@Guub0

My young (human) student shows promise. **The same** ***"old (skeleton) hermit"*** **tales, but this time in the point of view of Mr. Skeleton himself.** Traversing through the dungeon I had previously prepared for my young student with them being on the lead was an interesting experience to behold. My years of dungeon crawling had helped me discern which elements were more prevalent in dungeons and allowed me to ‘come up’ with my own training temple, specifically made to test my student’s ability. I didn’t just make up a dungeon, I had *refurbished* it. This one *had* been a temple from an ancient civilization of lizard people who wanted nothing more than to bring war and famine to the ‘world of the above’, who were now dead. All I had to do was clear out the lizards and traps and then streamline the experience for my little student. Smart she was, but also impatient. It wouldn’t do for her to end up in a pitfall trap just because she wanted to run around a dungeon to get around faster. I also had to fill the dungeon with ‘enemies’, in order to train my minion’s combat abilities. I have to make a mental note to thank my old friends from the skeleton fan group, their acting as ‘skeleton ghosts’ has been impeccable. Oh, I’d forgotten to mention that minion was a nickname our zombie friend picked for her, something about her reminding him of the old times when I used to have way more minions around.  She hasn’t complained about it so I assume she enjoys it, for whatever reason. This adventure has been very informative and had given me a greater grasp of how competent my little minion was. Wish she took things slower however, had this been a *real* dungeon with traps I didn’t know about… Bah, there’s no use on thinking like that. I just have to teach her a little more about the possible dangers in this line of work. She’s just like her grandmother, excited for adventure regardless of the risks. An insatiable thirst for knowledge. *…I just can’t seem to get away from this family, even after all these years.* “Mr. Skeleton?” Speaks my student, her voice bouncing from the walls in the hall. It appears as though I had stopped walking while processing my thoughts, my minion standing some distance away from me, clearly worried. “Is something wrong?” My minion continues, confirming my thoughts “Do you sense something ahead?” There’s some worry on her eyes. Perhaps she’s worried about me? Or maybe she thinks I felt something bad ahead? “It’s nothing Minion,” Nothing important anyway “You should keep moving on. We don’t have all day now, do we?” I’m thankful she’s still not that smart as to figure out I’m trying to change the topic quickly. My minion complied while I pushed her slightly into the dungeon. We’ve been at this for several hours now, excluding some ‘hiccups’ along the way, she’s been doing quite well if I say so myself. Now, if she’d only take the time to think before touching anything… That would certainly improve her chances of survival in a *real* dungeon, not to mention decrease the amount of time I spend sitting while I wait for my healing magic to wake her up. It was amusing at first, now it’s just sad. *Heh. Just like her grandmother.* Just as we reach the end of the hallway, I can hear my Minion’s breath hitch, before she turns around and yells. “Look Mr. Skeleton!” There, in the center of the room she was just rushing in, was another contraption just like many others in the dungeon. She’d ended up getting excited at the prospect of dungeon puzzles, just like a good ol’ adventurer should. If only she was *good* at figuring them out… Before things could escalate further (and to stop her from fiddling crazily with whatever it is that this room wanted us to touch) I rushed and placed myself between her and this room’s puzzle. “Now now Minion, it’s good you’re showing initiative but,” I start, raising my index finger in order to get her attention, “I think this is as far as we go today.” “*Whaaaaat!?*” I almost flinched at the pitch of her voice. I let one of my trademarked ‘tired teacher’ sighs, one she’s pretty familiar with by now, before explaining why. “We’ve been here since the early morning and now the moon is almost out. If we keep going it’s only a matter of time before you pass out or something.” “No!” She starts “I can keep going! I’m not even hungry!” Despite her words, I can already see that her breath is ragged. Her hair is stuck to her forehead thanks to the sweat on her, the poor girl probably hasn’t noticed thanks to the adrenaline rush she got from exploring a dungeon and fighting. That, or because my healing spell makes her ignore her weariness. Hmm, that’s something I should look into. Don’t want to accidentally make her pass out just because magic makes her ignore how her body feels. “That’s the rations speaking,” I look into her eyes, as if challenging her “And by the way, didn’t you only bring enough food for lunch?” She sputters for a moment, before looking down and mumbling under her breath. It doesn’t take long for her to stop and look me in the eyes again. “How do you even know what time it is?” She asks, her tone accusing “There’s no windows or any light sources here.” Why minion, being undead left me with a lot of free time which I eventually used to *learn* how to subconsciously count every second of every day. Being undead was quite boring during the first couple of years. …I could just tell her the truth, *but where’s the fun in that?* “Magic, my dear minion, *magic*.” I can already feel her fuming. “That’s your answer for everything!” *Doesn’t make it any less fun.* “Doesn’t make it any less true.” I respond. “…Fine. I guess we’re leaving then.” My minion looks crestfallen. Oh dear, it looks like she’s gotten addicted to the dungeon crawling. That’s good, just like any other adventurer does. “Don’t look so sad,” I put a hand on her shoulder “We’ll come back next week, when the skeleton ghosts come back.” Her face scrunches up. “Wait. Do they normally come back?” She says, one eyebrow raised, “Is that a thing?” *Yeah, because they aren’t dead. They’re just actors.* “Probably. It’s happens in a lot of dungeons.” I say, taking my hand away from her shoulder and then starting the oh-so-familiar process of teleporting several people at once. Once that’s done, I turn around to her. “*Anyway*, step onto the magical circle please.” She does so without complaint, by now she’s probably starting to feel her own exhaustion, by the way she slowly slumps over. It’s not until the spell begins the process of teleporting us back that my minion speaks. “Wait does this mean we have to go down *all these floors* again?” That’s a good minion! Asking the questions that should be asked. I answer her inquiry “Yes, teleporting into a dungeon tends to be risky, so we’re not doing that.” “And I have to fight all the skeleton ghosts again?” “Why yes, you do.” By now, the spell has taken us home. – Well, more like my home and her studying place – and my minion seems to be done asking questions. I just sat down on my favorite chair, taking a moment before putting all of my stuff back and resting for the night, but my student stands right where we appeared, unmoving, staring at space, before finally saying something. “I hate dungeons.” She only gets a chuckle from me in response. **University continues to be my mortal enemy, but my will to keep writing about these two is as strong as ever.**

The old (skeleton) hermit lets me explore a dungeon. Exploring dungeons with Mr. Skeleton, or *dungeon crawling* as he puts it himself, was not as fun as I thought it would be. …Now that I think about it, a lot of things regarding adventure and magic aren’t as fun in practice as they are in theory, but hey, at least now I know how to throw fireballs around. That’s always a bonus. Time flied fast when learning with Mr. Skeleton, and after almost a year of learning with him he decided to take me with him in an excursion deep inside an old dungeon. According to him, one of many old dungeons in the world. I asked Mr. Skeleton how many dungeons there are, thinking that in his old age maybe he has an idea of it, to which he responded: “I dunno.” shrugging his shoulders and scratching his skull “Like, every week there’s a new dozen dungeons that pop up somewhere, lost civilizations, lost castles, heck even alien spaceships, they just appear outta nowhere.” Apparently dungeons are the “main” import of our kingdom, or so he says, thanks to the huge number of them that appear out of thin air with a surprisingly long backstory behind them. Like if someone was making them with the intention of some adventurers walking inside. We have so many of them that when Mr. Skeleton said ‘let’s explore some dungeons’ he just started walking in a random direction and we ended up finding one dungeon thirty minutes in. Which brings me to where we are today. Me walking inside the dungeon with a little magical dagger in my hand, spells in my mind and Mr. Skeleton walking behind me, some distance away. He’s taking the role of ‘emotional support’ and said he’ll only interfere if I’m in real danger, adding that this was a test of sorts, just like how almost everything else he wants me to do is also a test. Suddenly, as I keep walking into one of the many dark corridors of this place, I hear a click as my right foot steps down. Having familiarized myself with this sound by now, I realize I just activated a trap, so I did the thing I always do when I trigger one by accident. Kneel down, put my hands on my head, rock back and forth and yell at Mr. Skeleton to help. “You know, if it was a falling rock you’d be dead by now.” He added from his spot. A small item in his hand. This time it was a small dart that simply flew by because I had ducked to avoid it, Mr. Skeleton *catching* it in midair. “…You’re being really helpful.” I said while picking myself up, trying to put as much sarcasm in my voice as possible. “You’re welcome!” answered Mr. Skeleton, somehow oblivious to my sarcasm. Honestly, exploring dungeons isn’t how I expected it to be. I’m spending more time scared of the weird traps that this place has instead of fighting evil mages or dragons or something cool. Even the mooks inside the dungeon aren’t what I was expecting. I knew I wasn’t going to fight dragons anytime soon but I at least expected to see… I don’t know, goblins or something? Typical level 1 stuff, like in the stories my grandma used to tell and the books Mr. Skeleton has laying around. Instead, I got skeleton ghosts. Yes, ghosts that are skeletons. *Somehow*. Or was it ghost skeletons…? Nevermind. Oh and traps, millions of traps, don’t forget about those. One has to wonder, how exactly did these people get anything done at all if they had traps in almost every single one of their hallways? “Hey, Mr. Skeleton?” I decided to ask “If they have these many traps, how did anyone inside this dungeon ever do anything at all?” He hums “You see Minion, this dungeon was made by old people” He walks over to a wall and knocks on it, for some reason “That means that, by nature, they despise young people, so they decided to make their living space ‘unlivable’ just to spite the future generations that would inevitably end up entering their rooms and looting everything” “That… doesn’t sound right Mr. Skeleton” “You clearly underestimate the hatred that old people have for the youth Minion” He added. “I, of course, am immune to it. Me being immortal and all that, so I don’t really age, thanks to that I can’t become old and angry.” “That’s not… how it works…” We continued in silence after that, me going through the many hallways making sure to not step in any more traps, though I always did fail on that last one, and fighting the occasional skeleton ghost that appeared. I wish I had an epic tale of how I beat several dozens of them but… They’re easy to beat. You can’t hit them with normal stuff but magic just kills them. And I’ve been learning magic for a year now. Yeah, there’s not much fun in that. Although, it does make sense. I don’t really think Mr. Skeleton would send me to a dangerous place yet… He’s always going on about making sure I’m prepared before doing anything remotely dangerous. Wished he picked a dungeon where the wall darts weren’t poisonous though. “Minion!” He suddenly exclaims, taking me out of my own thoughts. “Bwuh?” I turn around to him “Look!” He raises his arm, a skeletal hand peeking out of his robes and pointing to the center of the room we’ve just entered. Mr. Skeleton quickly moves deeper into the room, with me being the one walking behind this time. He stops right next to a pedestal erected in front of a giant wheel with some symbols in it. “Do you know what this is!?” He says, excitedly. I don’t know and I’m already dreading the answer, whenever he gets giddy like this… He takes my silence as an answer though, and continues to fawn over the weird thing in the room. “It’s a puzzle, Minion! An ancient thingamabob invented by very obstinate old men with no free time to infuriate the explorers of the future who dared trespass on their homes!” Thankfully, I’ve read on those, so this time I *finally* have an idea of what Mr. Skeleton is talking about. According to what my books say about these contraptions… “This means we can’t move on without solving the puzzle?” I ask. “Yup.” Is Mr. Skeleton’s response. He turns to me before continuing “You’ll probably have to find a way to solve it. Usually they leave an instruction manual or something laying around.” He scratches his skeletal chin as he looks at the puzzle in question. I sigh, the solution to the puzzle is probably in one of the many many corridors and/or rooms we haven’t checked yet. Mr. Skeleton mutters, loud enough for me to hear “…Unless we’re talking about really old ancient people… Those tend to forget where they keep their things all the time.” I *sigh* and instead decide to brute force my way through, pressing panels and moving the wheel in whatever combination. What’s the worst that could happen? After I’m done a series of clicks and hisses fill the room, and before I can realize what’s happening, I can feel the familiar sensation of a dart pressing against my back. Scratch that, several darts. Why can’t I feel my fingers? Wait why is my vision going dark- *Oh no.* … When I wake up, I’m still in the same room with a killer headache. Mr. Skeleton standing over me, moving a hand over my face and snapping his fingers quickly, trying to make me pay attention to him. “That’s why we don’t do things willy-nilly Minion, we have to be *careful*.” Says Mr. Skeleton, always being so helpful. “…I hate the old dungeon people.” Is my weak response. Mr. Skeleton just laughs. **University has been a cruel mistress whose grasp I can't seem to get away from, so that's why this one took so long.**

The old (skeleton) hermit's history lessons are terrible. “The father of modern lichdom?” I ask. Once again, I was studying at Mr. Skeleton’s house. A couple of months passed since the last time I… *messed* my spells up and I have been getting better ever since, I think. At least I haven’t blow up Mr. Emile again. Today, Mr. Skeleton was talking about the nature of his life - er, un*life –* as he called it, and teaching me the dangers of necromancy and dark magic, or tried to, since we somehow got lost in that topic a couple of hours ago. “Yup.” Mr. Skeleton hums positively at my question. He’s laying back on his chair, positioned next to the same old chalkboard he uses to write down the process for spellcasting, which now has ‘Necromancy, Liches & You’ written in big white letters. “See, this Marcos Rudyas was a practical sort of fellow.” He continues, gesturing wildly with his hands. In the months I’ve been studying with him I learned that’s what he does when he’s about to start rambling. “See a problem, fix a problem. It’s the mentality that he lived by. So, when confronted by absolute mess of inefficient stuff that the lich rituals were, the man decided that ‘hey, I could fix that’ and so he did” Mr. Skeleton stands from his chair, walking in circles as he continues to explain. I simply listen, somewhat interested on the story, somewhat dreading the ramblings to come. “So to do that, he goes around asking crazy ol’ liches if they want to improve the state of their undeath, crazy fellow that guy was. Asking them if they were interested on getting back their fleshy bits or seeing if they could just… not kill people for sustenance and so on” He pauses his movement, before rapidly turning back at me and pointing. “What’s the problem with that, Minion?” He asks. After some more training with Mr. Skeleton and some more collateral damage, Mr. Emile decided to call me ‘Minion’ because, according to him, I do as much damage as Mr. Skeletons old minions do, or used to, back when he had any. Mr. Skeleton picked it up too, he had assumed I liked the name and I can’t really say that I don’t. Just look at his face whenever he says ‘Minion!’ to me. He’s practically beaming! Taking a moment to think of a response, I speak to Mr. Skeleton “…Because all liches are psychopaths? - *I mean -* Not *all* liches, just… the ones before… all that stuff…” Mr. Skeleton *did* say he wasn’t as old as all of those liches, and that he wasn’t as crazy as them. “…Good save” “Really?” “No. You’re grounded” I let out a small ‘aww’ as he continues speaking. “All liches! -” He starts, his voice echoing through the room “- are psychopaths…” “…I just *said* that.” He ignores me “So that means Mr. Marcos here -” He points to the chalkboard, specifically to a small crude figure he drew, the name of the man in question right below the figure. “- Spend a lot of time locating and talking to weird, old, smelly recluses addicted to evil magic” He takes a moment to look at me. I raise a brow in question. He sniffs, somehow. “It ended up exactly how you think it did.” Says Mr. Skeleton, after a moment. “…Death and destruction?” I say. After all, Mr. Skeleton says that, when angered, a smelly old lich kills and blows up anything they can find. “Well yes, but not *by* the crazy old smelly liches. I mean, they tried to stab and burn him, but they didn’t succeed. The liches were the ones that died and burned.” I officially give up. He goes back to his chair, then clears the board and draws again. “He somehow manages to find non-psychopathic liches and some weirdos that do want to live forever, but *differently* from the other weirdoes that want to *also* live forever and compiles as much information as he can-” He draws some cutesy looking skeletons in a circle with what seems to be a normal human being standing on the upper part of the circle, next to the skeletons, holding hands, for whatever reason. On the center of the circle is a rectangular shape, a book. Mr. Skeleton taps the book “Marcos releases his magical lich book that includes, among other things, ways to make yourself immortal and do cool skeleton magic without having to bathe on the blood of virgins or by sucking the souls out of people without consent.” “Wait what was that last part?” I ask. He then quickly goes to the other side of the chalkboard, ignoring me again, and draws angry humans in armor. “The church of… whatever the god of life was back then, gets angry because we can’t have nice things if they collide with their beliefs or something, and since Marcos is a popular writer who now just handed the secret of lich powers to the common peasant that can read, he’s a problem- ” He says, drawing a line connecting the knights, who I know presume to be templars, to the circle of skeletons, Marcos and the liches. He quickly deletes most of the board with the sleeve of his robe, a huge smear mark left behind. He then draws some fire on the board, or tries to, and several books inside of it alongside some more templars throwing books on the fire. “- that needs to be solved, so then the church starts burning books, like usual, but here’s where they messed up!” He says, turning at me as his voice raises. If he wasn’t a skeleton, he would probably be smiling. He draws a bunch of skinny figures some distance away from the fire, with pointy hats on top, wizards probably. Some of them are crying, some of them are angry. “Some people at church decide to get cheeky and burn magic books that have nothing to do with the lich stuff” He cuts himself off almost as soon as he’s done speaking “But then -!” He raises his arm, erasing the little wizards and then drawing them again, this time they’re shooting lightning at the templars. “The mages of the country get angry that they’re just burning whatever they want, because there’s probably important research inside their books or something.” He now deletes the templars and the fire, drawing them again, this time the templars fight back. “And this minion, starts the Second Mage Templar War.” He finishes, putting his hands on his hips and staring triumphantly at me. Before I can even begin to ask anything, *at* all, Mr. Skeleton raises his right arm with *blinding* speed and speaks. “The moral of the story is!” He stands in front of me, his eye sockets staring deep into my eyes. “Don’t piss off the weird loner guys with magical sticks. Because they totally can, and *will* mess you up.” … I don’t say anything for some time, staring at Mr. Skeleton, as if tempting him to continue speaking. When a couple of minutes pass and nothing happens, I speak up. “So how… exactly did we get to this point?” I asked, haven gotten completely lost in this conversation. Mr. Skeleton places a hand on the armrest of his chair, the other one he puts under his chin as he speaks. “Well… I realized I never did tell you how I became an undead and decided to tell the story about Marcos while I was at it, and *then* I realized that’s also closely related to the war – one of many- so then I decided to include the wizard stuff in order to kill four birds with one stone!” He says, beaming. I just stare at him. Mr. Skeleton coughs awkwardly at my silence, *somehow*, before speaking. “Yeah… maybe not my best idea.” “You think?” I ask. One eyebrow raised. “I practically forgot *everything*” I say, exasperated. “That so huh…” Says Mr. Skeleton, crossing his arms and turning around. “Well in that case…” He erases the board again, and starts drawing again. “Let’s just start all over again” I can only protest from my chair, weakly. “*Uuugh.*” “Now, now, Zombie language lessons are on Mondays, don’t want Emile to think you’re insulting his ancestors or something.” **Alternate title is "The old (skeleton) hermit does a (terrible) info dump"**

Aimless Wanderer fights for his home How many times have you heard something like this? *It was a day like any other, birds were singing, sun shining…* Pretty much a normal day, until the bad thing happens and everyone’s in trouble. Sounds like a cliché in one of those plays the merchants use to talk about, but it happens. It’s usually exactly *how* it happens; People enjoy their days and mind their own business until some bandits or something come running and start killing. Which was what happened today. We should have seen it coming, it happens for a reason, it’s a cliché for a *reason*. Secluded little villages like these are good for bandits; It’s in the middle of nowhere, they tend to have little to no defenders, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera… That was no excuse though, we have our own town guard, we’re not as small like other villages. We should have, definitely, made a better stand against them. So why did it happen? They played it smart. Any bandit group with experience wouldn’t make themselves obvious. By that I mean that they wouldn’t just walk up to town and say ‘we’re going to take all your stuff’, like in the before mentioned plays. Bandits are bandits, but they’re also people and they know that they’re not invincible. All it takes for one person to kill another is a lucky stab, the chances of which increase when everyone sees a bunch of maniacs charge from the distance into their town. So they stand back, look at the place, the people living and the guards, so on. Some of them are extra crafty and disguise themselves as something else (as another group of merchants, for example) and some simply chose to do it the ‘political’ way (talk to whoever is in charge, now you’re in cahoots), at least that’s what Teach says. When they came to town as simple merchants selling their weird wares, something the townsfolk had already grown used to with all the other merchants that came to town, immediately did my teacher see something weird in the situation. *“It’s the little things boy. Things no one who has no business fighting knows. See how Mister ‘Merchant’ there moves? There’s something to it, he moves just like a person who has years of fighting in him, as if he was just waiting for the right moment to pounce… In fact, all his little friends do the same.”* I always listened to my teacher (most times anyways). So, when confronted with the possibility of some people coming in and killing all the people in town, I immediately suggested to tell the guards and do something about it. He stopped me from rushing out the door, like always, and explained how the guards wouldn’t listen to me or him for that matter. We had become the ‘black sheeps’ of town a couple of years back, so anything we said was never going anywhere, even if we were worried about the safety of town or if we could present proof of it. This, a result of me separating from my family some years back in a not-so-pleasant manner and them spreading bad rumors to everyone else on town. It’s a small town, gossip is what they live on. Teach did say there was one thing we could do and that was preparing ourselves, just the two of us, for whatever those bandits were planning. But I managed to convince the man, after some arguing, to speak with the leader of the guard, to at least try something. Because sitting here waiting for the bandits to kill everything in sight and do anything to warn people about it left a… horrid taste in my mouth. We could at least try, even if they weren’t going to listen to us. Of course, Teach was right, and the thing with the guards didn’t go anywhere. If anything, it made things worse, and now the entirety of the town guards were looking at us like we had grown a second head. The fact they didn’t even feel bothered by the possibility of it… It made me feel worse. Which is why, when the town started burning, the feeling of dread I had since that afternoon had increased tenfold. Shortly after the sun had set and darkness started to overcome the town, the sounds of struggling and the smell of fire started to reach our little abode. It didn’t take long for Teach to pick himself up and go outside, yelling at me to do the same. Retired adventurer or not, the old man wasn’t letting these people destroy his home. Even if he didn’t like some of the people within. After a full second of processing the man’s words, I grabbed the sword we had made specifically for my fantasy journey and ran outside, looking at the hellscape that our little town had turned into. Fire was *everywhere*. Screams and sounds of battle that were muffled inside were now louder, as if they were happening everywhere. Within seconds of me leaving the house, I was locked in my first real fight. Against another human, a bandit, this fight was for life and death. I was more scared than excited, but I managed somehow. It was an extremely short fight and I didn’t kill the man. …It felt wrong to do so, for whatever reason. Not even a second had passed since I downed my first bandit when another one came and rushed me. My fear and shock were short lived, something my Teacher had drilled into my head during training, move or you’re dead. So I started moving, dodging and parrying his attacks, more out of desperation than anything, and waited for an opportunity to strike. It never came, instead, another bandit appeared from the distance. In the few seconds I managed to look at him I saw him scream at something, or someone. Probably calling for his friends to back him up. It’s then that I knew I had to make my own opening. The person in front of me hadn’t realized that his allies were coming for his aid, instead focusing all of his efforts on trying to hit me, even if that made him swing like a madman. With one swift movement of my arm, just like I had practiced countless times, I managed to parry his attack and then drive my sword inside his chest. His friends haven’t still closed the distance between us. It’s not until the bandit I just killed falls to the floor lifeless that I realize I lost sight of Teach. Taking a peek over my shoulder, a trail of corpses behind me somewhat resembling a trail of breadcrumbs, most likely my own masters doing. For an old man with a crippling wound, he sure knows how to kick ass. …I’m going to have to catch up with him now.

The old (skeleton) hermit's lessons don't go as intended. Learning magic was not *exactly* what I expected. I mean, I didn’t really know what you needed to do in order to do magic like Mr. Skeleton, but I wasn’t really expecting to have to sit down and read a lot of books while Mr. Skeleton tells me to write down some stuff on a book. He told Mr. Emile to go look for a blackboard from somewhere and went looking for something else himself, returning with several dozen books that were *very* big. He then told me to open one of them and start reading, and then he started jotting down things on the blackboard. It was hard to follow, mostly because Mr. Skeleton wanted me to read at the same time I wrote things down, but I somehow managed to get a rhythm, however complicated it was. There was no actual spellcasting though. This repeated itself for several weeks. After Mr. Skeleton had talked with my parents about my decision to learn magic, they had decided it was okay for me to spend the days going to Mr. Skeleton’s cave to learn, after he promised to them that he wasn’t going to ‘teach me any dark magic tricks with zambambos’, whatever that meant. I wasn’t really happy with what we were doing though, since most of it was just reading and writing and not spell casting. I’m pretty sure that by this point I at least should be able to throw a basic spell or something, according to the books, but Mr. Skeleton insists on me doing the same thing I’ve been for weeks. I talked with him about it, but he keeps saying that I need to get the concepts down first, otherwise I’ll end up blowing up my hands, or my face, or my body, *or something*. I didn’t really know if that was true, mostly because I don’t really have anyone else I could ask, and I couldn’t ask more to Mr. Skeleton when he wasn’t teaching me because he was so busy. Who knew magic skeletons had so many things to do?. He was also giving me *more* questions while teaching me so I didn’t get to ask more about that specific thing. This was in the first few days I started learning, so after some weeks of nothing and frustration I decided to try doing magic by myself, just to try whatever and see if it works, but Mr. Emile always appeared right before I tried anything in order to stop me. He even appeared if I was back home! Dad almost had a heart attack when I found that out. So when my patience ran out, I just asked Mr. Skeleton to teach me how to do a spell, actually do a spell and not write down more stuff. I was happy when he said he was going to. I was sad when he just taught me how to make a small light with my fingers. I mean, it’s magic, but still. He must have seen the look on my face, chuckling and putting a skeletal hand on my shoulder back then, and then saying: “Don’t worry, the big fireballs and shiny streams of magic come once you get the basics right. Don’t want to burn your house down by accident, do we?” And I just kept doing the same thing, day after day. At least this time Mr. Skeleton was actually teaching me *how* to do it rather than just telling me to remember things. I learned a bunch of other spells after that, however basic they were. Things like levitating stuff, making a small light (with different colors) and so on. Simple things, but the fact that I could do all of that was good enough for me. I also wanted to learn how to make fireballs, to which Mr. Skeleton said *no* and a couple of days later I was learning, under his directions, how to do a ‘wind spell’. “Don’t ask me why it’s called like that” He said, sitting on a chair and gesturing to the board next to him “It’s not like you’re making wind out of nowhere, you’re just… pushing air in a direction.” “So it’s like if I was blowing air on someone’s face?” I asked from my chair, staring at the blackboard and looking to Mr. Skeleton for an answer “What’s the point of *that?*” Mr. Skeleton let a noise similar to a snort, before throwing the piece of chalk he had on his hands to the air as he stood and pointed to the blackboard next to him. He drew some figures on the board to represent the different steps needed to do the spell, he always did this whenever I was about to learn how to properly cast, and although his figures looked more like my little brother’s doodles, they were simple enough to understand. “Yeah, you’re basically blowing air, *buuuuut-*” He starts, pointing to the lowest doodle- er, *figure*- on the board, one that looks like Mr. Skeleton casting. “If you put just enough power into it… it’s like if you were pushing someone with just air, more than that and you could punch them with it” He stopped pointing to put a hand under his chin. “In a couple of months maybe you could even cut stuff with it… Who knows?” He says, shrugging, walking over to me “It’s like I told you, a mage’s best tool is their imagination, even if your spells are basic, all that matters how you use them” I, of course, stopped hearing when he said I could cut things with *air*. My head snapped to Mr. Skeleton just as he stood next to me “Cut stuff with *air?* That’s so *coooool*! Lemme try, lemme try!” I was practically bouncing in place. Mr. Skeleton chuckles and shakes his head “Of course that’s the thing you focus on” With a snap of his fingers, followed by the now familiar cry of ‘Emile!’, Mr. Emile appears from a cloud of smoke, some distance away from us, carrying a small vase that he almost immediately places on a small table in front. Mr. Skeleton points to the vase in front of Mr. Emile “You know the basics already, so try and do a simple wind spell to knock over that vase” He adds, after a moment “Emile should be able to catch it when it falls over, so don’t worry about putting too much power into it.” With a nod, I get off my seat and put myself at some distance away from Mr. Skeleton. I’m now standing on the other side of the room, Mr. Skeleton is at the center right next to the wall and with a clear view at the two of us, and Mr. Emile stands on the other side of the room, opposite to mine, right behind the vase. I take a deep breath and extend my hand, closing my eyes and focusing on repeating the same principles that Mr. Skeleton has taught me week after week. For a while, nothing happens, and that’s when I unconsciously clench my hand and try to focus harder. Mr. Skeleton speaks, his voice kind “Remember, you’re still learning so take all the time you need. There’s no pressure, so take a deep breath and work calmly.” I shift on my place a little as I listen to his words, taking a deep breath and starting again. *Remember what Mr. Skeleton said, feel the mana move inside of you, feel it reach every part of your body and guide it where you need it to be.* Another breath. *Move it where it needs to be, remember the proper flow it needs to have, not too much and not too little. Too weak and nothing happens, too much and it goes* boom*.* By the time I take my third breath, I can already feel the spell forming on my hand. The moment I realize it however, the excitement makes me lose concentration. The energy I gathered releasing almost immediately. I hear- no, more like *feel-* an explosion of air happen right in front of my extended hand. The sound of a vase breaking appearing alongside the explosion, a small but audible thud shortly after that. “Oh my.” Says Mr. Skeleton. When I open my eyes, somewhat scared to look at the levels of destruction I probably caused, I see the vase, cleanly cut right in the middle, the cut part laying broken on the floor. I also see Mr. Emile’s upper body laying on the floor, his legs still standing despite not having a body connected to them. “*Gods* I’m so sorry Mr. Emile!” I scream. A hand in my mouth as I stare at the… zombie bits leaking over the floor. Oh god I think I’m going to- Mr. Emile, being a zombie, simply lets out an emotionless “*Ugh*” as he lies on the floor. Mr. Skeleton, for his part, stares at the broken base, Mr. Emile and then myself, now emptying the contents of my stomach on the corner of the room, all the while putting a hand under his chin. “…Huh” He says “Maybe we need to learn more control first.” “*Uuugh.*” “Yes, yes, I’ll be there in a moment” He pauses, looking at me. “I do expect you to clean up her mess after I help you.” “*Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.*”

The old (skeleton) hermit teaches me magic. Mom did throw a fit when I got back home. Well, first was the screaming (because I brought a skeleton to the house), then the crying (because they thought I was dead) and then the grounding (because talking to skeleton strangers is bad). Not all that happened once I came home was bad though. I mean, mom and everyone else were scared by Mr. Skeleton but I managed to convince them that he wasn’t a mean person and that he was the one who saved me from the bandits. It was hard, especially when Mr. Zombie showed up again and scared my parents, but thankfully, Grandma was there to help me convince mom and dad, she’s always there to help. Another good thing (I *think*) is that we don’t really have guards in town, which is maybe *why* we got attacked on the first place, but that makes it easier to explain the nice skeleton mage who saved me. In the end, Mr. Skeleton said his goodbyes and left back to his cave with Emile, leaving me alone with my family who were somewhat upset with the girl that led a skeleton necromancer into their home. So I was grounded for some weeks, mom didn’t let me leave the house and that just left me to help around with chores. I started to wonder about Mr. Skeleton and his magic on my free time to try and distract myself. And once I was grounded no more… I decided to sneak out at night and head into the forest to look for Mr. Skeleton, hoping to find more about him. But it was all for nothing, every time I step out of town I was brought right back to my room! Like if I was being teleported around, that thing Mr. Skeleton does that brings people to other places really quickly! It was definitely Mr. Skeleton’s doing (because he’s the only one I know that can do that), he was trying to make me stop, I’m sure of it! I don’t know why though… So after screaming in frustration (and apologizing to mom for waking her up), I keep trying (and failing) to leave town. I was caught once, by Grandma of all people, who just looked at me with a wrinkly smile of hers and gestured for me to go on with my little adventure. Grandma is really nice. I think I even saw her walking around during one of my nightly adventures, I don’t know where to. Sometime after that I got to actually step out of town. Only to then be sent back to my room once I made it back to the dead forest. I really do have to wonder why exactly Mr. Skeleton doesn’t want me going out. And speaking about Mr. Skeleton… “Again? This is like, the third week you go into the dark spooky forest” He says, hand on his head while speaking to me. I made it to the forest, again, this time Mr. Skeleton didn’t send me away and instead decided to speak to me. Mr. Skeleton continues “Do children nowadays just like to go into dark spooky forests alone? Is that a thing you do now?” I look at him and respond “We do when we want to talk to a living skeleton-man” Mr. Skeleton lets out a sigh and his entire body sags. He takes a moment before he speaking again. “Alright, go on” He sighs again, gesturing with his hand in an exasperated manner “What did you want to talk about?” … “You know? I… uh… I think I forgot.” “…Really?” “W-Well! To be honest, I didn’t really think I would get this far, so I just… focused on leaving instead of what I wanted to talk about y’know?” Mr. Skeleton mutters something under his breath, pinching the part of his head where his nose used to be. “Alright then, off with you then, back home you go” He says, lifting a staff that just appeared from midair, his other hand extending and lights appearing around his body. He was doing magic. No doubt about it. “Wait! Stop!” Once again, I was speaking without realizing the words had left my mouth. “Huh?” And just like that, the magnificence and lighting show from Mr. Skeleton disappears “What now?” Alright, quick! What do we say to not be sent away!? “I want you to teach me how to do magic!” Mr. Skeleton simply stares at me and stays silent while doing so. The stare down extending for a long moment before Mr. Skeleton spoke again. “No.” *What.* “Why not!?” “I don’t wanna.” “What lame excuse is that!?” “Hey, teaching people takes time. Time that I don’t have” “You’re a walking skeleton! You have all the time in the world!” “I’ll give you that. So I’ll just change what I said: teaching takes time that I don’t want to spend” “That’s even worse!” The back and fort continued for a while, our screaming match increasing in volume, somewhat reminding me of the times I argued with my little brother. After some more screaming (a *lot* of screaming) Mr. Skeleton sat down next to a tree, exhausted, with me sitting in front of him. We don’t say anything more for a while, instead choosing to just stare at anything but each other, trying to not start another shouting match again. Mr. Skeleton for his part begins tapping softly on his leg and looking around the forest. I do nothing but think on how I could convince him to teach me. Mr. Skeleton sighs, once again, his voice soft as speaks. “Why do you even want to learn magic?” I just stare at him with wide eyes. “Well… I mean” I start “The village doesn’t really have anyone keeping an eye on it anymore you know? Bandits can just… do the same thing they did before.” I stare at the ground, tracing some lines on the dirt. “…Also, because it’s kinda cool I guess.” I mumble that last part to myself. Mr. Skeleton chuckles a little under his breath and then he stares at the sky for a moment, reclining a little on the tree behind him. “Alrighty then” He says. My gaze snaps right back at him, stars in my eyes as soon as I hear the skeleton’s words. “You mean you will-” “Teach you magic? Sure, why not? It’s not like I’m going to get any older.” He says, standing from his position on the floor and dusting off the dirt on his cloak. “Besides it’s been like… two-hundred, maybe three, since the last time I taught someone.” Mr. Skeleton extends a hand to me, I grab it and he helping me get off the floor faster. “You’ve taught other people?” I ask in amazement. “Yup. It get’s boring when you live in the cave for so long by yourself, so sometimes you need to spend time teaching people to do things” My head tilts in curiosity “But what about Mr. Zombie? Don’t you live with him?” He seems taken aback for a moment, before responding “Emile? Ah, you clearly haven’t lived with him. No one who’s been living on the cave long enough thinks of him as good company” “Isn’t that kinda mean?” “Well yes, but Emile makes it hard to like him, he's a very negative person.” “Huh…” Once again, I was talking and walking next to Mr. Skeleton as we made our way back to his cave, happiness and excitement washing all over my body, the idea of learning magic making me energetic on the spot. From this day on, little old me will start learning how to do magic. There’s literally nothing that can ruin this day! “We will have to speak to your parents about this though.” Says Mr. Skeleton. There was *one* thing that could ruin this day.

The old (undead) hermit. There was always a fairy tale on my home village, about an old man who lived inside a well and a forest now long dead. The story says an old hermit was a dark wizard of immeasurable power who terrorized the land, who consumed the life of all the living things around him… They say that the dead forest far away from town is a product of his presence, that the trees stay dead forever and that the grass dies because he fought the druids who lived in the forest and cursed the land dozens of years ago. I didn’t believe that story, it was just something they told the little kids in the village to make them behave. Now that I’m ten years old (basically an adult) I don’t have to fear fake hermit-wizard guys. I only fear bandits, and bad people, and *maybe* the demons under the bed, but they only show up sometimes. Though it just so happened, during one nice day, that the town got attacked by bandits, who quickly overran us. I started running away from them but some of them had followed me and I ran faster, ran through the creepy forest of the old hermit. That was a bad idea. Maybe. I ended up tripping over one of the dead roots of the trees and feel over and scraped my knee on the floor. Ended up backed against a tree, all while the bandits caught up and looked at me like my brother’s dog looks at his food… In this situation, all I could do was cry and scream for help, even though I knew no one would come. … But *then* a magical skeleton man appeared out of nowhere and killed them all with his creepy magic. I say it was creepy, because he just… grasped the air with one hand and then the bandits started to clutch their own chest and choke, the ones that didn’t do that just lit up in flames and fell over really quick. There was more stuff too but uh… I rather not describe all of that. It was somewhat traumatic. In the end, I was left alone in a creepy forest with a magical skeleton man, a lot of corpses from bandits that chased me for Gods know how long and a very bad scrape on my knee. It was bad, really. So when the skeleton man who just killed those bandits without any effort turned around to look at me, I just forced myself to grab a rock and threw it at him. In retrospective, that *may* have been a bad idea. “Ow.” The rock hits his head and the skeleton just… slightly moves his head, as if trying to act like it had hurt. “That’s really mean you know?” The skeleton in front of me speaks, his tone chiding “Here I come, after a girl that’s screaming for help and what do I get? Rocks thrown at me, that’s it.” He puts a skeletal hand to his head before letting out a sigh. “The living, I swear…” He mutters. “Aren’t- Aren’t you going to kill me?” I ask, stuttering in fear. The skeleton freezes before his head snaps back at me, I can’t help but wither under his gaze the second his eyeless head stares at me. “What? Heavens, no! What kind of person do you take me for?” He screams, as if he was offended. The skeleton tsks and looks around, over the remains of the bandits laying on the forest. He sighs “You know what? I’ll- I’ll just clear this up and be on my way” He begins. He takes a deep breath, *somehow*, and shouts “Emile!” Nothing happens, and he’s standing there for a few seconds, before he starts grumbling. “Where the hell is- EMILE!” He screams, louder this time. More seconds pass and shortly after his scream a decently sized amount of black mist appears from nowhere, right next to the skeleton. A figure reveals itself from within the clouds, and once enough of it clears, I see a somewhat rotten person standing there, an undead maybe. “Ugh.” Is what comes from the moving corpse, who seems to be wearing some expensive clothing. “And just where were you Mister? I told you I needed your help five minutes ago!” The skeleton starts arguing with the undead, ignoring me completely while he speaks with him. The interaction somehow shaking me out of my stupor and reducing my fear, *just a little.* *“Uuuuuugh.”* “What do you mean *I was busy!?,* I asked if you were busy with something *before* I asked you to help me!” It all feels so… *surreal*. “Uuuugh!” “Something last minute!? I literally asked you *FIVE MINUTES*- !” The skeleton cuts himself off almost immediately, pinches his nose (at least the place where it *used to be*), takes a deep breath and starts again “You know what? Just- Just clear this up, I’m done. I’m done, this isn’t worth it.” The skeleton gestures to the bodies of the bandits strewn across the forest, the undead simply staring at the skeleton, like if he was challenging it, for a couple of seconds. The skeleton puts his hands on his hips, kind of like how mom does when she’s angry with us, and after some more seconds of staring the undead gives another *ugh* before moving towards the corpses in the regular fashion that an undead would. Which is slowly, very *very* slowly. “And you.” The skeleton’s words make me jolt, the fear in me bubbling up once again. I don’t know why I haven’t run yet; I don’t know why I haven’t kicked or screamed or anything. Despite my wound I could have probably made enough distance between us by now The little part of my head that tries to be rational even in this situation tells me it’s my fear stopping me from doing anything but shaking. When the skeleton looks at me, a small but sharp light filling the empty sockets of his eyes, I feel the full force of my fear hit me again. I can feel my heart thunder in my chest, almost as if it was going to jump out of my mouth right then and there. But his next words make my fears go away- “You need a hand with that knee or can you go back home on your own?” -and replaces them with sheer befuddlement. “…Huh?” …And that’s how I found myself inside Mr. Skeleton’s cave sitting on a very ornate chair and sipping orange juice while the magic skeleton man (who’s not really that scary anymore) entered the room with a box and some wipes, kneeling right next to me and cleaning my wound. “So, I *could* just use magic to heal this, but it turns out I don’t particularly remember how necrotic magic affects kids so… band aids will have to do. Sorry about that” He says, while putting the band-aids on my knee. “It’s okay.” I mumble, while sipping from my glass of juice “Thank you for helping me Mr. Skeleton…” “Don’t worry about it, I’m just doing what anyone else would.” He waves his hand while sitting down next to me and grabbing a glass for himself, from which he takes a sip, *somehow*. We stay in silence while drinking juice and all the while I can’t help but think that… …Mom’s gonna throw a fit once I come back home.

Aimless Wanderer learns to Wander **Next part of the little story in my head that refuses to just die. I'm not sure how many parts there are since it keeps going, but it's probably halfway done.** **I hope you enjoy it.** Things blurred after that. I spent most of my days with the blacksmith, either working alongside him on the forge or learning how to swing a sword, my parents begrudgingly happy I had finally started doing something, mostly because I was also learning to be a Blacksmith on the side. So, I spent the years focused entirely on my own goal and hearing the occasional new tales of Logan coming from the infrequent travelers that came to town. I had pretty much committed most of those to memory, but I was always looking to hear them again. But the rhythm I had gotten used to changed one day, when the tales regarding Logan had stopped reaching our village for a while and we were once again visited by Royal Knights. The knights visiting the village were silent and simply asked for directions to the chief’s house where they then stayed for a couple of hours, one of the knights inside with the chief while the others stood outside, silently. After an eternity, the knight who entered the chief’s home came out with the chief behind him, his face pale as a ghost. The chief had asked everyone to listen to him and the visitors, who then revealed the reason of their visit. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard! The knights then called Logan a traitor to the kingdom, they called him a monster who had killed the king and left the royal family in disarray. They carried parchments with his face which had listed several more supposed crimes under it. As soon as the man I presumed to be the head knight had finished speaking the rest of the men moved around the village, plastering the parchments on every surface they found and asking everyone if they had heard something about Logan or his whereabouts. They called him a criminal, a murderer, but I refused to believe it. I refused to believe that the same man who did so many great things would end up becoming a monster. That the selfless hero was now a wandering killer. I was about to scream at the knights, rage at them even, but I was immediately restrained by my teacher, the blacksmith, of all people. I’m thankful for that, had he not stopped me I would have probably been killed, either me or my family. These knights don’t take kindly to people insulting them. Once the images depicting the man and his crimes found themselves all over town, they continued their job, recounting the things he had “done” to the people of our kingdom, but at that point I refused to listen, simply going to my own room to think. My family had thought that was the end of my dream. I didn’t consider the possibility at first, but when doubt started to fill my mind… I simply redoubled my efforts in training myself, my goal shifting from adventuring and becoming like Logan to finding the man and confronting him directly about his supposed crimes. The goal was still the same, to be a hero, but now I also wanted to ask my own hero what had happened to him. It wasn’t as easy as before though, as soon as the knights had left everyone in town started gossiping about Logan and, by extension, started to whisper their worries about the kid that tried to mold himself into the new Logan, and now they feared I would turn into a monster too. Eventually, my own parents had started to worry about it and tried to talk me out of it. The result of the discussion had me now living with the Blacksmith permanently, who was still kind to me despite everything and offered me to stay with him after things with my parents got too heated. In the end, their paranoia and my own refusal to stop had resulted on me being completely alone, not even my distant family or the rest of the villagers had wanted to speak to me, the Blacksmith being the last and only person still supporting me. Eventually we got closer, kind of like father and son, and even though he was running out of things to teach me I still wanted to listen to him. We both fell into a rhythm, working and learning day after day. The man and I had become family by now. One day he told me he had wanted to start a family of his own in this village, where he was born, alongside some of his adventuring friends. The man taught me as much as he could, his lessons ranged from everything to survival to sword related. I even learned how to work the forge on my own. Thanks to the fact that he lives all alone, wounded and incapable of adventuring anymore, I think I can understand the reason as to why he’s all alone now. A part of me believes he maybe started to see me as a son as time passed maybe that’s why we ended up growing so close. However, the blacksmith was soon running out of things to teach me. By now I had dominated (or at least understood) most of the things he wished to teach me and soon I would have nothing more to learn. That’s when I intended to start my journey, once the old man was sure I was ready. More time passed and I started to get cold feet, not because I was afraid of leaving, but because I had wanted to stay with the blacksmith. Even though he had and still was teaching me everything he could, a part of me wanted to stay even if there was nothing more to learn and simply enjoy the peaceful days in the village. Of course, it just so happens that the moment I think of living in peace the village was attacked by bandits. …I really wish we had more time together.

Pokémon Nuzlockes are fun, so let's Randomize them! Some time ago one of my friends asked me If I wanted to join him and another friend at “racing” a bunch of Pokémon games with them, and then at one point we stopped racing and put our teams on Pokémon Showdown, to see who had the most ~~broken~~ I mean, *strongest* team. The twist (there were two of them), was that he wanted us to do Nuzlocke runs and that the games were Randomized. See, Pokémon themselves are data. What determines whether or not you get a specific Pokémon in a specific place depends on certain values, the moves they have depend on other values, their genders depend on values, nature, and so on. A Randomizer takes those values, puts them on a magical blender and then spews out a game that’s basically the same… except that everything changes. There are limits you can put into how much the game changes, for example, you can just change what moves Pokémon can use and learn or decide to only change what they evolve into or if you really want to, you can decide to change their types too. If you’re feeling like playing spaghetti you can also decide to randomize **everything**, but at that point you’re just playing roulette with the world so *why would you*. The other thing he wanted to do is a Nuzlocke, which basically consists of catching the first Pokémon that shows up in every route, giving them a name and if any of them faints then its dead and has to be taken out of the team. That’s a thing people do when they feel like Pokémon isn’t that fun anymore on its own. Combined, those two different things can make a very fun and challenging game to play with or hell on earth. Basically, if your luck completely sucks, you can end up facing Pokémon that will destroy your team with some over powered moves or that end up having just the right move that kills your guys, or you could just end up finding broken Pokémon that will make you fly through the game and destroy your opposition. If you’re like me then you’ve got the first. We’ve been running through *Pokémon: Soul Silver* right now and my experience with it has been nothing but a painful, slow crawl, as I try to survive the bombs this game throws at me. Yes *bombs*. When I said that any Pokémon can learn any moves I meant it. With the randomizer, more Pokémon can learn Self Destruct/Explosion, which kills the user and deals a lot of damage to the enemy. There’s a reason why I said my luck is terrible, the chances of *several* Pokémon learning self-destruct in a randomizer are not that high, it’s *possible* (but not likely) to get to the point where every single thing you see blows up. Unless you’re me. Normally, these aren’t moves easily available to any Pokémon, but because the randomizer did its job right… Well, I’ll let you see the box of the dead for yourself. It’s not all bad, I got to catch some mons I wouldn’t really use under normal circumstances and I ended up loving most of them, which made it somewhat hard once they started dropping like flies, but also gave me a stronger sense of victory when I succeeded at something. Sadly, I didn’t get to win this time, as I was defeated in the final Pokémon gym, the last stretch of the journey, to a critical attack no less. Basically, the gods in charge of randomly generating numbers hate me and my guts and decided to strike me down, lest I do something that makes me happy. I kept going after I lost, mostly out of spite (to the NPC that killed my last creature) and because I wanted to see how hard the rest of it all was (It was easy, really easy). Still, this adventure as a whole was enjoyable. And I did get a lot of terribly great moments from both my friends and my own game, so it wasn’t all for nothing. Here, let me show you some of the most interesting creations from the randomizer: This here is one of the greatest heroes I’ve ever seen. This creature has carried me through most of the game and ended up dying right at the end, the second last death to be specific. He died to a Dog that knew Karate, who ended up breaking his jaw into a trillion pieces. (Not exactly how it happened but sounds cooler to me) This here is CrmsonF* who is named after… *nevermind.* Crimson here died just like she lived. *Fast.* Scizor’s don’t have *Impulse* as their ability, which made her somewhat broken when she first showed up, it lets her increase her speed every turn (potentially acting faster than anyone else after a short while) and also had access to a lot of strong moves thanks to randomization. She, sadly, died to another Crimson. An agent of the number generation gods, because I can’t have nice stuff. (Actually, it was my fault). Kittkat’s a Luxray, under normal circumstances they’re somewhat lackluster. See, when they made the normal Luxrays they made a strong Pokémon that used physical attacks… that learns almost no useful physical attacks whatsoever. In here though? She has an amazing ability and a surprisingly great pool of attacks. Singlehandedly responsible for murdering thousands of enemies this run. Finally, we have Steve Harvey. On the right, Steve Harvey. On the left, Steve Harvey: Golden Experience Requiem, a joke a couple of my friends made when we first saw him. GE sadly died shortly after appearing, leaving the world with the non-gold version of Steve Harvey. Many tears were shed. This is just a few of the Pokémon I’ve caught on this run, but there’s a lot of them with their own stories inside these boxes. Stories of glory, of dying like heroes, of blowing up, and so on. Truly, randomizing before a Nuzlocke run presents you with a unique adventure with highs and lows, unfair stuff and completely broken moves that will make you go *oh that’s gross*. So, if you’re looking to have some unique experiences, go give a randomizer a whirl and try a nuzlocke for yourself. Maybe you’ll end up blowing up too, maybe not, who knows? In the end, I think you’ll end up having fun. All photos are screenshots, taken by me during my own gameplay.

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Aimless Wanderer. **I couldn't get this idea out of my head, so I ended up writing it down. I ended up writing a lot more so I decided to split it in parts and take my time polishing each one.** **I hope it's not so bad.** I will always remember that day, as if it was something that just happened yesterday. A moment in my life that impacted me and has never left my mind, the impact that person had in me was still strong to this day. Before that day I was essentially aimless, a child without purpose, but everyone else in the village wanted to be something at that point, there were some who wanted to be bakers, others traders, guards, the next chief and so on, but I had never a clear goal in my mind. Something I was always reminded of every day when the rest of the people my age worked towards their dreams. It’s not something I could ignore either, the people in town celebrated the interest these children had and encouraged them to keep fighting and working on their dreams, with me being the one child goofing off and doing something different every day. It’s not like they hated me for it, but the thing is that it always hurt a little to see people cheering and celebrating others for something you just didn’t have. That changed one day though, when our small and remote village was visited by a large group of people. Back then the entire kingdom was under the final years of a war that had lasted for far longer than I had been alive (According to my grandfather, he was a child when it started), the visitors of our town being soldiers fighting that war. Later on, I would learn that they were passing through our village to cut time and reach their destination faster. But the part that impacted me the most was the person they were led by. A man whose presence shone brighter than the sun, riding on a horse and followed by several knights. Long hair cascading from his head, his face set with a perpetual smile that just oozed honesty. The man was named *Logan Molthart*, one of the most esteemed generals in the King’s army, singlehandedly responsible for the biggest push of the war effort (at least during the years he was alive) and hero of a thousand different stories that spoke about his strength, courage and kindness to others in need. The adults in town had referred to him as a hero, almost falling over themselves when fawning over him. The ones that were frozen by their awe simply stood with their mouths open while the others who were brave enough to move in his presence thanked him for exploits that I would later learn about, stories I would later ask to hear again and again. They were simply moving through the village, but their appearance was something new and different to our people, something that got their attention. As Logan slowly rode his horse through the village, smiles all around in response to anything the people said to him, his eyes wandering from person to person until they somehow found themselves on me. It was a coincidence really, I was just one kid standing far away from the commotion, I didn’t even know what was going on and the fact that he just looked at me isn’t really something unique, he pretty much had to look at every person in town. Grandpa used to say that eyes are a window to a person’s soul, a way to see into the person standing in front of you and for them to see into you. When he looked at me, a small smile on his face, it was as if he was wearing his heart on his own shoulder, as if there was nothing to hide or worry about, and all the emotions behind them just… hit me. His eyes radiated kindness and compassion, a man who had probably seen the worst of the world and its people in war and yet refused to bulge to the darkness of it all. A true hero. Of course, back then I was just captivated by him, but as I grew older and relived that scene in my head… It was as if I could see more and more.   That’s when my heart was filled to the brim with an inspiration I never had before in my life. A motivation to become someone just like Logan, a true hero. Not for fame or glory, but to be someone that was willing to help, who would stand against darkness, against injustice. From that day on I had decided to become a hero, so I decided to start as an adventurer, but my decision to become someone who would put themselves at danger daily didn’t really sit well with my family, who wanted me to do something close to home instead of dealing with all the dangers of said profession. They went as far as to go and speak with the Chief, who understood their fears and told guards and other people who could have taught me more to not do so, so that I would be dissuaded and end up doing something else. Except that didn’t stop me, so I grabbed the nearest stick and started wildly swinging around for some days, copying whatever movements the guards did on their drills back when they let me see those, until the day I learned that our town’s blacksmith was once an adventurer. The man hadn’t agreed with the chief’s demands, simply because they never agreed on anything, so I went and begged the blacksmith until he (reluctantly) agreed to teach me how to swing a real sword and how to survive in the wilderness, provided I helped him in his job. Later on, when I asked him why exactly he decided to teach me when no one else did, he just said: *You’re gonna go out there even if you don’t know jack, so it’s better for my consciousness if I at least teach you to not to die so fast or something.* He was right, of course.

Captivity. (Part Four) (FINAL) (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) https://read.cash/@Guub0/captivity-part-one-388e8d66 https://read.cash/@Guub0/captivity-part-two-027a426e https://read.cash/@Guub0/captivity-part-three-786d32f9 The moment all of us woke up and realized Billy was gone was... *special* to say the least. All of us knew it was inevitable, it's the reason why we were brought here, but Billy's disappearance just cemented how *useless* we were at this moment. Not to mention how much it reminds you that Billy isn't the only kid who was taken and tested on. Even Axton, always screaming and kicking in response to everything, was completely silent in response to Billy's absence. Axton's sitting on a corner of his cell looking at the stub he once called an arm, his face looks grim and sometimes he takes glances towards Billy's cell. I think that, for the first time, the gravity of the situation finally got to him. He hasn't made any noise since waking up. Legate's on the center of his own cell, legs crossed and taking deep breaths, probably nursing all of the bruises his body received. Like usual, he's silent, but a part of my mind imagines that he's thankful Axton isn't causing a ruckus. It was obvious that he didn't care much for Billy, or any of us for that matter, but it still felt weird to think a person could just not feel anything at the thought of what awaited a small child at the hands of those “doctors”. I didn't mention anything about it, there's not much you can do to change the mind of a person like him, instead preferring to remain silent and not do anything but remain in my own head, like always. It gave me some time to think about what had happened to my own powers, to try and keep my mind away from thinking on Billy, or something worse. By now, the fear of the differences was gone and as far as I knew these changes weren't completely *bad*. I mean, technically my whole body is on fire and I can't seem to stop being ablaze, but at least the fire doesn't seem to hurt me at all, like if there was no damage being done to it from exposure. I still felt sore all over, thanks to whatever they did to me, but at least the headache was gone. All I can do for now is to mess around with my powers, put a small fire on my hand, make it stronger and then dim the fire, play around with it for a while. Small things to test out how much control I still have, just like when I was a young boy figuring out my powers for the first time. It could be worse, I guess. I could have it cook me up from the inside out, or maybe have it actually hurt so that every second feels like I'm burning up again. It's weird, but I'm somewhat thankful it hasn't done anything worse. Unless they intend to do something *worse* after this… …Great. My distraction turns out to be just as unsettling as my other ones. Good job brain. Wish I could still talk to Axton or Legate but neither of them looks like they want to speak again. All we have to do is wait until the heroes save the day, but now I find myself asking, more than ever, *when* will they get here? Once everyone is dead? Once there are no more people to be taken? Once these people are finished and leave with no trace? One needs to remain positive in these kinds of situations, but it's already taking its toll on me, on everyone here. I don't know how more of this I can take, how many more times I can handle them. It's infuriating. I try to focus on my powers again, try and pass the time just doing anything over and over again but my thoughts betray me easily and bring me back to my worries. When several hours pass, and we're still awake, we realize that Billy just hasn't come back. When I fall asleep to my worries and nervous thoughts and wake up again, I'm still in my cell and Billy hasn't come back. When several more hours upon *hours* of maddening silence pass, we're about to fall asleep again, and not even one of us are taken with sleeping gas, we realize that Billy *isn't* coming back. Axton notices first, despite his usual character, the man just looks distraught and chooses to not do anything else beside sitting and looking at the now possibly dead boy's cell. If Legate noticed, he doesn't mention anything, instead choosing to remain seated. I do notice however, that we've been left to our own devices for so long that his bruises don't look as bad, that my body doesn't feel as sluggish, that Axton's scars seem to be healing as much as they can. I couldn't take it anymore. I went right on to my cell's door and threw the biggest ball of fire I could even muster at it. The bars in front melting slowly inside the inferno I just created. Axton's voice being the first thing I hear in response to my action. Immediately after that I hear the familiar hiss of the sleeping gas coming from the vents, but I refused to be put down without putting a fight. I make another fireball, putting more strength behind than before, probably enough to kill a person and throw it at the door again, both fires combining and melting it even faster. But that isn't enough, in my anger I rush at the door, I can feel the fire around me burn even hotter, and bash it with my own body. The door breaks out of its hinges and hits the cell in front, Legate's, with a resounding clang. This was as far as I had ever gotten before. I didn't even bother opening the other cells and just ran out of mine. I didn't even look back at Legate or at Axton, I simply ran in one direction, the cells in front of me leaking gas as I ran through more and more of them, intending on taking me down again. I ran until there weren't any more cells at my sides, until the only thing remaining was a large hallway, until the gas was just too thick for me to keep running, until it forced me to slow down and I started growing weary, until I felt my flames growing weaker despite my anger. In the end I couldn't stand anymore, falling to my knees right in front of a locked door, consciousness drifting while the door in front opens, the last thing I see is several armed figures come from the other side of the door, weapons aimed at me until I completely crumble on the floor and lose consciousness completely. The second I fall asleep I could swear I saw their weapons aim at something behind me. … … …When I regain my consciousness, I find myself laying in front of the same door from before. As I drowsily try to stand from my position on the floor, I immediately freeze in shock at the image in front of me. Bodies strewn all over the floor in different states and positions, each of them dead and surrounded by small pools of blood. It doesn't take long for me to realize these people are the same guards I saw before falling unconscious. There's more of them too, the trail of blood and destruction being obvious evidence. Despite any better judgement, I decide to follow said trail. Breaking into a sprint again – and stumbling a little, given I'm still half asleep – a dozen more corpses appear in my path, pieces of equipment I don't recognize and computers either stained by blood or broken. Lights broken and walls cracked by whoever is responsible for this carnage show up and, eventually, corpses belonging to people *other* than guards show up as well. It looks like the doctors of the place, judging by the red stained lab coats. The less said about the state they ended in, the better. Eventually, I start to hear screams and gunfire, the sounds of fighting. My heart almost leaps out of throat as I get closer and closer to the source of it all. Once I make a sharp turn, I can finally see what the chaos is all about. There, standing in the center of a large room, stands Legate, atop a mountain of scattered and broken corpses. There are even more dead people across the room. I hear the throat of a man *crack* as Legate tightly holds the man by it with one hand and while that person suffers, he effortlessly throws a different one with his other arm right into the wall next to me. He didn't put any effort in it and yet the man crashes with a horrifying sound into the wall, I'm pretty sure both the wall and his bones broke as a result. Legate's eyes quickly move towards my position, he probably realized I was standing there after throwing that man. To my own surprise, the anger in his face dissipates as he sees me. “Ah Jackson” He says, his voice is stronger than it ever was before, when we were inside the cells. “I was wondering when you would wake up” He continued – While dropping the now lifeless body of the man he was choking on the floor. Before, when we were powerless in our cells, the idea of speaking with him wasn't so intimidating on the account of him not having all of his strength. But now? The man standing in front of me was fully capable of killing me without hesitation and, despite my own powers, Legate was just a man on a completely different level than most superpowered people on the planet. But despite my own fear, I found myself asking one question before I could even realize I had opened my mouth. “Since when?” I saw one of his eyebrows raise questioningly, the man putting his arms behind his back as he stared at me. “You'll have to elaborate on that.” He said. “Since when -” I began, only to choke halfway through my sentence and gulp before continuing. “- Since when, could you do this?” Gesturing to the bodies lying across the room. “Since when could you just… *escape* from all of this?” “Ah.” Was his response. “I take it you didn't believe the whole ‘salt’ incident?” He shakes his head at my silence, but continues. “Since the very beginning.” Now's my turn to remain silent, my mouth betraying me again at the last second. “…So why didn't you?" *Why didn't you stop them? Why didn't you save Billy?* I wanted to ask, but didn't. He hums. “Because I wanted to know *why*, Jackson” He says, while gesturing to the carnage in the room. He elaborates further, before I can ask. “I needed to know what or who they kidnaped people for, I needed to know the reason for such… *procedures*.” I shake my head at his explanation “And you just… let them play with you like they did everyone else?” He chuckles at that “All I had to do was to spin a little lie about a weakness and feign a lack of strength, the rest they did themselves” He lets out a sigh “It's not like they can wound me, and even if they did, I would just easily break free, all their time was spent *trying* to pierce my body.” “But in the end, all of their testing was worth nothing.” He exhales. I can't help but scream at him “What does that even mean? You expect me to believe they just cut open people because they could!?” “I can see the doubt in your face” He says “But you can see the truth for yourself -” he turns around and gestures to the door behind him, pried open by his own hands, probably. “In that room lies the fruit of their research, the result of months of never-ending pain and testing.” He continues. “I've told you before I tried to understand their motivations, but-” he walks towards me and speaks, softer this time “Whatever they are, all I see in the end, is a waste of time and resources.” I can only stare at him, as he retreats through the same path I came from. I start walking to the other room before I can realize, my feet slowly carrying me over that distance, nervous for what I was about to find out. Legate's voice cuts through my hesitation. “I do recommend you make it quick though.” The entire place shakes, as if an earthquake just hit, the lights flicking on and off until the rumbling subsides. Legate continues, unaffected by the event “I believe your little show just so happened to coordinate with the actions of our so-called rescuers…” He looks at me from over his shoulder “Whatever you wish to do after entering that room… I'd make it quick before they can start asking questions.” The man walks away and not a second after I'm moving too, as if his words managed to break me of my trance. When a familiar smell of decay breaks through my nostrils, I find myself moving even faster towards my destination. When I'm standing on the frame of the door, the smell becomes unbearable. Once I'm inside and I can fully see everything in the room, my entire body reacts in anger, the fire surrounding me becoming brighter in response. My body knows and understands what's in front of me, the emotional feedback from it is the only clue I need and my understanding of what exactly Legate's last words meant hits me just as my brain processes what lies in this room. Despite that, I can't really help myself but ask, mostly to the room rather than myself. “…Billy?” **There we go, the end of the first one. As soon as I'm done with** ***Pursuit*** **I'll see about tying up both stories and giving a more complete ending to everything.** **Don't really like how this one part ended, but my mind couldn't come up with something better...**

Captivity. (Part Three) (Part One) (Part Two) https://read.cash/@Guub0/captivity-part-one-388e8d66 https://read.cash/@Guub0/captivity-part-two-027a426e I don't remember for how long I laid there on the floor of my cell, how much time I spent unconscious or how much time passed after their last experiment. …Or if they did more while I was like this. My body feels sluggish, my mind is tired and for some reason I can't even muster enough strength to even sit. I'm just laying on there on the floor. Thankfully I have just enough strength to roll over and, after struggling to for a while, I eventually manage to turn and stare at the ceiling of my now familiar cell. …Or not so familiar, because everything has an orange-ish tinge to it. “See!? I told you he was alive!” That voice… Axton? “I mean, he *looks* like he's dead but…” “Shush. Give him time, he needs to get his bearings” That's Legate… There's some exasperation on his voice. Axton doesn't seem to listen to him though, he keeps talking, this time he gets closer to me “Hey hey, buddy…” He trails off I try to stand, and fail, eventually settling for sitting down on a corner. Everything's woozy right now… “Take your time, you uh… look like you need it” Says Axton. …Axton looks at me like if he's trying (and failing) to not make me nervous- Ugh, my head's killing me right now. I put a hand to my forehead, a reflex in response to the sharp pain in my head, my hand is on fire- …Why is my hand on fire? Axton takes my surprise as a cue “Yeah, don't really know if that's your doing or the scientists'” He scratches the back of his neck. “You just laid there for a couple of hours or days, or whatever, we didn't really know if it was you being… y'know” He gestures to my entire body, he probably means my powers. “Or if it was something they did to you.” I don't answer him, instead choosing to stare at my hand intently. It's not weird, to me at least, to be on fire, it's part of my power after all. …But I don't remember using my powers. The flames feel *weird*. The familiar sense from my power, from my own flames, was gone and replaced with nothingness, like if it wasn't even there to being with. The *‘tickling’* from my flames when I'm just imbued in them, the small burning that comes with the feeling of overusing, of pushing myself too hard was gone. I feel a pit on my stomach, as I focus on my powers and force them to *shut down*. But nothing, the flames don't stop, the fire keeps burning and it's as if I just can't tell them to stop. I can feel my heart jump to my throat, if there wasn't any fire I would be sweating tanks now. I try again, again and again, but they just won't disappear. The sense of vertigo is gone, my headache goes ignored. All I focus on is the inability to do something I *know* I can fully do. I shot up from my position on the floor and stand to my full height, staring again at my own hands, now fists as I try to once again shut down this aspect of my powers. I can hear Axton cry out in surprise, telling me to sit down probably, but I'm too focused on my own world. But nothing happens. I can't stop myself from screaming in frustration, my flames responding to my feelings and *bursting* from my body as I explode in anger. Axton screams to me then, still close to my own cell, not caring about the fire that threatens to spill out of it “Calm the hell down!” “You're scaring the kid!” He hisses. *A kid? What kid?* The realization makes me stop, the fire also dying down, a thick layer of it still remaining on my own body. Curiously, it hasn't burnt my clothes with it. I glance at Axton, he simply gestures with his head to the cell next to mine, on the opposite side. There, sitting on a corner with his legs up and shivering is a small child. He has his eyes set on me, but the moment he sees me looking at me he closes his eyes and turns his head away. …I really did scare him. “Besides- ” The voice of Axton stops me from doing anything “It's not as if you're the only creepy looking guy in the room.” It's then that I turn to look, and I mean *truly* look, at Axton. The face I've gotten familiar with has a scar right in the center, going over his left eye which is also closed, smaller wounds are also all over the rest of his face. But the most striking thing I see is the fact that he's missing an arm. His left, from the elbow down. He chuckles, looking down onto his arm “You weren't the only one to come up different from this trip.” His voice is low, barely audible. I speak up, after a moment of silence “…And Legate?” God, my voice is so raspy. Axton scoffs “Guy only has a trillion bruises” He points over to Legate with his working arm. Legate's sitting on his cell, like always, though this time his entire body is purple and covered in bruises. He doesn't look any worse from wear though. He doesn't say anything, but instead looks at me and nods. Axton coughs “The kid's been here since the last… *‘experiment’*” I look at the kid, who is still cowering on his own corner. “It's not been easy to talk to him” He says “He's really jumpy, and the image of guy with scars and a stub for an arm doesn't help much.” He chuckles after that “What I also though was a burning corpse until now and a purple man who doesn't stop glaring at you don't help either.” “He's young.” I say. Axton looks at the kid. “Yeah.” *Really young.* Axton tsks “Can't believe they would do this to children too.” His voice is low so that the kid doesn't hear it, but by the way the child jumps a little I think he did. … “Hey…” I call out to him, the child jolts for a moment and then looks at me, fear in his eyes. “I'm… sorry for scaring you.” I said, trying my hardest to not scare him anymore. I can hear Legate scoff from his cell at that, Axton shushing him before he can say anything else. Kids weren't something I was used to deal with. The kid is still staring at me, the fear is still there but it feels smaller than before. “I know it's scary” I continue “You're in a weird, damp place with a lot of people you don't know, your parent's nowhere to be seen.” He lets out a small sniff. “…I'm scared too.” I say. “I just… lost something important right now, and overreacted a little. Maybe too much.” I walk to the edge of my cell, towards his, slowly, trying not to intimidate him anymore and crouching when I get there. “It must be scary to have a burning man speak to you too, but we can't do fear right now.” I start, the child's staring at me with no fear now, only interest. “We have to be strong, stay strong and wait until the heroes come here and save us all.” I *didn't* mention the fact that some people did die while waiting. The kid didn't answer, just looked at me and then the floor. “I know.” He says, voice barely a whisper. We stay like that for a while, the small child in the corner still occasionally sniffling but not shaking as before until I ask for his name, trying to start our conversation again. “Dad says to not talk to strangers…” He mumbles. I sigh, because of course his parents told him that, but eventually I come up with an idea “But if you introduce yourself to others you aren't really a stranger” I begin. “My name's Jackson” “'m Billy” He says, after a moment. I chuckle, it comes off as a deep rumbling. “Pleasure to meet you Billy” I tell him. “I promise you, that the heroes are coming to save the day and that as long as me and this fine gentleman here- ” I point to Axton, who is in the cell behind mine, he waves with his working arm at the kid “ -nothing bad will happen to you.” It takes a while but eventually Billy gives a small and somewhat weak smile back at me. We stay in silence after that, with Billy still on his corner, not shaking or looking back in fear or at least not with as much fear as he had before. My headache is still there, not as strong as before but still noticeable. The fear and anxiety from my newest problem are also there, but I *try* to not think too much on them. I'm finally happy that Axton doesn't shut up, because he won't let me focus on them. …I didn't notice it immediately but I'm sure it's almost been more than five hours and we're still standing; they haven't knocked us out yet. It almost gives me a sense of security, like we're safe for now, that the worst is over, but I don't fool myself like that. The scariest and most frustrating part of it all is that I can't even really help Billy, or anyone inside for that matter. I'm as helpless as they are. A feeling that, in the morning after we inevitably fall asleep due to our own fatigue, becomes stronger once Billy disappears. He never came back.

Pursuit. (Part Three.) (Part One) (Part Two) https://read.cash/@Guub0/pursuit-part-one-cde671c1 https://read.cash/@Guub0/pursuit-part-two-e4e88bab “Leave this to me then” He says. You can almost feel the smirk on his face. The guy next to me tries to rush the two figures again as they step toward us, both in eerie synchronization, only for me to hold him by the arm and stop his movement. “Hey- what gives?” I'm surprised those two haven't jumped us yet, they're taking their sweet time, they're just walking here *slowly*, don't even look eager or antsy. Still, I take the opportunity to speak with my newest “partner”. “Think before you do something that kills us both!” I hiss at him. He scoffs, forcefully ripping his arm out of my grasp “I know what I'm doing! Just stay back and watch” “Wait! Don't-” He moves before I can finish, with enough speed to kick up whatever items are on the floor, heading straight for the two in front. All I see is a blur moving extremely fast in front me, I can't even get an idea of where he is until he hits the smaller of the two sending them both backwards into the alley. …That means he left me with the big guy. The giant doesn't even react to his friend being tackled, instead choosing to sprint towards me. Needless to say, getting hit by that guy is definitely not something I want to happen to me. Instead of bracing for impact I take out three more of my own toys and throw them at him, all the while distancing myself from him. These ones are boomerangs of my own design, there's no explosives on these ones though. The three of them hit, the man doesn't even flinch or react to them and simply keeps charging at me, covering the distance between us in no time. In a panic, I try to move out of the way of his reach, I manage to, just barely, and can feel the movement of his arm right behind me. I try another thing from my belt, I take out two more boomerangs, special ones and throw them again. I *could* try to punch the guy too, but something tells me it's a bad idea. The giant moves again, this time aimlessly swinging his arms around, I made enough distance between us two for it to not hit me and one of the boomerangs hit, before it sends an electric shock to him. The giant *flexes* in response to the shock, his size increasing even more as he lets out an animalistic roar. He lunges at me with surprising speed and I only have one split second to react. I can only move an inch, barely avoiding his attack. His fist buries itself *into* the asphalt of the road with a loud crack, the strength behind it makes me stumble and fall. I quickly roll and try to get myself up, all of my senses alarmed and preparing for the giant to use this advantage. Thankfully for me, his fist seems to have been stuck onto the ground with too much force, the giant trying to pull his appendage of the floor desperately. I intend to use that to my advantage and put some distance between us both, checking my belt and pockets for something stronger… Suddenly, from one of the buildings beside the street comes a burst of lightning, blowing up one of the walls and sending someone flying with it. That someone being my newest partner, who unceremoniously landed right next to me on the floor. Despite the nature of the attack and the distance he was thrown off from, he looks just fine. He sits up on the ground, holding his head and groaning. All the while his opponent, the smaller figure, jumps through the hole they made on the building. “Trouble?” I ask my companion. His head turns to my direction as he slowly stands “You could say that” he mumbles, he shakes his head and looks at me again “I… don't suppose you have any ideas?” he asks, hand behind his neck. I turn to the giant, just in time to see *his* partner in crime stand next to him, the light from the streetlamps illuminating both, letting me finally see them properly. Without moving my gaze from the two of them I open my mouth again “A couple, though you would have to listen first, instead of running off again.” I can feel him flinch at that comment. It doesn't take long for him to speak once again “Yeah, sorry about that” I hum, still staring at the two. The small one *looks* feminine and stares at her companion while his arm is stuck on the floor. Despite his predicament, she just stares at him for a moment all while he struggles with his arm. There's no communication between the two, I can't even recognize their costumes yet there's some sense of familiarity, like I've seen them before. “Uh… Ideas?” My ally stammers. “One” I respond. “What's your name?” I can feel his surprise at the question “Uh…” “Hero name, not real name.” “…It's *Drift*.” Huh, not someone I recognize, must be new “Mine's *Hood*” My head turns to stare at him in the eye “We'll change targets, you go after the big guy, I'll deal with the small one” His eyes widen “That's your idea!? He'll turn me into mush!” I ignore him, rummaging through my belt once more “You have speed, use it.” I continue before he can respond “Not like you did before. Go for the legs, his arms, not his body. Don't rush him like before, play smart, not tough.” The small figure produces more electricity and directs it at the giant, his muscles once again increasing in size and allowing him to pull out, or rather, break free his arm from the asphalt. He flexes his now freed appendage for a moment, his companion turning towards us and staring, just like they always do. “Huh.” He probably didn't think about that one “I didn't think about that…” Heh. “You've got your target- ” I begin, taking aim before continuing “ -so go out there and knock them out!” I throw my weapons with all the strength I have. Three of my spheres go flying from my hand and two of them get shot down in the air by the small figure, one of them getting too close to her before she shots in down, the explosion sending her backwards somewhat, away from the big guy. “How many of those things do you have?” I hear Drift yell as I move. The giant responds immediately to the attack on his ally and rushes to us. Drift staring like a deer in headlights. I bark “Stop gawking and *move*!” It seems to snap him out of his stupor, the familiar burst of wind as he simply moves is all that remains after I speak. Immediately I turn towards the incoming threat. It takes almost no time, before the giant stumbles once, twice and finally falls down majestically, rolling over the floor. I quickly step out of his way as he does so and lands some distance away. Drift stops moving, standing where the giant began to fall, there's some elation and surprise on his face. “*Hoo.* I can't believe I did that!” The smile on his face is huge and I can't help but chuckle myself. “Good work- ” I see something out of the corner of my eye and quickly sidestep right as a bolt of thunder hits the floor, Drift jumps in place as he sees the attack, our smallest opponent standing a great distance behind him, her arm filled with electricity and aiming right where I stood. The biggest of our opponents, the giant, stands once again, staring at Drift. I take some more of my toys and stare at my own opponent, before speaking once again to Drift. “Now do it again.”

Pursuit. (Part Two) (Part One) https://read.cash/@Guub0/pursuit-part-one-cde671c1 Finding a person that's been missing for more than two years is hard. Finding two people who have gone missing, who also have nothing in common is even more difficult hard. Finding said *two* people while the entire city faces a kidnapping crisis is even *more* difficult than that. It's been six weeks since I've last spoke with the Marcus' and I've already exploited almost all the options I have. Investigating neither of the two cases have given me any leads that go anywhere, and any source of information simply leads to a dead end. It's frustrating, but I've set my mind and don't plan on giving up any time, mostly because of the money (Callahan's mistress is willing to pay a *lot*) and because of Billy (simply because the idea of giving up on a missing child sits wrong with me) So, after pouring countless hours on all of the information I had I decided to stop and look back at everything, start again with Callahan, re-evaluate everything and then do the same for all of the information I had on Billy, which was less. Which is what brings me to one of the last locations where Mr. Callahan was seen. A place by the name of “Rogue Street”, a pretty normal street all things considered, got its name changed when a guy killed a big hero in it way back when and was big enough of a deal to get its named changed. I've been sitting on the rooftop of a building for hours under the light of the moon, thinking on what to do next while giving glances to the city below. The best idea would be to reach out to the police or more heroes in regards to Billy’s case, help in the overall effort to *“save the day”*, it isn't really investigating Billy himself but it will eventually lead up to him. As for Callahan’s case… perhaps I need to talk a little more with my client, see if she has any more ideas. Should also take a break while I'm at it, staying awake the entire night for several days isn’t exactly healthy, even though I'm feeling fine right now. I stay up here for some time, stuck on my own head. Before I can continue thinking though, some noises on the alley get my attention. The sounds of trashcans being knocked over, street cats hissing and a voice reach my ears. I take care to not make too much noise from up here while getting closer to the edge of the rooftop, looking down on the alley and inspecting the ruckus. Three people, two of them are deeper into the alley, the other guy is just standing and looking at them. “Hey, I just asked you something!” Yells the lone figure “You two deaf or something?” With that outfit and attitude… He's probably a hero. The other two remain silent, looking at the direction of the lone hero while standing in the darkness, I can't tell who those two figures are. …Whatever, it's probably none of my business. Just before I can even turn around the hero *bursts* towards the two, with enough speed that the trash and papers on the floor are being sent flying in response. The two figures on the other side *sidestepped* and let the hero run right through them with an incredible level of synchronization, the largest of the two prepared himself and moved his arm just at the right time with just enough strength, hitting the hero and throwing him backwards, like if he was hitting a ball with a baseball bat. I thought the two of them were going to pounce on him before he could get up, but they simply stood right there as the hero put himself up, he doesn't seem to be too affected by that hit. The hero doesn't say anything, instead grimacing and running again into the two. This time the big one simply braces himself for impact. The hero hits the big guy right in the chest with all the speed he could muster, but he giant doesn’t even budge, he instead holds the hero tightly and doesn't let him escape his grasp. It's then that, in the darkest and deepest part of the alley (the one completely submerged in darkness), a light forms out of nothing. Surprisingly, the light quickly gets a circular shape and what seems to be a humanoid figure steps out of it. The figure has something in its hands, a cylinder of sorts, and with a small twist of his hand some sort of gas is released, accompanied by a hissing sound as the gas escapes its containment. It quickly fills the air; the person being held in the giant's arms appears to be slowly losing consciousness. It's then that I jump in. Quickly putting a hand inside my cape, I take out a gift for these three and jump from the roof. The attention of the three is drawn directly to the floor, to a clacking noise that is distinctly different from the hissing of their cylinder, there they see five small spheres which eventually explode, the newcomer being smart enough to back away before they burst. The hero is released from the giant's arms, and as soon as I hit the floor, I quickly make my way towards him. Holding the hero in one arm as I quickly back away I throw yet another three spheres towards them, trying to make as much distance as possible. Just as I make it out of the alley and stand right on the center of the street the spheres detonate, the smoke from the explosion blocking my view, but I focus on the person on my arms right now, who's apparently not fallen unconscious yet. “Breathe through this” I take another item from my belt, a rebreather in the form of a small cylinder, and put it in his mouth. “You always jump in before thinking things through?” I ask him. He coughs into the cylinder before looking at me “And who are you supposed to be?” His voice somewhat muffled thanks to the rebreather. “That doesn't matter right now.” I take another cylinder and place it in my mouth. The smoke from the small explosions is slowly clearing out, as well as the gas from their own device, the three figures from before visible behind the smoke. There in the alleyway they stand, two of them on each side of the alley and the third one back, he gestures to the other two before slipping into the same light he came from. The two figures remaining simply stare at us, eerily striding towards our position, ready for a fight. As I feel the hero I just rescued slowly stand I speak again “What matters right now is making sure these two don't sweep the floor with us.”

Pursuit. (Part One) **For the last couple of weeks people have been disappearing from the streets, from their homes, schools, places of works, and so on. No one knows who’s doing it, or why. The Mayor has tried to keep this a secret for as long as possible, to not scare the public. It failed, badly. Now the city is scared and no one knows who to trust anymore. People go missing every day and corpses appear on streets and alleyways.** **Heroes and Villains have been working non-stop to find out the truth, but some other people, like me, simply do what they always have.** **…Destiny had other ideas for me though, and my own investigation on a different matter led me right to the center of the mystery.** (This story takes place in the same time “Captivity” does.) https://read.cash/@Guub0/captivity-part-one-388e8d66 The city’s a disaster. It’s been like this for a while now. People are going missing left and right and there’s no trace or reason left behind. The speed at which they work and the fact no one knows *why* they take people leaves too many scared to even go out to their daily commune. This has been going on for some months and despite the constant investigations by police or heroes, there’s still no clue as to who is behind it. The Mayor chose to play the long game, to try and not mention the problem and hope that it could be solved before it got worse, in the hopes that it wouldn’t scare the entire city. Then the corpses of the missing people started appearing and he couldn’t tell people nothing was going on anymore. Everyone in the city is on high alert, no one really knows what to do or who to trust. …Except for a select few, who chose to continue with their own lives and business despite it all. People like me, for example. Another caped crusader jumping through the roofs of the city and fighting criminals. Though less of a hero and more of a detective, because there is certainly a lot of people who need something or someone found, or certain matters of theirs that need to be dealt with… discretely. It’s like Dad always used to say, if there’s something you’re good at don’t do it for free, and according to the man himself if there’s something I’m good at it’s using my head and tinkering. Currently moving through the city, making my way to my current objective, all the while thinking on the “case” I’m working on, if I could actually call it that. An ex-millionaire going missing, of course this was *years* before the problem with the disappearances started, so I’m essentially looking for a man who disappeared years ago. However, working on a missing person case while there’s a frenzy of people going missing all over town makes it more difficult to solve it. Who would have thought that there’s plenty of people who like to kidnap defenseless civilians who have nothing to do with the bigger problem at hand? As I move through another set of buildings, jumping on rooftops and making my way down to street level, I double check the address in my mind, now that I’m close to where I’m headed, I have to make sure I get it right, wouldn’t want to knock on the wrong door after all. I make my way towards a small two-story house and knock on the front door, not a glamorous entrance I know but I like to keep things civil and not enter through a window like some other *people* do. That’s just rude, not to mention illegal. I don’t have to wait for long. Soon I hear shuffling inside and someone undoing the locks of the door, a woman opens the door for me. Her face looks tired and her eyes are red, she has a crumpled piece of tissue paper on her hand so she’s probably been crying. I can tell she’s a little taken aback by the costume and before I can say anything to her, she starts a conversation. “Are you here for Billy? Did you find anything!?” She asks pleadingly, her voice is weak but also desperate. “…No, I’m sorry” I reply. I can see her visibly deflate at my answer and she looks like she’s about to cry again “I’m actually here to talk to your husband, is Doctor Marcus home?” Her face scrunches up, before she asks “You know my husband?” I nod “I’m a… private investigator of sorts” That’s the best way I can put it. “The doctor hired me some months before to investigate something for him” It’s not until I remember *what* he hired me for that I quickly mention “Of course, I’m not at a liberty to discuss the details of my investigation so you’ll have to ask him about it” The woman stares at me for a moment, processing my statement before she surprisingly opens the door further and gestures for me to enter. “He’s… on the living room. Come in, please.” I give her a quick thanks and make my way inside. I’ve been inside the house before, back when her husband first hired me so I know my way inside. It doesn’t take long for us to reach her husband. He’s sitting on a couch, looking thoughtful and staring at a small portrait on the coffee table, he doesn’t notice either of our presences until his wife speaks to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Honey? There’s someone that wants to see you.” “What? Who-” The man looks at his wife, then turns around to look for his visitor his eyebrows rising in surprise when his eyes find me. I notice that his eyes are red, just like his wife’s. “Wait. What. *Hood?*” He speaks. There’s some awkwardness in his voice. “It’s been… A while, hasn’t it?” His eyes dart to his wife and then back to me. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I needed to visit you for something” I say, walking over to him. “…This isn’t about money is it? I thought I had already paid for your-” His eyes land on his wife again for a second “-*services.*” “No, no, nothing like that” I try to assure the man. He’s surprisingly jumpy tonight. I reach inside my pockets and take out a photo of the person I’m looking for. To them it must look like I’m just reaching into my cape or something. I show the picture to Dr. Marcus and tap on it. “I’m investigating the disappearance of Edward Callahan” The man’s eyes widen in recognition “I understand you were a coworker of his as well as one of the last people who saw him two years ago?” It takes a moment for the doctor to collect himself, he blinks a couple of times before speaking. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while…” He pauses for again and then shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I… can’t really do anything right now, I’m- There’s something going on right now.” Looking back to he and his wife, I’m completely sure something has them on edge. All it takes for me to realize what is wrong is to take a look at the picture on top of the table. “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping, but did something happen to your son?” I ask. My response is a whimper from his wife, with the doctor biting his lower lip before answering. “…Yes” He sighs. It’s a weary sigh, the kind of one a person lets out when they’re about to cry. He rubs his hands on his face “Billy disappeared two weeks ago” He lets out a shudder “The police believe it was related to X8” X8 being the name they’ve given to the serial kidnapping case. They do that for whatever world ending threat or big occurrence of the year shows up that requires several heroes to stop. That makes me raise my eyebrows. …Not that they can see them behind my mask. “The kidnappings? They think your son was taken by the same people responsible for them?” The doctor looks down to the picture on the table, this time joined by his wife who embraces him with one arm. “They say it looks exactly like the other cases, no trails, no evidence, no hero can track his position… Nothing.” He grabs the picture again and looks at it for some time before turning to me. Now that I have a good look at his face, I can see the man is filled with sadness just like his wife. “I’m sorry, you came here for answers and… I’m sorry” Another sigh. *I’m the one that’s sorry* is what I think on saying, I came here looking for answers on something and interrupted these two on their weakest moment. I was about to apologize and leave until his wife spoke again and broke the silence between us. “Richard, you said you hired this man for something right?” She begins, separating herself from her husband and gesturing to me. “Can’t we just get him to look for Billy? For anything about what happened to him?” Her husband looks back at me, somewhat unconvinced, but his wife doesn’t stop there. “If you could… look in to what happened to our son” His wife trails off. “I know it may be too much to ask for” Her husband stares at her “But if you do look up about Billy, *anything* at all, then I’ll tell you everything we know about Edward.” “Honey, it’s not that simple- He can’t just!” They start arguing after that. I don’t focus on them; I just think on what to do now. The second I was hired to look for a man that was kidnapped I was ready to decline, because it may have something to do with X-08, it was only thanks to the man’s lover who convinced me that it was not related that I took the job in the first place. Even though there’s some good money on the line I was ready to decline if it involved getting into this mess. Don’t get me wrong, it’s just that selfless heroics hardly pays the bills and jumping around with a costume and throwing gadgets burns through your budget fairly quickly, so I tend to outright refuse jobs that get me involved in something bigger than me, or something that just doesn’t pay right. Still… As my gaze wanders over to the Marcus’ family photo again, I can’t help but feel something at this scene, I can’t help but feel something for Marcus’ son, despite just being a passerby. I can’t help but taste something akin to disgust in my own mouth when I consider not helping them. “Are the police not doing anything about your son?” I break their discussion myself. The couple stops what they’re doing at stare at me for a moment. Seeing their red eyes, probably from all their crying *for losing their son* almost makes me flinch. Almost. “…The police said to wait” Marcus responds “All the cases are the same and all we can do is wait until they find something, but they’re acting as though it was impossible to” His wife perks up next “We know it’s asking too much but…” She grabs her husband’s hand “We’ll be grateful if you can find anything, no matter how small it is.” I take another second to think. Everyone has been searching non-stop ever since the beginning, stress and tension building up when they realized no one has found anything conclusive, even more so when the city realized that the kidnapping rumors weren’t just rumors anymore. Every day that passes makes it feel like stopping it is an impossible task, just like they said. But again, a part of me can’t stop but feel disgust at the idea of giving up on them. “I can’t promise I can find your son.” They both visibly deflate at that, their faces hopeless. I tried. I really tried to stay as far as possible from this fiasco but it seems fate just won’t let me stay the hell away from it. “I could promise you that I could search as much as possible about this” I start “Maybe even end up with the same conclusions that the police have” “But I *can* promise you that I won’t stop until I find out what happened to your son” …Dad always said I was a man led by his own emotions. They both brighten up somewhat at my response, with Marcus’ wife being the first one to respond to my claim. “Thank you… That’s all we ask.” *That’s all I can do*. I look Marcus in the eye and ask him again “But first, I need you to tell me about Mister Callahan” Marcus’ blinks “What? Why?” His eyes narrow “…You don’t think he has something to do with this?” “Not really, no.” I move over and take a seat on another chair “But I’d like to get this one thing done with before starting on your son” I respond. Besides, if my luck is any good then maybe Edward will too end up another victim, and maybe I’ll end up finding who’s responsible for it all, that’s two birds with one stone! …Yeah right, as if *that* would happen.

Captivity. Part Two. (Part One) https://read.cash/@Guub0/captivity-part-one-388e8d66 **Kidnappings are something that happens too often, a sad part of reality really, but when said thing keeps happening again and again in a short span of time… people tend to notice. At least I did, thinking I could do some good and find out what was going on.** **It’s how I ended up here.** It’s been two weeks, according to Legate at least, guy helps me keep track of time and that helps in not trying to go insane while waiting, doing nothing but sit and sleep as these guys keep me on a table and do whatever they please with us. At the end of the first week we got a new neighbor, a hero that goes by *Concussion* or something, guy refuses to just sit down and keeps screaming and hitting the bars. He fails to realize that makes the guys in charge use the sleep gas so that he “calms down” and because both Legate and I are sitting *right next* we end up inhaling that too, so forgive me if I’m angry at him or something. I thought he would eventually learn we can’t really do anything from here but we’ve been all put to sleep at least five times and he Still. Keeps. *Doing it.* Hey he’s doing it again! Why do we get the rowdy guy as a neighbor? Why don’t they put him two cells apart!? Maybe that way the gas dissipates before it reaches us or something. “You listening to me!? I’m going to get out of here and when I do I’m going to put my foot so far up your ass-” *aaaand* there he goes… I stopped trying talk him down a couple of sleeps ago and Legate, for his part, can’t even get a word in before this guy condemns him for being evil and me, by extension, because I haven’t kicked his ass or tried to, despite the fact that’s physically impossible in our current situation. I think he doesn’t get the part where we can’t physically do anything aside from running circles in the cells. Ah. There’s the now familiar sound of the gas leaking into the cells. At first, the smoke makes him angrier, but eventually he goes down first because screaming and kicking so much makes him breathe the gas faster. Again, since he’s close to my cell I end up breathing it too and fall asleep shortly after. Hope he actually shuts up for good next time. -- Four weeks later and he’s *still* screaming, although he calms down halfway through his tantrums now so we don’t get as much nap time as before. He finally started speaking to us – well, more like to me, he still looks at Legate like he’s the devil incarnate – we talked for a while, ended up sharing what our powers do. *Concussion’s* power is “super resistance”, as in being able to get hit or shot and not be worse for wear, it doesn’t help him fight back but does wonders to keep him alive, which is probably why he’s so stubborn, now that I think about it. Also learned that his real name is Axton. He *also* told us about what the rest of the city is doing at this point. “Everyone knows about the kidnappings by now, they were rumors before but now that there are as many corpses as missing people…” He stops there, leaving that statement hanging for us to process “Supers and Police kept this hidden, for a while. Didn’t want to scare the masses, but eventually it escalated and now every single super out there is in full alert looking for answers.” It was reassuring to know they were still looking, a part of me had given up on thinking they’ll get here. “So they *are* coming…” Is what comes from Legate, hand on his chin. “Just like I had estimated. It’s only a matter of time.” Axton snorts from his cell “Yeah, right. Just as planned” He tries to imitate Legate’s voice “Look at me I’m the smartest guy ‘round! I’m so smart I got caught by the guys that got *everyone* else!” Legate simply narrows his eyes at Axton. “If you’re so smart anyways, why don’t you come up with a plan to get us out?” Challenges Axton. The man sitting on the cells across from ours simply closes his eyes before speaking. “I’ll admit it wasn’t my finest hour, I simply miscalculated.” He sighs “They had found a way to weaken me. My one weakness” “…What is it?” asks Axton, moving slowly towards Legate’s cell - at least as much as he could - to hear him better. The man hesitates for a moment, before answering “Salt.” …What? Legate sighs again, probably thinking how to explain his predicament “In small amounts salt does nothing, but as I was fighting against my captors I was thrown into a establishment, the fall broken by several bags of salt, which weakened my powers immensely, leaving me at their mercy” We fall into silence after that, both Axton and me staring in shock at Legate, although for different reasons. While Axton starts laughing at the idea of someone so strong, so powerful, falling to a condiment I just think. One of the biggest and strongest metahumans in the world has a weakness? To Salt of all things? This is a world of metahumans and people with bizarre and fascinating superpowers, of which there are several with weaknesses to common things, I’ve even meet people that are weak to *rabbits*, as in rabbits sap her powers or something. But for this guy…? I don’t believe it. There’s something about him, something about this whole situation that is just too… *stupid* to believe. And while I’m busy thinking to myself, I see Legate look at me once again. As I narrow my eyes at him, as if trying to speak to him with my eyes, I see the man smirk knowingly at me. *He’s lying.* He didn’t *lose* anything or lose to anyone. …But why? Why lie to us? What’s the point? As I process all of the different possibilities and theories running through my head, I hear the familiar sound of the sleep gas pouring in to the room, probably to silence Axton again, or maybe they want to start the tests again. I hear how Axton stops laughing and swears as he falls asleep and see how Legate simply smiles at me from his cell. But just before I lose consciousness, I swear I can *see* the man mouth something to me. *All in due time.* … … This time, when they get me to a table and start working on me, it feels different. It’s not like the other times, where I woke up in the middle of it and stayed awake until the end or the ones where I slept through. This time my consciousness is fleeting. All I see is blurry, but that doesn’t mean I can’t *feel*. The first few times I “wake up” I feel as though everything is heavy, I can’t really feel anything anymore. This keeps going on for a while, the voices of the *“scientists”* sound distorted in my head. After that’s over, I feel in the clouds, as if my body was flying. I can hear myself breath, my heart beat, but I can’t hear any voices anymore, nor see anything at all, like if my eyes were welded shut. That feeling stays for a short amount of time, before it’s completely replaced with *pain*. Harsh, intense pain, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. My entire body felt like if it was going to be ripped apart. My body feels like… like… Like if I was burning alive. A feeling long forgotten, since the first day I got my powers and my resistance to fire increased. Like a blast from the past, this feeling washing over my body is as if I was being burnt completely, as if my whole body was washed with fire and I didn’t have my resistances to it. It reaches a crescendo, the pain overwhelming me and, for a split second, I feel like my body is truly coming apart. It’s on that same second that I “wake up".  I open my eyes, but all I see is fire. I open my mouth to scream, but all that enters is fire. My entire being burns and I shortly pass out again. … … The next time I wake up, I can’t control my flames anymore.

Captivity. Part One. **Kidnappings are something that happens too often, a sad part of reality really, but when said thing keeps happening again and again in a short span of time… people tend to notice. At least I did, thinking I could do some good and find out what was going on.** **It’s how I ended up here.** Normally people don’t realize how easy it is to lose the sense of time, especially when you can’t even see the sun move or the time on a clock. The continuous loss of consciousness for indeterminate periods of time makes it worse. I’ve been a prisoner of these people for more than a month now (I *think*), maybe two months, but it could be more than that. I really don’t know anymore. All I can do is sit in this little cell and talk to the people around me, for as long as I’m allowed to that is, eventually they just make us sleep with gas and then take us out. I’ve had the luck to regain consciousness during their… ‘experiments’ and I’m somewhat thankful that not every single person here has to. I don’t even know what their long-term goal is here, all that they do is drag them around and open us up. God, the things I’ve seen them do to people… Most of them wish they’d were dead. Some of them *die* inside their cells, screaming and moaning in pain. And for what reason? No one in the cells knows, the oldest ones who could probably have an idea of what is going on are either insane or dead and anyone who probably figures it out ends up getting killed and disposed of… Unless they’re experimented on, in which case they’ll probably want to be dead instead. The one thing I thought most of the people here had in common were Powers, yes Superpowers, in the sense that most of the people here had one of their own, but that theory quickly died when I talked to several people who *didn’t* have any. The other idea in my head, which was that maybe they just went after Heroes or people with heroic complexes, who for some reason tend to be number one prime subject for getting Superpowers, died as soon as I realized common thugs and Villains were, also, held captive. I myself am a Hero, or at least I tell myself I am, my power is fire control, my body being capable of generating flames. I’d like to say I’m good with it, that with my powers giving me a higher resistance to fire (It takes longer for me to cook up inside a fire) and that I can light myself up and end up looking like a 6-foot-tall *flaming* skeleton man. Just before I was unceremoniously dropped here, I had heard of people going missing on the streets, a sad and common occurrence in this day and age, but what wasn’t normal about the disappearances was how people were missing almost everywhere in the city and the speed at which they were taken. Something had to be done and that something was a bunch of costumed freaks investigating. I work on my own (apparently the image of a skeleton man in flames throwing fire doesn’t do wonders for your public relations) and was making my own investigation into this mess, which is probably why I got nabbed on the first place. Maybe I found something they didn’t want found, maybe it was the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe I’m just unlucky. At least there’s a couple of positives, now I know what they’re doing (*kind of*), and back home no had said anything about Heroes and Villains going missing too, (weird, when you think about it) which I found out as soon as I woke up here, so I suppose not all of this is bad. …You have to remain positive in situations like these, otherwise you eat yourself up with anxiousness. I could sure do without the ‘stress tests’ that they put me under though. Just because I’m somewhat resistant to fire doesn’t mean I’m completely immune to the thing, a fact that their constant prodding has demonstrated and that the left-over burn scars won’t let me forget. *Thankfully*, I hardly feel them anymore, but I’m not sure if that’s because they’re healing or because of the drugs they pumped me with. … Oh, look. My cell neighbor is just waking up. Joy. Standing on the cell right in front of mine (or at least trying to) is a giant of a man most people call *Legate*, although most people call him ‘Oh dear god please don’t hurt me’ thanks to the fact the guy hits like a nuclear truck with superspeed and that he can also take a hit from a nuclear truck with superspeed like nothing ever happened. That and because he’s a Villain. At least he’s good company, being stuck in a cell alone for so long will drive a guy crazy, sadly, I didn’t really have any other neighbors and had to do with what was given. Turns out he’s not really that bad! At least when he doesn’t look at me with murder in his eyes. I wouldn’t say we’re friends, or that I wouldn’t wish to have someone else in front of me, but it beats talking to and making up my imaginary friends. “Morning sleepy head.” I greet the guy while he gets his bearings. He just stares at me with the same scowl he always has while softly massaging his jaw. “I see you’re still alive.” Is his only response. I can’t help but sigh. “…Yeah, I missed you too.” The man is such a great conversationalist, every time I talk to him, I feel enlightened. “What was it this time? They poke you with the electric sticks again?” I can’t stop myself from asking really, I need to make some conversation to fight the silence and if I don’t say anything this guy won’t either. It takes a while for him to answer “If you really must now” He starts, stretching a little. “I believe it was *‘endurance’* training” …*Ah* “The sticks then” Is what I say. Yeah, turns out I’m not great at this whole conversation thing either. The only response I received was a grunt, before he got back to his usual stretching. You have to *really* try to get a conversation going with this guy. I don’t think it’s his fault, he’s a very successful Villain so there’s several worth’s of people trying to get him every time he shows up. My guess is that he’s used to the usual hero talk of ‘hold there, villain!’ or something like that, so he expects most of the Heroes that speak to him to be idiots, or *fools* as he calls them. Not saying those people *are* idiots, but if you dress up in spandex and threaten a guy that can flatten your entire city with words like ‘cease your heinous villainy you scoundrel!’ what do you expect to happen? I can’t help but look at him as he keeps stretching in his cell. It makes me think, if Legate is really that strong, how did these guys manage to keep in incarcerated, incapable of breaking free? Surprisingly, it’s the man in question who interrupts my thoughts and starts the conversation this time. “I don’t suppose you’ve found out anything about our captors” He’s finally done stretching and just stares at me, sitting on the center of his cell. I’m tempted to be an ass to him, like usual, but… “No, I haven’t. All I’ve seen is cells and experiments” I remark, looking at my now burnt hand. “Same as you, I guess” Legate stares at me for a long moment before sighing, the man takes a moment before he continues, all the while looking at the ceiling. “By my estimates, it’s been at least four months since they’ve started” He takes a moment to let that sink in “Two since we’ve been imprisoned, seeing as we were both taken around the same time” “I have tried, and failed, to find the reasoning behind this madness” He continues. “For two months I have listened, I have paid attention to the actions of the madmen calling themselves scientists as they dissect and cut their way through us” “Yet all I see is just madness. No rhyme or reason. No purpose.” I can’t stop myself from saying “Look, there *has* to be a reason. There’s no way they’re doing this to have a good time” You just don’t cut up people unless you’re crazy and the things they’ve been doing to us implies that there’s more than crazy on this. “Oh no, there is definitely a reason behind it all” He begins “Whatever it may be, I doubt we’re going to find anything at all ourselves” “…You think we can’t do anything ourselves?” I cross my arms. “Not against these people no. These ones aren’t your average street thug, they’re professionals” I can hear him click his tongue “Had I all of my strength…” He trails off. A moment passes. Neither of us says anything while I process Legate’s words. “What do we do then?” “…We wait.” He says “We wait until our associates find this place.” “You think they’re still looking?” A part of me believes they are, but another one lost hope some time ago. “It’s not like they have a choice” He gestures to the other cells far from us, to all of the people we can see at a distance. …I think some of them aren’t moving anymore. “With the speed at which they’re taking these people… It’s only a matter of time until they’re found out” The moment I turn to him I see him looking back at me. Right into my eyes. “All we can do… is wait” …And with that, he shuts up, leaning back into his cell and closing his eyes. He doesn’t say anything anymore for the rest of the day. Neither do I. All we can do is wait. …I just hope they find us before our time’s up. **Where have you been Guub0? You may ask.** **University is a cruel mistress, online semesters are a thing of the devil, plus my general laziness... Yeah.**

Fallout: New Vegas. The best Fallout game, probably. Today I bring to you the holy child of Fallout games, the greatest invention of mankind, the so called “greatest fallout game ever made since fallout 3” “fallout 3 but good” “fallout done right” “fallout when not made by Bethesda” and so on. Basically... This game is pretty *cool*. This was the second Post-Apocalyptic RPG FPS game to come out in the Fallout series, the first being Fallout 3. It meant a lot to people once news of it came out because it was being made by the people who originally worked on the series (Fallout was sold to Bethesda once the company it belonged to went bankrupt) and after release it was considered a superior version to Fallout 3, *mostly* because of some technical improvements but sometimes people like to say that just to spite Fallout 3 players. What followed were a series of long (extremely long) rants about how Bethesda sucks and about how Obsidian (the guys that worked on it) were gods in comparison to those plebeians. (In case you haven’t realized yet, people like to pick on Bethesda) But I’m not here to talk about that! I’m here to talk about the greatest game ever made: Fallout New Vegas. This beautiful baby may be old but to this day is considered one of the greatest games that exist, simply because of how many people end up re-installing it over and over again. People are making mods despite its age, good ones. A big one was just released recently too, which brought even *more* people to reinstall Vegas. Fallout New Vegas takes place in the fictional land of *“The Mojave Desert”* a land of mutated geckoes and sand which has some other fictional places like *“Las Vegas”* called *"New Vegas"* probably because of the apocalypse, which is where the name of the game comes from, *probably*. The story is about a person that gets shot in the head (that’s you!) and their quest for vengeance (or for whatever it is you end up doing) that makes them go up and down the Mojave. You start the main quest by looking after your aggressors but eventually the story puts you in the middle of a war between three factions (and an extra) for Hoover Dam and control of the Mojave, for he who controls the water controls the wastes! This is one of the biggest points of Fallout NV’s and something people still argue about, the big factions of the game that you can help or attack and the endings associated with them. You may be asking *“But Guub0, how does a single man/woman/human/person get shot in the head and end up going to war?”* I’m glad you asked citizen. You see, the Mojave is filled with incompetent idiots (no, really), which creates a perfect opportunity for one random guy from the street (that’s you!) to help one of said idiots to tie up their own shoelaces and then lead them to war! The three (four) contenders for this fiasco are as follows: **(Disclaimer: This part doesn’t explain the whole of the factions, so experiment on your own when you play and see which one you like best.)** **NCR (New California Republic):** Also known as America V2.0, also known as political corruption V2.0. It’s pretty much a bunch of people trying to build a government resembling USA’s in the post apocalypse, with all of the goods and bads that means. Probably the best choice, despite all of the other bad juju they have going on, the downside is that choosing this forces you to file taxes, which no one likes. **Mr. House (Big Brother):** An old dude in a machine, a *really* old dude in a machine. He just wants Vegas to be honest, that and to develop a lot of technology to bring humanity to an even higher position that what it was before the big war, why? Because the man owned Vegas before the war and wants to keep it this way, he also likes developing technology and being smart. He has the technological edge and the only reason he didn’t really kick everyone out of his backyard (The Mojave) is because his pirated copy of Windows 98 was rebooting from the mother of all bluescreens and needs an OS update. Choosing this kinda makes you his protégé, which means you get a bunch of money to spend on Vegas of all places, probably, maybe, don’t count on that. Caesar’s Legion (Pronounced Kai-ser if you’re a Legion nerd): This faction would have (probably) *not* survived development were this game made in the current times, as it pretty much stands against the principles of the average internet person. The armor their men wear is football equipment, which serves as a way to explain how incompetent NCR is in comparison, given that they have actual armor and guns and yet still lose to the LARPers. The men here are led by a Roman LARP-er guy named Caesar (disclaimer: not actually his name), who says that women are icky and forces them to cook, clean and breed. So yeah, choosing this one is pretty much the *evil* option. You (The Bonus Contender): It’s you! Instead of following any of these losers you can instead choose to take the Dam for yourself. Because let’s be honest, you couldn’t possibly do a worse job than what they’re doing… Unless you want to that is. In addition to all of these factions and weird endings, you also affect the fates of the smaller towns and factions you visit with everything you do there. So yes, that child you killed? It’s going to affect the ending and it’s going to tell you how much of a horrible person you are. New Vegas historians still argue to this day which one of these factions is the one that will lead to the “Good” ending for the Mojave as a whole, although the argument eventually winds down to people calling each other idiots. Truly, the one thing that most New Vegas fans can get behind is that no one really knows what the best ending is, that and that everyone agrees that Caesar’s Legion is the worst ending. There’s also a bunch of DLCs too, four of them are story-based and have a lot of content and the other two simply add some more weapons, I’ll quickly go over them… - **Dead Money:** Download it, play it, regret playing it, dread playing it again. It’s a mixed bag but most people consider this the bad one. Somewhat of a “Rite of passage” for everyone who loves New Vegas. - **Honest Hearts:** It’s pretty cool. There’s tribals and Mormons and they shoot each other, that’s pretty much all you need to know. It’s considered boring to a lot of people at I completely understand why, but it’s good on its own way. - **Old World Blues:** The funniest of them all, also considered the best one because of its atmosphere. The best part of it all comes when you get rid of all of the humor and realize that it’s probably one of the *darkest* pieces of the entire setting. - **Lonesome Road:** The endgame. It’s somewhat lackluster. It’s the final story DLC so it’s fairly linear, but you get a lot of challenges from it. - **Courier’s Stash:** You get cheat items as soon as you start the game. ‘Nuff said. - **Gun Runner’s Arsenal:** Gun vendors sell quality Guns and Gun accessories. Needless to say, the DLC is pretty much a must have. All of it, it’s good, give your money to Bethesda and I swear you won’t regret it (Okay, you’ll probably regret Dead Money, but everything else is good.) This is a game that makes people come back every so often, so trust me when I tell you it’s good. That said it’s not for everyone and since we’re all grown-ups I’m pretty sure no one’s going to be angry or offended if someone feels that the game isn’t good or that it’s overrated. You also have to keep in mind that this *is* technically a game based around on Bethesda’s engine so expect a trillion different bugs to happen, experience has told me that different people experience different issues in this game so if you have a lot of problems try to get some mods to make it more stable. Which brings me to modding... All you need to know is that there are still people making more mods for this 10 year old game, with several levels of quality, but there's a lot of great stuff out there. I would talk about modding in depth but this is getting somewhat long now so it’s time to end for now. With that said, I hope you enjoyed my ramblings on this game. All photos are screenshots taken by yours truly during his own gameplay.

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Fallout: Tactics, Tactical Brilliance (read: Stupidity) Similar to how in a family there are siblings in the weird position of being the middle child there are some games belonging to series that find themselves in a weird situation, although these ones tend to make people say *"what even is this"* or *"why does this exist"*. One of these said games is Fallout: Tactics, which finds itself in the weird position of being a spin-off game to Fallout *wayyyy* back when people wanted a Fallout 3, (before the times of Bethesda), which made a lot of people *think* it was Fallout 3. It isn't. It plays like Fallout (kinda) it uses some of its material, but it's technically its own thing. Fallout: Tactics Brotherhood of Steel is a game based around, you guessed, tactical combat and real time fighting, as opposed to the turn based RPG that its two predecessors focused on. You can change Real Time Combat into Turn Based Combat at any given time, but the play testers said that Turn Based Combat is for nerds, so they didn't polish it at all. The story is also different from your regular Fallout. Instead of focusing on your average Vault Dweller trying to do whatever to find the game's McGuffin you're instead a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, a group of technological weeaboos who enjoy the practice of "hikikomori", that is, staying deep inside of their fallout bunkers watching anime and not doing anything productive with their lives. Their favorite anime are those involving mechas and technology, their *waifus* are the Laser and Plasma weaponry they have in their base. They also like to pester wastelanders (AKA: non-Brotherhood guys) whenever they have technology on their hands because, according to them, those uncultured barbarians are only getting onto the hobby because it's "hip" and "cool". **I wish this was entirely a joke but it's actually close to how the Brotherhood really works.** At one point however, some of the members of the brotherhood had an argument over an anime adaptation of a popular manga, the resulting fallout *(heh)* of that argument ended up with the manga lovers kicking the rest of their brothers from the bunker and sending them on a quest against mutants or something, just an excuse to get rid of them really. It worked to a certain degree, the anime lovers said "screw them" and decided to make their own brotherhood, one where anime adaptations wouldn't be judged by manga lovers. The problem was that they had left their animes back home, so now they had to involve themselves with the "posers" in order to regain what they had lost. The whole point of the game (in terms of the campaign mode) is to do whatever your superior officers tell you to do in order to spread the influence of the BoS and increase it's power over the region. You also get to kill a lot of people too, it's technically a requirement. In terms of actual gameplay, you're supposed to fight smarter, not harder. There's a reason why *Tactics* is on the name. The game goes to some lengths to give you information on your mission, you get debriefed and you can even check the map of your mission, where there's a lot of stuff jotted down. It's simple, but it lets you be creative with how you solve your problems. We're supposed to enter that Raider stronghold but the guards make it impenetrable? We'll just blow some of their stuff outside to get their attention and make our *OWN* stronghold that's impenetrable. Then there's also luck, which plays a big factor on some ridiculous situations. This being basically the engine that the first two Fallout games used, randomly generated occurrences happen when you least expect it, more so if the character involved just so happens to be unlucky/lucky. Like your gun blowing up on your hands, characters missing so badly that they end up shooting themselves on the foot and knocking themselves unconscious or those times when you're trying to give first aid to one your companions but you end up giving them a concussion. How? *I don't know*. But there are times, moments when lady luck seems to be on your side, like one time when a Raider tried to take himself and my squad leader out with a grenade... There's also other times when lady luck leaves you and suddenly one of your guys gets a bullet through the eye, and other times where one of your squad mates dies to a combination of your own brilliance (read: stupidity) and some bad luck, which happens a lot to me for some reason. Finally, even though it may not be the FPS experience of the modern Fallout or the exact same experience of the older ones, it's still a good game. You *could* turn on Turn Based Combat to get that old experience but I wasn't kidding when I said it wasn't polished right. It's not broken, it's just... Okay, play through the game with Turn Based Combat first and then switch it to Real Time, it feels different, really different, like a different game. Some moments of gameplay may make you want to change to TBC simply because maybe there's too much going on, unless you've played StarCraft before and are a god at micromanaging your guys, which I am *not*. ...And that's what happens when I try to micromanage like crazy. But really, if you're into tactical games or shooty games or Fallout as a whole, give it a whirl. But remember! It's called "Fallout *TACTICS*: Brotherhood of Steel", don't forget about the Tactics! Otherwise you end up with Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. Most people try and pretend that one *doesn't* exist. All photos are screenshots taken by me during gameplay.

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Getting shot is kind of scary. You know how in movies and games people get shot all the time and always come back completely fine? You want to know why it works that way? Because if all gun fights in fiction where like the ones in real life no one would go watch those movies. Now, I haven’t been shot myself (and I hope I never get to experience that) but I have a big imagination, a lot of curiosity and a huge amount of free time, which is why I ended up writing this whole article about how getting shot works. Why? Because I am *also* writing a story that involves getting shot. Stay with me for a moment, I promise the reason behind my “investigation” is interesting. You see, my story is inspired by the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game, which is where that one buggy videogame was inspired from, and like any good tabletop 2020 has a section where it explains how combat works. It’s inside of this section where they go on to explain how, in real life, gun fights aren’t particularly a *fun* experience, which is why 2020’s combat is the way it is. It also goes on to explain how, when most people get shot, they don’t technically die just because they got shot, they die because of what happens as a *result* of getting shot. Being the curious person that I am, and interested in how 2020’s combat ends up being more lethal as a result of trying to be realistic, I decided to go dig a little further on how shot wounds actually work, because once I had started to write a little gun fight on my story, I had to ask myself “Is this actually how it’s supposed to work?” So, first thing first; I am not a doctor, nor am I a gun expert, so don’t follow everything I say here to the letter, because some of it, a lot even, may be wrong. A man with a gun pulls the trigger, the gun vomits a bullet at high speeds, the bullet goes through a poor victim, we all know how this goes, it always looks the same in the movies. The actual thing that harms you when you get shot is the *bullet* which, depending on the specific type of bullet and weapon that fires it, comes with its own kinds of problems. The first kind of damage that comes from it is *tearing*, that’s how the bullet enters your body. Why? Momentum. The bullet is fired with a certain amount of speed, and once it enters your body it abruptly loses *some* of that speed, it can ricochet too... The bigger the bullet the more damage it does to your body when entering. Luckily, this also means that if said bullet hits something else while on its trajectory it loses speed and does less damage on hits. Say it hits the door of your car and then you, you still get shot but it’s less shock than what it was before. The damage alone of that tear can harm your organs, even if it didn’t actually hit them, and you can also pass out from the pain and shock of having a hole torn on your body. What happens after the bullet enters is the most dangerous part… because it’s unpredictable. It can ricochet inside of your own body, it could hit important organs or other important parts of your body, like arteries for example. It generally depends on the direction the bullet has taken but according to most of the sites google showed me it really comes down to luck. Like I’ve said multiple times it could ricochet or, depending on the type of bullet, it could *fragment* or it could even stop and not hit anything vital. It’s as if God himself span a wheel and the result determines what happens to you… And then, after the bullet enters and does whatever it’s supposed to do, comes the real killer. No, it’s not a joke, this part is what actually kills a lot of people. Blood loss, mostly a product of where the bullet decides where it wants to go and, if it pierces anything important, expect a massive amount of bleeding, combine this with shock and you get the idea. You can, also, pass out thanks to blood loss, so that's another thing to keep an eye out for. That said, just because you get shot it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the line. According to my “research”, if your heart is still beating there’s a chance. The first thing you should do is obviously call for help, try and stop the bleeding, and so on. Since the biggest part of surviving a gunshot falls on luck, you *could* technically get shot several dozen times and survive (Please don’t try that) and there *are* cases where people who got shot multiple times lived. However, there’s also cases where people took several shot wounds and died, and even situations where they were technically dead (as in too many bullets to important parts) and stayed conscious for several minutes (until they died). Basically, getting shot is bad, really bad, and there’s a lot of things that can go wrong once someone gets shot, but it doesn’t necessarily mean your life is over.

The Job. Part Two Part One. https://read.cash/@Guub0/the-job-part-one-4014c2e6 As soon as he gets out of the car, his friend calls out to him “Yo, catch.” He throws a weapon out to Eddie, taken right out of the car’s trunk. Eddie stumbles with it at first, before holding it properly and checking it out. Rico gave him an SMG and, from the looks of it, an expensive one. “Where’d you get this from... No, more like; How’d you get this on the trunk?” He had checked it this morning, there weren’t any weapons before. “Told you I was doing business” Is what Rico says. “Decided to buy you a little present too. Put it on the trunk while you were looking around” He adds. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful but… I already have a gun” Eddie’s still looking his ‘gift’ over, turning the weapon around, checking its weight, making himself familiar with it. Rico stops rummaging through the trunk for a moment, pointing at Eddie’s hip, where his handgun is “That peashooter of yours is so old it’s going to fail at one point, so I decided to get you something new” He then continues to move things around the trunk Eddie digests Rico’s words for a moment. “…But I like my peashooter” He responds, dejectedly. A chuckle is all that he gets in response. Eddie shakes his head, now’s not the time to mess around, not when they have a job to do. He goes over to the car’s trunk and stands next to Rico. “I hope this thing has more ammo than this” He gestures to the magazine loaded onto the weapon. “Also” He adds, shortly after “Where *exactly* are we going?” Rico moves away from the trunk, leaving enough space for his friend to look at its contents, before gesturing to them. With a smile on his face, he says to Eddie “Help yourself, there’s enough stuff inside for three Ricos and six Eddies” The trunk was loaded with dozens of different types of ammunition. Some, he recognized as ammo used by the weapons they have hidden at their apartment, others are new. He picked up some more for the gun his friend bought, it always helps. Rico puts a hand on his shoulder and looks out towards what seems to be a ruined apartment complex and points to it. “Target is at the building in front of us, had Ajax check it out while I was in the meeting” He called Ajax too? He usually leaves him out of the simple jobs… This one must be bigger than he thought. All the more reason to be nervous. “Any reason you didn’t bring him with us? Could use the extra hand…” His friend takes out another weapon out of the trunk “Ehhh…” It seems like he’s trying to find the right words to say. “Ajax is more like… A computer guy” He takes out a… clown mask from the trunk and closes it, then turns to Eddie. “Yeah, so?” Eddie asks. “He’s more likely to shoot us on the foot than the guys in front of ‘im” Rico deadpans. “You got your mask?” he adds quickly while gesturing to the mask on his other hand. “I still don’t see the point of that, it’s not like people don’t know who we are…” “It’s our trademark!” Rico complains “You, me and Ajax, The *Murder Klowns!*” He makes a gesture with his free hand, the sign of the horns, while saying it. You could tell he put a K there too, because of course he did. One of Eddie’s eyebrows rises at the comment “And last week we were *Murder Doks*, and before that we were *Murder Knights* and before that…” He trails off “Okay! Okay!” His friend almost screams “Look, we need to wear *something* to stop the common thug for realizing who just shot their buddy last week, because *then* they storm our floor and try to pop our heads” He explains. Rico looks away from Eddie, his eyes refusing to see his friend, almost as if he was embarrassed “…The name’s just a bonus” “It sounds cool too” he mumbles. At that, he can’t stop but laugh a little. “I get it, I get it…” He shakes his head again, to try and get rid of his amusement “*Murder Klowns* it is.” Eddie moves back to the front of the car and takes his own mask from his seat on the car. From behind him, his friend pumps a fist into the air as if celebrating. At simple glance, the mask he picked up looks like a normal clown mask bought at a market, with some small changes made to it to fit the “Metal” aesthetic his friend was going for, the black paint poorly smothered over it being the only proof he needed. Let it be said that Rico was not, and will probably never be, an artist. He puts the mask on his head properly before turning to his friend “So what’s our plan here?” For all of his silliness and antics, Rico was a big part of their operations, the (biggest) brain of the team, always with an idea of how to pull off their job, and how to pull *out* of it if things got messy. “We go through the back door” he answers. “Ajax kindly ‘borrowed’ the place’s map back when it wasn’t almost falling down on itself. I kinda have an idea of where to look for our generator” “We’re not using the main door?” “Not unless you want to get filled with bullets” While they were busy setting up and arguing, the sun was already replaced by the moon and the darkness of night covered the entire city. There was still light of course, from the many ads and neon lights plastered on almost every wall of every street, but in this part of town the lights were scarce and the darkness drowned almost everything. It’s a good thing his eyes have adjusted to the darkness without the need for implants. There was no one outside the building to stop them, no one making rounds outside to protect their building, it was typical for the Strays. Most of them go hard on their addictions, passing out and then waking up the next day with a killer headache and no recollection of what they did before. There were however, some people wearing the colors of the Strays passed out on the floor. They both saw several of them on their way to the back of the building and Eddie was pretty sure some of them were dead. Once they cross the street and stand right in front of the building’s backdoor, Rico gestures to Eddie... “Give me a headcount with those magic eyes of yours” Aside from zooming in to stuff, his cyber-eyes have a special mode, it makes him almost blind but lets him see the outline of people, like the heat vision in those movies Ajax likes. Normally something like that is too expensive for people like them but thankfully a dead ganger gave it to him a couple of months ago as a little gift. Using said function, he couldn’t see any people inside, or at least any people close to them. It was a little hard to use it with his… clown mask on, but he had gotten used to it. “No one in this room at least” He says, his voice still low. You can never be too sure. “Works for me.” Rico shrugs before slowly opening the door. He makes a gesture with his head, telling Eddie to enter first. “Ladies first” he says. “Oh, grow up.” All he can see as he enters the building is darkness. The building *is* ruined, there’s not a single light source inside the place, or at least in this room, the ceramic on the floor is dirty and broken, just as some of the pillars holding the structure together. He feels Rico close the door as he enters, looking around as well. “It’s times like these that I wish I had them cyber-eyes of yours” He murmurs. “I asked you if you wanted the parts back when and you said no” “I didn’t know we were going to practically live in the darkness” Rico starts to walk slowly, following the schematics that Ajax gave him, careful to not make much noise as to alert anyone inside “Hey, keep an eye out for people” He murmurs. “Tell me if there’s too much heat on our path” All he can do is silently agree, he moves behind Rico, keeping an eye on their back and on the path they’re taking. Before moving rooms, he uses his vision to check for people. Eddie grabs Rico’s shoulder, trying to make him stop “Not that way, I think they’re sleeping in there…”  His friend lets out a small ‘tsk’. “We’re taking a turn then.” They keep moving like that for a while, him keeping an eye out and Rico leading through the darkness. Surprisingly, almost no part of the building has light on it, so they spent most of their time walking on darkness. His stress builds up with time however, because while he keeps checking for people, he also keeps adding their numbers on his head. There’s too many of them. A single misstep, one loud noise… And it’s over. It’s a good thing they went through the back and didn’t start shooting up people, since extended firefights aren’t really safe. Thankfully, they have no guards at all checking their halls. It’s a wonder no one has dealt with them here, it’s as if they’re begging other gangs to shoot them here. It would make him laugh a little, if his heart wasn’t trying to come out of his chest that is. Eventually though… “We have to go through here” …It all has to go wrong. “Walk through a room filled with sleeping Strays, why not just ask them to shoot us instead?” Eddie says. They’re both standing right on the entrance to what seems to be yet another impromptu sleeping quarters. There’s at least six people inside. Rico lets out a breath, he’s stressed out too it seems “Look, it’s either this place or go back through one of the other, much more filled ones” “Are you even sure that the bloody thing is in there?” He has to ask. And regretfully, Rico has to answer “We’ve been through the whole place, the basement is the last thing left unchecked and this so happens to be the easiest way in!” He knows that, he really does, but that doesn’t make him feel better. He has to relent though, there’s no other way around. He enters the room first. There’s six people sleeping inside on makeshift beds, some of them shuddering, others seem to be knocked out cold. On the other side in front of them there’s a door that, presumably, leads to the basement, at least according to the schematics their friend has. He takes some air, to steel himself, before slowly, *slowly*, moving through the room, keeping an eye on both the residents and the floor (as to not step on anything and make noise) just makes him even more nervous. Not to mention, whenever one of the sleeping beauties abruptly turns or mumbles on their sleep. He feels like he’s going to get a heart attack at any moment. He makes it to the door and turns around, his new position lets him see the room, it’s smaller on this side. Rico started moving as soon as he got to the door, taking as much care as he did. When he’s halfway there, Rico’s mouth moves as if to say ‘The door’ and Eddie immediately turns to open it. He can feel his heart stop for a moment. *The door’s locked.* He turns back to Rico, who apparently can *feel* the fear on his face, even through the mask. To the surprise of Rico (and to his horror) the person sleeping behind him groggily pushes themselves up from their bed. When Eddie’s head moves to them, his friend turns around in shock, as the person slowly regains their consciousness and realizes there’s two armed strangers in clown masks in their makeshift bedroom. *“Oh shit.”* **I'm happy with the reception that the first part received, inspiring me to write this one much faster than the other. I want to give a warm thanks to everyone and their kind words on the first part of this story.** **I hope all of you enjoyed this one as well. Criticism is always welcomed.**

The Job. Part One. Cyberpunk settings are very interesting to me, they're usually described as a depressive future where technology helps to make humanity even worse, as in: A world where the ever-advancing tech doesn’t make things better for people and instead makes it worse. I've been gaining more and more interest in them, and before I realized I had started to make a story about one. This is technically the first time I post anything I write, so criticism is welcome. Also, a disclaimer: **Just because it has** ***Cyberpunk*** **on the name it doesn't mean it's the same thing as an already existing videogame/tabletop.** ***Those*** **guys were the first to use the name as part of their product. Cyberpunk is a setting, not just a specific game or thing.** It’s been hours now. Hours since he’s been waiting here inside his friend’s car and he can feel his nerves *rise* with every second that passes. It’s just for a job he said. It should only take a couple of minutes he said. He’s been inside for an eternity and he’s still not out. He’s tried everything now, taking deep breaths, trying to focus on the music that loudly blasts from the car’s radio… Heck, even tried counting sheep of all things. He just has a feeling that something is bound to go wrong. For what seems to be the umpteenth time today he checks his handgun, looking through the car’s windows for anything out of place, for anyone out of place. Looking at the people passing by, the boys and girls with gang colors, then looking around to make sure no one’s focusing too much on the car. Using the cybernetic enhancements on his eye, he zooms onto the building his friend entered and, after a couple of minutes of doing nothing but staring, he checks his watch one more time. Everyone always asks him *Why do you even have a watch? Don’t you have a robot eye that can tell the time and more?* It’s a fashion thing, besides, it gives him more stuff to do when he’s nervous, like right now. “…C’mon Rico” He mumbles to himself “What the hell is taking so-” “Hands where I can see ‘em, Punk.” A gruff voice stops him cold. He jumps, but does nothing. Whoever it is probably has a gun pointed at him, so he just carefully drops his gun and turns his head as slowly as possible to try and take a better look at the man behind. As soon as he does though, the fear goes away. “Oh for crying out loud…” The man, his friend, doesn’t even try to hide his amusement and laughs loudly. “You should have seen your face!” He says, in between laughs “The perfect expression Eddie!” Eddie turns around on his seat “The hell’s your problem Rico!?” he says through gritted teeth “You wanna give me a heart attack!?” Rico tries, and fails, to stop laughing. “Sorry man, couldn’t stop myself” He says. “You look like you were begging for someone to mess with you, so I did!” “Yeah, I was begging for that. Thank you very much” Eddie responds, completely deadpan. Rico laughs even louder, before speaking. “You my friend, need to laugh more” “Get in the car before I shoot you” He snorts “Yeah right” Eddie fixes himself properly on his seat, as he waits for Rico to get in. Once Rico settles in the driver’s seat Eddie finally asks “What took you so long…” He looks at his watch once more “You’ve been there for years” “Business” Replies Rico, while turning on the car. Eddie sighs as the familiar sounds of the car’s engine fill his ears. *It’s always the same thing with you* he thinks. Finally, as Rico starts driving, he says to his friend “Please tell me it was actually business and you weren’t sniffing something while I waited like a moron” His friend snorts “Heh. That was only one time” “I’ve sat on your stupid car for three hours with your god-awful music playing nonstop, please tell me you actually got something out of this.” Eddie retorts. “Hey, I thought you liked metal!” He complains. “Yeah, I like metal, not whatever the hell this is!” Eddie says “It feels like the lead singer is trying to choke himself to death with the microphone!” As if cued, the song on the radio picks up, the singer making a shrill scream that grates even on Rico’s ears. Eddie gestures to the radio, as if saying ‘See?’, before muting it. Silence fills the car for a moment. Rico mutters dejectedly, low enough to not be heard “…Uncultured swine” He doesn’t let his friend continue “Do we actually have a job this time?” His friend sighs “Yeah we do. We’re driving there right now” He says. “Wait, right now?” Eddie says, eyebrows raised “We’re not even going to pick our stuff?” “Chill. I got something on the trunk for these cases” Rico waves his right hand around, dismissing Eddie’s complaints. He turns the radio on again, it’s still metal, but this time it’s something less heavy. “Our new boss wants us to pick something up for him” He says, turning at an intersection “Y’know we’re in Viper turf, right? Our job is to take something that was stolen from ‘em” The Vipers are one of the many gangs of the city, one of the few ones that matter, as in “one of the big boys” of the city. Important enough for everyone normal to be scared of them and for everyone in their line of work to not want to mess with them. They themselves were guns for hire, willing to do anything (with exceptions) and capable of everything! (according to Rico). Which is why Eddie can’t help but ask… “Why is it that they want us, of all people, to take back their stuff?” They were, after all, small fish. Small enough to not be the go-to group if a gang needed something, so why is it they get the job? His answer is a snort “We’re not taking it back to the Vipers we’re-” “Please don’t tell me we’re stealing from them” “Hell no” His friend immediately replies, head snapping to lock at him as soon as his own words leave his mouth. “Eddie please, I’m not suicidal” Rico raises a finger and before Eddie can say anything else, he adds: “I am stupid, but not suicidal” He was liking this job even less. “You heard about the Strays attacking the Vipers?” His friend took his silence as a chance to continue explaining “Last week they stormed one of their houses and took something from them” He says. The Strays are another gang in the city, they have the numbers but are smaller than the Vipers in terms of power. Wild and unpredictable too, in a badly written story they would probably be the gang inexplicably made out of drug addicts (and sometimes it feels like they are) if not for the fact their ‘mysterious’ leaders are actually competent, using their *many* drug crazed gangers as bullet sponges. They’re always looking to cause trouble, which is what’s bound to happen when your gang is made out of people who have gunk for brains. “What kind of something?” Eddie asks, finally curious about their new job “Guns? Money?” “A generator, which is what our boss wants to take” Rico responds, taking a moment to open the glovebox and take out a pack of cigarettes, he takes one out and puts the box back. “…A generator.” Says Eddie, grabbing a lighter from the glovebox and helping to lit his friend’s cigar. “Thanks.” Says Rico, inhaling some of the smoke, as he proceeds to explain their current job to him. Their employer had bought the generator from the Vipers, but before the Vipers could give it to him the Strays decided to break into the place that just so happened to have it and steal it, *probably thought they were being cheeky*, adds Rico, *they’re always like that*.” As Rico lets the smoke from his cigarette out of his mouth, a small cloud of smoke filling the air, he continues. “Our job is to take it back, and to shoot every mean son of a bird that tries to stop us” He continues. “Alright, first, a generator? Really?” Eddie retorts “Second, it’s the Vipers, they’re more than capable of taking their stuff back, so why are we doing it for them?” they’re capable of taking it back and more, but he didn’t say that last part. “It’s not about them being capable- Hold on” Responds Rico, making a stop at a red light. “It’s not about them being capable, or about them being able to kick the Strays’ asses back and forth” He continues. “We’re doing this because they themselves don’t care about the boss’ generator, or at least he’s not on the list of priorities” Eddie raises an eyebrow at Rico, gesturing him to continue explaining. “The Vipers don’t care that our boss was shafted, they care that they got screwed over by the Strays of all people” He takes a deep drag from his cigarette. “Our boss wants us to take the generator back *before* the gangs make a bigger deal out of it” He stops for a moment, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and tapping it lightly to get rid of the ashes. The red light turning green as he does so. “Over a generator? In a city that pretty much never runs out of power?” Eddie just has to ask. His friend answers while moving the car again. Eddie realizes they’ve been driving for a while now. “Not over the generator, the generator was *part* of a deal, a Viper deal, which was ruined when Strays started messing around and, the general Viper mentality is to exterminate with extreme prejudice whoever dares to slight them” Answers Rico. “They’re royally pissed off and likely to escalate” Rico takes another drag from his cigarette. “Our boss wants someone to take the generator before the Vipers start fucking up everyone’s day. When that happens, the cops get involved, arrest everyone and he doesn’t get what he paid for” He turns to Eddie, an honest smile on his face. “That’s where we come in” “I can see it” Eddie’s finally placing it all together, before turning to his friend, a small smile on his face. “Also, extreme prejudice?” He asks. “Do you even know what that means?” His friend scoffs “’Course I do, I read stuff.” “…” “It’s true!” “…Do you really?” “…*Sometimes*” He can’t help but laugh a little “Won’t the Vipers be pissed at us if we take the generator though?” He asks, now looking at the road, realizing they’re somewhere around the Stray’s territory. *That was fast*. “Nnnope.” His friend starts, shaking him out of his thoughts “Boss man cleared it up with the Viper boss, so long as we just look for the generator and tell his boys what we’re doing, we won’t get shot while looking of it” That one was a surprise. “Wait, our client. *Knows* and *is* on speaking terms with *the* Viper’s leader?” He asks. “Yup.” Rico answers, amusement clear on his voice, he was obviously waiting for him to ask that “Boss man is a big ol' client of the Vipers” So, someone important and big enough for the Vipers to care enough to talk to him. He was, most definitely, liking this job less and less… His friend takes one last puff from his cigarette before throwing it out the car’s window. “We’re here” He says. Eddie was focused on the conversation, so focused that he didn’t notice Rico had already parked on an alley, checking his wristwatch again, he realizes it’s five in the afternoon; the sun’s starting to set. Rico gets out of the car as Eddie checks the time, before he eventually picks himself up and leaves the car too. An extra thanks to @gertu13 , because without her insistence I wouldn't have posted this here. Again, criticism is extremely welcomed, my goal is to improve my writing as much as possible.

My introduction to this site. Hello! I suppose this is the first time I write for this community, at least for myself. I was invited here by @gertu13, who just so happens to be my mother and the person whose posts I help translate to English. I also help her sometimes (a lot of times), whenever she has problems with the “internets”. My name is “Guub0”, a totally average person from Venezuela that loves games a little bit too much, I also enjoy reading, tabletops, music and animals. I'm currently studying engineering through online classes. My greatest passion are video games though, I simply enjoy those way more than I should. I have two pets, which I love very much, a cat that only comes to me whenever he wants more stuff and a small baby turtle that is too curious for her own good. As for what I’m going to write here… Just whatever comes to my head. Whenever I’m working on or playing something, ideas come to my mind that sometimes just won’t go away. According to my dear mother, I should write those down and post them here instead of letting them disappear, like I usually do. Now, a small warning here: While my head never truly stops coming up with stuff, I am still new to this whole writing thing, so my writing may not be the greatest out there, in fact I believe it’s pretty lackluster myself so I appreciate any advice or criticisms that come my way. After all, the idea is to improve, not to stagnate. Thanks for reading my introduction post, hope to see you again and that you enjoy the things I write about.