howdoyouspell.cool

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“It takes an idiot to do cool things. That's why it's cool.” —Haruko. FLCL.

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from Salt Forged Stories


Heatstroke checked the information on his phone one more time before he landed on the ground: a lone metahuman, hostile, no known accomplices, involved in a robbery. Several reports of injuries and property damage, but no fatalities. By all accounts it was the exact kind of situation he excelled at solving quickly and simply. He'd run in there, let his or his squad's reputation precede him, and then, if he was lucky, get to fight a little besides. The thought spread a smile across his brown face as he leapt through the air. The superhero gripped the high collar of his chestpiece with both gloved hands as the ground raced up towards him. Heatstroke grunted with the impact of his boots along the concrete, taking a few running steps to gather himself like a plane landing on the tarmac. He'd gotten more accurate with his massive leaps across town, but timing his solar powers to soften the landing was often more trouble than it solved. Instead he skidded across the asphalt, trying not to warm it beneath him with each step.

It wasn't hard to distinguish which building had been hit: the block had only one building whose facade looked like some giant beast had taken a bite out of its second floor. Debris littered the floor outside the building, and he considered whether to use the front door or enter via the hole that someone else had already made. The latter made more sense, and glass crunched beneath his laced boots as he looked around.

“Oh thank God!” Someone yelled as he stood there in the hole in the wall, illuminated by the midday Sun behind him. He loved the feeling of sunshine on his back and the promise of his energy stores refilling as he fought. Thank God for daytime missions. Heatstroke presented the picture of aggressive confidence as he scanned the room.

“Oh shit... is that Heatstroke?” another asked.

“Like... from Kinetic Solutions?”

“Ahhh shit...”

“You're safe. I'm here.” He quieted the crowd's chatter, his hands already glowing with his signature solar might. The facility's employees sat in small clusters, each guarded by a strange shadowy creature. From this distance, each bipedal guard looked like an undifferentiated mass of dark grey, like an opaque shadow. The creatures turned to face him the moment the civilians began yelling, and Heatstroke prepared for the fight he'd been waiting for.

The monsters—bipedal and clawed with strange, misshapen heads—leapt at him en masse. They made low, guttural noises, more beastly than human, and Heatstroke met their aggression in kind. He bobbed and swayed, moving his thickly muscled frame with agility and efficiency of a trained boxer. The first creature raked the air in front of him and then disappeared into a puff of smoke when he punched through what would have been its chest. The next leapt at him, and Heatstroke discovered they had tails when a third wrapped its appendage around his exposed knee. It pulled him off balance and the one sailing through the air sliced his cheek with a sharpened foot. Both puffed into smoke a moment later when he punched down into the one wrapped around his leg and caught the other in his white hot palm. He hurled the mysterious beast into another of its kind and then scanned the room for threats, calling out the hostages ringing the room.

“Everyone still alive? Did you see who did this or where they went?”

The clump of hostages nearest him waved him over, its members still looking around as if the monsters might emerge from the shadows again at any moment. A woman with bright brown eyes held half of a ripped shirt against a nasty looking cut, and a younger man explained that the woman responsible had burst through the wide building unannounced and unprovoked. She'd summoned a dozen of the monsters he'd fought before subduing the building's meager security and leaving most of the monsters to guard the hostages. Another employee interrupted to describe the woman, and the one who'd spoken before nodded along.

“Big purple hat, purple clothes, and glowing eyes.” They all agreed about her eyes. They bickered loudly about her stature and complexion and exactly what she'd told them. Heatstroke let them talk, already signaling for a paramedic.

“Ok, great. Aside from shadow monsters, what did she do?” He asked. The sunlight bounced off his gear: boots reminiscent of hard armor plates affixed to boxing boots, a thick belt around his flared shorts that left room for his thick calves to see the sun, an armored breastplate that stopped just below his ribs and just before his shoulders but featured a high collar that nearly covered his chin, and armored gloves that stopped at his knuckles as to not hamper the sunlight that gathered in his fingertips. He'd consulted with a few designers and manufacturers on how to maximize protection without impeding his brawling, kickboxing fighting style or covering too much of the bare brown skin that turned sunlight into superhuman abilities.

He'd picked the colors—a deep red and pure white with vivid yellow details—to further emphasize his solar powers and draw attention. And also because he thought the entire thing looked badass when put together.

The initial report, the one he'd responded to when he accepted this job, didn't identify her as any known meta, hero, villain, or otherwise. That was rare but not unheard of, but he wanted some foresight about who he was about to apprehend and if or how they might resist. Even boxers studied tape of their opponents to prepare for a match.

The chatter grew louder as the worried victims each tried to speak over each other. The brawny hero heard no fewer than a dozen terrified and conflicting accounts of what this woman had done or said and what she was capable of. the only thing that they agreed about was that she'd headed upstairs, into the R&D department. A vicious rumbling interrupted his investigation and sent the room into violent cacophany as people huddled on the ground. Screaming and wailing, the tall, atheltic hero quickly decided that he had no better option than to investigate on his own. It was no secret that the Kinetic Solutions—the superhero team he led— were recommended for the jobs likely too violent for other teams. Nails in need of a team of hammers. He checked his armor—red and white with yellow accents in a clear artistic interpretation of the Sun that powered him— and jogged toward the stairs.

What's her hazard rating right now? He wondered, checking his phone. The Hazard system, long used as a rough guide, informed what level of response he could reasonably justify. A villain who hadn't murdered anyone shouldn't expect lethal force, and neither hero nor villain could claim they “feared for their lives” without serious extenuating circumstances. This woman's No one needed to die today

Shattered glass and twisted metal decorated the stairs. Heatstroke wondered if the damp, unpleasant smell of the stairwell predated this attack or not. He leapt up the center of the stairs, zooming out of his stories high arc and over the railing when he heard the familiar buzz of damaged electronics.

The door presented only token resistance when he pulled it off its hinges and stepped onto the R&D floor of the Meritron Inc building. Smoke poured from ruined devices lining the walls, engineering and science equipment he'd only seen in machine shops and labs. Whoever had been working here had been busy with something. The far side of the room was too obscured by smoke to see clearly, but the high ceilings, thick concrete walls, and sturdy floors of this level made clear that Meritron intended on keeping whatever work was done here close at hand. Heatstroke's brown eyes glowed with the same yellow white light that wound around his dark brown skin in ever changing patterns.

The blue-grey haze 20 feet in front of him was smoke. Natural. Carbon based. The product of burning plastic and silicon. But the smoke pooling behind it?

Magic.

Blocking his vision, denying the illumination pouring off of him. His hands glowed and Heatstroke braced himself, bobbing and shifting in his stance to present a moving target. He threw a single bolt of solar energy into the smoke, angling it towards the floor to hopefully avoid any further damage. It burst against the tile and spread a harsh glow that illuminated her silhouette in the smoke

“If you're in there, this is your chance to come out, hands up, and keep this simple.” He said.

A door opened in the deep grey smoke, like curtains parting. And then she appeared. He saw her eyes first: her irises were yellow discs sent against the deep black abyss of her pupils and sclera. The effect was chilling, inhuman. She stared at him behind thick, golden framed glasses, and a curious smile spread across her dark brown face. Her cheeks were soft and round, as was the rest of her. Her visage clarified as he approached her. She was small, with a deep purple dress inlaid with gold glyphs that stretched over her generous curves. He looked over her quickly, noting the purple fog blanketing the floor around her. The purple hat and cape gave her the distinct image of a sorcerer or a witch, but her heavy gloves and boots suggested someone much more accustomed to hand to hand combat.

She stared at him, hard, for a long while before saying anything. He figured she was sizing him up the same as he was her. “You first responder heroes are never any fun.” she said, resting her chin in her palm and folding that arm over the other. “Go call for backup and tell them to bring me a challenge.” She dropped something from her hand and it disappeared into the split cloak waving behind and below her without a sound. Then she dismissed him with a wave and turned around, returning to whatever she'd been doing when he'd arrived.

Heatstroke gritted his teeth but kept his emotions in check. He'd done this for too many years for such a simple barb to get under his skin.

“Joke's on you, witch; when I'm the first responder, I'm the only response they need.” He knew exactly how 'witch' sounded and relished the wide eyed rage that flashed across her admittedly pretty brown face. Even with her long purple and black braids partially blocking her face, there was beauty there. Only those inhuman eyes ruined the effect. A reminder that she wasn’t just a pretty thicc woman in a revealing dress.

“Oh?” The tendrils of smoke beneath the woman tightened and coalesced as she turned to face him again, and he noticed now that she was floating. Likely mere centimeters above the ground, but the visual of her bobbing up and down made it clear that she wasn't standing on solid ground. She unfolded and crossed her arms and regarded him with what looked like intrigue. “Tell me more, hero.” He noticed her fingers waggling but ignored it.

Now it was Heatstroke's turn to regard someone with intrigue and interest. “You're new in town, huh? Pretty sure they have wifi in the jails now. When you get there, look up “Kinetic Solutions. Last I heard I was the man in this city. Ask about me. As a matter of fact...”

He lost himself in his own introduction. Who wouldn't? He'd led the city's— no, the state's— most dangerous superhero team for almost 3 years. He was tall, dark, handsome, and as skilled at tactics as he was as scrapping. He was squad leader for a reason. His solar powers made him sturdy, dangerous, mobile, and let him be as aggressive as he wanted. He didn't even have them on yet. His bands weren't even glowing right now. And-

And then she was flying toward him, knees first, yelling what sounded distinctly like “Malus Meteora.”

He felt her shins on his shoulders, and braced, and then felt something around his ankle. Hands. Cold shadowy hands. And then he toppled over onto his back and got a much clearer view of the witch rampaging through Meritron's R&D facility. She sat on his hard chestplate, her full body weight on top of him. She was heavier than she looked. Solid. And surprisingly muscular beneath the soft squish of her thighs. Her dark brown skin contrasted with the rich purple and gold of her skimpy robes. The slit on each side put her wide, curvy hips on full display. From this angle, trapped beneath her, he couldn't see her face, not with her massive chest obscuring her view. Each breast looked like it might be just a little larger than her head. But when she leaned forward. It was her eyes that caught him and held his attention. Her irises glowed, golden halos set against the night sky of her jet black sclera. A demon's gaze, nearly hidden by her curtain of black and purple twists spilling out of her witch hat.

This was dangerous. She'd pinned him immediately, gotten the drop on him while he'd gotten lost bragging about himself. She was almost certainly going to try and incapacitate him here. The thought of a genuine brawl excited him like little else could, and Heatstroke watched her expression curdle as she looked down on him.

“Glad to know heroes here love the sound of their own voices as much as they do everywhere else. Sorry to cut this short, hero, but I'm in a time crunch. Any last words before I turn you into an unpleasant memory?” She stretched out her arm above him, fingers curling to contain a rapidly growing black hole that churned and seethed in her palm, a miasma of energy from an unknown source. He didn't have to understand its origin or mechanism to know that he wouldn't enjoy her shoving it into his face. She caressed his jaw with her other hand. “It is a pity though. You're cute, in a 'big dumb idiot' kind of way. I would have had a lot of fun playing with you until you broke like a cheap toy.”

“Just one.” He said. Her eyes narrowed at him. “Mind if I turn my powers on?”

Heatstroke didn't give her a chance to respond. Instead, the burst of light and heat flung her away from him, directly up into the air. The two shadow servants disappeared in the flash while he rolled away and onto his feet, body now coursing with his sunlit powers. The white gold bands of light pulsed and shifted across his skin in changing patterns, a human light show.

“Sorry.” He said, cracking his knuckles. “That was rude as fuck, but goddam is that shit funny. “'Some hero you are.' 'Man you're weak.' Yada yada.” he laughed in a mocking tone. “Then I turn the lights on and they start running like roaches.”

In front of him, the curvy, dark skinned witch had righted herself, smoothing out her dress and already mumbling a spell. She didn't have any words for him this time, and Heatstroke fell into his familiar stance, looking to close the distance and bring his sunlight charged fists to bear. Or a knee, maybe a spinning elbow. He wasn't especially picky about how he hit her, or even if he made direct contact. Light and heat poured off his limbs in sufficient amount to turn near misses into painful reminders for opponents to keep their distance from the Sun. To his surprise though, she didn't flee. Most spellcasters preferred to keep their distance to give them more time to react with the proper incantation. This one bent forward in a half-crouch, hands spread out wide like a...

Like a wrestler?

There was a first time for everything. They met in the center of the room when she ducked his wide, arcing punch to launch herself at his waist. He felt her arms wrap around him, soft and smooth until the muscles beneath tensed as the diminutive witch hauled him off his feet and onto her shoulders. She capsized, falling to her side to drive him headfirst into the cold tile of the research lab. They fell much further than he expected, than they should have, until Heatstroke saw the now disintegrating puff of obsidian colored magic that must have catapulted them both into the air. The impact sent an ugly thud resounding through the drafty room and rattled him. Then two shadow beasts he hadn't seen darkened his vision and stomped him like they were trying to squash a roach. He drew his arms up to cover his face but otherwise ignored them. The witch kneeling near him was the bigger issue. The eerie purple glow emanating from her body and especially her hands hurt just from touching him, and he recognized the danger immediately. Whatever spell pulsed around her seemed concentrated around her body. No wonder she wanted to wrestle. It ate at him, sapped him, even as her massive chest squished against his bare abs.

“What's wrong, hero? You don't look so hot.” She said, already trying to roll him over onto his stomach. Heatstroke braced himself and fought free, she lunged at him again, and this time he caught her with a sharp punch that stunned her long enough for him to back away and shake off the lingering traces of her spell.

They both caught their breath, and he strafed and circled as she walked straight towards him, brimming with menace and confidence. She could summon seemingly endless amounts of those shadow beasts on a whim, and the purple smoke that trailed her and her ominous purple energy crackling around her both seemed to eat at his vitality. It looked bad, no matter how he considered it?

Did he need to call for backup? At least one of the other five members of Kinetic Solutions was likely available if he needed it.

But pride might be harder to defeat than this woman was. He didn't need anyone. Not for a one-on-one against a spellcaster who didn't even know his powers. Instead he considered tactics and possibilities. What hadn't he tried yet? Ideas raced through his head as he parried her advances, throwing small bursts of sunlight at the horde of shadows that stepped forward from the edge of the room. She taunted him but that could wait. A vaguely hand-shaped spark of energy raced out toward him and Heatstroke made up his mind. The latest spell raced past him as he ducked beneath it, surging toward the caster as he delivered his first solid punches of their fight. The third blow erupted in a pulse of sunlight that sent the woman skidding along the cold floor of the R&D lab until one of the shadow creatures caught her and turned her upright. She might be as sturdy as she was haughty, but he bet that this small, voluptuous woman couldn't absorb many of the strikes that had sent larger villains flying and stopped armored vehicles in their tracks.

“You have a name?” He asked. “Or a callsign at least?”

“You can call me... Demise.” She said after taking a moment to wipe her face and adjust her glasses.

“Of course I can.” He shook his head. “Edgiest shit ever.”

“Heatstroke doesn't sound very heroic.” She said, circling him again.

“Anything's heroic if you're putting villains away and saving the day.” He swore that disdain flashed across her face as he finished the rhyme.

They circled like two predators fighting for territory, feinting and lunging, firing off bolts and rays of energy in an attempt to force one reaction or another. He caught her as she overextended, tagging her with a jab and a glowing kick before looping his hand behind her head and pulling her close to him. Her short stature and compromised posture pressed her chest against him, her massive chest squishing against his chiseled abs. He caught the shock in her cold black and yellow eyes as he drove his knee into her soft middle and tried to rearrange her face with a blistering right hook that sent a crescent of yellow white light through her and briefly dissipated her smoke cloud..

“You're almost too pretty to hit, nahmean? If you weren't robbing the place I'd be asking for your number.” He admitted, preparing to hit her again.

“If I fuck you, will you let me get off with a warning?” She asked, with a vulnerability he'd never heard from her. It gave him pause. Rumors, some confirmed, of heroes and villains working out extralegal agreements to conclude their hostile engagements persisted, but Heatstroke had never offered. He'd been solicited once, by a villain who'd clearly heard of the practice and thought it might work for them. Heatstroke had impolitely declined before putting them down for the count.

“I-I'm not like that. I didn't show up to fuck you.” He stammered, giving her the moment she needed to turn the tables on him.

“Pity.” She cackled, sliding out of his grip and behind him. “You're pretty hot, and you're good with your hands. I wouldn't mind seeing how good exactly.” Her warm breath tickled his ear and sent a twitch of distraction through him. Magic? He couldn't tell. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her body into his back, smashing her hips into his, her generous chest into his. “If you change your mind, I might just see if you can let me off easy. Or get me off easy.” The implications were as explicit on her long, wet tongue dragging across his hot back. The sensation didn't last long though, not when he felt her pillowy legs wrapped around his neck.She nearly sat on his shoulders, legs tangled around his neck. She fell backwards, trying to use the momentum to drag him backwards off his feet and onto the ground, headfirst, but a mighty effort from his glowing frame kept him upright. The shadow slammed into his calf and sent him toppling. Heatstroke saw the wan fluorescent lights of the laboratory come into view and then disappear as Demise slammed the top of his head into the floor.

The tile cracked with the impact, and Demise maintained her grip. The soft squish of her legs gave way to taught cords of muscle threatening to cut off his blood circulation. She sat on his back and reclined, straining with the effort of grapevining her legs around his thickly muscled neck. Her thighs rubbed against his goatee, and he fought desperately to unwind her limbs. When he made a little progress, she swore aloud and then changed tack. He felt Demise pitch forward, her chest pressed against him. She looped a leg under either of his and slipped her arms under his chin. He didn't recognize the hold until she pulled back, straining his bare abs. Heat fought this hold like the other, and they grunted into strained silence. He looked back at the too-handsy witch and plotted his escape. She cracked an unwelcome smile.

When he looked ahead again there was a shadow beat running at him. He didn't recognize the summoned shadow's intent until it reared back and kicked him square in the face like a soccer player taking a penalty kick. The creatures might not pose a threat to him when he could strike back, but undefended, their blows hurt like any other. Thankfully, the impact was sufficient for the brawny hero to rock backwards and then forward out of Demise's grasp. She didn't pursue him, instead she rested her head in her palm and watched him scramble up onto shaky legs.

“I'm gonna devour you. You realize that yet? You're doomed. Fucked. I'm gonna be your, and this city's-”

“Don't you fucking dare.” He roared, too late to stop her.

”-Demise.” She finished, laughter creasing her dark brown face. “I'm glad you're a sun hero. You're cooked. Well done, in fact. But if you get on your knees and put your face between my thighs, I might let you live. You'll make a delicious pet.”

Something about her taunts was strangely reassuring. A villain who deigned to banter was a villain engaged with the task at hand. She was focused on him. This wasn't easy for her. Now he had to unravel her strategy and put her on the defensive. Ideas already ran through his head as he assessed their fight so far.

“I thought I told you that when I'm the first responder, the city doesn't need a second. I'm having fun with you. This is a great workout. But I'm a big guy: if you want me on my knees, do it yourself, witch.”

The same insult, the same twitch of rage. He'd struck a nerve with that one. He'd have to remember to use that again later. She'd hurt him each time she'd caught him off guard, and he'd need to be more diligent about staying focused on her. Her style was similar to Gamma Crush, his radiation powered teammate, though Gamma's grappling was less technical, less precise. And he dealt with magic on a regular basis courtesy of training with the Emissary, the mage whose pact with an incubus had turned him into a very petite, very unassuming magical hazard. His teammates had prepared him for this. Heatstroke could do this, no matter how heavy his legs felt or how much his head throbbed.

He took the advantage this time, leaping into the cavernous room and then using a burst of solar power to change his direction in midair. He shot downwards like a missile and caught her dead in the face, then knocked the reeling woman off her feet with a charged sun ray.

“I'm Heatstroke, and I don't lose fights.” he promised her, pounded his gloved fist on his cracked armor.

Their battle soon settled into a clear dynamic: they both wanted physical contact on their own terms. She wanted to lift him, slam him, strangle him with those big soft legs of hers. He wanted to turn her into a very pretty punching bag, or target practice for rays of solar energy projected from his fists. His brawn made him difficult to keep down, and his control of his powers gave him the kind of mobility most opponents didn't expect from a man of his size and strength. On the other hand, he couldn't tell exactly what spell or wrestling hold she'd attempt next, and the element of surprise made her dangerous. Her shadows threatened to tip the balance on more than one occasion, and he grew accustomed to evaporating them via bolts of sunlight hurled in their direction each time he had a second to spare. He'd guessed that they were more expensive for Demise to create and maintain than they were for him to destroy, and doing so had the added effect of hampering some of her most vicious spells and techniques. He'd also guessed that direct sunlight would be particularly effective at dissipating summoned shadows.

He still had questions about this mysterious woman, (none the least of which was how her glasses hadn't broken after being punched in the face repeatedly) but all those could be settled after she'd been apprehended.

“You know,” she asked as Heat absorbed a glancing blow from a jumping spinning kick he'd only seen on wrestling shows, “you might think about offering that whole 'sex for freedom' option. You're hot, and I get the feeling you're more of a lover, not a fighter.”

The brawny hero responded with a kick of his own. The blow missed but the arc of light it produced knocked her off balance enough to launch her into the air with a solar uppercut and guarantee her a hard landing with another strike as she fell back towards the floor. Each titanic blow sent waves of blinding light and blistering heat through the distressed building. So much for the typical financial incentive for reducing collateral damage. Demise hit the ground hard enough to bounce against the tile, finally landing face up and eyes closed. She didn't move further, splayed out on the cracked tiles and visible concrete. Heatstroke allowed himself a deep breath as he stood over her. Her sumptuous curves were distracting to say the least. Her soft, chubby waist terminated in hips and thighs each thicker than his impressive biceps. They jiggled softly as her chest rose and fell, but not as visibly as her massive chest. Each labored breath lifted breasts each larger than her head, and she murmured softly, apparently unconscious. With her demonic eyes closed it was easy to admire her face. Rich dark brown skin, large lips that demanded he investigate if they were as soft as they looked, and round cheeks that made her look younger, cuter, than anything else about her did. He guessed she was in her thirties, but considering her magical talents, she might be a hundred years old, concealed by a glamor spell.

“You're cute when you're asleep.” He admitted, but 'cute' was an understatement. She was as gorgeous as she was hazardous, as alluring as she was lethal. He wanted her. Not enough to take her while she was unconscious, but he knew they hadn't seen the last of each other. The surge of desire passed, and he pulled restraints from the pouches on his waist. He knelt by the vicious witch and paused. There was movement on the edge of his vision.

He noticed her fingers wiggling a new spell and mouth murmuring a new incantation a moment before three summoned shadows barrelled into him, knocking him headlong onto the floor. He shook off dust and sat up just in time for the decidedly not-unconscious to collide with him knees first: her shins caught his broad shoulders before her crotch collided flush with his face. They rolled in a heap before she sat on his waist, and Heatstroke cursed his complacency. He should have pummeled her till he was certain she wouldn't be an issue any time soon. The swelling on her eye didn't conceal those unsettling jet black eyes, their yellow irises only serving to make her more scary, not less. He prepared to rely on his grappling training to escape, before she ran her fingers along his chest.

“Awwwww, did the big, scary, hero fall down? That's twice I've hit you with 'Malus Meteora,' Heatstroke; maybe we're both getting used to me pressing my kitty against your face. If you wanted to taste real villainy, you should have asked earlier, champ.”

“God, you talk too much.” Heatstroke said, squirming under her. She was heavier than her short stature suggested, and he wondered if this was also a spell. From her he could just make out the brim of her hat past her prominent bust. The bottom, the inside of the hat's brim swirled with stars and galaxies set against a black sky. It took him a moment to realize that the sky wasn't merely a pattern sewn onto the hat; the sky and stars were moving in her hat, like a window of a night sky. He caught a single shooting star before it disappeared past her breasts and out of view. “Normally that's my job.”

They fought for position, rolling over once and then again, before she eked out a short advantage and pressed her body flat against his. Her chest squished against his cracked chest armor as she fought to pin his broad hands above his head. When she couldn't capture his hands or wrists for more than a moment he watched her lower her head until...

Until their lips met. He didn't expect the kiss, though he immediately discovered that her dark, plump lips were exactly as soft as they looked. Her tongue wiggled past his lips and delivered a taste of villainy he hadn't expected. It was faintly sweet like her breath, with a taste he struggled to place. He wanted her. Needed her. He wanted to taste her, he wanted to touch her, he wanted to fill her. Her grinding on his waist made him uncomfortably aroused and he had grief visions of fucking her in various positions and locales. From behind, the witch bent over a desk. On a bed, the witch on her back, single thigh lifted up to rest on his chest while she made soft, vulnerable moans.

“Ohhh?” Her taunt roused him from his lewd dream. “I wasn't sure that spell would work, but that's not a torch in your pants is it, Heatstroke? Feels like you're more than a little curious about what's under my dress. Be a good boy and I might reward you.”

Heatstroke realized that this was bad. Critically so. Here he was thinking about her mouth while she was trying to put him in the hospital or the morgue en route to making a clean getaway with unknown technology. She might be fine as [i]fuck[i/] but Heatstroke had a [i]fucking[/i] job to do and [i]fucking[/i] wasn't part of it.

He made one last effort and dislodged her with considerable effort.

“An infatuation spell? That hardly seems fair.” He groaned, pushing up to his hands and knees.

“I'm a villain, asshole. Did you expect me to play fair? If you wanna play pattycake, go find some dopey hero. I'm Demise, and Witch Way runs your city now, loser. Tell your little loser ass friends too.”

“Witch way?” He coughed, quickly connecting that Witch Way was likely the name of her group. Her coven? “Run the city? Y'all not even jogging. I've never heard of you.” He stood again, ailing and aching. “But come down to the station with me and I'll make sure we get your squad registered before you do some time in jail, nahmean?”

She rushed at him now, and Heatstroke expected more wrestling from the grappler witch until he noticed the black orb in her open palm, churning and swirling like liquid night.

“Here's your answer!” Demise screamed, and Heatstroke swore as he considered his options. She was too close, moving too fast. He couldn't dodge in time. He was too weak, still recovering from whatever her kiss had done to him. He didn't want to match power against power, especially with only a split second to charge. Instead a surge of churning light swaddled on muscled arm and he deflected her hand as best he could away from his head and heart. He'd live with the consequences.

Probably.

Demise's latest spell hurled them across the room in different directions and Heatstroke lost his bearings before he finally tumbled to a stop. He felt nothing and considered for a moment that he might in fact be dead. Maybe he hadn't survived whatever dark orb she thrust into his chest after all. He felt briefly furious at the idea of dying here, to her, on a job like this. It was insulting.

Then the pain found him and he briefly wished he had died. His body felt like a punctured water bottle, leaking fluid from a new and unwelcome orifice. Whatever she'd done to him was trying to sap him or his solar energy. It was draining him. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to cough. But more than anything, he wanted to win. The pain finally subsided enough for him to stop writhing and stand, stance and armor both severely compromised. He touched his armor, chest and legs both, and found numerous holes in each. His ablative armor had done its job. He bled, but between him and his chestpiece, only the armor had been pierced. The cracked and fraying edges of it threatened to cut the fingers he ran along it, and when he instinctively grabbed his high front collar, the entire thing gave way. The red and white sleeveless crop top armor crumbled in his hands and fell onto the cement floor, looking very much like a shattered porcelain urn.

He swore as he felt the cold air on his bare, brown skin. He flexed, wincing each time his body alerted him to a new tweak, bruise, or strain. At least nothing felt broken. Across the room, Demise didn't look much better than he felt. Her already revealing robe had further tattered and threatened to reveal her deep cleavage and whether she had a thigh gap or not. She wobbled slightly, punchdrunk and winded, while Heatstroke checked his arms. His sun bands had cooled to dull yellow and pulsed in sluggish, lazy waves across his brown muscle. He needed to finish this now. The audience of shadow servants that had originally ringed their fight was now much thinner, and the ones that remained fuzzed and blurred like TV static. She was running on fumes like he was.

She waved him in, steadying herself as he approached. His fists felt heavy and he felt slow, but he had one attack he hadn't tried yet. Heatstroke ducked low and surged forward, coming out of his crouch to wrap his arm around her again. He could feel her tense up, which made it all the more satisfying when he kissed her instead.His hands slid down the curve of her voluptuous frame and he allowed himself a little indulgence as he tasted her, nibbling on her lip, feeling the odd coolness of her soft, doughy waist and the sheer size and impressive shape of her hips. Her tattered dress offered no resistance as his fingers found a purchase on her hip, his broad hand grabbing the sensual crease where the curve of her ass met the curve of her thigh. He felt her gasp, felt the heat in his hands warming her. She resisted, but only at first. The next sound she made was a swooning, purring, moan. As satisfied as a cat napping, basking in the sunlight warming the window sill.

“Ready to give up yet?” He asked between slow kisses.

Her heavy bust pressed into his and he felt just how far her massive breasts could squish, freeing on hand to roam upwards along her dark brown frame. The rest of her was human. So delightfully human. He caressed her neck as they embraced, fighting to keep his own composure as her hands explored his muscles. From his broad shoulders to his chest, chiseled and bare, to the muscular ridges of his waist. She wanted all of him.

Her answer came slowly. An unintelligible but distinctly negative response. He'd expected that after all. Heatstroke nibbled on her neck again and whispered into her ear. “Then you know what comes next.”

“Your demise.” She muttered, eyes glowing once again.

They broke their kiss with a frenzy of action. She deflected his first blow but he caught her cleanly with two lighter punches that knocked her head backwards. She grabbed him, first his torso, then his thigh, and almost tripped him to the ground before disengaging. She turned to leave, but not before he caught hold of her short, high split cape. The same one she'd dropped a peculiar looking device into. It held the same night sky pattern as the underside of her hat, he noticed.

“Ughhhhh you're being unpleasant, Heatstroke! We had our fun, now it's time to go our separate ways.” She said with apparent exhaustion.

“We're not done quite yet, Demise.” He reminded her, still tugging on her cape. The fabric stretched then tore with a loud noise and a puff of magic. Demise kept her footing and spun away from him towards the darkened back wall. Heatstroke took a deep breath and leapt over her, landing within arm's reach. He needed to finish this soon or not at all. He was spent and he knew it.

The supervillain turned and ran in the other direction, towards the set of stairs he'd used. He dashed, sunlight in his steps as he curved around her and ended up back in her way. But the hero realized too late that this latest movement had been a feint, meant to distract him from her preferred path. She was running back towards the back wall after all. The one cloaked in shadow that she'd been standing near when he'd arrived. Now a throng of fading, buzzy shadows leapt into his path now, obstructing his vision. He vaporized them all with a glowing left hook that sent a sputtering wave of light into the air and sought out their creator.

And there she stood. Hands on her knees, panting, gasping. Her curves were more noticeable than usual. She held up a finger in a plea for time to catch her breath. Heatstroke couldn't, wouldn't oblige. They weren't having [i]that[i/] much fun, no matter how attractive she was. He expected a quip from her. He did not expect her to look into his glowing eyes and meow. Not the mimicked sound a human might make, but a full throated, authentic cat noise. He stared at her, and then Demise wasn't Demise anymore.

He was holding a large black cat. Other than the feline he was now alone in a room bereft of shadows or villains. He stood there, holding a cat in one hand and a length of tattered purple fabric in the other, and scanned the room.

He caught only a glimpse of her, but that was enough to see Demise—the real, human one—take a final step and leap through the wall in front of her, which rippled and shimmered like the surface of an ebon pool as she phased through it. He dropped the cat and chased after her, arriving at the same wall she'd used and quickly recognizing that the intense darkness on this side of the room had been the result of a witch’s spell rather than mundane darkness. She’d worked magecraft to black, shadowy plate to cover the gaping hole in the building wall she’d made sometime previously. He punched through it with his light, but staring down into the busy street below he could find no trace of the woman.

Demise had escaped.

He spun around and her cat too, was gone. He yelled with frustration and pounded the wall with his fist before deactivating his powers and slumping to the ground. All he had of her was her taste and the cape in his hands, tattered and torn. He looked at it and sighed. It would have to do.

“So Demise, huh? This city just got a lot more interesting...” “So what happened at Meritron?” 10-Count asked over breakfast the next morning. The Kinetic Solutions headquarters was modest, but well equipped to house its team of 6 superheroes and a small contingent of staff dedicated to the team’s success.

This morning the two superheroes sat in the chow hall in relative silence, save a TV playing the latest news. Jessica Nguyen, known to the world as '10-Count,' was an aggressive, determined superhero, enough so to stand out on a team full of them. She wasn’t the oldest or most experienced or the most socially adept, but the woman recognized a weakness when she saw one and knew how to exploit it.

Heatstroke looked up from his hot cereal. “C'mon Jess. Not now.”

Jessica looked away, and then the solar powered brawler returned to his meal.

“So Cal, what happened at Meritron yesterday?” Heatstroke heard her clearer this time for everything she said nonverbally: the way she used his government name, the curt tone in her voice, and the way she now specified the location and date. He might be the group's field leader, but 10-Count was the enforcer on a team full of superpowered enforcers. Heatstroke outranked her, and could make her drop it, but pulling rank over a debrief would be more trouble than it was worth. Instead, the bruised and weary solar powered hero acquiesced. He could give a little now and get a little more back from her later.

The dull ache in his skull and back had ruined enough of his sleep that he didn't feel like fighting her over this. Come to think of it, the dull aches plaguing him were likely what she wanted to talk about. The shredded cape he'd pulled off of Demise sat in a tattered heap next to him on the cafeteria table. He doubted 10-Count recognized it as such.

“Sure,” he said, reaching past the strap of his white tank top undershirt to rub his traps and shoulder. “She was there when I got on the scene. Took care of her magical... shadows or whatever and called in a medevac for the civilians. She didn't care, didn't try to use the employees as hostages. You'd think she tied 'em up and forgot about 'em.”

Calvin saw curiosity bloom in her brown eyes, partially hidden as they were by her short, wavy hair.

“So what was she there for?”

“Fuck if I know. You know Meritron ain't saying shit either. But I caught her pulling some shit out of a container in their third floor lab.”

Jessica motioned for him to keep talking.

“She dropped it into her cape.”

“Like, her pocket? Gamma Crush said you brought her cape back with you.”

“Nah. Not quite.” Calvin gestured at the witch's cape. “You see any pockets on that thing?” He failed to conceal his frustration or fatigue. “When she was wearing it the inside looked different. It glowed. Had stars on it like a night sky.”

The short, athletic woman stared at him, uncomprehending. “So what. Magic?”

“I mean, she had no shortage of spells for me. But once I ripped it off of her-”

“The spell dissipated?”

They shrugged at each other. That was as far as deduction could take them.

“Yeah, basically. I wanna ask Em about it. Where is he?”

Jessica's scrunched up face and exaggerated shrug was all the answer Calvin needed.

Emile Collet, better known as the Emissary, served as the Kinetic Solution's only current magical expert. The man was an antisocial jackass even by their loosened standards, but Calvin couldn't deny that the caustic little jackass was their best bet at determining what the hell had happened to the cape.

“So the job went sideways and lil' miss witchy-poo gave you the business.” Jessica was teasing him now and he knew it. “Bet you wish you called for backup now, huh Cal?”

Hand-to-hand combat excellence was a prerequisite for Kinetic Solution membership, but 10-Count surpassed even that. She might not have the other skills necessary to be team leader yet, but being the best fighter on the team was a constant debate and a point of pride for all six of their team's current members.

Calvin swore at her first. Then he explained what Demise had done, or tried to. She and her ‘Witch Way’ coven represented new forces acting on the already delicate balance of superhumans in the city and beyond. A new team capable of going toe to toe with the Kinetic Solutions threatened everything they'd built, including their reputation as the city's foremost fighters. He omitted, however, any mention of Demise's physique or the way she'd groped, kissed, taunted him. He wanted her he realized, or at least he had during their brief encounter. He'd more than wanted her. He'd needed her. Their last kiss had been one he'd initiated, and he couldn't lie to even himself that he'd done so solely to recover what she'd stolen. He'd kissed her to keep her from leaving.

But 10-Count didn't think that way about anyone, and mentioning his brief infatuation with the voluptuous witch would only make her doubt his judgement. As far as Jessica needed to know, Demise was just a wrestler with magical powers who’d squabbled with him before escaping. He snapped at her, fully aware of his exhaustion now.

“But anyways... a wrestler witch, huh?” The lithe Vietnamese woman took a moment to consider the possibility. “So like, a battle mage, combat witch kind of vibe. Like a magus or a warlock I guess. But I've never heard of one fighting barehanded.”

“First time for everything.” He said.

10-Count nodded. “Gotta love it. That's the superhuman world for you. If she's as sturdy as you say she is, I can't wait to get my hands on her.”

“Be careful. I hit her with the same punch that put Mac Mortar down. But she got up. I don't know if it's a dark magic vs Sun power thing or what, but you can bet I'm gonna find the fuck out.”

“Someone's touchy. You want your lick back, don't you?” Jessica shot him a devious smile.

Calvin nodded. “Damn right. I owe that witch some bruises.”


#Writing #FirstDraft #Series #SFW #HotDarkLoveStory #HDLS #Fiction #Romance #Action #Fight #Magic #Superheroes #MartialArts

 
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from DigiVoyager

There was a lot of this going around yesterday. Too much, possibly. It makes sense if you're in a good place, with things to be happy about, so most places but Pakistan. There are of course, a few worse too – very few, our passport is 4th worst in the world for a reason – hence my usage of most. Of course, if you happen to be in unfortunate circumstances, you have my heartfelt sympathies – there really is no ideal place but you can get darn close with the right people. Take my colleagues, they're from privileged families and their discussions revolve around things like Macchiatos (I literally had to google what this was, and the spelling too) which place has a more authentic steak and so on, and there is me who pictures a carpentry business when he hears them talking about Sabrina Carpenter (yes, I was called a country hick for this already) so they might as well live in their own world – heck they kind of do, it's scary sometimes.

But back on Earth, Parachinar is locked down, Shias – a minority – are being genocided – and rather than helping them, the government is cracking down on those protesting for their rights, while people just celebrate New Year's day, turning a blind eye to yet another genocide. So, everyone's celebrating Happy New Year's, even here at work. Very, very desensitized, Orwell would feel the worst kind of existential horror here. Then again, I suppose that's how the world's always been, seldom do people notice atrocities not near them. Far from home, far from the mind is a mantra often cited by those whose family members died in drone attacks simply due to living in a certain area, reminding one another their own tribes were all they truly had – because you certainly don't have the government in your corner, or the army and intelligence services – they'll just accuse you of being someone else and send you off to Guantanamo for a bounty of $5000; the case of Ahmed Rabbani is just one example, where the intelligence services misidentified him on purpose as Hassan Ghul – a known terrorist – to the CIA – and he ended up languishing in their custody for almost 20 years with the bulk of said time being in Guantanamo. https://reprieve.org/us/client/ahmed-rabbani/

Now, for the suffering majority, there was no power in many parts of Peshawar for over 9 hours on Happy New Year's Day, sounds pretty bad, but hey, as those in charge will tell you, it's not the worst thing that ever happened. See, the thing is, in a bottom of the barrel, or I should say cesspool, country like ours, the barometer is usually lives lost. Now hospitals don't usually get loadshedding, well, they're not supposed to. And it didn't happen in Peshawar, so, no biggie, life goes on. I am making a mountain out of a molehill, so what if power was gone for 9 hours, no one died. True, not in Peshawar. But many lives were played with somewhere else, nearly lost in District HQ Hospital, Battagram. The pain of many patients has been worsened, many conditions exacerbated, no one dead so far, thankfully.

Now, what is loadshedding, you ask? It's when your power gets cut, usually done by the power company itself because they can't quite handle the load. It's a complicated mix of issues, and the solar panel revolution has caused its own set of problems for our monster of a power grid, so hacked together that it makes the Atari Jaguar seem well thought out. But that is its own problem, one I will delve into some other day (the power grid, obviously)

Back now to Battagram. I am something of a semi-regular visitor here, and it is very serene – in my humble opinion, anyways. So, it does hold a special place in my heart.

Battagram

Beautiful, huh?

Now, there's a lot that can be said about Battagram, but for now, the only pertinent fact is – recovery rates are over 90% – this means that over 90% of people there pay their electrical bills, so the issue of power theft – one so serious in Pakistan – isn't that big a concern here. This is important because, while they vehemently deny it, power companies always cut power on low recovery feeders. Makes sense, right? People aren't paying, don't give them power. There's also the issue of ghost bills, and made up bills, so yeah, PESCO, the electric company, is downright nasty. And despite a presidential ruling meant to end said ghost bills over a decade ago, that still hasn't happened – but I digress, that is a matter you can look up at your own leisure, if interested.

So with such high recovery rates and a populace that pays its bills regularly, plus a dam nearby, you'd think there wouldn't be any loadshedding in hospitals. Sadly, PESCO does not care about the law, for they are above it; just like most institutes, wealthy people, connected people, a lowly cop, and so on and so forth; unfortunately, we have to exclude those who smoke scorpions, they are not above the law, they only think they are until the large hand of the law comes down upon them.

So, unlawful loadshedding happened. In Battagram. Hospitals in such areas are more in need of power than say, your average hospital in some big city. Besides the usual catalog of dialysis, diagnostic imaging, incubators, operation theatres and the like – you need to run it for tube wells and sanitation, thus making an uninterrupted power supply even more mission critical to the smooth functioning of the hospital. But that would never occur to those at PESCO.

Thing is, outside of the fudged “we are reducing inflation” figures, the country is in dire straits right now, the ground reality is far worse than one can imagine. Both gas and electricity are in short supply. You may have solar power if you are privileged, but you still have to go out and get your cylinder filled with gas. Of course, the privileged have servants for that so it's a non concern to them, but your average joe will still suffer daily in search of gas.

Yeah, slavery is a thing here – for instance one of my colleagues has two servants, both basically do all the housework, cooking, cleaning, chores, all for the equivalent of 53 USD a month.

Sorry, I digress as always, anyways, what happened was bad enough to cause both doctors and families who had brought their patients to come out on the roads, as well as most of the patients that were OK to mobilize – a rare showing of unity at a time when doctors are more despised in the public eye than anything. They stormed the PESCO offices, and locked the workers out. About the only thing they could do. Now, there are some privileged people calling them criminals, anarchists and the like, but let us look at why they did this.

A few examples:

  1. An elderly patient said that he had been hospitalised for two days but couldn’t undergo surgery due to the power outage.

  2. Another patient said that his wife had to return home without receiving treatment because the hospital’s equipment was not working due to the power outage.

  3. To give a more specific example: Mobeen Madakhyal, a patient’s relative who traveled from Torghar to the DHQ Hospital, said: “We came all the way from Torghar hoping for treatment at the DHQ, but the protest has left us stranded. My relative’s condition is worsening, and we don’t know where else to go. This situation is extremely difficult for us.”

Starting from Torghar, literal translation being Black Mountain is a 3 or 4 hour drive to Battagram, and people in that region are poor, it takes a serious amount of their means to reach Battagram. Now imagine, you are a poor person, you need healthcare, you travel 3-4 hours on a critical percentage of your funds only to get this in return. To make matters worse, the road is dangerous to put it mildly. It is the kind of place where bombs have gone off, the army has killed terrorists, terrorists have killed soldiers, so on and so forth for police. Torghar itself is one of those places that faces the constant gloom of being a gathering spot for terrorists, there was an army operation in 2014 meant to get rid of them, yet to this day the people of Torghar are resisting terrorists – this was just to give some context about why Mobeen's journey was so dangerous.

There are also woodworkers suffering due to this, engineers, tailors, computer shops and the like. Life, in general, is interrupted.

Someone on Mastodon once asked me why I had referred to Pakistan as a resource extraction colony for our establishment – meaning most of our areas except where the privileged are, and especially my own province and Balochistan – to this day I don't know why they did it in my private messages, were they Pakistani too? Probably.

I went into it at length initially, but upon the final message I never did get a reply from them. For a while, I was even scared that somebody as important as me, who has a readership somewhere between none and three people had attracted the ever paranoid eye of the state. Here, though, I will just say this:

There is a dam in Battagram. It is known as Allai Khwar hydropower station, it tops out at a capacity of about 121 MW and is connected to the national grid. Despite there being electricity generation in 29 village councils of Allai tehsil, not a single electric pole has been installed to supply power to the area.

In 2020, the people were asking for a mere 9 MW. Now, they are asking for 5. I doubt they will get any.

If you read all this, you have my sincere thanks, my only aim is to raise awareness about what's happening here. Battagram is just one case, if you look close enough you'll spot similar exploitation and issues all over Pakistan.

Let us hope next year we have cause to be happy.

Mac

It's kind of like this these days, sigh.

 
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from Salt Forged Stories

Early November, That Year


Tensions are high at a gym near Los Angeles, California. Women from the gym and beyond are gathered in the MMA cage looking to make new friends and hash out their differences. In particular, all except for one of them attend the same college nearby. Mary, a hardnosed boxer has just challenged Jamila, one of the visitors and a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu specialist, to a sparring round. Who wins in the classic boxer vs submission grappler matchup?


Mary vs Jamila


Theresa leaned close to her chemistry labmate to listen to Simone as they watched Jamila and Mary trade blows in the middle of the cage. Mary had a height and reach advantage over the curvy grappler, but the few shots Jamila threw landed. All the advice Simone gave her friend seemed to ask her to do more: move around more, throw more jabs, move her head more, attack more. More, more, more.

By contrast, Mary's friends seemed content to cheer her on. All they wanted was more of the same.

Theresa watched Mary back Jamila down and then dig another left hook beneath her arms and into her side, eliciting a grunt. Even a novice like Theresa could see that it was always Mary advancing and Jamila scooting straight back or to the side, out of Mary’s way. The Latina college senior looked indomitable, unstoppable. Theresa wondered if she’d seemed that way to Jennifer when they'd fought earlier that school year.

“Work that kick, Jazz! Work the angles! She’s got nothing but straight lines!” Simone called out from her seat in the corner of the MMA cage. Jamila took that one to heart and promptly took a half step around Theresa’s coach and uncorked a kick into Mary’s side. The stout Filipina slugger recognized it as the same kick Simone had taught her 15 minutes earlier.

It took a few more iterations for Mary to figure out the position and timing and then feed Jamila a sharp right the next time she tried the kick. Jam wobbled for a moment as she backed away. Theresa wondered what she was thinking…

Fuck that noise

The words blared out in Jamila’s head as she backed away. She’d boxed with this girl, traded leather and tried everything Simone had called out. But she felt that last punch through her mouthguard and decided that stand up striking was not a long term viable strategy. Not with this monster.

“Awww, pobrecita! I think you just realized what stepping in the cage with me means, meatball. Not so fun anymore, is it?” Mary taunted as Jamila circled warily. “I’m not like Rebecca or Kelsey; I don't play games; I just hurt people. Well come on, let's see if you even last the whole round. I wanna see if you're as soft as you look!”

Mary dashed toward her with a speed belied by her impressive muscles and fired a heavy punch at the stout grappler. Jamila absorbed it on her arm, mostly, and immediately sought to wrap up the burly boxer. “Aww, what happened to all that fire? Am I too rough for you?” Mary jeered.

“Just keep watching.” Jamila assured her.

Rebecca was strong; that much was certain, but the blonde had also been a willing grappler. She and Jamila clinched almost immediately, each certain they had the advantage. By contrast, Mary seemed to enlist every muscle in her body to detach her body from Jamila’s grasp. She shook herself free and sought to renew her punishing assault but a second effort from Jamila finally brought the fight to the floor.

“So you’re just like those two sluts..” the Latina brawler spat, clearly referring to Rebecca and Kelsey. “So much for you being a warrior.”

“Nothing sexy about it. It’s just Jiu Jitsu” Jam replied through gritted teeth. She had to admit: on the ground Mary fought like a woman who didn't want to be there, and who knew the basics of how to escape and get the fight back standing. Mary tried several different methods to escape. Unfortunately, Jamila rolled through the requisite positions with a practiced efficiency until Mary was face down on the mat, her shoulder bent precariously under the ebony fighter’s leg. Jamila held Mary's trapped wrist as well, and her free hand rested on the waistband of Mary’s plaid skirt.

“This is an Omoplata” Jamila declared loud enough for the whole cage to hear. “Nothing sexy about it. But if you plan to throw any punches with this arm for the next two months, you should tap out now.”

Mary growled audibly, and when her attempt to escape was preempted by the black girl torquing her arm ever so slightly, Mary tapped the mat twice with another audible growl. Jamila held the submission for a moment longer before she untangled herself from Mary, who rose to her feet immediately, rolling her shoulder around gingerly.

“What's wrong, Mary? Am I too rough for you?” Jamila mocked as she massaged her aching side.

“I figured you couldn't keep up without that pattycake shit” Mary shook her head. “I'm a boxer. You all can have all that wrestling shit.”

“Yeah well, I did Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for years before I ever threw a punch, so I guess we're even.” Jam smiled. “I know I’ve got a lot to learn but at least Simone’s nice about it: it feels like you’re actually trying to hurt me…” Her smile turned wary and she brought her hands up as the boxer approached again.

“I think I understand,” Mary smirked, “But Simone’s nice to you because she's soft. Whether it's a training session or a fight, there's no point pulling punches and sugarcoating everything. Fighting is painful. If you don't want that, find a new hobby…”

“You’re one of those, eh?” Jamila grimaced, partially from her words, and partially from the jab she absorbed. “You sound like the assholes at my last gym.” Jamila muttered as she lashed out, fueled by anger at the mention of the school she'd left early the year before. Now it was Mary's turn to grimace as a swift kick slapped against her thigh.

“And you sound like the type to run around until you find someone who’ll treat you with kid gloves and coddle you.” Mary came over the top of Jamila’s guard with a left hook but ate a knee to the gut on her way in.

Jamila tied Mary up again; those fists into her abs hurt. Mary jostled with her and broke free, but not before eating a few more knees into her legs and stomach. “Nah, I just want to train at a place that treats me like a person, not a soldier, not a slab of meat.”

“Whatever, softie.” Mary scoffed as she muscled some daylight between them and rifled yet another hard shot into the stocky wrestler’s breadbasket.


Theresa Bayan could hear them trade opinions and punches from where she sat in the cage. Watching Mary go all out against someone else was fairly terrifying; Mary was unstoppable, menacing, a bully in the ring. Her coach was a problem that Jamila couldn’t quite solve outside of taking Mary off her feet entirely. She was gaining an appreciation for Jen's struggles against her. But Theresa felt her heart rise into her throat as she considered their views: Mary had taught, was teaching her to box, but Jamila’s viewpoint made so much more sense. She’d never considered that there might be an alternative to your coach yelling at you and Mary certainly hit her, hard, during their sessions. The gruff senior had called it “Tough Love” but it felt more like abuse to Theresa. She made a mental note to ask Jamila where she trained…


“Keep talking and I'll take that arm home with me.” Jam threatened, moving from Mary’s front to her side and gripping her shoulder, reminiscent of the earlier submission.

“Don't worry, I’m about to let you have it!” Mary growled. She pushed the black girl off her with a shrug and watched her surprise when Jamila found herself suddenly against the cage. The college senior pinned her there with a shoulder and tenderized her unprotected side with a few heavy shots.


Jennifer McCowan watched in relative horror at the way Mary bullied Simone’s friend all around the cage. The black girl found success here and there and had even made Mary tap out once, but when they were standing it was clear that Mary was doing what she wanted and the other girl was merely doing what she could.

The Seattle native wondered with mild alarm if her and Theresa looked like this when they fought. It was bad enough that her roommate had a clear strength advantage over her, but watching Mary punish a girl who was shorter and weaker than she was just felt like abuse. As Jen nervously tucked her chin into her knees she knew one thing:

She had to find a way to fight, no, beat up, girls who were stronger than she was.

Perhaps Kelsey had noticed her trepidation, because the slender Asian woman leaned over to her and whispered “Wanna know what she’s doing wrong? You wanna know how to shut down girls like Theresa and Mary?”

The English major nodded enthusiastically and listened intently….


The phone alarm they’d been using for a round timer went off and Jamila slowly unwound herself from her training partner. She’d finally relented and brought the action back to the mat again, unwilling to allow Mary more opportunities to rearrange her internal organs. She’d had another simple submission all but secured when the round ended. Now she’d regretted not working that much faster to lock it in when she had the chance…

“Hey meatball” Mary shot.

“It's Jamila. Get it right, ho.” Jamila’s voice carried an uncharacteristic edge as she looked up to the source of the insult.

“Jamila eh? Well I'm Mary. Good shit, bitch; that was fun.” Mary offered a thin smile and an open hand to the still seated Jamila and helped her to her feet. The two exchanged a dap and Mary turned back to her friends while Jamila conferred with her excitable gymmate.

“I want her.” Simone grinned like a buzzsaw.

“What?”

“I want her, Jazz. I’mma take her legs off. I think I’mma actually hurt her. She's acting like those kicks don’t hurt, like her legs are steel. Well you can call me ‘Lil miss blowtorch.’” Simone’s smile was wide and predatory as she gnawed on her mouthguard.

“Oh God, Simone; that joke was Advil. And c'mon; I thought you wanted another crack at the blonde. Now this?” Jamila Hayes knew that the longer they stayed, the more likely tragedy would occur. It was past time to leave as far as she was concerned.

But the Caribbean grappler had learned that dissuading Simone was a fool's errand: when Yolanda’s daughter set her eyes on a fight, it generally happened, whether or not it was ill considered. And talent like hers ensured there weren't enough beatdowns in her past to break her of the habit.

As Simone strode across the cage to pick a fight with the bruiser, Jamila said a short prayer, hoping that leaving here wouldn't entail carrying Simone home in any capacity.

“Hey! You! Boxer chick” Simone called out, her braids bouncing softly.

“Need something, slut?” Mary turned to answer her.

“If she didn't chew up your leg too badly, wanna go a round? I think your style would be fun to fight against.” Simone had a kinetic energy, the heat and warmth and light of an open flame.

“You still want to fight, after the beating I put on your fat friend? Really? Well I guess this way you'll both have matching bruises. Get ready….”

“Simone Waterson” the fighter answered brusquely. “And like I told you: I grew up throwing hands. Boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, whatever. I want this. No Mexican style boxers in my gym, so this’ll be fun.”

“Damn, I really don’t care. I don’t want your life story or your hospital bills, slut…” Mary remarked, cracking her knuckles again…


Mary vs Simone


A minute later and the pair were circling warily.

“No takedowns, no wrestling.” Simone announced, pumping a jab into the empty space between them.

“No complaints here, snowflake.” Mary jeered. “But actions speak louder than words. You can try whatever you want: this beatdown is non-negotiable”

“You think you want that smoke. You’re wrong, but it’s cool- wait, you don't mind me trying something? Oh, this is gonna be lit!”

Theresa watched her friend and coach waste very little time measuring each other out. Mary approached much like she had against Jamila, but Simone moved in and out of her way with a fluidity that her stocky gymmate couldn’t match. Theresa also noticed that Simone’s stance looked entirely different than it had against Rebecca or Kelsey: instead of her normal MMA stance she almost faced sideways, though she tucked her chin into her left shoulder and looked at Mary. Simone now kept one glove by her ribs and flicked it out like a whip while her right hand remained by her chin, armed and loaded. The stance looked extreme, made more so by the fact that Simone’s right and left gloves were differently colored. The black sophomore bobbed and weaved around Mary’s red gloves, never allowing Mary to hit her flush and ensuring she gave the college senior plenty to consider as well.

Theresa swore that she heard Jamila next to her mutter about “Shell…” something or “flicker” something in an exasperated tone but didn’t ask her to clarify.

Instead Theresa watched on in awe as the pair clashed: Simone was constantly moving, punches coming in bursts. Her labmate’s left hand was a blur and though Mary kept advancing, Simone never seemed like she was running from her. Rather, Simone seemed to float around the muscly boxer, stinging her. But Mary pursued the sophomore with cruel intent, her punches tight and crisp, never leaning or wobbly or off balance. Mary was a terror in her own right. And she was beginning to win their exchanges. Fewer and fewer of those wihplike jabs and rocket right hands found an undefended home while Mary pounded Simone in the stomach on several occasions

They kept at it, Mary patient and consistent while Simone dodged and responded in violent bursts. The cocky sophomore ducked beneath a sweeping hook from Mary and once again landed two, three solid punches only to get caught flush by a left to the body and a vicious right hand that broke her rhythm and sent her staggering back.

“Damn!” Simone remarked as she recovered and stood upright. “I guess it’s not quite finished yet. I really thought I had you there.”

“Not in a million years, snowflake. All that prissy Philly Shell shit doesn’t matter to a real boxer.” Mary growled.

“A real boxer? Well damn, I'll make sure to be careful if I ever meet one of those, Maria” Simone taunted in response, her smile obstructed by her red and white mouthguard.

“Mary, Snowflake. The name is Mary.”

“Ehh, same ish.”

“Fuck you too, slut.” Mary’s jaw clenched and her fists tightened. Behind Simone Mary watched her two friends fail to stifle their laughter.

“Ahh, come on; lighten up, Martha. Don’t be so boring. I thought we were having fun learning how to punch each other.” The sassy sophomore beamed. “Alright, alright, I tried being a boxer. You’re better than me at that… by a little bit… for now.” Her eyes narrowed. “Ready for me to get serious and start using all my other limbs too?”

“You can try whatever you want, snowflake. It’s not gonna help. You step in the cage or the ring with me, you get hurt. It’s simple. Easy to remember.”

At that, Theresa watched Simone abandon her previous, sideways, boxing stance and resume the familiar one she’d used to get the best of Kelsey earlier that afternoon. Mary just shook her head and approached, guard tight as ever. Simone crossed the distance between them in one step and where Mary expected to duck an incoming punch, the black girl instead leapt towards Theresa’s coach, burying her knee square into Mary’s chest. The force of the blow sent Mary staggering back and she recovered just in time to prevent Simone from slamming her shin into her jaw. Encouraged, Simone spun the other direction, attacking Mary with a spinning backfist. Simone’s red gloved slammed against Mary’s cheek and sent her reeling for… the first time Theresa could remember. She hadn’t even though Mary capable of being stunned: somehow the pro MMA fighter she shared lab notes with was doing it right in front of her. Mary moved in to clinch but Simone evaded her and kicked her in the thigh for good measure

Mary Ramirez was livid. Rebecca could tell that much. Mary hated a lot of things, but ‘showboats’ were near the top of that list, right below ‘getting beaten up by one.’ A lesser girl would have backpedaled to safety or called a timeout to recover her bearings, but Mary was prideful to a fault. She’d try to fight her way out of this like she had everything else, including that ill-fated match in San Francisco. Pride had cost her more than a win against an obnoxious black woman that night and Rebecca was loathe to let history repeat itself, training session or not.

“Fucking Christ, Mary! Back off and reset!” the blonde yelled. She leaned against the cage, waiting for her friend to find some common sense.

Mary watched her pursuer approach. Simone had a height advantage, exaggerated by her frequent kicks, but time spent with Kelsey had taught her a few methods for negating that. Simone was getting comfortable picking at her, swiping at her with low kicks that dug into her calf and thigh. She watched the young girl’s eyes and leapt into action, sending a left hand straight into Simone’s face before the kick could fully land.

Being caught on one leg did wonders for Simone’s balance, but the moment she needed to put her foot down and regain her stance was more than Mary needed to explode another fist into her face and then corral the black youngster into a tight clinch and introduce fist to stomach. Whatever worries she had about the kickboxer replying in the clinch evaporated as Simone sought only to escape. She did, but only after Mary had reintroduced her glove to Simone’s abs a few more times.

The pair continued their vicious dance again, and Mary led as the cocky sophomore contended herself with long jabs and kicks. Her output slowed as the Latina slugger continued to pressure her. Mary waded forward with hard shots and caught Simone with a uppercut that sent the younger girl scrambling back. In return Simone trotted out that familiar low kick once, twice, and paid for it both times with stiff shots to the jaw. Theresa wondered if her friend was running out of ideas.

And then she watched Simone pivot and kick a third time. Except, she didn't, and the kick never happened. Instead, a red MMA glove shot out and over Mary’s jab, nailing the cagey boxer in her jaw. Mary flinched for just a second to process the punch and Simone tried to buzzsaw through her thigh with a ferocious kick. Theresa watched her coach’s knee buckle with the impact before Simone cracked her with a wide left. Mary recovered enough to fire back and the phone alarm blared the end of the round but Mary finished whatever selection of punches she had in mind, clipping Simone as she relaxed and lowered her guard. The undeclared science major nearly spit out her mouthpiece to protest but all Mary said was the same thing she’d told Theresa no less than twice each time they’d met up for training:

“Protect yourself at all times, slut. It's not a suggestion.”

The black girl muttered something unsavory in response and swatted Mary’s outstretched fist away. The boxer shrugged and Theresa swore Mary had a slight limp as she walked back to the wall of the cage they all currently shared.

“I swear that if you were any more stubborn you'd be an actual jackass.” Rebecca chided, rolling her eyes.

“And if you were any more vindictive you'd be an actual fucking movie villain, Rebecca. I mean a Dios mios, surfer princess. Your need to be queen bee all the time is gonna get you, or us, in trouble.” Mary pressed an accusatory finger into Rebecca’s ample chest.

“It already got her choked out once.” Kelsey snickered.

“No one asked you!” Mary and Rebecca yelled almost in unison.

“Just saying… I'm the only one who didn't get submitted by the fat girl..” The slender fighter beamed.

“Nah, her friend just slapped you around for fun..” Someone shot back.

The trio bantered on until Simone’s voice rang out across the cage.

“Hey! Malibu Barbie! I'm not done slapping the taste out of your mouth! Don't tell me you're done already? I'm still hungry!”

Rebecca placed an arm on Kelsey’s shoulder and slid the saucy brunette out of her way without another word. She met the impertinent girl in the center of the cage, emerald eyes ablaze.

“I'm gonna break you. That's all. Stupid fucking Compton bitch…”

“What? I'm not even from Compton. Racist ass…”

“And I’m not even from Malibu, but that hasn't stopped you, has it? You're the real racist, brat.” The buxom blonde spat.

“You’re about 3 seconds from catching these hands, Rebecca. Pick your words carefully.”

“I'm. Going. To. Own. You. Bitch.” Rebecca made sure to enunciate and emphasize each word.

Simone’s hand flashed out almost of its own volition. It was the unconscious, easy, appropriate response. The only thing that kept the yellow glove from splashing across Rebecca’s stupid beach tanned jaw was Jamila’s ebony arms wrapped around her gymmate, dragging Simone away as she kicked at Rebecca. For her part, Rebecca smiled maliciously until Kelsey slid in front of her to keep her from pursuing.

At the very least, this last round would start when the timer went off, not before.

“If you were smart we'd pack up and go home before you pull some dumb shit, and pull me into it.” Jamila remarked as she adjusted her glasses.

“Nope”

“Then keep her off your body at least.” The Caribbean woman said after a long sigh. “She wrestles like Ysela and is just as persistent with those takedowns, so fight her like Ysesla; mind your hips and legs, don’t plant your feet. She’s not gonna trade with you, she’s gonna look for clinches into that headlock takedown, or the double leg. This is stupid, but if you finna do it then tag her, get her desperate. Stay mobile and if she takes you down pull guard and look for an armbar or a triangle. Those are basic ones that still work. Tap her out.”

“Got it.”

“Just…” Jamila Hayes sighed again as she looked up at the young kickboxer.

“Hey Jazz… thanks. For everything. I know I'm being stupid. Thank you.”

“Bitch,” Jamila cooed affectionately. “If you're gonna do this… at least go out there and body her, alright? No ambiguity.”

“That I can do” Simone beamed.

Across the cage, Rebecca and her friends were having much the same conversation.

“She's actually really strong, so watch out for that.” Kelsey suggested.

“Brilliant” Mary snorted derisively.

“Sorry K, I wanna hear Mary on this one.” Rebecca admitted, prompting the slender Asian woman to cross her arms and pout.

“She'll try and setup that right cross.” Mary confided, visions of her round with Simone still fresh in her mind. “Keep your hands up and be smart with your jab.”

“Hmm, I think-“ The voluptuous blonde suggested.

“Then why’d you ask me, Rebecca?” Her surly Latina friend interrupted. “Listen. Push her to the wall and take away her movement. It’s the core of her offense. And she'll be hunting for kicks, to the leg or body, looking to slow you down. Tie her up, put her on back. You're bigger and stronger. Take this slut out.”

Rebecca bit her lip, smiled, and nodded at the advice. She stepped past Mary before her friend put a hand on her tanned shoulder.

“She’s still a kid. Watch out for bullshit. Make her pay for it.”

“I plan to.”


Rebecca vs Simone


The phone went off, somewhere in the distance. It signaled the start of a sparring round in the MMA cage of a Southern California gym.

Neither of the women fighting needed to be told to fight.

A sparring round, intended to instruct, to help fighters learn from each other and practice their timing, reactions, and techniques without the stress or stakes of a real match.

Both of the women had different ideas in mind.

This was personal.

Simone had a head full of new ideas she wanted to try out in real time: a million methods and theorems to break down this blonde wrestler. They all worked flawlessly when she saw them in her mind’s eye. But now she needed proof, a full experiment, a test. This was the heart of the scientific method!

She sprinted across the cage, gathered her stride, and leapt towards Rebecca with a flying knee. The blonde slid out of the way, ducked the blow entirely, and let the black woman sail past.

Rebecca recognized it from Simone’s round with Mary and was intent on dominating this bombastic youngster from pole to post and leaving no doubt about who the best fighter here was.

The way Simone had tapped out nearly as soon as Rebecca had attained full mount and done so with a goofy smile on her face, as if this was all just a game with no stakes. Simone was going to learn her place the hierarchy, preferably repeatedly and painfully, and Rebecca was an eager and willing teacher.

Well, she didn’t let Simone fly past without doing something about it.

The voluptuous wrestler wrapped her arms around Simone’s waist and hoisted the girl up and over her head. The rest of the girls in the cage either gasped or cheered when Rebecca’s suplex brought Simone crashing down on the mat on the back of her neck and head. Rebecca released her grip and let the black 19 year old sprawled out on the mat.

Jamila clutched her face in her hands.

This couldn’t have started worse. A German suplex? That was some pro wrestling nonsense. But Simone had demanded this, and her gymmate intended to let her fighter her way out of this.

Rebecca raced to get on top of the still stunned Simone. She couldn’t tell if the girl had been knocked silly or actually enjoyed the ride, but the striker’s goofy smile infuriated her. Then Simone opened her mouth and confirmed the less desirable option.

“A German suplex! Nice! I totally didn’t account for that. Your wrestling acumen is way more extensive than I thought! I mean, I’m annoyed that you dodged, but this is still awesome!” Simone beamed.

“Goddamn you’re annoying, Simone. I’m gonna wipe that stupid smile off your stupid face, bitch. Where’s that black girl magic now, bitch?”

“Try harder, Rebecca. And please try to enjoy yourself; this shit’s supposed to be fun. Also… Wu Tang.”

Rebecca groaned. “Wait, what? Wu Tang?”

Simone swung her hips suddenly and slid out from beneath Rebecca. In the next moment her leg swung up and onto Rebecca’s shoulder. The excitable fighter caught one of Rebecca’s arms and clamped one leg over the other, trapping Rebecca in one of the few Jiu Jitsu holds Simone could faithfully reproduce, an Arm Triangle.

“Protect Ya Neck!” Simone beamed, squeezing her legs tighter and looking to wring an early submission out of Rebecca. The blonde spat an expletive before deciding to conserve her air and find a way to prevent being choked with her own arm. The other women in the cage reversed their cheering and groans to reflect this reversal of fortunes, all except for Jamila Hayes, who had accompanied Simone from Binary Star gym and still held her clenched fists in front of her mouth. The Triangle wasn’t quite tight enough, Simone hadn’t almost but not quite secured the submission, and she watched in horror as Rebecca gathered Simone up, hoisted the young fighter up into the air, and slammed her onto the mat for the second time this session. Simone landed with a thud but didn’t go limp. She was still conscious, still in the fight. Simone released the hold and lay there on the mat but Rebecca didn’t look much better, kneeling and gasping for air.

“Alright, that slam shit is getting old Rebecca. I get it: you’re one of those corn-fed white girls and you wanna make sure everyone knows how strong you are. You eat your Wheaties before you go surfing or tanning or whatever but-” Simone rolled backwards and stood, clearly shaken but ready to fight.

“Do you actually never get tired of saying stupid shit?” The blonde growled in response. “I mean, Jesus Christ it’s like you’re physically incapable of shutting the fuck up.” Rebecca rose to her feet, eager to silence the cocky knockout artist.

They stood and traded tentatively, Rebecca taking the lead and clogging the air between them with punches. Her intent to draw Simone into a firefight was clear but the Los Angeles native refused to take the bait, offering measured counters instead and never staying in one place for long. She seemed content to let Rebecca miss as she came forward and reward the voluptuous blonde with stinging kicks for her efforts before sliding away back towards the middle of the cage. On and on they went, Rebecca unable to put meaningful leather onto her and helping to demonstrate why the young black fighter’s moniker was “Slick” when Simone ducked and swayed and avoided several shots by the slimmest of margins, frequently tagging Rebecca instead. Her first strategy defused, Rebecca eschewed punches and dashed towards Simone only to get rocked by a waiting left hook. The next approach found a sharp knee jutting into her. The busty beach princess was suddenly a boat unable to make its way past the rocks and onto the shore. When she finally bullied her way in and got a grip of her opponent the slippery striker twisted free and blasted Rebecca with another hook and two chopping kicks, then leapt towards the reeling blonde and detonated a soaring red glove onto her face. The blow sent Rebecca tumbling back towards the cage, senses on full alert.

This was wrong. All of it. She’s not supposed to do this. I’m supposed to beat her… dammit!

Frazzled and furious, Rebecca rose to find the sophomore beckoning her, waving her in to face more punishment. “Damn, you’re still awake. I thought that would put you sleep. Ah well. I’m right here, Barbie,” she taunted. “Come on, get a second serving. I’ll be cooking up ass whoopings as long as you’re hungry!”

“Stop chasing her, Becky.” Mary growled as she leaned against the wall of the cage. “Let it come to you.”

Rebecca Meyers stood, fists clenched, and approached tentatively. Simone picked her shots, an angry orbiting satellite, sending kicks and punches at the busty white fighter. Rebecca endured the abuse until an open handed yellow glove splashed across her face and left her seeing red.

“Got ‘em coach!” Simone yelled to no one in particular.

Getting punched she could accept, but slapped? Fucking disrespected? In her own gym? Maybe Kelsey could find humor in it, but Rebecca Meyers was going to tear this slut limb from limb

Simone’s next kick landed, but when she brought it back there was Rebecca, face full of fury and arms wrapped around her calf.

Dammit; I guess I got careless

Simone pushed down on the wrestler, tried to hop away, but they crashed down onto the canvas for the third time this round, and Rebecca sought to extend her stay. She crawled up the young pro fighter as they wrestled, eventually wrapping her arms around Simone’s head while she pinned her down with her body.

“The headlock and… side control. Yeah…” Kelsey muttered. She’d spent a lot of time wrestling with Rebecca and knew the blonde’s affinity for this position well. More curious was if Rebecca would demonstrate exactly why she loved this particular position so much… There it was

With Simone trapped beneath her and Rebecca on her side facing her, it was just a natural byproduct that Rebecca’s full bosom happened to press against Simone’s face. That was an inescapable fact of gravity and biology. When the busty blonde wrapped an arm behind Simone’s head and pulled her into her ample cleavage, that was intentional.

And certainly not unnoticed by her unwilling victim.

“Get your udders out of my face” Simone groaned.

“Make me” came the haughty reply, punctuated by several fists and knees to Simone’s face and body. Rebecca luxuriated in the feeling of the younger, shorter fighter squirming uncomfortably beneath her, unable to free herself.

This was more like it, more of the domination she imagined, no demanded.

She sought to straddle the girl and rain down leather to bring this short lived rivalry to a close, but Simone was surprisingly persistent about keeping Rebecca from improving her position. She considered a full attempt at choking her out with this current headlock; Simone drowning in Rebecca’s ample cleavage would be a fitting end for the cheeky sophomore. She fed the black girl some leather while she considered her options.

A momentary lapse in her concentration gave a flagging Simone all the space she needed to throw a flailing elbow and force her escape when it connected with Rebecca’s jaw. Jamila always mentioned how wild elbows didn't constitute a legal escape in Jiu Jitsu, but fuck, this wasn’t Jiu Jitsu. A desperate scramble ensued and though she paid the toll in heavy shots, Simone found her way back to her feet, the blonde still clinging to her, leaning on her, abusing her.

“Just get off me.” An exhausted Simone demanded…

“Make me!” Rebecca crowed.

They leaned against the chain linked wall of the cage, an unglamorous tangle of groaning limbs and impotent threats. Jennifer’s phone blared the end of the round but Rebecca didn’t let go, whether due to malice or exhaustion, instead pushing Simone’s face further into the wall of the cage. When her pushing and wriggling didn’t secure her escape, Simone Waterson resorted to insults. Rebecca finally let her go, just in time to catch another flailing elbow in the face.

Now they were both pissed.

If this had been a tense spar before, it quickly devolved into a nasty fight. The two charged at each other, tired, and past the point of dealing with whatever new bullshit the other could come up with. Insults and fists flew, and the former continued even after friends and gymmates intervened to keep the pair from actually maiming each other. Jamila grabbed a hold of Simone while Mary and Kelsey pulled Rebecca away, leaving the two fledgling sophomores staring at each other unsure what to do.

“Nah, let me go!” Simone roared. “I’mma kill her, Jazz. I'll actually catch a body… I swear I'll…”

“Go home, chill the hell out, and hope to God none of this ends up online, cause if your mom finds out what happened we’re actually dead. Corpses…” Jamila shivered at the thought while she walked Simone out of the cage, stopping only to collect their bags and adjust her glasses. “I knew this runback was a bad idea but you went ahead and confirmed it. Nice job…”

“...Damn” Simone acceded. “Damn… Let’s just bail…l… sorry Jamila. I guess I was on one…”


Rebecca was cornered, figuratively and literally, by the two classmates she'd come to know very well over her college career. Now those two were trying to keep her from making any more poor decisions…

“Who the hell does she think she is?” Rebecca raged. “I'm going to rip her head off and-“

“Calmate, Rebecca, calm down, be cool. Just think…” Mary advised.

“Yeah, like, this was fun. They're fun.” Kelsey continued in her characteristically bubbly tone. “Way better than you said they’d be. I mean, Janelle or whatever her name was, she tapped out you and Mary. I think she needs to lighten up, but we'll get there, and Simone’s kind of a beast once she gets going… like… watching you two go at it gave me chills.” The Eurasian brunette gave a lusty smile.

“Yeah, like the airhead said.” Mary shrugged. “They don't totally suck. I could have some fun with either of them.”

The haughty blonde’s fury was only beginning to subside, but she stopped trying to forcibly make her way past her friends; if Mary and Kelsey were in agreement about anything, particularly anyone, that was news unto itself.

“Goddamit… just…” Rebecca pounded her fist into her palm. “Did we at least get it on camera?”

“Oh did we EVER!” Kelsey assured her, her bubbly smile sharpening.


“Why’d Rebecca hold on like that?” Theresa asked aloud.

“Why’d Simone deck her?” Jennifer countered.

“Why do you always stan for Rebecca! Is she your new hero or something?” Theresa asked, her tone angrier than intended.

“The same reason you keep defending your little lab partner even when she’s totally acting like a butt!”

“Nuh-uh!” Theresa protested.

“I said-“

A more important realization dawned on the two rookies in unison.

“I guess we're walking back to campus…”


Later that week, at the Binary Star Gym in Los Angeles, California, the gym’s two co-owners leaned over a phone held between them.

“Where’d you’d find this, ‘Dre?” Yolanda Waterson asked, irritated. The gym’s striking/boxing coach was staring down at the phone watching her daughter getting ragdolled by a blonde white girl before a woman who looked suspiciously like the back of Jamila’s head slid in front of the camera and the video clip came to a close.

“Cameron” Was Andre’s response. Andre Collins was the gym’s instructor for wrestling and mixed martial arts. ‘Cameron’ was his son, and a budding heavyweight boxer with Olympic dreams. “I found it on his… InstaPic account, or whatever the hell it's called.” The old man was exasperated searching for the name of the social media site. “You know the kids and this social media shit, Yola.”

“Yeah Dre, I know… I just… this looks bad… and right when we're negotiating the contract with…”

“Yeah, I know Yolanda. But Simone’s young, and it's not like she went down to one of them semi pro league and fought topless or nothing…” the retired fighter and current coach scratched his neck.

“I think I'd actually prefer that, Dre.” The gym’s matriarch looked up from the phone to stare Andre in his eyes. “Hell, I did topless stuff during my career; that wasn’t the reason I had problems finding fights.” Yolanda chuckled ruefully. “If anything, that sexy, foxy shit made me a few new fans. I get it, it's not for everyone, that's fine. What pisses me off is that she told Jam but didn't tell me. I tried my best to be the kinda mom that my daughter could tell anything. Y'know, did she tell her dad about this? Or anyone else besides Jamila?”

“Damn Yola… that's…”

“That and it looks like she's getting her ass handed to her, but if she can't handle a wrestler that's your fault Dre… you and Ysela and Jonathan and..” Yolanda’s face finally cracked a smile.

“Aw nah, if she's getting trucked by some corn-fed white girl that's on her. I gave her the tools…” They shared a look. “But listen Yola; if you want her to trust you, you gotta trust her.l

“What do you mean?”

“Peep, Yolanda.” Andre checked his phone again. “If she had told you what was going on, would you have tried to stop her?”

“Of course.” Yolanda’s brown eyes narrowed.

“And that's exactly why she didn't tell you. Look, I unno what's up with you and Isaiah, but Simone’s in college; she ain't a kid anymore. You gotta let her make choices and support her.”

“Like you and Cameron?”

“THAT knucklehead…” Andre sighed…”Yeah, like his dumbass haircut and that stupid ass tattoo he wanted to get. I convinced him not to tattoo his face, remember?”

“Yeah…” Yolanda’s voice trailed off. Perhaps trust was a thing she’d yet to offer her daughter…

For now though, there would be consequences and punishment...


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

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from DigiVoyager

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.

 
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from Lucifer Orbis

I've spent the last two hours caring about the wonders of bank accounts, outstanding payments, various updates, invoice control, etc. I would love to have someone who could take care of this mess for me, but part of being an adult – so people say – is being able to control our own finances and everything else in our life. I am on the good path! Also, I'm happy living in a country where if I fail to remember some payment, I will get spammed with notifications. In my home country I'd get one notification and then, shortly after, a fine. Maybe things have changed now and I'm too absorbed in my life to notice it. I mean, I see things changing for the worse. No, this is not an introduction to some profound message. I'm too tired even for that.

When I was a child, my grandfather used to say that I was already born tired. He did it with a chuckle and tenderness that still fills my memories every time I think about him. My grandmother was the boss. There wasn't time for exhaustion and tiredness. We should go to school or work, be active, and don't think too much about our problems – we should solve them instead. I miss her resolve. I can imagine her in Heaven, with everyone lying on the clouds in peaceful meditation, and complaining that she has to do all the tasks and paperwork by herself. “You, get up and help me.” If you think Heaven is easy – not with my grandmother there. What could be written in those papers? Words no one cares about here below.

My divinely sweet cat has been very sick. We took him to the vet, they didn't find anything, but he has a chronic illness that, little by little, will take away years of his life. He lost a lot of weight, at least for a cat. I have much to learn with him. How to feel weakened, living with an incurable disease, and still being simultaneously happy and cranky. Our relationship has evolved greatly after I took care of him during one of his episodes. If he wants something, he will make himself understood, and when he doesn't, there's claws and teeth waiting for me. I'll gladly take everything if it means taking a glimpse at the enormous spirit inhabiting his eyes. When I arrive home, he's the first to run towards the door to congratulate me for having survived another day in the adult world. Then he jumps into the kitchen area and says “Human, I need food. Go to work.” But I know it isn't food that he wants; it's just his convoluted way of asking for cuddles, because he's as good at communicating feelings as I am. Then, cuddles it is, but not without some protest in between. Then comes the food, and of course he doesn't eat it because he had done it five minutes earlier.

In the end, I give him a big hug. “No-no, go away, you witch.” I put him on the floor, and he comes back straight after, asking for more pats. And then there's lap time, but carefully, because Your Highness doesn't like to be petted just like that. Things should be done with grace. One takes ten minutes to find the right position and then God help me if I need to get up because my feet got numb. There's a bit of protest and then, finally, relaxation. At this point, a book or a handheld console can rest on his back. As a proud owner/owned I was well trained in the art of staying still. Some movement is allowed, but what he really enjoys is conversation around him. The sound of our voices and the company (without touching!) is the best a King can have. The sound of talking about life, politics, culture, religion, everything is music, even if it's about the US. He's very attentive to everything I do. If it's bathroom time, “Better go and keep watch lest she gets swallowed by the toilet and I lose my source of food!”

I have another cat. A cat-cat. When I arrive home, he keeps napping, and doesn't even notice me. I fill him with kisses and he doesn't bite or scratch. He chirps a little, still half asleep, starts purring and falls asleep again. When it's time for cuddles, he doesn't understand the word “no.” How could I dare having any will of my own? The difference is that I can do whatever I want with him. I can go full Elmyra Duff on him and he loves it. His favourite place is the crook of my arm (before, it was my head, but even I have limits) and I use my other arm to pet him. All arms on deck and no books. But if the King dares to set paw on the bed at that precise moment, the Dragon is unleashed, and a fight ensues. Being able to defend the territory is of paramount importance to ensure the source of cuddles is well protected against intruders. Sometimes, even a simple eye contact for a short moment is enough to expel the intruder from the battleground. This little Dragon Snake has been with me for many years and now he's taking advantage of his brother's illness to steal his special food. He also stole his bed.

When there's fireworks outside or any other suspicious sound that could indicate a catastrophic hazard, the King rings the alarm, “Alarm! Alarm!!! Move, you fools!” running around plants, over the furniture, on window sills, to the front door and back; while the other one just sits and stares in pure ataraxia, watching the world burn around him, watching his brother panicking over nothing. Purr, purr, purr.

Reality is always More or less Than what we want Only we are always Equal to ourselves.

Ricardo Reis (excerpt) 1-07-1916

 
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from rC:\ Writing Portfolio

I Believe In the Fediverse

In 2022, tech magnate and bombastic personality Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, thumbing the scales of an already polarized social media website further toward censorship, misinformation and ideological warfare. Twitter once was—and arguably still is—the closest thing to an open forum on the internet with widespread participation among people of all social status, from A-list celebrities to run-of-the-mill crackpots. While this may be true, it hasn't stopped millions of people from completely abandoning the site as the quality of the user experience continues to degrade beyond our wildest imaginations.

The critical weakness of Twitter was exposed during the aftermath of this multi-billion dollar transaction: a forum cannot actually be open when it is owned and operated by a central authority with a transparent political agenda. Much digital ink has been spilled over when exactly Twitter was ruined, but it's hard to deny that it got there. People have begun to understand the need for an alternative, seeking it out in new and familiar destinations alike.

The new social web, in many ways, looks like the old social web. The kinds of people who were on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Vine in the early 2010s are likely spending more time on Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Bluesky in the mid-2020s. We're still tapping out ten-second, hundred-character ephemera into our pocket rectangles, the parameters have just shifted slightly. While I'm glad to see people recognize the need to cut ties with a burgeoning hotbed of reactionary ideology in the case of Twitter, I worry that many have not learned the correct lessons from this saga and are setting themselves up to repeat the same mistakes.

As we continue down a path toward tech oligopoly and unfettered transfer of wealth to the upper echelons of society, it should be clear that another centralized, corporate platform cannot be the key cornerstone of a free and open internet. An alternative will always be necessary when the entire infrastructure of a communication service can be acquired with a cash transfer. Enter Mastodon: an open-source, decentralized Twitter equivalent that could be a viable solution to this growing problem.

Mastodon is part of a vast social networking platform known as the fediverse. This platform makes use of the ActivityPub protocol, a framework for seamless communication between various interlinked, disparate services. In practice, a Mastodon user can see content and interact with profiles from all over the fediverse, well beyond anything that exists under the Mastodon umbrella. Fediverse servers (referred to as “instances”) are comparable to email servers, hosted by different kinds of people from around the globe and able to communicate with each other by design.

The fediverse is as much a part of the small web as your personal website or blog. Its utility in your life is as shallow or deep as you want; your experience will be the priority every step of the way. Fediverse services are never going to harvest your data, advertise to you or psychologically manipulate you into scrolling further—they only seek to connect you with other fediverse users. The fediverse is also literally a “small web” in the grand scheme of social media. Mastodon only has about 7,000,000 users, around half of the total Bluesky userbase and about thirty times smaller than the population on Meta's Threads app.

Threads is technically part of this federated network, though its users currently cannot follow or see replies from other fedizens, demonstrating Meta's lack of good faith commitment to the concept. Bluesky is another popular refuge for Twitter expats, developed on a similar protocol to ActivityPub. The Authenticated Transfer protocol is not linked to the fediverse or any other service outside of Bluesky, suggesting this for-profit service's touted openness could end up being more style than substance. It's possible to bridge profiles between Mastodon and Bluesky using hacky third-party methods, but this is not quite the same as the intercommunicability you'd find between fediverse instances.

Most people are not thinking too deeply about the technical minutiae, they simply go where other people are. Once you get used to a certain place, it's difficult to see the point of spending time anywhere else. Enmeshing yourself in any given service will eventually expose you to its limitations, there might be ways around them but you're going to be aware of them regardless. There's a certain Stockholm syndrome-like quality to social media partisanship; I can't confidently say I've been above it in all my years of using the internet.

I've always been fascinated with the abundance of social media apps that all end up doing the same thing. If social media is supposed to be a place on the web to share shortform text, pictures, video and audio clips, why do we need so many places to do it? At a certain point after uploading videos to Twitter, posting a Notes app essay on Instagram or publishing an animated photo album reel on YouTube, how have we not discovered that this is all the same?

The beauty of the fediverse is a distinct recognition of this fact; the entire utility of social media has been flattened into one logical, streamlined plane of deployment. The services that make up the fediverse aren't deadlocked in competition, instead collaborating with each other to popularize the ActivityPub standard. Rather than being driven by market forces that funnel development efforts toward unwanted features, fediverse apps endeavor to provide the best possible experience for their intended use cases and nothing more.

Mastodon is the premier service, it's practically synonymous with the fediverse among the uninitiated. There are also several other federated Mastodon-likes offering comparable features and exclusive benefits, such as Misskey, Sharkey, Friendica and Pleroma. Pixelfed is the designated Instagram replacement, about as straightforward as it gets. A TikTok competitor called Loops was also recently made available by the Pixelfed developers. Peertube remains criminally underutilized as people clamor for a viable YouTube alternative, though it can be challenging to find a suitable instance. Lemmy successfully gained a foothold among disillusioned Reddit users, but it's still too niche to be useful for certain interests due to lack of engagement. WriteFreely is a solid, if bare-bones choice for blogging in my experience, seemingly lacking functionality offered by other free services.

The fediverse as it exists today is clearly a mixed bag. It's nice that all of these services can talk to each other, but the practical application of this is questionable at best from my vantage point. Further buy-in is required from wealthy, technically-skilled people to keep the project sustainable. Prominent instances that serve a specific niche on the fediverse like botsin.space are forced to shut down due to lack of support, exposing a weakness of this concept and demonstrating why it might not actually be the one-size-fits-all solution needed to fix social media altogether.

It's been a great service for my specific interests as a tech blogger, but I worry the evangelists can't see past their nose when it comes to clarifying the benefits of joining for other kinds of people. The sign up process is notoriously confusing for those who are more familiar with conventional social media. The actual usability of fediverse apps is almost never a clear upgrade over their mainstream counterparts. We've reached a point with computing—and every experience downstream from it—where the focus has shifted away from providing a quality product and more toward extracting value out of those who are too dug in to learn a new way of doing things. The alternatives don't currently have the infrastructure or cultural cachet to compete, requiring more effort and compromise than the average person may be interested in.

All I can do is share bits of personal experience in hopes that it resonates with people. I've enjoyed my time on the fediverse, but I'm just not as deep into it as other folks. While I think it would be a fun project to start my own instance from home, I don't exactly have the time, money, housing continuity and technical competence to get it done right away. Still, the act of remaining on a large general-purpose instance like mastodon.social does not make me less of a fediverse user in the same way that relying on a desktop environment does not make me less of a Linux user—yes, it's true.

I decided to join Mastodon in the summer of 2023 when I became fed up with the direction of Twitter under its new leadership. By this point, Twitter had become more of a news tool than a social media site for my uses. I was drowning in a sea of voices; nothing I shared had any amount of penetration, and the mutual acquaintances I once kept up with grew distant or dropped off completely. I chose mastodon.social because it seemed like the most logical starting point for getting into an ecosystem I knew practically nothing about.

It took a period of months to start coalescing around like-minded individuals on Mastodon. Posting in several hashtags, monitoring the various timelines, filtering out obnoxious keywords and vigilantly muting obviously fake, spam-ridden and low quality accounts worked wonders for discovering people. I can proudly say I've made more genuine connections on Mastodon in under two years then I ever did on that Twitter account I made in 2009. Though I may not have the energy to post multiple times a day, every day, I'm likely to get something out of it when I do.

I believe in the fediverse as a Utopian concept for a social web unconstrained by corporate influence. I've been exposed to avant-garde ideas and artistic creations I wouldn't have encountered anywhere else. I've met some wonderful people who've encouraged me to be more creative, put myself out there, think in different ways and grow as an individual. There is a personal touch to the fediverse that can be difficult to describe. Fedizens appreciate your contributions in a way you won't find as easily in other communities focused on cultural narratives and clout chasing. It can be easy to forget how small Mastodon is when you're reaching an engaged audience without much barrier to entry.

That being said, it's important to recognize that the fediverse may never end up being a snug fit for everyone. It's not likely to win over anybody who is averse to using social media or those who struggle to find a healthy balance with online activities. While it's not as explicitly hierarchical and addicting-by-design as some of the other corporate services I briefly mentioned, the perverse incentive structures baked into the concept of social media are inextricably linked to fediverse apps as well. The ways that social apps shape our behavior are beyond the scope of this piece, but suffice to say, the fediverse won't likely be a panacea for anybody's social isolation or attention span issues. All the negative factors I've discussed add up to a potentially tough sell, hence why I don't normally extol the benefits of the fediverse to everyone I know.

The irony of this ambitious interlinked system of cooperative social media services ultimately having limited appeal beyond a thin slice of diehard enthusiasts is not lost on me, but at the same time, that lack of reach might actually be a good thing. The small web is experiencing a revival, in part because previous attempts to create a central location on the internet for every kind of person to mingle have mostly proven to be a failure, a net negative for society at large. The internet was always better when there were degrees of separation between demographics—the evolution of the new social web is bearing this out. It would be great if humans could get together, sing Kum Ba Yah and find ways to appreciate each others' differences, but that's simply not the world we live in. Until that day comes, I'll keep sharing periodical musings with the handful of people in my circle over here.

(Originally published in Ctrl-ZINE Issue #17: https://ctrl-c.club/~/loghead/zine/Ctrl-ZINE.issue.17.pdf)

 
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from Lucifer Orbis

Updating on my previous post, I finally – finally – finished The Mirror of Simple Souls by Margaret Porette. I’m so happy because it wasn’t easy and I may or may not have something to say about it. Maybe in general terms, but even to me it was too much. And not even on purpose, another book came out: Dissident women, beguines, and the quest for spiritual authority by Catherine Lambert. I’m going to read it after taking 1000 naps. I mean, the book title says everything. What I enjoyed the most about Margaret was precisely the independence with which she lived her faith, especially at a time when independence and women were mutually exclusive. I wrote the following text a while ago, but didn’t publish it because I didn’t think it was that good but here goes.


I was listening to a song called Ballad of the Prodigal Son. It's terribly beautiful and collected. It's actually funny that the story, being a joyful one, and with a happy ending, at least for the father and the son – the brother being rightfully pissed at the special treatment and kinda missing the point – the angelic voice shifted tone just in the right measure to bring tears to my eyes. I still have no idea why I listen to these things, but I do. Oh, it's late at night. Silence! And a midlife crisis.

Circling back, this is a very well-known story but as my memory fails me consistently, I don't recall it from my childhood; or maybe it was in a book a nanny gave me. I must have heard it, but without much contextual memory from those early years, I can only trust that the story reached me one day somehow. It’s common knowledge that the communion of saints is one of the fundamental principles of the Catholic Church. But why exactly do people need saints? What's a saint supposed to do? After all, Christ is Lord. He is, but sometimes you just need a little nudge to get there. The saints can do precisely that. So, a normal Catholic will tell you “we don't worship saints!” even though they may be talking with their favourite saints the whole day, but this is the part that they don't tell you so it can't get confused with “worshipping”. However, if they tell you that they're talking with other Catholics the entire day, it's not worshipping, it's a conversation. This is exactly what the communion of saints is – relishing in the very connection between earthly and heavenly things, and everything in between – that of holy people united by the sacraments and communion with Christ our saviour. Think about it as a connection between the human and the divine; the human turned holy, touched by grace and by the Holy Spirit which is common to us all. In other words, it’s being in touch.

Of course I’m only mentioning this in very loose terms, not even explaining anything, but you get the idea. Where I want to get at is, as made abundantly clear in a previous post, I have a favourite saint. That person died 400 years ago. I could try to update myself a little bit and choose another saint as a guide but I can’t. My head is resting on the perfect lap, if I can be so candid. I can push it a bit further and say that my body is being held by the perfect pair of arms and my soul is being fed the most eloquent whispers. That my will is being guided by the wisest actions and my dreams are being set on fire by the most ferocious passion. Ok, I’ll stop here before this gets weird – and it does. Remember that angel? Where do you think that passion comes from? It came from God, it was infused into a human being who subsequently wrote a number of theological teatrises that pierced the soul of another human being 400 years later. Now think about this as a web of connections, of a pulsating heart from where all arteries and veins expand. This is just the power of one saint and her communion with Christ. Think how many individuals are connected to Christ through a web of connections with other people, and these, with others. It is, in other terms, a Church.

My head is resting on the perfect lap My body is held by the perfect pair of arms My soul is fed the most eloquent whispers My will is guided by the wisest actions My dreams are lit by the most ferocious passion

Hah, it almost looks like I’m in love! Teresa of Avila, in her younger years, got access to a number of books. One of them was Letters of St. Jerome. See, St. Jerome was an inspiration to her and a guide in her own faith. As such, I also started reading his letters, learning that he was the translator of the Bible to Latin and a few other facts about his life. I wanted to read his letters, because they lingered in the eyes of Teresa and his words flipped a switch some time later. One of his letters caught my eye – To Theodosius and the rest of the anchorites. It was there that I saw Luke 15:3-5 and ended up reading the whole passage. For context, St. Jerome wrote: “I am the prodigal son who although I have squandered all the portion entrusted to me by my father, have not yet bowed the knee in submission to him; not yet have I commenced to put away from me the allurement of my former excesses.” Oh Jerome, how much we have in common! And then, by some weird coincidence, the heavenly voice I mentioned in the first paragraph starts singing the ballad that gave melody to my ears, a ballad previously unknown to me, playing on shuffle on YouTube, echoing the Holy Spirit, echoing Luke’s gospel, echoing Jerome, echoing Teresa, and piercing me.

 
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from Lucifer Orbis

I am exhausted. It's a good kind of exhaustion, but still, I need naps. I've been able to juggle my job, drawing, reading, writing, playing video games and watching silly horror flicks. After all, it's October and I need inspiration to keep going after the cold and darkness sets in for good. Winter is coming, right? Last Winter, we had a lot of snow. Our little neighbourhood looked like a cosy postcard people used to send to their families during Christmas. Do people still do that? Things at work have been fine despite the fact that sometimes what I really, really need is silence. I've seen that silence these days can enter the realm of luxuries. Not everyone has access to it, not everyone can enjoy its all encompassing bliss, it's the realm of the privileged.

Silence, silence, silence. I need it so my soul can sing.

Maybe it's the reason why I sleep so little. I enjoy the early hours of the night to stay in absolute silence. During this time I get inspired to write or draw while processing the many thoughts flowing in waves through my head. Sometimes I get desperate! I need to do everything all at once and can't seem to find rest. At least, I don't have neighbours digging their heels on the upper floor, children practising the piano right above my bedroom. Beats all the neighbours I had before, though. These don't make free use of an hi-fi system or play video games at maximum volume during the night. I am very lucky and enjoy their presence even when we don't interact.

Following my last post, I wrote some ramblings in my journal about a somewhat new translation of Teresa's biography. I'd like to transcribe it here, but first I need to understand my own handwriting and second I need to edit a fair amount. So, I think the idea will stay inside the drawer alongside my journal. Writing about Teresa's works and ideas wasn't easy and I assume that when I start seeing what I wrote here, I'll probably bin the whole thing. The gist of the text is translation for authenticity vs. translation as experience. At first, I didn't understand the whole purpose of changing so many things in the original text “for a modern audience”. I also shouldn't fall into traditional bigotry over religious texts. It's exhausting and useless. I just got slightly annoyed because one part of me thinks the original text and respective direct translation (as far as possible) is the right thing to do, whereas the other part felt the new translation is the right way to take it in. Therefore, if you want to read the original text, as written, in all its authenticity and sweet imperfection, all well and good. If you choose instead to read something that is truly transformative, then the new translation is the way to go. Why, though, can't the old one be both? Well, it can. I’ve experienced it both ways and the conclusion I reached is, in order to grasp the old (original) discourse, the one thing we have to put in is work – a lot of it. And it's this work and effort that I miss when I’m reading the new translation. I must be very clear that this translation couldn't be more beautiful and rich – it’s the one I have in physical format – but it just did all the work for me.

In the end, I rambled intensely about this in my journal. I had to cross-reference some sources. I was comparing translations all the while reading about traditions on literature produced by women in the Late Middle Ages. It was over 4am, fortunately on a Friday. My brain was on fire. Then, not on the same day, I wrote about my progress with a book called The Mirror of Simple Souls, written by Margaret Porette. It's not an easy read, but the translation I got, from the University of Notre Dame Press, comes with a f a n t a s t i c introductory essay. Ah, joy! I'll transcribe what I've written here if the inspiration strikes again as I still have to finish the book and read another one about the Latin translation. What drives me to the Mirror is pure curiosity and it's a brilliant piece of spiritual literature from the Middle Ages. The essay focuses on what we know about the life of Margaret before being taken by the Inquisition, as well as theological themes, literary style and tradition, reception, custodial history and translation. A treasure, is what it is.

I finished reading River Kings – The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads by Cat Jarman. Wonderful read about the exploits of the Viking Army and viking presence in Central and Eastern Europe, and then further East. I got a deeper look into their society, belief system, military operations, trade, expansion and connection with Constantinople. The book was recommended by someone who knows about my peculiar taste for badass saints and it presented me with a couple of pages about Olga of Kyiv, the scourge of the Drevlians. I wondered if she was the patron saint of widows, and that she is! It was a great way to finish the last chapters at the prow of trade currents possibly reaching Baghdad and further beyond, maybe.

After finishing this month’s Inktober event, I’ll be dedicating more time to Trails from Zero on Nintendo Switch and will hopefully write a few words about it on my blog. There’s a website that runs prompts like Inktober, except it’s year-round. In order to make some effort on that front I could challenge myself to create at least four or five drawings per month, just to train the line and eventually develop my skills. I like to draw on prompt; it’s easier to come up with something almost immediately, without having to waste a long time staring at a blank page. A prompt can either summon something of a creative nature or purely descriptive. I’m satisfied with whatever comes to mind. Time is something I don’t have when I feel that I already have so much going on. And time with silence, lesser still.

 
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from Crapknocker

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

 
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from how do you spell cool

promo image for the zine showing a picture of the zine superimposed multiple times with different coloring

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
 
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from dharmadischarge and his comics

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

 
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from dharmadischarge and his comics

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

comic-1.jpg

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.

 
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from Crapknocker

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.

 
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from Crapknocker

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.

 
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from hazardes

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

 
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from hazardes

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

 
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