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Early November, That Year

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A fiery conversation between Simone, college sophomore and rising pro MMA star and Rebecca Meyers, Resident Advisor for a university in southern California and a talented MMA fighter in her own right, has led to this: heated, full contact MMA sparring sessions between Rebecca, her friends, Simone, and her gymmate Jamila. Rebecca’s invited everyone to the gym she and her friends train at, and the leather has flown.

Caught in the crossfire are Theresa and Jennifer, college students, friends to Simone, and Rebecca’s residents.

The last set of sparring rounds saw everyone who stepped up struggle eventually, and in the meantime Jen and Theresa have only previously boxed and are curious about trying mixed martial arts for the first time...

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Jennifer McCowan had more questions than answers swimming through her head at this moment. There was a starting point and an endpoint but only confusion in between. It didn't help that her teacher felt ridiculously, impossibly strong, and that every eye in a 10 radius was watching her flounder.

“Rebecca… can you show me again? The first bit… just… what?” The slender woman ran her hand up her forehead and swept a sweaty lock of green hair away from her face. She just wanted to get this right, to impress the older girls who’d deigned to give her the time of day.

“Sure thing, Jen.” The young blonde said with a winning smile. The pair stood up again and resumed fighting stances. At least until the college senior stopped to correct the budding fighter's stance. “Remember, don't stick your leg out like that. I know it's fine for boxing but…” and in one fluid motion the older girl crouched and shot forward, wrapping her arms around the flailing sophomore’s leg and hugging it tightly to her chest. “Here it's just asking to get grabbed and you totes don't want that.” The surly Resident Advisor slapped her resident's pale thigh playfully and backed off.

Jennifer blushed and muttered the advice to herself out loud as she tugged on her gloves; they felt almost nonexistent compared to the big bulky boxing gloves she was used to. Wiggling her fingers while training was still a novel experience.

“Try it on me now, k?” Rebecca waved her in, rousing the lanky brunette from her wild-eyed muttering.

Jen crouched, took a deep breath and crouched, trying her best to emulate her RA's pose. She lunged forward, arms ready and grasping, and locked them around Rebecca’s leg.

Holy shit, she’s got muscles.

Jen stared at the leg, tried to pull the limb up and towards her but it was like lifting a stone column. A tanned stone column. She redoubled her effort and gave it another heave until a hand slapped her on the back and pushed her away. The awkward sophomore stumbled and fell, looking up to see a smirking Rebecca shaking her head. “Don’t pull me towards you, Jen; put your chest on my leg and then take me with you when you stand up. Try it that way.”

Jennifer could feel her face reddening. She stood up quickly and put her hands up in front of her. She was certain everyone was laughing, whether she could see them or not.

This was stupid and she was stupid for trying and she should just leave and stop embarrassing herself and

A different hand on her shoulder this time. Then Kelsey’s warm smile.

“Hey, hey, Jen, deep breaths. You can totally do this. Just like learning to pivot when you threw that cross punch with your right hand. That was complicated then and you got it. You can totally do this. We’re all here rooting for you. Don’t think about the steps, think about that essay you haven’t written yet and let your body go to work” Kelsey whispered into her ear. The college senior had given Jen a crash course on boxing when she’d agreed to fight her roommate and those lessons had worked better than she’d ever thought they could. She’d almost won that fight.

Hell, maybe throwing Theresa around could be part of her revenge. She’d need someone to use this on afterwards

“Go get her, Meanstreak” Kelsey giggled, accentuating her peptalk with a playful slap on the ass before she walked away from the center of the ring and left tutor and pupil to finish their lesson. As Jennifer resumed her stance, she realized that wasn’t sure which ‘her’ Kelsey meant…

The next attempt had been better. The one after that more so. And finally, on the 4th attempt Jennifer McCowan wrapped her arms and torso around Rebecca’s leg, lifted, and slung her down to the ground. Jen followed her to the mat tentatively as the blonde tensed up and readied for more grappling on the mat.

“Yes! I did it! Hell yeah!” Jen exclaimed. It took her a moment to recognize Rebecca waving her in towards her.

“Great job…” Rebecca trailed off.

“Thanks! Wait… thanks?”

“Kinda” the older student teased. “So you got me down. Now what?”

“Now I guess I… hold you there?” Jennifer shrugged.

“That’s a start, yeah, but you could also try hitting me. Punch me, knee me, and try to hold me down while you do it.”

“That sounds kinda complicated…” The brunette lamented. The green streaks in her dark brown hair matched her eyes.

“Don’t worry, just give it a try. Come here.”

---

5 minutes later and Jennifer McCowan had successfully shown some semblance of grappling intuition. Rebecca Meyers had shown her a simple takedown, the theory of what to do when she successfully used it to drag her opponent to the floor, and even a nifty way to use that takedown when her and the girl she was fighting were all tangled up in the clinch. Though she’d only ever boxed to that point, the English major had shown excitement, interest where the subject of grappling was concerned.

Wrestling didn’t seem so scary after all. Even for a slim, lanky, awkward girl like her.

Now she needed someone to try it on for real. Jen immediately looked towards the wall where her roommate Theresa sat next to Simone and a woman Jen didn’t recognize. Simone and the new girl were both black, and the new girl was shaped kind of like Theresa: glasses, and cute, in a chubby, way too curvy kinda way, but the mysterious girl was shorter, darker, with thicker legs and big poofy hair. Jen recognized her as the one who’d choked Rebecca unconscious earlier but couldn’t remember her name.

This wasn't about her anyways.

Rebecca saw her tutee’s stare and called out for her. “Hey, Theresa! Wanna go a round with Jennifer? She doesn’t have anyone else to train with.”

Where Rebecca had called out on Jennifer’s behalf, Simone answered for Theresa.

“That’s fucked up, Malibu. How you give Jen a private session and then straight up sic her on T like that? That’s dirty.”

Everyone in the cage and several people outside it could see that the 5 minute sparring session that Rebecca and Simone had shared had done nothing to improve their relationship.

“Well, Theresa won their match, barely, so I thought Jen could use a little extra training session. It's only fair…” the green eyed senior gave an exaggerated shrug.

Simone wasn’t having it. “Nah… Theresa, stand up. I’m finna give you an… accelerated crash course in kickboxing. Just the basic fundamentals, with an emphasis on easy to apply principles and techniques. It'll be lit. I promise. We’ll take what you already know about boxing and just… bend it a little. The differences between them are mad intriguing to me.”

Theresa almost choked on her water. She’d hoped to escape this session unscathed but the past 90 seconds had murdered any hope of that. She stood up tentatively and faced Simone.

“…Sure?”

“Take your glasses off and put your gloves on” Simone deadpanned. “Goofy ass…” .

“...Oh!” Theresa said, reaching for her face and confirming that yes, her glasses were in fact still there. The nerdy sophomore was too dark to blush but tried her best anyways. She reached for her gloves, put them on, then touched her face, realized her glasses were still there, and finally took them off and flung them towards the corner of the cage where her new friend Jamila was sitting. She’d seen Jamila toss her glasses to Simone before her sparring session with Rebecca and wanted to look as cool as she had.

Unfortunately Theresa missed her target by a few feet and then sheepishly walked over, picked them up, and handed them to Jamila.

Not quite the intro I wanted… Lame…

Simone was waiting in her fighting stance, all smiles and bouncy, relaxed energy. Theresa approached tentatively, her stance tight, her steps heavy and plodding. Her MMA tutor couldn't resist a smirk, but that curdled as Theresa approached.

“Hold up; you're going to want the heavy shin guards for this...”

Theresa didn't like the thick foam shin guards very much: they were cumbersome and made her legs sweat but Simone probably knew what she was doing and so Theresa complied with only a few complaints. No sooner had the stocky neophyte resumed her stance than Simone lashed out and kicked her leg.

Theresa recoiled in pain and blurted out shot an expletive back at Simone, who merely stuck her tongue out. “And that's the difference between kickboxing and boxing. We're looking to avoid that.” Simone wisecracked. “So move your front leg back and widen your stance.” The physical sciences major turned to give Theresa a better view. Her chemistry labmate mimicked as best she could, but Simone couldn’t help but should out particular adjustments: widen this, bend that, move that there. After a minute Simone shrugged and kicked once again just to demonstrate that now Theresa’s leg was out of range.

“Great, now move with me.” Simone waved her on. Theresa approached, stuck between the sturdy, careful footwork she’d learned from Mary in order to box and Simone’s bouncy strafing. Simone moved like the kind of fighter Mary frequently griped about. She looked around:

If Mary wasn’t here, she wouldn’t mind Theresa trying something different, right?

Right?

“So, boxing gloves are huge, MMA gloves are small, so don’t try and block punches with your hands. Use your arms, or shoulders, or better yet keep moving and just don’t be there. Be anywhere else...” Simone explained. Teresa nodded as if she understood. She did understand, mostly, she thought. She was already used to using her arms and shoulders to block things, and the girls in the videos she’d seen seemed even more willing to clinch and hold each other, so that strategy should need to change too much. Moving though… that might take a while to sink in.

What direction where you supposed to move besides forwards, and sometimes back?

Her mind drifted back to the nickname Mary had given her: the muscle bound Mexican-American girl had taken to calling her “Cuddles” precisely for her habit of looking to clinch and hold and “hug” every time Theresa got punched hard enough. But what else was she to do, getting punched hurt and she wanted the other person to stop it!

She shook Mary’s taunts out of her head for now and tried to follow along with Simone’s next instruction.

“Thankfully your punches still work, so we’re not exactly starting from jump” Simone smiled, “but let's try and kick.” Simone’s body unwound like a coiled spring and her leg carved a screaming arc through the empty air in front of her. The stout boxer winced instinctively. Simone explained it as a basic “round kick,” from Muay Thai. Basic or not, the movement looked so complex that Teresa wasn't sure where to focus. Simone must have caught the look of wild-eyed terror in Theresa' eyes because the next time she tried that kick the result was a simpler looking motion that Teresa was grateful for. Jamila even stood up to demonstrate it for her as well.

She tried it in earnest, certain that she’d nailed it. Then she caught Simone’s squinting, confused, dissatisfied expression. “Wait what?” Theresa complained she tried again, filtering everything Simone had said and done through the Filipina slugger’s limited dexterity. “This might take a while” She heard Simone mutter. “Not bad; show me again! All the power comes from your hips, like a right hook. You got curves, Theresa; use that shit, girl!” Jamila called out in support.

Theresa’s next attempt softened Simone’s face a little but invited more “corrections,” and so she tried again. Theresa’s confidence grew as the pro fighter encouraged her.

I must be killing it so far

The brawler unwound another kick, careful to try and incorporate the new feedback. Whether it was the extra force she exerted, sweat on the mat, or the strange sensation of trying to move on one foot, physics conspired against her and she instead fell directly on her ass.

“Owwwww…”

The black girl almost stifled her laugh as she offered Theresa a hand up. “Yup. That’s about right. Welcome to Muay Thai. Now you’re one of us.” She joked. Theresa accepted the help, still rubbing her butt. She thought she heard a few snickers of laughter in the crowd but tried to ignore it.

Thankfully, Theresa’s next attempt didn’t end in physical comedy. She had to admit, there was something kind of cool about swinging your entire leg out like that, like a baseball bat. Simone had helped her figure out how to aim it, to throw it at legs and bodies, and what it felt like to actually land one. She thought she was ready to take on her roommate again until Simone upended her confidence with a single line.

“Great, now let’s put it all together.”

“What?”

“You can do them, now do them together.”

“Do we have to?”

Simone’s expression made it clear that this wasn’t optional, and Jamila yelled out her support. Theresa begrudgingly assented, rolling her broad shoulders and returning to her stance. Simone guided her through a series of punches, rolling that singular kick into the series like fruit into a pastry. The strikes weren’t so bad, but Simone insisted on so. much. Movement. To Theresa it felt like Simone never stopped moving, taking little steps or twists and turns between the punches and kicks. Just watching her was exhausting let alone mimicking it. But Theresa whined and complained and trudged through it until the curvy, athletic black girl pulled her into a hug.

“Great job,” she whispered in their embrace. “Now go out there and beat her ass. I’m rooting for you, T!”

As they released, Simone lamented that she’d hadn’t had enough time to do a intro on avoiding takedowns, but Jamila, not to mention Rebecca, complained so loudly that Simone backed off.

“Besides, if anyone’s doing a demo on ‘no touching,’ it’s me.” Jam started, adjusting her glasses and the hairband securing her massive puff of coiled hair.

“Can I help?” Kelsey teased, blowing a kiss across the cage and groping a pair of invisible breasts. The stout submission grappler visibly shuddered and prepared a retort before Rebecca raised her voice.

“Seriously though. You losers had all the time in the world to teach her or whatever. I wanna see Jen and Theresa go at it again. Last time was a lot of fun, but super raw, and I wanna see if their training did anything to improve that.”

The two sophomore roommates looked at each other, preparing to go at it again seriously for the first time since their boxing match.

“Let’s try this mixed martial arts thing, unless you’re scared.” Jennifer challenged

“As if, Jen. You’re going down for the count just like last time!” Her roommate countered.

Jennifer bristled at the callback. “Don’t forget I knocked you down first!”

“Yeah, but I got up; when you went down you stayed there. Wanna try again?”

As the two sophomores argued, their RA couldn’t contain her glee. “Oh fuck yeah; this is gonna be totes amazing.” She waited eagerly for the two neophytes to work themselves into a lather and actually hit each other with malicious intent. Fighting was always more fun with a bit of drama behind it, after all.

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Jennifer vs. Theresa Redux

Jennifer and Theresa approached, gear ready and tempers hot. Jamila looked back and forth between them while Kelsey pulled her phone from the corner and set a timer for 5 minutes.

“Being honest, you’re both pretty new to this, and a full contact session is almost certainly a bad, irresponsible idea, but hey, so is most of today. Why stop now? On the real: when I tell you to stop, or pause, or let go, or stand up, just shut up and do it, or I’ll choke you like I did Rebecca…” Jamila deadpanned with a wry smile. The blonde rolled her eyes and raised a middle finger in silent response. “I’d tell you more about how you’re still friends and shit but meh, just get this out of your system, beat each other up now, and makeup later…” The bespectacled grappler shook her head as the two neophytes wandered into striking range and started trading leather…

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Mary Ramirez checked her phone. The unread texts from ‘Becca got progressively angrier. She hadn't responded to any of them; she'd told Rebecca that she had class when the blonde had first informed her of this escapade. Angry texts weren't gonna change that.

Yeah, I’m late. I told you I had class till 11:30, slut, but you had just had to have this stupid little session now, huh? Whatever Rebecca.

The college senior was still wearing the T-shirt and jogging shorts she’d worn to class that day as she walked into the familiar gym. She gave the guy behind the front counter a cursory nod and immediately headed towards the back. She’d hoped to find them in the boxing ring and sighed when all the commotion came from the cage instead. Mary muttered an expletive and hefted her gym bag on her shoulder as she approached.

“Where the hell were you, slut?” Rebecca challenged as her friend strolled up nonchalantly.

“Where I told you I’d be, bitch. Some of us actually attend our classes here.” Mary countered as she dropped her red gym bag and rifled through it. “So it’s small gloves today, eh? Typical. Qué lastima: I go through all the trouble of teaching that poor girl to box like a real woman just so you two can come by and ruin it with your ‘mixed martial arts?’” Mary said that phrase like it was a dirty word. “It’s like Shannon all over again…”

The mention of that name prompted Kelsey to shoot Mary an icy glare. The new arrival returned the tense, wordless stare before Rebecca interrupted Mary with a playful shove.

“Whoa; I can’t possibly be to blame if Shannon found out that she enjoys being the one getting squeezed, bent, and slammed.” ‘Becca shrugged coldly. “It’s totes not my fault that most of the action is MMA rather than boxing: the internet doesn't wanna watch two girls make out while wearing mittens.”

“Ugh, that's the point: I don't wanna make out with anyone...” Mary complained as she looked on.

“Not until they’re bleeding and whimpering…” the sultry blonde protested.

Mary answered that accusation with a smile before changing the subject. “Wow: they look even worse here than boxing. It’s like watching two kids flailing in a ball pit.”

“Yeah, like you trying to wrestle.” Kelsey sniped.

“Or you trying to box, puta sucia.” Mary fired back.

“Ladies… don’t make me play peacemaker.” Rebecca smiled ruefully. “You know how poorly it suits me…”

---

Theresa’s eyes watered and her cheek stung, but she wasn’t going to stop now. She had to keep moving in.

Simone’s warning about the difficulty of blocking punches with MMA gloves had proved prescient: her roommate had tagged her twice in the mouth so far without Theresa offering much in the way of a response. She pursued her green haired roommate across the cage, hands up, and successfully parried the next punch. These gloves had a lot less padding than the boxing gloves she was used to, and every punch stung a little more. Jennifer bounced in front of her in that loose stance of hers, firing off punch after punch. Some missed. Some landed on her gloves. The rest hurt. The voluptuous Filipina’s face stung but she just needed to close the gap and wipe the smile of her skinny roommate's face.

---

Rebecca and Kelsey watched the rookies with rapt attention, trading looks back and forth: there was a vicious smile creeping across Jennifer’s face, growing wider with each unanswered punch.

“Oh my god, she's totes enjoying this…” Rebecca murmured.

“I know right? That's ‘Meanstreak’ for you. Theresa better watch out.” Kelsey watched the woman she’d taught you box a few weeks ago score with a crisp jab.

“Everyone better watch out. I can't wait to get her back here for the next Friday session, Kelsey. She's gonna kill.” the blonde beamed.

“Sounds like you've found a new project, ‘Becca. I can't imagine Katie will be too happy to hear that though” The slender fighter vividly remembered the last woman Rebecca had seen potential in, and what she was up to now.

“She had her chance. She knows what she did.” Rebecca spat.

---

Jennifer’s fists kept flying until the stout brawler answered back with a heavy right hand to Jennifer’s pale stomach and her roommate backed off for a bit. Theresa wanted to chase her until she heard Simone’s voice saying how her kicks were longer than her punches. That… made sense to her.

On the next exchange the Long Beach native threw a jab that just missed but then followed it with the round kick she’d learned minutes earlier. She was almost surprised when it connected with her lanky roommate’s hip, painting a grimace where a smirk had been. Comforted, Theresa charged ahead, digging a wide hook into her roommate’s body and then kicking her again. The rotation of the kick was still novel, and she only managed to catch Jen’s calf that time, but it was something!

The curvy brawler walked toward Jennifer with impunity, daring her lithe roommate to stop her. To her surprise, Jen obliged. The Seattle-born sophomore dashed toward her, eager to tie up those wrecking ball fists. Jennifer grabbed one of her roommate’s wrists but ate a pair of right hooks before Theresa broke her grasp, sending Jennifer stumbling to the mat. Undeterred, Jenn rose and charged. This time she started with Theresa’s right hand, punched the voluptuous brawler in her face a few times, and corralled her other arm after a brief struggle, a loud complaint, and several more punches to her side.

No crop tops for me tomorrow

Whatever, now she had her. The sophomore tried to recreate the exact motions that Rebecca had shown her earlier and sure enough, she lifted Theresa’s thick thigh and drove the Filipina biology student onto the mat, making sure to try and land directly on her. “Hope I didn't hurt you too much, Theresa; ready to give up? It only gets worse from here” she menaced.

“Get bent, Jen. This doesn't even hurt. You're just sharp and pointy…” her curvy roommate spat back.

Jennifer McCowan stopped for a second to think: she was still on top of her squirming roommate, but..

What next? All of this grappling stuff was new to her. They just let you stand back up in boxing.

Jennifer tried to remember the cool stuff Rebecca had done to Simone. Someone inside the cage yelled “Hit her!” and that was enough. Still tangled up with her thicker roommate, she leaned heavily on her and dug short hooks into Theresa’s stomach, drawing a grunt from her roommate each time. She remembered Rebecca moving around until she was sitting on Simone; the wiry brunette tried to extricate herself and follow suit. Instead, Theresa clutched her roommate closely, leaving Jen with little to do except squirm and throw ineffective punches. Then she slipped an arm free and remembered the one tactic both of her mentors had used in their rounds.

“Stop grabbing my breasts you perv! Cut it out, Jennifer, that's weird” Theresa groaned.

“Mmm, make me!” Her roommate cooed, her hand still cupping and rubbing Theresa’s impressive chest.

“C'mon… that's not… quit it! St- oww!” Her waning protests were pierced by a sharp groan when Jennifer transitioned from fondling her roommate to punching any soft spot she could find. Theresa immediately changed tack and wrapped her arms and legs entirely around the boundary challenged white woman.

---

Jamila looked at the two scrabbling novices and shot a look of confusion and disgust at Simone, who replied with a silent shrug.

“Yup, she was definitely trained by Kelsey alright…” Jamila remarked bitterly before interrupting the cuddle fest and helping the two fighters back to their feet.

“Neither of you actually know what you’re doing down there, so let's stand up and try again. This is mad depressing…”

---

Restarting the session had a sobering effect on the pair, who approached tentatively, neither willing to make a mistake. Jennifer resumed her strategy of long, leaning jabs, menacing her roommate. She found modest success, tempered by her flagging stamina. They traded there in the center of the cage: Jen continued to set the pace with long lancing punches while Theresa mixed kicks into her deliberate, heavy, close range offense. Jen tried to tie up Theresa every time she approached, forcing her stout, shorter roommate to spend time and energy shaking her off. As they broke from another clinch though, the Long Beach native raised her gloves, leaned away from a jab, and ducked under a particularly languid followup from Jennifer.

Time slowed down for Jennifer as she watched her roommate slip beneath her outstretched arm. The sophomore replayed her mentor’s unheeded advice about proper punching form and how to prevent this exact scenario. She promised to remember it next time. For now she was helpless and could only watch Theresa unload a clenched fist right into her unprotected jaw.

Woah. Wow. No thank you.

Jennifer’s vision blurred briefly and she saw stars, or bright lights, or something. Whatever she was, she hoped to not make it a frequent trip. She brought her hands to her face; she really just needed a moment to stop and clear out the cobwebs.

Just a second, please.

Then a troubling realization hit her harder than the punch had:

Goddamit, my stupid fatass roomate is gonna knock me out again! How? Is she just better than me? What did I do wrong? I don't wanna look like a loser in front of Kelsey and ‘Becca.

Jennifer shut her eyes tight and screamed internally while she awaited the knockout blow that would usher her into dreamland.

She heard a loud thump and assumed it was the sound of a fist colliding with her face, accompanied by raucous yells.

I don't… hurt? I feel nothing? Am I unconscious? Is this what that feels like?

The humanities major opened her eyes and instantly understood: Theresa hadn't just missed, she'd flubbed another kick entirely and fallen on her ass again. Jennifer definitely heard someone in crowd yell derisively about “fucking newbies” and blushed in shame.

We probably do look pretty stupid right now.

She dove on top of her roommate anyways, fists flying; this was her chance to turn straw into gold. She landed a few vicious shots until a panicked Theresa caught one of her arms and bucked her hips wildly. The pair rolled over on the mat, a tangled mess of flailing limbs desperate for dominance. Theresa finally ended up on top and elected to catch her breath instead of return the abuse. She pressed her voluptuous torso onto her roommate and tried to pin her down enough to keep the Seattle hipster from catching her with anything substantial.

“Get your fat tits off my face!” Jennifer menaced

“Make me! Or better yet, grow a pair!” Theresa spat back. “What happened to you trying to grab them earlier? I’m just giving you want.”

Their erstwhile referee wondered whether to cut this session short and intervene: this had steadily devolved into something ill-natured and malicious, not to mention moves like that still made her uncomfortable. She struggled to believe Simone that these two were roommates and friends when the gloves were off.

Moments before Jamila called a halt, Jennifer squirted free of her roommate and instantly tried to tackle Theresa again, dragging the thick Filipina striker back to the mat. This time, Theresa managed to wrap her legs entirely around her roommate's torso. Jamila smiled; she could recognize a closed guard in her sleep. Believe it or not, Theresa had finally made a good decision on the ground: from there she'd taken away most of Jennifer’s methods to hurt her. It was a pity Theresa didn't know a submission or a sweep from that position on her back: she had Jennifer right where she wanted her if only she knew she wanted her there. As it was all Theresa was doing was squeezing Jennifer's slim waist between her ample thighs…

Remind me to explain “guard position” in Jiu Jitsu to her.

The pair struggled there in Theresa’s grappling guard until the alarm on Kelsey Liao's phone announced the end of the round.

The pair stopped and shared a tense stare. It would be a few more seconds before Theresa actually let go, or before Jennifer would offer to help Theresa to her feet. They stood and regarded each other warily before the plump fighter caught her roommate in a great big hug.

“Nice job! That was crazy intense, Jennifer. So cool!”

Jennifer responded in kind, the ire draining from her voice.

“That would have been so cool if…”

“I know right? Or if…”

“Right? Next time…”

Their excited exchange was interrupted by Simone draping an arm across either of them, congratulating them. The pro fighter was obviously excited by what she'd seen, amateur though it was: Jennifer’s jab was developing into an actual threat, and Theresa ducking under her cross was brilliant. Simone joked about Theresa’s kicking prowess before Jamila grabbed Theresa away.

“So you know that part at the end where you had your legs around her?” Jamila exclaimed. “That's good! That's guard! That's Jiu Jitsu! I can show you what to do next; you can actually win the fight from down there next time.”

“Wait, I can win while I'm on my back? Like how?”

“Choke her unconscious! Threaten to break her arm! Get creative. Come to Binary Star and I’ll show you myself.” The excited grappler offered.

“That's Simone’s gym right? I think she mentioned it.” Theresa’s eyes were alight with possibility.

“Hell yeah! It's lit! There’s so much you can learn, Theresa. Come check us out!”

While they conversed excitedly, Jennifer's two mentors were congratulating her on how quickly she'd actually pulled off a takedown. Jennifer couldn't hide how much she'd enjoyed the feeling of being on top of another woman, raining down punches. It was different than anything she felt while boxing.

Rebecca commented on her strength, or lack there off, and the freckled brunette agreed; maybe this would be the thing to get her in the gym for something else besides yoga and cardio…

The only woman unimpressed by their showing made her opinions clear to the rest of the cage’s occupants. Mary Ramirez wasn't one for tact or softened sentiments: the two girls looked new, green, clumsy. Why try to learn all the facets of some new endeavor when they had barely scratched the surface of boxing? As far as Mary was concerned, MMA was a fad, a sideshow to give talentless sluts like Kelsey something to do. The surly Latina made sure to call out her mentee Theresa for her sad attempt at grappling and her bouncy new stance.

“You box right?....” Simone asked her, trailing off when she realized she didn't know this new woman’s name.

“Mary. Mary Guadalupe De La Cruz Sanchez Ramirez” the boxer recited proudly. “And yes, I fucking box. Who the hell are you supposed to be?” Mary stepped to Simone, a mere inches from her face and looked her in the eyes. The young black woman let a wide smile blossom on her face. Theresa watched the staredown horrified that a fight might break out here and now while Kelsey rolled her eyes at Mary’s hyper-aggressive machismo.

“I'm the only one here the world cares about, lowkey. I'm the problem everyone’s tryna solve. I'm not the plug but I am handing out that work. I knock women out, professionally. I'm Simone Waterson. If you don't know, you prolly don't matter.” Simone beamed, clearly enjoying herself. “You talk a lot of shit, Mary, about boxing and the real way to fight. Well I don't wrestle; I'm a kickboxer. Put up or shut up. Come catch these hands, same day delivery.”

“Pause. Hold up, Simone” Her bespectacled training partner stepped between them, a light in her brown eyes. “Let's you and me go a round then.” Jamila offered to the muscular boxer. Mary had a few inches on her but was significantly shorter, thicker than Kelsey was, and Jazz already had a plan for the fight building in her head. “I don't get a chance to work with boxers like you often, and I'm curious. Besides, there's way more to Jiu Jitsu than just laying on people.”

“Bring it, fatass. You wouldn't last a round. And then afterwards you can call the coast guard to roll you out of my gym and back into the ocean…” Mary challenged, never one to refuse a fight.

“Ehh, Rebecca ran her mouth too. She said basically the same thing and somehow ended up unconscious.” Jamila shrugged. ”So I'm not gonna worry too hard. But I will give you this: if you're looking for someone to rub your ass and nibble on your ear, I'm the wrong one. I'm more of a ‘punch you in the face and bend your arms in ways they shouldn't,’ kinda girl. But I’m nice, and I’m nice with it, and I'll let you know when to tap out to avoid serious injury.” Jamila pushed her glasses up her face and began stretching in preparation for another training session.

“Ha, so you're a warrior. None of this softcore shit. I can respect that. I'm still gonna lay you out, but I'll respect you while I'm doing it.” The aggressive pugilist grinned like a knife while she slid on her MMA gloves.

The next session had officially been decided. Maybe these fighters Rebecca had mentioned might provide some fun after all…

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#Writing #Series #FeintingSpells #Fiction #Action #Fight #MartialArts

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In the ramshackle city of Quetta, once a prosperous hub of economic activity, now more akin to a dilapidated frontier town because of the devastating earthquake of 1935, life is viewed through a very narrow schism. The good old days, before 1935, before the earthquake that ruined almost all of its infrastructure, killing over 30,000 to boot, and the bad days since. Add a heaping dose of doom and gloom for every year post founding of the once Dominion, now Islamic Republic, of Pakistan in 1947. In this corner of the world, people tend to believe hope was locked inside Pandora's Box for a different reason entirely. For hope is an evil thing, just as rotten as the rest of the inhabitants of that contraption.

We now move forward in time, from the once hopeful times of Independence Day circa 1947, the hope of a new nation and better days to come, until we hit the 2010s – but we do not see any development. The economy has stagnated, and the people are worse off than they were before. There is only disillusionment and deprivation. Added to the box of despair and misery is the missing person phenomenon, state sanctioned abductions are now the norm.

We now present for your consideration, the tale of a journalist, seeking gainful employment. One Bilal Mehngal, who works as an honorary journalist in Noshki, a correspondent for a newspaper called the Independent, the kind that you won't find at a news stand, or even with a seller that carries most newspapers. The Independent did not pay him a salary, and eking out an existence per story covered was miserable.

Picture a journalist, in need of money, and picture the Pakistan army, the country's most successful business enterprise. Picture, if you can, that journalist trying to make his way out of the quagmire of poverty and squalor.....but the people of Quetta are people of few means, and life treats them just as apathetically as it does Bilal.

Picture then, his euphoria, when the army itself wanted to hire a tailor on a long term basis, the most gainful employment of all and Bilal just happened to have a background in tailoring, due to having worked with his older brother, who was a tailor. Lucky break, you would say, and you would be wrong if you were at all familiar with what happened in Balochistan.

In order to stitch for the army, our friend the tailor had to work within the garrison, an extremely secure, highly regulated environment. He and his son were the only civilians there, everyone else was from the army.

Now picture if you will, the chain of command, and the army's officer cadre. Picture if you will, a baboon smoking a cigar, and drinking whisky, picturing himself as the very height of culture. His qualifications? A useless Bachelor's, and a schooling just as pathetic. His patience? None. These people only care about results. And when something bad happens, they want a name. Failure to supply one means an end to your career. In Pakistan, everyone is a wolf, but also a sheep that hopes to survive by throwing you to the wolves instead.

Now picture, if you will, the tension in Quetta. A city where the number of abductions and missing people continues to spiral. The abductors? The ones within those garrisoned walls.

Picture our tailor, and his son, happily working at their station, when a soldier is shot at. The time? 6:30 PM.

The soldiers of the army are just as savage as their masters, only they put on no airs. A name is needed. A name is given, the name of one of the only two civilians in the garrison at the time.

The civilian was the tailor's son.

It did not matter that he was with his father in the shop, or that they had proof of his presence there, or even a register logging him as leaving the shop at 7:15 PM, and not a minute before.

What matters is what was said by one uniform to another.

And so, our tailor, once seeking gainful employment, now stands outside the Quetta press club, lost in the sea of fellow Baloch faces seeking something even more elusive than hope, justice.

45 disappeared, 48 killed. A headline for the ages in any other nation. But for the Baloch people? Just another month. August, 2022, in fact, and almost every other month is just the same.

The citizenry of Pakistan, however, may as well have prosopagnosia, for they see no difference between him, and countless others. There is a reason the Baloch lock hope away.

Somewhere in Peshawar, in a lesser known Government Hospital

Dr. Fawltea entered his domain, the forgotten Medical E ward, like a king finally bestowing his magnanimous grace upon one of those lesser-visited and more neglected hamlets. Or, to give it a more local flavor, a police officer visiting one of those streets he knew was frequented by smugglers, drug dealers, and those he hated the most: fruit vendors; but those vendors would not sour his mood on that particular day because he had gotten a brand-new motorcycle as a gift from the state. A gift, in this context, being a bike he'd taken a fancy to at the impound, removed the plates off of, and claimed as his own. Similarly, nothing would sour Fawltea's mood today; not the faulty oxygen lines, the lack of essential drugs, the misplaced crash carts or even the outdated monitors that were well past it, their green phosphorescent glow drowning out any information a doctor might glean from them.

Not even Gul Abad, the technician who liked to pretend he was a trainee from some other specialty, could ruin his day. He had been a Cardiologist, Pulmonologist, and even an Emergency Medicine specialist (a specialty that wasn't even recognized in Peshawar, such was his dedication to the role). He'd argued many a time with Gul Abad in the past, but, like others before him, Dr. Fawltea too had given up, realizing he was just one of many; there were similar characters in Surgery, Radiology, Pathology, and even the blood bank, for some reason.

“Gul Abad is not just a person, he is an idea, and these ideas often have their own clinics on the outskirts of town” had become his new go-to line whenever any new doctors asked what his deal was.

Why anyone would want to be a blood bank officer, Dr. Fawltea could not fathom, but then, dear reader, he was not aware of Gul Abad's favorite maxim: “There is always money in the blood bank.” Gul Abad's role model, a notoriously corrupt doctor who had dodged jail more times than Pakistan had had IMF bailout programs (25 at the time of writing) had bestowed this wisdom unto him. In Gul Abad's view, this saint among men would've probably cheated the IMF and led Pakistan to heights hitherto unseen. In the views of more pragmatic people, such as his family, friends, etc. he would've taken a few bad loans and absconded with the money.

While Gul Abad had been named after his father's favorite place, Dr. Fawltea was sadly not named by his father after that esteemed personage, Basil Fawlty, who managed Fawlty Towers. But he told people that anyway, making sure to look at them with a derisive eye so that they would not ask questions about why the timeline didn't match up, him being older than Fawlty Towers and all. This benevolent shepherd (or so he fancied himself—but then he also fancied himself a cardiologist, even though he had specialized in internal medicine) of that godforsaken flock, which constituted today's trainees (they did not even know how to read ECGs, the only one that had shown any interest was that annoying Gul Abad), annoyed him to no end. But nothing could ruin his mood today; he had finally managed to get his hands on the holy grail of holy grails: a VIP. VIP in this here context does not mean Very Important Person; it means Very Important Patient.

Patients, you see, had varying levels of importance for Dr. Fawltea (and many other Pakistani doctors) depending on what they had to offer. A poor patient? Pointless. The milk of human kindness, however much remained in Dr. Fawltea, compelled him to take a cursory look at those poor downtrodden and help them, but that is all. Those middle-class, annoying patients who only asked questions, on the other hand – ingrates, the lot of them – were of no use to him. He disliked them the most. VIPs, on the other hand, were patients that were connected to the halls of power; they could be businessmen, criminals (in Pakistan, the Venn Diagram of such an association would be extremely overlapping; some have tried to find that rare creature, a businessman that is not a criminal, and have turned every rock up and down for said cause, but to no avail), politicians (much like businessmen, they also overlap with criminals, and like our criminals, they overlap with businessmen too), and of course, the unicorn: a high-ranking army officer. Dr. Fawltea was dreaming of luxurious luncheons at golf courses, days whiled away driving those cute little golf carts all over the course. Perhaps he would even throw down a fishing rod or two in the water – he didn't care that there were no fish. He was due some much needed introspection.

He entered the break room, not at all surprised to find only two of his sheep there. He did not know how many there were in total; only God knew that because the system was a mess, and over half of them were ghost employees who never showed up, except when they needed to change their attendance records – a little bribery went a long way. Within the lounge, there was that new fellow who looked like he was dressed as a seller for a book fair at some old bookshop that had long since run out of funds and was hoping to glean some extra sympathy from buyers; he was talking about how computers were unfairly priced for the umpteenth time. He was perpetually on the night shift, and judging by his pallor Fawltea was beginning to suspect the fellow was some sort of lesser vampire.

Sitting on that twin green sofa across the table was that famous professor's daughter. Her father had a master's in several domains, and she too claimed expertise in said matters. Why she had decided to go into medicine also baffled Dr. Fawltea, he had seen her discuss everything but. She was, as ever, reading her book out loud, perhaps lost in the delusions of being a person of lordly caliber, much as Fawltea himself was. Dr. Fawltea wondered if she too viewed the other doctors as her flock; it certainly seemed like it. He did not like the idea of competition from a junior doctor, but, being related to not one but two brigadiers on her mother's side, Dr. Fawltea knew better than to say anything to her. A harsh word from him would lead to many harsh beatdowns in a cell. 'Sticks and stones will break my bones, and words will never save me,' he reminded himself. Feigning polite interest, for one can always do with being on good terms with someone related to the army, he smiled and asked, 'And what are we reading today?'”

The Professor, as she was affectionately nicknamed (not that she was aware they called her that), smiled back and pointed to the cover of the book dismissively, as if Dr. Fawltea was not worthy of her time. It was another one of Adam Smith's works; of course it was. Moral Sentiments or something. And all he could do, in lieu of her powerful family, was to nod and smile as she continued to read it out loud, as if this were a Class 3 (for my American audience, think third grade; for my British audience, I am not familiar with your form system rannygazoo) English lesson.

She spoke stentoriously: “It is to be observed accordingly, that we are still more anxious to communicate to our friends our disagreeable than our agreeable passions, that we derive still more satisfaction from their sympathy with the former than from that with the latter, and that we are still more shocked by the want of it.” The fellow who looked like a down-on-his-luck bookseller nodded and obliged, Fawltea was not sure if it was due to genuine interest or simply what her status commanded. Fawltea felt bad for the poor sod, it was clear he'd not slept all night, and now this. It was all Fawltea could do to keep himself from yelling something akin to “Go on, you vampire, go into the sunlight and end your torment.”

All this scene really needed – Fawltea thought in disdain – was a harsh, dissonant violin to make it more annoying, or perhaps a sad piano piece to drive home the lesser vampire's agony. “Shall we start the round then?” Dr. Fawltea asked, though it was more of a command than anything.

“After this chapter,” replied the Professor, as if she were the head consultant and Fawltea the trainee medical officer.

Fawltea sat down to drink some tea, wondering if any of the other rascals he supervised would bother showing up to today's round, when the Hardy Boyses entered the lounge as if it were their own backyard, bringing a smile to his face. He called them that because they reminded him of Frank and Joe, two characters from his favorite book series. Always together, practically like brothers, always off having an adventure. Normally, this sounded great, but when their adventures (the Hardy Boyses in a brawl with the local Snooker Club toughs was a particular favorite of Fawltea's) happened on the hospital's time and dime – that is to say, they were being paid to treat patients and not beat up hoodlums that darkened the doors of the local Snooker club, or go hunting or fishing or whatever else they found to occupy their already paid-for time – it made quite a lot of administrative trouble. But Fawltea had always idolized such adventurous lads, having been denied that feeling in his own school years. He was now living vicariously through them, much like the books had allowed him to live vicariously through Frank and Joe. If that stupid deputy sub-inspector police were going to make sure his nephew Gul Abad stayed, then he, Fawltea, would also fight to the death for his Hardy Boyses, who had taken him fishing, hunting, and even horse riding, besides the usual spot of cricket. Sadly, they did not have access to that hanging garden of Babylon, the local golf course. He could simply go and pay a rather exorbitant sum, but Fawltea had always found it hard to part with his money.

“Allo allo bruva,” said Frank, whose hair was in more disarray than the traffic in Peshawar, but not so bad as to be likened to the traffic in Karachi or Lahore. “Hey, bro,” said Joe, who had used more hair gel than a baboon would on a particularly bad hair day. Both of them fist-bumped Fawltea. This, right here, was the dream. For a moment, he too had forgotten he was their boss, and he was just one of the lads. There was a triumphant smirk on his face, and in his own mind, he was bathed in radiance, others watching on, jealous that he was a member of this exclusive boys' club. How Fawltea wished they were off in some long lost Amazonian jungle, finding lost treasures and thwarting devious pit vipers as they made their way to the top of a sacrificial altar just in time to save the world from a permanent eclipse. But before he knew it, they were gone again. Dammit, he had not gotten a chance to get any new stories from them, his daydreams were too vivid sometimes.

The Professor's sermon on Adam Smith's treatise regarding moral sentiments continued for a good while, during which Fawltea pondered many things. He wondered when exactly the heat death of the universe would occur, if today’s youth were interested in those old Doctor Who radio dramas, and why his car had such particularly bad mileage. As a matter of fact, it was because his driver used it as a taxi during the time Fawltea was busy working.

As he continued to ponder, another trainee he was afraid of entered. The first words she uttered were: “Hi Benazir, hi Hamlet. I'm well past 3000 now!” and then she made a peace sign. The fellow who looked like the world's most forlorn bookseller (Fawltea could see why he had the Hamlet moniker, it was easy to visualize the boy being plagued by several ghosts, though he would've gone with some lesser known vampire himself) mumbled congratulations. The Professor (aptly nicknamed Benazir, after the former Prime Minister who was the first woman to lead a Muslim majority government) also nodded her acknowledgment. Unfortunately for Dr. Fawltea, this trainee was not related to any army officers by any degrees of separation; she was as close to the establishment as one could possibly be – both of her parents were high-ranking officers. Why she was in a government hospital like this and not a military hospital, he couldn't fathom, but it possibly had something to do with the higher salary and the lack of consequences. All one had to do was be in the right place at the right time, and they could perform operations well outside their own domain. Fawltea himself had done a few appendectomies and exploratory laparotomies out of sheer curiosity, and had even botched a few cardiac surgeries.

While looking at her, most would see a normal girl. Not Fawltea, though. He always saw her flanked by two phantasms, both famous generals of the past, who looked at him threateningly, daring him to say anything so they could toss him into a jail cell for good, their mustaches brimming with the arrogance of a thousand suns. At least she wouldn't oppress him like The Professor, Fawltea consoled himself as he watched the girl sit down, bring out a MacBook (which, by the way, is asking for trouble in a government hospital, dear reader, as someone will invariably want to snatch it) and start watching a movie with her fancy Bluetooth thingamajigs that fit in the ear, they were called earpods or something of the sort. Fawltea did not like how they made him feel; he was an old-fashioned sort and preferred old-school headphones. He noticed she watched at least two, sometimes three or four movies at work, and he wondered just how many films she must have seen. The number must be in the thousands. One day, perhaps, he'd talk cinema with her – always useful to have contacts in the army, after all.

A cursory look told him she was watching The Breakfast Club, the irony of which was not lost on Fawltea. His own ward, once a well disciplined unit that ran with the cold, calculated efficiency of a machine when he was a trainee here, had turned into a recreational club of sorts under his own command. It seemed as if she were mocking his very being, by watching that movie.

Having given up on conducting a morning round, some but not all of his good mood soured like your typical fruit vendor's stock in the suburbs of Hayatabad, Peshawar. Fawltea had decided the hangdog bookseller would be carrying out today’s orders. He did not like to call Frank and Joe and ask them to cover their allotted beds, for he did not want to seem uncool. They would say something like, “Never figured you for a stooge,” and he would no longer be one of the boys, merely a toad, or whatever slang was hip these days.

As much as he hated that bloke who kept gabbing on about how Pakistan would have its first guillotine soon, the revolution being nigh, the bourgeoisie finally coming out and making the nation their own, Fawltea realized he was missing him today. His arguments with The Professor about Communism, Socialism, Economics, Philosophy, and the like usually ended up with the cozy, almost café-esque atmosphere so prevalent here right now going up in flames, and everyone marching out to start the round without Fawltea having to say anything. Come to think of it, this was the first day he’d been absent. Communist or no, Fawltea had suddenly become an admirer of the man, and after a few phone calls that went unanswered, Fawltea had realized that this Tartan Check sweater wearing patriot had probably been picked up for good. Others had warned the fellow not to go on posting exposés about the army’s various businesses, but he had not taken those warnings to heed. Fawltea wondered if he should perhaps ask the girl whose parents were high-ranking officers to have a word with them about Mr. Tartan Check, but then he remembered what had happened to all those people who had become missing persons simply because they were searching for another, and decided against it. He poured himself a cup of tea and drank it in remembrance, hoping Mr. Check would return alive someday.

The “café” that the doctor's lounge had become now had two happy faces on the green sofa towards the left – one reading her book out loud, the other watching a movie on her Mac with her Bluetooth thingamajigs – and two downcast faces on the right: the fellow who looked like a woebegone bookseller, and Fawltea, who was sure the former was going to print out a few posters of Adam Smith (on the hospital's dime, of course) and throw a few darts at them. As things stood currently, Fawltea wanted to do so himself; perhaps this could be a bonding moment. It would be far better than brooding at graveyards, or whatever it was this gloomy vampire undertaker did in his free time.

As for Frank and Joe, Fawltea speculated they had probably embarked on their next adventure, and had just been stopped by the police for carrying all that vodka near GT Road. Alcohol was illegal in Pakistan and usually carried the threat of jail, but even the police officer had fallen for their charisma, wanting so badly to be one of the lads that he ended up escorting them in his own car so that no one would stop them. They seemed like rich, well-off boys, so the officer knew no good would come of arresting them. He had a penchant for good vodka anyway; might as well make friends with people who could source the damn thing. They probably sang Pashto songs as they traveled to the River View hotel, where the plan was to drive the police car into the sea or some such. Yes, it seemed like the sort of thing they would do on any given day; at least, in Fawltea's opinion. Outside that world of dreams, however, Frank and Joe were just playing snooker at a newer, lesser-known club, as was their custom, so that they would not become too well known as hustlers.

God, Fawltea missed Nancy Drew, as addicted as she was to reading true crime books, she could be trusted to check up on the patients and make sure they were all getting the right medication. But she had since made her way to far off shores, and Fawltea had not been able to find anyone else with that sense of responsibility. Now she had been replaced by a Veronica Mars, who only cared about what Olivia Rodrigo was up to and the like. “They're all doomed anyway, they're living in Pakistan.” Veronica would say nonchalantly, before going back to her phone, refusing to check up on any of the patients. Were she not some higher up bureaucrat's daughter, she too would be walking the plank on his ship, but instead she was busy making all kinds of playlists for her musically uncultured colleagues.

As Fawltea continued to wallow in despair, the clock, which had struck 9 (and 8 before, and 7 before that, and so on), struck 10, and he realized he had waited over 90 minutes for Adam Smith’s sermon to end. Just then, Gul Abad entered, and the first thing he did was ask when the round was going to start. As much as Fawltea despised the fellow, he wanted to sing his praises for the interruption. But sadly for Fawltea, no one else heard Gul Abad. Before Fawltea could say anything, Gul Abad seized the opportunity and declared, “Don't worry, I'll conduct the round myself.” Did he just conjure a lab coat out of thin air? Fawltea was flabbergasted, but before he could say anything, Gul Abad had bolted faster than The Flash when he needed to mess with the fabric of time itself.

Fawltea called his Assistant Professor, wondering why the AP had not arrived. “Pakistan vs Netherlands hockey match today, mate, can't be bothered.” was all he got. Fawltea muttered more curses under his breath, wishing he were part of some military outfit — then he’d like to see how anyone would dare disobey or misbehave as they were now. Still, he had to begrudgingly give the man some credit, here he was supporting the flickering flame of a once glorious hockey empire. The jokers that sat before Fawltea had no idea how glorious Pakistan's hockey team had once been in the 70s and the 80s, winning four world cups.

“You, come with me. Don't just sit around. It's time for the round,” Fawltea motioned to the boy, who looked like a heartbroken bookseller whose wares had drowned due to a leak while he had already been weighed down by a suffocating debt. Or a vampire that had just arrived at a blood bank for a feast, only to be hit with a flood of sunlight. Afraid of getting in trouble with his supervisor, the depressed vampire started to get up, only to be chided for it.

“Sit down, you idiot, don't get up.” The Professor glared angrily at him; he was now exuding the vibe of a practically hopeless bookseller whose store had burned down, and it was beginning to look like he would cry.

Then, she shot an angry look at Fawltea, dropping her Adam Smith for the moment. This did not bode well.

“And just why does he have to obey you? We don't have to do anything you say. We're doctors, we're supposed to be independent. We'll examine patients on our own time. Why don't you stick to your job, and let us do ours? It's not like this is an office, and you're our boss.” She huffed with the kind of rage usually seen in a tiger disturbed from enjoying its usual meal of daily villager, with a side of rabbit.

As a matter of fact, he was precisely that. They were trainees, and the whole point of training was to do as you were told by your supervisor. But these new trainees weren’t even interested in following basic protocols. Suddenly, Fawltea realized just how brave the Tartan Check doctor was for taking on these establishment prats, for he could not bring himself to do the same and risk the army's wrath. Even a lowly captain could make you disappear forever, never mind someone related to brigadiers. It was all he could do to stop his hands from shaking.

Nodding and saying, “Sorry, ma'am,” because he was reminded of his particularly harsh History teacher, and because his paranoia insisted on it, he left the doctor's lounge. He was consoled by the fact that, for the gloomy insomniac, listening to more Adam Smith was a fate far worse than any that could befall him during a morning round.

Fawltea started to make his way to the private room where his VIP patient was. Always best to butter these fellows up and what not. He made his way past the main counter where over 20 people were queued up. The two doctors on duty there were playing Tekken Tag on the PC used to register and discharge patients, and the crowd of attendants in the queue seemed more interested in the match than in their own patients. Various amounts of money were exchanged, and the fellow playing Heihachi and Kuma against Eddy and Hwoarang had 12-1 odds or something of the sort. Fawltea liked Heihachi, he was a no-nonsense man, the kind that threw his own son off a cliff if need be. If only I were like him, he thought pensively.

The IT Administrator seemed to be handling the financial side of things as far as the betting went. Fawltea remembered those days when these two buffoons could be found playing Tekken 3. The queues seemed far shorter back then, interest in Tekken 3 had waned after 15 odd years of it being the mainstay government hospital videogame in Peshawar, (and all the other cities too) but now the queues were longer than ever – signing off on those new PCs had been Fawltea's undoing. The IT Administrator had tricked him into thinking it would make the administrative side of things faster, yet all it had done was gum up the works significantly while lining his own pockets. These PCs were also capable of playing Tekken 4, 5, and 6 for when interest in Tag waned. The future of the administrative side of the process looked bleak.

When he finally arrived, still a bit shaken by his brief encounter with what he swore was the Grim Reaper playing Ludo with the custodial staff, he found a nurse putting the death shroud on his patient’s face, eyes closed. “W-what happened?” he asked, his voice cracking as if his very soul – and more importantly, his hopes and dreams of free adventures on the golf course – were being cleaved out. There went his only chance of impressing Frank and Joe.”

“Dr. Gul Abad tried his best; he threw everything at uncle – adrenaline, morphine, ketamine, you name it,” said the patient's only attendant. All Fawltea could do was glare at Gul Abad, who was doing his best to look solemn while the attendant thanked him for trying so hard to save his uncle, who had been admitted for a simple case of mild pneumonia, which Fawltea had managed quite well.

They went outside the room, Fawltea fuming like a police officer who discovered the bike he had stolen from another had been stolen from him. “You did it again; you rat bastard. You killed a perfectly stable patient.” His eyebrows nearly jumped off his face, as if he were some sort of angered cartoon.

“I saw signs that led me to predict a shortness of breath, sir, and concluded adrenaline might be needed, so I acted in advance, before the bacteria could surprise us. I am still learning about why they use morphine and ketamine,” Gul Abad spoke nonchalantly, as if he were a trainee.

“Goddamn it, YOU ARE NOT A DOCTOR!” Fawltea wanted to choke him right then and there, yet Gul Abad was smiling as if they were the best of friends, like petrol smugglers in Balochistan and the soldiers that patrolled the border on petrol smuggling day.

“I got his golf club pass for you, sir; the nephew agreed to put it in your name, the paperwork is underway.” Gul Abad smiled wryly, holding out the card.

“Oh, you did...? Well, that does change things. Well done, Gul Abad; perhaps I shall teach you a few things from now on.” He smiled, all that malice evaporating faster than Pakistan's GDP crashing after the typical bust caused by bad loans stimulating useless consumption. A patient was a patient after all; you lose one, you move on to the next. Such was the spirit the country that had defaulted 3 times had inculcated in its citizens. Frank and Joe were more important, as were his dreams of golf.

“Shall we drink some tea, sir, while you teach me how to read ECGs?” said Gul Abad, as one of the poor patients in the corner rooms passed away silently, forgotten by all. In his death summary, Veronica Mars merely wrote: “Saved him from a bleak, hopeless future that would probably end in suicide anyway. kthxbai”

“Of course, of course,” nodded Fawltea happily, and they went back to that pleasant café, what was once known as the doctor's lounge. Without the argumentative revolutionary, it was certainly far more pleasant. Fawltea made a mental note to be sure to denounce him beforehand on his social media accounts, just to make sure the authorities didn't assume they were pals or anything. There was no arguing with them, one only ended up in an infinite combo of pain.

The Professor was still reading, still the most imperious of orators. Fawltea wondered if she somehow wasn't related to Mark Antony. “The first are those whining and melancholy moralists, who are perpetually reproaching us with our happiness, while so many of our brethren are in misery, who regard as impious the natural joy of prosperity, which does not think of the many wretches that are at every instant labouring under all sorts of calamities, in the languor of poverty, in the agony of disease, in the horrors of death, under the insults and oppressions of their enemies.”

Adam Smith was going to haunt this lounge for a good while longer, it seemed. The Breakfast Club was no longer playing on the Macbook; it was now Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Fawltea liked this Ferris fellow, he reminded him of his buddies Frank and Joe. Maybe it was time he took a day off, too, and went on a wild adventure. He made his way towards his classic 96 Corolla, and drove off, it did not matter where he went.

Back at the hospital, Gul Abad had noticed the Defibrillator for the very first time, and was wondering just how it worked. Now that he had surface level knowledge of electrocardiograms, it was time to put his knowledge to the test.

I have been meaning to make this entry for a while now. My first thought was to perhaps find a Fediverse instance with 1000 character limit, or something of the sort, perhaps even higher, haha.

But on reflection, I wanted to write just a tad more, making this a better fit.

Earlier, on Saturday, that is the 23rd of November, I went to my cousin's wedding. We're not that close, but generally attendance, and a small gift (money is usually the way, we do not have registries and the like) is considered mandatory at these things so I had to go. I, of course, did not take any gifts, since I assumed my parents would, being fond of my own money and all. I did not care to confirm that they did, for I wished to cover my bases, me asking may have lead to a no, why didn't you, and a negative outcome for self.

Anyways, back to the wedding itself, the old men mingled with other old men; sadly not wearing golf caps and plus sixes, no cool pipes either. They were, perhaps, talking of times long gone – times when the grass was more green than brown, the air not a near lethal dose of toxic smog equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes in a day, and crime was the exception, rather than the norm. The invention of mobile phones has something to do with this. that most attractive and lucrative profession, phone snatching, would not be so rampant if we were still stuck with telephones. Imagine someone sticking you up at gunpoint, asking you to take them home, so they make take your telephone set – no one is going to risk it all and go to such lengths for something far cheaper than any phone.

One may wonder if wallet snatchers exist or not, the answer to which is simple. They do, but make up far less of the robber %, being that most of us walking the streets are poor, our wallets are similarly deprived of any meaningful cash for them. Thus, they have that other most attractive profession, that of robber who hangs around outside the ATM. The glint in the eyes of said robbers when they see someone vulnerable is something to behold, not unlike that of the look in one's own eyes when the PS2 finally avoids the dreaded red screen that accompanies an unreadable disc.

There are sadly not any Beyblade snatchers, though perhaps in one of the zillions of other timelines, there is a lil' DigiVoyager who turned to a life of crime, and decided he might as well get a Beyblade collection out of it, circa 2009. He probably has an account named DigiSurfer, or something to that effect and enjoys playing Grand Theft Auto 2, and only 2, because he is a hipster or something of the sort.

But back to the wedding, on the other side, the women mingled with other women, for weddings among us Pashtuns are generally segregated. There was much gossip, and nothing but gossip as my mother tells me, and people speaking of making matches between so and so's son, and this and that's daughter, while both of the aforementioned parties are enjoying university life, oblivious to this sudden axe hanging over their heads. I imagine it must be like taking a nice leisurely stroll on a nearby road, only to run into a wild leopard -also a thing that has happened to a few unfortunate souls here in Pakistan. I am told my name comes up often, first with an array of optimism – oh, he's a doctor, but then someone invariably mentions my salary; who first sourced my income, and then told the rest, I do not know, but my mother denies it so it was probably one of my aunts or cousins – then the conversation quickly turns to other names or women who are 40 and over, yet very wealthy.

Dear my aunts and cousins, I am not a gold digger, I do not know what caused you to imagine me so.

Now, there's a lot of showing off, pomp and festive merrymaking at these things, provided the festivities have been thrown by a middle class (or better) family. As we go up the economic ladder, the festivities get more and more luxurious, and segregation too, tapers off.

However, this one was a distinctly lower class affair. I am not mocking my cousin's status by the way, in case the thing may seem mean spirited or such, he and I are about the same economically as Goblin A and Goblin B in one of your role playing games, the mooks you beat up around the start of your game without even letting them get a hit in.

We sat in the tent, cold, I taking in the usual chat: Uncle A talks about how he purchased a rare WW2 rifle from so and so, uncle C reveal the rifle is a fake as he knows the seller only provides fakes, uncle A insists it must be a different fellow with the same name, uncle C opens his Facebook profile, uncle A curses, uncle B tries to sneak an extra plate in the heat of the moment, uncle D talks of how he plans on finally purchasing that dream car but his own progress in that matter is about the same as mine in getting that coveted Panda Trueno, that is to say he and I are about as close to owning a car as this country is to fixing itself.

If any time travelers are reading, I wish to know: Does he ever get the car? I can make peace with me not getting one, but I am too invested in his tale.

Back to the class matter, our weddings during winter are not ones you want to attend. We are not the class of family that rents out wedding halls, these events take place in tents, and you can probably imagine how cold it gets. For warmth, there are a few fires lit here and there, you sit down by them if you are feeling cold. If there are ever any portable heaters or the like, all of them always go to the women's side.

This is never an issue in middle class or better weddings. For photography and recording, many families hire drone photographers and the like, but here we had just one photographer, a friend of my cousin's with a DSLR. This, by the way, is a rule of getting by in Pakistan. If you know anyone with a DSLR, befriend them instantly. I wonder if these DSLR fellows ever get burgeoning existential crises where they wonder if people care about them or their camera more.

When the thing is done, there are photos at the end. The bride and groom sit on a sofa, and families go in turn to take photos with them, pretending to have a nice conversation and such. I generally never take part in these things. Many feel it is shyness, or some other reason. In my own view, the crux of the matter seems to lie in me not really being close to my relatives, it feels rather like a case of impostor syndrome, I've never really had any bonding moments with them, nor they me, and to appear in these would feel not only wrong, but also so as to be cheapening their memories. This does seem like a rather odd tangent to go off on, but I do wonder what it feels like on the other side. I imagine people just keep photos of people they like, and get rid of the rest. But do they also feel that cheapening, or is it just me?

Perhaps they are too happy, too euphoric to care, like Uncle B, sneaking off to where the rice is being made, claiming he needs some more plates for misters X, Y and Z, who remain as unaware of his deeds as they were 20 years ago.

Still, I would love to photograph one of these events one day, the raw authenticity one sees is something else. I wish to take wedding photos, and someday soon I may, if I ever get my camera. For the moment, it is about as close as Uncle D's car.

A few times, I’ve had really great or interesting runs in FrogComPosBand, so if you’ll bear with me, I’ll reminisce about them a bit here.

Angel runs

Angels have a ton of advantages compared to other monster classes. They have all the normal human item slots, they get basic resistances as they level up and they get a bunch of useful spells without having to tote around any books. The only downside is the huge experience penalty, it takes them forever to level up. They have to grind grind grind to get anywhere, but once they get there they can usually kick ass.

I’ve done a ton of angel runs. Usually they end up the same way as most of my decent runs: dead around level 30 after I try to fly too close to the sun and get burned. The one I most vividly remember was popping around the lower levels of Angband when they encountered the legendary Metal Babble. This is one of those enemies from other videogames, this time the Dragon Quest series. In those games, this enemy is nearly unhittable but gives a ton of experience and items if you do manage to vanquish them. In Frog, it has its own aura of darkness and fires high-level spells with a ridiculously high speed. It took me a few rounds to figure out why my health was dropping considerably until I noticed the little guy teleporting about. Since I was low on health, I used the Globe of Invulnerability spell to keep myself safe from almost all attacks. I say almost because it was that day that I found out that the Psycho Spear spell is one of the few, if not only, spells that go through the globe of invulnerability.

Sometimes that’s how your knowledge of the game grows, through the blood of your previous characters.

Dragon runs

Dragon monsters are really fun to play as, but have a few quirks that make them stand apart. First is the equipment slots. Most of their resistances have to come from rings, as they only have amulet, light, cloak and helmet slots apart from their six rings they can wear. They also have the breath weapon you would expect as well as pretty good claw and bite melee attacks. They get to specialize in a particular domain later on, which gives you some flexibility in how you want to dragon.

Breath specialization gives you powers and shapes for your breath weapon. Armor gives you an AC boost and occasionally reflection. Attack ups your melee and gives you some related buffs. Craft gives you powers related to making and dealing with weapons, Lore gives you identification and detection powers. Domination gives you summoning powers. There are also a few realms restricted to certain types of dragon, namely Death and Crusade. Only Death dragons can choose the Death realm, which gives you some summoning and nether-firing options. Law dragons can use Crusade, which gives some light healing among other powers, similar to the magic realm.

My most memorable run was with a steel dragon, which doesn’t have a breath weapon but does have incredible AC and slightly better melee than your standard dragon. I somehow managed to drag this guy to the higher levels in the game, as his melee kept being awesome despite lacking any distance attack. Also, the high AC helps slightly lower the damage you’re taking in melee, which is where you’re strongest. If I slapped on a few rings of protection with AC bonuses, I became very hard to hit. 250+ AC!

But like so many of my characters, I think I got double-breathed on by big dragons. And no matter what your resistances or AC are like, you push your luck too many times and eventually you’ll lose.

Filthy rag runs

As I’ve said before, I love running Filthy rag monsters. For a long time, I tried to get one with the Lucky personality off the ground, thinking that the luck would help offset the need to dive deeper before certain resists showed up on dropped armors. Turns out, the class is very weak in the beginning, somewhat weak in the midgame and stronger in the end. Having the Lucky personality’s -2 to all stats makes the early game that much more difficult.

Filthy rags are a patient player’s game. You need to get resistances, but to get them you need to go deeper but the puny offense of the class means that you have a hard time killing monsters. Not to say that it’s impossible, there are several Lucky rags on the Angband ladder, but you have to grind, grind, grind and hope you get lucky with your drops.

The big bottleneck for these guys is Confusion resistance, at least when I play them. Base resistances show up fairly early on and you can get them here and there without too much trouble, but getting that first bit of confusion is much more difficult. You’ll probably be wanting it about halfway through the Hideout dungeon, thanks to the good ‘ol Variant Maintainer unique that shows up there. But the only armors that even have the potential to drop with that resistance are ego armors ‘of the imp’ that might randomly get a single high resist. So not only do you have to get lucky and have an enemy drop one of these, which is difficult in itself, but then it has to roll confusion resistance out of all the possible high resistances, which is also rather unlikely. And because of how the filthy rags acquire resistances, you have to do this three times or possibly more. Remember, rags can’t wear rings or jewelry and gloves or boots that have confusion resistance only start dropping in much much lower depths. Good luck!

Same goes for gloves with bonuses to hit and damage. These also drop very rarely at the early levels and are your main source for increasing melee damage. And as you can’t equip a shooting weapon, your only other option are wands and rods which rags aren’t the best at. You can eventually find body armor and occasionally some boots with hit and damage boosts, but these are rare even at the deepest depths. Again, good luck.

So you have to grind to get exp to level up, which increases your life and melee damage. But you can’t dive too deeply since you don’t have the damage output to keep up. You could try and stairscum on high-level dungeons to maybe get some items just lying around, but this is even riskier.

I will say, I haven’t ever really gotten over this hump in my playthroughs. I once got a Lucky rag to level 30, but that was as far as he got as he (it?) was still missing tons of resists and had puny damage. One day I’ll roll that boulder up the hill, though, and it will stay at the top.

#FrogComPosBand

The first issue of the official howdoyouspell.cool ZINE is now available for download!

Download here!

Featuring words from the following articles/authors:

1. WE ARE BESET BY SUFFERING ON ALL SIDES by forrest @ Mastodon
2. Long Weekend (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) by Hazardes @ Mastodon
3. Misc. FrogComPosBand sentiments by CrapKnocker @ Mastodon
4. Shonen Weekdays by DharmaDischarge @ Mastodon
5. Hot Dark Love: Work Date by SodiumReactor @ Mastodon

Eternal Eclipse: Book One of The Brutal Song of Aziel Bartholomew

A prototype of my current main project which will be a comic. this is however a long fragment of a novel that will likely never be finished. I had typed nearly three thousand words by the time dawned on me that this is more visual and would work better as a comic.

Will try to only post comics and updates of making comics on this blog but thought I would share this because I dug parts of this and still do.

Chapter one

Drifting through the lake of stars. Out of the port hole of the celestial cruiser christened Giga-Death, we see a small starship large enough to hold a hundred persons drifting serenely through the lake of stars. Aziel Bartholomew lay in his bunk in his cell waiting for the trial that would lead to his execution. He knows that By the standard of the Scarlet Templars, he is guilty. He betrayed the royal family, and embarrassing the Royals is a cardinal mistake for anyone living around these parts.

The Celestial Dynasty is an empire in the galaxy known as the lake of stars. This empire has over a hundred thousand planets within its space. Each one has a king. Each king has an army. This is an age of fragile peace.

Every gambit of the political spectrum is expressed in how these planets are governed. Some near utopian democracies while others are prisons for breeding prisoners. The kingdom is diverse but power is the name of the game.

Aziel killed two of his comrades in the Scarlet Templars. They were soldiers sent with him to purge a bloc in the urban mess that is Sprawl 4. A megacity in his home world of Lohiri. It was his first day on the job. He had made it back home after some combat in the orbit while on patrol near the Hopecraft's home world. He was a proud veteran of a conflict that did not require a duel between the royal families... and their Holy weapons the Panzer Striders. Yet when he saw what they did to that family... He lost it. Without hesitation nor with fear he executed both men with his Flail Blastor pistol... They were reapers of the law by all means he was guilty. So they sent him before a council of the royal family to be judged.

So he lay in his small cell till he heard an explosion. He walks over to the port hole looking out at the wreckage not knowing why the ship is shattered but still it drifts on the lake of stars and the corpses around it.

Then next to his reflection in the glass he sees a face. With a cone hat angled off to the side. The Bright red clown nose is bulbous and absurd. the black around his eyes like gothic tears contrasting with the white painted face. The clown's red and yellow jumpsuit with blue buttons is profane and grotesque.

Aziel turns around. staring at the terrifying fool.

“Well... Who are you?” Said, Aziel.

“I am the Yama Yama Man.” Said the Clown.

“Be you a Banished Heart? Or Hoblin from the abyss to torment me?” Said Aziel.

“I am a bringer of gifts,” said the clown.

Then fanning his fingers in a dance with a twist of his wrist and a clap of his hands. In his hand appears a bag. Knotted up and balled up it is empty. Yet still in escalating theatricality, he lays the bag down reaching into and pulling out a blade.

The black blade was fat with steel. Glittering red runes on both sides said something Aziel could not understand. The blade was a short sword barely longer than Aziel's forearm. Yet the object screamed authority.

“This is Eternal Eclipse, The cunning of oblivion.” Said the clown.

Then staring at the blade in the light he seemed almost reluctant to humor whatever was on his mind.

“This is a Rune Sword of channeling. A lighting rod for destiny. A blade that needs no sharpening. A gift or a curse.”

Then in his theatricality, he kneels as if presting the blade to a king.

“Take it,” he whispers.

With a vague second of hesitation, Aziel tries to discern if this is fancy or delirium caused by spun sugar withdrawals.

“Take it!” Says a demonic voice without subtlety only dominance.

Whether afraid or Obedient Aziel takes the blade.

The clown please smiles showing golden cavity teeth. His eyes Gnarley with terror. Then he picks up the sack he pulled the sword from and places it in oblivion... it returns to the void.

Aziel looks at his eye's reflection on the blade's edge and does not know what he is considering.

“you will need this.” Said the clown holding out a round canister of spun sugar.

Aziel takes it and while blinking the clown's hand is gone as is the rest of it. Not slowly fading into nothing. but is gone as timed with Aziel's lids closing.

As if waking from a dream He in his frustration clenches the can of spun sugar in his hand and whispers “Eternal Eclipse: The cunning of oblivion...“.

chapter two

Aziel is standing with the Rune Blade. He is feeling the handful of spun sugar dissolve on his tongue. He needs channeling rings. His freedom demands it. Yet he will have to make do.

Aziel holds up the Rune Blade pointing in with the tip at the cell door.

He commands the sword “Open the door.”

The first rune on the side of the blade begins to glow red and then after its glow is vibrant the next. With each Aziel feels like he is pushing a blouder destined to roll back down the mountain. Yet, (and this is the touch of destiny) with each Rune lighting up. The door and wall around it are bending. Through sheer psychic will, The warping of steel is growing in distortion. the steel ballooning away from him until glowing red like lava the door rips outward dissolving and pouring out into the hall.

The growing heat triggers the fire alarms. Hundreds of gallons of water start pouring throughout the Celestial Cruiser. the water sizzling the steel to coolness. Aziel does not hesitate he runs.

/v\/

He pushes his mohawk out of his eyes and off to one side and peeks out looking around the corner. Wearing his Black and white horizontal-striped prison jumpsuit he runs.

He does not make it far before he hears the chugging explosive blast of crusader rifles.

“Wump!-Wump!-Wump!” the rifles scream.

The bullets explode past his body being only saved by the quick use of the words “Protect me!” to the sword.

An inch-thick bullet of warbling steel. stops near his hip then explodes at the two Scarlet Templers. One of them dies instantly from where the bullet struck him. Left only with a fist-sized hole in his face. The other soldier stops firing and runs with a tomahawk at Aziel. His Crusader Rifle hanging from a strap on his side.

They fight without sizing up their opponent. a tomahawk swinging by aziel face. while the rune blade dances close too but is unable to connect a stinging blow to a plate exposure of his opponent's exoskeleton.

Till at last beneath his enemy's left armpit he pierces between the plates of armor. Sending the soldier towards his judgment. Aziel pulled out the blade, blood-stained but ready.

Taking from the dead men a crusader rifle and as much ammo as he could carry (Two belt straps thrown over his shoulders). He leaves at a jog. The wet floor from the sprinklers trips him more than once, as he goes sliding from one side to the other. Occasionally he will hear explosions that he assumes are out of the hull but other times he is not so sure.

He thinks “If by chance this is real I can not waste this opportunity.”

He walks for twenty minutes before running into another living being.

The Electric scorpion-like legs of a Delta Pulse Computer. Its pinchers are jittery and unpredictable in their automation. the Stillborn Fetus that houses the AI of the machine hovers in the scorpion tail. It looks at Aziel and starts squirming and spinning in its plastic and steel tomb. The machine starts to manually scan with a blue laser flickering out in triangles. Yet Aziel to it does not exist. only the baby's eyes notice it and that without understanding.

Aziel thinks “The unborn child is the machine's subconscious. It knows something is wrong but can not rationalize it.”

A door opens in the black halls of the ship. Eight feet from him stands a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. She is wearing a toga.

Aziel thinks “A toga... not only is she a noble... but one that has committed adultery...”

“Don't kill me.” Says the woman.

“He might be my ticket out of here.” she thinks.

Aziel points the rifle at her.

“Please don't!” she screams.

The Delta Puls computer opens its claw revealing plasma blasters. and rotates on high alert back and forth dancing to find whatever has startled her, But, It can not.

“Stand down.” she says to the machine “Return for maintenance your not working properly.”

The delta prime says “As you will.” and wanders off while the fetus clings to the glass in fear, yet wanting to know what happens next.

Chapter Three

Captain Naomi Mercia Stood with her sword tightly clasped in her right hand as her other... the left palm (and artificial prosthetic going from her left fingertips to a surgical implant in her shoulder) rested on the one holding the hilt. Sheathed but dangerous, all attention was drawn to the rapier between her legs. using it to shift her weight forward the aurora of hostility backing it up more than her slight frame. Standing on the deck of Celestial Cruisor: Giga Death.

Her checkerboard short skirt is a Black and Green pattern though with golden shoulder boards. Her blouse was also the standard uniform of her rank. Black and button-up with medals and officer marking all around. Her hair hung loose bleached blonde combed to one side beneath a bicorne with plumes of red feathers out of the top. Polished to precision were black standard-issue-laced the edge of her knee boots.

“Captain!” Says an armored young soldier with his face visor raised.

“Speak.” Says Naiomi.

“The son of Young Bull....” He hesitates and struggles to find the words.

“Yes,” says Naomi

“He has... Taken your wife hostage.” Before he can finish the pronunciation of the word hostage she floors him with a straight jab from her left arm crushing his face and knocking him out cold.

“get this worthless... useless trash off of my deck.” Says Naomi.

Two soldiers drag off the young recruit by the legs leaving a trail of blood and teeth on deck.

“And get someone to clean this mess up,” says Naomi. wiping off the blood from her prosthetic arm with a handkerchief.

“Where is the slut?” Says Naomi.

“Captain we still can not locate the prisoner.” says someone looking at the screen of the scans from the Delta Pulse computers. “We're not seeing anything.” He continues.

“put a guard detail around the little punks Panzer Strider: Wizard Tusk. We may not know where he is but we know where he is going.” Says Naomi.

Then staring off into space she turns red in the face and screams with Rrimal glory an expression of not only what she was feeling but everything she could feel and it trailed off with guttural glory

“FUUUUUCK!”

(The Brutal Ballad of the Young Bull)

How am I to tell the ballad of the Young Bull? Well for one that was not his name. His name was Bartholomew Rainwater. He was the leader of a group known as the Battle-Axe Horde. A bunch of violent psychopaths Would tie their prisoner's hands with ropes soaked in gasoline and then set them alight.

They were a primeval kind of debauchery about the lifestyle of that gang. They aspired to be a crew of Star-Rogues but even if they were a major player on their block in the grand scheme of things Even if he was tribal king to millions... On his last day... He was a serf-like you or me. Property of the Royal Blood.

They planned a kidnapping that was not properly thought out. It never should have happened. They kidnapped a minor noble's daughter who has a small claim of blood to the Ashe birth line and its inheritance. When they sent the transmission saying they had the young women. the soldiers sent back the question “Who is the young bull that has my daughter.” Bartholomew Rainwater laughed and said, “I am the young bull”. He raped the poor women. He Got her pregnant and when the nobles sent word there would be no ransom paid. He decided to keep her as a concubine.

What he did not know was the nobles had been lenient for a thousand years. They let the cities be run how we the people saw fit. as long as our quota of product (whatever that be!) was met.

Within twenty-four hours the noble sent the whole fleet to orbit the planet shooting anything out of the sky that tried to leave orbit. A single ship. A celestial cruiser. opened its mouth and spit lightning and fire. With one blast megalopolis-4 was removed from existence taking billions of lives with it.

That would be the end of the story... except... the concubine of the young bull was smuggled out of the city to another of the megalopolis. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy... well... that's another story.

chapter four

“My name is Terry Mercia. My wife is captain of this vessel, as long as I am still breathing you can use me to get off of it.” Says the young woman.

Aziel says “The only way we're getting off this ship is with my Panzer Strider. Where is carrier bay?”

“How can you believe what I said... how can you trust me?” Says Terry.

“I don't. But I will kill you if you turn out to be lying,” says Aziel. “it's no skin off my teeth, either way.”

Terry nods in agreement. Then thinks “He is telling me the truth. Every word he has said is as honest as it could be.”

“It's an elevator ride away.” Says Terry.

Then she turns with Aziel following sword in one hand and a rifle hanging at his side. It is a short walk to the elevator. they get to the carrier bay without conversation or hitches. Crawling with Scarlet Templars. the bay could be a quarter mile with small fighter ships lining the floor and large carriers that are nearly twenty-five feet long.

“what are we going to do?” says Terry.

Aziel closes his eyes and points to Wizard Tusk his Panzer Strider. Seemingly on its own, it activates. Stomping and killing Dozens of soldiers bighting some in half and spitting out the mess. A twenty-five-foot tall psychically fueled weapon of mass destruction. Going into a full Rampage. Roaring with unnatural sounds like a whalesong or a gorilla's bark.

When most are dead it fly's over Aziel's chest opening after it sits in full lotus zazen posture he climbs on its legs. and into it's cockpit.

“You staying?” Says Aziel.

“No,” says Terry running at a full stride toga bouncing in the wind. she climbs onto his lap and the hatch shuts. inside there is little room. a locker opens where he places his weapons and they seemingly are swallowed by the Panzer. Even the seem disappears as they are locked away. an orb lowers in front of Terry and Aziel. He places his hands on it and possesses the Panzer.

Soon after some explosions, they are outside. making the jump

one-page comic with full description below for alt text.

panel 1 “This is me renewing my dreams with a bootleg handheld game console.”

image a cartoon anthropomorphic cat playing a Gameboy clone in a computer chair. The cat looks kinda like Felix the Cat but with fur on his chest and a scar on his forehead. he has mischievous eyes and fangs on his mouth that are nearly always visible.

panel 2 close up of the cartoon cat staring off from his game remembering the past while the game still says beep boop while he is distracted.

panel 3 the cartoon cat as a kid watching roo rami (a legal parody of Toonami name but from a kind scooby doo influenced place in my heart.)

the text above the image says “When I was a kid I watched anime and played retro games.

panel 4 him sitting in in a side view

the cartoon cat says “it doesn't get better than this right guys?)

below the text says “those are my fondest memories.”

panel 5 the cat looks back at the reader and sees he is alone with the text “Where did you go? overlayed over his head.”

panel 6 The view is like panel 4 with the only difference the cat cartoon cat is crying while a Toonami promo plays and says “A boy has the right to dream.

Just a few bits of general advice on playing #FrogComPosBand gleaned from dying over and over and over.

Once you’re deeper than level 30, watch out for summoners. Lots of different monster types can summon on you, which is generally a really bad thing to have happen. Watch out for qulythulgs, as that’s their main jam to summon nasty stuff right on top of you. Bigger demons can summon as well, which can also lead to chain-summoning which can royally ruin your day. Always have a means of escape; teleport scrolls work very well for this. You can also find ways to cast the genocide or mass genocide spells to clear things out, but be aware that for every monster you delete using these methods you lose 1 HP. When the dungeons fill with hundreds of monsters, this might do more than just sting. Also be aware that uniques are resistant to genocide.

Keep out of open areas, for the simple reason that monsters seeing you will begin to attack you. If you’re playing a stealthy class they might not see you until you’re closer or at all, which is highly to your advantage. Whenever you can choose the battlefield and tilt things to your advantage, you should do so. Open areas give the monsters the initiative to start chasing you, and many have very nasty distance attacks like Hell Lances or Mana Storms. Keeping out of sight of summoners can prevent them from summoning on you as well.

Buffing yourself up before a fight is almost always worth it. Potions of Speed, Heroism, Resistance, and temporary armor buffs like Stoneskin can make the difference between having to retreat and heal and sticking out that last turn and killing that tough unique. Eventually you will find a rod of Heroic Speed to hit you with both at once and perhaps save an inventory slot.

Always have a source of healing! Early on you will have to use potions of cure (light, medium, whatever) wounds but towards the midgame those won’t be as effective as you would like them to be. You can search for staffs of cure wounds that can have you back up in a jiffy, but as you go on, you will need to rely on potions and later staffs of Healing unless you have some healing magic to fall back on. Stockpile these potions! Buy them from black markets when you can. In the late game, staffs and rods of Angelic Healing can replace some of these needs, but having potions as your backup is a zero fail method you can always depend on. Potions do give you nutrition, so if you’re planning on chugging a bunch of potions, you may want to come on an empty stomach, as being Gorged slows you down significantly.

Always have a source of detection! Knowing what’s coming and how to deal with it is paramount. If there’s a tough unique up ahead, you would definitely rather know about it rather than just blindly getting ambushed. Furthermore, knowing the layout of the dungeon around you is helpful for the same reason. Taking a quick sprint across two tiles is much safer than walking up to that big summoning monster and just hoping they don’t get too many shots in before you get there. In the early game you will have to find or buy rods or staffs of Detect Monsters, scrolls of Magic Mapping and Detect Traps, but towards the midgame you will replace all these with rods of Detection, which rolls a bunch of useful things into one (monsters, traps, items, stairways). You will also find staffs of Clairvoyance later on to help map the terrain and light things up for you. You can also use potions of Enlightenment on levels you think will be tough to find out the whole layout at once.

Ideally, here’s how a battle against a difficult enemy would go: you use your rods or staffs or whatever to detect the enemy far off in the distance. You do a little magic mapping to see the terrain. You choose the best possible approach, one that keeps you out of line-of-sight until you’re right next to them. You buff up before you engage. Then you hit them until they drop all that delicious loot.

What actually happens in practice is that there’s some element you’ve forgotten or something unexpected occurs. For example, just out of range of your initial detection radius could be another difficult enemy that wakes up when you’re fighting the first, putting you at more of a disadvantage. The enemy could escape or even steal something of yours before running away. Enemies can also buff themselves with berserk rages and globes of invulnerability and the like. Some enemies can dispel your precious buffs or suck the charges from your wands, rods, and staves. One of your potions of speed might shatter after an enemy’s elemental attack, causing that enemy to be much faster than you were originally estimating.

You can always ‘l’ook at a monster and hit r to recall information you know about it. If you’ve seen that type of enemy before, you might know what it resists, what it’s immune to, it’s speed, it’s HP, lots of different information. This is invaluable, and you can turn on the ability to remember this info between characters in the settings. There’s a billion kinds of enemies, so having this info around can keep you out of the frying pan just a little while longer.

One last thing, don’t rush. The game doesn’t do anything on its own until you press a button to move or act. Take time to pay attention to what enemies are around you and what they might do in the next few turns. Other games may have conditioned you to push buttons quickly to get yourself out of danger, but doing this only gives enemies more turns to act while you might not be noticing what they’re doing. It’s tempting to start smashing the move buttons after an enemy gets you down to half health in one round, but acting without thinking, especially in the lower depths of the dungeon, will get you killed. If you get in a tough spot, think over your options before doing anything. Teleporting out is usually safe, unless there’s a big enemy you’ve passed by that’s awake somewhere else on the level that you might accidentally end up next to. Staffs and rods have a chance to fail and if you do in the midst of combat, the round you spent trying might be your last one. Keep low or no-fail options like scrolls or potions in your inventory as well.

Level feelings

I’ve you’ve been playing the game, you’ve probably noticed a message pop up, something like, “This level looks relatively safe.” This is the level feeling and can give you an idea of what’s waiting for you out there in the rest of the level you’re on. The color of the level indicator in the lower left of the main screen will change depending on what message you get. This only applies to the level you’re currently on, if you to a new level in a dungeon you’ll need to wait a bit there until you get a new feeling.

The level feeling takes around a hundred turns to pop up. But once it does there are several useful things you can take away from it that might change how you play the level. Possibly the best one is “There is something special about this level.” in a baby blue color. This means that somewhere on the level is an artifact, just waiting to be picked up. Depending on the level you’re on, this could be a huge find.

There are a few levels of messages that indicate how difficult the enemies you will be facing on the level are. The first, in light brown is something like, “You’re feeling nervous.” In the early levels (0-20), this probably means there’s a unique monster somewhere on the level. Next is, “You have a bad feeling about this level” in dark brown. That means there’s more difficult enemies waiting for you, probably still a unique or a few out of depth monsters waiting for you. The next level is in orange text and I can’t remember the message. The final one that I’ve seen is in dark red, indicating that there’s something extremely dangerous out there. Probably a vault or a bunch of out of depth monsters.

Line of sight

You’ve probably noticed that enemies don’t start firing distance attacks at you until they see you. There are a few ways to keep out of sight of monsters but still cause damage to them. The first is by using a rod, wand, or ammunition of exploding to fire an area of effect spell that hits the monster without you being in its line of sight. This becomes extremely useful when dealing with enemies like qulythulgs and druj (drujes?) that are immobile but can cause all sorts of problems for you if they see you. If you can avoid being seen by these guys and have enough charges or ammo, you can safely kill them from out of sight without them being able to do anything about it.

Personalities

These are options in character creation that can add some additional wrinkles to your run. A few of the easiest ones to ‘get’ are the Combat and Mighty personalities. They are trading your int and wis for additional strength, dex and con. If you’re planning a warrior-type, these can give you some extra early game oomph at the cost of higher device and spell failures in the lategame. On the flipside, there is Crafty or Shrewd, which somewhat does the opposite of the previous two mentioned.

Some of the wackier choices are Unlucky, which gives you a boost to all your stats, but makes it harder to get good drops, occasionally makes you miss in combat and gives you higher spell and device fail rates. The opposite of this is Lucky.

Sexy gives you a boost to a few stats but gives you inherent aggravation, which causes enemies to instantly wake up on level generation. This puts you at a serious disadvantage to start with, but can be mitigated a few different ways. And you can wear items that aggravate since you have it already.

The in-game help has good descriptions of how each of the different ones work, so check through the list and see if one might make an interesting twist on your character.

I can’t give too much advice on the endgame, having only gotten there a handful of times myself, but in general, be a coward. Detect everything as thoroughly as you can before ever entering a room. Kill every weak enemy you can for exp and use every cheesy strategy you can come up with. Dig holes in walls to draw out powerful monsters and fight them one on one. If you’re an archer, use scrolls of phase door to bounce around once a monster gets into melee range with you. Use every advantage at your disposal, because once you’re in Angband facing down monsters that breathe multiple elements simultaneously, can stop time, and summon enemies that then summon more enemies, you’ll wish you had practiced running away earlier.

In general, keep more items in your inventory than you think you'll need. When you have more than 300 HP, start carrying around potions of Healing for emergencies. Speaking of Healing and Healing potions, you'll want to hoard all you can of these to prepare for the final fight. Use them if you need to, it's stupid to die with an inventory full of healing potions, but keep as many as you can for later.

Check out the Angband ladder for FrogComPosBand https://angband.live/ladder/ladder-browse.php?v=FrogComposband&r=&c=&n=&e=&s=0, especially other characters of your class. Read spoilers on monster levels, spells, anything you can find.

Advice for quests found in towns: https://pastebin.com/ZLZZz45j

Demigod mutations: https://pastebin.com/hTi24Nky

Arena rewards and various other small spoilers: http://nikheizen.github.io/pages/rewards.html

Dungeons, dungeon guardians and quests: https://pastebin.com/AVsp31k8

One last bit of advice, maybe try the Munchkin personality if you get stuck in a rut. It gives huge boosts to your stats, makes it easier to level up, and starts you with a million gold. You can't really get credit for beating the game using this mode, but it is great for trying new character combos and learning how places you've never been work. It's worth checking out at least once, especially if you're learning the game. Preparing to fight big J

Some tips I've gleaned from excessively reading winning posts on the Angband ladder on what to do and how to prepare to fight the Serpent of Chaos:

Double breaths

You have to have a bunch of HP to even think of fighting the serpent. The main reason for this is that the big guy is super fast and even at +35 speed can get two moves on you before you have a chance to react. If the serpent decides to breathe some exotic element on you like chaos, it’s a problem. If he decided to do it twice in a row, it can be deadly. Having a big batch of HP is the best way to deal with this. That way, if you get taken down to minimal HP you can teleport out to heal before resuming the fight.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these double moves can occur halfway through the fight or when you’ve got him down to his last bit of health. You will need to keep your HP above a certain level to avoid instant death if the serpent gets a double move on you. The energy system underlying the turns in the game is somewhat randomized, so you won’t know this is coming until you get hit with it. Keeping your HP up is the best defense alongside having your resistances covered.

To help buoy your HP levels, you can do a bit of manipulation with your Life Rating. If you managed to come across a potion of Self Knowledge, you probably noticed you had something called a life rating. Here’s how I understand this system to work. Every level up, the game rolls some dice behind the scenes to determine how much HP you gain. Over the 50 levels you have available, a series of bad rolls can really hamper your total HP. To counteract this, you can drink potions of New Life, which reroll these dice and can give you a larger HP pool and potentially different stat maximums. Your life rating is a general feel of how high you could’ve gotten on these HP rolls. Anything over 100% is great here and potentially worth keeping. Basically if you stockpile enough potions, you can drink a New Life followed by a Self Knowledge to see how good your new life rating is. This can get you 50 or more HP in the endgame, which is nothing to sneeze at and may save your life.

Summon uniques

The Serpent of Chaos has a power that I think no other boss in the game has, to summon unique monsters. If you have gotten to him (it?), you have probably gotten surrounded by bunches of high level undead summons, dragon summons and tons of others. But summoning unique monsters is probably the most nasty one of them all. As you probably already know, unique monsters are some of the hardest to defeat in the game and can complicate any encounter they pop up in. This goes double if the encounter is with the toughest boss in the game, the Serpent of Chaos.

The quirk here is that the serpent will only summon uniques that are currently living, i.e. those that you haven’t defeated yet. The problem here is that there are a bunch of high-level uniques that can make your life hell in the lower depths of Angband. Some especially nasty ones are Godzilla and Nodens, both of which have boatloads of HP and devastating attacks so you don’t want to be engaging with them at the same time as the serpent.

One approach is to troll the lower levels of Angband in the 90+ range and try to kill all the uniques that pop up there. This is useful for two reasons, one it lowers the amount of uniques that the serpent can summon and two it gives you the really useful drops of the uniques from that low in the dungeon. Better equipment is always better.

Another way to deal with unwanted summoned uniques is to use scrolls or staffs of Destruction, which turn the usual dungeon terrain into random mashes of stone. Uniques caught in the radius of a destruction spell will be despawned from a level (not killed). However, if you accidentally catch the serpent in the radius of your destruction spell, he will also be despawned. But then he will immediately be respawned elsewhere in the level at full health, so you really don’t want to do this unless you’re trying to escape or something.

But destructing the level before the serpent finds you can be a useful strategy to limit line of sight and the summons that might occur. Enemies can only be summoned in the squares surrounding your @ character. If your back is to a wall, that’s a few less squares that bad guys can occupy trying to kill you. The only downside to this is that the serpent immediately knows where you are on the level as soon as you go down to 100 and will begin making his way toward you, smashing down any walls between you and him as he goes. Even if he tunnels through a few walls, taking control of the terrain you fight on can give you an edge in this battle of attrition.

There are a few things you can do to help even the odds, though. The first, if you’re planning on fighting the serpent in melee is to have as much damage as you can without sacrificing too much in the way of resists. Having a few pluses to hit and damage on random bits of equipment can end up giving you hundreds of extra damage per round. You’ll want at least 500 damage per round to even stand a chance in melee, and the more the better.

A few notes about the Serpent of Chaos. First is that he’s not immune to stun, so if you have a weapon that stuns or a reliable stunning attack, you can make the fight much easier by keeping him stunned, which I believe increases his chance to fail casting any magic (including summons) and lowers his chance to hit you in melee. Second, he’s considered an evil, living monster so if you use gloves of slaying that do extra damage against either evil or living monsters, they will work on him as well. My third note is that he frequently breathes chaos, so bring along at least double chaos resist to help mitigate that damage. He also has an aura of shards, so don’t go up against him without resisting that.

There are a few other techniques to reduce or prevent the serpent’s summoning powers. If you can mix it into your equipment, there are amulets of anti-summoning that exist in the game (denoted by [Sm). Keep your eyes out for those. Some classes have access to anti-magic, which also helps prevent summoning, which is also available in amulet form ([M). You can also turn the tables and have your own summoned minions occupy all the spaces around you so that big J’s summoning is blocked that way. This can be doubly helpful if you bring heavy monsters of your own to fight on your behalf. Some classes can summon dragons and Great Wyrms of Power (GWOPs) and Steam-Powered Mechanical Dragons are two types that I’ve heard hold up decently against the serpent. Even non-summoning classes can get in on the act by capturing these monsters in the capture balls available in certain stores, then throwing them (‘v’) when you want to release them, Pokémon-style. But be aware, the chaos breath he breathes has a tendency to polymorph monsters occasionally, so your big badass summons might get turned into tiny, fragile rats.

i bought a box set of three films directed by Takeshi Kitano (aka “Beat” Takeshi) “Violent Cop”, “Boiling Point” and “Sonatine“

Kitano is very famous in Japan. for most of the 1980s he was known as a stand-up comedian and tv host before moving into film directing and acting. in 1989 he was set to star in “Violent Cop” with Kinji Fukasaku directing, however the scheduling didn't work out due to Kitano's tv commitments and Fukasaku dropped out of the project, leaving the film without a director. someone suggested to Kitano that he direct the film himself and that's what ended up happening

i watched Violent Cop last weekend expecting great things, and it certainly is a film about a violent cop. Kitano stars as Azuma, a police detective with a habit of using excessive force when dealing with criminals. Azuma is assigned to investigate the murder of a drug dealer and the film follows the investigation, and Azuma's life when he is off the clock. the plot is a fairly standard crime film along the lines of something like Dirty Harry but what makes it interesting is Kitano's direction. i mentioned Kinji Fukasaku was set to direct, and if you have read my earlier posts you'll know what i think of his yakuza movies like Battles Without Honour and Humanity, there is so much energy in them, particularly the action sequences, with the camera violently shaking all over the place. you can practically feel the energy crackling through the screen like a jolt of electricity

well, with Violent Cop it's like Kitano decided to do the exact opposite of what Fukasaku would've done. the camera hardly moves, and i don't even know if you could call the performances acting. there is virtually no emotion at all in the entire film, the actors deliver their lines in long drawn out scenes with no camera movement, long pauses, and sudden outbursts of extreme violence. it gives the film a very nihilistic tone, but it feels completely lifeless and when it finished i just kinda sat there feeling nothing at all about what i had just seen

i can kinda see what he was going for but it just didn't work for me. i didn't care about anything that happened. there's even a pretty nasty rape scene involving Azuma's disabled sister but it's filmed in such an emotionless dispassionate way that i sat staring blankly at the tv

weird as fuck

Boiling Point is Kitano's second film, about a hapless duo of lowlifes who work at a petrol station. their boss is beaten up by a local yakuza and they go on a trip to Okinawa in order to buy a gun and get revenge

filmed in exactly the same style as Violent Cop with all the same problems, lack of emotion, and nihilistic style. i enjoyed it a little more as the characters are more fleshed out and interesting, and there are a few moments of black humour

Sonatine is the final film in the set, and Kitano's fourth as director (his third, A Scene at the Sea is not included here) the plot follows a yakuza gang led by Kitano who are sent to Okinawa by their boss to help resolve a gang war

the plot reminds me of Fukasaku's yakuza movies, and is full of the same allegiances, betrayals, and violent revenge that characterised them, and it's definitely the most interesting film of the three. but again i just found it dispassionate, emotionless, and nihilistic due to the way it was shot

here's an example of an “action” scene from the film, to give you an idea of what i mean

Sonatine bar shootout

contrast it with this from Fukasaku

Battles Without Honor And Humanity Shuji Yano death scene

so yeah, Takeshi Kitano. definitely a unique director, but his style just doesn't work for me. like the characters in his films i just sit there expressionless while events unfold on the screen in front of me, feeling nothing. and when it's over i slowly walk over to my tv, take the disc out of my player, and put it back on the shelf

today was a public holiday here in the UK and i had the day off work. it's the end of the month and i have no money left so the plan for today was to sit around at home, do a couple of chores around the house, have some dinner, and then watch a load of films

mission accomplished!

i ended up marathoning the last three films in the Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, which will come as a shock to you i'm sure. i said writing this blog would give me an excuse to watch them all again. i honestly don't think i've ever been as into a series of films as i am these, like i mentioned in an earlier post they're just so dense, and i really feel like i'm learning lots of things while watching them; language, history, culture, all of it very alien to someone who grew up half a world away

the third and fourth films; Proxy War and Police Tactics are the two films in the series that are the most closely linked together, Police Tactics follows directly on from the events in Proxy War, and tells how an all-out gang war erupted in Hiroshima between rival yakuza factions in 1963, and the subsequent crackdown from the authorities. the plot gets very heavy in these two, when i talked about the first film i mentioned that it can be hard to follow in places, and that is magnified here as there is so much going on, it all follows the familiar pattern of alliances, betrayals, and violent revenge, but i did find it a lot easier to keep track of who everyone was the second time round

it's funny, you'll spot an actor and be like “oh i recognise him he's so and so from the first film” but then you remember that the character he played two films ago was brutally murdered and that same actor is playing someone completely different now. this happens quite a lot

one actor i have to mention is the amazing Nobuo Kaneko who plays Boss Yamamori in all five films. i came to absolutely love him by the end, Yamamori is a slimy double-crossing cowardly snake, and Kaneko delivers such a memorable performance. he appears in loads of other Japanese films i've watched recently from around this time too, always playing similar characters – scheming bosses, corrupt politicians, he was definitely typecast, and he's great in them all. i looked him up on Wikipedia and he had a really long career, even hosting a popular cookery show on Japanese TV towards the end of his life. such a character

the fourth film Police Tactics was originally planned to be the final film in the series, and it's written that way, however it was such a success that Toei put up the money and got Fukasaku to direct one more. i'm glad they did because Final Episode is an absolute banger movie and a great send off for the series. set a few years after the events of Police Tactics, the public have turned against the yakuza and their constant violence forcing the gangs to try and rebrand as respectable businesses and a “political organisation” called Tensei. predictably this doesn't go well and infighting soon leads to more violence

you really get a sense of how tired of it all Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) is by the end, when he realises that he's become the boss sending the young footsoldiers out to die

so, which one of the five films is the best? i can't decide, please don't put a gun to my head and force me to choose, all five of them are simultaneously the best film i've ever seen, but Proxy War is probably my favourite

still can't believe i got the box set for twenty-five quid