#and finally now got what some already had in patch 4&5 and was expanded on in patch 6

[galedekarios]

not someone saying gale is now getting closer to ast*rion in terms of content bc he got the same stuff added in one go that everyone else got over the last 2-3 patches i can't

[waystobuild-blog]

Top 7 CN Shows That Would Work Better in Live Action than PPG

So I think everybody’s talked about why CW Powerpuff Girls doesn’t work, whether or not it’s a real thing or not? Who even knows. But while thinking about how this:

is kinda awful for Powerpuff Girls, I got thinking what shows that this style of a reboot would work for. In which it’s live action, the character is depressed and has sort of resentment towards their childhood now and that sort of thing. 

So what are the top 7 shows that I think this

Number 7:

Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends

At Number 7 we have Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Seems fitting that we’d start the list with another one of Craig McCracken’s biggest hits. Why do I think the premise of “Oh, life sucks now and I kinda wasted my childhood” would work for Foster’s? For the plain and simple fact that for a few episodes of the show, there was a focus on Mac growing up and whether or not he should leave his friends at Foster’s behind him. You could play a lot with that concept combined with the live action reboot thing. Maybe an older version of the character is dealing with whether or not to let go of both Bloo and the past and move on with his life. Frankie being a young adult during the time of the original show could also be a pretty instrumental character since it was a matter of living there, caring for the friends, having that job and balancing this life with the life that she had outside of the house.

Not quite a coming of age story but a sort of “Hey, my life has gone nowhere and where could I go with this now? Do I keep the friends I loved and cherished as a child or move onto other things? Is there a way to do both?”

Only thing I wouldn’t want though is CGI monstrosity friends. Those would be kinda the worst…

Number 6: 

Okay, let’s actually talk about a real superhero show this time around. Or would this count as a superhero show? Well, they certainly do a lot of cool time travelling so I’m gonna say it’s a superhero show. Of course, I mean Time Squad.

Now if you haven’t guessed, I don’t have the most experience with this show but I know enough to think that this is something that could actually work well. I mean, Otto was a kid who was basically running around all over history protecting the balance of time with a stuck up robot and a dude who is a little too into all of this. Imagine if he just sorta did this for all of his childhood and realizing as a young adult that “Crap, I didn’t really have a childhood.” With the dynamic of the squad, the potential to expand the greater organization as a whole and just all the time travel shenanigans that could happen, I don’t see a reason not to do it.

Plus, CW already has Legends of Tomorrow and that’s awesome so even less likely to screw it up if they’ve already got a model to do it off of right?

Number 5: 

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

Yo ho ho, it is a sailor’s life for me. And in this sailor’s life we’re coming in with Number 5: The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. Now this is a bit of an odd choice, right? But hear me out.

Flapjack as a child kinda had only Bubbie and K’nuckles as guides for his life. While they mostly spent their lives at Stormalong Harbor, they also constantly spent their lives looking for Candied Island. What if they never stopped looking and eventually, little kid Flapjack is a grown up now and he’s like “Oh wow. I wanted adventure but I was kinda manipulated to follow this creepy old man’s dreams of candy.” I think going heavy and hard on this sort of found family between them would be kinda fun. How K’nuckles wasn’t the best role model and how they’ve still only got each other in this world, that sort of thing.

Plus, a live action Stormalong would be sooooooo cool.

Number 4:

Ben 10

As the old saying goes, it started when an alien device did what it did, stuck itself upon his wrist with secrets that it hid, now he’s got superpowers he’s no ordinary kid, it’s Ben 10.

And unfortunately in CW’s Ben 10, he’s not a kid who just wants to have fun. Nah, he’s got a lot of emotional stuff to deal with and all of that depressing stuff. Isn’t it great? Now I do think that this could work especially if you work it in where maybe Ben enlisted into the plumbers after his summer vacation and it just kinda escalated from there to the point where here he is now.

Say what you will, but at least with Ben 10, we’ve seen it hit a more grounded and emotional place with Ben 10 Alien Force and Ultimate Alien so I don’t believe that this would be too far of a stretch with how that show worked and a lot of people happened to really like those iterations of the show.

Granted, I actually do want a CW styled Ben 10, but less edgy Arrow style and more along the lines of The Flash, but I’d still take this too.

And now before we get into the top 3, let’s get into a few honorable mentions.

First up, we’ve got Steven Universe. Now honestly, this could work really well, the only issue with that is that we’ve kinda already seen this story told and that was with Steven Universe Future. Good stuff and a lot of potential, but we’ve seen it and I don’t think we need to see it again with a live action coat of paint.

Next up there’s Codename Kids Next Door. Honestly, I think the only real spinoff we need for Kids Next Door is Galactic. That’s it. Anything else is unnecessary. Still, with this sort of concept an older KND who has been decommissioned and feels like there’s something missing in their lives that they just don’t understand would be really cool. Although maybe that would work as like a movie or special or somethin’ I don’t know.

And finally for the last of the honorable mentions we’ve got Teen Titans. While I am trying to keep this list to CN Originals, I couldn’t help but bring this one up. How Long is Forever is one of my all-time favorite episodes of the 2003 series so I think seeing a series taking place in that timeline or something similar would be a lot of fun maybe for like a miniseries or something. And honestly, anything’s better than Titans.

With those three out of the way, back to the list.

Number 3: 

The Life and Times of Juniper Lee

In a world full of monsters and demons, June is the only one who sees them. This is the Life and Times of Juniper Lee and it makes number three on my list.

Now, like Time Squad, I didn’t watch much of this show. But what I do know about this show is that June is cool and she’s got this whole legacy and destiny by being the newest Te Xaun Ze, which are basically the magical protectors of her town. Only problem, and why I think that this direction for this show would actually be kinda cool, is the whole thing that the Te Xaun Ze is never allowed to leave the town at any point in their lives and oh boy, you could actually go really hard on that with this format since it’s literally built into the show.

Juniper Lee all grown up and just straight up depressed because she’s got the cool powers and grabs all the monsters but everyone around her has moved on in their lives. Friends have gone off to college and started all their lives and she’s got nothing but her family in Orchid Bay. You’d have a story of someone who once was big on their destiny who has accepted it but wishes that it wasn’t theirs anymore. I do know the show dealt with this a bit but with a new continuity and an older version of the character you really could just go in and deep on this.

I stand by that this would actually be pretty cool and kinda want it. Honestly, I like this idea so much that I wasn’t sure whether to put this in the number three or the number two spot, but y’know what? The next show told me a little secret that gave it the edge.

Number 2: 

The Secret Saturdays

That’s right, it’s the Secret Saturdays. 

Zak Saturday went all around the world with his parents discovering ancient cryptids, protecting the world and everything. He got some cool siblings in Fiskerton, Komodo and Zon. And then to add on top of that that he’s also the reincarnation of an ancient cryptid set to rule and control all the cryptids in the world? Yeah, that’ll do it. Definitely not the type of life he asked for and kid went through a lot because of it especially after losing those powers and apparently getting them back if we’re to count the Omniverse crossover TGIS to be canon.

But having parents like Zak’s, everything with the community of Secret Scientists and not really having many friends his own age or well, his own species will do that.

Exploring Zak and maybe Argost coming back for powers he might not want anymore and learning to embrace his destiny while also trying to patch up the Saturday family would be awesome.

Number 1:

Dexter’s Laboratory

Now while I know we already have a live action Dexter and it was an incredible hit, I- Wait, not the same show.

Ahem, Dexter’s Laboratory makes the top of this list. Partially because of it being PPG’s sister series but also partially because of the whole thing of there’s a lot you could do with Dexter’s character in terms of depression. If someone with such a high intellect were to somehow lose it all or just in some way, never really got forward in life, that would do it. Dexter could be a type of character that’s too stuck inside his own head in order to move forward. Alternatively, maybe Dexter is highly successful but has found there’s something missing in life or something. I dunno.

But whichever way you decide to go with Dexter’s character, you could have Dee Dee be pretty much the opposite of that. Maybe she’s found herself a place in life that she’s content with and Dex doesn’t understand why but wants it. I think going deep on this sort of emotional aspect of his life while also having all sorts of fun crazy science stuff would be a good watch.

All in all, gimme a Dexter’s lab show but we gotta make sure he keeps some form of an accent. No accent is a dealbreaker.

Although, I think that at the end of the day, animation should really just stay animated and that we don’t need to go live action for anything. All of these ideas I’ve presented, I’d of course rather prefer as cartoons with a more balanced tone more than anything but I figured with the announcement of a PPG show, this would be a silly but fun idea to talk about rather than ranting about it like most have. Granted, I’ve got some rants of my own since I still think it’s a bad idea. Haha. But you know how it goes.

At any rate those are all the shows I think would make better CW PPG style reboots than CW PPG. When it comes to the edginess and potential for drama, I feel these shows fit the bill better than the innocent, buttkicking action that was the Powerpuff Girls.

But what do you all think? Do you have any shows in mind that I haven’t mentioned? Do you think I’ve opened Pandora’s Box and given The CW more awful ideas? 

Now, this was originally a YouTube video so you can probably see that in the way that this post, especially the ending was written, but I just still don’t really have the energy to edit stuff so have this post instead. It’s something I really wanted to discuss and just decided, hey, why not make it a Tumblr post?

[salenakingston]

The Future: Theories and Predictions

Boy what a wild ride this has been hasn’t it? The Future has been out for a few days now and I’ve seen a lot of interesting discussion going on about it. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to toss in my two cents about some things that I have noticed, a few theories/food for thought, and some predictions I have for the next video. Yeah we’ve got a while before then, but that gives us all plenty of time to expand on theories and ideas. Anyways, onto the rambling. I apologize if I am repeating some stuff that other people have already said <3.

1. Shiromori and Mystery

This seems to arguably be the biggest mystery (haha) that’s still present in these videos. A lot of what we can gleam from them is some interactions and still image flashbacks. It’s clear there’s a connection between her and mystery’s blood, and I’m pretty sure we can assume mystery is the one that brought her to life with his blood. And given the third image that is shown to us in Hellbent, I think it’s safe to assume they had some kind of symbiotic relationship, at least in the past.

But now with the release of future, there seems to be much more going on between them. I know these details have been pointed out by many other people, so I won’t drag on too long about this, but rather go over some things that stood out to me. I had seen one user point out the fact that Mystery hesitated to join the fight between Vivi and Shiromori at the start, only stepping in once Vivi’s face got cut again, and again when the vines started coming towards them.

It’s like Mystery doesn’t want to fight her, and this seems further supported after Shiromori loses her arms and they get frozen over. He steps in and protects her, something that surprises her and Vivi. He cares about her, even if he is afraid of her to some degree. There is more evidence to this when Shiromori’s body is destroyed (I’ll come back to this bit shortly). The look he gives is shock/horror at what happened. Sorry I am not good with description words.

One other interesting thing to note is that when Shiromori attacks Mystery when he snaps is that she can be shown crying. So she to some level cares about Mystery as well, to the point where yes she wanted his blood, but not want him dead. Just an interesting detail.

So with all that being said do I have any predictions about this going into the next video? Honestly not really, at least not at the moment. Considering how the ending of the Future is set up, I’m not sure how much more information we will get on these two. I know the main creators have mentioned the possibility of doing more after this current arc. Maybe this would be something to explore if more is not shared. One thing I will say about Shiromori is I don’t believe she is dead. Yes, we see her body disintegrate, but her heart remained in tact. After all Vivi, only hit it and didn’t break it as far as we could see.

2. Mystery and his tails

Now, I will say upfront that I know next to nothing about kitsunes and their lore, so for a lot of this I’ll just be going off what we see in the videos. I do know that the tails in lore connect with a kitsune’s age, but I am not sure if that plays a role here, as many have already pointed out that in the Shiromori flashbacks he has nine, in the Ghost flashback he has six, and present he has seven, which become nine at the end of the Future. Since that all has been talked about, I have something more to chew on in terms of this and Mystery’s heart itself.

It seems that to Mystery, his tails are connected to other beings, beings that he cares about, as evident to him growing his eighth tail when Vivi gets injured and his ninth when Shiromori “dies.” Each person is represented by a stream of color coming out of his heart.

I do find it interesting that of all the colors, those are the two with patches on them, making me wonder if this also ties into his connection with Mushi and Mystery’s past, but I don’t have enough to go off with that. What I am more interested in are the other colored streams. A lot of people have been connecting colors to others we know, like magenta/purple being Lewis and yellow/oragne being Arthur, something I also support. Green might be linked to ??? but that makes me wonder something I’ll get into in another bullet point.

Bringing this all back to my point, this is just something to think about more than a theory. If we assume that this is the case, then did Mystery grow to six tails after everything that happened in the cave, or did he start out with six? Along with this, if we assume who some of these colors belong to, who got hurt or killed between the time in the cave and present day to make Mystery have seven tails? I could just be looking too deep into this, but thought it was interesting to look at when put into the context of the previous videos.

3. Mystery and ???/Multiple ???

I know that header might seem a bit confusing but stick with me on this one. There’s a clear connection between Mystery and ??? that is more of less confirmed by the end of the video when ??? reaches out and grabs Mystery’s heart. It’s clear that ??? has got a hold on Mystery... but my question is how? The last time we saw it was in Freaking Out, and it wasn’t for very long. It was sure quick to run away when Shiromori popped out of the ground, looking very worried. Almost as worried as someone else we know.

More importantly though is how did ??? not only find the Mystery Skulls gang, but catch up to them running around as just an arm? He has been hanging out at the cave until Shiromori even showed up. We at least know Shiromori was able to track them due to the flowers she spawned, and was fast enough underground to keep up with two moving cars going at a very high speed. I find it a bit hard to believe that ??? was following them the whole time, or was even able to keep up.

I will admit that there is still not a lot we know about ??? and it is very possible that there is more that will be shown in the next video, but this does give me a couple theories that are worth looking into.

Either ??? might have been a part of Mystery the whole time, or the events of the cave left a bit of ??? not just in Mystery, but Arthur’s arm as well, which would mean there’s two... pieces for lack of a better word, running around. I’m not swayed towards one theory over the other, as both seem to have a good backing to them. There is a clear connection between the two of them though as evidence from a couple frames that pass rather quick after Mystery grows his eighth tail.

He’s already changing at this point, and it only fully goes through at the end once Mystery’s passed out. I assume that is because it is a point when ??? could easily take over. But that also harkens back to my second theory. How? If all of ??? is still trapped in Arthur’s arm, how would Mystery be changing like this? There’s no way the arm was somehow able to get inside him off screen right? It makes me wonder if the arm (the physical arm, not just ???) will turn up in the next video and expand more on how it was able to do this.

4. Arthur’s arm/??? and Lewis

And that finally leads me to my final point, being Arthur’s own arm, specifically the left one in both senses. Yes, it’s metal now, but that doesn’t mean he’s got full control over it. At the end of the Future, when Mystery starts to transform, Arthur’s arm really starts to freak out. I only really noticed when @ectoimp​ and @arthurtristankingsmen​ pointed it out on my feed, but the arm seems to be moving on its own and pulling him towards Lewis.

Now I’ve seen a couple theories floating around about this. One thing I would like to point out is the color of the sparks. I’ve seen people tribute this to Arthur himself, but I think it’s just simply a show of the metal arm itself. It’s metal and it’s a show of it sparking and malfunctioning. Yes, we saw this when Lewis’ sparks when into Arthur’s arm and shorted it out, but he’s a ghost and that was his power. These may just be normal mechanical sparks coming out.

Another theory was that it was pulling Arthur towards his friends. While yes, I could see that, there’s one key detail, and that’s Arthur pulling his arm away from Lewis once he sees what it’s doing. Now why would he be physically holding his arm back if it only wanted him to be back with his friends?

I’m more inclined to believe that Arthur’s arm might still be possessed in some way, or ??? still has some kind of influence over it, even if it is metal. With that in mind, something to think about, why is it still going for Lewis? We know it was used to push Lewis off the cliff and kill him, but Lewis is dead now. Granted he is a ghost, but what can Arthur’s arm do to him? It can physically touch him as we saw in Hellbent, but what else? Is there some connection between Lewis and ??? that we don’t know about? Or is it perhaps ??? trying to get rid of another threat since Lewis is still around? Maybe Vivi as well? Just some things to think about.

Also, I wonder if this has a deeper meaning between Mystery, ???, and Arthur given the “vision” we see in Freaking Out where Arthur’s arm can also be seen sparking at the sight of Mystery in kitsune form. Perhaps more than just clever foreshadowing?

5. Predictions

This is mere speculations now, but what can I see coming out of this and going to the next video? Boy we’re hitting the climax and I’m super excited. Ok, so most of the new videos have been starting with some kind of intro before the actual song starts. I imagine the next one will as well. About what I am not sure.

Now this is purely based on a post made by @heilos​, but the word designs was used. Designs, plural. We’ve already seen Murder Mystery, so who else could it be? I’ve got three guesses on who could be getting some kind of design. Arthur: if something is really going on with his arm and ??? starts to take over again, ??? itself: maybe getting a look of his own rather than just being a walking arm, and Lewis: hell, if Mystery can change forms and is a supernatural being, then why can’t Lewis do the same? Especially if Arthur and Vivi play some kind of role in that.

I also think Arthur might play some kind of larger role than just being the one running away. I image his will still do that, but think about it. He’s had experience with ???, he’s got a soft spot for Mystery, even after what was done to his arm, and maybe that could lead to him being a key to helping bring Mystery back to himself.

Holy shit that got long. Sorry for my rambling, but I love sharing about something I care this much about. We may have to wait another two years, but the wait is always worth it! Please let me know your thoughts if you have any or expand on some of these ideas! <3

[otterbeesfanficblog]

Learning Experience

Dean Winchester x Reader (Male pronouns)

A/N: I NEED MORE BISEXUAL DEAN WINCHESTER IN MY LIFE. An, come on, let's be honest, there aren’t enough gay fics out there for this handsome man. S0, here we go!

It was a slow week for you and the brother's, nothing seemed to be piquing an interest. Sam, as diligent and intellectual as always, decided to spend the night on his laptop looking up anything that looked like it could be a case. 

And Dean, as impatient and childish as always, decided to spend his night in your room. You both ordered about 4 pizzas and Dean took a trip to a gas station to raid their snacks, and now, here you both were. 

You were laying with a mountain of pillows behind your head while you leaned against the headboard, Dean put a pillow over your legs and laid on his stomach, leaning on your legs, eating his 7th piece of pizza while you both watched some classic movies that were being played on the motel TV. 

You looked at him for a while, just staring at him stuff his face with the pizza and you let out a short chuckle while shaking your head. That seems to have caught the green-eyed man's attention, he turned away from the TV to look at you, raising a brow at you. 

"What are you laughing at?" His mouth was still stuffed when he spoke to which made you chuckle more. 

"Your stomach has to be a black hole or something." You spoke, smiling as he smirks at you, given a wink before opening his mouth and showing you his chewed up food. You fake gag and forcefully pull your legs out from under him and hit his shoulder, he laughed and flinched, hiding in the pillow with you rolled your eyes at him. 

"You are so disgusting, Winchester. If only the girls you sleep with saw this side of you."

You cross your legs together close to your body, Dean sat up and crawled his way next to you, throwing his arm over your shoulder which you fought for a while before he tightened his grip, pulling you to his chest.

"Awe, is Y/n a jealous boy? Huh?"

You throw your head back with an abrupt laugh and finally push his arm off, smirking at him you cross your arms over your chest, turning your attention to the motel TV. 

"You wish, Winchester."

"Oh?" Dean chuckles, sticking his head into your view and smiling at you. "Are you sure it's not the other way around?"

You hum, tapping a finger on your chin, glancing up at the ceiling while pretending to think about it. 

"Uh, who's the one that always asks me to give him back rubs? And medicine for his hangovers? And his pie when getting take-out? And cleaning his and his brother's clothes when they are too lazy? And cooking for him? Hm?"

You smirk, looking at Dean with a sly expression as you listed off all the things you did for him and his brother. You watched him sit back and fumble for words, opening and closing his mouth like a fish while thinking. You let out a genuine laugh at his struggle, patting him on the shoulder. 

"What would you do without your trusty gay friend, huh?"

Dean rolls his eyes and mumbles a quiet 'whatever' as he realized he couldn't come up with any good come back, the room fell silent as you and the eldest Winchester sat next to each other at the head of the Queen sized bed. 

You could feel a smile growing on your face as you felt Dean's eyes linger on your face, wanted to say what you had been expecting for weeks now. 

It's been a while since you had given Dean a back rub, or Sam for that matter. It wasn't uncommon for you to do a lot for the boys. While you were also a hunter, you were also raised as a witch doctor and mostly you helped with research and patching them up after hunts. 

You weren't the blood sacrificing, baby-killing, demon-worshipping type of witch, no. You used natural magic, herbs and such, worshipping and respecting nature. This helped the boys a lot when it came to nasty hunts, ones that left them with broken bones, strained muscles, and torn open skin that would otherwise need a hospital visit. 

Along with being their personal doctor, you also cooked for them, cleaned their clothes when they were too busy, and often offered them massages for their hard work. 

They, mostly Dean, liked to joke it was why they kept you around, but you and the brothers all knew you were basically a part of the Winchester family. Having been a part of their lives before their mother died, there was no denying you closeness. 

Which lead you back to this moment, Dean staring at the side of your face with those pleading apple green eyes, you knew he wanted a back massage since it had been about 4-5 weeks since you gave him one. 

But you liked watching Dean Winchester, the charming, funny, handsome, adorable, idiot Dean Winchester, struggle to ask you for something that you had done for him for years. 

"... Y/n?" It was so quiet, you almost wanted to pretend you couldn't hear him but you gave him a little break. 

"Yes, Dean?" You said an overly sweet tone, turning your head and giving him an 'innocent' smile. He gave you a small glare before remembering he was asking you something, he let out a sigh before looking back at you.

“Uh… Can… Uhm… Well, I mean… I.. uh.” Dean seemed to be struggling more and more with actually asking, a small tint of red starting to form on his cheeks when he coughed into his hands, you only raised a brow, your smirk growing.

“Use your words, darlin’.”

“Shut up.” Dean hissed at you before ripping it off like a bandaid. “Can I get a massage?”

You raise a brow at him, crossing your arms, a sly smirk still very present on his face.

“Dean, darling, I’m not as easy as those women you pick up at the bars.” You scold him in a sweet tone, his face falling into one that was not as amused as you are. “There's a magic word to be used.”

Dean let out a heavy sigh and rolled his eyes.

“Please?” He asks in a nice tone, you nod with a pout.

“Actually, it was ‘please, my gay lord’ but a simple please will work too.” You laugh as Dean rolls his eyes, you then motion to the bed, then to him.

“You know the drill, handsome. Shirt off, on your stomach, then I will be back with my oils.” You get up from the bed, chuckling as Dean was fiercely taking off his shirt and getting himself comfortable on the bed.

Going through your medical bag, yes you had a separate bag for your things, you searched till you found the oil you needed and the one Dean said was his favorite. You know, for a man that is very keen on keeping up this mean, bad, and tough-guy appearance, behind closed doors he is just the softest little baby you have ever met.

Turning around with the oil in your hand, you saw Dean was already very ready, almost smiling like a giddy child. 

“Are you sure you got everything there, sport?”

Dean tried to pretend he wasn’t excited, covering it up with a cough and looking at the TV as if he was suddenly interested in what was playing, but you saw right through him. Going over to the bed, crawling on the bed you put one leg over him to the other side of him, sitting right on his ass. You noticed his jeans and his belt were going to make it a little difficult to get to his lower back, so you put the oil down next to you and scooted down to his calves.

“Dean, can you pull down your pants a little?”

“Whoa there, Y/n,” Dean said in a playful tone, looking over his shoulder at you with a sly smirk. “Don’t you think we should go out on a date first? I’m a classy guy.”

You roll your eyes at his statement.

“Dean, you are anything but classy. Now, do you want this massage or not?”

Dean was quick to quiet down after that, going to his knees on the bed and unbuckled his belt. While you sat on his calves, you couldn't help the smirk that came to your face as you watch his back muscles move and seeing the many scars and looked at the dimple at the base of his spine. 

You weren't going to pretend or hide the fact that you find Dean attractive, because he is. You definitely weren't the first to say that, but maybe you were the first guy to say that. 

Shaking your head Dean laid himself down again, his pants now lose enough for you to see the brim of his boxers. Move back to sitting on his ass, you open the oil bottle and squeezed some out onto your hand, closing it then rubbing your hands together before starting to massage his lower back. 

You pushed down his boxers a bit more, rubbing and putting pressure on his back, which made him start to groan, headfirst into the pillow making it sound muffled. 

You chuckled, Dean was not shy when it actually came to showing his appreciation during the massage. He told you one that this was better than sex, which equally made you proud of your ability and horny. 

"Breath in." You instructed him, watching as his chest expanded up. "And out." And he did so, and at the last bit of breath, you pushed all your body weight into his lower back. 

A satisfying pop came from his back, which was followed by a loud, muffled moan from Dean, then a breathless chuckle from him as he lifted his head. You continued up his back as he laid with his head sideways on the pillow under him. 

"God, why are you so good at this?" He genuinely was breathless, which made you blush a tiny bit, but you brushed it off as you got more oil and massaged the middle of his back. 

"I'd like to think it's because I'm gay, but it's probably just because of practice."

You both laugh at your answer, you moving up to his shoulder and telling him to relax them as much as possible. 

"With magic hands like those, can't help but say I'm jealous of those guys you're with."

You cackle a little, telling him to breathe in and out again, pushing and hearing several pops in a row at his shoulders. His moans not muffled this time, and still loud with no shame. You roll your eyes at not only what he said, but also at yourself for blushing at his noises. 

"That's a joke, right?"

"What do you mean?" Dean sounded way out of it at you massaged his neck and moving onto his arms. 

"Dean, I've never been with a guy before."

Dean's eyes opened wide at what you said, and as you felt him start to move under you, you went to your knees above him. He turned his whole body so that he was looking up at you, then he sat up, making you fall and sit in his lap, staring right into his eyes. 

He looked at with a face of disbelief, eyebrows scrunched together and a pout of his lips. You slowly started to smile, feeling a little shameful of your purity. 

"No way." Was all he said, you laughed at this, putting a hand to cover your mouth. 

"No way what?"

"You are not a virgin." You let out a genuine laugh this time, leaning back in his lap. He grabbed hold of your arms so you wouldn't fall, but you were too busy giggling away to care. 

You shake your head, still giggling as red started to show on your cheeks. 

"Oh my god, Dean." You shake your head once more, wiping your eyes and looking at him with red cheeks and a smile. "Why do you sound so shocked?"

"You?" He asked, genuinely, raising both eyebrows at you and dropping his hands. You shrug, the red leaving your face as you just give him a gentle smile. "You?" He asked again. 

"I mean, finding a gay guy isn't as easy as it is for you to find a girl at a bar. It's pretty slim pickings in the homosexual community, besides… " you scratch the back of your head as you gave him a shrug. 

"The world is still working on accepting equal rights, so… Not to say I'm scared, but… I'm certainly not shouting it out. Especially in the bars we go to."

Dean looks you in the eyes, you knew you were probably being too depressing, but it was Dean, he would understand. 

"All I'm good for is being on the sidelines, helping you or your brother. Hehe, always the bridesmaid, never the bride."

"Y/n," Dean spoke to you, looking you in the eyes as you looked at him. "Do you.. Really feel that way?"

"Nah," You joke. "I just want your sympathy."

"If you want to leave…" Dean started, which made you stop joking immediately. The thought of leaving the boys, of leaving Dean, was a nightmare, so you quickly shook your head.

“No, no, no! God, no!”

“No?” Dean seemed confused now, you let out a sigh.

“I just mean… Ugh, I have no right to complain.” You finally said, shaking you and head and sliding back you of his lap. While doing so you seemed to miss the sad look that passed over his face.

“I’ve only ever had my eyes on one guy, anyway, but… I know I’m not his type.”

“When did I saw you weren’t my type?”

This made you pause and look at Dean confused, his face was filled with genuine worry. You chuckle and give him an odd look, which he returns with a smirk.

“And, uh,” You cross your arms over your chest and lean forward. “What makes you think it's you?”

“Well, you aren’t very subtle.” Dean says plainly, you smirk back.

“Who says I was trying to be? So, really, when did you notice?”

It was Deans turn to sigh, giving you an almost shameful look.

“When we were kids? But… at the time, I thought it was… weird?” Dean seemed to be trying to tell you the truth about him being homophobic when we were young, but he was also trying not to be mean, which you smiled at.

“You can say you were homophobic, I know you aren’t.”

“Well, no, I just thought it was different. And as we both got older and I started going out with more and more girls when we were on hunts, and I noticed you still liked me… I wasn’t weirded out anymore, in fact, I won’t lie in saying it boosted my ego.”

You laugh and roll your eyes at this, of course, Dean Winchester would get an ego boost from a gay man finding him attractive. Why not.

“Then I realized… it wasn’t as one-sided as I thought it was.” You could tell he was being honest now because now he was rambling, and it took you a moment to realize he meant he started feeling for you back.

“I’ll admit, I was scared out of my mind. What would dad think? What would Sammy think? You hadn’t come out to me or dad yet, but I heard you talking to Sam so, it had to be okay right? I mean, I still liked women, women are nice, but… I always felt… natural, around you. I wasn’t openly trying to flirt with you to get into your pants for one good night, we would talk for hours. About nothing and everything… and it made me scared.”

“Because… you liked a guy?” You finally asked after his ramblings, he shook his head.

“No, no… because… I finally had someone I loved romantically. Someone I wanted to be around all the time, to talk to and have pizza parties with, gossip and make fun of Sammy, just… being around you even if neither of us were talking or even looking at each other. Hell, if I had to sit in a room with you alone with neither of us talking and just sitting there together… Heaven on earth.”

You felt yourself smiling without even thinking about it, his words made your heart flutter in your chest, making you want to squeal like a schoolgirl who finally got noticed by her crush. 

“So,” You slowly started to ask, looking into his eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Dean chuckled and let out a huge breath of air, almost as if letting go of a huge weight he had been carrying around this whole time.

“I was scared.”

“Of being bisexual?”

“... Of screwing it up and losing you.” You both stared at each other, the junk foods and TV be all had been forgotten as you looked into each other's eyes. Dean continued.

“I’m not a good man, Y/n, that much is obvious. I pretty much a man-whore, but you… you are the picture-perfect man of my dreams. Literally.”

You both shyly chuckle at this, both of you now fully realizing what all these spoken words meant. 

“I like you, Y/n, a lot… But I don’t want to screw it up.”

“Can’t screw up something that hasn’t even started, Winchester.” You joked, nudging him with your hand against his. Look at your hands, your sight went to his hands and it seemed he had the same idea. Slowly you both reached out and held each other’s hands, then looked at each other once more.

“I know one sure-fire way to confirm your feelings, to know you won’t screw it up.”

“What’s that?” Dean asked as if he didn’t already know where this was going based on the growing smile on his face. You can only shake your head with a breathy laugh before you close your eyes and lean in, Dean mirroring you and finally, your lips touched.

It was a soft, almost first kiss shy feeling from him. This was your first kiss, but Dean had no excuse being so gentle and shy. It made you laugh, your lips parting and smiling against his. Dean found this as a challenge to make you speechless, taking his chance he let go of your hands and pulled your whole body to his lap again, pulling your legs over each side of him and holding them there as he deepened the kiss.

You certainly shut up after this, placing one hand on his still bare chest and the other on his cheek, tracing and feeling the scruff of facial hair, letting Dean have more access to your mouth while parting your lips. 

It really was a dream come true, for both of you, and especially Dean. With this boosted confidence and pushed you all the way back on the bed, you back to the sheets and legs put on either side of him. He places one arm next to your head, but he tightened his other hand on your thigh, holding it up high and close to his body. His jeans were still loose from the already forgotten massage, showing off the top part of his boxers, and soon enough his chest was pressed right against yours.

You could swear he could feel your fast-beating heart, you gave soft gentle breaths as he pulled away from you now kiss swollen lips and traveled down your chin to your jaw then you ear, giving gentle, lingering kisses as he traveled down your neck, savoring every moment of this like it was all going to end.

Then…

It did.

“Hey, guys, I think I found a---” Sam, unaware of the activity going on in the room, simply walked in, then froze in the doorway as he saw you and his brother.

All of you were stone still, staring at one another.

Dean, shirtless, glistening from oils and pants undone and falling off. You, under him, shirt all disheveled from Deans wandering hands, hair going everywhere. Sam, standing in the doorway like a child who just found his parents 'wrestling’.

It was silent for so long that you couldn’t take it, a loud, abrupt laugh ripped out from your throat. You scream laughed, turning on your side, away from Sam, coving your face from embarrassment.

Dean sat between your legs, giving his brother the hardest glare he could muster with red cheeks. And Sam was beyond horrified with embarrassment, his face probably more red than either of you combined.

“I-I-I’m sorry, I-I should have knocked --- If I had known--!”

“Sam?” 

“Going. I’ll tell you guys tomorrow.”

Dean didn’t even have to say it to his younger brother, Sam tripping over himself and fumbling with the door handle before finally closing the door. Dean sighed, running a hand down his face as he turned himself back to you, who was still laughing way too hard.

Dean chuckled and pushed your shoulders down, pushing you to lay on your back again. He watched as a few tears spilled from your eyes, you face red and you wheezed with laughter, making him laugh too.

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t that funny.” Dean, chuckled, watching you fan yourself to calm down.

“I can’t breath!” You wheezed once more before finally calming down to tiny giggles, wiping your eyes fully as you looked up with Dean with a full smile. He looked down at you with soft eyes, looking at you like you were a masterpiece, which to him you very much are.

“Well, we’ll have to learn to lock Sam out.”

You giggle one more time before pulling him down for a kiss, then speaking with a smile.

“It was a learning experience, which we will have plenty more of.”

[themrmalice]

Treacherous Deep

By Malice

Narrated on YouTube by The Disciple: https://youtu.be/rmoQAE5QBM8

   

Metal groans in discomfort as its frame compresses, glass shakes and snickers, full knowledge that it alone stands as a barrier between the crew and the black depth outside. Like invisible arms squeezing the cabin with all its might, wishing only to crush the sub like a tin can. Within were 5 “Derelicts” a term coined for salvagers, investigating a signal that blew through the system from 15,000m below the tense surface of water. Clean, lacking waves, like a marble. Took 4 blasts from an orbital kinetic cannon to break the surface tension, allowing the Derelicts to go beneath its murky waves. 

    Passing 4,000m, the Abyss, where no light dare tread, and where only 1 singular pulse of light may emit. A fiery red beams from a subsurface station, pulsing, again, again, again. It was still a few thousand metres down, in the pitch black beneath us. Perched on the only continental mass we could find, between two cliffs leading into a massive and unexplored crevice. Depth calculators still havent found the bottom, hidden as it is, we were sent in to find where the S.O.S. was coming from. 

    Passing 6,000m, its been quiet, with only a few low groans from the Ballast interrupting that silence. Hideous and beautiful, the ocean is nothing but a masterpiece. Our Sonar has not picked up anything thus far, and with a 4,000 mile radius, its only proof that we are truly in an abyss. No rocky formations, no lifeforms, not even bacterial life. Just our sub. The S.S. Moloch. As we sink deeper into the abyss, my job becomes far more difficult. I manage room pressurization. Normally Automated, but the station wanted us to be extra cautious. After 10,000m, its one button press from instantaneous death due to Barotrauma. I’ve seen it, at this depth the body is its own weapon. Implosion, your body guts itself brutally, the fashion by which it does this involves innumerable organs expanding and collapsing. In the blink of an eye, what used to be your friend is now a misty cloud of parting crimson. 

    Passing 9,000m, in just a few minutes, our ears will start to ring, a signal I need to up pressurization in the sub, just a tick too much however, and we will meet a watery grave. The control panel in front of me started to beep a couple hundred meters up, showcasing a warning that the pressure in my specific cabin was getting too low. If I let it beep for a second longer, my cabin would have collapsed, adding to the weight of our sub and eventually sinking the S.S. Moloch. Everything must be perfect, every tiny calculation, no room for error. Our Oxygen Supply, if the tempurature increases the entire supply could explode and puncture the bow, dragging us all down with it. The Sonar, if we lose power to it, even for a moment, wont be able to notify us of our descent speed. Moving to fast, we hit a rock and implode, moving to slow, and we are wasting valuable minutes beneath the surface. The Pilot, his hands are weary and eyes are straining, sweating profusely, one wrong move and we’ve lost time down here. This S.O.S. beacon was calculated to be below 20,000m. Under the crust and buried in the mantle. 

    10,000m, we found the station, who signalled us into a drydock for resupply and a small break lasting only 2 hours. A mistake in my opinion, the break may only slow us down. I remained on the ship, telling those on the station I cannot leave until I can guarantee the safe reentry of my companions. About 30 minutes in, I gave in and left. The station was dilapidated, held together by the bare minimum, I believe I found some gum holding a small hole in the ground of the dry dock together, frozen by nitrogen. Depth Gum too, made out of plants found down here, eases anxiety while retaining focus. The crew aboard the station, Station Lamia, one of 4 here and the only one at this depth in The Trench. The Crew were all very calm, relaxed, and overall pleasant. They gave us food, water, the occasional ration of alcohol, and eventually sat us down for a more serious topic. The Trench. The widest berth they’ve found down here was a mere 800m in diametre. Our sub could easily slip through, but that was merely the opening. Past 14,000m, the diameter never opens up to 800m, meaning we would need to take it slow and cautious. They warned us of the wild life down here as well. Incredibly territorial and incredibly large to boot. The largest creature they’ve seen can dwarf the entire station! Its so massive that it could never find its way out of the cavern system. The caves it resides in are too far beneath the trench to explore, but a probe was sent in and never found the bottom. Only the horrifying site of an unknown station. Upon exploration of it, the researchers found scriptures of unknown languages. A sign we have been looking for, a sign of sentient alien life. The unknown station was named “Incognita” and has been probed only twice. The full station has not been explored, as part of it was burrowed into the wall of the cave. Another threat they mentioned, oozing black liquid, an ichor so strong it could stick our whole sub to the side of a building on Earth with only 5 square inches of it. Its so powerful that extraction is next to impossible. They would require a requisitioned Extraction Mech AND have it modded to survive at this depth. To put it lightly, this cave system wants us dead. The Water, wants us dead. The creatures. The rocks. The currents. All of it wants us dead. The final and most foreboding threat they warned us about, the water itself. Its not water. It feels, looks, tastes like water. But its lighter. And on a microbial scale, it too moves upon its own volition. Tiny molecules that sink into the pores of skin and bones. The molecules themselves will expand and connect during expansion. When you swim in the water, you cant come out. They happily gave us a new Depth Suit, only one and not fitted. We boarded our sub and said goodbye. The Crew gave us hugs and we left with a somber farewell. They didnt expect to see us again. 

    Passing 12,000m, the pressure is off the charts and hard to control. Outside is no longer black, but now gray rocks painted by my light. These rocks moved swiftly. “I thought they said this cave had a wide berth?” I said to the captain. The radio clicked on, “Yeah, I thought so too. I cant remain mad at them though, I wouldn’t want to do constant calculations down here.” He has a point. But, this is a lot smaller than they led us to believe! We barely fit through some caves! The stalactites nearly scraped my window, but they were pointed at a peculiar angle. Odd. Why would they be pointed off to the side? Maybe the ship nudged them. 

    Passing 15,000m, we were nearing the point of the S.O.S., with enough Oxygen to get us back to the station with an hour to spare and enough fuel to get us to the surface and back, we were all feeling warily confident! The Crew had snuck a pack of Depth Gum for us onto the ship, so we were all feeling more relaxed than normal. Even with our ship barely fitting through some sections. The ship groaned a few metres down, made us all jump out of our seats! It was so loud we thought we scraped against the wall! Turns out the Ballast just kicked some sand from the bed! Our on board engineer screamed “Watch it! We dont want to poke a hole in the ballast, you know that right?” The captain quickly responded “I-I didnt hit it! The sonar didn’t state that the bed was anywhere close to us! We had about a 10 metre difference between the ballast and the sand bed!” “Uh-huh,” the engineer groaned, “just make sure you watch it next time. Please.” “Of course.” The captain wearily said. He looked more confused as he examined the Sonar, I peaked over and saw what was confusing him. The sand bed behind us was now much lower! How can that be? Its solid rock with a pile of sand on it! Thank god we only nicked the sand pile itself!

    Passing 17,000m, this cave is by far an anomaly! Nothing we have ever seen before! The cave walls shift! I swear on my life! I told the captain and he said nothing, just a blank stare. Of course, thats a staple of him. He wears drab attire, only his captain coat and hat set him apart from the rest of us. The generic blue captains coat was nothing to scoff at however, for he had a number of badges, all decorated his upper left shoulder. One patch was a commendation of performing 12 missions below 10,000m. This would be his 13th. Another patch showed his military service during The Fall. One for 40 years of service. Finally there was one I hadn’t recognized. A red patch, decorated with a blue rose in the middle with the words “Flos Occidere” encircling it. I know that Patch I just cant put a name to it!

    Passing 19,000m, we were approximately 1 hour from the S.O.S. The Captain turned to me, with his dead glare he said “I want you to go in the Suit and investigate the signal.” I was surprised, “Why me?” I asked. He spoke again, this time without tone “I want you to go in the suit and investigate the signal, thats an order.” I quickly responded “Yes sir!”. But something felt off about him. As we descended, the pressure began to stabilize and I asked him “May I go get a drink, sir?” He nodded quietly, eyes fixated on the sonar, which shifted every few minutes. I got up and began my descent into the musty storage, where I picked up a flashlight, a Seal, and a bottle of water. As I turned around the Engineering Chief was behind me, glaring at me with similarly dead eyes. “You got what you need for your dive?” I nodded, shaken by his posture and gaze, “Wait, how did you know I was diving? The captain never sent out a mess-” He turned around and grabbed a handheld sonar and the Dive Suit I was going to wear, “Better get prepared, we are only 500m from the bottom.” then he shoved them all into my arms and slowly walked away. I was trembling, both from that encounter, and the thought that we were already only 500m away from “The Bottom”. Which means either we are descending fast, or the caves shifted again, bringing the Beacon closer to us for some unexplained reason. 

    20,000m. We stopped just a few meters away from a Derelict, crushed into itself with triangular holes roughly grinded into the body. The scene was horrendous. I was alone in the jettison chamber, in my suit with an hour of oxygen available to me. I booted up my Seal, and it began to whir rapidly. I turned it off to preserve power, and gave a thumbs up to the camera. Voice Comms werent available in this suit, unfortunately, so I was on my own. The chamber opened and a cold wash of liquid cleaned the scuffs off my suit and I was immediately enveloped by the deep black. The ships bow lights were on, illuminated the whole of the wreck. I booted my Seal up again and it tugged me towards the wreck, where its perched flashlight poked into recesses and revealed exploded Oxygen Tanks and cracked glass. After surveying the outside, I wormed my way within through an incredibly large hold, the same triangular holds decorated the rim of it. The steel door ahead of me was covered in that ichor the crew on the station mentioned, so I wasnt getting in through that. Luckily the way the ship was bent showed a smaller hole that gave way to the inside. I barely squeezed through, and before I knew it I was inside the Medical Bay. Only a distorted arm floated towards the ceiling, other than that, the place was empty. I noticed that the door had claw marks on it, something with incredible strength tried to break in. I found the S.O.S. Beacon and turned it off. 

    As soon as the switch clicked into place, though, the lights from the sub were gone. Replaced by a deafening squeal of metal against stone, similar to that a rumble began beneath my feet! I had to get out of the sub! I clawed my way to a hole and began to tear through the rusted metal with only my hands. Unfortunately, the metal had cut a hole into my glove! I swam out, searching for my Sub, but nothing was there except the dead black! Limitless, I used my seal to chase upwards for a minute and found nothing, not even the cave walls! I felt a current, a pull, the water shifted from behind me! An unknown presence was here! I quickly descended back to the sub, and sheltered myself inside the Medical Bay. I saw something move, something massive! Enormous teeth and a gaping maw! Eventually, it all went black again, my light flickered off so all I could see was black! It came back on again, illuminated a pale figure in the distance, outside the hole in the sub, a massive mouth with hundreds of teeth, all swirling in an oval! It drew closer and closer, until I could see the shine of its teeth! It slammed into the sub, my light flashed off again, and all I could hear were the hideous moans emitted from the sub itself as it conformed to the mouth biting into it. The rumbling began again, god I cant take another cave shift! It continued for minutes on end until grinding to a halt! It was all quiet! My light still didnt work, the battery finally ran out! I felt the rush of the water, the water shifted again! But this time, it was next to me! I reached for my belt and grabbed an emergency flare, I struggled with the tip for a while and fumbled lighting it, until eventually, it snapped to life! And before me, illuminated by the red of my flare, a horrific figure appeared and disappeared again. It looked to have tentacles! I have no idea! I slowly rose to my feet, the whole medical bay was illuminated now, I could see the hole! Instantly I got up and swam out, where I was met with a distant sound that rang through my body. I felt something slowly envelope my leg, and tug me downwards. I let go of the flare and flailed back and forth as the thing grabbing me did! I was hurled into the sand, where I snagged a small pointed rock, which I used to jab into the gripping mass! With one hand I held it, and with the other I punched into the squishy thing with the rock! It let go, and I began to fall deeper. The flare was below me, showcasing a massive cave, something from my deepest nightmares! The walls were flexing and slowly writhing into itself, weaving a horrid shape around me. I continued to fall, feeling the water rush around me, watching the flare as it too fell. The walls began to slowly narrow, until only a small hole, big enough for one person to fit was found. It looked like it was excavated. When I gently landed beside the hole, I picked up the now dying flare. I raised it, nothing was around me! But i felt the water rushing to and fro. I reluctantly hopped into the hole, and slowly descended into it. I fell for what felt like hours, before reaching a small cave with no way out. When I hit the ground, a horrific sound bellowed through the cave. Another groan. The flare died out. I was alone in a crunchy pit. It felt like the floors were made of wood that had been burnt to cinders.

    An hour passed, I began crying, watching my Oxygen Supply deplete slowly. Just let me die already. Before me, I saw a small yellow light, it was growing in size! Its the end! I’m free! I jumped to my feet and stammered closer! On my approached I realized, it was something physical. The size of a Walnut, growing, becoming more bright. It began to illuminate something it was hanging on. I moved in for a closer look, my hand outstretched to grab the pulsing seed. Until the seed flashed brightly, and showcased the horror that held it. Long, gangly hands. All its bones were grotesquely lengthened, and a swirling mass of tentacles weaving into a ball laid at its feet. A human skeleton. Its ribcage still loosely intact, and its arms slowly enveloping me. The skull was fully dysmorphic, the upper half of the skull was lengthened with sharp, elongated teeth pointing from the front. Below its jaw hung, barely held to to the skull. From the roof of the mouth, the seed hung. How was it moving? The last thought that crossed my mind. Only to be answered, by the realization of that very black ichor covering the joints and crossing from one bone to another. As its arms closed in, its head moved towards me, and the light began to fade.

[klaussstilinski]

Chapter 4

An: I was slipping plain and simple. I truly hope you enjoy this chapter. Please leave your feedback, all is welcome. Sorry for the long wait but another chapter is coming Thursday!!

Disclaimer: DON’T OWN ANYTHING ABOUT ON MY BLOCK, JUST MY CHARACTERS DAISY, JACKIE, AND MADELINE.

You ever get that feeling like your whole world is falling apart and then boom something exciting happens and everything is fine in the moment? If so, well, congratulations you’re human, and you’re not the only one with those feelings. When your world Is falling apart you have this crushing feeling in your chest; like there’s an elephant sitting there just waiting for you to stop breathing. Although it feels like your heart is beating faster and is going to beat out of your chest cavity it’s actually all in your head, that’s called panic. Your heart rate is picking up because of your fear of death. Then all of a sudden, your lungs start expanding like a balloon when someone starts blowing warm air into it. That crushing feeling is finally lifted off your chest and you can take a gulp of fresh air. That. I wanted that. As I'm sitting on my warm chocolate brown recliner couch, I wipe my eyes as I realize that the meeting with Oscar didn’t go as I had planned, or even hoped for. It was so much worse, and to be honest I don’t know how I'm going to face him or the kids for a while. ~THAT MORNING~ I wake before my alarm clock starts going off. Excitedly I get up to start my morning routine; hair up, brush teeth, wash face, moisturizer, pull hair down just so I can put 2 french braids in and dance my way to my closet to pick out a semi-comfortable outfit. Boyfriend jeans, a basic grey V-neck tee and a black and an old black and grey plaid shirt matched with some white vans. Smirking I all but skip to the white nightstand, unplug my phone, grab my necessities and walk to the wooden front door, set the alarm and walk to the car. Nothing is going to wipe this big smile off my face. That is until I walk into the back door of the bakery. “Daisy! Oh, thank god you’re here. I need you to pick up Jackie’s shift, she came down with the flu.” Maddy gagged, “It was real nasty! She facetimed me this morning, her nose was so red and her eyes were so puffy. OH and her voice was basically gone.”

“That’s fine, bu-but um wasn’t she trying to finish some cupcakes for a 8 year old's birthday party?” I asked swallowing hard.

“Yeah, so she finished half of the order, which was 50 cupcakes, but the other half of the order was the 2-tier cake.”

“I-I didn’t know about the cake. When is the deadline?”

“Sunday...but like I said the cupcakes are done!” She quickly adds when I look at her as my jaw hits the floor.

“Maddy! Today is friday, just please tell me she already has the framing of the cake.”

Walking to the fridge she opens the doors with a grand gesture. “She actually does, and she has base coating done.” Breathing a sigh of relief, I put my belongings away, put on my apron, wash my hands, and get started making the fondant for the marvel birthday cake. By the time I get finished covering the cake with the fondant, it was already 12. Short day my ass. Jackie owes me big time.

~4 THAT EVENING~

R- 3:13 pm: Daisy raincheck on tonight's meetup!!

R- 3:17 pm: You know you could at least text me back...

R- 3:19 pm: Okay so I know you got this message; it says it was delivered

M- 3:25 pm: DAISY! The boys, mainly Ruby, wants to reschedule. Call me as soon as you get this!!!

M- 3:40 pm: Why haven’t you called? Are you hurt?

J- 4:01 pm: Just to formally update you woman, we can’t make it to the meetup tonight...

Well for once I'm glad my phone was on silent. Hanging my apron, I clock-out and quickly head out the door putting my phone up to my ear.

“Hey, sorry I had to cover Jackie’s shift at work. I saw y’all couldn’t make it to the meeting tonight but why did you need me to call you?” I ask as soon as Monse picks up.

“You’re fine, yeah something about Ruby needing to move his things into his room with his abuela. But I actually need to talk to you. It’s really important.”

“Talk, I'm driving!”

“I think I might have feelings for Cesar.”

“Um yeah I know, I think we all know at this point.”

“But he’s pressuring me to tell everyone. He I feel like he wants to stake a claim, or something.”

“Are you home? I’m on the way, we’re going to my house to talk.”

“Yes, how far are you?”

“About 10 minutes away, be ready!” I reply hanging up the phone. Arriving I blow the once before she comes running out the front door and quickly jumping into the car.

“I didn’t know you had a record player.” Monse yells through the house.

“It was a gift from grandma, along with all of her old vinyls.” Picking up a Nat King Cole record I turn it over to show her the vintage vinyl.

“She was into Jazz?”

“Stop beating around the bush. What’s going on with you and Cesar?” Glancing at the clock, it’s already after 5.

“So, we’ve been seeing each other since I came back from camp and-”

“Having sex.” I interrupt as I sit down beside her on the couch.

“W-what?” She stutters looking at me with wide eyes.

“Monse, I'm not dumb I know y’all are having sex. Do I approve? Hell no. Do I wish you would have waited? Hell yeah. But hey,” I turn and look her in the eyes. “I’m not disappointed in you Monse. I’m not judging you either because there are worse things you could be doing. But just a 1 question, are you using protection?”

“Yeah...” But she’s looking everywhere but at me.

“Monse?”

“We’re only using condoms, but not all the time.”

“What?” I screech.

“Dad has never talked to me about birth control or even sex. I’m not even sure if I should talk to him about it. Wouldn’t that be weird?” Her round cheeks turn slightly red, reminding me of the time mama first told me about sex and I got so embarrassed.

“Well since you already technically know about sex, I'll let you know right now that condoms are good birth control but they aren't 100 percent effective. That’s why sometimes it is best to be on some kind of birth control yourself, not saying you have to though. There’s the pill, IUD, the shot, the patch, implant, ring, sponge, and so many-”

“Okay I get it!” Monse yells cutting me off. “There are many types of birth control, but um this isn’t why I wanted to talk you. I’m afraid if we say something it’ll break up the crew.”

Laughter bubbles up my throat and without warning it tumbles out. I stop when I see Monse grinding her teeth.

“See this is why I was afraid to tell you!”

“I thought you were joking, Monse you’re afraid of what the boys will say. The same two boys who are most likely jerking off to magazines or porn?”

“Eww I totally didn’t need to hear that.” Shuddering she jumps up and starts pacing the living room. “I just don’t want things to change between us.”

“Things are going to change, you’re growing up. Everyone changes Monse, you can't stop that. But if they don’t support you in this decision then screw them. Real friends support you in anything and any situation. From what I understand they love you both, right?”

“Right!”

“Okay then I have no doubt in my mind that those boys will accept you two. Maybe you’re just scared of your feelings for him.” She went to interrupt me but instead her stomach growling cuts her short. “I know you Monse, you’re just scared and nervous, which is normal. But maybe you should give it a try with you and Cesar just to see how things will work out. But for right now let's get some food in you!”

“Good idea.” She says chewing on her nails while walking to the kitchen with me following close behind.

Frozen pizza and tater tots were definitely a win tonight. Not the healthiest but who eats healthy 24/7 anyways.

“So, dad is picking me up. He should be here really soon” She says as we’re watching tv after dinner.

“Oh, when did he get back in town?”

“Yesterday, he said something about the two of you not really talking right now.”

“Yeah just somethings I guess we need to talk about.” I shrug not really caring to have this conversation with her.

“That bad?”

“Not really, I just don’t agree with everything he does.” Lights shine through the living room curtain. “Well I guess he’s here, come on I'll walk you to the door.” Heading towards the door she stops to ask me a question.

“Did you use birth control with Spooky?” Laughing I push her towards the door.

“Not at first no, but eventually I started taking the pill, which by the way there’s different kinds of.” Opening the door, I turn to her to give her a hug just to see her face frown with confusion.

“What are you doing here?” Turning around I come face to face with the devil himself.

“Hello to you to.” Oscar announces looking at me the whole time. 30 seconds go by before another car pulls into the driveway.

“Well there's my ride, I'll call you later Daisy, love you!” Monse yells running down the steps in towards dads car.

“Why are you here? It’s not even 8 yet.”

“Thought I'd surprise you; we need to talk.” He walks by me as if I wasn’t blocking his way in.

“Um, excuse me I didn’t invite you in!” I follow him once I close the door. “You can’t just walk into my house uninvited.” Laughing he sits down and leans back stretching his legs and arms.

“Come sit,” he pats the cushion beside him. I choose the other end of the couch. 10 minutes go by before I decide the silence begins to get to me.

“What did you want to talk about?” How awkward.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He locks his jaw in place.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don't play stupid with me.” Playing stupid? No, I'm actually stupid because I have no clue what the hell he’s talking about.

“Honestly have no clue what you’re talking about Oscar.”

“The baby...” It gets eerily quiet. My body runs cold, it feels like my body turns to stone.

“Got nothing to say now huh?” Hanging my head, I lock my fingers together in my lap.

“I did...I-I came to you and told you.” Glancing up at him, I see him look at me with disgust in his eyes.

“You didn’t tell me that you got an abortion.” His voice gets deep and raspy.

“No, who told you that?”

“That’s not important, you were my girl. You come to me about these things not-”

“How was I supposed to do that when you were behind bars? Huh?” My voice gets louder and louder. “I was 15 and scared Oscar. You weren’t here to help.”

“I would've been if you just told me from the beginning.” His neck is turning red from all the straining and yelling he's doing.

“You know that wouldn’t have stopped you from doing what you did!”

“How do you know?” He laughs, but it wasn’t one filled with humor, no, it was filled with sarcasm. “I would’ve done anything for you.”

“You told me to leave and build a life for myself.” I try to change to direction to conversation.

“That doesn’t mean leaving town, and getting an abortion.”

“Stop saying that, I didn’t get an abortion. Why do you keep saying that?”

“Why won’t you tell me what really happened? I want to believe you, but since you won’t tell me what happened I can only believe what other people tell me.” Was his smart ass response.

“Why can’t you just believe what I’m telling you and leave it at that?”

“Because it was my child!” He yelled.

“It was my child too.” I scream back officially breaking down in tears. “I lost the baby…” I manage to say as I’m trying to breathe through my soon to be panic attack.

Silence.

I guess he didn’t expect that. When you’ve been told one thing for years, a lie, and then hear another thing that might be just as worse as the lie, I guess it would render you silent.

“I was consistently worried about you, me, the baby, what my mom would think, and so stressed out. God I was so stressed, that before I knew it I had lost the baby. I was only 11 weeks along” Wiping my eyes I get up just to slowly pace the floor. “Please…say something.”

“Do you blame me?” Looking up at me, we lock eyes as so stop and face jinx

“No, I never would. The doctor said it happens often.”

“Did you believe them? That it happens often?” He whispered.

“No…it was my fault. I knew I shouldn’t have been that stressed but instead I still decided to take on everyone’s problems and my own.”

“You should’ve told me. You were mine, the baby was mine.” With his head hanging between his broad shoulders he starts running his fingers through his hair. “Had everything planned and written down in there. I was going to behave and get out early. Come home to you and our child. Get a job, buy a home, and have more children. Build a better life for our family. That’s what I wanted.”

“Im so so sorry Oscar!” Closing my eyes as tears run down my cheeks.

“That’s what kept me alive in there. Knowing I had you and our blessing to come home to. Then that all came crashing down when I found out the truth, well what I thought was the truth.” I stayed quite to let him get what he needed off his chest. “I don’t blame you, you shouldn’t have had to worry about me, I put you in that situation. For that I’m truly sorry Daisy.”

“Yo-you don’t owe me an apology.” I know my under eyes had to be an angry red from all the wiping and rubbing.

“I do, because no matter how mad I am I’m still in love with you.” I can’t move, I think I’ve stopped breathing too. “I’ve tried to stop, god I’ve tried. But I know where my heart is and who it belongs to.”

“You don’t mean that, you’re just upset Oscar.” Whimpering I sit down beside him.

“I mean everything I just said. But it’s because I love you that I can’t love you.”

“What? I’m confused. You love me, but you can’t love me?”

“That would put a target on you. Being my girl in the streets would put you and everyone you love in danger. I can’t have that, I would kill everyone for even looking at you the wrong way.” Oscar explains himself.

“I’ve dated you before, I know what it’s like.”

“But things have changed, I’m more powerful than I was before. I won’t put you in danger again, end of story.” He gets up and starts heading for the door. Jumping up I chase after him.

“You can’t just tell me you love me then walk out the door Oscar. That’s not fair. You’ve done this to me before and it left me in pieces last time.” I grab his arm to stop him from walking. “Please just talk to me more before you just close the book on us.”

“Goodnight Daisy, I’ll see you around.” He pulls his arm from my hands and locks the bottom lock before heading out the door. A loud sob comes from somewhere in the room and it’s once I collapse in the chair when I realize that the sound came from me.

~THE PRESENT~

As I’m wiping the tears from my face I decided here and now that this won’t be the end of us. He might’ve walked out but I refuse to just give up on him so easily. Then that’s when it hits me. All this time I’ve been running away from my feelings for him. Everything is so clear.

I’m still fucking in love Oscar Diaz.

My phone ringing brings me out my trance. Running to the kitchen I find the phone on the kitchen table and as soon as I seen the name something else comes to realization within these last 5 minutes. Only 2 people knew of me losing the baby. I hit decline just for the person to pick call right back. I have to options, ignore them and turn my phone off or answer them and confront them of their disgrace and lies. I hate confrontation so option number one sounds really nice right now. Too late! 

“Why would you lie to Oscar and tell him that I had an abortion?” I spit in the phone. 

“Daisy baby...”

TAG: @mbaku-babygirl @izraahh1 @shesbriaanayy @aka-eb @yxseminx

[madrivervalleyicelandics]

Note:  click through the photos and gifs above to read the captions.

I’ve been promising for ages now that I’d make a post about the hoofcare changes we’ve made to our program in 2017, and now that the days are getting shorter I’ve had a bit more downtime to actually do it!  So here goes - it is long and I struggled with how to organize it, hopefully those of you who were interested don’t mind wading through all of this information :P

Over the past year I have transitioned every horse in my care out of metal shoes.  This was a decision that we made based on research demonstrating that the conclusiveness of metal shoes is harmful to equine joints in the longterm.  

Since making the switch, I have noticed a drastic positive change in my horses.  Some of the back tightness and stiffness in some of the horses, which I had long accommodated to saddle fit issues and had been working with a saddle fitter to fix, suddenly cleared up - every single horse’s back improved this year, with softer and better developed muscles - the good ones got better, and the ones with some issues got significantly better.  I believe that chiropractic/bodywork care is not an “extra” cost but a necessary part of maintaining equine athletes, as this is the only domesticated animal that we SIT ON and expect to perform, so I continue to have my vet check my horses regularly and work with me to determine each horse’s training program.  However, since making the switch out of metal shoes, my vet hasn’t had as much to adjust when he checks the horses.  This is the most marked change, and it’s not one that I expected.  It’s been dramatic enough that I am completely sold on going metal-free.

Another change that I have noticed is improved balance and posture (this, of course, ties into the back softness) in a way that has improved clarity of gait.  There is often this idea that horses which are pacey will be better with longer hooves and heavier shoes - this belief is the reason why we have so many shoeing regulations in our sport, to prevent people from cheating or compromising equine welfare to achieve higher scores.  However, paceyness and trottiness are both body issues - exaggerating hoof angles or shoe weight does not fix the root of the problem.  Fixing the balance of the hoof, rolling back the toe, and making the horse more comfortable through their backs and muscles has trickled down into the gaits - now, on shorter toes and composite shoes or hoof boots (which are LIGHTER than the metal shoes that most of us use in this sport), horses that had a tendency towards paceyness and trottiness have become much more supple and balanced.  Now, of course, this is along with a careful foundational dressage program and fitness program, so I’m not saying that you can throw composite shoes on your horse and all of his training issues and chronic back issues will magically be fixed - but for a horses already in a solid, compassionate program, this change has given them a serious boost.

Finally, I’ve noticed that the horses seem a little more confident and cheerful working out of metal shoes, although they were already confident and cheerful - again, it’s like the change has given them a boost.  They’ve got more cushion when their hoof hits the ground, and it’s something they reacted to immediately in a positive way.  The first time I rode each horse in the composite shoes or hoof boots, I was amazed by how different the horses felt - in a good way!  It’s a bit like riding on air, and it’s a more secure feeling because the hooves don’t slide when they hit the ground.  

So, now that I’ve opened with the benefits I’ve seen in my horses since making this change, I’ll get into the details of what I’m using, why I’m using it, etc.  

First, some background information:

Last year, myself, Amy Goddard, and Kathy Sierra submitted a proposal to the USIHC Board (before I was elected to the BOD) requesting that composite shoes and hoof boots be allowed in sport competition.  We made this proposal in response to new (and even some older) research that demonstrates that non-metal hoof protection reduced concussion on our horses’ joints, and improves their chances at soundness and good longevity.  I had kept my horses in metal shoes for many years and had not suffered serious ill effects from it as some have (no early onset arthritis, tendon issues, hoof ailments, etc.), I think because of my focus on conditioning and strong foundational dressage work - however, I made a promise to myself and my horses that I will always be open-minded to new findings, and that I will change my ways when I see that something else may be better for my animals’ welfare.  The proposal was sent on to FEIF, the international governing body for Icelandic sport, where it was approved on an experimental period for the 2017 show season.  Almost immediately, I sought out to find a farrier that could help me transition my horses over to nonmetal hoof protection.

My search led me to Common Ground Hoofcare.  Annie and Jeremiah are EXTREMELY qualified professionals who are 100% focused on equine welfare.  They’ve dedicated themselves to a never-ending quest to further their knowledge and improve their craft, and as a result they are very open-minded and educated.  Their approach produces sound, comfortable athletes and their methods are backed up by the best and most current research we have available.  As new information becomes available, they adapt their practices to include it.  These are the kind of equestrian professionals that I like to work with.  

Best of all, THEY TRAVEL!  They can probably come to you!  They travel around the Midwest, Kentucky, etc. to offer their services and are willing to expand their territory, although they prefer to stick mainly to the East Coast.  They’re also able to recommend other trimmers and farriers that they respect, if they can’t cover your area.  I repeat, THEY CAN COME TO YOU, OR HELP YOU FIND SOMEONE WHO CAN.

The shoes approved by FEIF included the Duplo composite shoe, and the Easyboot glove and Easyboot Epic.  I chose to shoe my competition horses (and one of my boarders also chose to shoe her horse) in Duplos, straight-nailed on as opposed to glue although glueing them on is also an option (nails were my personal choice in this case).  For my other horses - our lesson horses and horses in training - we decided to leave the horses barefoot and work them in the Easyboot Epics.  Since then, I have experimented with glueing on the Duplos, and with Epona Shoes.  Below I’ll write about my experiences with composite shoes and hoof boots, broken down into the questions that people have most frequently been asking me:

Duplo Composite Shoes

The Duplo shoes are a composite shoe, made of a kind of bouncy, plastic-y material with a metal core.  As I said above, they can be glued or straight-nailed on, or a combination of glue and nails.  They come in a variety that has side-clips, and a variety that does not.  We have been using the variety that does not have side clips.

The Duplo shoes have been absolutely fantastic for the kind of riding I do with my Icelandic competition horses.  I cross-train with distance riding, and my competition horses do a 15 mile ride once per week mainly on tough, hilly, hard-packed dirt roads.  Additionally, we usually do 1-2 days per week of dressage work in the arena, one day of work per week without a rider (longeing/in-hand or ponying on the roads and trails), but the bulk of our training is conducted on the dirt roads.  I put serious miles on my horses, but take the time to condition them carefully and work them correctly using a strong foundation of classical dressage.  The Duplo shoes have been an improvement over metal shoes in every single way, for every facet of what I do with my horses.  Below are some of the things I have been asked about:

Resets - How do they hold up when you’re riding at speed on those abrasive roads the way we Icelandic riders so often like to do?  I’ll put it this way - I think I can count on one hand the amount of time my Vigri and I have gotten a reset out of a pair of metal shoes.  We ride a LOT and usually our metal shoes are useless after one 4-5 week cycle.  We have been getting at least one and sometimes TWO resets out of the Duplos.  TWO!  Because they don’t slide when they make contact with the ground the way metal shoes do, they hold up unbelievably well, even with very tough riding.

Are they slippery on grass?  NO!  Much less slippery than metal shoes!  Vigri and Spönn were both shod in Duplos when they won blue ribbons at a hunter pace this summer at GMHA, and that hunter pace was mostly on grass footing. If anything, they’re grippier than metal shoes!

Gaits - Do the Duplo shoes negatively impact the gaits (tölt and pace)?  Not for me - however because I am focused on postural rehabilitation and dressage, I do not use hoof length or shoeing tricks to enhance or patch up holes in my horse’s gaits.  So I was not concerned that the shoes would mess up their gaits.  With good dressage and a proper trim, this shouldn’t be an issue at all, regardless of whether horses are barefoot, in hoof boots, shod in composites, or shod in metal.  Gaits should come from the body, not the feet.  See above, photos of Spönn pacing in her Duplos and Vigri competing in his.  

Heelboots - can they be used with these shoes?  Yes they can!  There is a part of the shoe that covers the frog, however because the shoe is flexible it is easy to get the little triangle of the heelboot into that space if you want to use heelboots for protection.

Trim cycles - is there any difference with the Duplos?  Yes, in that the Duplo shoe is going to maintain its shape and not warp with the hoof the way a metal shoe will, this does mean that horses ought to be kept to a 4 week cycle.  Which is really the ideal schedule for a shod horse anyway - going longer results in excessive hoof length that can put strain on the tendons, ligaments, and joints.

Can they be studded for winter use?  YES, and Duplo even makes a studded variety!  I can’t wait to try them out this winter!!

What about Epona shoes?  I like Epona shoes fine, but not for a humid climate.  The Duplos have these bumpy, grippy patches that keep them from sliding around on the hoof.  I have tried Epona shoes on a horse here and because of the way the hoof was expanding and contracting in the humidity, and the slippery material of the shoe, the shoe ended up moving around too much and breaking up the nail holes.  I also did find the Epona shoes to be slippery on grass and on the dirt roads.  In my opinion based on my experience, the Duplo is the better choice for our climate here in the Northeast and for our terrain in the mountains of Vermont, and for the level/amount of riding I do.

Benefits - have you noticed any benefits in the 6+ months you have been using these shoes?  YES, I absolutely have.  I have been able to cut my chiropractic/bodywork bills for my horses in half.  Their muscles, backs, and joints are just happier!  I’m getting better relaxation and freedom in my horse’s movements.  At the recent competition in Kentucky (where I did have to reshoe my horses in metal just before the show because FEIF’s experimental allowance period ended in September), Dr. Gloria Verrecchio said that my Vigri was in the best shape she’d ever felt him in.  She has been giving him bodywork tuneups after the long trailer ride to Kentucky for three years now, and this year he was much softer and better developed - I attribute some of that to the Duplo shoes, as they’ve reduced concussion and stress on his joints and allowed him to relax and develop his muscles better.  I’m getting improved movement from all of my horses, who seem more comfortable and more willing to offer me a little something extra.  Spönn paces better in her Duplos than she does in metal shoes.  Overall I am highly impressed with the Duplo shoes, and the way they make my horses feel.  I hope that they get approved longterm by FEIF so that I never have to compete in metal again!

EasyBoot Epics

I resisted hoof boots for a long time because I thought they looked clunky, I worried they would fall off or mess up my horse’s gaits, etc.  The EasyBoot Epics have dispelled all of my concerns.  They are fabulous.  They are essentially the same thing as the EasyBoot Glove, except that they use a cable to close whereas on the Glove, you hammer them on or sometimes people even glue them on.  I like the EasyBoot Epics because they allow my horses to live barefoot when they aren’t working, which is the healthiest thing for a horse with healthy hooves.  Living bare allows the hoof to expand and contract as it should, and allows us to keep the horse in a very balanced trim without having to attach something to the bottom of the hoof.  The Epics fit snuggly - before I ride I clean out my horse’s hooves, and slip the Epics over their hooves.  Sometimes, they do need a knock with a mallet because you do want them to fit snuggly.  Then you just velcro the gator and snap down the cable, and you’re good to go.  Here are some of the questions I’ve received about the Easyboot Epics:

Do they change the horse’s gaits/way of going?  This was my biggest concern.  And the answer is yes - in every single one of my horses, they have improved their gaits.  I think this is because they make the horse more comfortable and confident than they are in metal shoes.  Horses with a tendency to get a bit pacey or trotty both began to offer clearer tölt.  Again with these boots, the horse’s just aren’t needing the chiropractic or bodywork they once needed.  

Can you use them only in front?  Yes you can, but that may change the balance of your horse, because then their front feet will weigh more.  For Icelandic competition, you must have them on both the fronts and backs if you are using them.

Do they stay on?  If they fit, yes - but there is a small catch.  Your horse’s boot size may change throughout a trim cycle!  That took me a little while to figure out.  Particularly on the front hooves, after a fresh trim my horses are often a size smaller than they are towards the end of the cycle.  So if your horse measures a 0 after a trim, you might want to buy a set of 1s as well to use towards the end of the cycle.  I have had boots come off when they were fitted to my horses at the end of a cycle, and I put them on after a fresh trim.  Also, if the boots get very wet, they’re more likely to come off when you’re going fast in canter or fast tempo tölt or pace, if they are even a little bit too big.  But as long as they are the correct size, you will not have problems.

How long do they last?  My farriers told me that if I’m riding regularly, to expect about 3 months from each boot.  So far that has been pretty spot on, except for horses in lighter training.  Eventually, just like shoes, they do wear out.

Does the gator rub the pasterns?  Not on any one of my horses and we have done a fair amount of distance riding using these, through water crossings and mud etc. with no issues.

Are they hard to put on?  They can be hard to put on in the beginning when they are brand new.  But they quickly get easier to put on.  There is also a learning curve, in the beginning its a bit awkward, but now I can put them on all of my horses very quickly, in about 2 minutes to get them on all 4 hooves.

Do the horses like them?  They seem to.  We only had one horse walk a bit funny when they were first put on, but she quickly adjusted.  None of the horses have acted displeased with the boots and all have improved in them so I would say that the horses do like them.

If anyone has any further questions about my experiences with composite shoes or hoof boots in this past year, feel free to ask!  It is my hope that these shoes will get approved by FEIF to be permanently included as acceptable shoeing for Icelandic sport, but even if they don’t get approved, I can say without a doubt that my horses will be wearing composites or hoof boots from now on.  If I must put metal on them for shows, I will do what I did for the KY show and shoe them in metal just before the show and pull shoes immediately after, but I hope that FEIF will see that there is no reason to ban composite shoes and hoof boots from competition, and that allowing them is a great step for equine welfare.

EDIT, November 18, 2017:

We have now studded both the Easyboot Epics and the Duplo shoes for winter use, and I have ridden in both in all gaits including canter on the icy roads and in the snowy ring.  I am very pleased with how both are working, although I am finding the Duplos slightly more stable.  I would say based on my observations so far that having the Easyboot Epics fit PERFECTLY becomes especially important when using them in winter like this, because as the boot bites into the ground, if its moving around at all on the hoof that will surely be an issue.  Ours are fitted well and have been working out nicely.  Below are two photos of a studded Duplo shoe (attached to the hoof with both glue and nails - fewer nails than would be used without glue), and one photo of a studded Easyboot Epic.

I am thrilled that I will be able to use these all winter long!!

[crystalelemental]

Gen 2 was such a fun generation.  Gen 1 started things, and perhaps because of a first attempt, there were some rough patches.  Gen 2 really smoothed a lot of things out, including expanding movepools, offering some new evolutions, and two whole typings to try and introduce more balance to the system.  It's also my personal nostalgia generation, so I have the fondest memories of this gen.

TOP 15: 15) Noctowl - Noctowl would be my favorite regional bird, if it weren't for the fact that it's competitively terrible and beyond help, and Staraptor wound up looking cooler.  Still, Noctowl is a great Pokemon.   Owls are cool, and Noctowl is just a big owl with Psychic-type coverage.  It was always weird to me that it got Normal/Flying.  Why not Psychic?  Is it because you didn't want it to compete with Xatu and Lugia?  It probably wouldn't regardless; just let the poor thing be Psychic/Flying already.

14) Lanturn - Water/Electric is such a cool typing.  Water, Ice, and Electric type coverage is fantastic, and Lanturn gets all of it, on top of some serious bulk.  It's also just a big round friend, and I love it.   Actually cute final stage evolutions are a rarity, for some reason, so it's nice to have one that's both adorable and unique.

13) Murkrow - Dark types were introduced this gen, and while, as a Psychic lover, you may assume I hated that change, I actually loved it.  I'm not opposed to Psychic having answers; in fact it was much needed.  Murkrow is one of the best new Dark types, I felt.  Not in terms of actual utility.  Houndoom was way stronger, and Tyranitar was a pseudo-legend so...there's that.  Even Umbreon probably did better than this thing because it could stall more effectively in a generation all about stall.  But Murkrow stood out to me because of it's cute design and mischievous nature.  Shame that it's only in Kanto, after you beat the League.  You know.  Along with every other Dark type bar Umbreon.

12) Politoed - King's Rock must have been a very hit-and-miss evolution item, creating two split evolution paths, one of which was outright not as good, and one that was outright better.  Slowking was the not as good evolution, and Politoed is the better evolution that seems to get everything.  Pure water typing is working out a lot better as a rounded Pokemon than Water/Fighting, and Poliwrath just never got any useful tools, while Politoed got Drizzle of all things. I really love Politoed.  It's a sleek and cute design for a final stage, and it makes more sense as a frog design.  It is an odd choice of design for the Poliwhirl evolution, but it's such a good final form.

11) Magcargo line - You know what typing sucks defensively?  Fire/Rock.  4x weaknesses to Water and Ground, a common defensive typing, and the most common offensive typing.  But you know what's a really good offensive typing? Fire/Rock.  Fire blasts through a lot of threats, including the new Steel type, while Rock hits a lot of things Fire can't.  It also gets some fantastic coverage moves, and decent support.  Unfortunately, it's defensive and slow.  Slow enough that even Shell Smash can't save it.  It's a very sad state of affairs.  That said, Magcargo is cute.  An adorable lava snail that I wish I could pet in Refresh, without buring my hands off.

10) Furret - Again, cuteness wins the day.  Furret is 100% adorable, and if there were any early-game "rodent-type" that deserved to get more to work with, it's Furret.  I, personally, think it's the cutest of them all, and should at least get a bit of a buff in stats.

9) Jumpluff line - I love Jumpluff.  I love its entire evolutionary line.  Hoppip is super cute, and its evolutions are just as adorable.  Too bad they are awful. Like, competitively they have nothing.  Even in-game they get very little in terms of attacks or roles.  It's such an unfortunate situation for them, and they're very high on my list of things I wish would get more tools.  But it will always have a special place in my heart as the adorable cotton puff.

8) Xatu line - This is one that became more solid after the first mystery dungeon games.  It's role as some strange, mythical fortune-teller is fantastic.  Xatu is just an interesting design for a Pokemon, and Psychic/Flying was a cool typing.  It was a pain to catch because Natu knows Teleport, but man, what a unique bird this line is.  I also really appreciated the time it spent as the bulky Magic Bounce user.  You know.  Before Mega Sableye.

7) Steelix - If someone were to ask about my favorite gym leaders, Jasmine would easily be on that list.  A large part of that is because she's cute, but has this giant metallic snake creature as her signature Pokemon.  You never expect it.  Even on its own merits, Steelix is just cool.  It's a refined version of Onix, offering obscene physical defense, respectable attack, and...probably nothing else.  It does have a lot of flaws from a competitive standpoint, but it's got a strong design and a great presence.

6) Slowking - Slowbro was a great Pokemon in Gen 1.  It was never really my favorite, but I had to acknowledge it was good.  Slowking, though?   Now we're talking.  It's basically a specially defensive variant of Slowbro's defensive variant, and as such, was...never really as good.   Boosting for Psychic types always allowed for special defense to grow, so you needed good base defense, which Slowking did not have.  Its movepool also didn't differ from Slowbro in any meaningful way, so it's basically a carbon copy that had less going for it.  Still, I adored it, because of the design, and its role in Pokemon the Movie 2000.  I think it looks a lot nicer than Slowbro, and it feels like a more impressive final form.  Even if it's probably not.

5) Mareep - IT'S SO CUTE!  I love the entire Mareep line, but Mareep stands out as one of the cutest first-stage evolutions in the game.   Honestly, Gen 2 really stood out because of how cute a lot of first stage Pokemon were.  But Mareep? Mareep is unbelievable.  Prior to Mareep, I wasn't the biggest electric-type fan.  I loved Raichu, but Electrode, Magneton, and Electabuzz weren't exactly that interesting, with Zapdos also being my least favorite of the birds.  But it was with Mareep that I had a really cute Pokemon that evolved into a still cute but powerful creature.  I always try to get a Mareep when I play Gen 2. It's easily one of my favorites to train in-game.

4) Espeon/Umbreon - Flareon may be my favorite, but Espeon and Umbreon were my favorites for a long time once they showed up.  Psychic is a great typing, and Umbreon is just such a sleek design.  The two are a great new addition to Eevee's evolutions, and the choices they made with these two are nothing short of divine.

3) Kingdra - Talk about an improvement.  Water/Dragon meant you basically had a weakness to all of three attacks.  One was a TM, one was a move I think only it learned, and one was a move only Dragonite learned.  Best of all, its even stats meant it was pretty solid at any role back in the day.  I also really like the design.  It just feels like an ancient sea-based dragon, and it's fantastic.

2) Celebi - Mythic legends suck.  Not because of what they are, but how they're distributed.  If it weren't for the show, or rather the first movie, I wouldn't have known Mew existed.  But by the time generation 2 came around, I knew about Celebi.  And I wanted one so bad.  But I couldn't get one!  Because they're based on nonsense events you have to go to.  In gen 3, I got a Gameshark, and the first thing I did was hack in a Celebi.  I wanted one so badly.  It is absolutely adorable, and I love anything with time-focused powers.  Being a psychic-type is also a huge plus for me, and it's just...such a good Pokemon, and such a good legend.

1) Misdreavus - I don't think there can be any comparison.  Misdreavus is a godsend.  It's such a cute ghost type, and as the only other ghost besides Gengar, it stands out incredibly by virtue of not having a Poison typing, and thus being able to handle Psychic types.  Between aesthetics and its role as the first pure ghost, I love Misdreavus a lot.

BOTTOM 10: 10) Granbull line - Not a bad one by any means, but it's another aesthetic thing. Before the advent of Fairy type, this being just a standard normal type thing also didn't really help it stand out.  I don't dislike them, but someone had to take the spot...

9) Shuckle - I really don't know what Shuckle is supposed to be, and I think that's why it weirds me out a bit.

8) Yanma - Not a bad Pokemon, just...not as interesting?  It's a Dragonfly that's just another Bug/Flying type.  It doesn't really stand out much to me.

7) Quilfish - A bit more unique and dynamic, but misses the mark a bit.  I just feel it's a bit too plain?

6) Octillery - Oh man.  Okay.  Remoraid is a cute little thing, but Octillery just...it doesn't really make sense to me.  At all.  Why are you an octopus?  How does this relate to what Remoraid is?

5) Delibird - And now for the complete opposite of #7 and #8.  Yanma and Quilfish are a bit plain, but Delibird, by comparison, is an interesting concept and design.  It's meant to look like santa, with its tail being the sack of toys.  It only uses Present, which can hurt or heal the enemy.  It's a really cool concept...that does little for it.  I can think of few Pokemon less useful than Delibird, and some of those at least evolve into something more useful.  It's gotten more options as time goes on, but it has virtually nothing going for it.

4) Tyrogue - Baby Pokemon are not my favorite.  I just don't like them.   Tyrogue is, design-wise, one of the better ones, I feel.  But its evolution method is obnoxious.  I hate it.  I absolutely hate it.  Three possible evolutions, based on the stats it has when it levels.  I liked Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee well enough. Hitmontop is okay, but I don't think it's all that interesting, since it mainly kicks like Hitmonlee but different, and Tyrogue as a pre-evolution to all of them is not a terrible idea, but is definitely not my favorite.

3) Magby - I didn't care for Magmar all that much, and Magby just isn't that cute as a pre-evolution for it either.  There's little aside from just me not liking the look of it.

2) Elekid - There are many who disagree with me, but I do not like its design.  At all.  It just doesn't look right.  The electric plugs on its head are just goofy to me, and I didn't care for its evolution either.

1) Aipom - I mentioned this with Primeape, but I don't really care for monkeys.  They are definitely not my favorite animal.  Aipom is at least cuter, but it's also weirder.  Why is the end of its tail a hand?  Why does it have to be like this?  That's so weird to me.

[seriouslyhooked]

Some Call It Magic (A CS AU) Part 9/?

When Killian Jones moves to Storybrooke he instantly senses something strange about this little town in Maine but he’s willing to overlook all the bizarre signs for one reason: the single Mum living next door to him. There’s only one problem. Killian is nearly positive she’s a witch, a brewing potions and casting spells witch. But when true love is involved, does a little thing like magical powers really matter? Story rated M.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8. Also On FF Here.

A/N: Hey all! I’m so excited to be back with this update this week and to finally get to Emma’s POV after Killian’s last time. As promised it’s bringing forth the harvest festivities and Emma’s magical interlude with her friends. However, I ran into a bit of a problem, one I’m all too familiar with. The muse just had so much to say that this chapter needs to be split in two and the next one will actually bring the promised smut I mentioned before. Not to worry though, because I’ve actually already written it and will be publishing it in the next couple of days so the wait will be minimal. Anyway thank you all so much for reading and I hope that you will enjoy!

Glancing around the central quad of Storybrooke tonight, Emma could clearly see that this year’s festival would be one to remember. The town this autumn, under the faithful oversight of Belle, had really gone all out, and what was usually a quaint little patch of green in the midst of a quintessential small town had been transformed with vibrant fall colors, rustic antique lantern lights, and decorations that were truly something else.

With a theme dedicated to autumn and the harvest season itself, there were so many directions Belle could have taken, and in years past, before Emma had gotten to town and before her friends had taken the reins of this special day, the aesthetic hadn’t always been so pleasing. But this set up was really without reproach, and everywhere Emma looked there was this seamless infusion of the natural world they were celebrating and the modern advancements of time. The most gorgeous of leaves around town had all been collected and brought here to this place, interspersed with painted harvest crops and twinkling lights that shone in the canopies of the trees above like stars in the twilight of the evening.

There were games for the kids, some traditional and some a little newer and a little flashier, and food stands for everyone, but mostly there was this feeling of happiness and belonging. The spirit of Storybrooke was on full display tonight with neighbor embracing neighbor and the townspeople reminiscing on old times while also planning for the future as well. The holidays would soon be upon them all, and the feeling in the air around them was one of real magic, but it crackled just beneath the surface, filling the aura around them all with warmth without actually being on display.

“I think we really outdid ourselves this year,” Elsa proclaimed from beside Emma as she came to admire the general merriment all around them. “Or I guess I should say Belle outdid herself since she was the mastermind behind it all.”

In typical Elsa fashion she managed to downplay just how much everyone had helped, most notably herself, for if Belle was the Captain of this ship then Elsa was her lieutenant, and there hadn’t been an errand Emma’s friend wouldn’t run or an element she wouldn’t organize to be of help. But to Elsa all of that hard work seemed like nothing because she was just the kind of person who sought to aid others. She lived with the community at the forefront of her mind always, and it was what made her such a terrific big sister to Anna and a wonderful friend to the rest of them.

“It really is something,” agreed Emma with a smile, not wanting to embarrass Elsa with too much praise, but there was still something missing in her estimations.

Emma just couldn’t shake the feeling that this would all be so much better when Killian was finally here to share in it. That didn’t really make sense of course because he’d never been here at the festival before, but still the feeling lingered and Emma had found herself scanning the crowd for him more than once during set up and when the gates were opened, awaiting the moment she’d get to see him again. The excitement she was carrying about tonight wasn’t just of the typical harvest festival variety; it was largely thanks to the fact that she’d have someone new to share it with and that that someone was Killian Jones.

“He’ll be here, Emma,” Elsa counseled softly as she took Emma’s hand with care. “Trust me, he’ll be here.”

“Am I really that obvious?” Emma asked, wincing a little at the idea that she was being so unguarded, and Elsa didn’t hesitate at all in her answer.

“Totally. But it’s wonderful because he makes you happy and that’s what tonight is all about. Our magic’s always strongest when we follow the good in life, and Killian’s become a big part of that for you.”

Emma had to agree with that assessment even as a flurry of butterflies took flight inside her chest. It was still a lot for her to handle. All of this emotion and this sensation that she and Killian were supposed to be more than what Emma had ever allowed herself in the past was a lot to handle, but Elsa was right. It was good even while it was overwhelming. For whatever reason being with Killian somehow managed to transcend her past baggage, and though she still hadn’t gathered the courage to confide in Killian about her one big secret, Emma was growing more confident by the day that she would. If her heart could be totally trusted then Killian was the man who would change the game for her, but in the meantime her mind had a little catching up to do and a little calming down as well.

“You want to know what would really make me happy?” Emma asked before turning back to Elsa and giving her a sincere look of pleading. “If I didn’t have my best friends spying on my every move tonight.”

“Yeah… well that might not be possible given the circumstances,” Elsa admitted though she looked less than concerned. “But how about this – I promise to contain the damage as much as I can. If Ruby so much as looks like she’ll shout an innuendo out when in my presence, I’ll tackle her.”

Emma laughed at that promise and smiled at the thought. The problem was it wasn’t too hard to picture in her mind’s eye because her group of friends was hardly docile, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that, and she trusted that though Elsa too would be curious and probably a tad too nosey, she would work on reining their other friends in to the best of her ability. And all things considered, Emma really appreciated that.

“You’d do all that for me? It almost doesn’t seem worth it,” Emma joked, imagining how less than thrilled Ruby and Mary Margaret would be if someone interrupted their snooping. Those two were both just so bad at being sneaky, but at the same time it came from a place of loving Emma so she had to forgive them their rather frequent outbursts.

“It is, but only because someday I’ll need you to do the same for me. At least I hope I will.”

The first part of that statement had been light and airy, but then a crack appeared in Elsa’s good spirits and Emma could see that there was worry there, worry that love for her wasn’t on its way despite what she wanted, and that everyone else would find something she hadn’t. Emma could understand that fear all too keenly, but it was important to her now to assure Elsa that would never be the case. Someone as wonderful and pretty and kind as Elsa just had to find love. If there was any justice at all in this world then she would find her soul mate too and hopefully it would be sooner rather than later so Elsa could get all the time she deserved to be happy and content with a man she loved.

“You will, Elsa, and when the time comes I’ve got your back.”

The smile on Elsa’s face at that solemn vow eased the little bit of worry Emma had over her friend’s state of happiness. She really did feel for Elsa, after all, and now that she’d managed to expand her own world outside the jaded sort of bubble she’d been residing in so long, Emma didn’t even want to think about going back to a point where she didn’t feel this connection. But before the friends could do much more than hug quickly Elsa pulled back, her grin growing and her head nodding in a direction behind Emma.

“Looks like the wait is finally over,” she said gleefully before urging Emma to go and enjoy the festival.

Emma was all too willing to comply with that request, but she still wasn’t prepared for the moment when she turned around and finally saw Killian. Because when their eyes met across the green and he fully came into view it was like the rest of the world around them faded away, no longer at the forefront of her consciousness. Suddenly Emma wasn’t in the midst of one of the biggest nights of the Storybrooke year. She was caught up in Killian and trying to find the words for what she saw.

She could start by saying that despite her thinking she had a read on how attractive he was, she was wrong. She was so totally wrong. Or maybe she just wasn’t prepared for seeing him like this, in a black leather jacket and with a bit more scruff than he’d had in recent weeks. He looked almost dark and imposing in the clothes that he was wearing, but the look on his face was anything but, almost like his ensemble was a misdirect. This was bad boy apparel at its finest, but the man donning it was looking at her like she was the light and by doing so he was bringing so much light of his own to the table.

Emma’s gifts when it came to magic hadn’t ever been aura driven. She might have good instincts and an ability to read people, but she always left the ideas of people’s spirits and their essences to people more inclined to that set of skills. But right now she swore she saw Killian’s essence illuminating him and coloring the rest of the world in the same exact way. It was beautiful and wonderful and very unexpected, but it was almost impossible to resist and so was he. So why bother trying? There was no reason to, and so Emma followed her heart in this moment, cutting through the milling crowds of people as he did the same until they met in the middle, coming close enough to touch and reach for each other’s hands automatically.

“Hey,” she greeted, realizing a little late that it wasn’t exactly the coolest opening line, but from the way Killian smiled at her, with his lips tilting up slightly higher to one side and his eyes brightening from just the sound of her voice, no one would know. “You made it.”

“That I did, love, and not a moment too soon,” he said, his eyes staying on her but roaming over her figure to take in the full effect of the costume she was wearing. “You look... well you look like you’re from another world completely.”

In years past Emma had always enjoyed the harvest get ups, with the free flowing skirts and the crisp ivory color despite it being past Labor Day. It was comfortable and flattering but it harked to a simpler time, a moment from the past that felt muted in today’s world. In fact the only part Emma had ever questioned was the wreath of flowers that many of the women (and all of the ambassadors for the ceremony) wore, for it seemed just a little over the top when she first arrived in Storybrooke. But eventually she learned to lean into it and over time she’d come to love them just as much as her friends did even if she wouldn’t admit it. It was fun to put on the crown and pretend a little bit, and now, as she took in the more than positive response from Killian, Emma found herself liking it all even more.

“Is that a good thing?” Emma asked, even though she knew from the appreciation in his gaze that it was, but he responded first by pulling her closer into his embrace and placing his other hand on her hip gently.

“Aye. Truth be told I’ve yet to find a single thing about you that wasn’t a ‘good’ thing, Swan. You could say I’m a fan of every part of you.”

At those sweet words Emma fought off the urge to close her eyes and just soak them in, letting them wash upon her. Killian couldn’t possibly understand how much they meant to her and how badly she wanted them to be true. What she wouldn’t give for a man – or rather this man specifically – to truly see her as she was and not turn away. Emma didn’t even need him to be a ‘fan’ per se of all of her, because she had flaws enough, same as anybody. But the most tantalizing part of what Killian was implying was that he wanted her flaws and all, and he was intending to stay for more than just a moment or a fleeting span of time.

The only problem there was still something he wasn’t totally acquainted with, something that Emma had been trying to see as a gift for years and not as a burden, but that she was still scared might be the breaking point. In the past her magic had been both beautiful and the source of the worst pain she’d ever known. It had pushed people she loved away, and made her too different to be loved or accepted, and though it wasn’t fair to assume that Killian would do that too, and though she’d been making progress in letting him in little by little, Emma was still petrified of the idea that someday this would end. She didn’t want Killian to leave, not when she finally felt like she’d found what real love was, and the only reason she could think that he would go was her magic.

“Is something wrong, Emma?” he asked then, his hand squeezing hers a little tighter as her eyes came back up to meet his.

In their blue depths there was all sorts of concern, but there was also something else – a level of trust and of faith in her that was brimming right there at the surface on full display and expressed without any kind of hiding. It was that openness that had made everything else - all her feelings and the love she felt for Killian - possible, and it was also what gave her hope of her own that the surprise or shock of her magic wouldn’t be enough to drive him away.

“No, sorry I just… there’s a lot happening, you know?” she said, not at all coherently but hoping that Killian would understand her on some level, and when he offered a kind smile and then nodded in the direction of the festivities she knew he had.

“Aye, love. I know just how anxious you’ve been to have me as your date tonight. I can imagine that prospect alone would drive any woman to distraction.”

Emma didn’t bother hiding the eye roll that those overly cocky words inspired, but she knew that Killian was kidding and she also knew he’d said that to cut through some of her tensions. Even this display of pretend arrogance had been done and said for her, and Emma appreciated that more than she could readily articulate. So she decided to show him instead by leading Killian into the fray of the evening and illustrating to him why she was so eager to let him in on this favorite tradition.  

Storybrooke and the festival did not let her down either and every part of the evening went off without a hitch. There were the games in the square that usually Emma thought of as being for kids but ended up being really fun with Killian, especially when he got frustrated at his lack of ability in some areas but proved too stubborn to walk away. He was steadfast and determined and, if Emma was honest, thoroughly sexy in his never failing confidence. Plus it paid for her in the end too when he won his prize after a few attempts and he readily handed it to her.

“Consider it the smallest token of my affections, love,” he said and Emma played it off like he was way too over the top but damn if she hadn’t loved it all the same. The flirtatiousness and the display of dominance even if it was in such a small arena had been definite positives, and it was nice to get her moment walking through the fair with a tiny stuffed bear her boyfriend had won for her. Non of her exes (if most could even be honored with that substantial a title) had ever given her moments like this and it turned out she liked them more than she ever believed she would.

After they finished with the games for the most part it was time for food, and there was no shortage of it, not when Granny’s had provided everything savory and Stay A Spell had created enough hand made sugary confections to satisfy any sweet tooth. There were pumpkin cupcakes and sugar cookies, cider donuts, and mini pies, and though Emma and Ruby had slaved away over prepping all of them in the past few days the best part was they didn’t have to run the stand. Tonight she and Ruby were off the clock and so the sweets tasted all the better when Emma and Killian got around to trying some.

“How in the hell does anyone limit themselves to just one item?” Killian asked, totally serious and thoroughly confused. “I want everything you’ve made, Swan. I don’t want to miss out on any of this.”

Emma had been prepared to give her two cents, which was to remind him that he had an in with the owner and that all of these recipes could be recreated at a later date, but then they had their first interruption of sorts from a not so surprising source. David and Mary Margaret suddenly appeared before them, and with his usual dose of easygoing honesty David provided a solution.

“Here’s a tip man: you ask for extra boxes from the actual food carts and then use those to stash the sweets for when you get home.”

With his words of wisdom, David handed Killian one of the boxes he’d stolen like he was truly a genius, which was funny in itself, but then Killian looked upon him like he’d really cracked the toughest issue of their times and Emma couldn’t hold back the laugh any longer. Mary Margaret joined in right after and the two of them shared a look, both silently appreciating the bond forming between the two men but also wondering why the heck this could be such a big deal.

“You, David Nolan, are a real miracle worker, you know that?” Killian asked and David nodded like it was an absolute given that he was brilliant.

“Took me two years to figure that one out and after that I never looked back. Figured I might as well share the wealth of my knowledge and spare anyone else the pain.”

“Well next year I’ll get the boxes, mate. Seems only fair.”

“So you’ll be here next year then?” Mary Margaret asked, honing in on talk of the future like a heat seeking missile and reminding Emma of just how painless this had all been so far. Of course that couldn’t last though because her friends would always make comments like this until… well honestly probably forever.

“Most definitely,” Killian said to Mary Margaret as his hand came around Emma’s waist and held her close. “I’ve every intention of staying right here.”

This announcement sent Mary Margaret into an excited tizzy and though Emma also loved hearing it, she was a little put on edge by her friend’s abundance of excitement, but mercifully David stepped in and redirected, pulling his wife away under the guise of winning her a bear like Emma had and leaving Emma and Killian alone once more. In that moment though Emma looked around and noticed that all of her friends and many other nosey neighbors were still hanging around watching and she felt the pressure of it starting to build. She wanted a way out of this, and as if he could read her mind, Killian offered one.

“Just how much privacy do you think one could expect to find in a corn maze, love?” Emma smiled at the question and shook her head.

“It’s a good thought, but you’d be surprised how little alone time you get in there. The kids are obsessed on the years we build one and they hide in every corner just waiting for people to show up. But I have another idea,” Emma offered as she took Killian’s hand once more and led him up the hill and out of the direct line of sight of the rest of the festivities.

Up here there were still people milling around talking in smaller groups after having collected their food and whatnot, but there was one spot Emma knew would be clear, at the edge of the trees where the twinkling lights shone. Just inside that grove they could be alone, and as soon as they got there she surprised them both by pulling Killian behind a tree and close enough to her that they were separated by mere inches and close enough to kiss. In the shadow provided by the leaves it wasn’t quite as easy to see his face, but there was enough light to sketch its likeness and it was impossible for Emma to miss the bit of awe and mischief that appeared in Killian’s cerulean eyes.

“You were right about tonight, Emma. It truly is a tradition to be cherished. But I gather I’ll be enjoying this particular unsanctioned activity just a bit more.”

With those words Killian closed the distance between them, his body coming flush against hers and their lips fused together. It was zero to sixty in seconds but God was Emma ready for it, because after a night spent with subtle flirtations and Killian being that mix of gentlemanly and having all that confident swagger she was in need of this moment. This interlude was all they could have for the time being and it wouldn’t last long, not if they had any hope of actually keeping it just between them, but Killian was right: even if it was fleeting it was easily the best part of her night so far.

“I’m really glad you came tonight,” Emma whispered when they’d finally broken apart and Killian’s forehead rested against hers lightly.

“As am I, love. And I meant what I said before about this being home and me being here for the long haul. I’ve no plans to leave. Not ever.”

Emma’s heart thumped loudly in her chest at his words and her body hummed with a fresh spike of energy. Those words were loaded with promise and with the innuendo that he wasn’t just staying and building a life here just because, but that she was the reason. It was crazy, and yet when he looked at her this way and held her in his arms with this mix of reverence and wanting it was difficult to interpret his meaning any other way. In fact, it was hard to imagine that a man who looked as Killian did right now could be in anything short of full and total love with her, and to feel that even if he hadn’t said the words outright gave Emma the most exhilarating sense of hope.

“Killian, I -,”

The words Emma was about to murmur that would have gone deeper into telling him how she truly felt were unfortunately interrupted by the sound of footsteps drawing closer and then a voice she recognized immediately.

“Are you sure you saw my Mom come up this way?” Henry asked and Emma immediately jumped, but Killian didn’t move at all, holding her steady as they waited to see what would happen.

“Hmm, you know what, I’m not so sure…” Ruby’s voice responded, though Emma could tell by the tone of voice that she was definitely certain. “I mean what reason would anyone have to leave the festival? It would be so strange, maybe I dreamed it up.”

“Damn it, Ruby,” Emma whispered, knowing her friend was teasing her and that she would never let Henry get far enough to find her and Killian if she actually knew they were out here, but she couldn’t just be cool and cover for her for once. Ruby always had to have her fun.

“How would you like to play this, love?” Killian whispered and Emma looked back at him, seeing his openness and willingness to follow wherever she led and it touched her. There was no sense of questioning her feelings or her instincts. What she wanted Killian would want also and it helped her feel better about what needed to be done.

“The only way we should play anything: honestly.”

After saying the words and watching another smile grace Killian’s handsome face Emma extended her hand to him and led him out of the grove of trees. Thankfully Henry was now looking in the opposite direction but Ruby was watching and grinning like a mad woman when they came out front. Emma tried to level her with a warning glare but Ruby didn’t respond with anything but laughter, which then alerted Henry and had him spinning around to find them with a look of relief.

“There you are, I’ve been looking all over for you guys!” Henry stated coming to stand before them and looking at their joined hands not too slyly. His brighter smile at seeing them together did not go unnoticed and again Emma was struck by how much of a matchmaker her son appeared to be. She’d clearly let him spend too much time with her friends, but at least it was working out in her favor. It meant the world to her that Henry liked Killian, because if he didn’t any relationship between them simply wouldn’t be an option.

“That’s my fault, lad. I’m not used to all this fun at once. I needed a bit of relief and your Mum was kind enough to join me in that,” Killian stated innocently, but the words were anything but innocent and Emma fended off a blush when he said them aloud though Henry was completely oblivious.

“But you are having fun right?” Henry asked sincerely, suddenly anxious that Killian wasn’t enjoying himself.

“The most fun I’ve had in ages,” Killian confirmed and then Henry looked positively thrilled before his friend Grace ran up the hill to join him and he seemed to remember why he had come to look for them at all.

“Speaking of… Grace asked if I can sleep over her house tonight. Can I, Mom? Please! Please! Please!” Henry pleaded, somehow managing to bolster his cute ‘I’m only ten’ persona without being totally grating, and Emma couldn’t help but smile and nod.

“As long as it’s all right with Grace’s Dad it’s all right with me.”

“Awesome!” Henry and Grace both proclaimed at the same time, closely followed by ‘Jinx!’ and then ‘Jinx again!’ Then the next thing Emma knew the two of them were sprinting away with just a quick hug as her form of goodbye and a ‘see ya later, Killian’ thrown over Henry’s shoulder.

“And what am I, chopped liver?” Ruby asked, feigning insult at Henry’s having neglected to say goodbye to her, but showing with her overly dramatic flair that she wasn’t actually fazed.

“What you are is treading on thin ice. I mean really, Ruby, you couldn’t have handled that any differently?” Emma asked, prompting Killian to chuckle though he tried to hide it as best he could. Clearly he found her scolding her friend to be comical, but his laughter made Emma’s own aggravation lessen considerably and though she’d barely been frustrated with her friend, she now couldn’t even seem to muster that small level anymore.

“Well maybe, but it doesn’t really matter because we have that, uh… thing we have to get to now.”

Emma hadn’t been keeping tabs on the lateness of the hour and when she realized that she had to call it a night now with Killian it left a bit of sadness in her heart. This had really been such a lovely evening and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had this much fun, but Ruby was right. She had things she had to do and responsibilities that must be met. So even if it was hard, she had to say goodbye.

“I suppose this is where you leave me, love,” Killian stated, and Emma nodded, wishing that didn’t have to be the case.

“Just for a little while. It’s tradition, you know?” Emma said, not really knowing how to convey the necessity behind this. Short of saying that the town would potentially be hurt by them not casting the protective spells (which she definitely didn’t want to get into right now) there wasn’t really an excuse she could think of, but Killian didn’t need one.

“Say no more, Swan. I trust whatever you all will be up to is worth the separation. But…”

“But…?” Emma prompted, wanting to know what he was going to say and knowing instinctively that it was going to be good.

“But if you find yourself feeling a bit lonely tonight since Henry will be gone, you know where to find me.”

The invitation was enough for Emma to realize what an opening this really was. For months they’d been looking for a prolonged window of time and with Henry out tonight they could definitely have that. Of course it would come on an evening when she already had to be out late, but Emma could hope that maybe it would work out, even if she didn’t want to have to intrude on Killian’s time and patience.

“I might be late. Like really late…” Emma whispered and Killian shook his head, his hand coming to cup her cheek.

“Time is no matter to me, Emma. Not when it comes to you.”

The promise was so sweet and heartfelt that Emma felt compelled to give him something in return and she moved closer to kiss him only for the moment to be broken by the emergence of more of her friends.

“Ruby, I thought you said you were grabbing Emma and we were heading out. What’s taking so – oh, shoot sorry,” Anna said before giving an awkward wave at Emma and Killian who were now looking in their direction. “Carry on with whatever, you know, this is.”

“So I’ll see you later?” Emma asked, looking back to Killian and trying her best to ignore her friends for the last few seconds of this goodbye.

“I hope so, love. I really do,” he said before giving her one last chaste kiss to her cheek and bidding her friends farewell as he headed back into the festivities and towards a waving David. After she watched him go, Emma turned back to her friends and faced exactly what she’d expected – five completely gleeful women who looked like they would burst from excitement.

“Don’t even start,” Emma counseled them before grabbing one of the lanterns that was nearby to light her way. “We’ve got things to do, remember?”

The reminder proved enough to divert her friends and they left the confines of the town square to get to the field that they’d selected days back to utilize for their ritual. It was out of the way of the traffic of town, but just in case there was a barrier in place that Emma and the others walked through easily. Once inside it though, the charge of magic was already present and the six of them got to work gathering what was needed for their traditional blessing of Storybrooke.

This was a dance that Emma had been through a number of times now, but each time it still amazed her how much could be accomplished with the knowledge of how magic worked and a team of likeminded people beside her. This spell was harmless, inflicting no damage to anyone or anything. It was all about bolstering the spirit and the source that Storybrooke encapsulated and seeing the town through the long winter ahead until spring came once again, but there would be a personal rush for Emma and all her friends when the incantation was complete. Any time they used magic they could feel it, but when they were all together like this and using their magic purely for the good of others that feeling was stronger than ever.  

There were many steps to take in this ritual all of which had been passed down from generation to generation, and over time each friend had chosen one part that they liked most. Elsa and Anna attended to the shells and ordered all of the other tokens in their designated spots while Ruby and Mary Margaret worked on the fire before them. It had to be a specific size and burning hot enough to work to its best potential, but by now they were masters at this, which made Belle’s job of oversight over everyone easy as could be.

That just left Emma who had a special task that had gone unfulfilled for years and years before she and Henry arrived in town. For Emma her job was to use her magic to pull other magic forward, utilizing the natural world around them and the essence of Storybrooke itself to embolden their spell. She then put all of that white magic in three crystals that would eventually meet the flames along with the other collected ingredients the friends had been searching for the past few weeks.

“We’re getting really good at this, don’t you think?” Mary Margaret asked at one point and the others agreed, all of them just as pleased as Emma was by how easy this was proving to be.

As fate would have it their first year of taking the reigns for this from their mothers and grandmothers was the year that Emma came to town, and back then it had been anything but seamless. They were stopping and starting all night long and they’d barely gotten it all done before the first morning light crept up and the moon was fully gone. But time had taught them so much, not just about this ritual but about each other, and the trust between them and the intimate knowledge of who each friend and what her strengths were made this a far easier prospect than it had once been.

“I’ll say,” Elsa agreed as she took her spot by the fire with Anna coming to her other side. “All of this ready in thirty minutes? That has to be a town record.”

“Maybe, but we’ll need that extra time this year with the new phrasing. It might take us a few tries to get the spell just right,” Belle said. The words, however, confused Emma since she hadn’t realized they were changing anything.

“New phrasing? Why do we need that?”

“Oh we don’t need it per se,” Belle filled in. “But my grandmother always said spells have a shelf life and new words have new power. It’s all the same sentiment though, just rhymed a little differently.”

Belle then came around the circle of them passing out the little slips of paper she’d created with their words to read, and because of how she’d set it up Emma was reading last which would be a first for her. Usually she was right in the middle of the pack, but now she was in the spot of honor so to speak, and she had to wonder if that wasn’t for a reason. Nevertheless she memorized her words and tucked the paper safely into her pocket before extending her hand to take Belle’s and Ruby’s.

“All right, girls, let’s do this,” Ruby said and then she nodded to Belle who was set to start them off. At that they all closed their eyes and let themselves feel the energy around them, seeking it out and hoping to magnify it.

“With magic white and hearts made true, we stand in front of sacred fire,” Belle began before Mary Margaret stepped in.

“In hopes that safety, love, and light continue on and then grow higher.”

Now it was Elsa and Anna’s turn and they spoke together having only Elsa’s magic to use, but knowing Elsa’s magic was strongest when she had her sister beside her.

“Protect this town and all it’s people, the grown and young, the old and new. And keep this place our cherished harbor, no matter what the world may do.”

“Grant us the chance to glimpse our futures,” Ruby continued. “To walk our paths and keep in light.”

“And help us love, for love’s our anchor,” Emma stated. “To get us through the long cold nights.”

When the last word was uttered, Emma felt a rush of wind both cold and warm at once. It was transformative, a feeling brushing over every part of her, but when she opened her eyes it was largely invisible, merely a bursting of light that came from the circle of friends and spread up into the air, presumably to infiltrate each barrier of town and envelop all of their neighbors. The spell had clearly worked even on its first time, and in the aftermath Emma felt lighter than air and filled with a giddy sense of purpose and rightness.

“Woah!” Anna said aloud, her smile growing as her eyes traced over the starry sky. “That was easily the best one yet. Could you feel that?”

“Hell yeah,” Ruby agreed eagerly, squeezing Emma’s hand as her eyes came to hers and her grin hitched up to one side. “That was all you, Ems. You’re magic was super present. Even more than last year.”

Emma nodded knowing Ruby was right. Every year since getting here she’d gotten a similar comment about how her magic had a force none of the rest of them had, but before she’d only had Henry and her friends to bolster her powers with. This year the mention of love and the sentiment of keeping people safe had extended to Killian too. That must have been the reason she had even more strength (since it had happened with Mary Margaret and Ruby when they met David and Graham), and the thought made Emma smile to herself. Her mind then wandered back to Killian and his invitation for tonight and she felt the lingering magic tingling under her fingertips, right at the surface and ready to push forward. She felt like she could do anything she wanted, but the one thing she desired most of all was the chance to get back home and spend the night with Killian.

“I think it’s safe to say we crushed it,” Belle said happily as she closed her book with one more written note beside the spell (probably to say how successful it had been).  

“So what do we do now?” Elsa asked excitedly, her hands still holding Anna’s and her eyes looking to all of them for guidance.

“Now we clean up and get some cocoa while Emma goes and gets her man,” Ruby proclaimed determinedly, and Emma began to argue with her but then she realized she didn’t want to. That actually sounded pretty perfect to her, and she’d make it up to her friends somehow when time was more on her side.

“Are you sure?” Emma asked, hoping that they were but ready to face the reality that they wouldn’t be.

“Oh we’re sure,” Mary Margaret said with the stern intonation of a mother. “Now go on quick before we make you talk about your feelings and finding true love.”

Emma didn’t have to be told twice, and after hugging her friends goodbye, she made her way through the woods with her lantern in hand, eager to get home again and to the man who had changed her life for the better and brought his own kind of magic into her world and into her heart each and every day.

Post-Note: So thank you all so much for joining me in this. It was super fun to write, though I was frustrated by my muse’s inability to be a bit more succinct (I mean hello I wanted to just get to the smut already but somehow all these words had happened and it just wasn’t meant to be). Anyway like I said I will be putting my next chapter out in the coming days so there will not be the same level of wait that there has been in the previous chapters. I’m also happy to announce that I have made some real progress on the other two WIP fics I have going and those either have been wrapped up or will be wrapped up in the next week or so leaving me more time to finish this story before my life gets crazy hectic in the fall. Thank you all so much for reading and let me know what you think!

[zombiescantfly]

Words About Games - Unreal Tournament 2004 (Epic Games, 2004)

Unreal Tournament 2004 is the greatest game ever crafted by human hands.  I was 12 when it came out, and I knew that then.  This is a game I still play on a semi-regular basis; I make sure I run a few matches at midnight every New Year because it deserves to be the first thing I play in a year.  I still tinker with the map editor, I still download new maps, and I still occasionally host servers for friends to join me.  For a game to hold my interest for 15 years like that, to that extent, there is nothing else I could call it other than the best game ever made.

Unreal Tournament 2004 did a lot of things.  It took the lackluster UT2003 and, rather than just roll in a couple patches, toss a few new maps here and there, and call it a full-priced game, it more than doubled the content across the board.  It released March 16, 2004 with 106 maps, 11 gamemodes, and 29 mutators making up the launch version, with a further 15 maps added via free downloadable packs.  Unreal Tournament 2004 is a big, big game, and we're gonna be here a while. 

To begin, a disclaimer:  I am biased as hell.  UT2004 is my favorite game of all time and the very fact that I've written four of these essays already should tell you my dedication to the series.  I try to remain objective as I explain things, but I am very biased when it comes to this game specifically.  When I say this is the best game ever made, I mean for me.  It is a game that has everything I could ever want to look for in it, and the ability to add or create anything not there.  

So, where to start?  Having already highlighted some of the changes, both popular and not, that UT2003 introduced, I may as well mention how they were handled in this sequel.  But even before that, let's address the fact that this is even a sequel at all, released merely a year and a half after UT2003 and containing all (nearly all, it dropped like 2 maps) of the content from the previous entry.  This was still years before Call of Duty became an annual event, so that so little time passed was certainly odd.  Well, much like how Unreal Tournament was born of too-big a project to just patch Unreal with, so too was the case for this game.  UT2004 ushered in significant engine upgrades, making the two incompatible for playing together, but with the benefit of having all (most, I'm sure there were some scripting exceptions) the maps and mods made for UT2003 work with 2004.  In addition, Epic offered customers a $10 rebate on their purchase if they mailed in the barcode from their UT2003 box.  Back then, digital distribution didn't exist (Half-Life 2 and Steam along with it was later that year), so this wasn't an unreasonable ask.  Given that back then a new game was 40 USD, bringing it down to $30 for owners of the version it was replacing turned it into the very approachable price point of an average expansion pack.  It was a nice gesture, and one they didn't have to make given that all the new content made up just as much of a game as UT2003 did.  

But, right, the changes to the changes.  People didn't like that UT2003 was so floaty and that people moved so fast in the air: Epic toned down acceleration after dodging off a wall.  Liked UT2003’s way of doing things?  They put a mutator in called UT2003 Style that reenables it.  People didn't like the weapon nerfs, various arc trajectory changes, reduced damage, and firemode changes:  Epic rebalanced some weapons again and, as a bonus, added the UT Classic mutator that makes every weapon perform exactly as it did in UT99 while also giving you the option of disabling double jump, walldodging, and more.  Yes, you can literally enable this and just play UT99 with better graphics.  People didn't like the Lightning Gun, Epic put the Sniper Rifle back in.  People hated Assault going away, Epic put it back in and made it even better.  People weren't crazy about UT2003 not having vehicles after Halo came out and got people excited about vehicles, Epic added an entirely new territory control gamemode with vehicles and huge maps.  People hated Double Domination and wanted the classic version back, Epic didn't listen to them and it's the biggest blemish on the game.  Whoops.

(Don't worry, there's a mod that adds it back in.)

To call Unreal Tournament 2004 a landmark in videogames is to do it a disservice.  It is one of the biggest examples of a developer taking user feedback into account and giving them more of what they wanted and expected.  It was, overall, a sort of last hurrah for the arena shooter, but there really couldn't have been a better way for the genre to go out.  

But before the end, let's talk about the middle.  What was UT2004?  Beyond rattling off a count of this or that, what was the core essence of the game itself?  What were the different parts that came together to make what I consider the Best Video Game?  

Let's look at weapons again, in their order in your loadout.  First up, the Shield Gun.  Replacing the Impact Hammer of UT99, this still filled the roll of last-resort-melee weapon, but added an alternate fire mode that protected you from weapon fire in the direction you look.  It helps to think of it as some sort of shield, as the name would imply.  When you hold down the button, a meter shows up to tell you how much charge the shield has left, which depletes as weapon fire hits it.  Just think of Reinhardt’s shield from Overwatch without the movement slowdown.  Most weapon fire is just stopped, but as a curious little quirk, shock rifle alt fires bounce off.  It's neat.  Also neat is a somewhat hidden function: the gun’s ability to mitigate falling damage by shielding towards the ground.  You can absolutely survive lethal falls this way, but they'll still kill you if you're too high up.  The Shield Gun also works like Quake’s rocket jumping where you can aim at the ground and fire as you jump to go a bit higher at the price of some self damage.

Next, the Assault Rifle.  The stupid, stupid Assault Rifle.  Sporting a new model from the one in UT2003 for some reason, the AR is a bad weapon.  Its primary fire spits low-damage bullets out in a direction that could be generously called ‘forward,’ while its secondary fire charges up a grenade.  Hold the button to make it go further and faster, or tap it to unceremoniously dribble the grenade out in front of you.  The grenade bounces a few times then explodes, or does so on contact with an enemy.  The grenade actually does a fair bit of damage if you can get past the floaty physics of the thing, but sadly it has its own ammo counter apart from the bullets.  And speaking of bullets, while UT99’s Enforcer shared ammo with the Minigun, the Assault Rifle uses its own unique pickup that is extremely rare on most maps, meaning that even if you are forced to use it, you'd better watch your ammo because you don't have many chances.  Like the Enforcer, you can pick up a second and dual-wield them.  They become slightly better like this, but I'd rather take my chances with the Shield Gun from just about the same distances as the AR is effective.  Keeping this hunk of trash in rather than re-adding the Enforcer was one of four big missteps UT2004 made, so make a note of that.  And, in unfortunate conjunction with that, while the UT Classic mutator can make the game otherwise behave just like UT99, it does not whip out a secret Enforcer to add in.  

Reigning champ of the third weapon slot is the Biorifle, here doing exactly what it's done since the original Unreal.  The Biorifle, as stated previously, has always been a bit overlooked in the series at large, but it had a decent niche as an area-denial weapon that saw most use in the CTF and Assault gamemodes.  But it was perhaps the biggest victim of UT2003/4’s new double jumping, and the small threat it posed got even smaller when a player can just jump over a minefield.  Ah well.

Number four is the equally as classic and certainly more recognizable ASMD Shock Rifle.  It was another weapon to get a model update from UT2003, and other than that the only change was how much ammo creating its famous shock combo took.  See, the combo is a powerful tool, dealing 200 damage to anyone unlucky enough to be in its radius.  In UT99, hitting the orb with the beam consumed 2 ammo as a kind of tax for that power, then UT2003 made it 3, and finally UT2004 upped it further to 5.  Of all the nerfs possible, this is perfectly fine.

Weapon slot five is reserved for the Link Gun, the successor to the Pulse Rifle.  They're pretty similar, but with a few small changes and some big ones.  Primary fire damage is exactly the same as in both previous UTs, but the secondary beam damage was lowered while increasing the rate at which it actually dealt ticks of damage.  This was put in place largely to combat the quick-tapping of the alt fire to deal damage faster while also taking less ammo.  It also got a minor facelift.  The biggest change, however, started in UT2003 and was expanded upon in 2004, and is the very reason it's now the Link Gun at all.  In UT2003, Epic added the ability to use the secondary fire - the sustained beam - on a player in your same team to give them a damage boost.  “Oh, neat!”  As long as the player being boosted is also using the Link Gun.  “Oh, hm.”  There's math behind it, but my takeaway was always that I'd rather have two people firing from different angles than just giving an admittedly-noticeable buff to one.  But!  In typical UT2004 fashion of making everything better than it was, the Link Gun was given more utility!  We'll get more into it later, but UT2004, as I said earlier, both brought back the Assault gamemode and added a new territory-control gamemode with vehicles, some of which now show up in Assault.  The Link Gun, therefore, can now not only heal friendly vehicles, but speed up capture point construction in that gamemode.

Number six is the Minigun.  Replacing Unreal and UT99’s “full auto/fuller auto” firemodes are full auto primary and a slower but more damaging alt fire, which was also more accurate.  There's not a whole lot to say about the minigun just given that it's such a simple concept, so I'll mention something I alway found a nice quality of life feature: when using the default reticle, the primary fire will always land within the circle it draws, giving you a perfectly accurate representation of where and what you'll be hitting at any range.

Up next, then, at seven, is the venerable Flak Cannon.  A perfect weapon, the Flak Cannon in UT2003 was given a slightly faster fire rate from the one in UT99, then UT2004 reduced it slightly.  We're talking matters of tenths of seconds here, so it's not really all that much to write home about.  Most different from UT99 to UT2004 is in the effective distance of the weapon, which is noticeably but not unreasonably higher than in UT99.  The primary fire travels a bit further, the arc on the alt fire isn't as severe, and the bits of flak both produce bounce a bit further.  Other than that, the direct impact damage of the alt fire was reduced so that someone with sufficient shields could survive one shot, if not a second.  In the interest of providing more opportunities for people to actually duel when they came into contact with each other, I support this particular nerf.

Weapon eight is the Rocket Launcher, and the most changed from its original incarations.  Whereas UT99’s version of it was just a remodeled version of Unreal’s, UT2003 halved the number of rockets it could charge up, from six to three.  As if that wasn't bad enough, UT2003 also removed the ability to fire the rockets as grenades, making the primary fire for a single rocket and the alt fire for charging up to three.  This is where I'd like to say that UT2004 put it back to normal, or even four or five, but sadly the change was sustained.  This is, to me, the second of UT2004’s biggest missteps.  They did still keep the lockon and being able to fire them as a spiral, so that's something.  And yes, here to save us all as usual is the UT Classic mutator that lets it charge up to six rockets and brings back the grenades.  Praise be to the UT Classic mutator.

All the way at number nine are both the Lightning Gun and the returning Sniper Rifle.  In a move I still don't quite understand, Epic included both and even balanced both differently, fully committing to neither upholding their decision to replace the Sniper Rifle or their decision to ignore the Lightning Gun in favor of what players largely wanted back in the game.  Strange to this day.  Anyway, the Lightning Gun does more damage per hit, has a slower fire rate (though increased from UT2003), and still leaves its visible trail to discourage camping.  In an effort to do the same for the Sniper Rifle, a mostly-opaque puff of smoke drifts out of the muzzle after each shot, both announcing a shooter’s presence and blocking their view, the latter of which is much more effective at getting someone to change position.  

Superweapons return in a big way, occupying the number zero on the keyboard.  The Redeemer is back and unchanged, and the Ion Painter and Target Painter join it.  Both behave roughly the same: holding primary fire gives you a beam to hold on a specific point for about a second, after which something will happen.  For the Ion Painter, this is a giant, quickly expanding blast of energy.  For the Target Painter, it's a strafing run by a spacejet that drops a line of bombs onto the field.  Both can only be used “outdoors” - a specific tag map authors place in an area to mark it as such, but trade that limited application for not being able to be stopped after firing, as the Redeemer’s giant missile can be shot down.  The Ion Painter first appeared in UT2003, while the Target Painter, and its wider area of effect, debuted in UT2004 as a complement to the Onslaught gamemode.

Ah, Onslaught.  Beautiful, beautiful Onslaught.  Perhaps the most extravagant use of the Unreal 2.5 engine and all its shiny new features, Onslaught is a territory control gamemode set in sprawling levels and stuffed full of vehicles.  Each team has a home base, and a field full of capturable nodes connects them in a jumbled line.  A team can only capture a node adjacent to one they already control (including their base), so the whole thing becomes and elaborate tug-of-war with lasers and rockets.  Nodes take time to build (that time can be reduced with the Link Gun), can be damaged and destroyed, but only the last node in a given “chain” is vulnerable.  If a node is adjacent to either an uncaptured node or an enemy node, it’s up for grabs.  Aided by the fact that you can choose to respawn at any node your team currently owns, and that nodes taking damage are highlighted on the gamemode-specific minimap, even the largest maps keep you in the fight.  

Vehicle spawns are different per node, making the territory control not just simply the objective of the game, but a way to control what tools you have access to.  But what tools are those, exactly?  Let’s take a quick look.

UT2004, of course, came out three years after Halo made its meteoric impact on the console market.  Halo was one of the first games to incorporate vehicles as such a big focus, and other games were quick to follow as technology marched forward.  Battlefield 2 was out around this time, Call of Duty 2 had tanks, and the Unreal Tournament series was feeling the pressure of not having what was quickly being seen as a standard feature.  After promising and failing to deliver that feature with an Xbox title, Unreal Championship (which itself would go on to be recobbled into UT2003), Epic knew they finally had to give people what they wanted.

People wanted vehicles like in Halo, so Epic gave people the vehicles from Halo.  

I had taken a break from UT2003 to play Halo 1’s PC release, so by the time UT2004 rolled in, I was pretty familiar with its vehicular arsenal.  There's the Manta, a single-person light attack hovercraft with twin rapid-fire plasma cannons.  There's the Hellbender, a three-man jeep with a turret in the back.  There's the Raptor, a single-man plane with twin plasma cannons and a heavy alt-fire.  And there's the Goliath, a main battle tank with a big cannon and a heavy machine gun.  Yes, they are basically the Ghost, Warthog, Banshee, and Scorpion by other names and different models, but Epic did do their fair share to make updates and changes, and there are even a couple other vehicles that aren't just ripped from Halo.  

The Manta has the fun ability to jump in order to evade weapon fire or clear obstacles, and pressing alt-fire jams it down from the air so you can cut people’s heads off as you skim by.  The Hellbender’s rear turret is a beefed up twin-linked Shock Rifle that you can charge up, or use in conjunction with the passenger seat’s own turret that shoots Shock Rifle alt fire orbs.  It's technically called the Skymine Launcher, because rather than just creating one big explosion, the rear turret’s beam will link every single one of the Skymines in a chain explosion.  It's great.  The Raptor is a VTOL plane rather than the Banshee always accelerating forward, allowing you to hover, and its secondary fire is actually a missile that automatically locks on to other Raptors and even Mantas, should either of those be around the general area of your reticle.  And while the Goliath doesn't have the exterior seating for passengers that the Scorpion did, it reserves its secondary machine gun for a dedicated gunner, and gives both the ability to zoom in.  

There are other vehicles, though.  The Scorpion - no, not the one I was just talking about, yes, it is a tad confusing - is a single-person assault jeep.  I'd extend that sentence to talk about the gun and secondary, but its gun requires a bit more.  The Scorpion’s gun is a weird affair, you see.  Tap to fire and its rear-mounted turret spits out what looks like Link Gun secondary fire, only it travels as a projectile and spreads out horizontally between three energy blobs.  Hold to charge it up, and you get more blobs, which means it spreads even further.  On contact with something, a blob will stick, while the other blobs - and the energy trailing between them - keep going.  In application, this quite effectively wraps targets up in energy webs, at which point damage occurs.  It's most effective as area denial, especially good at hitting large targets like control nodes or Goliaths, and devastating to anyone on foot nearby either.  Also devastating to anyone on foot are the Scorpion’s extendable side blades, which effectively triple the width of the car and are positioned at the perfect height to decapitate anyone in the immediate forward vicinity.  What a concept.

Also different from Halo is the Leviathan, a comically enormous superweapons platform that seats a gunner controlling auto-lock-on swarm energy missile things, and four gunners in plasma turrets on each corner.  If its monstrous size, absurd health, and devastating weapons weren't enough, its alt fire is to transform into a giant, stationary gun that now fires Ion Painter explosions after a short delay.  The Leviathan isn't on every map, and it becomes an immediate target when it is, but its power is truly awesome and unlike anything else you're likely to get in a shooter anymore.

So those were the vehicles at launch, but further free bonus packs added three more: the Paladin, a slow assault truck with a main gun that shoots bigger, deadlier, and faster Shock Rifle secondaries and can also project a giant energy shield in front of it; the Cicada, a two-man air-to-surface missile spewer with a belly gun and the ability to lock on to a specific point on the ground, charge up to sixteen missiles, and fire them almost all at once directly at that spot; and the SPMA, a mobile artillery platform with the ability to deploy a hovering camera drone that allows you to project a reticle onto the ground from above to aim from a strategic view.

There is one particularly large strike against it all, however, and that is that the actual physics for the vehicles themselves is a tad less than great.  Where Halo (and the Warthog especially) had the problem of far, far too loose suspension that would send you bouncing around every bump or particularly sharp turn, UT2004’s vehicles had the opposite problem.  Taking the equivalent of a speedbump is going to scrape up the bottom of your Hellbender a little more than you’d like, and good luck racing a Manta over rough terrain without smoke pouring from under the hood by the end of it.  There’s a stiffness present in the vehicle’s performance that’s hard to describe but instantly obvious when playing.  That, and it was still in that early-2000’s infancy of physics, so nothing feels as heavy as it should.  The Manta feels light, but so does the Goliath.  The Leviathan feels appropriately heavy until you take a fully charged Hellbender laser to the corner panel and spin almost 180 degrees in half a second.  I wish I could call it a small gripe, but the vehicle physics really do just seem quite bad at times, and there’s no real fix.  It’s the third of the big missteps, but still not the biggest.  There’s a ton of good to the vehicles, and only this is bad. It’s unfortunate, but not unforgivable.

The vehicles may have been the biggest and flashiest tools Onslaught offered, but they weren’t the only ones.  Three new weapons were native to the gamemode: the AVRiL (or Avril for my own sanity typing it over and over), the Grenade Launcher, and the Spidermine Layer.  The Avril is an anti-vehicle rocket launcher that shoves a slow moving but incredibly deadly missile at a vehicle, and its alt fire is a perfect lock-on that will ensure that missile reaches its target as long as it’s in view.  It doesn’t deal any sort of respectable damage to non-vehicle targets, though, so it doesn’t mess with the established balance of on-foot combat.  

The Grenade Launcher is different from its appearance in Return to Na Pali - no longer is it literally just Quake’s grenade launcher and/or the Rocket Launcher secondary, UT2004’s Grenade Launcher allows you to fire up to eight grenades at a time, all of which can be stuck to vehicles if you so choose, and detonated at your leisure with the alt fire.  Load your Manta up with a payload and take out a node with a well-aimed ghost ride, tag a passing Hellbender and get a multikill, or just drop a couple around a node you know is about to be contested to dissuade enemies from approaching.  But what happens if you die before you can blow them up?  Well, then you’d want the Spidermine Layer for that job.

Spidermines are, as the name would suggest or maybe if you’ve played Starcraft, mines that look like spiders.  You can have up to eight active at a time, and all they do is sit around waiting for an enemy to walk into their trigger radius so they can chase them down and blow up.  They’re not an uncounterable trap, however - they make a ton of noise and have very few hitpoints.  But as an added bonus, the spidermines can be guided with the Spidermine Layer’s alt fire, a simple laser pointer that sends the spiders scurrying after it towards whatever vulnerable target you choose.

So with all the technical aspects out of the way, what actually was Onslaught?  What did it mean for UT2004 as a big, open-ended gamemode with lots of open space and vehicles and weird weapons, when the core game was always about close-quarters dueling?  

Onslaught was fantastic, there’s no other way to say it.  Trying new things is kind of what the Unreal series at large wanted to do more than anything, and Onslaught was something very new indeed.  Halo and Battlefield had their vehicles, but neither made them such a center-stage spectacle, for better or worse.  There are small Onslaught maps with no vehicles you can find on UT map library sites, and they’re just not the same.  Fun, sure, because it’s UT, but the fact that you could be doing it with vehicles is always there.  Those vehicles may have been overly familiar to an eye-rolling extent, sure, but Epic was careful with what they copied and what they changed.  I won’t try to convince you of whether or not Halo or UT2004 did their vehicles better, because each game used the vehicles in the ways that were best for the game around them.  Onslaught was conceptualized and built from the ground up with the vehicles in mind.  The maps are huge, the sight lines are long, and the terrain is generous.

Onslaught was by far the most popular gamemode for UT2004 and even remains populated to this very day, fifteen years later.  So with all the efforts obvious in this gamemode, what else could Epic have offered to really wow people?  This had to be it, right?  Nowadays, the Onslaught mode could be sold as a full game, easily.  So what else did they bring in to win people back after UT2003 under-impressed?

Assault.

This scenario recreates the pacification of the riots all across Earth as it was announced that Unreal Tournament 2003 was dropping the series’ most venerated gamemode.  For months, angry players took to the streets, armed with whatever high explosives were at hand, and decried Epic Games’ lack of audience awareness.  Eighteen months later, a solution was found.  First, make your way through the rioting crowd.  A separate passage can be secured past the refreshment stand.  Then, you will need to infiltrate the Epic Games headquarters to secure the master copy of the Unreal Tournament 2004 game data.  Once the data disk is secure, push through the sewers into Atari Headquarters.  Finally, fight your way to the top of the building to broadcast the data disk to desperate PC gamers across the globe, ending the riots.

Assault came back in a big way, to put it lightly.  While UT99 had some solid Assault maps, there ultimately wasn’t a whole lot to the gamemode.  And while simplicity is often best, the framework for something better was there, and Epic found it again two games later.  Assault in UT2004 is more ambitious in every possible way.  Each map is bigger, each list of objectives longer, every objective more elaborate.  Let’s look.

As I said in the UT99 essay, an undercurrent of lore lent the game’s world a scope it almost didn’t deserve, and certainly didn’t need.  Epic noticed people like this, and leaned into it as hard as they could.  Assault scenarios are based off of fictional events in the workd of the game.  A daring recovery of stolen warheads on the planet Taron.  The suppression of violent revolts in a post-war Earth.  The theft of a prototype tank from one megacorporation by another.  A particularly noteworthy and infamous episode of a reality show.  Defense against a robot uprising on LBX-7683.  The final desperate attempt to destroy the Skaarj mothership during the Seven-Day Siege.  

UT2004?  More like UT200LORE.  

But we’ll get back to that soon.  We’re still on Assault, after all.  

Each Assault map starts with a (skippable, don’t worry) narrated overview of the map, the historical even it’s recreating, and your objectives within.  Ingame, a list of those objectives is displayed in the upper righthand corner, and pressing M or N on your keyboard summons a colored wisp that shows you the way to the next objective.  All are very welcome additions because quite honestly, the biggest issue with Assault in UT99 was that the objectives weren’t actually given to you unless you played the map in the tournament ladder, so popping into, say, the undersea lab map could leave you a bit lost if you hadn’t played it in a while.  

Other than that, the gameplay is the same, but greatly improved by all the new ideas inside of it.  Larger maps make for more opportunities to try new things, like Convoy starting out by having you hop across the back of an armed caravan speeding through the desert, clambering over cargo, avoiding sniper fire and machine gun turrets before taking a protected boarding tunnel over to your first objective.  The maps are more dynamic overall, still “go here and use/do a thing” at their core but more interesting moment to moment.  Other than just being in bigger, better looking maps, there’s a lot of incidental game design lessons Epic learned between games that are on full display.  Chokepoints still exist, but there’s probably an alternate route.  The few places in UT99 Assault maps that weren’t necessarily supposed to be chokepoints but turned into them are gone, in general there are fewer areas where an attacker is immediately in danger upon spawning, and overall the flow is easier to grasp.

I want to keep moving on to other gamemodes, but I can’t without stopping to seriously gush about how incredibly well the world of Unreal Tournament is expanded by the decision to turn all the Assault maps into these historical recreations.  Unreal and Unreal Tournament both suggested these massive worlds going on behind the game, and Unreal Tournament 2004 just drives that point home even more.  Things set up by casual mentions in other games are now the focal points of these giant, elaborate Assault maps.  The Corporation Wars get a nod in Glacier, where the full power of the Izanagi and Axon corporations is on display.  After the events of Unreal and Return to Na Pali, the Skaarj followed human ships back to Earth and began the Seven-Day Siege in response to Prisoner 849 destroying the Queen and mothership they had stationed on the Nali moon, and the level Mothership lets you replay the final hours of Earth’s last bid for survival.  It’s an exploration of these events through the same medium as the rest of the game, but what’s going on under the shooting lends so much to the world around it all.  AS-Mothership begins with an extended dogfight sequence as your team struggles to disable the exterior defenses of the Skaarj mothership so they can land inside and continue their mission.  As far as the gameplay is concerned, it’s a great little spacefighter section with full 6-degrees-of-freedom flight and easily identifiable targets.  In the context of the world, your small swarm of light attack fighters slowly are whittling down this massive mothership while it’s still actively raining down nuclear blasts on the Earth below you, while the bombastic, orchestral music swells to desperate highs, you feel the sort of thing they were going for.  This is Earth’s last chance, you are the one who will decide.  

So while Onslaught and Assault are the best the series has to offer, and are by far some of the most ambitious gamemodes in a shooter to begin with, Unreal Tournament 2004 did have to trade something for all that good.  Something that was bad enough to make up for two greats.  Something so inane and against everything the game is good at that there’s no way to rationalize any decision involved with its creation.  

Double Domination.

Double Domination is so bad, I’m pretty sure it was totally dead online within the first week of release.  Double Domination is so bad, it’s the only thing that can make me not want to play UT2004.  Double Domination is a tedious slog through a game of what should be a fun, fast-paced shooter, but the gamemode devolves into RED TEAM DOMINATING, AVERTED, BLUE TEAM DOMINATING, AVERTED, RED TEAM, BLUE TEAM DOMINATING, EIGHT, SEVEN, SIX, AVERTED, BLUE TEAM DOMINATING, EIGHT, AVERTED.  

Double Domination is a gamemode where each team has a control point, and they must capture the other team’s and then hold both for ten seconds to score a point.  The maps, because of this, are symmetrical, and the capture point base ends up just feeling like a flag base, and the whole thing feels like a bad version of capture the flag.  Because control of the point is still transferred instantly when a player touches it, it’s quite difficult for anything to actually happen on the more crowded maps, and on less populated maps the players will spend most of their time rotating around just trying to touch a point before ten seconds are up.  So the whole thing ends up almost not being a game at all, because the win condition is so hard to meet just by the very nature of the underlying design.  Double Domination is not a well thought out gamemode, it is by far the worst UT2004 has to offer, and I, to this day, have no idea what was so wrong with the classic Domination formula.

But past that massive disappointment the game is better than ever.  Using the same roster of maps are Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, joined by Last Man Standing, Mutant, and Invasion.  Capture the Flag and Bombing run both return with greatly expanded map pools, and Vehicle CTF makes its somewhat secret debut as a default gamemode in support only, as it had no official maps at launch.  It wasn't listed on the menu, but the framework was there for modders and mapmakers to start going to town.  

So what are some of these new gamemodes?  Last Man Standing is typical free-for-all deathmatch with an adjustable lives system, Mutant is Unreal’s King of the Hill and RtNP’s Cloak Match, but with yet another new twist.  The first kill of the match transforms the killer into the Mutant, granting them infinite ammo, partial invisibility, increased fire rate, and faster movement speed.  From that point on, only the Mutant can be damaged by other players’ weapon fire, except in the case of the last-place player who can kill anyone.  As before, killing the Mutant transfers those powers to their killer, and so on until a score threshold is reached.

Invasion is a little more extravagant.  This is a cooperative, wave-based score attack survival mode where a team of players is beset by hordes of enemies from Unreal.  There is an end to the mode, but unless you're really that good at massacring Skaarj Warlords, it's most likely going to end up as a “survive until you don't” sort of situation.  Dead players are revived at the start of the next round, but only then.  In the match setup menu, Invasion actually gives you a lot of control as to how long each wave is, how many enemies there are and what kinds, and so on.  Invasion isn't the flashiest gamemode, and seeing Unreal’s sparse collection of polygons running around the then-modern graphics of a tightly-crafted UT2004 level can be a bit silly, but it's a fun gamemode to mess around with every now and then, and the modding opportunities it opened up were very well exploited.

Capture the Flag returns, its roster of maps is doubled as with the rest of the game, and an old friend returns.  Yes indeed, Facing Worlds is back after its baffling absence and better than ever.  Well, pretty much entirely unchanged except for a facelift (hah), that is.  As silly as it sounds, Facing Worlds became something of a mascot for UT99 and its return here was much celebrated.

But Face wasn't the only map that made it back in.  Deck 17 is the new version of the classic and also missing-from-UT2003 Deck 16, bringing with it some minor and welcome upgrades.  A new, short hallway connects two rooms that were previously dead ends, which helps improve the flow.  A jump pad from the bottom level back to the central area gives a third way back up from below, and the ramps leading from the middle level to the small upper area are now slightly curved so those below them can enjoy better vertical sightlines.

The whole thing was given a change of location, as well, as you can see.  The cold greens of the Tarydium sludge refinery deck are now the warm glow of magma.  This is a minor change, obviously, but I like red more than green myself.  Also as a fun detail, a partially fenced-off doorway offers a view at the darkened Deck 16 nextdoor, sadly closed for repairs.  If you turn on noclip, a fair chunk of the level is actually modeled and you can run around the main platform and the overhead bridges.

And it's exactly that sort of fun detail that turns UT2004 into a powerhouse of expansive yet quiet worldbuilding.  If it seems like I've used that phrase before, it's because there's no better way to describe it.  The Instant Action menu has been overhauled, and now every single one of the 120+ maps that come with the game have a short description right there in the selection screen.  They talk about where the map is, what it was before becoming a Tournament arena, what planet it’s on or orbits.  They're small tales of ancient ruins, top secret military bases, forgotten structures left to rot.  There's a tangible history woven between the double jumping and headshots, something not just suggesting a bigger world but eagerly telling you about it.  Humanity has bounced back from the Seven-Day Siege and now builds skyscrapers that reach into space.  So many alien civilizations have been found that Liandri rents real estate in their temples and towns.  The Corporation Wars that threatened every human world are now sensationalized as profitable bloodsport.  

Through it all, Liandri Mining Corporation remains the goofy, overblown cartoon megacorp it's always been.  There's a map called Grendelkeep that has this description:

“Prieth Callas was a hard, cruel man, fond of torturing his enemies before sending them to their deaths. He raised creatures of great size and ferocity, setting them against his prisoners in arenas of his own creation. Grendelkeep is the last of his diabolical constructions, left to fall into ruin after Callas was dragged from the battlements by his own men and fed to the creatures he bred in the dark kennels below. The rain has washed away the blood, but the evil that bred here has left a much deeper stain.”

An entire story is told, as morbid as it ends up, just to suggest that a Liandri location scout went “Wow, that'll really draw in the crowds!”  It’s presenting the Tournament as a collection of tourist traps, and the thing to remember is that in-universe, the Tournament is the go-to entertainment.  It's a sport.  People compete and strive for a place at the top.  The Unreal universe has eliminated death with their respawning technology and the first thing they did with it was monetize the ability to brutally murder someone over and over.  So it stands to reason that the levels of the game would be a vast collection of areas, because sending eight competitors to their repeated deaths in a notorious, infamous location is good for the books.  Just imagine the novelty value of going to a paintball course built around the Statue of Liberty or at the beach at Normandy.  That's the sort of spectacle they're going for, and UT2004 revels in it.

But the levels aren't the things with buckets full of incidental lore.  The greatly expanded character roster is stuffed full of words that expand other events.  The Geneboosted team is an excuse for the Axon corporation to continue its research into genetic modification.  A Skaarj team competes in the post-war landscape to retain honor and relevancy.  The mercenary teams from UT99 are defending their titles and earning some cash.  The Gen Mo’kai race of aliens uses the Tournament to settle family scores and advance in their own hierarchy.  The team of robots competes as a way to kill humans.  The list goes on and includes an honestly staggering number of characters, all with their own short backstory explaining their place in their own society and why they compete.  

But they also have something else that sets them apart from each other, and stops them from being just an interchangeable bundle of pixels to gib: weapon and tactic preferences.

The Tournament ladder itself got a major overhaul in UT2003, and is expanded even more here.  No longer just a simple sequence of matches across various gamemodes, the Tournament in UT2004 is more of an actual sport facsimile.  A couple one-on-one and free-for-all matches kicks things off, then you select a team of allies from an available pool.  AI in UT2004 has four stats that determines how good they are at the game (and also being a sneaky way of showing you what actually controls AI difficulty - they’re just the various parameters that get adjusted) and, as mentioned a couple sentences ago, weapon and tactic preferences.  This comes across in gameplay as them favoring one weapon over others in combat, and being a bit better with it overall.  Better aim, faster reaction times with it, that sort of thing.  Tactics preferences comes across in whether they like to range out on their own or stick with a you or another teammate.  You can always give them specific instructions with the hotkey AI command menu, but this just determines how they act by default.  It’s a neat system that adds a bit of personality to the bots, and also makes you put a little consideration into the composition of your roster.  I like it.

Before they become your team for the rest of the Tournament, you must win one final FFA match against them to prove yourself fit to lead.  After that, it gets a bit “sport management sim” on you.  Due to some in-universe imperfection in the respawner technology, teammates can sometimes come out of lost matches with injuries, which must be treated.  You do so just by paying for it with credits you earn after matches.  Each match has a buy-in and a payout value, so if you trust your own skill enough to make up for any deficiencies in your AI partners, feel free to punch above your team’s weight.  Occasionally you’ll also find some matches that aren’t part of the direct ladder, such as when a losing team challenges you for a double-or-nothing rematch, when a team you haven’t fought gambles with one of their members - if you win, they trade you a man, but if you lose, you give one up, or maybe just a higher-stakes incidental challenge.  You can initiate these as well, but be careful, because losing a good teammate will be a blow felt for quite a while.

Because all the various Deathmatches get taken care of in qualification, the actual Tournament ladder is CTF, Assault, Double Domination, and Bombing Run, with a final few super-high-tier Deathmatch bouts at the end against the reigning champs.  Strangely, there’s no Onslaught present in the ladder, which just seems like an odd choice.  Clearly the effort they went to to actually make the gamemode wasn’t wasted as it still has regular players 15 years later, but the game definitely shipped with enough Onslaught maps to make a ladder out of.  Who knows.

And of course the gameplay contained in all of these gamemode and Tournament ladders is just as superb as it always was.  They toned down air acceleration from dodging, and while it didn’t win back UT99 fans who didn’t like the inclusion of doublejumping and walldodging, it did enough to bring projectile weapons back to relevance.  It’s still a game with quite a lot of high-flying acrobatics during gunfights, but that just makes it even better for me.  There are few feelings in games so interesting and neat as jumping off an elevator as it reaches the top for a giant boost, dodging off the wall it spits you out near, and slamming a trio of rockets down on someone’s head from twenty feet above while they try to figure out where you went.  Ah, arena shooters.  

UT2003 and 2004 also added a weird and contentious facet of gameplay in the form of Adrenaline.  Adrenaline is both a pickup and something you get for killing people, scoring goals, or really anything else that helps make you or your team win.  Adrenaline isn't lost on death unless you suicide, and once you get 100, you can activate a temporary buff by quickly tapping a sequence of movement keys.  There are four to choose from by default: speed, regen, berserk, and invisibility.  All of the buffs consume adrenaline while they're active and will run out once you're at zero, but you can extend that by simply getting more.  Adrenaline is a weird thing because it guarantees someone will have one of those powerups at some point, removing an element of the map control and knowledge that's part of what defines the genre.  But as with everything, there's a handy-dandy mutator called “No Adrenaline” that, well, makes it so there's no Adrenaline.

There are a lot of really nice mutators in UT2004.  Classics like Weapon Arena return, only a bit slimmed down because now you just select the one mutator and pick which weapon you want to replace every spawn with rather than having a distinct Arena mutator for each weapon.  A Big Head mode is partnered with Big Wheels, both of which rapidly increase the size of either head and/or vehicle wheels depending on how well you're doing.  There are mutators to force Lightning Gun spawns to be Sniper Rifles and vice versa, there's a mutator to make everyone fire twice as fast, a low gravity mutator, one for quad jumping, one to force the bonus vehicles onto maps built before they existed, and even just weird cosmetic things like making all the ragdolls move in slow motion.  Mutators are a wonderful system.

I don’t really know if there’s a whole lot left to talk about on the mechanical side, so let’s move on to the emotional appeal segment of this giant essay.  I’ve already spoken at length in various others of these just how much I am in love with the way the series builds its lore, but there’s just so much to say about that lore in the first place.  Of course there are the planet-conquering Skaarj, the corporate intrigue between Liandri, Axon, and Izanagi, the genetic experiments, and all the usual stuff, but then there're the more off-the-wall details that get thrown in for fun.  Take the fact that the entire Egyptian mythos is - in this universe - a bunch of space aliens from another planet who have now recontacted humanity to participate in the Tournament.  What does this mean for the game?  Well, there's an Egyptian team and a bunch of maps with a super rad techno-Egyptian theme that I really, really love.  It's all pale yellow sandstone with bright lapis and teal highlights and glittering gold, but a bunch of holograms and coursing energy tubes in those same colors.  It's just so neat, and oh man the colors.  UT2004 snuck in just before it wasn't cool to have color in your game anymore, so while the tone may be serious and all about killing each other, you do so in fantastically colored arenas.  The new Deck 17 of course radiates its warm red glow, but then you have Icetomb, a stark blue-white palace with vaulted ceilings, or the gloomy shadows of Curse4, lit with gaudy splashes of green and blue.  Colossus, a map used in both CTF and Bombing Run, stretches out over a shaded nighttime field as the construction-yellow and metallic gray structures loom overhead, adorned with team-colored lighting.  Every color is just so rich that the game can't help but look amazing.

Without a general theme between a lot of the maps, they have to rely on bite-sized bits of your time to have their artstyle make an impression, and I think they all do it wonderfully.  Sure, there's a hefty collection of grungy or high-tech industrial settings, but Asbestos doesn't feel like Junkyard doesn't feel like Sulfur doesn't feel like Metallurgy.  Then you have more setpiecey things like the aforementioned Icetomb or Hell or the returning Morpheus.  120+ maps is a lot, and while there's definitely some that don't totally land, the game as a whole has an unnaturally positive skew to the quality of its playing fields.  

And of course, to go along with all of those maps, Unreal Tournament 2004 gives us a wide variety of music to frag to, and it is glorious.  Alexander Brandon and Michiel van den Bos are sadly absent from the soundtrack, but three other composers step in to offer a staggering variety of new sounds.  Will Nevins, Starsky Partridge, and Kevin Reipl are the trio that gave this game its music, and they all do a great job.  Of the three though, Kevin Reipl is the indisputable star.  His music for the game is so varied and imaginative that I barely believe he did so much of it.  But it's true, he did 39 of the game’s 62 tracks, and each one sounds unique.  So many different styles, sounds, and instruments are present in his work, and they're all great.  I'll just drop a list of six tracks of his to illustrate how much range this guy has, because it's really hard to understate just how impressive it is.  

Action 2v2

Atlantis

Conduit v2

Metallurgy

Skaarj Assault

Hyperblast Redux

Even his take on the classic GoDown is great with Hyperblast Redux.  A new sound, kind of a big band inspired thing with light electronic elements to the late 90s techno boops of the original.  

Stage music really is a lost art, but I never get tired of this soundtrack.  Epic had a knack for picking their composers, and UT2004 is right alongside UT99 and Unreal for tracks I've long since incorporated into my regular playlist.  The music is weighty, exciting, and downright danceable in some cases.  UT2004’s music is incomparable.  No game I've played beyond it has done so well with mixing so many different styles with so many maps and locales, gamemodes, characters, or just sheer options.  And as before, if something isn't there, feel free to make it.

Epic once again included the Unreal Editor for free, allowing users to create their most expansive desires with the very tools used to make the base game.  I recently downloaded a pack totalling nineteen gigabytes of UT2004 maps, mutators, gamemodes, character skins, and more.  People made new guns, new vehicles, new games.  Counter-Strike and Team Fortress might be the most noteworthy examples of mods becoming full games, but UT2004 was the petri dish for a good number of its own.  Rocket League, Air Buccaneers, Alien Swarm, and Killing Floor all started their lives as UT2004 total conversions, now grown up to be fully realized.  

Unreal Tournament 2004 is a massive behemoth of content in a way that games never will be again.  It came out at a time before the push for an insane level of realism, a push that was partly Epic’s own fault with the Unreal Engine 3.  Games haven't shipped with more than a dozen maps on offer for over a decade, and we're lucky if we get anything beyond Deathmatch anymore.  Our old nemesis Half-Life would come around later the year of UT2004’s release with Half-Life 2 to once again shift attention to the more guided side of videogames, but this time the fight wasn't between two competing singleplayer narratives.  Half-Life’s mark in 1998 had been made and copied, and Half-Life 2 only made it bigger.  Halo’s success on console influenced the shooter genre from an entirely new angle.  Call of Duty 2 was one of dozens of WW2 shooters gaining traction, and the FPS genre had more eyes on it than ever.  It had been over a decade since the panic surrounding Doom, and shooters were changing.  Though I hardly have a reasonable stance to take against it, having played UT99 at the age I did, Halo’s presence on Xbox was attracting a much younger crowd than other shooters of the time.  Consoles were still seen more for children, and the colorful graphics and man-on-alien violence with minimal blood was palatable to a lot of parents, certainly moreso than UT’s or Quake’s showers of gibs, or Call of Duty 2’s or Counter-Strike’s emphasis on real imagery.  

This isn't a condemnation.  More options means more people are happy buying games, which means the industry progresses.  Trends come and go, it's just that fast-paced murderfests came first and were the first to stick around.  As much as games may be a passion for those making them, copies must be sold so the creation can continue.  As one thing becomes popular, new eyes are on it and eager for more, so companies shift focus.  It's how, after Halo and Half-Life 2 made their giant impacts, we got so many linear narrative-based scifi romps.  No game would exist without the others.  As Half-Life begat Halo, Half-Life 2 begat hordes of others.  Halo 2, Red Faction, FEAR, Quake 4.  Lots of variation between each, but all influenced by what came before.  FEAR has hints of arena shooters in its buckets of blood, but takes a horror slant.  Quake 4 wants to forget its predecessors and be the next Halo, with narrative cutscenes, vehicle rampage sections, and giant setpieces.  Call of Duty would go on to be the weird inconsistent monster it's remained.  Red Faction would, well, you know.  

2004 was a great year for videogames overall.  But it was also one of the last moments of the proverbial Wild West of the industry.  Things would soon become much, much more corporate as the next generation of consoles rolled in, and games suddenly grew massively inflated production costs.  Experimental titles were scaled down, relegated to single instances of experimental bits in something much safer to sell.  Killzone, Call of Duty 4, Epic’s own Gears of War.  After Doom 3 and Quake 4 both flopped harder than imaginable, id bowed out for years.  Unreal Tournament 2004 became a sort of marker as the last of the arena shooters, and it carried that torch proudly.  All those maps, all that music, all those mutators, and all those mods.  

And if only it had.  But Epic, good old Epic Megagames who I'd grown up with, kept making games.  Sure, they're a business, why wouldn't they.  2006 saw Gears of War chainsaw its way onto PCs and the Xbox 360, and while it was a fine game, it was a far cry from the franchise they'd spent the last five years tinkering with.  It was a narrative-based third person shooter with a slow pace and slow combat built with console controllers, regenerating health, and a cover system in mind.  So, kind of exactly the opposite of what Unreal Tournament was all about, but hey, always good to branch out and try new things, right?  It's not like it would end up negatively influencing the next Unreal Tournament game or anything.

. . .

Coming up at the end of the month, we'll wrap up this essay series with a look at Unreal Tournament 3, a game negatively influenced by the design philosophy present in Gears of War!  

[howtoloseweightfastsafely]

How Much You Really Need To Eat For Steady Fat Loss (The Truth About Calories and Macronutrients)

For starters, you should know this...

NO matter what anyone, especially any health expert or media personality or Facebook/Twitter superstar tells you...

If you're overweight now and you want to be skinny, fit, and healthy for life, find out how many calories you need per day to maintain weight, and then methodically subtract from that number.

It is the one and only scientifically proven, a zero-nonsense method of knowing how much YOUR specific body needs to function at its highest level, day in and day out.

We start by calculating your BMR or your Basal Metabolic Rate.

This is the amount of calories that you burn by just sitting on your butt all day. If you're new to this, you may be shocked but this number is pretty darn high!

And you may think, well my body burns so much in one day...and I'm eating so little, so why am I not losing weight??

Introducing...

5 unusual reasons why 90% of people on a diet fail within the first 90 days (avoid these diet traps and you'll be laughing all the way to a beach-ready body)

1. You're not eating less calories, CONSISTENTLY enough to lose weight.

a. Weight loss is a process. It's not a one-and-done thing.

b. You need to stick to your calories day after day after day to see results. And if you half-ass it by not tracking intake, you don't realize that you're actually eating more than you need to for weight loss.

c. Personal admission: I'm guilty of this myself. I thought I "had it" during a recent program and decided to not count my intake (aka "half-assing" it). In my head, I have convinced my foods added up to 2,200 calories a day, which would help me lose about 1 pound per week while retaining muscle. But on Day 4 I decided to track my intake, and lo and behold, I was eating 2,750 calories. It's that easy to get off schedule, while somehow convincing yourself you're doing OK.

2. You haven't made a concentrated effort to reduce inflammation, insulin resistance, and liver clogging

a. This will ruin your efforts to lose weight.

b. Simply put, if your body is dealing with the deluge of inflammation and insulin problems, on top of the excess strain placed on an already clogged liver... the last thing your body is going to do is pay attention to your expanding fat stores.

c. Make sure you use a smart diet and exercise plan, like the one in this book, to address these issues and take a natural herbal supplement, like InvigorateNOW, for added protection.

3. You think you're eating a lot less than you actually are (this has been reproduced in countless studies).

a. The truth is we're simply terrible at estimating calorie intake. And this goes both ways.

b. Overweight people think they're eating much less than they are, and skinny people trying to gain weight and/or muscle think they're eating much more than they actually are. And they both fail.

4. You actually are eating less than you're burning every day, and you ARE losing some weight, but your protein/carb/fat ratios are poorly calculated or non-existent

a. As a result, you're losing so much muscle that you still look like you have the same amount of fat on your body as before. (This is "skinny-fat" syndrome.)

5. (This one is the best scenario, and surprisingly common) You're actually losing weight, with lots of it being fat (as opposed to muscle), but you're not tracking your results and so you don't realize that you started at 180 for example and that you're now 173....all you see is someone who isn't "super hot" and "fit" yet, and you say "screw it, this isn't working". And then you fall into the trap that a large % of people do.

The truth is there are few people who enjoy counting their calories and macronutrients, but there's no smart way to lose weight and build a lean physique without it.

Luckily, there are some great web sites that help a lot with this (Fitday is probably the best on the Internet and several apps for smartphones and tablets that can lend a helping hand, as well.)

Anyway, let's get to the basics.

A pound of fat has 3500 calories. If you're a regular Joe or Jane, you burn between 1,500 and 2,500 calories per day on basic functions like keeping your blood flowing, your body temperature regulated, and your brain pumping out thoughts. If you're a regular Joe or Jane, you also typically eat a few hundred calories (about 300 based on research) more than you need to maintain your weight.

The good news is you don't actually have to make too drastic of a change to start getting the results that you want. The bad news is, even non-drastic changes can be really hard to make - your body is desperate to hold on to its fat and keep homeostasis at all times, so you've got your work cut out for you when you're trying to lose weight. However, by knowing your optimal calorie and macronutrient intake every day (and keeping a food journal) you'll take out most of the hard work and put yourself on the path to success.

 Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...

Read the previous article about "A Nutrition Crash Course To Build A Healthy Body and Happy Mind"

Read the next article about "The Easy Way To Determining Your Calorie Intake"

Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.

Topic 1: How I Lost 30 Pounds In 90 Days - And How You Can Too

Topic 2: How I Lost Weight By Not Following The Mainstream Media And Health Guru's Advice - Why The Health Industry Is Broken And How We Can Fix It

Topic 3: The #1 Ridiculous Diet Myth Pushed By 95% Of Doctors And "experts" That Is Keeping You From The Body Of Your Dreams

Topic 4: The Dangers of Low-Carb and Other "No Calorie Counting" Diets

Topic 5: Why Red Meat May Be Good For You And Eggs Won't Kill You

Topic 6: Two Critical Hormones That Are Quietly Making Americans Sicker and Heavier Than Ever Before

Topic 7: Everything Popular Is Wrong: The Real Key To Long-Term Weight Loss

Topic 8: Why That New Miracle Diet Isn't So Much of a Miracle After All (And Why You're Guaranteed To Hate Yourself On It Sooner or Later)

Topic 9: A Nutrition Crash Course To Build A Healthy Body and Happy Mind

Topic 10: How Much You Really Need To Eat For Steady Fat Loss (The Truth About Calories and Macronutrients)

Topic 11: The Easy Way To Determining Your Calorie Intake

Topic 12: Calculating A Weight Loss Deficit

Topic 13: How To Determine Your Optimal "Macros" (And How The Skinny On The 3-Phase Extreme Fat Loss Formula)

Topic 14: Two Dangerous "Invisible Thorn" Foods Masquerading as "Heart Healthy Super Nutrients"

Topic 15: The Truth About Whole Grains And Beans: What Traditional Cultures Know About These So-called "Healthy Foods" That Most Americans Don't

Topic 16: The Inflammation-Reducing, Immune-Fortifying Secret of All Long-Living Cultures (This 3-Step Process Can Reduce Chronic Pain and Heal Your Gut in Less Than 24 Hours)

Topic 17: The Foolproof Immune-enhancing Plan That Cleanses And Purifies Your Body, While "patching Up" Holes, Gaps, And Inefficiencies In Your Digestive System (And How To Do It Without Wasting $10+ Per "meal" On Ridiculous Juice Cleanses)

Topic 18: The Great Soy Myth (and The Truth About Soy in Eastern Asia)

Topic 19: How Chemicals In Food Make Us Fat (Plus 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply)

Topic 20: 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply

Topic 21: How To Protect Yourself Against Chronic Inflammation (What Time Magazine Calls A "Secret Killer")

Topic 22: The Truth About Buying Organic: Secrets The Health Food Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

Topic 23: Choosing High Quality Foods

Topic 24: A Recipe For Rapid Aging: The "Hidden" Compounds Stealing Your Youth, Minute by Minute

Topic 25: 7 Steps To Reduce AGEs and Slow Aging

Topic 26: The 10-second Trick That Can Slash Your Risk Of Cardiovascular Mortality By 37% (Most Traditional Cultures Have Done This For Centuries, But The Pharmaceutical Industry Would Be Up In Arms If More Modern-day Americans Knew About It)

Topic 27: How To Clean Up Your Liver and Vital Organs

Topic 28: The Simple Detox 'Cheat Sheet': How To Easily and Properly Cleanse, Nourish, and Rid Your Body of Dangerous Toxins (and Build a Lean Well-Oiled "Machine" in the Process)

Topic 29: How To Deal With the "Stress Hormone" Before It Deals With You

Topic 30: 7 Common Sense Ways to Have Uncommon Peace of Mind (or How To Stop Your "Stress Hormone" In Its Tracks)

Topic 31: How To Sleep Like A Baby (And Wake Up Feeling Like A Boss)

Topic 32: The 8-step Formula That Finally "fixes" Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested (If You Ever Find Yourself Hitting The Snooze Every Morning Or Dozing Off At Work, These Steps Will Change Your Life Forever)

Topic 33: For Even Better Leg Up And/or See Faster Results In Fixing Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested, Do The Following:

Topic 34: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 35: Part 1 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 36: Part 2 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 37: Part 3 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 38: Part 4 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 39: How To Beat Your Mental Roadblocks And Why It Can Be The Difference Between A Happy, Satisfying Life And A Sad, Fearful Existence (These Strategies Will Reduce Stress, Increase Productivity And Show You How To Fulfill All Your Dreams)

Topic 40: Maximum Fat Loss in Minimum Time: The Body Type Solution To Quick, Lasting Results

Topic 41: If You Want Maximum Results In Minimum Time You're Going To Have To Work Out (And Workout Hard, At That)

Topic 42: Food Planning For Maximum Fat Loss In Minimum Time

Topic 43: How To Lose Weight Fast If You're in Chronic Pain

Topic 44: Nutrition Basics for Fast Pain Relief (and Weight Loss)

Topic 45: How To Track Results (And Not Fall Into the Trap That Ruins 95% of Well-Thought Out Diets)

Topic 46: Advanced Fat Loss - Calorie Cycling, Carb Cycling and Intermittent Fasting

Topic 47: Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling

Topic 48: Advanced Fat Loss - Part II: Carb Cycling

Topic 49: Advanced Fat Loss - Part III: Intermittent Fasting

Topic 50: Putting It All Together

Learn more by visiting our website here: invigoratenow.com

[sunbaebes]

Crooked Chapter 4

Summary:Big Bang Mafia AU-

Chapter 1   Chapter 2  Chapter 3  Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6  Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Epilogue

When the members of Kwon Ji Yong’s men take up a deal with the Italian mob, they think kidnapping one young woman will be a piece of cake. But all isn’t as it seems, and soon Ji Yong is realizing that maybe he’s bitten off more than he can chew…..

Disclaimer : Rated M for violence, and eventual smut.

The men had been gone for hours. In the home, hollowness seemed to expand and breathe its presence in their absence, and it was large enough to be felt even in the confines of your rooms. You had been doing a sheet mask when your stomach began to growl; Seungri had forgotten to bring you dinner. You tried to ignore it, continuing on with your facial routine, until the craving was too much, and with a huff you slipped on a large sweatshirt, and made your way out of your room.

This new freedom had come as a shock to you. G Dragon’s quick visit before they departed had been to tell you that they would no longer be locking you in your rooms.

“You can roam wherever you’d like, within reason.” He said pointedly, his body wrapped in form fitting black clothing, a turtle neck reaching far up past his neck to sit just on the tip of his pointed chin.

“We’ve got a job tonight,” he said casually, his arms crossed loosely over his chest, “there will be our regular men around the gates surrounding the property, but otherwise there shouldn’t be anyone in the house.”

“And if there is someone?”

“Press the red button on the pin code to your door. It will keep everything locked down until someone comes back with the emergency password.”

You looked at the red button now, in the silence of a house where not even the pipes moved. You had been joking about intruders coming into the estate, but it seemed the men you were staying with took the threat very seriously. The first few steps you made out of your rooms were on tip-toes. It felt like a sin to make noise, and it wasn’t until you made it to the first landing on the steps that you finally lowered yourself onto the balls of your feet and let out a large exhale. You felt ridiculous. Taking the rest of the stairs with heavy footfalls, you jumped the last two steps for extra enthusiasm. Aside from the night of the screaming man, this had been your first taste of the world outside your bedroom in two weeks. The ceiling seemed to rise up endlessly, while large windows remained hidden behind heavy curtains. The floor was made of white marble, with flecks of silver and onyx that shimmered naturally in the low lightening that seeped out from somewhere down the hall.

Following the light source, you end up just where you wanted to be; the kitchen. It’s polished in chrome with warm granite countertops, and bottles of wine in wracks on top of the cabinets, an espresso machine in the corner blinks with a lazy red light.

The fridge is large and stocked, and it’s not long before you manage to find all your favorite fixings for kimchi fried rice. There is comfort in slicing down the squash, and browning the onions; letting the familiarity of cooking bring life back into the abandoned house. Finding the light switches, you bring a healthy glow to the bottom floor, and find an iphone docking station that allows you to at least play the radio.

You’re just cracking an egg into the rice when you hear a large thump from down the hall. The first sound is small and soft, almost easy to miss over the sound of the music. The second is a bit harsher, a rough pounding and then something sliding against what you assumed to be the front door.  Quickly you turn off the burner, sliding to the sink to grab the knife in the drying rack. Socks on your feet silence your footsteps as you creep out into the hall. The front porch light turns shadows into monsters, as a four headed form shifts and sways in front of the light.

The closer you get, the more you’re able to hear. Someone was cursing as the door swings open. Top is in front, his long leg stretched out from kicking the door open, while Youngbae and Daesung are holding onto G Dragon’s torso, Seungri using both his arms to lift the man’s feet.

Turns out, G Dragon had been the one cursing, his fowl mouth still popping off offensive phrases as the men carrying him come to a quick stand still.

“Y/N?” Seungri grunts between his teeth, and G Dragon picks up his head enough to stare at you; taking in the sweatshirt that drowned your figure, and the large knife held at eye level.

“How is it that you always manage to find a knife?” he asks, before letting his head fall back, kicking his leg out as if to tell Seungri to start moving again.

The knife falls quickly to the floor as you run over to them,

“What happened?”

“Get her out of here.” G Dragon spits.

“Get back to your room,” Top says, his voice quiet until he realizes you’re not moving,

“GO!” he screams this time, and it’s now that you notice the blood on his hands. You try to look for a wound on him, but his dark clothes give nothing away.

Looking around at the other men, Seungri has a bruise darkening on his cheek, but there are no other marks, no blood. Daesung is the same, looking a little ruffled but unharmed. It’s when your eyes fall to Youngbae that the color of crimson pops out once more. It’s all over his hands, dripping down to the floor, a few smudges appear on his face where he must have wiped at sweat. The blood itself seems to be come from G Dragon’s arm, where someone had made a rough tourniquet.

“I can help,” you mumble as TOP wastes no more time with you, grabbing you by your arms and pushing you towards the stairs.

“In case you didn’t notice we don-“

“You don’t have time.” You finish for him, pushing back on his arms with little progress. “I know a bit about this stuff, I can help.”

“This isn’t our first patch up job, go upstairs. You’ll be in the way.”

“But I can help!”

G Dragon lets out a frustrated yell, “If she wants to help let her help, just fuckin’ patch me up before I bleed to death.”

Top looks at you for a second longer before setting everyone in motion. The men quickly bring G Dragon’s body into the sitting room, throwing his body as gently as they could onto the couch before running around for first aid kits and a bottle of booze for the inflicted.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Youngbae asks as he hands you the kit, “We can do the job just as well as you.”

“I’m sure you can, with a rusty sewing needle and a bottle of vodka.”

“We’re mobsters, not heathens, Y/N.”  Daesung pointed out, throwing his jacket to the ground as he tries to help Seungri get G Dragon out of his shirt.

“Ya!” G Dragon yells, the force of their pulling too hard on his injured arm.

“Don’t bother with it,” you mumble, taking out a small razor from inside the kit, and making your way over to the couch.

“Woah woah woah!” Youngbae tries to pull you back, “I don’t think you need that to patch a wound.”

“Fuck off,” you mutter, shouldering Youngbae out of the way. Your curse throws them off, and in their brief daze, you take the razor to G Dragon’s shirt, ripping the fabric up his middle until the clothing falls away completely and he’s easily able to slip his arms out from it.

“Why didn’t any of you think of that?” he mutters, finally able to suck down some of the liquor Daesung offers him.

“Get him a blanket; I don’t want him going into shock.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been stabbed,” G Dragon tries to laugh, the movement obviously causes him a bit of pain as his face contorts briefly and he goes for another sip of vodka.

“Don’t drink too much of that.” You order, but he seems to not hear you as he continues to sip down the fowl liquid. Instead of taking the time to unravel the tourniquet, you slice it away with your razor, ordering Youngbae to replace it with his hands and to keep steady pressure on the wound. Luckily, the kit Daesung gives you is fully stocked. You pull out an irrigation syringe and begin mixing water and betadine.

“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” G Dragon’s eyes are already a little unfocused.

“Don’t give him any more of that,” you look from Daesung to the bottle of tequila, which is promptly snatched away.

“Youngbae,” you wait for the man to look into your eyes before speaking, “In a minute, I’m going to ask you to pull your hands away, you’re going to need to apply pressure just above the wound, closer to the heart so he doesn’t bleed out while I clean the wound.” He nods once, and you look to the other men,

“Once I start, you’re going to need to hold him down.” The men get into position, and with a steadying breath, you ask Youngbae to reveal the wound.

Even with pressure applied, blood flows out quickly, the gash being long rather than short and deep. The long gash started closer to the shoulder blade, before dragging down towards his chest, G Dragon must have tried to avoid a hit to the heart, but not been fast enough.

You clean the wound as quickly as possible, though visibility is difficult as fresh blood replaces what you’ve cleaned away. Pulling out a small suture kit, you make quick work of the curved needle, threading small knots just over half an inch apart. As soon as the needle punctures skin G Dragon is clenching his teeth, a vein popping out on the side of his neck as he tries and fails not to scream out expletives. He’s cursing Hong’s men, cursing you, cursing the sky above until his head lolls to one side, and you realize he’s lost consciousness. Top irrigates the wound while you work, and though it feels like hours, you’re sure the process is actually quite short.

With the wound sealed you rub anti-bacterials topically, as well as a salve to help with the irritation before asking one of the men to dress the stitched shoulder. You finally stand, your legs feeling a little weak from the anxiety of the situation. Your hands are covered in blood, and as you make your way to the kitchen, you curse yourself mentally for not asking for a pair of gloves.

Though the soap gets most of the gore off your hands, there are bits of red trapped under your nails. You scrub and scrape, working hard to get everything, but it seems almost impossible for you to get everything. The light color of your now chipping nail polish now shows a pink hue, and now that you’re not fighting for someone’s life they begin to shake.

“How did you do that?”

Seungri had followed you into the kitchen, rubbing alcohol and small nail kit in hand.

“Do what?” he’s walking towards you now, taking a clean bowl from the drying rack, and pouring the alcohol into the bowl. The strong smell makes your nose crinkle, and before you can say anything he’s softly reaching for your hands, soaking the tips into the bowl.

“You were so calm,” he speaks quietly, staring at your hands rather than your face, “you stitched him up so effortlessly, how?”

You’re staring at your hands as well, they sting slightly, around the edges of your nails where you had been scrubbing too hard. You shrug,

“My dad used to get into a lot of fights.”

“Knife fights?” You look up at the new voice, as Top rests against the entrance of the kitchen. His head is tilted to the side, his eyes squinted and accusing. All you can do is nod, looking back down at your hands.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it was a bottle, sometimes it wasn’t a fight at all, just black ice on his motorcycle, or slicing himself while in his workshop.”

“Why didn’t he just go to the doctor?”

“Not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford a visit to the hospital.”

Seungri looks up from your hands, a smirk forming on his lips,

“Well, in any case you really did us a favor.” He opens the nail kit beside him, and begins digging out the blood from underneath your nails.

“Why did you?” Youngbae entered the kitchen, a stern set to his jaw, his brow furrowed in what you thought was anger. Top quickly reaches for him, stopping the direct path he was making for you.

“Don’t,” Top says, as Youngbae tries to shake him off, “It’s done.”

“I want to know!” His voice isn’t loud, but there is power in it, a strong emotion that leaves him slightly out of breath as he speaks, “I need to know why you helped us.”

“Does there have to be a reason?” Seungri asked, taking pause to look at his hyung, “She didn’t hurt anybody.”

“But we did.” There is conviction in Youngbae’s voice, weather is be for you, or for them. “You know that’s what we went out to do tonight, don’t you? We went out to kill people.”

The hairs stand on the back of your neck. Despite the passion in his voice, there is no guilt, not determination for you to understand why they went out, only the fact that they did and they would never be sorry for it.

“I know.”

“You know,” he repeated, voice low, “Do you know how many men we killed tonight?”

“Ya!” Top pulls Youngbae back harder, forcing him to look at him rather than you, “It’s none of her business.”

“She locked herself away for over a week because we shot someone. What’s she going to do now, lock herself away for a month?” He looks back at you then. “Why did you get involved when you clearly can’t even stand the sight of us?”

“Why do you care?” you yell back, the quick retraction of your hands from the bowl cause it to slide off the counter and fall to the floor, shards jumping back to slice your toes and ankles.

“Why do you?” his voice is loud and low, his gaze steady underneath the braids that tried to obstruct his vision.

“Just because you can stand to watch someone die,” you say through gritted teeth, the cuts on your legs beginning to sting, “doesn’t mean I can.”

“Aish,” sliding the glass shards away from your feet, Seungri picks you up, and brings you back into the sitting room, roughing dropping you onto one of the plush chairs.

“Hey!”

“Just sit,” he looks at you for a moment before walking back towards the kitchen.

“Don’t take it too personally; he likes to cause drama when he’s upset.” G Dragon’s voice is gruff, slow and dragging either from physical exhaustion or the dwindling amount of vodka that seemed to be in the bottle by the couch.

“I was just trying to help.” You look down at your feet. Though there’s a decent amount of blood, you know the cuts are small, just scrapes really. The worst is along your big toe, where a piece of glass sticks out, glinting and dangerous. You lean down to pull it out but a hiss from the couch stops you.

Fear spikes your heart as you think G Dragon’s managed to hurt himself, but he’s looking back at you, an annoyed pout on his lips. You retract your hand, and placated, he settles back into the couch and closes his eyes.

“Let Seungri take care of it.”

“It’s just a few scrapes…”

“They feel useless right now.” G Dragon sighed, his eyes opening once more, eyes staring up at the ceiling. “They weren’t able stop that bastard from stabbing me, and they weren’t able to patch me up. Let them get a little mad, let them help where they can, it’s all they can do.”

Seungri reenters the room, bandages and cleaning supplies in hand. You sit quietly as he inspects your wounds, pulling out the glass, disinfecting the cuts, and finally wrapping your feet in soft gauze. When he’s finished patching you up, his bowl of water is replaced with alcohol, and he’s back to soaking your hands. While you wait, you close your eyes, and before you know it you’re out.

When you wake, it’s in someone’s arms. Looking up, it’s Youngbae, his firm arms holding you close to his chest as he walks carefully up the steps.

“I’m awake.” You mutter, blinking fast and trying to move in his grip. His arms tighten and he lets out a low laugh,

“Nice to know.”

“I can take myself to bed.”

“Not with those feet you can’t.”

“They’re really not th-“ you stop. G Dragon’s words come back to you, to let the men help. You stay quiet, and it’s not until you’ve been dropped back into your bed that Youngbae speaks again,

“I’m sorry for the things I said. You were trying to help, and you did.” You don’t know what to say, so you say nothing.  Youngbae is looking at his feet, his lips screwed up in frustration,

“We’re family. All of us, but Ji, well he’s more important to me than anything in this world. Helping your kidnapper couldn’t have been easy. If roles had been reversed, I would have let him bleed out.”

He doesn’t wait for your reply, exiting the room and leaving your alone to your thoughts.

You didn’t hate them, you never had. Though they had been frightening in the beginning, and you still found them to be irritating, you knew the world you lived in was different form their own. You knew now not to take it so personally that they had taken you, that they were doing their job. They didn’t need to wrap you in comforts, but they had, and while the thought of murder flipped the liquids in your stomach, you knew that in a way that was how they survived. You thought back to the night they’d watched dramas with you, and found it was a fond memory. You’d go as far to say you enjoyed their company, the range of personalities they showed, and how like you, they were very human. You held onto those images as you fell asleep.

You wake to the sound of your door opening, the clamor causing you to sit straight up.

“Sorry!” Seungri is smiling at you, a tray of food in his hands as his back holds the door open, “Good morning!”

“It’s practically noon,” Top mutters, striding in after him, gauze and disinfectant in hand. You nod as a greeting, the sleep in your eyes making them a bit blurry. Pulling your hair off your neck, you quickly tie it into a sloppy bun that doesn’t quite make it to the top of your head.

“Not a morning person, Y/N?” Top is smiling as he sits on the end of your bed, and you have to blink a couple of times before you’re able to actually comprehend his words. Was he always so pretty?

“There’s no point in being a morning person here,” you use a vague arm motion, thanking Seungri for the cup of coffee he hands you, “Not like I really ever get out of bed.”

Top has lifted up the bottom of the comforter, revealing your feet, still wrapped from the night before. Top carefully unwraps them, cleans the wounds, and begins wrapping them again.

“I guess your schedule is very limited,” he mutters, while Seungri sits beside you on the bed and tries to feed you a slice of toast.

“I made a traditional American breakfast today!”

“I can see that,” you laugh, looking at the spread of eggs, toast, hashbrowns, and pancakes, “I don’t know if you just got carried away, or if you’re trying to tell me I eat too much.” Instead of answering, Seungri shoots you a wink, picking up a fork and knife to cut your pancakes.

“Hey, hey hey! I’ve got hands, I can feed myself.”

“My hands are busy,” Top looks up from where he’s wrapping your feet, giving a pout and large innocent eyes at Seungri, “give me a bite instead.”

“Get your own pancakes!” Seungri huffs, turning the plate of food away from the older man.

“Ah, just give him a bite.” You mutter, grabbing a bit of hashbrowns with your fingers.

Begrudgingly, Seungri complies, cutting a bit of pancake, and holding it out for Top to take in in his mouth.

Quickly devouring the food offered to him, Top makes big exaggerated sounds of pleasure, his eyes blinking rapidly as he goes on about how sweet and delicious the bite was. Seungri looked on in disgust, but you couldn’t hold back your laughter.

“So this is where everyone is…”

G Dragon looms in the doorway, Youngbae and Daesung not even an inch away from him.

“Why wasn’t I invited to the party?” Daesung laughs, gently passing by G Dragon to attack Top on the bed. Seungri slides the plate of food onto your lap, before diving into the fray in an attempt to help Daesung. You laugh as the boys play fight, popping a bit of pancake into your mouth. G Dragon still hangs in the doorway, quietly observing his men with a large smile.

“Yo, that breakfast looks great,” Youngbae laughs, touching G Dragon quickly on the hand before passing him to steal a piece of toast.

“Hey!” he shoots you a wink before taking up a seat by the bed. The scene is comforting, watching these young men goof around, poking and prodding like real brothers. You catch yourself smiling as you look on, and your eyes gravitate to G Dragon, who’s looking at you. For the first time in weeks, you feel happy.

[tribeoftrolls]

Patch 7.3 Content Release Timeline

Just a little something, you can find this post on mmochampion

The team learned a lot from how Patch 7.2 unfolded. It wasn't clear what you were supposed to do after the intro.

Argus has five chapters and three sub-zones and a ton of stuff available right away.

You will be able to play through the first two chapters on Day 1 and unlock world quests and other world content.

Week 2 unlocks Chapters 3 and 4, which includes Mac'aree, invasion points, and new world quests.

Week 3 you get the final chapter, the dungeon, and Netherlight Crucible.

There is a lot to do on Argus and the team wants it to be clear what you should be focused on rather than having many things competing for your attention right away.

Many players mostly care about power and would race through the content to unlock the Netherlight Crucible if they could do it on Day 1.

The first few weeks allow you to experience all of Argus and then on Day 14 it is a short bit at the end to unlock the Netherlight Crucible.

Many of the content unlocks on Argus are account wide, such as the dungeon, most of the Argus world quests, travel to the sub-zones, and the Netherlight Crucible.

Artifact Unlocks

In Patch 7.3, as soon as you hit Level 110 on a character, all of your relic slots are unlocked right away.

You no longer have to do the Broken Shore quest line to allow your artifact to go beyond 34 points.

As soon as you hit 110 in Patch 7.3 you will have Level 41 Artifact Knowledge. After that it will increase weekly automatically, no more research required.

Legion Invasions

Invasions will remain active in Patch 7.3.

Order Hall Champions

There will be catch up tokens from missions and chests that help you quickly increase the item level of your followers.

Netherlight Crucible

The Artifact Trait tree is a steady form of progression.

The team wanted to offer two trait relics in Patch 7.2, but ended up removing it.

Relics point to a trait by index (1-9). Each class and spec in the game has a relic that maps to trait 5, but that is a different trait for each class or spec. This means relics can't be customized as much as the team wanted to.

Relics in the Netherlight Crucible solve some of the problem of Relic availability. Any relic can now have another trait that you wanted.

In Patch 7.2 players didn't have enough choice or control over the RNG.

In Patch 7.3 you can use the Netherlight Crucible to make a choice, giving you some level of control instead of total randomness. You won't have to have your worst trait, because you can choose not to pick a bad trait.

You won't be able to get the same trait twice on one Relic.

Reforging

Reforging had lots of downsides, such as trying to perfectly get the hit or expertise cap and reforging all of your items every time you got a new item.

Every item that doesn't have your best two stats you would reforge to have your best stat. This didn't really make for interesting choices.

This also narrowed the distinction between items, making them feel more similar.

It also made it harder to evaluate upgrades, as you had to look at the item in its current state as well as how you could reforge it.

There were some good parts, such as giving players choices to make.

Artifact Power and PvP

The Netherlight Crucible traits don't work in Rated PvP.

The item level upgrades (+5) from the Netherlight Crucible do work in Rated PvP, but it is a very small power bump.

Artifact Appearances and Transmog

The team doesn't want you to feel like you have to rush to collect all of the Artifact appearances on your alts before Legion is over.

The team is looking at a different system that allows you to unlock the appearances by completing Legion content in later expansions, as well as keeping the appearances you already have unlocked.

The exception to this is the appearances from the skill challenge and the +15 Mythic ones.

Artifact Appearances

The team is done creating new Artifact Appearances.

Prestige and Artifact Appearances

Prestige isn't account wide because PvP on different characters means something different.

The experience you have when playing a Rogue vs a healer is very different.

Unlocking things per character reflects the experience you had on that specific character.

If prestige was account wide, you would probably focus on getting a high rating on one character, but what would you have to work towards on other characters if everything was already unlocked?

Mythic+ Changes

The team is very satisfied with the changes they made to the Mythic+ system in Patch 7.2.5.

Now the most challenging content gives the best rewards.

If you wanted the gear from doing a +8 or +10, you previously needed better gear than was rewarded by the +8 or +10.

Mythic+ participation is up across the board in all regions.

People are actually doing higher keystones now.

The system was structured differently than challenge modes because they didn't want it to be about speed runs again. All that mattered previously was cleave and AoE, making the single target specialists not valuable.

There has been a lot of positive feedback from people doing higher keystone runs.

Mythic+ Rewards

Tier sets have always been one of the things you can get from raiding. Even if you can get similar item level loot from other sources, you had to organize a larger group to earn the sets.

There are mini-sets from Mythic+ dungeons that you can earn, such as the items from Court of Stars.

Raids and Mythic+ dungeons are parallel but not identical loot systems.

The team doesn't want to remove too much of the incentive from raiding by providing the same rewards to players doing Mythic+

Mythic+ and Older Content

The team isn't currently planning on expanding the Mythic+ system to dungeons from older expansions.

The Mythic+ system allows dungeons to remain relevant during the entire expansion.

This is something that could be expanded on in the future, maybe tying it in with Timewalking.

It would be strange to do Mythic+ Underbog as part of your weekly Legion activities.

Augment Runes

There is a permanent Augment Rune in Patch 7.3 from Exalted Army of the Light.

Augment Runes are there for the top end raiders, something that people running Raid Finder to sell.

Timewalking Raids

Raids should let you pick up where the leader left off, just like normal raids.

World First Race

A week and a half to two weeks is a reasonable time for the world first race.

Heroic Ragnaros took around that long to kill and people thought it was a well tuned boss, but Paragon was the only one to kill it in that time. Otherwise he would have lived much longer.

The main goal of the encounter design team is to create fights for the broad audience.

When the team tunes the last few Mythic bosses of a new tier, they are keeping the world first race in mind.

Those bosses should be hard enough to allow the top guilds in the world to distinguish themselves from each other. This is a very hard target to hit and evolves over time, especially as guilds do more split runs or stack classes.

The internal testing team has lots of people that pushed for world firsts in the past.

Mythic Kil'jaeden was overtuned. They made it a little too hard, allowing them to nerf it. Hundreds of hours of testing took place internally.

This tier increased healing requirements across the board by increasing raid damage, but they went a little bit too far.

The internal testing team was better than anticipated on the Mythic Kil'jaeden fight and has been getting better over the years, so when they increased everything by a percentage to make it challenging for the top guilds that was a little bit too much.

Should the team tune the end bosses to be very challenging for the world first race and then nerf them a bit so that regular guilds can kill them?

Raid Damage

Fights are designed and then mechanics are added or removed to address problems.

There wasn't enough coordination between encounter designers, resulting in similar solutions (lots of soak mechanics) to problems.

The team realized this too late, but it shouldn't be a problem in Argus.

The team was happy with the individual fights in Tomb, but want to create a more diverse set of fights in the raid.

Nethershards

Nethershards will continue to be used on catch-up gear and cosmetics.

The Relinquished vendor is moving to Argus to find Argunite that he will trade for item level 910 items. He also allows you to target a specific relic, like a Holy relic.

Existing Relinquished items won't be expanded or upgraded.

Don't hold on to Nethershards or worry about them, Patch 7.3 has a new system.

Class Design

If your role is damage dealer, you can compete as a damage dealer.

There is a disparity between the utility different specs bring. The team would like to address this by shoring up the utility of some specs.

Rogues have individual survival utility, which can be useful for the group if they use them to soak mechanics.

Spec Damage Auras

Rather than manually adjusting all of the abilities for a spec, they now use a single aura to increase the damage on all of those abilities.

In previous expansions the team would focus buffs on specific abilities, but that would change how things played.

The team still targets individual abilities when the ability needs to be changed, but there isn't a need to change all of the spells individually to bump up damage by a few percent anymore.

Changing all of the individual spells resulted in errors in the past, so this also helps to reduce errors.

Class Balance Changes

The team is mostly happy with how often class balance is tweaked.

Cathedral of Eternal night probably took too long to nerf. It probably could have been done faster and more aggressively. The team wasn't sure if it was new and unfamiliar or just too hard initially.

The team doesn't want to make players feel like their spec or class is constantly changing due to hotfixes.

Changes are bundled up to make all of the hotfixes happen at once rather than adjusting things more frequently.

If a certain spec is seen as being slightly better, all of the best players will switch to that spec. This makes the other specs look significantly weaker, as the people logging other specs aren't as strong of players.

Balance is always a moving target.

Raid Finder Difficulty

Keeping all of the mechanics for Raid Finder difficulty but making them weak didn't feel great. There were a lot of mechanics that you could just ignore.

The team's biggest balance concern is for the people that are only doing Raid Finder difficulty.

Instead, the team moved to having fewer mechanics but making them meaningful and challenging.

There is no longer a desire to make Raid Finder a tourist mode.

The team is hoping to make difficulty closer to Mists of Pandaria difficulty than Warlords. There are some fights that are too easy still.

Challenge Artifact Appearances

Any unlocks that require doing a thing while using another appearance are being changed to doing the thing after earning the base appearance.

Now you can get your 10 Rated Battlegrounds wins as any spec or appearance.

Split Raids

Both the developers and players don't enjoy split raids.

The team wants to make sure that the cure isn't worse than the disease.

This is a behavior that takes place in a tiny percent of the playerbase, maybe a couple thousand players in the world and only takes place for a few weeks.

Sharing loot lockouts across difficulties would have a big negative impact.

The team doesn't want to punish the entire playerbase because of the actions of a few.

Worgen and Goblin Models

The team hasn't forgotten about the new models.

The priority right now is the new casting animations, but Goblin and Worgen models are still on the high priority list!

[waynekelton]

The Weekender: Eye of the Beholder 2 Edition

So I've been trying out The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot past couple of weeks. Fun Fact: This game originally launched in 2015 on PC as some weird blend of loot-tastic action/RPG and a Dungeon Master type deal as players built their own Castles/Dungeons for players to raid for said loot. It didn't last that long, closing down shy of two years after launch. In January 2017 it came back on mobile, soft launched in only a few territories. Whatever they were testing seems to have worked because it released world-wide in full the other week. 

The problem is, it's now just one Red Hot(TM) Free-to-Play gacha mess. Energy gating how long you can play in one go, chests that you can unlock by spending keys, which can be bought for money. Hey, want to double the loot you got from this chest? Watch an add! Can't be bothered to play? From Level-5 there's an 'Auto' mod, and you can even buy 'Instant Win' tickets that by-pass playing levels out entirely. I mean look at this non-sense:

The worst thing is, they've gotten rid of the Castle building elements, which I personally think was the most interesting part about it, but what do I know? Here I am, playing it anyway... It's an incredibly pretty game. Like, I really dig the production values that have gone into designing the character models and levels and I'm not going to lie, I've taken more-than-appropriate satisfaction from putting different pieces of bad-ass gear to my dude. 

Tl;dr - Don't play Might Quest for Epic Loot, you will probably end up hating yourself (while looking like a baws).

Meanwhile, in the world of mobile gaming... 

Out Now

Beholder 2 (iOS Universal) – Full review coming soon!

If this had already been announced, I must have missed the memo as I was not expecting to see Beholder 2 on the release docket this week. We reviewed the first game back in 2017 and while it had some interesting ideas in terms of the choices and trade-offs, it was too easy to succumb to ‘efficiency’ rather than trying to deal with morality. Beholder 2 seems to be a rather expanded affair, with your character a fully-fledged member of the Ministry of Security. You must work your way up the career ladder, spying on your co-workers and praising the leader at every turn. It’s only on iOS at the moment but the first game made it do Android eventually, so it’s hopefully just a matter of time.

Fluxx Digital (iOS Universal) – Re-Review Coming soon!

This is technically a ‘re-release’ rather than a new release, but you’ll remember the other week we reported that Playdek has decided to revive their digital adaptation of Fluxx from the dead. Originally released in 2012, it was lost in the Appocalypse a couple of years ago – now it’s back! This is a card game for 2-4 players where the rules and objectives can change at any moment. It’s chaotic and pretty unique, as card games goes.

We do have a review buried in the site archives, but it hasn’t aged well so I’ve got Michael on the case to re-review it for us, so watch this space. Also note – if you bought the game originally between 2012 – 2017, so long as you still have access to the iTunes account you bought it on, you’ll be able to re-download it on your modern iOS devices without have to re-purchase the game. The originally release was never on Android as far as we know, and we don’t know if there are plans to bring it to Google Play anytime soon.

Also released this week  of note was Cosmic Frontline AR, which we reviewed yesterday (it’s not very good, unfortunately) and Healer’s Quest: Pocket Wand (Android), which at first glance is a strategy RPG in the style of Final Fantasy, except it’s also got comedic themes woven into its DNA. It seems a little generic on paper, but we’re wondering if the light-hearted presentation makes it stand out.

Finally, for the more aesthetic among you, the developers behind 2013’s iconic Journey have released a new game this week. Sky: Children of the Light is a free exploration/adventure game where you can fly around, explore and go on adventures with other players.

Updates

A few update of note this week, so let’s run through them...

Chess Rush

Tencent’s version of Auto Chess received an update this week, which along with the usual tweaking of pieces and new rewards/content drops, also included a co-op mode. I’ve yet to test it out, but it sounds intriguing.

Santorini

The digital version of Santorini has had a few updates since launch. Two this week fixed a few bugs as well adding in an easy share feature for private matches, along with a discount for God of the Week promos. If you’re wondering, our review will be dropping on Monday – sorry for the delay!

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

The first official patch since the end of June, this week’s update offers a few quality of life teaks, such as making the Exstimulo potions a bit more effective, and showing how much Spell Energy you have left in more obvious places. You can also change your code name in the settings, if you want, but only once.

Star Traders: Frontiers

In this week’s episode of the Star Traders: Frontiers Update Show, the latest update adds a new ship, new salvage, replaces the Pirate template as well as a few others goodies that keep this game ticking.

Sales

On the sales front, here’s what we’ve got:

Warhammer Quest 2 is completely free on iOS all this week, but not on Android. It also got a new character to mark the occasion.

Solitairica is down to $0.99 on iOS.

April’s SFD Rogue is down to $3.99 on both iOS & Android for the first time. 

Beamdog’s Siege of Dragonspear is also down to $5.99 on both platforms.

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

The Weekender: Eye of the Beholder 2 Edition published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[bmiremodeling]

Redskins future for someone welcome to indianapolis NFL

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The post Redskins future for someone welcome to indianapolis NFL appeared first on BMI Group Inc.

[3one3]

The Sequel - 888

All Good Things Come To An End

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

Christina’s stable was built atop a slight elevation from the paddocks and rings below. The subtle hill from one down to the rest was manmade, to expand the flat surface upon which to build, since the driveway was naturally higher and the property generally sloped downward. When it rained, water flowed over the little hill directly behind the stable and hit the gravel section of the tractor path. Whatever water made it beyond that natural catchall collected in a trench dug just before the low hedge surrounding the dirt ring. It then moved east, toward the path from the barn to the paddocks and riding rings. There was a drain under that path where it joined the flat area with the elevated one. It prevented pooling or flooding in places where the horses actually trod.

Christina watched water pour out of the gutter fronting one of the posts holding up the tresses upon which her stable’s overhanging roof rested, travel down that gentle embankment, spread through the gravel, and join the river flowing toward that drain. The pretty basket of orange, yellow, and red blooms hanging between that post and the next, and indeed all of the baskets between all of the posts, collected its fill of the Sunday afternoon drizzle too, sparing Kyle a few more days of watering the fall flowers with a can or the hose. The stalls to her left were all empty, so their Dutch doors were completely shut up. Just one horse- Socks- looked out of his top door to her right, all the way down at the end, perhaps also watching the movement of the rainwater, or perhaps just enjoying the fresh air. Nick was always cold, so his top door remained closed. Dirk was visible under his black turnout blanket in the distance off to the left, alone because Calvin was inside on the crossties. A few other horses were out there in the paddocks, mostly just standing around in the rain, or nibbling the wet grass. Christina stood straight up to give the shoulder on which she leaned against the open stable door a bit of relief, and then crossed one ankle over the other and resumed her hands-in-pockets leaning. Her feet were cold in her field boots, and her thighs were freezing, unprotected by the black adidas coat keeping the rest of her warm. She could see her breath. The rest of the horses would need to come in soon, because they too would get cold.

“What you looking at, pretty girl?” André asked as he moved behind her and used her slouchy gray beanie-covered head as a chinrest.

“Nothing.”

“Calvin’s almost ready.”

“Okay.”

“Mausi is rolling polos.”

“Okay.”

“Everything is all right?”

“I think I’m going to retire Nicky at Saut Hermés in March.”

“That’s a big decision. Are you sure you don’t want to see how he is when you’re competing regularly again?”

“It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but yeah. I’m pretty sure.”

Nick’s lameness was, according to his vet and his chiropractor, due to back pain. Specifically, the section of spine from his mid-back to his croup was tight and sore. A side effect of his rider’s decision not to show much throughout the fall was a rolling back of the associated treatments her horses usually received following competition weekends, and a change in the type of work they did at home. Some of them weren’t adjusting well. It turned out that Nick really needed his regular post-show chiropractic adjustment and massages to be regular. If he wasn’t showing, he wasn’t getting them. He got a bunch of visits from both professionals in the week and a half since his lameness appeared, and was feeling much better. Christina scheduled them bi-weekly going forward for about 6 months, regardless of competition schedule.

Since Nick’s problem turned up, Rio had some issues with swelling and stiffness following big jump schools, and Calvin was letting boredom turn him into a big baby about everything, on the ground and in the ring. Christina’s horses need to get back into their normal rhythm. Christina needed to take them to horse shows and keep them working, and focused, and properly fit. Everyone- Tom, Isandro, Holger, Heiner, Dr. Todd, Marcus, Daniel- though that it would fix a lot of problems and be best for everyone. She refused to budge on her plans through the end of the year, but agreed to “get back to work”, as Heiner put it, after the holidays. Entries were readied for the World Cup qualifiers at Leipzig and Zurich in back to back weeks in January, and Bordeaux and Gothenburg in February. It would be difficult to qualify for the Final from just 5 rounds, including London Olympia in December, but if she managed it, then she wanted to do it with Dirk, so he would do at least three and Rio the other two. Socks, Calvin, and Nick would rotate as her second horse for those events. Saut Hermés featured lots of big 5* classes but no World Cup qualifier. Nick could be her number-one there, and receive a classy sendoff in front of appreciative, experienced fans. Holger wanted her to retire the Hanoverian stallion in front of a German crowd, but Christina didn’t know if she wanted or could wait until summer for an event like Aachen, or the German Championships. Leipzig wasn’t big enough an event for her, and the only other World Cup Qualifier in her home nation was Stuttgart, the week after Doha, so that was out. There would be a fairly large show right in Dortmund later in the winter, but it lacked a truly big feature and big prize money, so it was likely going on her calendar as an event for Kimi and some of the others, but it wasn’t suitable for her Olympic Champion and Grand Slam winner’s farewell.

A lot of silent, solitary introspection led Christina to the conclusion that Nick’s body was trying to tell her that it was time to start figuring out that farewell- that he likely didn’t have another year of heavy campaigning left in his legs, and that he wasn’t going to be like Cristiano Ronaldo, an aging footballer who added years to his career through careful management of his playing time, nor Ariz Aduriz, a player who kept going by playing nonstop. It was very important to her that she managed the end of his career correctly, and fairly. He was looking great again after getting his back sorted, and there was no reason to just call it quits immediately. The horse loved the show ring. He wasn’t a big ham like Dirk, but his rider and his grooms knew he loved to compete and do well. None of them wanted to try to nurse and patch him through a full World Cup season, or Global Champions Tour series, or Nations Cup qualifying campaign on the maximum permitted pain medications, days off, and extra high-tech therapies. Christina thought he could handle being her big star at London, her number-two at a few other qualifiers, and then be in good shape to jump the big grand prix in the Grand Palais in Paris. She’d still ride him regularly after that. It wasn’t her intention to simply turn him out for the rest of his days. Nick would stay in her program at home, and be wound down from work over a long period, or as long as he seemed interested and sound. He wouldn’t be sold, and he wouldn’t go live somewhere else to stand at stud. And if she thought he was unhappy seeing his stablemates go off to compete all the time while he was left home, then she’d take him to non-international-level shows for fun. That was the pact she made with herself. All of it was what she needed to agree on to feel like she was doing right by him. But it still didn’t feel good. She already missed him and nothing had even happened yet. He’d been her security blanket, in competition terms, for so long. Always reliable, Nick was the horse she needed most in her life and in her career when André gifted him to her. It felt like he’d been around a lot longer than that though. He helped her through the difficulty earlier in the year, when he remained consistent for her even as her head and her heart interfered. He always made her feel like a better rider than she was, and he was always cooperative. “Faithful servant” belonged on his stall plaque, Christina thought, though she saw all of her horses more as partners than underlings working for her.

Everything in the barn reminded her of the reality and the morning’s decision in that moment. Just seeing Isandro lead Nick in from his paddock to dry off and be ready for his massage made the rider pensive and sad, and had her standing in the doorway, out in the cold, staring into space. Doing what was good for all of her horses was not necessarily what she had concluded was good for her and her relationships. She hadn’t yet been ready to decide to do all those winter shows. Doing as little as she was throughout the fall didn’t feel exactly right either, but she wasn’t sure going back to 4 weeks of showing in 8 weeks was what she needed either. Her heart was heavy with sadness about Nick, and anxiety about the consequences of her proposed schedule. It wasn’t clear to her if she could go back to the same career and routine she had before the Olympics but with her new, post-Olympics way of thinking about it, and find the necessary happiness and satisfaction in it. The unknowns were the killer. Post-Olympics Christina kept reminding Cynical Christina that she had newfound strength with which to work, and André and Juan to lean on as she tested the theory, and to use as resources to help figure out how to adjust and alter as needed. She turned around in the former’s gentle hold around her waist, and hugged him tight for a three-count.

“It’s the plan for now,” she reiterated into his fleece sweatshirt. The rest of her facility was nice and warm. There was no reason to be freezing in the doorway, or to open that side of the split doors just to stand there and stare into space and let the cold in. She closed it and headed for the tack room to hang up her jacket and put her helmet on so that she could ride Calvin, in the indoor. Lukas was sitting on the bench outside the tack room with all three barn dogs and a laundry basket of clean polo wraps. Lucky was of course napping in the basket. The little scene made the equestrian star smile.

“Mommy, good?” Her son held up the maroon wrap he was working with. It was hard to tell it was in the process of being rolled versus just having come out of the dryer in a blob. Lukas wasn’t very good at the polo rolling. Someone- Kyle, likely- would have to redo them.

“Yup.”

“Finish that one and then we’re going upstairs to watch Mommy ride,” André advised. Actually, we’re going to sit on the couch and draw with colored pencils, but to Chris, we’ll be watching Mommy ride, the player countered inside. Christina was just hacking Calvin, he assumed, based on the loose ring snaffle Isandro was putting on the giant bay, and the polos on his front legs instead of the leather or plastic boots the horses wore for jumping. Calvin always wore ankle boots in back- leather CWD ones at shows, neoprene and plastic Eskadron ones at home- because he constantly kicked himself behind. The flatwork foreshadowed by the horse’s “outfit” wouldn’t be very interesting for spectators. André was only even out at the stable on Sunday afternoon because he didn’t feel like being in the house after early training. The mood at Brackel was bad. Dortmund was aggressively atrocious at both ends in Hannover on Saturday, and lost 4-2. He got to play for about 20 minutes, with little impact. That wasn’t his fault. His team could barely get the ball at that point. It was almost like the end of a friendly. Two penalties and a sending off set a bad tone. The returning forward didn’t want to play with Lukas in the house with football on TV, or be in the playroom with him and have nothing to distract him. Playing with Lukas was kind of a mindless task, usually. It left a lot of opportunity to think about other things. His dad didn’t want any opportunity to continue pondering football. He could at least try to watch Christina instead if he lost interest in coloring upstairs in the lounge, where the child had his own basket of toys and arts and crafts supplies.

“Emma too?” he inquired very politely. He had a small plush version of Borussia’s mascot bee, Emma. It was an exceedingly happy and cute little stuffed toy, and the one Lukas deigned to tote along with him everywhere for the day.

“Yeah, she wants you to make a picture for her, I think. Want to do that? Want to color while we watch Mommy?”

“Yeah!” Lukas dropped the polo wrap into the laundry with the dog and slid down off the bench with his Emma.

“Show me the picture when it’s done,” Isandro requested from the grooming stall. He was fitting the horse’s halter over his bridle so he could clip him back into the crossties to wait for Christina. André thought the groom liked Lukas more as the child got older and better at communicating and understanding people. His wife said she thought he just missed his daughter more in Germany. He did some babysitting in the barn in recent days because Espen asked for time off and Christina still needed to ride.

She emerged with her helmet on and a slim crewneck sweatshirt in place of her hat and warm running jacket. André, Lukas, and Calvin all got cheek kisses before she got a leg up onto the monster truck-sized horse. Being mounted in the barn still felt odd to her, but her stable had extremely high ceilings there, before the bit added to connect it to the indoor with the lounge, office, bathroom, and bleachers. There wasn’t any danger of hitting her head if Calvin reared up or something right there. The clearance was much lower by her office, for the couple of meters before Calvin stepped into the arena. It still made her nervous.

Holger’s Hanoverian stallion wasn’t the most focused creature in the indoor. He looked at the windows every time he passed them, or tried to. Christina kept an inside bend to try to stop him from even noticing them. Sometimes she needed him to be very straight down the long side of the ring though. He spooked at whatever the guys were doing in the garage at the end of the ring that made noise come through the closed metal door. He was clumsy while working with ground poles, and clunked his feet into them a bunch of times. Work continued until he focused better and tried more diligently. Not a single interesting thing happened during the 35-minute workout, from André’s perspective.

He held colored pencils and the eraser for Lukas while the little boy drew some shapes that were supposed to be a large, friendly bee. His big sketchbook took up more space than his lap had to offer, and he had to fill up as much of the paper as possible, so that entertained him through Socks and Kimi’s workouts too. Dad cut up an apple from the permanent stash in the refrigerator to provide a late-afternoon snack. It was hunger that ultimately drew them back to the house, leaving Christina to finish her other horses without an audience. André heated up soup and made a grilled turkey, avocado, tomato, and Swiss cheese sandwich for Lukas. He kind of wanted to make one for himself when he realized how nicely it came out. He thought it more considerate to wait for his wife for dinner though. She limped into the kitchen with her water bottle and her hat right as Lukas was inquiring about dessert at the counter.

“You can have a small piece of Nanny Espen’s cherry tart,” she mumbled tiredly into his hair while stopping to kiss him there on her way to dumping the water bottle, her phone, and her notebook in the “dump all the things” spot next to the collection of white and silver painted pumpkins. The island had offset countertops. The black quartz surface meant for eating was higher than the part meant for everything else, and the sink. The end furthest from the sink always had a bunch of junk- mail, keys, Christina’s handbag or clutch, her water bottle, phones, the nursery monitor, etc. separated from the work area by a flower arrangement and/or a bowl of fruit, or in the end of October, Halloween pumpkins.

“Hi Mommy!”

“Hi Luke.”

“What hurts?” André cringed. He was by the other sink, the one under the window, and saw Christina coming long before Lukas noticed her.

“My ankle.” She put her things down and then pulled out the tall stool next to Lukas’ middle one and gingerly climbed onto it to start pulling the tape off the offending ankle. She didn’t want to remove it at the barn when she changed her shoes, in case the tape was the only thing making it bearable to walk on. Her partner came over to help, and to provide his thigh for her to use as a footrest.

“Did something happen, or is it just a bad day?”

“Bad day.”

“The horses were good though?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want the icepack? Or are you showering right away?”

“Daddy, dessert!” the smaller Schü demanded.

“In a minute,” his dad replied, unmoved by his impatience. Whining and giving orders for dessert wasn’t as cute as the innocent and hopeful way he asked about his prospects for having any in the first place, which André found adorable.

“Ice bag and shower.” Christina’s answer was short because she felt a sneeze coming, and boy did it come- all over the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

“Gesundheit.”

“Blesh-zoo, Mommy.”

“Thanks.”

“Take your pants off and I’ll plastic wrap the ice on for you, Prinzessin.”

Her ankle was a messy mix of swollen spots, purplish areas, deep lines from where the tape ended up too tight because of the swelling, and redness from the cold of walking home in sneakers without socks. It was in the kind of state where trying to rub or massage it for her would hurt more than provide any relief. The rider in general looked like an uncomfortable mix of redness and purple too. The redness was in her cheeks and the purple in the light bags under her eyes. André saw a tired, mildly sad, and very pained little girl who was badly in need of a hot shower, some painkillers, and a spot on the couch.

“What did you eat, Munchkin?”

“Samwich and mato soup. What about dessert?”

“It concerns me that you can’t say “sandwich” or “tomato” but you’ve got “dessert” down perfectly.” Christina cracked a small smile at her son, and she told André he could get the cherry tart for him before he got her a bag of ice. At least to him “dessert” means anything from ice cream to cheese or fruit salad, and not just sugary junk food, she decided, enjoying the happiness that filled the cute little face in the booster seat. Inside she felt slightly less glum than she appeared on the outside. Cold, rainy, low pressure days were rough on her various injuries, the horses were all kind of annoying, she had Nick on her mind, and the mood at the house on Saturday night and Sunday morning was hardly joyful. It actually surprised her to find André in such a generous and helpful one. It would have been understandable if he were glum. His girl hoped his relief in being able to play again would outweigh the disappointment of his team’s recent results, and she was mostly correct.

He fixed the bag of ice to her ankle so that there was some on both sides and directly on the most painful spot on her tendon at the back, wrapped it tight with the cheap plastic so she could move around with it, and sent her for that shower. Against his wishes, Christina decided she would make adult dinner after Lukas’ bedtime. She wanted spicy blackened chicken and bowties with butter and Parmesan. André wasn’t going to argue her desire for her version of comfort food, and he wasn’t going to ruin it by insisting he make it himself. He stayed out of her way in front of the TV. Eden was trying to get him to identify some girl anyway. The scorer of Chelsea’s winner on Saturday sent him an Instagram profile and asked if the mostly blonde-haired girl looked familiar.

“Did you meet her with Leigh? Was she friends with her and Dani?” he asked.

I don’t think so, André decided while he scrolled through her photos. The girl looked a bit older than Leigh, in her later-mid-20’s perhaps, with expensively dyed hair, small but pretty brown eyes, and probably a good sense of humor. She was smiling in nearly all of her selfies. There were none with “sexy” expressions, but a few where she was clearly pulling some kind of serious or pouty face to be funny. In the group shots, she was the shortest, even in heels. I’d hit it, the player concluded. Petit girls for the win, as my petit girl would say. Well-traveled girls are good too. They know how to conduct themselves in different places. This one seems to have been all over.

“I recognize some of the restaurants she goes to but not her” he wrote back to Eden. “And not any of her friends either, I don’t think. Quality though.” André added an emoji to give his seal of approval, without really knowing why he was giving his approval, or why his friend was asking about the girl.

“I am so sure I have seen her!”

“Did you just find her on IG?”

“She had some drinks with Juan at Lotus last night.”

“Why don’t you ask him about her then?” And oh man does he have to? Seriously? The BVB man frowned at his iPhone for a second and then switched back to the girl’s profile. I would love if he fell in love with some cute girl and left mine alone. I would not love what it would do to mine in the meantime. I can’t handle that right now. We finally got to normal. She’s finally pretty happy with everything, besides Nick. Not now, Juan. Ugh.

“He never talks about girls. If I ask he just says “none of your business”. You are sure you never met her? Where else would I know her?”

“How should I know? Is she English?”

“Does Jenni sound English to you bro”

“It sounds like an English girl called Jenny who wants to be ~exotic~”

“Too pretty to be from here.”

“True. Was Juan talking to her or just tolerating her?”

“Into it. Laughing, talking, hand on her leg the whole night. I think he has been fucking his ex-fiancé for some time, or dating her on the low. Maybe he is looking to update.”

“Chris.”

“What?”

“Is Juan back with Lex?”

“No,” Christina snorted from the kitchen. “Why?”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Why are you asking?”

“Eden thinks he is.”

“I already told Nat to correct the record.” The rider rolled her eyes and stirred the boiling pasta. “Apparently everyone thinks he has a secret girlfriend or something.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t?” I don’t want to make her suspicious, but maybe she hasn’t even been telling me about what’s up with him, her partner thought. We don’t talk about him that much, except when she was drunk the other night and telling me about wanting me and him to fuck her together again.

“He does. It’s me,” was the flat reply from the kitchen.

“K.”

“I don’t know bro. Never seen her. Ask Juan if it’s going to bother you.”

“Ok I will”

Good luck. Juan really doesn’t discuss girls like he used to back in the day. And he can flirt with other girls but I swear, if he’s about to hurt Chris, I’m going to hurt him. Listen to me, André scoffed to himself. I’m sitting here threatening a guy not to fall for anybody and hurt my wife- a guy I have, for almost as long as I’ve been with her, wished would just go away and forget he knows her. How stupid.

“Why is Eden asking you about Juan and Lex?” Christina asked skeptically. Damn it. I shouldn’t have said anything.

“No one knows why Eden does anything.”

“Accurate. This is going to be done in like two minutes,” she warned, already in the process of slicing the chicken that made the whole house smell like charred goodness.

“Are we eating in there or over here?”

“Couch, definitely.”

Dodged the bullet. Now, do IIIIIIII ask Juan about the girl?