#and the last one so close to unwinnable

[refigiowen]

The Reedlands, the Sakkat Clan and the Buyeo Clan

The Reedlands are a nation consisting of multiple large islands in what was once the Sea of Japan.

Shortly after the Calamity had occured and most parts of Asia had been consumed by the waves, what once used to be China, Japan and Korea (as well as the last remaining bits of East Russia) united as a single nation under the name of "The Reedlands".

Soon after it's creation, the Reedlands would find itself in an unwinnable battle against the ever rising sea levels. Luckily, however, the Highest Court would quickly order New Ijssel to build a Steambreather in what was once the Sea of Japan. This would put an end to the rising sea levels and allow the Reedlands to recover and grow as a nation. After the dust had finally settled the Highest Court chose the Sakkat Clan as the leaders of the Reedlands.

The Sakkat Clan was a clan known for it's hyper aggressive, yet strangely elegant swordsmanship focused on inflicting wounds on their own body. The Sakkat clan believed that when it came down to who will win in a fight, it is merely a question of who is ready to yield more of their body to ensure their victory. They believed that every scar, every wound they suffered in battle grants them more strength. And so, many Sakkat Clan members often cut their own body during battles, believing that in return they would be granted the strength needed to overcome their opponent.

For many years the Sakkat Clan would rule over the Reedlands while keeping the nation out of the Resource War.

Yet, despite the Sakkat Clan allowing all parts of the Reedlands to live out their cultures in peace - and ensuring this by law - another major clan, the Buyeo Clan, wished for total unification of the Reedlands and for the people to live under one banner, and within a single culture instead. And so, after many failed diplomatic approaches between the two clans and many street battles between followers and members of the Buyeo Clan and the Sakkat Clan, the Buyeo Clan created a plan to seize power.

On the night of the Head of the Sakkat Clan's birthday, when all was quiet and every soldier was drunk, the Buyeo soldiers would strike - massacring the entire clan in a single night. And this they did.

Shortly after this massacre, the Buyeo Clan began to rule over the Reedlands, forcing all people of the Reedlands to follow their rule. Those who dared to oppose them were slaughtered.

A few years would pass, and with the Buyeo Clan as rulers, life in the Reedlands was not easy. Greed, injustice, sickness and oppression plagued the nation. Around the same time tales of a mystical sword dancer from afar began to spread like a wildfire around the Reedlands. Large crowds would travel from all across the Reedlands to watch this mysterious dancer perform its elegant dance. None knew who this person was, as their face was covered by a large bamboo hat.

And as their fame grew and grew, it was no suprise that even the Buyeo Clan wanted to see the dancer's dance. And so they ordered the dancer to perform at their palace, and they did perform their dance. But at the very end of their performance, the dancer lunged at the clan's leader, decapitating them and slaughtering all surrounding Buyeo Clan members. The performer was later revealed to be Kim Sakkat, daughter of the former head of the Sakkat Clan.

Present time

The death of the Buyeo Clan's leader marked the end of the Reedland's Buyeo Era. Soon after news of the assasination spread across the nation, a nation wide civil war between Buyeo supporters and the remaining members of the clan and those who oppose the Buyeo Clan began and the borders of the Reedlands were closed off. To this day this civil war has been ongoing and no end seems to be in sight.

Kim Sakkat managed it to flee to New Ijssel, hoping to start a new life under a new name there. Instead, she was captured and given the death sentence for assasinating a nation's leader. To her luck she was chosen as one of the members of the G.U.I.L.D's Gehenna Operation Squad consisting of multiple deathrow inmates. These members are as follows:

Michikatsu [REDACTED]

Illinca [REDACTED]

Sancho [???]

Kim Sakkat

Sakkat plans to use her "Ticket" to unite the Reedlands as one again and to return the Sakkat Clan to it's former glory.

(The "Ticket" is the supposed reward which the inmates will be granted upon completing the operation. It is said that this "Ticket" serves as a wish of sorts, bending time and space to make whatever the person wishes for true. But it is also said that this item has it's boundaries.)

[catenary-chad]

Tell me, what:

-often has a whistle and siderods and is 100+ years old

-was genuinely good at what it did but often failed by outside systems and left to rot

-kept on switching on mostly unglamorous backwater lines away from public attention well into the 80s, 90s, and even 21st century

-is often overlooked in railroad history and even outright erased in media

-was notably less popular than other trains in toy form, often sold as a budget option, and outright baffled some kids and store owners when they saw it vs more recognizable models

-was clean, VERY reliable, and efficient despite being very old tech?

Yeah I think it’s increasingly obvious I am not talking about steam engines here.  I am talking about the humble electric boxcab.  

(A lot of the SUPER long lived ones did not have siderods but they weren’t a rare feature-these things were designed in the steam era where that was the established tech!)

These totally cubular things were used in all kinds of places for both freight and passenger work in the early 20th century.  They came in a lot of sizes, from colossal to smol, but one thing they often had in common was being STUPIDLY DURABLE and lasting 50+ years, sometimes exceeding 70 or even 90.  They were usually well-built and extremely reliable due to lack of moving parts.  

What led to their demise varied by line: some just got run into the ground (the Milwaukee Road EF-1s literally rusted out and fell apart) but many lines de-electrified or closed entirely due to long-neglected electric infrastructure (due to a mix of bad business decisions and being put into a nearly unwinnable situation by the US government subsidizing highways and airports but not giving any support to railroads like Europe and Japan).  But it wasn’t due to any failure of electric traction itself. . I’ll spare my extended arguments of how a small functional steam engine in the 80s actually fails on nearly every level as a class or even disability metaphor for its own post.  But as sacrilegious as it sounds, it’s actually FAR more symbolically fitting and historically accurate, and way less cliche to make Rusty an electric boxcab. They were useful and influencial and ran for a very long time, but are nearlu absent in train media, and haven’t been preserved or remembered well in the US/Americas in general for a variety of reasons. There’s only a handful in museums and I’m not sure if any physically run (it’s very rare for any substantial electric engine to run in preservation here due to lack of places to actually run them). Early US electrification and its decline is quietly known as a weirdly obscure train topic in general, which is unfortunate because it was very influential and also a massive cautionary tale of what car culture and lack of government support destroyed. It didn’t happen elsewhere to the same extent, but it’s unfortunately politically relevant in a lot of places today. There’s also just a broader lack of understanding about how versatile and varied electric trains really are that’s just dying to be portrayed somewhere.

And as a fun bit of toy train history, this is the Lionel 520.  It was a weird 50s-era budget model based on some obscure boxcabs from a Chilean copper mine.  It confused and sometimes disappointed kids who expected typical steam or diesel engines in train sets.  The funniest anecdote I’ve heard was someone getting one for free because a store owner was so disappointed he went “get rid of this” to his dad.  But it’s attracted a cult following akin to the VW Beetle because it worked fairly well mechanically and was just so weird and versatile to modify. A lot of boomers defend these guys online. And even better, their real-life basis ran into the 2010s for a ~90 year lifespan that is impressive even by boxcab standards.  

https://youtu.be/MZKFT9uLirE?si=uMJl36QpspZMLY0W

Making him a toy akin to this would be really fitting, they were even built by sticking a different shell on a steam engine chassis.  Maybe he was a weird freebie from a disappointed toy store, maybe Control had a relative who kitbashed him from the chassis of a busted toy steam engine and some vaguely boxy metal thing.  A repurposed train car, maybe even a candy tin repainted/shaped a bit.  

As a bonus: make the final race on a mountainous course with at least one big tunnel and tight, steep, uphill sections.  Smaller boxcabs (most larger ones too) weren’t fast, but not gassing people in tunnels and being good climbing hills and working in low temps/oxygen are major advantages over a larger diesel or steam engine.  There’s also the underused advantages of switchers in general, like being able to go backwards easily and navigate tight curves- which would also be hellish for a large steam engine and carbody diesel engines.  Tbh I like Rusty way more as a shlubby older janitor type vs moody teen, and train media does not lean into the Zamboni Guy appeal switchers and track maintenance and other mundane rail activities have.  

(You get some wacky role shuffling in this AU, but Momma/Poppa works GREAT as a high maintenance unreliable celebrity who’s disruptive but not really malicious. That’s just how steam excursions can be.  Electra becomes Rusty’s friend/comrade/adoptive sibling-ish figure who wins their heat but physically fails afterwards.  Greaseball just perpetually works as-is and needs no changes.)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Do not fear Trump

Steve Schmidt

Donald Trump is riding high, but soon he will be weighed down by the one thing he has shown over and over again in his life that he does not do well with: responsibility.

Soon he will be in charge, and his MAGA movement will control government.

Everything that happens next will be on their watch.

Everything.

Because Trump has surrounded himself with a creature cantina of unfitness, depravity, weirdness and nuttery, when the moment comes — and it will — where wisdom is needed, there will be none in the room.

Disaster will follow misjudgments that will be compounded by a mix of arrogance, certitude, incompetence, stupidity and epic ignorance. The American people will pay the price for believing the lies of a liar, who was made credible by the failure of America’s political elite over the last 25 years to do the things that they said they would do and make wise decisions.

[...]

Meanwhile, the great supplication and appeasement rolls along at Mar-a-Lago.

The parade offers important lessons about the cost of personal debasement in the pursuit of self-interest dressed up as something else.

Whether it is Justin Trudeau or Joe Scarborough, Trump devours weakness. He preys on softness. When his foes come calling they seem to do so with a bag full of quibbles, quivering and whining, while trying to play a version of Trump’s game. It never works. Ever.

Everywhere right now there is a spirit of accommodation, appeasement and supplication in the air.

What Trump plans to do demands opposition that does not relent, and does not tremble. The terrible abuses, corruption and malice demand resistance. The test ahead will be both political and moral.

Americans are a tough people. No wonder they hold the media in such abject contempt. People always reserve their greatest disdain for the people who treat them with contempt, and signal with each breath their smugness, superiority and arrogance. It’s basic human nature.

More than anything else, right now, Americans deserve leaders who are less worried about themselves, and more focused on the wellbeing of the American people. Fearful people can’t lead because cowardice, like courage, is contagious. When integrity, conviction and honesty are called for, cowardice is a cancer.

When Donald Trump takes power he will seek to stifle dissent, intimidate media companies, threaten opponents, journalists, and anyone who asserts themselves in opposition. This must be opposed loudly, fiercely and effectively. It must be confronted relentlessly without fear or panic.

Do not fear Trump. Do not give him that power. Instead, take it from him.

In time, he will fear the American people who will turn on him after a short season of abuse.

The greatest political failure of the last 80 years was the 2024 loss by Democrats to Donald Trump. Period. Don’t let anyone ever tell you this race was unwinnable. It was lost. Understanding the how and why of that is of the utmost importance because three short years from tonight we will be closing in on the home stretch of the New Hampshire primary. What comes next doesn’t need to remind anyone of what came before.

The political situation in America will be very different after 100 days of Trump. The time for pretending will have long passed by then.

[lichqueenlibrarian]

Time for Yesterday gave me so much to chew on.

I don’t really want to spoil it if anyone is intending to read it (or bore anyone if they don’t) so thoughts about the book under the cut.

From the book’s summary:

Time in the galaxy has stopped running its normal course. That can only mean one thing -- the Guardian of Forever is malfunctioning. To save the universe, Starfleet command reunites three of its most legendary figures -- Admiral James T. Kirk, Spock of Vulcan, and Dr. Leonard McCoy -- and sends them on a desperate mission to contact the Guardian, a journey that ultimately takes them 5,000 years into the past. They must find Spock's son Zar once again -- and bring him back to their time to telepathically communicate the Guardian.

But Zar is enmeshed in troubles of his own, and soon Kirk, Spock and McCoy find themselves in a desperate struggle to save both their world -- and his!

One of the things I did enjoy was the change in Spock’s characterisation; he was softer but not in a way that felt forced- the story takes place after The Motion Picture and Deep Domain (which put Jim back on Earth at Starfleet HQ at the book’s end) so not only is Spock older, you get the feeling that he’s been doing a lot of thinking since the last time he and Zar met. Spock outright says that the incident with Vejur caused him to reevaluate how he interacts with the universe, and with the people in it. He allows himself to connect a little more with others (he and D’berahan, the little esper they bring along to contact the Guardian get along quite well and have a very immediate friendship), and the book expands a bit on his friendship with Uhura, which I thought was lovely. The side plot with D’berahan, a member of a species that communicates solely through telepathy did make me wonder at the ease with which she and Spock spoke, it seemed much different than the way Spock uses words, and it occurred to me that you could probably consider telepathy Spock’s first language rather than Vulcan.

When they find that the world is in imminent danger of ending, Jim’s put into a conundrum- does he reach out to David knowing this could be his last chance, and in spite of what he promised Carol? Does he have the right to contact David, and does he chance causing David any distress? In the text it’s set up a bit as a counterpoint to Spock- they’re both estranged from their children for different reasons, and how do you cope with that? Jim’s also conflicted about having let Carol take sole responsibility for David, and his past willingness to accede to her desires. I think though, that Jim’s more in line with Zar than with Spock.

Zar has been leading his city, bringing them into prosperity with the help of the things he learned in the future. Unfortunately he’s on the brink of an unwinnable war that will wreck all that work, he’s not happy as the leader (preferring to teach), and having been widowed and lost his child twenty years prior hasn’t allowed himself to get close to anyone again. He’s also closer in age to Spock and Jim due to the vagaries of time travel. Zar wants to teach but can’t because of his responsibilities to the people and city. Jim would prefer to teach (he would see Spock more often, too and I’m sure that has nothing to do with anything) but can’t because he’s constantly getting bogged down in Starfleet business taking him over hill and dale. Zar is afraid to get close to anyone (including his new wife Wynn, high priestess of one of the clans allied against him) because he’s afraid of her possible death. However, he’s able to get over his fear and will be able to go back to teaching because Wynn is a capable and enthusiastic ruler herself, more than willing to take on ruling the city so that Zar can spend more time doing what he really loves.

I think the suggestion there is that what Jim’s really feeling the lack of is support and partnership. While Spock is able to meet Zar on a more even footing this time, able to express more of his honest feelings, and in the end to overcome his qualms and do something dramatic in order to save his son, Jim doesn’t really get the same payoff. Whether he goes to meet David isn’t resolved, and while the book ends with him resolving to be firm about taking on more teaching opportunities, there isn’t really a resolution for his emotional arc.

I really enjoyed Spock’s final trip into the past to help Zar. Prior to their marriage, Wynn prophesied that he would fall in battle and rise, and Spock saw in the Guardian’s records of the past that Zar sustains a brutal blow to the head that likely kills him. To prevent this, he takes off into the past with a lirpa and ahn-woon to try and save Zar. Along the way he encounters the hideousness of war in that era- there are some descriptions of the injured and dying that are kinda gross (viscera everywhere)- and I liked that this was shocking and nauseating to Spock. He also kills someone accidentally and feels guilt over it despite that person being the one who nearly murders Zar. At the end they pull off Wynn’s prophecy by using Spock’s resemblance to Zar and a bit of Jim’s dramatics to scare off the opposing armies.

The battle against the Originators was neat, mostly because McCoy gets harassed by an alien taking the form of his ex wife (despite knowing it’s not Jocelyn they immediately start bickering), while the one that targets Jim uses Winona’s recent death to try and hurt him. That Jim reacts to the alien’s taunting by saying his mother wouldn’t ever think those things and that he knows he did his best for her, while Spock reacts by getting angry and putting himself between Jim and the alien is… fascinating.

There were a lot of references to other books (MR NARAHT MY SON!!) which I did like, it gave the world a bit of heft rather than introducing a whole bunch of new people again.

I think the change in Jim from the show to the movies is so damn interesting, it’s one of my favourite parts of these books despite the focus being mostly on Spock.

[autisticsupervillain]

Five Nights at the Archives

(A FNAF Fangame concept for The Magnus Archives)

You naturally play as Jonathan Sims. Not while he's working in the Archives mind you, but while he's asleep and trapped inside his own mind. Each of the Fourteen Fears is trying to make him their Avatar and the game play depicts you fighting them off. The game takes place in a facsimile of Jon's office at the Institute, with the monsters out to get you being representations of what Jon would look like as an Avatar of each of the individual Fears. There are four main gameplay areas. The front of your desk, behind your desk, under your desk, and the cameras. The cameras have two maps, the building itself and the vents.

The front of your desk is where you'll find Eye!Jon. The more you look at any of the Fears, the more he manifests into your office until he kills you. In order to drive him off, you have to push a button to close your eyes while, waiting for audio ques to signify that he's de-manifested a step. When he's about to kill you, you'll hear the noise of the tape recorder on your desk turning on and playing m, indicating that you need to deal with him now. This is the only Jon who is active on all the nights, so you'll always have to be checking the front of your desk periodically to know if you need to drive him back a step.

Dark!Jon is the other Jon who appears at the front of your office and he works the exact opposite way. The less you look at him, the darker your office gets and the more he manifests until he jumpscares you. Closing your eyes to drive back the Eye makes him speed up and he de-manifests the more you look at him. If you've been neglecting to deal with Dark and Eye too often, then you'll put yourself in an unwinnable situation where driving back one lets the other kill you. Your cues for when he's getting dangerously close to jumpscaring you are flickering lights.

Behind your desk is where you'll find Web!Jon and Corruption!Jon. On nights where they're active, they appear at first as cobwebs and beehives in the corner of your office, slowly spreading as they manifest in more and more. You drive them back by burning them with Jon's web lighter, but doing that feeds Desolation!Jon, as signified by the candle on the floor burning down. Desolation!Jon de-manifests the less you use the lighter, but the Web and Corruption come back faster the more you burn them. The trick is to try waiting for the last possible moment to burn away the Web and Corruption so as to not trap yourself in an unwinnable situation between them and the Desolation.

Hiding under your desk lets you avoid a select few Fears. On nights where Lonely!Jon is active, your office will gradually fill up with fog. To drive the Fog back, you hide under your desk and listen to a tape recording of Martin's poetry. The longer you listen, the further back the Lonely is driven, but obviously you can't be down there all night with the other Avatars after you. You also hide under the desk to avoid Stranger!Jon when you hear circus music outside your door. Stranger!Jon does appear on the cameras, but you likely won't use those to track him, as unlike the others, he has an audio tell for when he's near.

Hunt and Slaughter are the ones you'll likely track while on the cameras. If you can't find either of them on the cameras, that means they're outside your door, so you'll have to click on it at the front of your office to hold the door shut until they stop banging on it and reset their path. Slaughter has an audio cue for moving one camera closer to your office (an army trumpet jingle), while Hunt moves completely silently. And hiding in the desk doesn't work on either of them, they'll just stab you through it.

Flesh and Vast are what you need to check the vents for. You can seal off whatever vent they're in to either stunt Flesh's progress to your office or drive Vast back from manifesting inside your office. (As indicated by the subtle sound of rushing wind and thunderstorms getting ever louder.) However, doing so too often makes the Buried faster and more active as Jon struggles to breathe, even on nights when Buried isn't supposed to be active.

The Buried, when active, starts to fill your office with mud and dirt, forcing you to find its coffin on your cameras or in your office and close it to make the mud go away. If the vents are closed, Buried!Jon does this more frequently and fills your office much faster, getting faster and more frequent the longer its closed.

And Spiral and End are the ones that make you dread checking the cameras. Spiral and End will randomly appear on one of your cameras, forcing you to quickly exit that camera before they jumpscare you. If Spiral gets you, than your controls are completely randomized to make you look at different cameras or parts of your office. You need to quickly find the Distortion's door in either your office or cameras to deactivate the effect before he kills you. If End gets you, you get sent back one in-game hour, with everyone resetting back to where they were at that specific hour. If you survive back to the hour you first saw End, he appears in your office and you must quickly hide under your desk to avoid him. If you get under the desk too late, then, unlike Stranger who just kills you, End stares at you until you either leave the desk to get killed by him or die to something you couldn't prevent because you were stuck under the desk.

Some of these Jons can only be active on nights where the others are active and some can be active whenever. Desolation, Corruption, and Web will all be active on the same nights because their mechanic is so interconnected, for example, while Hunt or Dark can be active whenever. The game will inform you before the night begins which fears will be active and let you click on them to tutorialize their mechanics.

Extinction!Jon is the night six boss fight. He slowly approaches your office on the cameras and you have to find symbols of all the other Fears on the cameras and in your office so they can drive him back before he reaches you, with you occasionally having to close vents or block doors to keep him out after certain sound cues. Then, for the next in game hour, it's a normal night where all the Fears are active, with Extinction coming back every other hour and switching between the gameplay modes.

[starryevermore]

following orders: the goggles (1) ✧ tech

following orders ✧ a tech bad batch story | ao3 

inspired by: a conversation with @captainsbestgal​

pairing: tech x fem!reader

series summary: you don’t want to live in a galaxy where the love of your life, tech, does not exist. but, you can’t abandon your already grieving family. you devote all of your energy to helping hunter and wrecker save omega from the empire and, perhaps, save the wayward crosshair along the way. but the longer you look for the youngest member of the bad batch, the more you suspect that your lost love is not as lost as you once believed. 

chapter summary: the aftermath of plan 99.

word count: 7,223

series warnings?: spoilers for “plan 99”, plan 99, canon-typical violence, hurt tech, canon divergent, fix it fic, angst, grief/mourning, torture, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, relationship discussions, mutual pining, clone troopers speak mando’a, depression, suicide ideation, memory loss, brainwashing, jealousy, not proofread

chapter warnings?: mention of tech’s death, grief, mourning, suicide ideation, not proofread

“When have we ever followed orders?”

You cradled Omega in your arms as the Marauder traveled through hyperspace. You weren’t sure if you should still be holding her. She’d been gravely injured, and you have enough first aid training to know that it’s safer to let a person be stabilized than to constantly be adjusting them. But holding onto her, your pseudo-daughter, was the only thing grounding you in this moment. And, perhaps a bit delusional at the moment, you told yourself that, when traveling through hyperspace, maybe it was safer to hold onto her than to let her little body be whipped around the ship—not that her brothers would do that. Not now. Not after everything that’s happened. 

“When have we ever followed orders?”

A tear slipped down your cheek. You raised one hand, quick to wipe it away, before returning to holding Omega. You couldn’t cry. Not now. If you cried…That meant it was real. And it couldn’t be real. He couldn’t have…No. He was fine. He was okay. He piloting the ship, he was making last-second calculations to ensure a safe landing. He was…He was not with you. Not now. Not ever. Even if he had beat the odds, used that brilliant mind of his to calculate just the right way to fall…You all left him. You weren’t sure anyone could survive in the wilderness below, even someone as brilliant as him.

“When have we ever followed orders?”

Hunter walked up to you. His face was void of his emotion, save for his eyes. Hunter could play the stoic leader all he liked, but his eyes would always tell a different story. The man was barely holding it together. You could hardly blame him. Losing Tech…No one had seen that coming. No one saw him making the sacrifice play. He was supposed to be on the ship with you. How did he expect you to move on when he meant everything to you? When there was still so much left unsaid? 

“When have we ever followed orders?”

Hunter sat down beside you. Omega’s head rested in your lap. He reached down, stroking her blonde curls. He needed this, too. Everything that all of you did was to ensure that Omega would live, that she might one day get to see a peaceful galaxy. Or, when that was too large a task, at least that she would live a peaceful life. That she wouldn’t become a soldier in an unwinnable war. But what was the point in that when all she’d experienced since joining you and her brothers was unspeakable loss? No kid deserved that, especially not one as kind and innocent as her. 

“We’ll be landing soon,” Hunter said.

You swallowed, trying to choke down any sob that threatened to escape. “Are you sure this is a good idea? When we were…When we were on Safa Toma, Millegi told us that Cid can’t be trusted.”

Hunter kept his gaze focused on Omega. You weren’t sure, but you thought that he kept his head downturned so that you wouldn’t see any tears that were close to falling. “I don’t see how we have any choice. She needs proper medical treatment. AZI is the only one I trust to make sure…”

To make sure she didn’t die. He couldn’t finish the sentence, but you could feel the weight of it. It nearly suffocated you. You couldn’t lose anymore of your family. The galaxy could not be so cruel as to take another from you. You wouldn’t let it. 

“I just worry that Cid will do something. We cut off all communication with her. We may have once been in her good graces, but I don’t know what will happen if she sees us again.”

“I know. But, she has a soft spot for the kid,” Hunter said. His hand fell from Omega’s hair, stroking her cheek. Though still unconscious, she let out a whine. You weren’t sure if it was one of pain, or if she recognized that her father figure was present. “I can only hope that that will grant us some favor.”

“If it doesn’t?”

Hunter’s jaw clenched. He lifted his head, finally looking at you. His eyes were glassy, but hard. With a sort of ferocity you only ever heard from him on the battlefield, he said, “I won’t let anyone take her from us.” 

The Marauder jerked slightly as it entered Ord Mantell’s atmosphere. While Echo was more than a capable pilot, he lacked some of the finesse that Tech possessed. Or perhaps you were hyperaware now of every move, every jump, every jerk. It felt like your senses were on fire. Like you had to perceive everything so that you didn’t have to picture his face. 

Within minutes of entering the atmosphere, the Marauder landed. Hunter stood, then held out his arms to carry Omega. It was a kind gesture, and maybe he wanted to carry her because he also needed to be grounded. But you knew that if you let go of her, for even a second, you would collapse and never want to get up again. So, you shook your head, adjusting your grip on the young girl, so that you were cradling her in your arms as you stood. It was an effort, you had to admit. You were strong, but that did not compare to the strength of a genetically enhanced clone trooper. But the pain, the burn of your muscles, was one of the only things reminding you were alive, that Omega was alive. 

Echo and Wrecker were already waiting outside the ship when you and Hunter emerged. Echo looked much like you and Hunter—stoic, but barely holding it together. Wrecker, on the other hand…The poor guy must have spent the entire journey crying. Tear tracks stained his face, his eyes all red and puffy. Even the tip of his nose was a bright red. When he saw you carrying Omega, he immediately reached out. And, oh, he needed this much more than you. You let him take Omega from your arms, a sob escaping his lips as he held her. 

“I’m going to stick with the ship,” Echo said. “Make sure everything’s in working order for when we leave.”

You shared a glance with Hunter. You wanted to say, We might be here a while. Or, you should probably be checked out by AZI, too. We all need help right now. Perhaps even, Please don’t leave us now. But, everyone grieves in their own way. If this was Echo saying he needed to grieve alone, who were you to deny him that?

Hunter said, “Keep your comm on and close by. We might need a quick getaway.” 

Echo nodded, then turned back to the ship. You watched as his shoulders sagged as he walked back up. You and Echo were never the closest on the team, but you knew enough of his life before the Batch that losing a member of the team hit him hard. Perhaps when Omega was healed, when you all left this Maker-forsaken planet, you would talk to him. Maybe convince him to stick around a little while longer before rejoining Rex. You couldn’t make him stay forever, but you all were his family. This was not the time to be splitting up for an undetermined length of time. 

Hunter squeezed your shoulder, letting you know it was time to go to Cid’s. You let out a shuddering breath, kept your gaze focused on your feet, as you walked the streets to the oh-so-familiar parlor. The entire walk, you tried working on keeping a straight face. You knew you couldn’t hide what happened from Cid—she was far too perceptive to not notice you all were down a man—but you didn’t dare show weakness in front of her. You were already certain a betrayal was on the horizon. You refused to give her anymore ammunition to hurt you with. 

The parlor was empty when you arrived, save for Bolo and Ketch. Ketch’s eyes widened when he saw the four of you. You could only imagine how much of Cid’s wrath they had experienced when you all never returned. Bolo’s eyes flicked toward the bar, and you followed his gaze. Cid was wiping down the counter. It seemed like she hadn’t noticed you all yet, but you knew Cid well enough to know she was waiting for one of you to make the first move. 

“Is AZI around?” you asked as you approached the bar. 

Cid’s eyes flicked up, a snarky remark on the tip of her tongue. But then she saw Omega in Wrecker’s arms, the pained look on his face. Instead of her usual sarcasm, she asked, “What happened to Tiny?”

You looked at Hunter. You weren’t sure how much he wanted to reveal to the Trandoshan. If it was up to you, you would give her nothing. But he was calling the shots, and he might think it better to give something so that she would be more inclined to let the med droid tend to Omega. 

“Mission gone wrong,” was all he offered. “She needs to see AZI now.”

Cid nodded her head toward her office. “He’s in the back doing inventory. Do what you need to do. But when the kid’s taken care of, we need to have a talk about best communication practices.”

You narrowed your eyes at her, a snarky remark of your own on the tip of your tongue, but you held back. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and all that. If Cid’s concern for Omega was the only thing keeping her from throwing you out, or worse, throwing you to the Empire, you could hold your tongue. For, at least, long enough to let AZI tend to Omega’s wounds. 

You started for the back, Wrecker and Hunter following close behind. But you didn’t make it far before Cid stopped you all again.

“Wait. One of youse is missing.” When you looked back at her, Cid’s eyes were flitting between the three of you. “Is Goggles on the ship or something?”

You decided to borrow Hunter’s words, and only offered her, “Mission gone wrong.”

Oh, what an understatement that was. But she didn’t deserve to be privy to the details. She didn’t have the right to know of the pain that stabbed at you, that bit and clawed at your heart, reminding you that you were alive instead of him. She was not a friend. She was hardly an acquaintance. If you couldn’t even talk to your own family about the ache you felt, why should she get to know? 

True to her word, though, AZI was flitting around the back, taking stock of the various liquors that Cid ordered for the parlor. He lifted his head when he heard you all approach. You might have been imagining things—and you surely were, because droids don’t express emotions in the same way as sentient beings—but the med droid almost looked happy to see you. Part of you had felt bad for leaving him behind with Cid. He had been Omega’s friend after all. But, Hunter wasn’t keen on returning to Ord Mantell back then. Not after the incident at the ipsium mines. You could hardly blame him, so you didn’t push. Now, you wish you had. If you had come back for AZI all those rotations ago, he would have already been on the ship or at least on the sanctuary that was Pabu. There would have been no need to come back here and endanger your family’s lives any further. 

“Oh! I was wondering when you were coming back!” AZI chirped, coming around the many boxes. “Cid had not been very happy when you all didn’t return. But I knew you would come back! And I was right! I knew that if you left, you wouldn’t leave me behind.”

“We need your help,” Hunter said, ignoring the droid’s words. He had previously been standing in front of Wrecker, shielding the droid’s view of the injured Omega. Now, he stepped out of the way. “Omega got hurt, and it’s gonna take more than a few bacta patches to fix her up.”

AZI stared. You could almost sense the hurt he could be feeling. Whether it was at the knowledge that you all weren’t there for him or that his friend was knocking on death’s door, you couldn’t be sure. “I see. I shall get started then.”

You reached out, your fingers grazing the droid. If he could have blinked at you in confusion, you were sure he would have. “Thank you. And…I’m sorry.”

“No need for apologies or gratitude. This is what I’m here for.”

You weren’t sure how long you watched AZI tend to Omega. It felt like days—long, agonizing days as he flitted around her—though you doubted it was any longer than a few hours. You had lost track of time. Between watching him fix up Omega and occasionally tending to you, Hunter, and Wrecker when he needed time for the medicine to work its magic on her, it all kind of felt like a dream. Or, really, a nightmare. The crushing weight of this reality was starting to settle on your chest. You didn’t like this. You didn’t like it at all. 

At some point, Hunter brought you some breads and a glass of water. “Eat,” he said, ordering you like you were a soldier. You and him both knew that you would ignore him if he asked. “He wouldn’t want you to starve.”

You let out a quiet huff of a laugh, if you could even call it that. “He would talk about the benefits of a well-balanced diet, go on about how the food here was hardly sustenance, but that fed is best.”

Hunter wiped away a tear that rolled down your cheek. You’d hardly noticed it. How long had you been crying? You’d been so sure that you were holding it together still. “We’ll get through this.” He nodded his head at the door, gesturing to where Wrecker had disappeared after AZI put his neck in a brace. Wrecker had been placing a huge amount of space between you and him. The guilt must have been hurting him, too—even if he had nothing to feel guilty for. “Wrecker and I were talking about staying on Pabu full time, after Omega is fixed up.”

“What about Crosshair?”

Hunter’s jaw clenched. “I can’t trust that his message wasn’t a trap. I’m not going to lose any more of my family on the chance that he’s switched sides. He’s given no indication that he wanted to join us before.”

“It’s not a trap. I know it’s not.” Perhaps it was a low blow, being so close to the incident, but you couldn’t stop yourself from saying, “Tech knew it wasn’t a trap.”

Hunter swallowed, hard. You watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed. Then— “Tech…died so his family could be safe. I’m honoring his wishes.”

“Crosshair is part of this family. His message, it was a sign that he still cared. That despite everything, he still cares.”

Hunter started to argue, but his mouth snapped shut when Omega groaned. He shot you a look—this wasn’t over. But the conversation would have to be tabled for another day. 

You squeezed his shoulder. “We can go to Pabu if that’s what Omega wants. Whatever she chooses, I’ll respect.”

“Hunter?” Omega managed to say. She said your name as she realized you sat beside him.

Hunter immediately leaned over her, stroking her hair. You reached out, taking one of her hands,  giving it a squeeze. Hunter offered her a small smile, and said, “Hiya, kid.”

“You gave us a right scare there,” you said. 

Omega let out a groan and started to sit up. “W-What happened?”

You and Hunter shared a glance. You could hardly put into words the ordeal you all just experienced. You weren’t sure you could explain it to her without crying, but you also didn’t want Hunter to shoulder that responsibility. He already carried too much weight on his shoulders. 

But before you could say anything, AZI entered the room. He chirped, “Hello, Omega. I am relieved you are awake.” He did a quick scan of her, the light blue light illuminating her face. “You each sustained multiple injuries. However, you all will make a full recovery with proper treatment and rest.”

Omega sat up, a hand clutching her head. Hunter reached around, helping her so that she didn’t make things too hard for herself. You gave her hand another squeeze. At this point, it was probably more for your comfort than hers. She was alive. She would be okay. That’s all that mattered right now. If you could focus on that, everything would be okay. Eventually. 

At the sound of Omega’s voice, Wrecker came into the room. He wouldn’t look at you, even when you tried to meet his gaze. You understood why—the guilt he must feel would be tremendous. He was the brawn on the operation. He was the muscles. It’s his job to make sure that no one in his family has to take the brunt of any injuries. In his eyes, he failed. In his eyes, he’s the reason your heart is broken. In his eyes, he’s the reason Tech died. 

You hadn’t been sure how to comfort him, so you let him go off on his own for a while. You weren’t quite sure how to comfort yourself. So, you let him sit in his misery and you in yours. Now, though, you wish you’d done something. It hurt, him not being able to look at you, even if he thought he was trying to spare you the pain. 

“You’re—You’re okay,” Wrecker said. He stumbled forward, kneeling in front of Omega, letting out a breath. He was the perfect picture of held-back panic. He held Omega in a quick hug, careful not to press on any of her injuries. “Don’t scare us like that again.”

Hunter offered her a drink. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. Her face twisted, contorted into sadness. You’d almost hoped she hadn’t remembered. She doesn’t deserve this kind of pain. She shouldn’t have to know this kind of loss. “The last thing that I remember, we were in the railcar when…”

She gasped, her eyes going wide. Her eyes darted toward you, searching for an answer to the unsaid question. But you couldn’t meet her gaze. If you did, you would cry. And if you cried, you would confirm her worst fears. 

She looked to Hunter. “Where’s Tech?”

Hunter looked away, looked at you. You gave a nod. She had to know. “Omega, Tech didn’t make it.”

You dropped Omega’s hand, letting your hand come to rest on Hunter’s shoulder. You gave it a squeeze. You’d meant what you said, that he shouldn’t have to shoulder all this responsibility. You felt bad for making him say it, but you suppose she would only believe the news from him. 

“We have to go back!” Omega said. “What if he’s hurt? He—He needs us! Tell him, Wrecker! We can’t just leave him!”

You looked at Wrecker, seeing his eyes squeeze shut. Oh, that must have killed him. That must have confirmed every dark thought that swirled in his gentle mind. Was it too soon to force everyone into a group hug? 

“Omega,” you said, reaching out, stopping her from jumping out of the bed. “You saw him. He calculated the odds right before he did it. He knew his chances, and he’s seldom wrong.”

“NO!” Omega smacked your hand away. “Tech’s not gone! You know he’s not! He—He can’t be!”

Her face screwed up as the tears began to fall. Hunter took your place, wrapping his arms around her. She sobbed into his chest. Your heart clenched at the sight. She was alive, but she was hurting. And you weren’t sure what to do about that. Nothing that you said would help her. Nothing you said would bring him back. 

You rose to your feet, glancing between the members of your family. “I-I need to go,” you mumbled, stumbling out of the room.

You didn’t make it very far, nearly collapsing into a seat at the bar. Your shoulders trembled as you tried to keep your sobs at bay. Until that moment, it hadn’t quite hit you that he was gone. You knew he was. You were there when he fell. You saw the calmness in his eyes, his acceptance of his fate. You could feel the unspoken words on the tip of his tongue as he said his final words. You felt the tremble of the railcar, the panic in your chest as the line snapped, as he plummeted…Going, going, gone. 

You’d lived through all of that, but a naïve sort of part of you had hoped. Had prayed to the Maker, to the Force, to whatever cosmic being there was that controlled Tech’s fate that he had made it. But at that altitude? With a railcar plummeting with him? Even if he survived the fall, the railcar landing on him would surely do him in. Tech had accepted his death, but you couldn’t. 

How could you? He had meant everything to you. He was the air you breathed, the reason you stayed with the Batch for so long. When the war ended, you had no reason to stay. Your contract with the Republic ended the moment that battles stopped. But he…He gave you one look, one unspoken plea, and you stayed. 

What was the point now? 

You lifted your head as Wrecker collapsed into a seat next to you. He stared at the bar. Knowing that he wouldn’t make any move, you grabbed his hand, gave it a squeeze. “It’s not your fault,” you whispered. “There was nothing you could have done to change what happened.”

Maybe the words were partly said for your own peace of mind, but it brought neither you nor Wrecker any belief. “He was gonna ask ya out when we got back to Pabu,” he mumbled. “He knew you liked looking at tha stars, so he planned a midnight picnic. Was gonna tell you every fact he knew about every star, planet, comet in tha sky.”

“…Oh.” You weren’t sure what else to say. What could you say? How could express the remorse of never getting to experience a future you so badly craved?

“He wanted to come back to ya. He was supposed to come back to ya. And I’m the reason he didn’t. You should hate me.”

“I could never hate you, Wrecker,”  you said. You squeezed his hand. “I meant what I said. His fate was sealed when he went out with me to make repairs.”

“I saved you. I should have saved him, too. I could have saved him.”

Your bottom lip trembled. “He made you get me first. He made his choice. Wrecker, he knew his fate. You…You did everything he wanted you too. Okay? So don’t, don’t feel bad about what happened.”

The sound of two glasses hitting the bar pulled you from your conversation with Wrecker. When you looked up, Cid was sliding you and him a couple of drinks. Your stomach twisted. You didn’t like the look in her eyes. There was something she wasn’t telling you. “Here,” she said. “These are on the house.”

You pushed the glass in front of you away. “Nothing ever comes for free with you, Cid.”

Wrecker pushed his glass, too. “It won’t help.”

Cid was silent for a beat. “I’m sorry about Goggles. I always liked him.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Wrecker said. 

You watched Cid. She had her arms crossed over her chest, one of her clawed fingers tapping anxiously. You sat a little straighter, sniffed back a couple of your tears. No matter what grief you were experiencing, you needed to keep your mind sharp. You had walked right back into the lion’s den. You needn’t give Cid any opportunity to betray you. 

Wrecker noticed, too. “What’s with you?” he grunted. 

Cid wagged one finger at him. “You know, I tried to look out for you kids. But you got too much heat on you. And you brought it here, to my place of business! I had to make the best of a bad situation.”

You watched the rage contort on Wrecker’s face. Oh, you don’t know if you had ever seen him so mad before. You almost expected him to reach across the bar and kill Cid with his bare hands. Instead, he growled, “What did you do?”

“Sorry, Muscles. Sorry, Killer.”

The doors to the parlor slid open. You were immediately on your feet, shoved behind Wrecker as a group of commando clones entered the parlor, their blasters raised. One shot at Wrecker, and he charged, more stun bolts firing at him. One hit you, and you went down easily, not able to put the same kind of fight as Wrecker. As you fell, you prayed to the Maker that Hunter got away—or at least that he convinced Omega to leave you all behind if he wanted to play hero.

The commando clones had you and Wrecker kneeling with your hands bounds behind two of them, maybe another half dozen behind you, all of their blasters raised at the door, waiting for Hunter. Hemlock stood beside you, watching you curiously as you avoided his gaze. He knew something. He knew something about Tech. Your eyes fell to the case he was holding, wondering what its contents were. Was it Tech’s head? His helmet? Some other cruel piece of his life, of his memory to taunt the fact that you all lost?

Hunter emerged from the back, his blaster raised. You let out a breath. At least Omega wasn’t with him. At least she might have escaped. He wouldn’t have come out unless he was sure she was long gone.  

“That’s not very strategic, Hunter,” Hemlock said. “You don’t need to use your enhanced senses to know you’re outnumbered.”

Hemlock turned to Cid, raising the case. “The Empire thanks you for your assistance,” he said, passing the case to the Trandoshan. 

Oh. It was just credits. Maybe Hemlock wasn’t so cruel to taunt you all with Tech’s death using whatever part of him they uncovered. 

Cid and Hunter shared a look, before Hemlock said, “Our business is done. Leave.”

Cid’s head dropped. She turned, walking past you and Wrecker. She paused for a second, looking like she wanted to tell you something. Maybe an apology. You weren’t sure. All you knew was, whatever she had to say died in her throat as you reared your head back, spitting at her. Childish, sure. Gross, definitely. But Cid didn’t deserve your respect. Not now. Not after she sold you all out. 

Hemlock turned his attention back to Hunter. “Please, consider your next move very carefully. I would hate for this to end poorly for all of you. Here is how this is going to go. You will lower your blaster and hand over Omega. And I will allow you to keep breathing.”

“Omega’s not going anywhere with you,” Hunter growled. 

“Oh. Well, who knew clones are so paternal? Fascinating,” Hemlock said. He paused for a moment. “I was saddened to learn of your friend’s demise. What was his name? Oh, yes, Tech.”

You let out a growl. He didn’t deserve to say Tech’s name. What right did he have to talk about Tech?

Hemlock glanced back at you, his eyebrows raised. As he took in your expression, he turned more fully. He reached out, a finger running down your cheek. You fought the urge to bite him. That wouldn’t end well. “Ah, yes, the girlfriend, right?” he mused. Not technically. You and Tech never made anything official. “From what I gathered, the two of you were rather…intimate. I didn’t know clones could do that, either. Though, I suppose his form of intimacy is far different than a…normal human, wouldn’t you say?”

“Don’t you dare talk about him,” you spat. “You have no right.”

“So protective,” he said. Chuckling to himself, he turned back to Hunter. Beside you, Wrecker growled, only to be hit with a blaster by one of the clones holding you all captive. One of the commando clones handed him something. You couldn’t quite see what it was. “I’m afraid this was all I could salvage. Consider it a gift.”

He tossed the object at Hunter’s feet, and you could finally see what it was. A sob caught in your throat. No. No. No, no, no. If that was all they managed to recover, then that meant…Another sob escaped you before your could stop it. 

“To lose one of your own, it must weigh heavily on you as their leader.” Hemlock glanced back at the clones. Several of them pressed their weapons into Wrecker. One of them reached out, grabbing you by the hair, yanked your head back. He pressed his blaster into your temple. You wondered how eager he was to shoot. At least if you died, then you could be with Tech. “And if you don’t lower the blaster now, you will lose more.”

Wrecker shook his head. You couldn’t do the same, not with the way you were being held, so you did your best to convey your message in your eyes. Don’t lower your blaster. We’ll be fine. 

Still, Hunter slowly lowered the blaster and set it on the floor. He picked up Tech’s goggles, the glassiness in his eyes clear. 

“Wise decision,” Hemlock said. He motioned to the clones, and two of them stepped forward to bind Hunter’s wrists. They pushed him to where you and Wrecker were kneeling on the ground. 

Another clone came from the back and reported, “Sir, the girl is not in the office.”

“She’s long gone,” Hunter said. “Like I said, Omega’s not going anywhere with you.”

“Hmm. We’ll see.”

Oh, how could Hunter have been so right and so wrong all at the same time? Omega was, indeed, long gone, but she’d been taken by Hemlock. Despite your family’s best efforts, no one could stop Hemlock. Part of you wished that Omega had listened to Hunter, that she escaped and left you all behind. But the other part of you understood. She’s lost too much. If she lost you, Wrecker, and Hunter to the Empire…You weren’t sure how she would survive that kind of heartache. But now, the three of you and Echo floated through space, with no idea on where to go. Your mission had been a failure—you didn’t have the first clue where Hemlock’s base of operations was. Everything that you all fought—everything that you all lost—was for nothing. 

Eventually, Hunter told Echo to fly you all back to Pabu. Returning there and clearing all of your minds before making the next move was important. Everyone’s emotions were still high. Even if you all could come to a decision, could fall upon some useful information, there was no guarantee that a rescue operation would be successful. While Omega was in more danger the longer she was in Hemlock’s control, it would do her no good if all of you were captured trying to save her. 

You spent the journey laying in Tech’s bunk. Your face pressed into his pillow, bundled up in his covers, trying to commit his scent to memory. His bunk always smelled clean. Crosshair, back in the days of the Republic, once told you that Tech had been incredibly messy before you were assigned to the team. But the moment Tech met you, he went out of his way to keep his area as clean as could be. Back then, you thought Tech was just trying to be kind, to make you feel welcome. Now, you realized he was trying to impress you. 

Tears burned at your eyes at the memory. You tried blinking them away, focusing on the scribbles on the wall of Tech’s bunk. Most of them were about ship repairs that he would be doing with you, or upgrades to weapons. But there was one in the corner, near his pillow, that caught your eye. 

In his messy scrawl, he had written out a series of steps to win a woman’s heart. Most of them were checked off, save for three. Step 7. Take her on a date—make sure it’s something she would enjoy. Step 8. Kiss her—refer to holofilms for best approach. Step 9. Ask her to be yours—let it be her choice. 

You let out a choked laugh, running your fingers over the words. Wrecker was right. Tech had been planning to ask you out. Oh, he had planned everything out. You wondered how long he had this plan. What you would give to have him back for just a moment, to ask him every question you ever wanted to ask, to listen to his voice, to be with him, to tell him you love him, too. 

When the Marauder landed, you reluctantly left the comfort of Tech’s bunk, joining the boys. As you walked out of the ship, you saw Phee waiting. She wore a bright smile on her face, her eyes twinkling. Considering your abrupt departure, you had no doubt that she had a million questions she wanted to ask about the mission. 

“Didn’t think you guys would be back from your secret mission so soon,” she teased. “Did you get what you were looking for?”

You looked at her, and shook your heard. It was one thing to tell Cid that the mission was a failure—she didn’t really care about your family. But to tell Phee? Who had gone out of her way to bring you guys to a place to a call home? Who showed time and time again that she cared, even if she had a funny way of going about it? It hurt. 

Her smile didn’t waiver. She understand yet. “Ah, well, that’s okay. I’m sure you guys’ll get ‘em next time! Say, what’s the long face’s for? The mission wasn’t that bad was it?”

Hunter squeezed your shoulder. You reached up, squeezed his hand back. Behind you, you could hear Wrecker shuffle his feet and the quiet whhrr of Echo’s scomp as he fiddled with it. No one offered an explanation.

“Geez, you guys look rough. Must’ve been real bad out there.” Phee glanced between the four of you, her smile falling. “Say, where’s Brown Eyes? Where’s the kid?”

You opened your mouth but no words came out. You looked back at Wrecker, Hunter, and Echo, but none of them seemed keen to answer. Phee seemed to know, though. You all wouldn’t be so put out, so mournful looking, if something bad hadn’t happened. When you looked back at her, she had stepped closer to you, a hand coming to rest on your shoulder. 

“I don’t know what happened, but I’m sorry,” she said. 

Your lip quivered. Kriff. You couldn’t take this. None of this was supposed to happen. You all were supposed to find out where Crosshair was, you were supposed to rescue him. Everyone was supposed to be reunited. You all were supposed to come back to Pabu and live as normal a life as you could manage. You weren’t supposed to lose Tech. Omega wasn’t supposed to be captured. 

Shrugging off Phee’s hand, you ran off. No one bothered to follow you, to call after you. For that, you were grateful. You didn’t want to be around anyone right. Not for a while. 

You settled on the docks. It was nearly dusk when the Marauder landed, so most of the fishermen had docked their boats and returned to their families with whatever they managed to catch. It was the perfect place for you. Almost no one around to bother you. You were as alone as you felt. 

Sitting on the edge of the dock, you let your legs hang over. You leaned all the way back so that you stared at the sky. The beautiful reds and oranges soon faded into a black abyss. The stars started to peak out, winking down at you. Once upon a time, you would have killed for the opportunity to watch the stars like this. There was seldom free time like this in the last few years. The stars once brought you comfort, providing you a map for your way back home. But it was different now.

The stars no longer brought you comfort. What was the point in the stars guiding you home if he wasn’t there to go with you?

Your eyes fluttered shut. For the first time since the incident, you let yourself cry. Sure, tears had escaped before, when you didn’t want them to. But you had been holding them at bay this entire time, trying to focus on the tasks at hand. Now, there was nothing to do. There was nothing you could do. Nothing, except mourn. A sob wracks your chest. You cover your face with your hands, letting everything you’d been holding in out.

You cried, and you cried, and you cried. Until there were no tears left. Until you uncovered your face, staring back at the stars, sniffling. 

A steady clunk! of a set of boots alerted you to a guest. You had a one-in-four shot of guessing who’d come to comfort you, but you didn’t care enough to see who it was. Did it matter? None of those four people were the one you wanted. And none of those four people was the kid you were supposed to protect. 

You saw Hunter’s face as he finally reached you, sitting down beside you. He said nothing. Hunter was never really the comforting type. He’d gotten better since Omega joined the team, learning to navigate his emotions so that he could be a better parent. But this wasn’t the sort of thing he’d been prepared for. None of you were prepared for this.

“I asked Shep to set you aside some dinner if you decide you’re hungry,” he said. “He said you can come into his house anytime you decide you’re hungry and take it. It has a note on it for you, in his fridge.”

“Thank you,” you said.

A silence passes over you. There’s so much to say. There’s so much you want to say. So much you aren’t sure how to say. How do you navigate this sort of sudden loss? What was the right way to grieve? What was the right way to comfort? A thousand possibilities flooded your mind. None of them felt right. Finally, you settled on an apology. 

“I’m sorry for running off,” you said. “If I worried you, I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intent.”

Hunter shrugged. “I knew where you were. I figured you just…needed time.”

“No amount of time can bring him back.” You sat up, looking out at the dark sea. If you jumped in now, you might sink fast enough under the weight of your armor that, by the time Hunter dove in after you, it would be too late. Even with his enhanced senses, the water would drown it all out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save Omega.”

“You’re sounding like Wrecker now,” he said. He had heard your conversation with him back at Cid’s. Usually, he kept quiet about conversations he overheard. But things were different now. No one knew how to navigate this sort of hurt. “They got us while we were down. I don’t know if there was anything we could do to save her.”

You rested your hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “We’ll get her back.”

“We will,” he affirmed. He reached for something that you couldn’t quite see. When he brought his hands back into your view, you gasped. “I, uh, came to give you these.”

“Hunter, no—”

“I talked with Wrecker and Echo. We all agreed that he would have wanted you to have them. Anything of his, it’s yours. But these especially.”

As he pressed the goggles into your hands, a tear rolled down your cheek. Oh, this was too much. How could you look at these goggles and not want to jump off the dock? How could you look at the cracked lenses and not picture his eyes squeezing shut as he hit the ground? How could you not imagine the way he looked at you, in the split second before he made his choice? How could you not see of how he looked before, when you all were leaving for the mission, the fire in his eyes as he searched for a way to rescue his brother? How could you not dream of the soft look in his eyes the night before, when you rested your head on his shoulder and told him how you wished the two of you could have a peaceful life? You ran your thumb over the light that used shone red, indicating his constant filming of his surroundings. It was off now. Part of you wondered why, but you dismissed the thought. It was probably broken in the fall. 

“What do we do now?” you ask. You look up at Hunter to see him already looking at you. His eyes were glassy still. You wondered if he had allowed himself the privacy to cry yet, or if he was still playing the part of the stoic leader. “Echo’s probably going to return to Rex soon. Wrecker’s in no position to fight. Kark, neither of us are either. We don’t have the first clue where to look. We don’t have—”

Hunter squeezed your shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. I don’t know how, but…We’ve faced horrible odds before.”

“We had a hundred percent success rate back then.”

“I don’t know what we’ll do,” he said, “but if we stick together, we’ll figure it out. I know we will.”

You wanted to push back, to argue, to feel something other than this grief, but you didn’t want to hurt Hunter in the process. So you let it go. Instead, you asked, “Could you tell me about? What he was like before I joined the team?”

Hunter let out a chuckle. “When we were cadets, Tech was a complete menace. Worse than the rest of us, if you could believe it. Always challenged the Kaminoans at every turn.”

You laughed, the picture forming in your mind. You leaned back against as Hunter talked, and soon he did, too, telling you everything about what little Tech had been like. For a moment, you forgot all that you’d just endured. For a moment, you felt at peace. But then you felt the weight of Tech’s goggles in your hands, and you were thrown back into the reality you were faced it.  

Tech was gone—you were sure of it. But he died to make sure his family would live. You weren’t going to let him die in vain. No matter what it took, no matter what you had to do, you would get Omega and Crosshair back. 

You swore it. 

[echo-of-damnation]

im not feeling good so im going to rant about the book Dead Men Walking by Steve Lyons because none of my irl friends will know what im talking about and i need to get it out of my system.

apologies in advance for anyone who ends up reading this

first things first. absolutely love the funky little krieg guys. i love that they just fucked their entire sick ass planet because the loser guys on top were like " yeah nah fuck the big man who is def not a god and fuck da rules". i applaud theyre blinding loyalty. one of their best traits imo. i love their quirks of not having standard names and the absolute crippling disappointment and need to atone for a sin so hard they send theyre young off at an unnatural amount. I love their hehe dont care about casualties front everyone thinks they have but they do and will take their lives in consideration. that some of them will feel fear at running head first into an unwinnable fight and some will flee. its so. human. like deep down in their gene code, no matter how much they reproduce these soldiers, there is a part of human nature that will always and forever be there.

I enjoyed Krieg by him and wanted to see more of their silly little lives in action. (this was before the siege of vraks book came out so at the time it was just those two books and pieces of lore scoured from the internet)

now! with that said!

i went into this book excited to see my funky little gas mask guys. what i ended up getting was a weird sub plot line about my guy Gunthar and the goveners daughter (ah forbidden love. a tale as old as time) and a little bit of the funky little guys.

after shit hits the fan our boy Gunthar gets separated from his one and only and ends up drafted into the PDF and gets to hang out and do really fun things train and fight with the kriegsman who came to "help" the planet from the shit that hit the fan.

spoiler alert. it was the funny robots hitting the fan.

while there is some really good parts in the book going through some of the fights with the dkok and ol'gunt it always ended up going back and bringing up his little crush. (who we find out is all in a shit hitting the fan situation but ends up fine at the end with the guy who liked her from afar and who shows up halfway through the book and this book wasnt about them okay. it was supposed to be about my cool guys.)

we get some super cool dialog from one of the krieg colonels saying something along the lines of "you just want to use us kriegers cause you think our lives are worth less than your own peoples lives. go fuck yourself." and some great moments when we actually get to see a kriegsman without his mask and its painful how young the boy is. it was great! more of that!

at some point all of gunny's krieg friends end up dying/they peace out because they cant contain the necron threat and its up to our love sick boy and this last baby krieger to do something.

so they blow the robos the fuck up. kinda.

beby krieger sacrifices himself(who didnt see that one coming) and gunthar does his thang.

NOW. I MUST CLARIFY. I MAY BE GETTING THESE TWO EVENTS SWAPPED IN ORDER. BUT IT REALLY DOESNT MATTER TO MY RANT.

at one point, and this is were i got frustrated and its kind towards the end ish, all of the important people of the planet are getting evaced which includes the govoners daughter and the lost puppy guy she found along the way.

what happened to the gov? the krieg colonel fucking shoots him for being a little bitch colluding with the enemy. so treason.

ANYWAY, the girl and the guy are getting onto the ship to leave when op! who is in the crowd! gunthar! hes there! he finally made it back to her! now to just tell her and oh who is that man touching her? hes kinda close and is she getting comforted by him? well i guess she didnt really love our boy in the end and his whole life is crumbling down around him. whats there to live for now? guess he'll just go die.

(now that im think about it i think this all happened before they blow up the necrons)

in the end i just kept getting reminded at every turn that yes this book is about the dkok but we are never in the pov of them. we watch and interact with them through gunthar who also wont stop trying to prove himself and find the girl he liked.

im not saying romantic plotlines shouldnt have been in the book but i feel like they should have taken a backseat. i didnt want to follow around the daughter as she leads a little revolution with some slave humans against the necrons. i wanted kriegsmen. i wanted to see how they lived and fought. how they interacted with each other and those around them. its fine that we had gunthar as our guy but i wanted more of him with them. at one point he ends up seeing them as brothers and finds comfort with them and the kriegsmen also end up respecting him a lot for his efforts. that could have been built on! that is an interaction that is never really seen and it would have made the story so much more. idk. i dont want to say better but like. more cohesive?

in this conclusion i will like to say i did like the book. it had really enjoyable parts but it wasnt great. its not a book i would pick back up and read of go and recommend to someone new to the fandom. it just never felt like a krieg book. just a book with funny gas mask guys sometimes.

thank you for coming to my ted talk. if you did enjoy this word vomit of a rant please like and subscribe and hit that bell for notifications so you know when i lose my mind about another thing in warhammer that no one else cares about. idk how to end this.

sincerly,

a sick little guy

[mahou-furbies]

Closing thoughts on Null Magical Girl

(spoilers)

Let’s do something like a plot summary. The main character is a soulless (literally) 24-year-old, who also doesn’t have a brain and uses a lump of nerves on her neck in its place. Her skull is cracked and hollow, and Kyubey lives in it. She travels 800 000 years into the future, where all life has mostly been replaced by Homo Magica, cute and über powerful magical girls who evolved from humans reading stories about relationships, and the last remnants of humanity and “real” magical girls battle against them. She absorbs the powers of Kyubey and the Time Railroad, and travels back where she started, and discovers a looping locked room mystery where she always dies before making it to the next year. She concludes that in order to prevent the Homo Magica from being created, she must stop stories from being created, so she travels back a bit more to kill Gutenberg, however the ghost of her died-before-birth twin sister unkills him. In preparation for a final battle against her sister she time travels all around to gather emotional energy by contracting girls into magical girlhood, and her ultimate power comes from contracting the fertilised egg that would become her and her sister. The egg had one desire, to divide and proliferate, which resulted in the sisters splitting and the world expanding infinitely and, uh, filling with relationships and stories... which creates the Homo Magica species... so we’re in an unwinnable time loop, started by the protagonist. Or something, I was miraculously somehow hanging by for most of the plot but dozed off at the end.

I don’t really have a lot of review to offer, I hope you can read between the lines. This story has practically nothing to do with the Madoka universe, I mean Kyubey is there and it ultimately is about a wish so there’s that, but really this is just one weird scifi twist after another. There’s even more nonsensical stuff that was less related to the plot but just happened, like the main character tries to turn sentient sperm into magical girls and one of her Gutenberg murder attempts is by teleporting the four gas giant planets near the sun, so really the story is even messier. By the end there were passages on what is a soul and going through the exact mechanics on how the final wish worked, but while my eyes looked at the words, my brain had already checked out. So if there was something deeply profound at the end I missed it. I was hoping that the fine folks at the wiki had summarised the story but it appears I’m out of luck.

If I try to look at something that is relatable to a normal human, a significant portion was spent on humankind being into stories about relationships, but I’m kind of allergic to this kind of meta stuff in otaku stories. Like it feels kinda pandering to a nerd audience to write how their love of their waifu light novels (or I guess spicy ao3 fics of your otp for us tumblr denizens) is so powerful that it creates the next evolution of humanity and rifts in the space time continuum. Also you could see something about depression in the protagonist’s struggle to escape the time loop where she always dies at the end, but I’m not giving this that much credit.

Art-wise the style is cute and there is a pretty cool “good twin vs evil twin” illustration so that’s good. I wish the homo magica girls were shown more though since they were described as being super cute!

I knew the premise of Kyubey living inside the skull of a girl whose magical girl wish was botched, so I was expecting a very bizarre story, but on that front this exceeded my expectations by throwing a new “what the hell is going on” twist every few pages. The concept of a failed magical girl contract is still really interesting so it’d be cool to see it in a story that is actually more about that.

Finally a big thanks to project Mokyuu for translating this thing, if nothing else it was a fascinating read, and short enough that it doesn’t take too much time if you decide to check it out.

[analog-smiles]

Fall of a King, Rise of a Kraken

ok we're back on the theory/rewrite/whatever grind covering a few major events in this one, primarily based around squisker and the events that led up to mckraken getting the role of chairman along with some Extra Stuff that is exclusive to my lore, wow !

so as mentioned previously, there was a huge surge of yokai abandoning their medals and becoming 'white yokai' some time before the events of the first game, around the time when word was starting to get out that lord enma might not last much longer and for so many yokai to suddenly jump to something so drastic, someone must be leading them on, right?

well. nobody knew it at the time - surprisingly well-kept secret - but the culprit was a certain yokai whose relations with humans were...less than stellar, to put it shortly. and he just so happened to be dipping his tentacle into politics, to see if he could make the most of the unrest caused by the upcoming power vacuum. admittedly, he wasn't expecting to get as far as he did legitimately, but he rounded up a decent following quite quickly some were desperate for a leader to turn to, with enma supposedly getting worse by the day and his only potential heir rushed off to the human realm in case of trouble others were similarly bitter toward humankind, on account of Certain Incidents that had occurred in the past with the few humans who could sense them the motives didn't really matter that much to mckraken. what was important was that he was being listened to, and he might just get the opportunity of a lifetime.

and then it happened. lord enma was officially announced to be dead. gone peacefully in his sleep, and didn't even leave a trace.

the immediate reaction, amidst the general grief and mourning, was to scramble to find someone to fill his position and lead the yokai and given his following [ despite the odd 'coincidence' of a majority of them being white yokai ], mckraken was a popular candidate. things were looking pretty good. but of course, he wasn't quite lucky enough to have everything go without a hitch.

the trouble was that mckraken had a rather close relative, who had been in politics for some time he was liked well enough, another popular name in discussion of enma's successor, but that wasn't the real problem, despite his considerably softer attitude toward humans it was more of a personal issue. squisker hadn't seen mckraken since the white yokai started to show up. intentional on mckraken's part, given the fact that he knew squisker would catch onto the issue quickly if he saw him like this but by chance, the two of them met a while after enma's death and it went about as well as you would expect. a conversation became a fight, which became a terrible misunderstanding squisker was accused of attempting to murder mckraken. not at all the case, and it's surprising that the accusation was even made. he wasn't the violent type, and nobody assumed him to be which is why mckraken didn't step in to defend him. he assumed it would be fine.

unfortunately, there was a particular piece of news which had failed to reach either of them at the time. and attempted assassination, bordering on regicide, wasn't easily glossed over by the simple fact that "he wouldn't". the sentence was the worst you could get, short of outright execution. and some would argue that it was worse than that.

on the plus side, that was the first and last time someone attempted to pry into the new chairman's best-kept secret. although after a while, rumors did begin to drift about regarding an unwinnable prize in the old crank machine on mount wildwood.

[xiakha]

FFXIVWrite2023 Prompt #11 - Once Bitten, Twice Shy

He was giddy. Giddy! Him! A hundred-twenty something years old and two centuries of stasis and he felt like a blushing maiden meeting her first suitor.

The flash of purple in the distance made his heart, already nigh embedded in his throat, soar somehow even higher. Lodged between his eyes no doubt, squeezing out his brain.

But even as he ran, doing all in his power to avoid skipping through the Crystarium, he started to recall how he parted ways with the Warrior of Light. How she didn't even go see him off, deserved in a sense, and how she was never recorded to have thought of him again after that.

And more recently, how he plucked her companions one by one from her side, completely on accident. Perhaps it was for the better in the long run, Xiao transferred over like the other Scions would have likely resulted in an unpredictable and perhaps unwinnable situation. But to have them taken without explanation or consent... She had good reason to distrust and dislike him right now, beyond the further reasons she had originally.

***

Xiao's limited Eorzean made arguments hard for her, and G'raha did nothing but antagonize her with his theories. The Echo allowed Xiao to understand him perfectly, so every sentence she did manage to fit together was caked in frustration and abundant hand signals. According to all rules of Sharlayan dialogue and debate, G'raha knew he stomped her, but she would not concede, and truth be told, G'raha had enough doubt creep into his own thoughts as to warrant perhaps his concession.

Either way, despite cracking open the Crystal Tower together and growing into a sort of friendship that G'raha was proud of and that he imagined Xiao holding dear, she barged into his room in the Seventh Heaven on the eve of closing up the Crystal Tower to dissuade him.

"You Nick-Ninny Jinglebrains! Starched Sorry Mouthed Jackanape!"

A spiel of other similar insults rattled out of her mouth. Insults and curses were easy to pick up, a pity they were all in cant and G'raha barely understood any of it.

"What is it that you're trying to get across, Xiao?"

"Don't go. Don't chase Fate."

G'raha sighed, this again, "I don't see a better option. The Crystal Tower is far too dangerous to leave accessible. That much aether at the ready... why just about anyone conquer entire continents. Only I can lock it back up."

Xiao stomped her feet, "You big fool!" She cursed in her native tongue, or so G'raha assumed. It sounded like cursing. And then she crossed her arms, "Not friends if you go."

He sputtered at the ridiculousness, "Are you serious, Xiao? You're going to rescind your friendship? Are you a child?"

The purple haired Miqo'te turned her nose up and away.

"...I would rather have you be my friend and see me off, but if you're going to be so immature as to withhold friendship the last time you see me," He massaged his brow with the fingers of one hand, "I have no choice than to sadly accept."

G'raha went back to sorting his papers and getting his affairs together.

Xiao stood in the same pose, her nose upturned, arms crossed, tail flicking, for a few good chimes until she realized that G'raha was not interested in continuing the conversation. There would be no further negotiation of her ultimatum.

So sheepishly, she left the room without another word.

"Goodbye, Xiao," G'raha said to the closed door, "Be well."

***

So it was that G'raha slowed his pace down and steeled his nerve. This was a former friend he was now approaching. His century long regrets came back to bite at him.

This was the first time he'd see her since that night. From Xiao's perspective, it had only been a few years since G'raha had sealed himself away. Her feelings could still be fresh or easily stoked into bitterness. He had, after all, chose his silly little ideas of fate and destiny over their friendship. Yes, it was immature and a bit bratty that Xiao would even offer that ultimatum, but G'raha had chosen.

And if she found out at this juncture that it was him that stole the Scions away? She might just walk away from all of this and focus only on retrieving them instead of providing her support.

To think that this centuries long plan might have been foiled by the first choice he made to enact it! What bitter irony!

So G'raha held back. He would be the enigmatic Crystal Exarch, not the old friend G'raha Tia. The mystery behind his motives would hopefully inspire intrigue and not doubt.

He could work with doubt. As long as there wasn't any outright animosity here.

Xiao was wearing a purple armor bound dress. It was a far cry from the swashbuckling gear that she wore in the brief time that G'raha knew her. She had kept the same eyepatch to protect her light-sensitive eye, but with the way she was squinting, her other eye wasn't faring too much better in the everlasting light. The squint rendered her expression a bit of a scowl.

At least G'raha hoped it was mostly the light.

The well practiced Crystal Exarch affectation was now as instinctive and easy to pull out as his lecturing voice, and Xiao seemed none the wiser. She did sneak looks at him while he was giving her the tour of the Crystarium, but she didn't say anything.

It wasn't until he revealed the Crystal Tower's origins that she opened her mouth unprompted.

"...You can enter it so freely? Was it not sealed? What about G'raha?"

The bundle of nerves that he had mostly calmed down at this point leapt back into action. His heart started racing. He could feel beads of sweat form on his forehead.

"Pardon? I'm not... familiar with that name," It had been a century since he responded to that name after all, "Is there something I should know?"

Xiao gave him a look, "G'raha Tia, a red haired Miqo'te, or Mystel I suppose, that I once knew. Bit of a loudmouthed fool, but alright all told. He sealed himself up in the Crystal Tower to safeguard it from misuse in my day."

"...Ah, an extraordinary tale. But I'm afraid I found no such individual residing in the tower when it passed into my care." It was technically true. He could not find himself in the tower after all. "Mayhap we can revisit that mystery another time."

He upped his affectation, trying his best to hide not only his true voice, but the miserable little bluff he had pulled.

Xiao looked troubled and stroked her chin with a gauntlet, "...Strange that you found the Tower without G'raha."

She shot him another look.

"For now, I think it best that we focus on the present." G'raha hoped his grin was more mysterious than nervous.

They entered the Ocular and G'raha gave Xiao the full Source to First run down. The arrival of the Scions, the research done, the prophecy.

"What say you? Have I earned your trust for the moment, at least?"

Xiao crossed her arms, "You traffic in lies and secrets, Exarch."

"Pardon?"

"All of this that you freely revealed to me, yet kept from your subjects, doubtless they were given another story, or were told not to pry or else."

G'raha nodded, not quite seeing what she was getting at, "But it's for the salvation of the Star, to circumvent calamity and avert disaster."

"Aye, what I can't help but wonder is how much you are concealing from me. No common magicks could have brought me here or would give you possession of the Crystal Tower without G'raha's say."

It was at that moment that G'raha almost pulled back his hood. That would surely shed light, quite literally, on his deceptions and reveal all to Xiao.

But he stayed his hands. No, there was no telling how she'd react. They were no longer friends. It was only because he had given it all up that he had gotten this far in the first place.

"You bring up a fair point. I suppose I do not need to keep you then. You may return to the So---"

"That's not what I want. I don't trust you, Exarch, but I haven't another choice. If to return the Scions to their bodies, I'll have to work with you, so be it."

Well, it was better than nothing. "...Excellent. You will not regret this."

[writer-notareader]

My Top 5 Video Game Bosses (July 2023)

(Riter no Reder Post)

Spoilers for Deltarune, Rhythm Doctor, Omori, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and ULTRAKILL.

5. Spamton NEO

Deltarune character!? No way!

Basically Spamton NEO is one of the coolest secret bosses I know of that weren’t executed abhorrently. While you can completely miss Spamton’s secret boss, it isn’t that hard to get to either, so anyone who just beat the game blind will probably see it on the internet afterwards and be all “what” and go back to it, and it isn’t really difficult to encounter him- basically you just get the funny disc, have a conversation, then go through a weird secret dungeon at which point it becomes self-explanatory.

My first complaint is that a lot of the exposition for Spamton lore isn’t actually in the game, which irritates me and it feels like Toby or whoever was supposed to do it just forgot and decided to randomly upload it to the Deltarune website on a whim. Could be wrong obviously but that’s what it feels like.

Other complaint is that some of the attacks are extremely weird and ridiculous. For example, the one where Spamton’s hands are phones and he crawls towards you. What even is that? Why was that considered acceptable? Even if you figure out the no-hit method for it, it still feels weird, awkward, and kind of unfair.

Aside from that, the whole build-up was very good and mysterious and the fight itself was alright. The only reason Spamton didn’t make it higher on the list was because of the already mentioned complaints.

4. Super Battleworn Insomniac (Rhythm Doctor)

For context, Rhythm Doctor is a 1 key rhythm game where you keep patients’ hearts beating to the pace you set them at via the spacebar.

It has been a while, but I remember this boss vividly. It felt like it just came out of nowhere.

“AYE THE PATIENT’S HAXITUS IS ACTING UP AGAIN EXCEPT ITS ACTUALLY WORSE AND MORE ANNOYING.”

The original variant of this fight was a little tough for me, but not a massive strugglebus or anything. It wasn’t a big deal, and I thought it’d be the same deal again.

It was not. Not exactly, at least. The boss’s whole gimmick is basically to screw with your head and throw off your rhythm. It showed fake texts, fake buffered before the actual song even started, showed you these janky visuals that made the line hard to see… it felt absurd and unfair, almost half as much as FNF: Dave and Bambi mods.

I genuinely thought I might not beat it, but I was determined anyway. That’s when I realized, wait, hey, this isn’t just a timing game, it’s a rhythm game, and the visuals are what threw off my rhythm.

So I literally just closed my eyes. It took a few more tries, but I eventually beat it that way much easier than before. Honestly probably one of the best instances of an out-of-nowhere final boss I’ve seen in a video game.

3. Omori (I forgot what game)

Omori is a very story-based RPG whose main protagonist needs to touch grass. You basically play as a little man, 12 years old, named Sunny. He is a hikikomori, and spends a lot of his time just dreaming his life away.

If you haven’t played the game already, stop reading this post and go play Omori first. Seriously, massive spoilers ahead. I don’t care if you weren’t intending to play it, play it anyway (pretty please with a cherry on top). If you can’t or genuinely refuse to, I’m not really standing outside your window or anything, so go ahead and keep reading.

Over the course of the story, if you pick the route where you actually go outside and touch grass (thanks Kel), you get the route where you actually work through your problems. To put it bluntly, Sunny ends up in the hospital, and in his unconscious state, is forced into one last dream- after going through many of his memories, he must face his dreamself, Omori, in a dream.

This fight is a particularly important and climactic part of the story for many reasons. While the fight is ridiculously unfair and basically unwinnable, this actually only contributes to the resolution more.

After battling this part of himself for so long, Sunny solos Omori by hugging him. He accepts Omori and what Omori represents as a part of himself, and he is finally able to move on. I really like the way this played out, and I genuinely think that it it alone would be a selling point to Omori if it wasn’t a spoiler.

2. Volo (Pokémon Legends: Arceus)

Volo was one hell of a fight. I’m sure everyone knows at this point, but spoilers ahead for Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

As you might notice throughout the story, Volo generally shows himself to be quite friendly, as well as selling items to the player. He just seems like a merchant, and battles the player with a low-level Togepi a few times, maybe even just once.

As the story progresses near the end, Volo seems to have a weird interest in following the player around, especially once the Red Chain becomes relevant.

This merchant turns out to be a fanatic and a Pokémon Wielder rather than a normal merchant or trainer.

In fact, not only that, but when he battles you after using you to obtain the Plates, his team consists of six Pokémon. And they probably destroyed you.

I, personally, was determined to beat Volo without using legendaries or overleveling, although I did rebuild and retrain my team to fight him.

Then he had another Pokémon with two health bars and individual phases.

When I did defeat him, I couldn’t help but notice the text said something along the lines of “You finally defeated Volo” rather than just “You defeated Volo” after I did it and it was the greatest, most subtle, and most accurate insult I’ve ever felt considering it took me like two weeks to do.

I also like the way Volo was very slowly revealed and hinted at towards the end, yet the game purposefully tries to make Volo personable so that you don’t pick up on it until like five minutes before it’s too late.

I probably forgot to add something but basically Volo was a genuinely well set-up and thoroughly difficult fight that felt very good to battle and very good to beat- and don’t even get me started on Volo’s theme. Speaking of absurdly good boss themes,

1. Minos Prime (ULTRAKILL)

Minos Prime closely ties with Volo for my favorite boss in a video game.

By the way, if you haven’t played ULTRAKILL, go play it. Right now. Go play the game, you are legally required to. PLEASE.

Back to the topic at hand, everything surrounding this fight is ridiculously good and well put-together.

Imagine you’re ULTRAplaying ULTRAKILL blind. You see some random path leading to an alternative area to the left in the stairs room of 3-1. You go into it and you see that it has a bunch of little stone squares with the letter P on them.

Eventually, you replay some levels and get your first P-rank. OHHHHH. SO THAT’S WHAT THAT WAS FOR!? You go back to the P-door and see one of the squares are now glowing yellow, and come to the conclusion that this door may open if you get all the P-ranks in Act I.

So you do. After a lot of hard work and obliterating the same layouts repeatedly, you manage to get every single P-rank in Act I, you go back to that door, and sure enough, it opens this time, all those P-squares glowing brilliantly.

Then you go to some secret level: P-1 - Soul Survivor. You leave, grabbing a torch and seeing none other than an actual massive spine that you are expected to walk down as a relatively calming background music plays. As you descend, this music becomes more distorted, getting to a genuinely indiscernible point before you falling into a mouth door, place a torch to open a boss gate, and head onward.

Then that annoying excuse of a flesh sack appears and decides to ruin your day with its automatic nervous system that does its attacks for it (canon). After a few realizations about the Flesh Prison and a little while of hoping you don’t miss your shots, the funny blue ball appears.

That funny blue ball breaks open, revealing a blue guy with no face. He starts monologuing about killing Gabriel and you in such a ridiculously cool way that he is effectively impenetrable, then he sacrifices this impenetrability just to say “DIE” and actually kill you (cooler than 99.99% of antagonists ever and he’s literally lawful good).

Not only that, but the music somehow slaps harder than the yellow snake projectiles that shatter on contact. Don’t get me wrong, though: unlike some of the other top 5s, this boss is completely fair to you. Like, he literally telegraphs almost all of his attacks and STILL destroys you. Many of these can be parried and dodged without much effort, so this fight requires some stamina management, which makes parrying even more effective.

Heck, this fight actively encourages you to parry. The thing is, though, this actually refills some of Minos Prime’s stamina… except I’m still gonna do it anyway. Parrying Minos Prime feels so satisfying for some reason, and even if it makes his combo longer, I still love to actually react to his attacks, especially with such a big, open space.

That being said, those are my top five video games bosses. Have a good day, also God loves you.

[callmebrycelee]

9-1-1: LONE STAR REACTION

This reaction is for the season 4, sixth episode "This Is Not a Drill" which originally aired on February 28, 2023. THis episode was written by Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson and directed by Michael Medico. Spoilers ahead!

***LAST TIME ON 9-1-1: LONE STAR***

Marjan discovers she is the reason the 126 has been brought under review by the Austin Fire Department Internal Affairs due to her calling a woman she was rescuing a "crazy lady". The woman and her former ex-husband ask Marjan to publicly apologize as well as paste a link to their GoFundMe on her Instagram. Marjan refuses to be extorted and ends up resigning from the 126. Meanwhile, Grace investigates the concerning phone calls she has been receiving from a little boy. She enlists the help of her husband and Tommy to come to the boy's (and his mother's) rescue. 

Now that we're all caught up, let's talk about episode six - THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

We begin the episode with an actual drill. The 126, sans Marjan Marwani, enter a building with bomb gear on. Owen leads the team up a set of stairs and they find a young boy and his father. Owen tells the little boy to evacuate while Tommy tends to his father. The little boy tells Owen that his two sisters are in the room next door. Owen and the others go to the next room, open the door, and BOOM! Pink mist! The lights come on and a very official-looking woman with a clipboard in her hand comes out and tells them they're all dead. Paul, Mateo, Nancy, and TK are all upset by their failure at the drill. Nancy suggests that she is merely maimed and not dead since she isn't as covered in pink mist as the others. Paul makes a reference to the Kobayashi Maru (an unwinnable test) and my heart is filled with joy. My boy Paul is a Trekkie! It was fun to hear them banter back and forth but judging by the look on Captain Strand's face, he was not having it.

Title card!

Back at the house, Paul, Mateo, Nancy, and TK are in a jovial mood. They all take a selfie together to send to Marjan. Owen snaps on all of them and tells them to think about all of the first responders who went on calls where they didn't come back alive. I mean Owen does have a point but he's also being a major buzzkill. The others feel like poo after his outburst. Tommy gives Judd a look that says, hey, you got this one. Judd, our second in command, sighs and goes to talk to the captain. 

Judd goes to Owen's office and tells him that the others - Paul, Mateo, Nancy, and TK - haven't been through what they have. They don't know what it's like to lose someone on the job. Judd also reminds Captain Strand that the drills are designed for them to fail. Owen goes to close the door to his office. He tells Judd he believes something big is coming. He then tells Judd that the Honor Dogs are on the FBI's domestic terror watch list and that a truckload of ammonium nitrate was stolen. Judd asks him how he has all of this information and Owen confesses he's been working with the FBI. Judd asks if the Feds have any clue as to what the Honor Dogs are planning and Owen tells him that they won't even return his phone calls. Owen says he's tired of sitting around waiting for something to happen so he tells Judd he's acting captain until he returns. 

Owen goes off, alone, in one of the Austin Fire Department pickups, to the Honor Dogs' clubhouse and is met with an icy reception. He tells Red (Dan Sanders-Joyce) he wants to have a chat with him. Red asks if he's wearing a wire this time and Owen says he's not and tells Red he can "check his junk". Red says that he doesn't talk to Feds or the friends of Feds and threatens to drag Owen out of the bar. Owen reminds him he's a fire captain and tells him he can have the bar shutdown due to several fire hazards. Red asks him what he wants and Owen reveals that he knows about the ANFO (ammonium nitrate) and suggests that he can make a deal with Red if he gives everything up. Red is unmoved by Owen's words and claims he doesn't know anything. Owen is inclined to believe him just as the FBI raid the place. Owen is escorted outside by Special Agent Chuck Biondi (Rob Parks). Owen tells Biondi that he believes the Honor Dogs don't know anything about the stolen ANFO but Biondi is skeptical. He goes to put handcuffs on Owen right as the clubhouse explodes.

The rest of the 126 responds to the emergency and we find out there were nine FBI agents, including Special Agent Rose Casey (Amanda Schull), and who knows how many bikers inside the clubhouse when the bomb detonated. Paul and Judd notice an Austin Fire Department vehicle already on the scene. Judd gives out marching orders while Tommy, Nancy, and TK set start to set up triage. Owen carries Special Agent Casey out of the bar and she is taken by ambulance to the hospital with Owen riding with her. Special Agent Casey tells Owen she's scared and for a brief moment I wondered if this was a sign of a potential romance between the two. During the ambulance she asks him to call her "Rose" right before she dies.

Sergeant Ty O'Brien (Neal McDonough) arrives at the hospital at Owen's request. Owen fills him in on everything that's happened. Nine FBI agents, including Special Agent Casey, and several members of the Honor Dogs (we are told the number is in the double digits) are dead. However, Red is still alive but in surgery. The working theory regarding the explosion is someone 'accidentally' detonated the ammonium nitrate which was being housed at the bar. Neither Owen nor O'Brien believe this. Special Agent Biondi joins them and tells them that the case is closed since the prime suspect (Red) is in custody. Owen tells him that Red is not the man they are looking for and the explosion at the bar didn't even account for half of the stolen ammonium nitrate. Special Agent Biondi tells Owen that Red is refusing to talk. Owen suggests that he and O'Brien can try talking to Red.

Owen and O'Brien go into Red's room and find him bandaged up with several burns all over his body. The way he turned over in bed gave me Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight vibes. Red calls them both snitches which made me laugh. Owen informs him that eleven of his brothers are dead as a result of the explosion, including Turner (Scott Peat). Owen also tells him the FBI believes he is responsible due to his politics and their belief that he is a terrorist. Red doesn't seem too surprised by this information but he insists that he is not the one responsible. Owen mentions that prior to him arriving at the clubhouse the Honor Dogs in attendance looked like they were meeting about something. He asks if Red called the meeting. Red tells him that he didn't call the meeting but the invite came from his phone number. He suggests that someone 'spoofed' his phone number and he believes that someone is Andy - the person they kicked out due to his extreme views. Damn, how extreme do your views have to be if the Honor Dogs think they're too extreme?

The FBI raid Andy's house and find it empty. O'Brien tells Special Agent Biondi he hasn't heard from his niece (Andy's wife) in two days. Another FBI agent informs Owen, O'Brien, and Special Agent Biondi that a neighbor says they saw Andy's wife and son leave the house two days ago with an unidentified male. We then see Andy spray-painting a van. We also see two giant barrels of ANFO. Dun-dun-dunnnn!

Back at Andy's home, Owen asks O'Brien. Let me just say, I love their budding friendship. I feel like O'Brien brings out the best in Owen. He just seems more level-headed and people like Owen Strand need to be surrounded by people like Sergeant Ty O'Brien. Special Agent Biondi tells them three days ago someone blew up a school bus. Traces of ANFO were found at the scene along with a dead hiker. The school bus was traced back to a salvage yard where the owner identified Andy as the one who purchased it. Yikes! Things are not looking good for O'Brien's nephew. Special Agent Biondi asks O'Brien if he knows of where Andy may be. O'Brien doesn't know. Owen suggests Andy is living at The Farm which is where he and O'Brien found the ANFO. The FBI initially believed that Red and the other Honor Dogs moved the ANFO before the FBI raid, however Owen believes Andy is the one who moved it. Special Agent Biondi prepares to go to The Farm and O'Brien insists that he go with them. Special Agent Biondi seems reluctant to have him tag-along but Owen reminds him that he's already lost a lot of his team. Special Agent Biondi agrees to have O'Brien join them.

Owen heads back over to the 126 and comes clean to his team about his involvement with the FBI. He tells them that another terrorist plot is imminent and that he needs their help. Meanwhile, the FBI along with O'Brien and Carlos arrive at The Farm. I have to admit, Carlos looked pretty badass with a rifle in hand. We see Grace get a call at the 9-1-1 dispatch and then we see the alarm go off at the 126. Several houses are called into action. It's time for battle!

Back at The Farm, there's no trace of Andy. O'Brien speculates that someone is working with Andy and believes that person is still on the premises. Special Agent Biondi tells his team they need to head over to the capitol because he just got notice that an anonymous bomb threat has been called in. O'Brien thinks that they should continue searching the grounds, especially the surrounding woods. Special Agent Biondi tells him he can stay but they are leaving. Carlos offers to remain with O'Brien. Oooh, an O'Brien and Carlos team-up! I am definitely here for this!

Over at the capitol, the 126 are helping with evaculations. We see Owen inside of a van working with the bomb squad. They are trying to locate a bomb inside the capitol. Using a robot, they locate several metal drums possibly filled with ANFO. The funniest part of this scene is that Owen Strand, captain of the 126, appears to be running the whole operation. No one is a bigger Owen Strand-defender than I am. People often complain about how he gets too much to do in this show and my response is, Owen Strand is the main character on the show. Of course he gets more to do than anyone else. I don't see Lone Star as the ensemble show that the original 9-1-1 is. The original show has several big names attached to it (Angela Bassett, Peter Krause, Connie Britton, and Jennifer Love Hewitt) while outside of Rob Lowe, Live Tyler, and Gina Torres, Lone Star is mostly composed of actors who don't have a lot of heft to their iMDB pages. Anywho, with that said, I find it a wee bit ridiculous that a fire captain is having such a major environment in a bomb situation. And I know the writers are really pushing the narrative that Owen was at the Twin Towers during 9/11 but this is Austin, not New York City. Okay, back to the story.

The guy operating the robot asks how someone was able to get all of those explosives into the building without being noticed by security. Owen immediately leaves the van against orders and walks right into the capitol building. When TK sees him, he shakes his head and has a look on his face that says, dad's gonna dad. I feel like if this happened two seasons ago, TK would be freaking out. It just goes to show, after so many instances of Owen just walking into volatile situations, all willy nilly, everyone around him is just like, that's what he does. The guys in the van ask Owen what he's doing repeatedly over the radio and he assures them he will be out in a minute ... one way or another. Owen locates the metal drums and for some reason decides to open one against the orders of the bomb squad captain. Well, it turns out the drum is empty along with the others. Outside of the capitol, Andy pulls up in an EMS van (the same van we saw him spray-painting) and he starts the countdown on the bomb that is in the back of the van. We have 10 minutes! Yikes!

Meanwhile, my new favorite dynamic duo/buddy-cop pairing, O'Brien and Carlos, strike out into the woods where they find tiny white pellets littering the ground. O'Brien picks one of them up and determines its ammonium nitrate. O'Brien posits this is where the bomb was built. The two of them stumble upon a shed. O'Brien sees tire marks on the ground. He tells Carlos he will go inside and sweep the place and will holler if he needs him. O'Brien goes inside and sees evidence of where someone has been living. He continues to do a sweep of the premises and finds his niece, Joanne (Stevie Lynn Jones) and his great-nephew, Jack (Kayden Alexander Koshelev) in a cell. He opens the cell to release them but is shot by Mikey (Richard Meehan). It turns out Mikey is the same young guy we saw getting branded the night Owen and Judd went to the Honor Dog's clubhouse a few episodes ago. Thankfully, O'Brien is wearing a bulletproof vest. When Mikey goes to shoot him in the head, Carlos shoots him. Hey writers! This is the Carlos we need! Give me more badass Carlos! Oh, and please make him a detective. At this point, he's doing more than the average cop. 

Owen exits the capitol and radios to Judd that everyone needs to go back inside the building. Judd asks if this is an all-clear and Owen tells him the safest place for everyone to be is behind the building's granite walls. Now, I'm not an expert on explosives but are we supposed to believe the same ammonium nitrate that can take out most of Austin is no match for the capitol building? Then again, who am I, a mere writer who likes to react to episodes of the TV shows I enjoy, to question the authority of Captain Owen Strand? Anywho, Judd thanks everyone for participating in the drill and tells them to head back inside. Owen debriefs with the bomb squad captain, Captain Jenkins (Bob Stephenson) and Tommy. He believes the reason the bomber wanted them to evacuate the building is because the bomb is outside the capitol, not inside. Captain Jenkins tells him that his team has secured the perimeter. Owen tells him he believes the bomb is in an emergency vehicle since they have clearance and access to the scene. Tommy suggests the bomb is inside an ambulance which seems like a leap to me in logic but, then again, an ambulance has more space in it to keep the explosives so perhaps that's her logic. She also mentions she saw a unit pull onto the scene shortly before the all-clear was given. She gives the unit number to Captain Jenkins and leaves to inform his team.

Owen gets a call from O'Brien and the latter catches him up on what he and Carlos have been up to. O'Brien tells Owen that Mikey is the one running the operation, not Andy. I get that this changes things a bit about the situation but I still don't see a scenario where Andy doesn't end up going to jail. Owen hangs up with his bestie and then we get a huge product placement for Verizon, one of the worst, if not the worst, cell phone carriers in the country. The bomb squad uses a drone (sponsored by Verizon) to locate Andy and the ambulance he's in. Special Agent Biondi arrives and tells Owen that when they find Andy, they're going to take him out. Yikes! Owen walks away and tells Special Agent Biondi he will find Andy himself. Owen sheds his gear and goes looking for O'Brien's nephew. He locates Andy and the ambulance and tells him that he knows that he's O'Brien's nephew. Andy tells Owen that Mikey's going to kill his family if he doesn't go through with their plan but Owen holds up a phone so that he can hear his wife. Joanne tells Andy that Mikey's been arrested and that they are safe. Owen tells him to get out of the vehicle and get his hand off the detonator but Andy tells him it's too late. There's less than 3 minutes left. Owen tells him to step out and do whatever the FBI says. While the FBI subdues Andy, Owen climbs in the ambulance and drives off.

Owen calls 9-1-1 and gets Grace on the line because, of course! Grace directs Owen to drive the ambulance into the river and make sure it's completely submerged underwater. Owen jumps out of the ambulance right before it drives into the water. In a funny scene, the ambulance stops just short of the water but thankfully, Judd, Paul, and Mateo arrive and finish pushing the ambulance into the water before it explodes. The underwater explosion isn't as big as I was expecting and all I kept thinking is, all of the poor wildlife! Also, what happens to the water supply in Austin if the river now has ammonium nitrate in it? Are we going to have a Flint, Michigan-level crisis in Austin because of this? Anywho, the day is saved by Owen, Grace, and the 126 so yay!

We then get a flashback to last summer. We see Andy get kicked out of the Honor Dogs due to his extreme views. Mikey finds him and the manipulation begins. Back in the present day, Andy tells the FBI he was really angry. He says he should've just walked away from Mikey but instead he got pulled into the madness. We learn Mikey's the one who stole all of the ANFO. Mikey is clearly psychotic. Sensing Andy's reluctance, Mikey threatens to kill Andy's wife and son and when he saw Mikey take out the hiker, he knew the threat was real. I'm so relieved that it wasn't Andy who killed the hiker. The last thing he needs is murder added to his growing list of concerns. Andy says that Mikey forced him to go through with building the bomb. He apologizes to his wife, Joanne. Andy thanks everyone, including Owen, for saving his family and all of the people. 

We see Andy say goodbye to his wife before he is taken to jail while Owen and O'Brien watch. O'Brien says that the worst part of all of this is that now Andy will have to watch his son grow up from behind bars where he'll be for 20 years. O'Brien looks so defeated. I'm sure he probably blames himself for getting Andy involved with the Honor Dogs in the first place. O'Brien worries that Jack will grow up without a father just like Andy did. The cycle continues. O'Brien feels like he fails but Owen tells him that he hasn't. Andy's alive and that's what matters at the moment. O'Brien thanks Owen for being a pain in his ass. I hope we get to see more of these two. 

In the final scene of the episode, we see Owen arrive at TK and Carlos' place with Chinese food. TK is pleasantly surprised by his father's presence and invites him inside. Owen tells TK he's proud of him. TK thanks him and asks what brought all of this up. Owen says throughout all of their ups and downs, he is grateful that TK has never decided to blow up a government building. Owen mentions the wedding and tells them he has thoughts. We then see the three of them through a window right before everything fades to black. 

Okay, my thoughts on the episode? I really, really enjoyed it. I love that we got the culmination to a plot introduced at the beginning of the season. My initial concern was that we would drag this storyline out for most of the season. It was fun watching Owen save the day with the 126's help, of course, but I look forward to episodes where Owen isn't the main focus. At this point, I think the fandom will revolt if we don't focus on Paul or Nancy or Mateo. It does look like next episode we will get to see more of Tommy and her blossoming romance with Trevor (D.B. Woodside). So, until next time ...

[wavering-eyes]

January 26, 2025 Richmond Regional Report - 24th w/ Crystron, x-2-1 UNDEFEATED (yes, really)

To answer the obvious questions first: yes, the title is accurate, and no, I'm not delusional enough to write a report for a good-but-not-great placement using a standard build of a known tier 2 deck at a low-turnout regional right after its release date. I know nobody with any awareness of how competitive Yu-Gi-Oh works would read that on its own merits.

I am here to tell you a story. About how one thing leads to another, why you should never give up, and most importantly, why you should always commit to the bit.

Part 0: Evidence / Decklist

Check my last regional report in case you want proof this is my COSSY ID. I don't know why I'm still censoring my name at this point but whatever, who cares, put in the legwork if you wanna send a bomb to my house.

Here's my list. I got locked out of my Side Deck account and had to do a paper list this time, so you'll have to settle with a DB screenshot.

I would change nothing about this besides putting more Mulcharmies in the side, which I wasn't able to afford. I have lots of thoughts on the deckbuilding here, but I'll be real, this is basically Yacine's list with a few cards swapped. I could yap a while to convince you I have the deckbuilding prowess to have reached virtually the same conclusions about what should and should not be here, but this isn't really supposed to be a profile.

Part 1: Paying It Forward

Let's travel back about two or three years. The closest locals to my house is Comic Kings in Virginia Beach. I have worked at a bar at the Oceanfront for the past seven years, and every now and then there's a bit of overlap where Yu-Gi-Oh players will turn up at my bar or bar patrons will randomly show up at locals.

I met a guy named Kyle at Comic Kings one day and saw him at the door to my bar later on, while we were charging a cover, and decided to be a bro and let him in for free. As it turns out Kyle became a regular, I continued letting him in for free and chatting with him, and I learned he's a generous dude.

Evidently I caught him at the tail-end of his career in paper Yu-Gi-Oh, because one day he decided he'd spent too much time and focus on the game and told me he'd like to give me his collection, to which I agreed. He took out most of the obviously expensive stuff and sold it, but left me with a bunch of bulk and foil bulk and a few deck cores he'd built over the years, all free of charge. I've mostly used it to build cubes, but every now and then I find something really useful there.

About a week ago, I was looking in there for cards for an experimental cube format when I stumbled upon a full Crystron core including a Quariongandrax and a set of Citree, like $100 worth of 8-year-old cards slowly curling away in a triple long box.

At this point the regional is in like, three days, and I don't even want to go. The format has been very rough, I've been playing nothing but Sky Striker at locals, and the matchup against Maliss just seems unwinnable. I've had two people offer to sell me a Maliss core but the plans have fallen through every time, and I wasn't exactly eager to spend all that money for a deck I haven't practiced. But life gave me Crystrons, so I put the deck together and found the new cards and took it to locals the following day with no practice and made top 8. Reluctantly I agreed to drive to the regional, expecting nothing.

Part 2: The Crystron God Awakens

Round 1: D/D/D, 🎲✓, 2-0

My first round was against rogue. Game 1 was actually very close after I let a Piri Reis Map resolve and he was able to steal my Infinity with a hard drawn Headhunt and put a Machinex over it, but he was at 1000 LP with a Gilgamesh in the EMZ and misplayed around float effects which let me attack over it with a Quariongandrax for game.

Game 2 I opened Droll on Kepler and a playable hand. Not much more to say.

Round 2: Maliss, 🎲✓, 2-1

Game 1 I opened Tristalos and 4 hand traps against a similarly poor Maliss hand. Naturally he wasn't able to play.

Game 2 he opened combo, I opened Lancea, he chained Called By. You know how this ends.

Game 3 I open combo, he opens Lancea, I open Called By and a much better hand.

They need to ban these cards, man.

Round 3: Melodious, 🎲✓, 2-0

Game 1 had a very funny chain of misplays: I control Dawn Dragster, opponent controls Aria summoned off of 1st Movement Solo. He uses 2 other monsters to Link Summon the Melodious Link-2 and activates effect. I chain Ogre, he chains Called By. I think for a bit and chain Veiler. He says OK and keeps playing. I smack myself in the head for not negating it with Dragster. Four or five moves later he realizes the Veiler was illegal and we both laugh and accept the gamestate, and he scoops after I out Aria with Samurai Destroyer.

Game 2 I imperm his first fusion off of Ostinato and use Droplet to crack the rest of the board.

At this point I'm the only person in my car doing well, and even though I've played only 1 meta deck I'm feeling like a beast--I'm sure I can win the whole thing.

Part 3: Why I Did Not Win The Whole Thing

The judges announced before Round 3 that there would be a 45 minute lunch break before Round 4. I invite the other guys in my car out for pizza and fuck up navigating there several times before realizing the only open pizza place is a 20 minute walk away.

We end up stumbling upon Buttermilk & Honey at 5th and Grace, a local chicken place in Richmond. We left the venue before time was called in Round 3, so we had basically the full 45 minutes to get our food and eat.

I order a side of macaroni and cheese and a box of fries.

I waited for an hour to actually get my food.

Numbers get called as people get their orders, including both of the guys in my car--but not me. I tell them to leave for the venue before they also get game-lossed, and about 20 minutes later I had to go up to the counter where I learned they never called my number at all, and had left my finished order on the counter for an indeterminate amount of time without telling me.

I was issued a match loss before I even made it out the restaurant.

This sucked, but I came to terms with it pretty quickly. Taking an L at 3-0 to make sure I had enough food in me to play the rest of the event seemed like a good idea considering I hadn't eaten any breakfast (didn't have any time) and wasn't going to be able to eat until the day was over.

And honestly, the absurdity of the situation was kinda funny.

No shade to the business owners, by the way. They were probably slammed, it looks like there were only a few people in the kitchen, and honestly the food was delicious. But this was completely out of my hands.

I sat down with my friends and enjoyed the extra hour or so long break before Round 5, when I walked up to search through paper pairings and... couldn't find my name.

So I went to the judge table and learned they dropped me from the fucking tournament without telling me.

But this was a common enough situation that they had an un-drop form available which I quickly filled out. Even so, I was also issued a loss for Round 5.

At this point I'm fucking heated, complaining to everyone I know about the unfairness of the situation. I have half a mind to go back to the judge table and drop again, since by this point my entire car was X-3 besides me. But then an idea formed in my head.

It would be extremely funny if I got my invite after this and said I did it undefeated.

Part 4: Committing to the Bit

Round 6: Ryzeal Fiendsmith, 🎲✗, 2-0

I remember almost nothing about this set besides some line in Game 1 that started with imperm on Caesar followed by Terrortop into S:P to bait backrow, Praisortle banish to summon a live Citree from hand, normal summon Rosenix, make TY-PHON with it and out the whole board while holding up disruption. TY-PHON is a beast of a card and you should always consider it!

I think Game 2 I cracked the full board with Droplet too.

Around this time, someone texts the locals group chat I've spent the past hour complaining in to ask if anyone is doing well. I respond with a cheeky "I am X-2 but still undefeated". I get a laugh react from someone else not in attendance. Everyone else is silent.

Round 7: Ryzeal Fiendsmith, 🎲✓, 2-0

Game 1 I open... I think, Taketomborg, two blanks, a dead Crystron and a Sulfefnir, so I start with Sulfefnir destroy itself to summon Smiger from deck, normal Taketomborg and make Cherubini. My thinking was that this line was worse into Ash and better against Imperm compared to summoning Sulfadhole, not that many people know how to interrupt my deck properly anyways. I didn't know at the time how correct I was.

I activate Cherubini and say "paying cost" and put a Thystvern in my GY. My opponent asks to read the card. I once again tell him that it mills as cost.

He asks to rewind the gamestate so he can imperm it on summon. Sorry buddy, you were never ever winning this game.

I think Game 2 I played through the full board and a Nib and still ended on like, tuner + Infinity + Cluster. I ended up making my second Eleskeletas and just playing Cluster control until he ran out of cards.

I'd like to say it's probably not a coincidence that both of these guys insisted on summoning Caesar over Desirae whenever they had the chance and sending Mereologic Aggregator instead of Twins for Ext. I know Nib is a scary card but I think you are massively kneecapping yourself by not summoning Desirae instead, it's better into breakers and patient imperms and also the mirror. But that's just me.

Round 8: Yubel, 🎲✗, 1-1-1

Game 1 my opponent sets up slightly less than a max board, playing totally uninterrupted: Phantom + A Bao + Desirae + Yama (?) + Escape + Varudras. He said he was one card off of ending on Soul of Rage but I'm pretty sure he actually misplayed.

Sitting beside my opponent one table up is Naomi Kim, who goes to my locals, and who also made top cut. I imagine her Game 1 finished before my opponent was done comboing, since she made some comment to the tune of "Yubel still makes super strong boards. I don't even know how you're supposed to break them."

I look to her and shout "WATCH ME" as I activate Droplet sending 4 Crystron names.

She told her version of this story after the tournament and I don't think I've ever felt so cool in my entire life, since she also said I broke the board afterwards. But I have a confession to make: the droplet got negated since he set Escape instead of Chamber, and I did not in fact break the board. I was able to play through it, but I quickly lost to Nightmare Pain singlehandedly.

Game 2 I am playing into draw phase Lancea and I didn't draw Crossout or Called By, for the first time ever. I still do not know anti-Lancea lines, and my opponent decides to rush me since he knows there's maybe 15 minutes on the clock.

I think for a while and determine there's a line that gets me to Infinity and a live tuner, but I'm maybe one card short of it. I end up doing a wonky Synchro-locked line ending on Clockwork Knight, a Dragster, and a Citree.

First action of his turn: activate some spell, chain Dragster, chain Citree, summon a second Dragster. Activate Talent to take, chain Dragster. Normal Summon Beckoning Beast, grab Gates, crash into Clockwork Knight???

He asks afterwards "Why did I do that?" I guessed out loud his idea was to turn on Gates to summon something by pitching it, and he did try that, pitching a Spirit of Yubel to get stopped by Ghost Ogre.

He asks if I can kill him next turn, and I say "no, but I can summon Infinity and make the game unwinnable" and he lets me play for a while before calling Game 3.

I noticed around here I could have summoned Infinity with my two still-live copies of Dawn Dragster which would have been hilarious.

Game 3. With 3 minutes left on the clock, I fully expect time shenanigans. He goes through a Fiendsmith combo with no clear goal. At first I assume I'm gonna be totally safe waiting for whatever card either burns me or heals him to hit the board, but there's a nagging thought in the back of my head that there might exist some random Fiend card from 2005 that burns when you mill it off of Aerial Eater, so I determine I need to stop that from resolving at all costs. Unfortunately in the course of doing this I also let Yama resolve, there's a judge watching our game, and I don't want to have to count on this random judge to give a correct ruling on whether the Aerial Eater will resolve if it's negated on field but resolves after being destroyed. (It gets negated.)

I stop him on effect of Sequence (instead of on summon, for some reason), and Veiler it with the explicit goal of baiting Sharvara.

He takes it hook, line and sinker. Aerial Eater comes out and gets hit with Impermanence, and the game is over with a draw.

He said later that Tract GY effect would have let him play through the Veiler anyways, so this may have been a misplay. I am not certain he had the correct materials when it mattered, but whatever.

I also learned his time card was Red Resonator, so I guess I could have waited for it--but I wasn't taking any chances.

I wait an agonizing ten or so minutes for the standings to be posted and pop the fuck off when I learn that only top 24 were getting invites and I placed exactly 24th.

To recap: I pulled a complete deck out of a box of bulk I got from a guy for being nice to him a few times over several years, took it to a regional with one day of practice, and got my invite with it despite literally skipping two rounds for macaroni and cheese.

Lock in and you can achieve anything. Crystron God, X-2-1, undefeated, signing off.

Thanks for reading.

[christmasintheloonybin]

I thought about the idea of making a private account on Instagram, or a second private account, a really secret one. and I thought of the great name "wiggerjihad" which is still available on Instagram as of last week if anyone wants it. but then I thought, ehh. I'm paranoid about lists. getting put on a list. every time I fly I'm scared they're going to take me into a secret room. I haven't done anything illegal and I have no intention of doing anything illegal but I've said a lot of crazy shit, I've researched a lot of crazy shit, and associated in the past with some people who say and research crazier shit than me. so I'm worried about lists. because it's also obviously not like an FBI agent scrolling on Twitter all day its AI shit I'm sure just flagging different accounts, so I'm cautious.

anyways I'm cautious especially about "wiggerjihad" because wigger is so close to Uyghur, and here is my prediction for not tomorrow but in the next five years.

the media has been priming people to feel sympathy for the Uyghurs, I'm sure the first many people ever heard of them was from the stories of a "Uyghur Genocide" happening in China. I don't know if this is true or not but it's certainly convenient isn't it? so my prediction is that there will be a fake and gay revolution in... what is it Xianjang? where Uyghurs live. something like this. like there was with Ukraine. and we have a new proxy war now against China. I would say this is more likely than a proxy war involving Taiwan, which is entirely unwinnable, it would be crushed extremely quickly. and who gives a fuck about Taiwan I mean obviously it's part of China they speak Chinese they are racially Chinese it has always been a part of Chinese history. it's a fake country set up by the West. Uyghurstan is a much more sympathetic idea, you'll get hug the world types rooting for them against the big bully China. like with Kurdistan, but this wasn't employed as much by the media and CIA/Mossad because ISIS was much more effective. and thinking about China I really can't come up with another group who would be more media friendly in terms of starting a war with China. or beyond media like a viable candidate. I can't think of one. there is a historical basis for this too, this kind of thing has happened since the cold war. and now there are plenty of Uyghurs, nutjob ISIS types, who have extensive combat experience. you look at the videos of "Syrian" rebels and it's hard not to notice that a good quarter of them are fucking Asian. I can't tell a Uyghur from an Uzbek in a cell phone video but you get the idea. so this is my prediction, and also why I don't want to be associated at all with the terms "Uyghur" or "jihad." because there's a good chance this will also be totally under the table, and they'll still be designated as terror groups like ISIS was, but they'll receive money and training from the CIA/Mossad, like ISIS, and maybe will have a more favorable media image in the west. if not total open support if they can spin it as moderate Muslims who just want to live their lives and are being oppressed by China. but I seriously think this is going to happen. also I wasn't referencing "white jihad" or whatever, which is like a white power thing now I guess, idk I don't really keep up with this stuff it is all fake and gay. literally all controlled opposition. I just think the term wigger is funny. and wigger jihad is a funny combination of words.

[starlight-time-machine]

Week in Review

10/06/2024 – 10/12/2024

Sunday

Week 35 of missing Cipher Academy

Undead Unluck… I’m cautiously optimistic about how this Julia arc will play out. I’m hoping that some of the Union members will fight off their respective Master Rules on their own, and then Julia can come back to save a truly unwinnable fight.

I watched Look Back in theaters and cried the entire way through. I even cried through the behind the scenes interviews, as ridiculous as that is. I just see all the heart and love that’s been poured into this adaptation, and Fujimoto’s story structure is so perfectly plotted and executed as is that it makes for the perfect movie. Everything about this story’s ruminations on art and connection just hit me so hard, and I’m so glad that both the manga and the movie exist. It’s absolutely a 10/10 and a new entry into the STM awards, and I can’t wait to buy the Blu-ray.

Monday

I won’t get into it too much because I don’t just want to spew negativity all over the place, but I’ve…kind of really disliked what they’ve done with Liella. I absolutely loved the first season, and I had felt excited about the future of Love Live for the first time in a long time…but I really didn’t like season 2, and now season 3 is looking to make me even angrier… I watched the first episode and didn’t like it, so I’m probably not going to be really watching the rest other than skimming through to see my baby girl Keke.

Started watching Sonny Boy and it’s pretty fun so far. I like that it’s not doing a Lord of the Flies thing (I think those plots are a little played out at this point), instead leaning into a more surrealist and sci-fi narrative.

Watashi no Musuko ga Isekai Tensei Shitappoi finally updated!! I’m so glad to see Doubara finally take a stand, and I really hope he can help Mio find some way to heal…

Tuesday

Started reading Zaijian no Yoake Made and it’s cute so far, just a nice down to earth sort of BL.

How long has it been, months? Since I last had a proper Manga Sunday? I’ve only had the energy to read Undead Unluck every Sunday, so I’ve fallen woefully behind on my other Shounen Jump manga. But no more! Today I’ll finally catch up!

SpyFam was whatever. The chapter introducing the Desmond butler was mildly interesting, I suppose, but it’s all still the same expected comedy beats as before.

Wow this was a good time to catch up on Oshi no Ko. I still think the villains’ motivations are too stupid to be believable or effectively dramatic, but whatever. This series was always campy and vaguely supernatural anyway, so I’ll just enjoy the ending even though I’m kind of beyond caring about the central drama at this point.

Dandadan is as good as always. I can’t wait to see how this arc turns out; it seems like the group is sticking pretty closely, so hopefully they’ll all get to participate in the fights this time.

Magilumiere fine, I’m surprised to see that the manga isn’t entering its denouement like I thought it was.

Chainsaw Man…?

One Piece good.

Wednesday

Speedran Revue Starlight El Dorado before my flight in the morning and it was pretty fun. Seisho isn’t my main oshi school (that’d be Siegfeld), but it’s fun to see them all together again and having little misadventures as they prepare for this play. I don’t know that I have a favourite route really, but the FutaKuro one was interesting for the role swap twist and the real rivalry I felt between Futaba and Claudine. And then the MahiNana one was fun because it went so out of the box of the established norms. The ending credits was really emotional and made me tear up, and I’m looking forward to playing around in El Dorado mode, but in general it was just an okay game for me. 7/10.

Thursday

I’m on vacation now so things are going to be a lot more scattershot. I did reread the Ookiku Furikabutte manga on the flight, though, and it was just as good as I remember it being. I have a better memory and understanding of baseball now, so that made the games all the more intense and engrossing to read. I love Nishiura’s team dynamics and how cute the boys all are, and how they slowly learn what Mihashi’s deal is and how to communicate with him. That tension between him and Abe is especially fun because of how their relationship affects their battery and thus the whole team, and this first major arc of the summer tournament was fantastically plotted and executed.

Friday

Busy

Saturday

Out seeing the world

[mrs-starkgaryen]

This chapter has me like

Girl where do I start? The wording in this was 😘🤌

Let's dive in to my analysis like I'm back at uni-

1. "You turn to the mint green wall where your paper airplane resume rests on the hardwood floor like the wreckage of the Titanic sits at the bottom of the ocean."

A) This symbolises their relationship will feel like they're flying high at one but come crashing down eventually. Whether that be one of them dies, personal issues or LA fucks them up.

B) my first thought reading 'Titantic' was 😱 the last time I read something about the Titantic was your last Aegon x Reader but they both survived... Is this your way of hinting that they won't be so lucky this time to have a happy ever after?

2. "He snickers, shaking his head. “Don’t let a man make you uncomfortable. Don’t believe anyone if they say they want to drive you somewhere to see you audition or take your picture and nobody else you know is going. When you go to clubs and parties, watch the bartender make your drink and never put it down until you’re done. Don’t get talked into plastic surgery. Yes, that includes Botox and fillers.”

A) Forget reader, does he want to bend me over? This was so hot, he loves taking care of us.

B) Is this because he's used to what goes on in LA or this possibly him speaking from experience? Has he had such a traumatic experience that made him want to leave acting behind and go into something that will protect future actors from the same fate?

3. “I’m getting married. Figured I’d do the whole settling down and living a quiet life thing.” He spins around one of the photographs on his desk so you can see it. In the frame, Aegon is standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon with a woman around his age, tall and willowy, long thick dark hair, flowing white sundress, wearing black aviator sunglasses to match his."

A) the fuck he is?! Not on my watch

B) I feel like this Becca is someone his family set him up with, to calm him down maybe? I don't feel like he's attached

C) Or he does like her but not enough and he'll realise that when he realises reader is amazing

D) Something defo happened for him to want a calm life..

4. "But you’ve already bitten over the same spot, enlarging the wound, your tongue grazing the notches left by Aegon’s teeth. You giggle as you lick juice from your lips. “It’s so good. You’re delusional.”

A) idk if it was because it was Aegon's bite mark but that was one of the most sexiest things you've written.

B) I bet Aegon watched that and gulped, thinking "oh shit."

C) if when they have sex or whatnot and this is not mentioned or reenacted, I'll riot

5. “Why did you stop acting?” You Googled Aegon before your meeting, so you know some abbreviated version of his story: a wealthy and prominent family in the production industry, several years spent as an actor beginning when he was around your age, a shadowy withdrawal into working as an agent with a practice so small and off the beaten path that it must be deliberate. He could have coasted his whole life on effortless roles in Lifetime movies or Hulu original series. Instead he chose obscurity, and a drab little office in half of a duplex on a run-down street in Elysian Park, and Brandon the receptionist as his sole employee, and clients who are nobodies like you."

A) something has happened for him to disappear like that...

B) could be an illness like people are saying but I feel like it was something traumatic and his family told him not to talk about it as it would affect their image. So he chose to stay close but not in the spotlight

C) Feels a lot like the Olsen sisters, like we have Elizabeth but where did the twins go? Very much like Aegon??

D) I can't wait to see what his sister and brothers are doing in this industry lmao

E) I feel like they're in trouble somehow- celebrity vs celebrity

6. “Um…well I think I got sick of how superficial it was, all the obsessing over height and weight and wrinkles and who’s in and who’s out, the unwinnable contest of who can be perfect the longest. We’re supposed to play real people but we’re not supposed to be real people, you know? And there are just a lot of things about this place that can leave people jaded and fucked up in all sorts of ways we weren’t before. And I don’t want that to happen to you, so I’ll try to make it as good of an experience as possible.” He smiles. It seems genuine. “I don’t really miss it. I’m a better agent than I was an actor.”

A) again something happened and he doesn't want it repeating

B) I copied this mainly because it was probably my favourite section due to how spot on you are? How well you wrote it? Fake people playing real people, barbies and bratz games

7. "You warn Aegon as you return his fork: “You’re going to die early.”

“I know,” he says, watching the oscars scowl at him through the glass."

A) like everyone said, you're going to kill him off, aren't you?

B) unless you've made it so obvious that he isn't. Maybe not physically but mentally, emotionally. You'll find a way around it

C) maybe she dies

D) is the way she described that food going to describe the way one of them ends up? Covered in blood?

8. Aegon grins and slips black aviator sunglasses out of a pocket inside his jacket and says as he puts them on, maybe to the sky, maybe to you: “You are so bright, sunshine.” Then he climbs the steps to the front door of his small, inauspicious office.

A) double whammy, sky and her are bright

B) we've found the reader's name, pack it up

C) and he goes into his office to get away from the sun of the sky and her? So he's defo gonna try and keep away from her romantically as his feelings would be too much and he'll be scared she'll find out what happened to him cuz he doesn't want to break her optimism

9. “Okay. I hope you get the star.”

A) I've got a star spot sticker on rn, so I've technically got it

B) the Hollywood star?? His or hers? Omg I'm banging my head on the wall, I feel like this is significant (or I need to go bed)

10. “Don’t thank me. This place is a curse.”

A) we've got the title, pack quicker guys

B) oh ho, oh ho. We knew it was a curse but why is it to him? WHAT HAS HAPPENED??

11. “Yeah, that’s awesome,” Jace agrees as he shovels pieces of a shrimp tempura roll into his mouth. Jace is Baela’s boyfriend of six months. He’s allegedly getting a PhD in Musicology at UCLA, but he only goes to class one or two days a week and does exceptionally little other than that. Once in a while you’ll overhear him pounding on the Yamaha keyboard he keeps in Baela’s room, cursing to himself and kicking the wall in frustration.

A) oh you really don't like Jace lmao

B) the orcas will be coming for u

Overall, sorry for an essay. I know I repeated a lot of the same stuff but I'm sure something happend. I keep thinking of the Brandon Fraser case (bless him) but idk if you'd go that dark.

Either way, great story so far and I can't wait to delve into the dark underbelly of sunny LA

A Curse [Chapter 1: Chinatown]

Series summary: You are an aspiring actress. Aegon is a washed-up and disenchanted agent...at least until he sees something special in you. But within paradisical seaside Los Angeles you find terrible dangers and temptations, secrets and lies. Maybe Aegon's right; maybe the City of Angels really is a curse.

Chapter warnings: Language, references to sexual content (18+ readers only), a lil age gap, entertainment industry misogyny, some body dissatisfaction/dysmorphia, big doomed situationship energy, erotic apple eating, Minnesota.

Word count: 5.6k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Tagging: @lauraneedstochill @mrs-starkgaryen @chattylurker @neithriddle @ecstaticactus, more in comments! 🥰

🏝️ Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🏝️

He takes your hand without looking at you. He had been lounging with his green Nike Killshots up on the desk when Brandon, the receptionist, brought you in. He had also been playing a translucent orange Nintendo 64; now the game is paused and Mario is frozen on the screen of the 24-inch television, deep underwater and in pursuit of a gold star affixed to the tail of a giant eel.

“Nice to meet you,” Aegon says without much interest. You’re smiling, not that he notices. Then he nods at the receptionist. “Thanks, Brando.”

“Oh, no problem at all!” Brandon trills buoyantly, pulling out your chair for you as Aegon flops back into his own. “Can I bring anything? Iced coffee, matcha latte, Perrier?”

“I’m good,” Aegon says, glancing at your resume where it rests on the desk amongst framed photographs, manilla folders, takeout menus, gum wrappers rolled into tiny balls. You have the impression he hasn’t read it. Nonetheless, you are still smiling.

“How about you, hon?” Brandon asks you.

You don’t want to make him run to a Starbucks or anything. “Um…I’ll take a Perrier, please. That’s easy for you, right? You can just grab it out of the minifridge in the lobby?”

“You betcha!” Brandon darts out of the office and returns in ten seconds. In the elapsed time, Aegon has not looked at you once. Instead, he slouches in his chair and thumps his Nikes onto the desk, sighs, and gazes longingly at the television screen. You sit up straight with your hands folded in your lap. You have dressed in business casual attire for the occasion: a modest yellow sundress and TOMS wedges, warm understated eyeshadow, sparkly champagne pink Dreamer by Anastasia Beverly Hills, matte brown Hope by Huda Beauty. Brandon returns and hands you a green glass bottle of Perrier, ice cold and slippery with condensation, and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

“Look, I’ll be honest,” Aegon tells you, picking up your resume and scanning it blandly. “I don’t want to waste your time, but I’m really not in the market for new clients. Brando made this appointment before I told him that, and then he really didn’t want to cancel it. He liked your resume or something. So I’ll hear you out but don’t expect much.”

“Oh. Well…I really appreciate you taking the time to see me anyway!”

He gives you a swift sideways look as if suspicious of your enthusiasm. It’s not that complicated; you haven’t had an audition in weeks, and none of the other six agents you’ve seen have signed you. Aegon Targaryen’s drab little office in one half of a duplex in Elysian Park is a relative paradise. His blonde hair is gelled back from his face. He wears dark jeans, a teal t-shirt, and a wrinkled tan sport coat jacket thrown carelessly overtop. You’ve Googled him; he’s thirty-five, so a decade older than you. “Where are you from?”

That’s on your resume he hasn’t read. “Minnesota.”

Aegon’s eyebrows shoot up. “No wonder you left. City or country?”

“A town called Apple Valley, it’s about a half hour outside of Minneapolis.”

“So you’re not a nepo baby.”

“A what?”

“Your parents aren’t connected to the entertainment industry in any way.”

“Oh right, no, they definitely aren’t. My dad’s a cardiologist. My mom worked as a waitress while he was in med school, and now she just has a lot of Akitas.”

Aegon flips over your resume and skims the back. “Are they supportive of you being out here?”

“Um…” You chuckle uneasily. “Not really. My older sister’s a pharmacist and my brother’s in law school, so I am definitely the underachieving child. But they’re not too mean about it. They’re just waiting for me to get it out of my system.”

“Law school where?”

“Michigan.”

“State or University?”

“University.”

“So you’re really smart,” Aegon says. He has begun to fold your resume into a paper airplane. “Intelligence is genetic. If your siblings are book smart, you probably are too.”

You smile and shrug, not knowing what to say. “I guess so.”

“Do you have a boyfriend back in Minnesota who’s calling you every other day trying to convince you to come home and marry him and have two kids and a Goldendoodle?”

You laugh. “No, no boyfriend. I mean, I have an ex-boyfriend there. I see him sometimes when I fly home to visit. But he’s not standing in the way of anything.”

Aegon nods like you’ve passed a test. “Do your parents send you money?”

“Yeah, but not a lot. They don’t want to encourage me. I work at a Cold Stone Creamery in Harbor Gateway, it’s just a few blocks away from my apartment. I have a roommate, she’s trying to be an actress too.”

“Ice cream,” he muses. He launches your paper airplane resume; it sails across the room, hits the mint green wall, nosedives to the floor. “Do you like working there?”

“It’s fine. It’s a paycheck. Back in the spring I was doing after-school programs for Mad Science, driving all over Watts and Southeast teaching children about bugs and magnets and outer space, so that was really cool.”

Aegon looks up at you, brow furrowed. It’s the first time you’ve had his full attention. “You were doing after-school programs in Watts?”

“Yeah, it was awesome. The kids were so fun. But I needed something that was more flexible so I could be free during the middle of the day for auditions and stuff.”

He blinks at you a few times. “Why do you want to be an actress?”

You stall, twisting open your Perrier and taking a gulp. “That’s a hard question.”

“It’s literally the most obvious question. If you can’t answer it, I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“Well, I never wanted to be an actress,” you say. “I just kind of…am one. I can’t read a book without my expressions and my posture changing to match what’s going on in the story. I can’t watch a movie without feeling like I’m in that world with the characters, or, or, or imagining how I would have delivered the lines differently. And then even when I’m doing something totally unrelated…math homework, walking my mom’s Akitas, making ice cream…I envision where the cameras would be if I was being filmed, which way I would tilt my face to catch the light. It’s something I think about all the time and I can’t turn it off. So how am I supposed to be a doctor or a lawyer and spend my entire life trying to avoid every thought that occurs to me organically? It sounds like torture.”

Aegon stares at you, a long golden silence as daylight pours in through the windows facing the east. Then he drops his green Nikes to the floor and straightens up in his chair, studying you. He points to the windows. “Look that way.”

You do, closing your eyes when the glare is too bright.

“Now the other side of the room.”

You turn to the mint green wall where your paper airplane resume rests on the hardwood floor like the wreckage of the Titanic sits at the bottom of the ocean.

“Stand up.”

You set your bottle of Perrier on his cluttered desk and obey, but with some reluctance. “Please don’t ask me to bend over.”

Aegon snorts a laugh. “That’s not what I’m doing. I want you to go to the door and then walk back to me like you’re angry.”

“I have a bunch of acting reels on YouTube—”

“I don’t want to see your acting reels. I want to see you in front of me right now.”

“Okay,” you agree. You go to the closed door, take a moment to shake off the real world, and then walk to his desk, your footsteps heavy and your eyes hard. Aegon’s dark blue gaze follows you and does not waver.

“Look at me like you’re sad.”

You imagine he’s said something horrible to you, a husband who’s broken a vow, a doctor with a grim prognosis.

“Good!” Aegon says, animated now. “You get it. It’s in the eyebrows, not the mouth.” He gestures to your chair. “Now sit down like you don’t want to be here.”

You move sluggishly, like you hope someone will interrupt you; your eyes float boredly around the room. Then you plop heavily into the chair and stare at Aegon, a little vacuously inane, a little resentful like a petulant teenager. You pretend to chew gum you don’t have.

Aegon smiles, amused. “If I’d asked you to bend over, would you have done it?”

“I’d like to say no, but I’m pretty desperate.”

He snickers, shaking his head. “Don’t let a man make you uncomfortable. Don’t believe anyone if they say they want to drive you somewhere to see you audition or take your picture and nobody else you know is going. When you go to clubs and parties, watch the bartender make your drink and never put it down until you’re done. Don’t get talked into plastic surgery. Yes, that includes Botox and fillers.”

You sip your Perrier. “Well, I might get a boob job.”

“Don’t get a boob job.”

“Why not? Basically everybody here’s had one. I think Taylor Swift got two.”

“You don’t need a boob job,” Aegon says impatiently.

“I’m not sure you have all the knowledge to make an informed decision about that.”

“I am so sick of this bullshit,” he mutters, pushing the takeout menus and manilla folders around on his desk but leaving it no tidier. “People cutting up their perfectly normal bodies…people stuffing themselves full of poison…so afraid to look human they end up like motherfucking Bratz dolls.” He sighs and peers up at you again. “Just so you know, I’m getting out of L.A. I’m only going to be here until September. So by then you’ll have to find someone else. But I can get you started, I guess.”

You are beaming. “You’ll be my agent?”

“Yeah, but like I said—”

You squeal and leap to your feet, taking his left hand with both of yours and shaking it vigorously, Aegon gaping up at you. “Thank you! Thank you so much! I am going to be the best client you’ve ever had, I will never ever complain, I will do anything you say, I will audition with snakes and tarantulas, I will swim with sharks.”

Aegon grins, perhaps despite himself. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Why are you leaving in September?”

“I’m getting married. Figured I’d do the whole settling down and living a quiet life thing.” He spins around one of the photographs on his desk so you can see it. In the frame, Aegon is standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon with a woman around his age, tall and willowy, long thick dark hair, flowing white sundress, wearing black aviator sunglasses to match his.

“That’s exciting!” You love weddings. “And you two look so happy together!”

“Yeah, Becca’s pretty great.” Aegon takes a stick of Juicy Fruit out of a pack on his desk, shoves it into his mouth, distractedly rolls the white and red wrapper into a ball. “She’s a real caretaker type. Always trying to do my laundry and pack me lunches and bake pies and whatever.”

“And that’s something you look for in a woman?” you tease lightheartedly. Aegon gives you a lightning-quick annoyed glance, and your smile abruptly dies. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. Please don’t fire me.”

He chuckles and stands up from his desk, his hands in the pockets of his tan jacket. Mario is still underwater, forgotten on the frozen television screen. “Let’s go grab some lunch.”

“Right now?” You slide your phone out of your purse—crossbody, wildflowers, Patricia Nash but found at T.J.Maxx—to check the time. “It’s like 10:30 a.m.”

“They’ll be open by the time we walk to Chinatown.”

“Okay!” Lunch can only be a good thing. Still clutching your Perrier, you trot after Aegon into the small lobby, scuffed wood floor and cheap IKEA couches. Behind the reception desk, Brandon is making notes in a planner using one of those pens with a fake flower on top. He looks up at you and Aegon as you pass by.

“Brando, I’m taking an early lunch,” Aegon tells him.

Brandon is hopeful. “Are you signing her?”

“Yeah, but it’s just until—”

“Oh for cute!” Brandon cries out, and Aegon is stupefied. But you know exactly what Brandon means. He must be from Minnesota too. So that’s why he liked my resume. Los Angeles is kind of like the military; once you’re swimming in this multinational fishbowl, everyone from your home state is a friend.

“What part?” you ask, smiling.

“Duluth.”

“Bet the Pacific Ocean beats Lake Superior any day.”

“Have you been to Venice Beach yet?”

“Oh yeah. Heaven on earth.”

“Good luck with everything,” Brandon says, and then he winks. “I hope you get to stay.”

Stay in L.A. Stay here chasing the dream. Me too. Then you follow Aegon through the front door and down the concrete steps to the sidewalk, out into breezy mid-70s air and sunlight peeking from behind pure white tufts of cumulus clouds. You can hear music and dogs barking. The street is lined with quaint midcentury houses with metal fences and humming air conditioning units in the windows; any businessowners here are hanging their own shingle, beauticians and pet groomers and bakers. On the horizon, you can see the silvery skyscrapers of Downtown.

“So about that resume I clearly didn’t read,” Aegon says as he walks with his hands in his pockets. “Have you done any meaningful acting work since you’ve been out here?”

Why lie? “No.”

He gives you a shellshocked look like this is the worst case scenario. “Well…I appreciate your honesty. So you’ll take anything.”

“Absolutely anything. I mean…” You take an anxious swig of your Perrier. “I’d really rather not be naked.”

He’s laughing again. You’re not sure if he thinks you’re funny or ridiculous. “I’m not going to pitch you for roles that require nudity.”

You are relieved. “Okay. Cool.”

“Where did you act before?”

“After college I did some short films for grad students…they’re all pretty terrible, I’ll admit it, but I didn’t write them…and I was in a bunch of shows at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. And I worked in the gift shop.”

“Guthrie?” Aegon says. “Like Woody Guthrie?”

“No, common mistake. A completely different Guthrie. Some English lord who was a director.”

“Which shows were you in?”

You describe your roles, all supporting, none leading: Romeo and Juliet, Othello, A Streetcar Named Desire, Pride and Prejudice, Julius Caesar, Anastasia, Frankenstein, August: Osage County, Richard III, Dracula. Aegon listens but he watches you too, the way you stride in your TOMS wedges over the cracked and uneven sidewalk, the way you use your hands too much when you talk, a habit you’re trying to break. His eyes on you—that deep and tumultuous blue—do not feel like a leer, and you think you’ve acquired enough experience in your past three months in Los Angeles to know the difference. Aegon’s gaze is no longer disinterested but methodical, practiced, ever-seeking, notes transcribed not in ink but electrical impulses and ineffable cyclones of neurotransmitters.

“Dracula,” Aegon jokes. “Vampire experience, huh? Maybe we could get you in the Twilight reboot.”

“Is that really happening?”

“It is, but it’s going to be animated. So it’s only voice acting. And I think we can aim higher than that.” He pauses at an intersection and looks lost for a few seconds, then remembers the way and bears to the right. This street is busier, hectic with shops and pedestrians, teenagers on skateboards, vendors advertising their fruit smoothies and boba teas. Red banners printed with twisted dragons and Chinatown 2025 hang from the streetlights. Towering palm trees cast shadows in the shape of windblown leaves. “Do you get along with your roommate?”

This is a random question. You finish your Perrier and discard the glass bottle in a trashcan. “Yeah, she’s really nice, we’re friends. Why?”

“Good. Housing instability is a huge source of stress for young actors, just wanted to make sure you weren’t in danger of ending up sleeping under a bridge.”

“I might be if her boyfriend ever gets a job and can pay half of the rent.”

“Well if it happens, let me know. I can help get you set up somewhere.” Aegon yanks his phone out of his jeans pocket to check the time. “We’ve got a few more minutes to kill,” he says, and ducks into a market strewn with crates of produce: bitter melon, bok choy, pears, pomelos, dragon fruit, peaches, plums, durian, sweet potatoes, kumquats, lychees. You follow after Aegon as he weaves through narrow, crowded aisles, inspecting the wares and waving to shopkeepers that he recognizes. He asks you as he points to a dozen cardboard boxes overflowing with apples: “Does this make you homesick for Appletown?”

“Apple Valley,” you correct him, laughing. “And not quite. I’d rather have Venice Beach.”

“What’s the state apple of Minnesota?”

“I have no idea.”

“Let’s find out.” He uses his phone to Google it. “Honeycrisp.”

“Oh neat! Those are pretty good.”

“Are they?” He searches until amongst the Granny Smiths and Fujis and Golden Delicious apples he finds a box labelled Honeycrisp. “I don’t think I’ve ever tried one.”

“Now’s your chance.”

Aegon picks up a large, glossy apple, pinkish-red and striped with yellow, and takes a massive bite. Juice dribbles down his mouth and chin; he wipes it away with the back of his hand. “I’m going to pay for it,” he assures you when you look startled. He chews, deliberating. “This apple sucks. This is a flop apple.”

“You are blinded by your anti-Minnesota prejudice.”

“It’s boring.”

“How can an apple be boring?”

“It’s like…too sweet. Not tart enough. Not as good as a Braeburn or a Pink Lady. Here.” Aegon tosses the Honeycrisp apple and you catch it. Then, when you stare at the sizeable bitemark he’s left in the fruit: “Wait, I mean, you don’t have to eat that part, obviously. Try the other side—”

But you’ve already bitten over the same spot, enlarging the wound, your tongue grazing the notches left by Aegon’s teeth. You giggle as you lick juice from your lips. “It’s so good. You’re delusional.”

Aegon watches you for a while before he speaks. In the meantime, you finish eating the apple with quick chomps. “Are you medicated?” he says.

“What? No, why?”

“You just seem…I don’t know. Bizarrely happy.”

“Why wouldn’t I be happy? I’m in Los Angeles, I’m living the dream, I have a brand new agent. My life is amazing.”

“Okay,” Aegon says uncertainly; but he’s smiling. When you pitch the apple core back to him, he catches it. Then he grabs a plastic bag off a hook and drops one fresh Honeycrisp apple inside. “We’ll let Brando be the tiebreaker.” He shows two fingers to a shopkeeper and pays in cash. You steal a glimpse of your phone; it’s just after 11:00 a.m.

Down the street from the market is a set of steps leading into what appears to be a basement. Instead, when Aegon opens the red door, on the other side is a restaurant already filling up with patrons. The tables are round and covered with crimson tablecloths; at each seat is one of those paper Chinese zodiac calendars with all twelve animals and their descriptions.

“Good morning Mr. Aegon!” a tall middle-aged waitress says warmly and ushers you both to a table by a large fish tank with opalescent pebbles lining the bottom. From the other side of the glass, colossal black-and-orange oscars gawp menacingly. The waitress passes you a menu.

“No,” Aegon says, snatching the menu out of your hands before you can open it. “Order what you’d normally get.”

Obediently, you turn to the waitress. “Do you have moo goo gai pan?”

She nods. “White rice or fried rice?”

“White rice, please.”

“Mr. Aegon?” the waitress says.

“Boneless spare ribs with fried rice. And a pot of tea, and two wanton soups. Thanks, Lanying.”

She hurries away to tend to other customers. You ask Aegon playfully: “Did I make the right choice?”

“You did. Naturally low-calorie but high in vitamins and protein. If you’d ordered the sesame chicken and only taken two bites I’d know that you probably have an eating disorder. But now I’m optimistic.”

“And you got the most unhealthy thing on the menu. What does that mean?”

“Life is short. I try to keep it delicious.” He taps the side of the fish tank; one of the oscars attempts to maul him through the glass. “Do you exercise?”

“Not by choice. I force myself to walk to and from work, and that’s the best I can do.”

Aegon seems alarmed. “I don’t think you should be wandering all over Harbor Gateway. Especially not at night.”

“There are always other people around.”

“Yeah, and some of them might mug you.” The waitress arrives with a pot of tea and two small, handleless cups. Aegon fills both with tea, slides one to you, and reaches for the little plastic container of sweeteners on the table. “Splenda?” Aegon guesses correctly and then flings several yellow packets across the table to you.

“Can I ask you something now?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Aegon says. The waitress returns with two bowls of wanton soup and makes conversation with Aegon briefly. She inquires about his health, his parents, his business. You wait until she leaves to ask your question.

“Why did you stop acting?” You Googled Aegon before your meeting, so you know some abbreviated version of his story: a wealthy and prominent family in the production industry, several years spent as an actor beginning when he was around your age, a shadowy withdrawal into working as an agent with a practice so small and off the beaten path that it must be deliberate. He could have coasted his whole life on effortless roles in Lifetime movies or Hulu original series. Instead he chose obscurity, and a drab little office in half of a duplex on a run-down street in Elysian Park, and Brandon the receptionist as his sole employee, and clients who are nobodies like you.

Aegon slurps broth from his spoon, stalling. He’s caught off-guard; you can tell by the way deep troubled grooves appear in his brow. That’s part of being a good actor. You have to learn how to read people until you can feel their emotions as if they are your own, until you can mimic them so convincingly your own pulse quickens or your stomach drops. “Um…well I think I got sick of how superficial it was, all the obsessing over height and weight and wrinkles and who’s in and who’s out, the unwinnable contest of who can be perfect the longest. We’re supposed to play real people but we’re not supposed to be real people, you know? And there are just a lot of things about this place that can leave people jaded and fucked up in all sorts of ways we weren’t before. And I don’t want that to happen to you, so I’ll try to make it as good of an experience as possible.” He smiles. It seems genuine. “I don’t really miss it. I’m a better agent than I was an actor.”

“And you’re not even that good of an agent.”

He laughs and shakes his head, just watching you, just trying to figure you out. He looks down at his Chinese zodiac calendar. “What are you?”

“I’m a dragon.”

Aegon reads aloud: “You are eccentric and your life complex. You have a very passionate nature and abundant health. I could see that. Kinda sounds like you.”

“Which animal is yours, the horse?”

“Yeah, 1990.”

You study his description. “Popular and attractive to the opposite sex. You are often ostentatious and impatient. You need people. I don’t think you’re very ostentatious.”

“But no qualms with the other parts?”

“No, the rest seems accurate.”

He stares at you, those overcast blue eyes curious, searching, maybe a little puzzled. When the waitress brings out the entrees, Aegon spears a piece of his boneless spare ribs with his clean fork and offers it to you. “Here, you want to try this?”

You really shouldn’t, but you make an exception. You take his fork and eat: saccharine blood red sauce, glistening gelatinous fat. It’s one of the most delicious bites of food you’ve ever tasted…and then it’s gone. You warn Aegon as you return his fork: “You’re going to die early.”

“I know,” he says, watching the oscars scowl at him through the glass.

You walk back through Chinatown together, Aegon swinging around his plastic bag with his Honeycrisp apple for Brandon, you listening as he tells you what each shop is known for and points out a temple dedicated to the goddess of the ocean. Now the sky is clear and the sun is high, and hot, and blinding when you aren’t under the shade of awnings or palm trees.

You say cheerfully once you have returned in Elysian Park and you can see Aegon’s office, a blue neon sign that reads Targ Talent Agency pulsing in the window: “So do you have any fun plans for Father’s Day?”

“Nope. My dad’s dead.”

“Oh my God.” You’re so mortified you almost trip over your own feet, your TOMS wedges stumbling over the pavement. Aegon instinctively reaches out to steady you, and you grasp his hand gratefully. “I am so sorry.”

“It’s fine. It happened when I was in college so I’m used to it.”

“He must have been young.” Forties? Fifties?

“Yeah,” Aegon says shortly, letting go of you. “Are you doing anything special?”

“My parents are paying to fly me back to Minnesota. But I won’t be gone long, I promise. It’s just a few days.”

Aegon smirks roguishly. “Going to make time to see that ex-boyfriend while you’re there?”

You smile, a little bashful, a little mischievous. “I might.”

He chuckles. “Enjoy. Don’t get pregnant and ruin all your hopes and dreams.”

“Oh no, don’t worry, I can’t take the pill because it made me suicidally depressed but we use condoms.”

Aegon is bewildered, his jaw hanging open. “You don’t overshare like this in auditions, do you?”

“No, sorry, I thought you were asking me a question.”

“It wasn’t a question, it was a comment.”

“Oh. I thought it was a question.”

He shakes his head and stops at the 2003 Honda Accord—painted in a shade called Desert Mist Metallic—parked curbside, a gift from your parents when you went away to college only to return in disgrace with a Theater Arts degree that they lie to their friends about. From one of the nearby houses, you can hear Take It Easy by The Eagles drifting out into the sun-drenched street. “Is this your ride?”

“Yup! This is me.”

“Well I’m going to make some calls and see what I can get you, and I’ll let you know either way in a few days how it’s going. Brandon has your phone number and headshots…and I can find your acting reels on YouTube if I need them…yeah, I think that’s everything. Okay?”

“Okay. I hope you get the star.”

Again, you have confused him. “What?”

“In the Mario game. The one on the eel’s tail.”

Aegon grins and slips black aviator sunglasses out of a pocket inside his jacket and says as he puts them on, maybe to the sky, maybe to you: “You are so bright, sunshine.” Then he climbs the steps to the front door of his small, inauspicious office.

“Aegon?” you call after him. At the top of the concrete steps, he pauses and turns around. Here in the shadowless midday light, you are overwhelmed with gratitude. It’s difficult to speak without your voice breaking. “Thank you for giving me a chance.”

“Don’t thank me. This place is a curse.”

He opens the door and disappears inside.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Guess who has an agent?!” you announce ecstatically as you burst into the apartment. Baela and Jace are in the living room on the velvet orange couch, eating sushi and watching True Blood on the 40-inch flatscreen television that Baela’s parents bought for her.

“Congratulations!” Baela says from the couch. “Finally! I’m so happy for you!”

“Yeah, that’s awesome,” Jace agrees as he shovels pieces of a shrimp tempura roll into his mouth. Jace is Baela’s boyfriend of six months. He’s allegedly getting a PhD in Musicology at UCLA, but he only goes to class one or two days a week and does exceptionally little other than that. Once in a while you’ll overhear him pounding on the Yamaha keyboard he keeps in Baela’s room, cursing to himself and kicking the wall in frustration.

“Is he nice?” Baela asks, meaning your new agent.

“I think so,” you say thoughtfully. You aren’t sure that nice is the right word. “He’s kind of weird and grumpy. But I really like him.”

“Is he old?”

“Not at all. Aegon’s thirty-five.”

“Ew,” Baela says. “Old.”

“I really like him,” you say again, smiling to yourself without realizing you’re doing it.

Baela groans. “Please don’t be one of those girls who fucks their agent.”

“No, it’s not like that. He’s engaged to someone super gorgeous. They’re getting married in September.”

“Huh,” Baela replies, losing interest now. Her eyes have drifted back to the tv. She hasn’t landed a role as a film lead or a series regular yet, but she’s been working steadily since she got to L.A. and her star is ever-rising. Tomorrow she is auditioning for Yorgos Lanthimos’s new movie. She’s not allowed to tell you anything about the script. It’s a secret; it’s an honor.

You go to the kitchen for a drink and stop when your gaze catches on the calendar affixed to the stainless steel refrigerator with plastic magnets shaped like pineapples. Friday, June 20th is circled with red ink; in the box below, you have scrawled the necessary details.

Baela twists around on the couch and sees you. Her voice is gentle; she knows you’re nervous. “When’s your appointment?”

“Next week.”

“You’re really getting sliced up?” Jace says.

You smirk at him, less than appreciative. “It’s just a consultation. But yeah, probably.”

“You scared?” Jace asks, gnawing on a pod of edamame.

Obviously. You sigh. “I think it has to happen if I want to land roles.”

“I haven’t gotten any plastic surgery yet,” Baela says, not meaning to sound smug.

You murmur as you ponder the time and address written in red on the calendar: “Well nobody is saying you need to.” You’ve had no less than ten people suggest implants outright, and far more have implied it. Aegon is the only person you can think of who dismissed the idea summarily…and that includes your parents. Your father has been emailing you doctor recommendations. He must think it’s a good investment for your post-California-detour life.

“It will give you more confidence,” Baela says as she turns back to the tv. “A little extra something to take you to the next level.”

You stare at her forlornly from the kitchen. You are suddenly very aware that you miss being outside: the sun, the heat, the swaying palm trees, the radiant kinetic potential. “That’s part of the problem? My confidence?”

She shrugs, using her chopsticks to dunk a piece of her tuna roll in a small plastic container of spicy mayo. She seems oblivious to how deflated you are. “It’s just so hard to stand out here, you know? The phrase ‘California dime’ exists for a reason.”

Jace glances at you over the back of the couch. “I think you look fine.”

“Thanks, Jace.”

“I think you’re easily a California nickel.”

“That’s super sweet, Jace.”

Now Baela is telling him to shut up and they’re bickering back and forth, but you aren’t listening. You take your phone out of your purse and open Instagram. You search for Aegon and find his account; his username is superstargaryen. You follow him. Within a minute, just long enough for you to click through one of his highlight reels—mostly pictures of the beach and trips to In-N-Out Burger—he follows you back. Then you receive a DM.

Aegon has typed: Brando says the apple is good

You giggle to yourself as you tap out a reply. Told you :)

Aegon responds: Or!!! All Minnesotans have no taste

And then he adds a few seconds later: I had to Google that word…Minnesotans…sounds fake

You reply: Please use Google to get me a job instead

He starts typing something, then stops and reacts with a laughing emoji instead. You pull a can of Diet Coke out of the fridge, wondering what he was going to say before he changed his mind.

Late that night, after a nine-hour shift at Cold Stone Creamery, you shower and crawl exhausted into bed wearing an oversized blue L.A. Dodgers t-shirt that you’re swimming in. You turn on your laptop and open YouTube, search for Aegon’s acting reels from ten years ago, fall asleep listening to his voice like the endless ethereal rush when you hold a seashell to your ear.