three, seven, nine, fourteen, and… eighteen. We should probably start with three since that one’s kinda the whole reason we landed at all.”
“What is special about segment three?” Tsavolyn asked.
“Proto-segment three is all the way inside of the warp drive’s primary ring,” I answered. “We experimented with other designs that were easier to service, but none could match the efficiency of our current approach. So unfortunately, in order to get to segments one through four, you have to partition them and extract the surrounding buffer. It takes special machines to do this because the drive becomes inoperable if the buffer leaks out.”
“Plus,” I added, “that stuff is toxic and it aerosolizes at standard pressure.”
“We didn’t pack our own equipment because it’s very heavy and we wanted to stay maneuverable in order to give ourselves the best chance of survival,” Taylor said plainly.
The three of us climbed down to the ground and began our preparations.
“I’m going to need some way to get up top to the primary ring,” I remarked.
“There should be an articulated lift here somewhere,” commander Taylor responded. “I can get that set up while you go find any other tools you might need.”
“Alright,” I said. The three of us parted, Tsavolyn traveling with Taylor while I headed in the opposite direction towards the edge of the spaceport. The researchers had set up a collection of temporary shelters and storage units. These structures were built out of flexible plastic supported by metal framework, they were more like habitats than buildings.
Once inside one of the shelters, it was obvious that the outpost was abandoned in a hurry. A variety of tools and electronics lay strewn about on top of a foldable table along with a half eaten bowl of oatmeal and a tablet.
Out of curiosity, I picked up the tablet and powered it on. When the screen lit up a dim orange color and displayed alien text, I realized that the device was of tynaksian design; evidence of the expedition’s cooperative nature.
After turning the tablet off, I set it back where I found it and then got to work. I managed to find a small tool bag and began packing it with everything I would need. I took a set of wrenches, a small flashlight, and a multitude of powered screwdrivers. I also packed a set of pliers along with extra bolts and wires in case any got lost or damaged. As I was searching through various storage drawers, I caught a glint of something gold and shiny. I reached in and produced a roll of PI tape. Remembering the hull breach on the flight deck, I packed the tape as well.
The next couple hours were spent tediously replacing each of the modified warp drive components. Accessing proto-segment three was a delicate process that involved attaching several cables and hoses to the drive’s primary ring, engaging multiple safety mechanisms, and then having commander Taylor activate the extraction machine from the ground.
After segment three, the rest were fairly straight forward. I would simply unbolt a panel somewhere, replace the proto-segment, and then put the panel back. When that was done, I went back inside the ship and used the PI tape to patch up the hole in the side of the flight deck. I also realized, upon further inspection, that the laser beam responsible for the hull breach had continued on its path and damaged one of the control interfaces.
To prevent any complications, I disconnected the damaged interface and then began a diagnostic on each of the components that had been replaced. After that, I headed back outside, finding commander Taylor and Tsavolyn admiring the alien landscape.
“I’m running a diagnostic on each segment,” I told them. “Once that’s done, we should be good to go!”
“Alright,” Taylor responded, “let me know when—”
As he spoke, the commander turned around to face me before stopping mid sentence.
After a moment of silence, I realized that Taylor was staring at something behind me. Cautiously, I turned around and followed his gaze.
An alien stared back at me. Their skin looked like it was composed of very small scales, so they definitely weren’t tynaksian. Looking directly at them, their scales were a crisp white color, however, when the sunlight hit them at an angle, they took on a faint violet hue. The alien wore a strange cyan-colored uniform inscribed with markings that were barely visible, and they seemed to be carrying a small crate full of electronics.
Since they weren’t tynaksian, that currently only left one option:
This was a raknin, probably one from the enemy fleet.
As soon as I had that realization, the alien dropped the crate they were holding and bolted in the opposite direction.
“Hey, wait!” commander Taylor shouted before taking off after them.
The raknin had already reached the other end of the launch pad by the time I recovered from my initial shock. I too began to chase after the commander and our alien visitor with Tsavolyn following close behind.
The concrete floor ended and our chase continued through the tall, lush grass. The ground grew steeper and before I knew it, the raknin and commander Taylor had both disappeared over the top of a hill.
Reaching the top of the hill myself revealed both a large valley as well as the alien’s intended destination. A raknin spacecraft sat tucked away at the bottom of the valley, concealed previously by the surrounding hills.
Taylor was gaining on the fleeing alien, and as they neared the bottom of the hill, the commander leapt forward. He collided with the raknin and the two of them tumbled the rest of the way down.
The alien quickly recovered and continued running. Commander Taylor took longer to get his bearings allowing me and Tsavolyn to catch up with him.
From there, it was a dead sprint to the spaceship.
When they reached the base of the rocket, the raknin scaled a ladder leading up to the cargo hold.
We weren’t far behind.
When I made my way to the top, officially boarding the alien craft, I was greeted with the sight of commander Taylor tackling the alien to the ground.
The alien tried to escape but couldn’t. As they struggled, the commander managed to look at me and shout:
“Tape! Tape! Give me the Tape!”
Tape?
And then I remembered: I still had the polyimide tape!
I opened the tool bag and retrieved the roll of tape I had used to repair the hull breach. I tossed the roll to Taylor and then helped hold the raknin down while he restrained them.
Once the alien was immobile, I stood up and took a step backwards. As I did so, my hand collided with a hard surface and I cried out in pain.
I turned around to see what I had hit, but there was only empty space in front of me. Confused, I looked down at the back of my hand.
There were burn marks.
While Esen and Taylor were handling the fleeing raknin, I had the wherewithal to check if there were any other crewmates aboard the rocket.
I had been on a couple of raknin spacecraft before, but this one was different. It was like the whole interior had been emptied out and replaced with a strange metal lattice. This lattice was densely packed with hundreds of some kind of tetrahedron-shaped device. These devices covered every wall and ceiling. Even the floors were nothing more than a thin metal grating with more of the strange instrument underneath.
It looked like this vessel had been turned into some kind of detector array. I wasn’t sure what kind of array this was or why this had been done, but I figured the flight deck might hold some answers.
Besides us, the ship turned out to be empty; the raknin we encountered had flown here alone. When I reached the bridge, the first thing I noticed was a message displayed on several of the control interfaces warning of damage to the electrical systems.
I picked one of the control interfaces and sat down. As I was in the process of opening the diagnostics menu, Esen came in.
“Hey, do you think you can communicate with our new friend?”
“Probably,” I answered, “but I can’t guarantee that she’ll cooperate”
“I’m hoping they’re at least willing to tell us what they have down in the cargo hold,” He said.
“If you’re referring to all the devices on the walls, I can probably figure that out from here. I have some experience with these ships from before our falling out with the raknins. If I open the diagnostics interface, it will list every subsystem on the ship’s network.”
“Yeah, finding out what those are would also be helpful,” Esen said.
“Also? I thought the hold was otherwise empty.”
“Oh no,” Esen replied, “there’s definitely something in the middle of the cargo hold. We’re not sure what it is because it’s invisible.”
“Invisible?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “It’s surrounded by some kind of cloaking field. Also, the field isn’t safe to touch.”
Esen held up his hand revealing burn marks on both sides.
“Okay, that’s strange. Wait, you touched it twice?” I asked.
“Science has to be repeatable,” he said with a chuckle.
“Okay, I have the diagnostics menu up. It looks like they have… actually I’m not sure how to say this in English. It’s a type of particle, low mass, no charge, emitted during nuclear processes…”
“It’s not in the nucleus of atoms, right?” Esen asked.
“That’s right,” I answered.
“You’re probably thinking of neutrinos then.”
“That sounds correct,” I responded. “In that case, this ship has an array of neutrino detectors.”
“That’s probably what the things on the wall are for then,” Esen said.
“That would be my guess as well. Okay, this I don’t recognize.”
“What is it,” he asked.
“It’s a system listed as ‘frame capture,’ and I have no idea what that means.” I said.
“Could that have to do with our strange object?”
“Maybe?” I answered. “I’m not sure though because this is listed along with the warp drive and the drive complement.”
After a moment of contemplation, I selected ‘frame capture’ and ran a basic, full subsystem diagnostic.
After a few moments, I heard the ship’s reactor change output modes followed by the unmistakable rumble of the warp drive activating. This was confirmation that whatever the frame capture system was, it had something to do with the FTL drive, however that still left a lot of questions unanswered. I had never encountered it before, so it was either new technology or something that had been kept secret.
The diagnostic continued without issue until suddenly, a warning flashed on the screen. I didn’t have time to read it before the control interface went dead. The warp drive powered down along with the reactor leaving us in total silence.
“Hey!” commander Taylor shouted from below, “You two should get down here!”
Esen and I made our way down to the cargo hold. The spaces between the flight deck and the hold were dark now as, apparently, the entire spacecraft had lost power. Fortunately, the cargo bay doors were still open and thus the deck was illuminated with sunlight.
When we reached the hold, we both stopped in our tracks. Something was definitely different.
“Whatever you did caused it to become visible,” commander Taylor said.
He was right. In the center of the room sat a strange metallic object. It had a thick outline in the shape of a dodecahedron, however, the space in the middle was filled with a forest of thin metal strands. It was spiky, messy, and in some way, almost organic.
“Can you ask the raknin what this is?” Taylor asked.
I glanced over at the pilot thoroughly restrained with the shiny, high performance tape. She was staring at the now-visible object, and the fear in her eyes was contagious.
I looked at her and saw myself as a kid lost in the woods.
“Hey, are you alright?” the commander asked.
“Sorry, I’m fine,” I said. “I think the silence is getting to me again.”