Household Hazardous Waste City of San Jose

hazardous waste drop off locations near me

hazardous waste drop off locations near me - win

My ultra hardcore recycling guide for our house

Hi all,
I've been putting together info for how to recycle in Tucson while leveraging all the recycling options that are open to me: curbside, the city's upcoming glass drop-off, local and mail-in corporate-sponsored, and TerraCycle (a paid option). I aim to reuse or recycle every last bit of waste coming out of our house, no matter how crazy it may seem. Partly I just want to see how difficult it is; I recognize that my process isn't practical for most people.
Anyway, here's what I've gathered so far.

General principles

​
  1. COMPOST: If it can be composted, compost it! (More on this below.)
  2. REUSE: If it can't be composted, reuse it! Reuse is always the most environmentally-friendly option.
  3. DONATE: If it can't be reused by you, donate it if it's something worth donating that someone else could use. https://tucsoncleanandbeautiful.org/ has a great directory for places that will accept various materials. Cero is a Tucson store that also accepts lots of stuff for donation and reuse. Donation usually involves transportation and some kind of carbon emissions, but it's still better than recycling. Don't donate junk! Donations aren't a free trash can.
  4. MUNICIPAL RECYCLING: If it can't be donated, recycle it locally using municipal recycling (curbside or drop-off). Recycle Coach has all the info you need on what municipal recycling can or can't recycle. ESGD's page on residential recycling also has some important guidelines. Recycling uses energy and involves carbon-emitting transport, plus not everything in a recycling waste stream actually gets recycled, so try to reuse first.
  5. LOCAL STORE DROP-OFF: If it can't be recycled using municipal recycling, recycle it at a local store for free. Earth911 has a search page that finds these stores and breaks them down by type, and TerraCycle's corporate-sponsored programs page also has some local programs. These programs typically ship their waste to a recycling partner, often TerraCycle in New Jersey, which adds to the environmental footprint of the process, so try to recycle municipally first.
  6. FREE MAIL-IN: If it can't be recycled at a local store, use one of TerraCycle's free corporate-sponsored mail-in programs. These programs end up sending waste TerraCycle, just like the local store drop-offs, but are arguably less efficient than sending a big communal batch of stuff, so try to use the local store drop-offs first.
  7. TERRACYCLE (PAID): If it can't be recycled using a mail-in program, use a paid all-in-one box to have TerraCycle recycle it if it's small and light. This is effectively the same as using one of the mail-in options above except that you have to pay, so try to use a mail-in program first.
  8. REGIONAL DROP-OFF: If it's a big bulky waste that can't be donated, see if it can be recycled outside of Tucson (e.g., save up Styrofoam for the next time I drive to Phoenix, where they do have the appropriate facilities). TerraCycle accepts almost anything, but their all-in-one boxes are pricey, so it may make more sense to save up big hard-to-recycle stuff like packaging for Phoenix or another big city, if you think you'll drive there at some point. Don't make unnecessary trips just to drop off waste!
  9. TRASH: If it can't be composted, reused, donated or recycled, throw it away and make sure that you follow the guidelines for hazardous waste disposal.
  10. GOLDEN RULE #1: Make sure that the material is clean. Clean waste streams are more valuable to recyclers, which helps keep costs down. Don't use too much water cleaning up stuff, but don't feel too guilty about using water, either! Dishwater usage is a tiny sliver of household water consumption, not to mention that industry and agriculture generally use much more water than homes.
  11. GOLDEN RULE #2: The goal of recycling is to break down your waste into "primary materials" (e.g., plastic, metal, paper, glass) that can be used by industry to make new products. The more mixed your materials, the more you need to research how to recycle it. Knowing the basics goes a long way. For example, I know that metal cans get melted down, so a paper or plastic label attached to the can doesn't worry me because I know that it will get burned off. But what about a milk carton, which is paper fused with plastic? Or the circuitry inside the plastic base of a CFL bulb? If you can't intuitively explain how the thing is going to get broken down into its primary materials, that's your cue that you need to do some research.
  12. GOLDEN RULE #3: Knowing the basics of how recycling centers work goes a long way. For example, if you know that you can't recycle plastic grocery bags curbside because they get stuck in the machines, that's a hint that you shouldn't try to recycle your plastic food wrap, either. Or if you know that plastic bottle caps fall through the holes of a separator, that's a hint that you need to research whether your beer bottle caps are recyclable (even though they're metal).
​

Reuse and recycling guide for my home

This is not a comprehensive list of every recycling resource in Tucson, this is just for my house my household's needs. I've found that there's no one-size-fits-all solution if you want to reach close to 100% recycling/reuse, you end up having to come up with a list that's customized for your home, which requires research. I'm providing my list as a potential template as well as for inspiration.
Legend:
​
​

How do I sort all this?

Right now, I'm using a makeshift system of lots and lots of bags to keep everything separate. My idea is to do a monthly "recycling day" and drop off everything that needs to be dropped off as well as mail in everything that needs to be mailed in. I haven't had to do this yet since I started this project.
I hope to build a sorting station in my house once I understand my needs a bit better.
​

Notes on TerraCycle and partner programs

A lot of the corporate-sponsored/mail-in/drop-off programs are done through TerraCycle, a New Jersey-based recycler that specializes in recycling hard-to-recycle things (e.g., potato chip bags, toothbrushes). They make lots of their money through large corporations, which essentially pay them to process unprofitable waste in order to burnish their environmental stewardship bona fides. They also offer paid recycling pouches and boxes to the general public. You mail in these pouches/boxes (they come with a shipping label) after filling them up with recyclable waste.
TerraCycle will recycle almost anything and everything. However, anything that gets recycled through them or one of their corporate programs is shipped to New Jersey for processing, so it's preferable to reuse or recycle locally. They're also not as transparent as I wish they would be. I'm not certain, for example, how much of each waste stream actually gets recycled. They have a customer support contact form that's been very good for getting my questions answered, but beware that they take about 2-3 days to get back to you per request.
I bought the large "all-in-one" box from their site and found a coupon code online to bring the cost down to around $350. I read a review elsewhere from someone who got a medium box (about 50% the size) who said that it lasted her six months. My idea is to use this box as "recycling of last resort" and rely on drop-off programs as much as possible to keep costs down. On the other hand, this makes my life more complicated in terms of sorting different waste streams, so you could simplify by putting waste destined for various drop-off points into a single TerraCycle all-in-one box.
You need to register for free on their website to use their mail-in programs. Many of their mail-in programs unfortunately have wait lists. Of the ~15 programs for which I signed up around two weeks ago, about 8 had wait lists, and I got off the wait list for about 5 of them. So they seem to go through the list pretty regularly. Once you're in, you can print off a free UPS label from the "my profile" section of the site after logging in.
If I had to take a wild guess, I would assume that TerraCycle has a higher rate of recycling than municipal programs, but this must be balanced against the financial and environmental cost of shipping waste to their facilities.
​

Composting

The Achilles' heel in my recycling and reuse plan is organic matter. The City of Tucson has a composting program but it's only open to businesses.
There are a few volunteer-run programs here and there that accept compostable waste. I managed to sign up for one, UA's Compost Cats, and will be meeting them tomorrow to pick up my sealed composting bucket and go over the program rules. I know that they have limited capacity, so you have to email them. They took about a week to get back to me.
​

Am I insane?

Maybe a little 🙃.
​

Shout outs

​
submitted by Low_Walrus to Tucson [link] [comments]

I became the most powerful entity in the universe. What could go wrong? | Chapter 10

Hello everyone, Hope you're all having a wonderful day! I'd like thank you all for supporting this series, it really motivates me to write. With that said, hope you enjoy this chapter.
Start from Chapter 1 | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter
Chapter 10 - Is this the best day of my life?
When you have an inseparable God virus in your body like I do, dreaming can go one of two ways. Either the virus reacts to the dream as it would react to conscious behavior, or it will be aware that its host is dreaming and attempt to interfere. I thought about it and found more than enough reasons to believe in the latter theory. But that raised another question — in what way will it interfere?
A) Because dreams are a side effect to a natural brain activity during REM sleep, the virus will remove that side effect, preventing me from dreaming.
B) The virus will try to communicate with me, or vice versa.
C) The virus will give me lucid control over the dream, and since the virus is going to be involved, the experience will be somehow more exceptional than regular lucid dreaming.
Analyzing these theories any further would be a waste of time, so I decided to put it in practice. But in the unlikely event that the virus is going to burn down the kingdom while I'm asleep, I knew I had to take measures to avoid that.
So, I stopped by the inn after reverting the color of my hair and eyes. Yes, I mean ‘stopped by’ because I wasn’t going to do something dangerous like ‘sleeping’ in my own room, that would be crazy. You see, I had another destination in mind. It’s just that some preparations were in order before I headed there.
The blanket we had on our bed was the first thing I took, securing a fairly comfortable surface to sleep on. I folded it and tucked it away in an empty leather bag. I also needed a rope, which I couldn’t find in the room. ‘I guess I’ll just buy one on the way,’ I said to myself and resumed packing. Next set of items were a blank notebook, a quill and a bottle of ink. Because, in case my dreams end up being completely ordinary, I wanted to take notes of what I could recollect after waking up; since dreams are normally easy to forget.
For the last item I needed, I began preparing some UU enchantments. If you remember, UU enchantments are based on magnetically coded instructions electronically translated and converted into magic skills. Therefore, it doesn’t require the ‘enchanter’ to have an associated enchantment skill. Basically, I was manually encoding binary instructions into magnetic disks.
Knock! Knock!
“I have brought you tea, lord Zenith,” the innkeeper’s muffled voice came through the closed door. She apparently saw me enter the inn and prioritized on preparing me tea.
“Come in,” I replied loud enough for her to hear. I remained occupied with coding, as she opened the door and walked up to the coffee table behind me. “Leave it here,” I said, referring to the study table by which I was working. Obediently, she brought it to my side and poured the tea from the kettle into the cup.
“Lord Zenith, as you requested, the rumors about non-believers and ill-intended people being smitten by the one true God is being spread around. It was just as you predicted. We all received the news about the giant apple tree in the Kullu district, and now this whole city is talking about it in relation with the rumors.”
“Very good,” I didn’t take my eyes away from the task I was doing.
She set the tea cup and coaster off the tray and comfortably within my reach on the table. “I shall take your leave then,” she said and proceeded out.
Before she got to the door, I called out to her. “Oh and could you bring me two sets of ropes? Maybe also something sharp to cut it with.”
…
I boarded a shared carriage to get to my destination. I wanted to board a private one, but they were all pre-booked. The shared carriage was not too bad though, especially because I paid the coachman for an extra seat. You see, with shared carriages, you have to wait until a certain amount of time or a certain number of passengers to occupy the seats before departure. When I boarded, the coachman needed one more person to board, so I offered, “I’ll pay for two people if we start now.” Unsurprisingly, money speaks louder than patience.
On the ride, I continued working on encoding the enchantment instructions. Okay, I’ll admit that I couldn’t finish it at the inn like I thought I would, but in my defense, coding in raw binary language is a pain. So there I was, mashing buttons on a peculiar apparatus with every other passenger staring at me and it.
The magnetic disk was inside a disk reader the size of a toaster, and it was connected to an input device with 3 main components; two for reading data and one for writing. On the left, there was a numeric keypad. This was to set the pointer on a specific memory location on the disk. Right above the keypad was an analogue screen with all the data readable in binary form. The device can read up to 8000 bits of data, the pointer starting from 0 to 7999, which is too much to fit on a still screen. So to its side, there was a rotator to scroll through the screen. Last but not least, on the right, there were two buttons representing ‘0’ and ‘1’ used to write data.
Just to be clear, this apparatus was engineered fairly recently. When we initially made the UU enchantments, data was encoded manually by hand. After the demo, I designed this apparatus and Devon engineered it, making it easy thereon.
Ignoring the curious stares of my co-passengers, I finished overwriting the old code with the new one. I ejected the disk from the disk reader, and pulled out the enchantment device out of my leather bag. Then I connected the disk to the input mechanism of it, and hoped for the best. Seventh time’s the charm. I snapped my fingers in the air and the sound was heard by everyone in the carriage. Following that, I released a little mana to be processed by the enchantment. And snapped my fingers again near the enchantment’s output.
Voila! There was no sound this time. I didn’t hear it, and neither did the other confused passengers. My soundproofing enchantment was finally working. I put the device into my bag, and pulled out another disk to code the instructions for the second enchantment I needed. Fortunately, this one was simple. Because, what I needed was electrical insulation and I’ve already developed the binary code for that in the ‘lightning resistance’ enchantment that is among our line of products. It’s the equivalent of copy-pasting from stack overflow, except I’m the one who wrote the code in the first place.
Anyway, I was done with all the preparations by the time I reached my destination, or rather close to it. I was dropped off about 3 kilometers away upon being stopped by government officials who prohibited entry past that point into the perimeter. Moreover, people who lived in that area were being evacuated on priority due to dangerous levels of electrical currents.
Amidst this orderly confusion, I paid the coachman what I promised, and set my eyes back on the scene, specifically on the monster that was impossible to miss — the tree that penetrated the clouds and was generating several gigawatts of power every second. Imagine spotting a skyscraper from 3 kilometers away and it still manages to look breathtakingly massive, that pretty much sums up what I was seeing.
Even as people were primarily focused on evacuation, there were still plenty who just stood and marveled at the tree. I overheard one of them, a lady, saying, “Did you hear? They are saying that this was an act of our one true God, smiting upon evildoers that were doing something bad in that place.”
“Really? What were they doing?” asked the curious person to whom the lady gossiped.
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, the city guards must be aware of it and are not telling us.”
Surprisingly, the rumors have managed to spread so far in less than 10 hours; I suppose I underestimated my own followers. It looks like they are going to soon find out about the red mages who held captives for slave trading. And when they do… Needless to say, matters are moving in my favor.
Anyway, on to dreaming. I moved away from the crowd, and found a secluded spot where I settled down. I made sure no city guards or civilians were in sight, and began focusing on developing a much needed skill at the moment — flight. There are plenty of ways to fly using magic. Despite that, not many were ideal for me in the current situation. For example, I can use some sort of gaseous ignition to initiate thrust, but that’s going to end up burning all the items I was carrying. As for flight methods that are not a fire hazard, I would need better mana control to perform.
Not to worry though. I spent the whole carriage ride here, thinking of a solution. And the solution is simply brute force, by which I don’t mean jumping up, exerting force on the ground. That would be disastrous. I would be using pure mana as particles to carry me through the air. For anyone else, including the immortals, this would be a terrible method of transportation because it continuously consumes ridiculous amounts of mana. It's a good thing my mana pool is a bottomless pit.
> Skillset: … 3D Space Navigation (Complexity - C)
Based on its complexity, you could probably tell that this is a stupidly simple skill. I basically just need to input the 3-dimensional points in space (latitude, longitude, and altitude) and my mana will carry me to that point. Also, this was a really slow mode of transportation, so I activated my camouflage skill before performing it.
I felt my feet lifting up along with my body, and the ground beneath me getting further away. This is the part where you would expect me to use a metaphor linking the ability to fly with freedom. Unfortunately, it was not a comfortable flight. You see, with the mana literally carrying me up, the force exerted on my body from below, including on the crotch region, felt nothing like freedom. I was waiting for the ride to be over.
15 uncomfortable minutes later, I reached the branches of the tree. I was defended against the electrical currents by the virus, as was my leather bag which I held closely to my chest. I landed, stepping on a huge branch. The width of that branch was as big as a sidewalk, and did I mention that the trunk of the tree is 15 meters wide? Looking down from where I stood, I saw thunderclouds, and past that, the humans were practically just a bunch of ants.
I didn't waste much time admiring the view. I unpacked the enchantment tools and set them down between my legs. I pulled out the blanket and the rope and started crafting a hammock. The difficult thing was to ensure none of my items got knocked off by the altitude winds or lightning. Apart from that, things went not so badly. Although a bit crooked because I couldn’t find a perfectly straight branch, the hammock was set up with both the prepared enchantment attributed to it.
Holding on to my bag which still had the book, quill, and ink bottle inside, I laid on the hammock and released my mana for the enchantments to work. Slowly, the noises of thunder faded away and electrical current was getting nowhere near me. I spent a solid 5 minutes consistently releasing my mana to make it an involuntary process as I fell asleep.
For the purpose of lucid dreaming, I maintained a strong conscious awareness that I was going to be dreaming. You can try this out yourself. As long as your conscious is aware that you're in a dream, you'll have lucid control over it. Admittedly, it's easier said than done since it's not easy to maintain conscious awareness when you're in REM sleep. The trick is to slowly adapt to it and you'll eventually be able to do it consistently.
The reason I'm telling you this is to make it clear that prior experiences with dreams significantly helps with lucid dreaming. With that being said, I had never experienced a dream before, at least as far as I was aware. I didn't have a clue about what a dream looks or feels like, I just knew the theory behind it. So unless the virus interferes, I should not be able to lucid dream.
Now, what do you think happened? Did the virus interfere? Did it help me lucid dream? Yes, and yes. But, what I experienced was far beyond anything I predicted. To say it was extraordinary would be a laughable understatement.
First thing I remember was me standing on the same tree branch, staring on to the planet’s horizon. This was my first experience with dreaming, and my conscious was not aware of it. It’s like suddenly being spawned in a place with no clues or context — you have no idea how you got there, but you don’t have the ability to question it either. Another thing about regular dreams is that it’s annoyingly difficult to recollect, and if I try to explain it, it’s going to sound weird. So, bear with me while I do.
An apple dangled before me all of a sudden. It was not a golden apple. Or maybe it was. But I remember the color red, so I’ll go with the bright red apple for the sake of this explanation. I poked it repeatedly for some reason, and it broke. And from it, a creature emerged. It was either a crow or a rat, let’s go with the crow. It immediately fled, and I ran after it. It led me to a more dark and bleak environment where I saw the first group of red mages I consciously murdered in the eastern forest. They had apple trees grown through their bodies and poking out of their faces, just like I remembered. I approached closer, and they silently crumbled down into fragments of charcoal.
That’s the extent to which I remember that dream. The thing to note here is that this dream was completely natural, like any human beings would experience. Right after that dream ended, I remember blackness surrounding me. When I say ‘remember’, I don’t mean vaguely. I vividly remember myself standing in the middle of absolute blackness where I was the only visible entity. And then this information popped up in my head.
> Level: INFINITE
> Mana Capacity: INFINITE
> Mana Control: POSITIVE
> Skillset: … Seal (Complexity - S , ???) …
> Character Trait: Logical, Malevolent, Opportunistic, Calculating
> State of Mind: Lucid Dreaming
Either I accidentally activated my analysis skill in my sleep, or as per my theory (2-C) the virus interfered to give me lucid control over the dream. If it was a case of the former, then that doesn’t explain my level, mana capacity and control. So yeah, this was the virus’ interference.
With my consciousness restored, I decided to start testing out the limits of this lucid dream. I recollected the events of the battle with Heath. And sure enough, the blackness that surrounded me transformed into the wasteland under the night sky. The scene was exactly how I remembered it to be, to the point where the details were astonishing.
“So, it was you,” I heard Heath speak the words I remembered. He was wearing his white and gold cloak that he introduced himself with. “You’re the one responsible for killing our people in the eastern forest. I’m glad you showed up as I hoped, it’s nice to meet you…” Meanwhile, the dream version of me stood behind a regular apple tree with overgrown branches, without responding. The scene was going exactly how it actually happened, and I was watching it all from a third person POV.
That’s when I noticed something odd. I walked towards the scene, getting closer and closer to the characters. The sicko was standing on the sidelines, incapable of doing anything as the battle raged on between Edith and Heath. It was around the time when Edith shoved a punch to Heath’s face and broke his nose, the sicko just ran off. Away from the warehouse and away from the battle. Nobody noticed him fleeing, which is what I found odd.
Back at the estate, when I tried to recollect whether the sicko had survived the battle or not, I couldn’t find him in my memory. But now I was seeing every step he took as he was fleeing. ‘Pause,’ I spoke through thought, and the scene froze with Edith’s fireball hanging midway between her and her target with the handlebar mustache.
I immediately realized what was going on, but it was technically only a theory. So, I decided to test it and confirm. I walked all the way up to Heath and resumed the scene. Obviously, none of the characters could see or react to me; I was practically non-existent as far as the scene was concerned.
Heath raised his hand to use his magic to counter Edith’s fireball. ‘Slow down,’ I demanded of the dream, and everything was now in slow motion. Following that, I commanded, ‘Make the mana visible to my eyes,’ and white glowing particles clouded several areas of the battlefield, especially exuding out of the Edith and Heath. I further observed to see the flow of mana as Heath performed his cause and effect skill, whose functionality I was yet to understand.
Not only did I figure out how the skill worked, I also pretty much confirmed my theory — I wasn’t in control of this dream. I mean, I was able to control the dream, but not directly. My commands were being executed by the virus instead. That’s why I was able to see things like the sicko fleeing, which I never paid attention to during the battle. Moreover, the whole scene was extremely detailed like I mentioned earlier, which could be explained by the virus recreating this scene based on my command rather than my less detailed visualization.
As for Heath’s skill, it turned out to be very close to what I assumed. He basically uses mana to scan and determine the cause and effect of any physical action, and replicate it on a target. Additionally he can control which of the causes and effects to replicate in what combination, and to what degree to amplify it based on mana input. For example, take the moment he threw an unexpected gust of wind at me and Edith. His mana determined the cause of my breathing, which is inflation and deflation of the lungs. He replicated that effect and targeted it at us after amplifying it like a million times by consuming a ton of his mana.
I took my sweet time analyzing the flow of mana to figure this all out, which made me rather annoyed to find out there was an instant way to acquire details about a skill. I just had to ask the virus for the skill’s pseudocode. Well, there’s no use pondering over it now. So, I shrugged it off and carried on dreaming.
You see, I wanted to first know the extent to which I could make use of this virus-assisted lucid dreaming. That way, I can plan for ways to farm benefits off of it, perhaps even learn to control my strength. And that’s how I quickly realized the sheer extraordinariness of this dream. The so-called extent of this lucid dreaming was non-existent — there was simply no limit to the things I could do in there.
And how did I realize this? It started with me walking away from the battlefield where Heath and the dream version of me were fighting in slow motion. I walked further into Kullu district and soon found a neighborhood. Out of curiosity, I entered and checked the houses. Sure enough, there were people inside. Some were asleep, some were reading, and some were having sex. Don’t label me as a creep just yet, I was checking the people out to see if I would recognize someone. And I did.
I recognized 3 of the people I found in this neighborhood from an hour ago when I was watching people evacuate with the assistance of the city guards. In other words, the people I was seeing in this lucid dream actually exist in the real world despite the fact that I haven’t seen most of them. Furthermore, what I saw them doing is also accurate to what they were actually doing at that time. And yes, that means a couple was really having sex while I was battling Heath less than 2 kilometers away.
Are you seeing what’s extraordinary about this lucid dream yet? If not, let me tell you one more thing I did in that neighborhood. I roamed around and found the bell that was for alerting its residents of an immediate crisis. I physically rang it, and the people within their homes came pouring out, confused by what was happening. Their expression of confusion and the panicked chattering all stopped when the thunder and lightning came. They saw the glowing tree with their jaws dropped as it grew and grew to the size I was familiar with.
This lucid dream wasn’t merely a recreation of my past experience. Rather, it was the entire universe reconstructed at this specific point in time. So, I could go to the Andromeda galaxy and see whatever happened there during the time I was fighting Heath. If that wasn’t incredible enough, I was also able to interfere with the simulation, triggering the butterfly effect. All of this was being done by the virus.
Naturally, I wasted no time to make use of this situation the best I could. And there were quite a few things I managed to pull off. If I were to start explaining each and every one of them, this chapter could go on for a while. So, I’ll just give you a brief rundown.
1) I observed Edith and learned how to fight. Although, it wasn’t simply observation that allowed me to master 27 styles of martial arts; that would have taken way too long. I actually made use of the virus, and commanded it to embed Edith's martial arts knowledge into me. It sounds like bullshit, but it worked. The instincts, muscle memory, techniques, and all else were cleanly transferred over to me.
However, it wasn’t without problems. You see, all the muscle memory and instincts made me hypersensitive to potential threats. And you know what happens when I subconsciously react to threats. So, I reversed some of the effects, I gave up the instincts, muscle memory, and other aspects that made me touchy.
2) I tracked down the 3 remaining Immortals, and studied their skills. ‘Locate humans with S level complexity skill: Immortality. Search radius: the entire planet,’ was the command I thought of, and it revealed me the coordinates of all 6 of them. Ignoring Edith, Devon, and Heath, I teleported to the other 3. Two females and one male.
Unlike the dynamic between Edith and Devon where Edith is the strongest one, it was different among the castaways. Heath and the other male immortal were significantly stronger than the females, which further strengthened my suspicion that perhaps the Omnipotent faced an issue with coding the male robot as the fighter and the female as the supporter.
3) In addition to locating the other 3 immortals, I used them to sharpen my battle skills. I simply made myself visible to them, and repeatedly provoked fights. I won’t lie, I was having a lot of fun kicking their asses while getting super creative with my seed modification skill. Especially with my new athletic capabilities that came along with the martial arts techniques, I fought those 3 with style.
You may be concerned about my dream battle affecting the real world. But rest assured, there is no real danger as long as I’m lucid dreaming with the assistance of the virus. You see, the virus was occupied with listening to my commands and controlling this dream, which confirms that the virus is aware of my lucid dreaming state. So, there’s no reason for it to react to my dream activities in the real world. However, if I’m physically threatened by something in the real world, that’s a different story.
Anyway, that’s about all the things I managed to do during this dream session. Sure, there were plenty of other things I hadn’t tried out. But for one, they weren’t too important or I failed to realize it, two, I didn’t want to spend too much time in the dream, and three, I can lucid dream any time I want so it’s all good anyway. By the way, if you’re wondering why I didn’t just use this opportunity to look into the future and solve all of my problems immediately, the reason is I couldn’t. I mean technically, I could but it’s not as convenient as you think.
You see, the future is solely based on the present point in time. And the number of futures that can be derived from the present are infinitely many, all of which are equally probable. In other words, there’s no way to look into a specific future out of the infinitely many and make my life easier. Furthermore, looking into the future itself will create a recurring loop since there will now be more futures that are derived from the present where I’ll be aware of a particular future. It’s best not to think too much about this stuff. The concept of time travel is riddled with paradoxes, because it’s simply not possible to achieve in a practical way.
‘End simulation,’ I commanded as I was finally ready to wake up. My surroundings returned back to absolute blackness, and I concentrated to allow my consciousness to leave the state of lucid dreaming. I slowly opened my eyelids, and the blackness was replaced with branches and leaves, and the rope that was tied to my hammock.
I remained laying down for a few seconds to allow my brain to get booted up. There was still no sound I could hear other than my own breath, meaning the enchantments were still in effect. I pulled my body and got down from the hammock, on to the giant branch below. “Hm, that’s weird,” I mumbled, seeing the sun setting before me.
With the sun’s orange hue reflecting off my face and irises, I thought to myself, ‘Looks like only a few hours had passed while I was asleep.’ I was so sure that I was asleep for at least 12 hours though. But if only a few hours had passed while I was lucid dreaming… I brought up my palms to my face and triggered the analysis skill.
> Level: 387
> Mana Capacity: 54000
> Mana Control: A+
> Skillset: … Seal (Complexity - S , Activated) …
> Character Trait: Logical, Malevolent, Opportunistic, Calculating
> State of Mind: Thrilled
Is this the best day of my life? With just a few hours I managed to raise my mana control from F to A+? Based on this, I would say the peaceful life I’m aiming for is just around the corner. Wouldn’t you?
I stopped my involuntary release of mana, wearing off the enchantment, and the sounds of thunder returned. After packing up everything I had brought along, I was all set to fly back down and back home. This called for a huge celebration. Moreover, I didn’t have to use the same 3D space navigation skill to get down. With my current mana control, I could develop a proper flight skill. And that’s what I did.
> Skillset: … Flight (Complexity - B+) …
This skill was also quite simple. Just imagine Ironman with a see-through suit. Admittedly, it still burns half the mana required by the 3D space navigation skill, which is a lot. But the important thing is that this skill is more comfortable to use and easy to maneuver.
Still feeling immense amounts of joy, I descended the tree, passing the thunderclouds. And then I saw something that made my smile disappear — a huge wall surrounding the area of the tree that didn’t exist when I went to sleep. There was another thicker wall surrounding the trunk of the tree, which was connected to the outer wall through a roofed pathway. Surely, this couldn't have been built in a few hours.
Maybe, Just maybe… I’ve been asleep for a little longer than that.
​
Chapter notes: Zenith's interference in the lucid dream does not affect the real world. The lucid dream is simply a simulation.
submitted by Code-V to HFY [link] [comments]

Stay Out, Stay Alive

I tell everyone that asks to embrace the motto, “Stay out, stay alive.” It is no joke; you’re tempting fate each time you wriggle into an abandoned mine, especially without proper preparation and knowledge. Trespassing charges, cave-ins, and noxious gases are all dangers you face while venturing underground, but not they’re not the worst; far from it. Many other things lurk in mines too, and I learned that the hard way. My friend and I ignored the signs, and I hope you can learn from our mistakes.
Also, please note that the images scattered throughout this story are screenshots of a video. No matter how much anyone pleads. I will never post the video online. Ever.
During our freshman year in college, my roommate, Ben, and I stupidly began exploring abandoned mines for fun, and it soon turned into a hobby. We were both new to southern Ohio, where adits and shafts dotted the forests and hills like blemishes on an unkempt face. The long-abandoned mines were easy to come across and hard to stay out of if you were curious— and dumb. Unfortunately, we were both.
We discovered the thrill entirely by accident while on a hiking trip early on in the fall semester. I’d heard from a local guy about a ghost town hidden in the national forest surrounding our campus, and I asked Ben to help me find it. He obliged, and we went out hiking one weekend in search of it.
I will not share the town’s name here, but we successfully found the small community’s remains. However, we were disappointed to see that only a few crumbled foundations were all that still stood, scattered about in a valley between two steep hills. There were no buildings left at all, nor the remnants of any roads. The forest had swallowed up the town almost entirely.
We felt let down and were about to begin the long hike back to the car when Ben stopped me and pointed out the entrance to what he thought was a small cave. It was tucked at the base of one of the hills about a hundred yards off from the nearest foundation and almost entirely obscured by the forest’s thick vegetation.
Only when we slipped inside did we realize that we had entered a crudely-sealed coal mine. While the town above had rotted away to the point of obscurity, its former lifeblood had remained remarkably well preserved. The timbering supporting the roof still bore the soot stains from the miner’s carbide lamps. A train of minecarts stood idle in the tunnel ahead of us, and we went to explore it with only cell phone flashlights. I found one of them filled with extra hardware and snagged an interesting-looking hinge that I still begrudgingly own. We only explored a bit further than the end of the mine train before deciding to head out. We agreed to come back some other time, more prepared, but I knew that wouldn’t be long. That first mine thoroughly teased my appetite for exploration, and I wanted more.
Back in my dorm, I started to read up on mine exploration. It turns out many others shared my new interest. There was a whole community, in fact. And I must admit, free information from other explorers was abundant online, and the supplies they used weren’t too expensive. I thought I could become a mine explorer also and coddled myself with vague snippets of mine safety. I naively thought collapses and blackdamp were all I had to look out for. I hadn’t given myself time to become aware of my own ignorance before I ordered oxygen detectors, hard hats, and high-power flashlights, thinking they were all we needed to go below ground safely.
I also found a public database created by the state government, a compilation of all their information on current and past mining operations. One of the database’s most convenient tools plotted the extent of every mine in the state on an easy-to-use map. Its purpose was to help homeowners determine if their properties were susceptible to subsidence, but I exploited it. The map gave precise coordinates of mine entrances and their corresponding underground maps, so I started a list of places to explore. It also kept track of which mine entries were inaccessible and which were still wide open.
Even better was most of these mines were on public land, deep in the national forest and away from people. The likelihood of getting caught by rangers out there was near zilch. The forest service had a plan for sealing abandoned mines, but with hundreds of openings to deal with, it was impossibly expensive for them to patrol them all, much less seal them. This, combined with the information that I gleaned from the internet, meant Ben and I had a backlog of locations to explore and no chance of incurring trespassing charges.
And explore we did. The thrill of it continued to grow each time we checked another mine off the list, and we soon became bolder and more foolish. We were a couple of idiots, but hunting down the mines was no more challenging than searching for a public park online. The only difficulty we had was finding the overgrown entrances. It was like the ultimate form of geocaching, and we started to have too much fun with it, entering any mine works we found open, regardless of their condition.
Then one day, towards the end of the fall semester, it all came to a head, and we unknowingly hunted down the last mine we would ever explore. This mine had a name, but I’ve decided to rename it the Peytonville Mine for this story. I don’t want anyone to discover its precise location, at least not as easily as I did. Even if someone pieced it together, they would no longer be able to enter this mine anyway, so I feel safe posting this.
According to the maps and information, there was nothing too remarkable about the Peytonville mine other than its size. It operated for the better half of a century before closing down in the mid-1950s. By then, it had accumulated a maze of tunnels over the decades from mining both iron and coal. As such, it had a much grander entrance than anything else we had explored, nearly ten feet tall and reinforced with brick, like the entrance to a fancy train tunnel.
However, a handful of monolithic concrete blocks impeded our passage into the mine. They were the kind of blocks used to construct a seawall or highway median. They looked new. A sign, warning of trespassing charges, also stood out front. It bore the US Forest Service logo and Smokey bear’s image, waving a finger, saying, “Stay out; stay alive.” The sign also looked relatively new, and we guessed that the forest service must have put them there in an attempt to seal the mine. These new signs and barriers worried me; the mine was most likely dangerous in some way. Remember, the Forest Service’s budget only allowed them to seal a few dozen each year, and I knew that they prioritized based on the condition of any given mine. Plus, this mine was far away from any roads or well-traveled trails, but we didn’t heed these warnings.
Ben pointed to a small hole between two of the blocks, about six feet off the ground. I knew that I was ignoring my gut, but I soon found myself climbing up the barricade and shimmying through the narrow opening behind him.
Once inside, I dropped back down to the floor and turned on my flashlight. This mine was nothing like any of the others we had entered; it was much more elaborate. I shined my light along the empty cart tracks and could not see the end. The miners had taken the time to line this tunnel with brick, continuing it in from the entrance to form an arched passageway that served to prevent the main haulage tunnel from collapsing. It was also reminiscent of a small train tunnel. I felt safe in here, and the tunnel’s condition seemed better than anything we’d seen before. I wondered why they took the time to try and seal this one.
https://imgur.com/g9iYmrs
https://imgur.com/QE7jtvn
https://imgur.com/lbd0RuN
We started down the empty tunnel and continued for several hundred yards. Usually, the mines would have branched out into a grid by this point, but this one continued in a straight, brick-lined passageway for as far as our lights would shine. Ben suggested that the face of the mine might be miles back after years of operation. I agreed; he was probably right.
The only deviations from the straight tunnel were small evenly-spaced setbacks that I thought once allowed miners to step out of the way of passing ore carts. They were nothing of interest until we arrived at one with some unusual graffiti. Markings left by miners to alert each other to dangers and exit routes were not uncommon to find, but this piece of graffiti was different. It was a crudely drawn outline of a humanoid figure and lacked any other features aside from two red-painted eyes and the faint outline of a set of wings. Where the outline’s chest should have been, there was a hole passing through the tunnel’s brick wall. I took a picture and then shined my light through the hole to see what lay beyond.
https://imgur.com/aesokRL
I could see that another part of the mine laid behind the wall, running off perpendicular to the main tunnel, another adit. I hypothesized that the other setbacks we walked must have also been other long-sealed adits. From what I read online, it was not uncommon for miners to seal off disused portions of their mines to improve air circulation, so this was not too weird of a find for me.
I paid little attention to the graffiti. The small hole at its center interested me more. It was similar in size to the one we squeezed through at the mine’s entrance, but someone had chiseled through the blocks to form this one. Ben started to push through before I could stop him, and I knew I had to go with him. We weren’t stupid enough to ditch the buddy system. I bit my lips and followed him into the chest of the outline.
Once through the wall, the construction of the tunnel changed entirely. No longer was the tunnel lined with brick, but instead was supported haphazardly by timbers. The ceiling was also much lower in there, and neither of us could stand up completely. This area looked much more like the other mines we had explored and much closer to caving in.
https://imgur.com/wWGmOTY
https://imgur.com/a1kxP2z
As we continued in this new direction, my trepidation increased as the ceiling quality decreased. Soon, we were walking across car-sized heaps of rock that had fallen from above.
I suggested to Ben that we head back to the other tunnel, but he brushed off my worries and still wanted to explore this new one further since we had no map of it. I continued to follow him, pleading about the mine’s condition and reminding him that a cave-in would be the end of us. I knew this was not safe, but I could not leave him alone. Getting separated was the worst possible thing to happen underground.
Eventually, we got to a point where the adit split into three different directions. Again, I told Ben we should head back. The fork was a likely indication that the adit branched out into a grid ahead of us. I didn’t want to add to my list of worries with the thought of getting lost underground. I pleaded with Ben that we were risking both a cave in and becoming lost, but he still ignored me.
I turned back and started towards the hole, hoping he wouldn’t be likely to go far without me. I waited for the sound of him scrambling to catch back up with me, but it never came. Instead, he’d trained his flashlight on something in the distance and started towards it. He beckoned me over, and I tried denying him, but he was adamant that I come to see what he had found. I shook my head in regret and started climbing over the fallen rock to catch up with him. I stood next to him and shined my light at his discovery.
https://imgur.com/90kTf2Q
https://imgur.com/ICyV4B0
For a moment, we stood there, trying to discern what our beams of light had illuminated. Something had dug out a divot into the gravel floor, forming a nest of sorts. In it laid a mess of shredded cloth, bedding I assumed. Ben thought we had found a large rat’s nest, but I disagreed. This was too large to have been made by rats, and I had no idea where the cloth would have come from; we were nearly a quarter of a mile from the mine’s entrance. This was too deep for even a rat to drag something this far. Even if someone tossed a bag of clothes right at the entrance, this was still too far. I started to feel uncomfortable.
To my dismay, Ben stuck his hand into the pile of tattered cloth and dug around. He pulled out a soft-shelled egg, almost as large as that of an ostrich, and looked up at me in horror. The egg was somewhat translucent, and as he held his light up to it, we could see something moving inside the semi-translucent shell.
My curiosity overtook me at that point as well, and I went and pulled the cloth from the nest while Ben stood inspecting his egg. As I flung the foul-smelling material from the roost, I realized that the nest contained a whole clutch of these eggs, dozens of them. All of the little creatures inside squirmed as my light hit them. I had never seen anything like this, and I stumbled backward and tripped over some of the rocks.
Ben, still holding his egg, looked over to see what I discovered. He seemed just as unsettled as I was. I don’t think either of us had any clue as to what we were looking at. As we looked worryingly at each other, we heard something rustle in the darkness in front of us.
Ben scanned around the tunnels with his light, and his beam came to rest on a pair of red, reflective eyes further back in the darkness, and he almost dropped the flashlight. Alarmed at the sight before us, I aimed my light in the same direction and was horrified to illuminate the outline of another person standing in the tunnel watching us, wearing what I thought was a trench coat.
Although humanoid in form and standing on two legs, we soon learned this creature was not another human being. What I mistook for a coat wrapped around the creature’s body unfurled into a pair of bat-like wings with a span of a dozen feet at least. They almost touched the sides of the adit.
https://imgur.com/ZbhBiMV
Both Ben and I screamed. Ben threw the egg in his hand to the floor with a loud splat and ran past me. I picked myself up and ran after him, occasionally aiming my flashlight into the darkness behind us to check where the creature was. The last I saw, it was atop its nest, seeming to inspect the clutch of eggs for damage.
An ear-piercing howl erupted through the cavernous space, and I rushed to cover my ears in response to the painful sound. It must’ve found the egg Ben threw. I couldn’t stop running; I knew my safety depended on it. I dropped my hands and continued down the tunnel. Another wail ripped through the air, and I heard something shuffle on the rocks behind me. I knew that the creature was chasing after us. I did not need to turn around for confirmation; the sounds told me it was close. I ran like hell, kicking and stumbling my way down the tunnel.
When I got to the hole, Ben was already halfway through. I could hear the creature approaching behind me, and I shoved Ben’s legs the rest of the way through the void as I followed right behind him.
I fell to the floor on the other side of the wall and scrambled back to my feet. Aiming my flashlight back at the hole, I realized what the humanoid graffiti around it meant; it was another overlooked warning. The outline represented the creature on the other side, but I had little time to ponder this as a pair of gnarled, claw-like hands started to push through the outline’s chest. The creature stumbled through the hole before shaking itself off and wailing again.
Ben and I continued down the main tunnel, towards the mine’s entrance. We ran like hell in the freedom of the larger tunnel, free of debris. Unfortunately, this freedom also applied to the creature. I heard its wings unfurl and could feel the wind as they began to flap in the enclosed space of the tunnel.
I ducked as the creature flew past me and towards Ben. He didn’t have the time to dodge but instead managed to get one good blow on the thing’s head with his flashlight as it swooped in on him. The creature fell to the floor in a heap, and its wings stopped moving. I wasted no time in jumping over the pacified beast and past my stunned roommate. I was determined to squeeze through the mine’s exit first and did not want to be the last one in the mine with that thing. I’m aware that sounds selfish, but those are the decisions you have to make when it’s life or death.
The final one hundred yards of the tunnel felt like the longest distance I had ever run. I could see the light peeking through between the cracks of the barricaded entrance, but my adrenaline slowed time to a crawl. I kept waiting for the creature to come at me from behind, but I got to the exit before that happened. I climbed up the barricade and started to squeeze through the hole, delighted to see the sunlit forest on the other side.
I squirmed the rest of the way through while Ben screamed at me to hurry. He said the creature was waking back up and started to push on my feet in an attempt to speed me up. I fell the full six feet to the ground on the other side, landing on my head. I remember lying there dazed, watching as Ben began to squeeze his way through.
Been started screaming again, this time that the creature had his feet, and I sprung back up and grabbed his arms. I pulled as hard as I could, but he wasn’t budging. I told him to start kicking, which allowed me to get some headway, but I could hear the creature wailing in the tunnel behind him, still playing a fierce game of tug of war. As I fought to free Ben, I noticed that the creature seemed to be avoiding the beams of light that made it past Ben.
After what seemed like an hour, but was likely only a minute, I won the battle and again fell back to the ground, this time with my roommate landing directly on top of me. I pushed him to the side, and we both laid there panting. We heard the monster moaning from inside the tunnel, but it didn’t try and chase after us anymore. I was almost certain that if it weren’t for the daylight, we’d be dead.
I got up and started to dust myself off and watched as Ben tried to do the same. However, as he tried to stand, he kept falling back. I looked down at his legs and yelled at him to stay on the ground. His right leg was mangled and looked broken. There was no way he could walk out on this injury inflicted by the creature.
There was little chance of getting any reception this far into the forest, but we still tried. Neither of us had a single bar. We were too far away from the highway, which was the only area in the national forest with consistent coverage. We had to formulate another plan.
I was dizzy from hitting my head but came to realize that I would have to hike out alone and bring back help. A ranger outpost was about five miles away, but I had parked the car five miles in the opposite direction. My roommate urged me to get help and leave him behind. I was apprehensive but agreed that it was our only option, gave him my pocket knife, and started towards the station. Thankfully, GPS works just fine without service, and I wasn’t worried about getting lost. I was worried that the thing from the mine would emerge and come after my roommate before I could come back with help. After all, the sunset was only a few short hours away.
The hike was grueling, and I felt disoriented, but I trusted my phone’s directions and eventually arrived at the small station almost two hours later, now with less than an hour till sunset. Luckily, I saw a ranger’s utility vehicle parked out front, and I ran to the station’s door and started banging. A young man, not much older than me, opened the door and brought me inside, introducing himself and asking why I needed help. For the sake of privacy, I’ll call him Rick.
I wasted no time telling Rick that my friend was injured and unable to hike out, but I reserved the details about entering the mine or the creature chasing us. Instead, I told him that Ben fell down a ravine nearby the mine. Rick grabbed his radio and asked if I knew my roommate’s exact location. I told him we were hiking near one of the nearby creeks, which wasn’t a complete lie, and gave him the coordinates for the mine’s entrance, hoping he wouldn’t catch on to our trip's real purpose.
Rick shook his head as he looked at the coal dust smeared across my shirt; he knew the truth. I clearly remember what he said on the radio, “This is Rick from the Athens Unit. I have an injury outside the Peytonville Mine. All armed and available personnel, please respond. Sunset in forty-five.”
Rick grabbed his rifle and some ammunition before ushering me out to his side-by-side. He loaded the gun and placed it in the back seat. I was scared shitless at this point and worried about Ben, but Rick looked me in the eyes and told me to calm down and tell him what had happened, honestly. He seemed both angry and intensely worried.
I didn’t lie about being in the mine and rambled off the story, sharing random details as I could remember them, including the nest, the outline warning, and the wings. I’ll never forget those wings. I thought my story came out entirely incoherent, but Rick started up the engine and told me, “Now, that story sounds about right.”
I wasn’t sure why he believed my crazy story, and his next question only confused me further. He asked me if I knew why the federal government had designated this land a national forest. I had no idea what the question had to do with that creature or the injury Ben sustained from it. Over the engine’s roaring and while navigating rugged trails, Rick began to give an impressive monologue, one that I’ll never forget.

“Uncontrolled industry results in unforeseen consequences; that’s just a fact of human nature. So, it’s unsurprising that people mined and deforested these lands into a veritable wasteland within a couple of generations of European settlement. And this happened not just here but across the country. In response, the federal government created the Forest Service and National Park System to restore that damage and preserve our country’s natural resources for future generations.
Although, to tell the truth, that’s only part of what we do. We’ve always known that protecting the forests means more than just wildfire prevention and tree planting. There are extreme dangers here, too, things that most people don’t believe in. We prefer to handle some things in secrecy, and it’s like that around any national forest or park.
You see, there are places in this world, like here in this forest, where Hell is a bit closer to the surface. And when the mines started going deeper, they uncovered things that should have stayed buried. Supernatural might be a good word, but the point is we’ve gotta protect people from threats they don’t even know exist. What you saw today is one of the things that our rangers work hard to keep underground, all across the continent. The miners before us knew this too and did what they could to keep things calm as well. That outline on the sealed tunnel you told me about was a warning to other miners not to unleash what hid behind the wall, if I had to guess. They knew what was in there.

Us rangers are just the latest in a long line of stewards for lands like this. The miners before us, and the Native Americans before them, didn’t doubt the supernatural, and they accepted the dangers that lurked around them. Nowadays, people don’t believe in anything like this. But it’s still real, so we just do our work in secret. Beside’s, I don’t think today’s society could handle the truth anymore.”

This information stunned me, to say the least, and I was unsure how to respond. For a second, I believed that Rick was joking with me for interrupting his evening, especially since my roommate’s injury occurred in an abandoned mine that was very much off-limits.
I must have looked confused and skeptical of his story because Rick said to me, “Your story was quite fantastical too. I guess we’ll just have to believe one another.” He tapped the loaded rifle in the seat behind him, and I knew he wasn’t joking either.
As we sped through the dirt roads and trails, back towards where I had left my roommate, Rick told me more about the rangers’ additional duties. He said they’d been having problems with the Peytonville mine for years, ever since it closed and the miners stopped maintaining the walls within the mine. Creatures would break out every so often, and the Forest Service had to hunt them down before they came across the public.
Years ago, in the 1960s, Rick said one of the creatures, similar to what Ben and I saw, escaped from some mines a few states over. The beast wreaked havoc for several nights before the forest service could hunt it down and put a bullet through it. Although, enough people claimed to have seen it that the creature had become cemented in Appalachian folklore in the years since then. Rick thought I’d seen the same beast, and he didn’t want another escape to occur.
As we neared the mine entrance, Rick asked me again if I was sure that we came across a nest with eggs while we were underground. I told him I was positive and reminded him that the creature revealed itself after my roommate picked up one of its eggs and only chased us after he threw the egg. Rick bit his lip and seemed worried about this detail. He said that the creature was going to be vengeful for screwing with its nest. I looked up to the sun low in the sky, and then back to Rick, and knew we didn’t have a moment to waste.
As we came around the final curve in the trail leading to the mine, I could see Ben still lying where I had left him nearly two hours earlier. He shouted and waved his hands, screaming that I had taken too long. He said the creature had been wailing and taunting him since we left.
While Rick and I helped Ben into the bed of the utility vehicle, we heard another wail emanate from the adit, and Rick rushed for his rifle. He told us that the sun would be down soon, and they needed to solve the problem by then. He got on his radio and asked when the other rangers would arrive. I heard the garbled voices of several others reply they were only several minutes out.
With Ben lying safe in the back of the utility vehicle, Rick headed towards the mine with his rifle cocked. He shouted for me to stay back while he trained his rifle at the singular hole leading into the otherwise barricaded adit. “I’m guarding this till backup arrives.”
A couple of minutes later, one of the other rangers showed up in a four-wheeler with a crate strapped to the back. He pulled up beside Rick and quickly hopped off to rummage through the rear of the ATV, eventually producing what appeared to be several sticks of dynamite.
Rick seemed to discuss the situation for a minute with his cohort while he stood with his rifle trained on the small, dark hole. Eventually, he yelled back to us to prepare for a boom and said that they planned to collapse the entrance to seal in both the creature and its offspring. “We’ve gotta get this closed up before it gets dark. That bitch will emerge with a vengeance.”
The other ranger finished taping the sticks together and moved closer to the entrance. He looked up to the hole and then to the explosives in his hand; he seemed nervous. Rick cheered him on and yelled at him to climb up the barricade and toss it in.
The ranger slowly climbed the concrete blocks to the small hole level and reached for a lighter from his pocket. He balanced on a small ledge as he lit the explosive’s long fuse. But as he threw the bundle into the orifice of the mine, a clawed arm reached from within and grabbed ahold of the ranger’s arm. The creature’s skin started to smoke in the sunlight, but I don’t think it cared. It then pulled the ranger into the mine, lit explosives and all, with one powerful movement. The man went quietly, only having time for a slight gasp of surprise before entirely disappearing into the mine.
Rick lowered his weapon, with a stunned look on his face, and ran away from the adit entrance, taking cover behind a fallen tree. He screamed for us to duck and cover, but I couldn’t peel my eyes out.
I watched in horror as the creature’s wings pushed through the hole as it attempted to escape the bomb it just brought inside its lair. Right when its hellish face poked through, the dynamite went off and blew the fucker to bits, collapsing the mine entrance in the process. The explosion was incredible.
As the debris and dust settled, I could tell the Peytonville mine entrance was utterly obliterated, well and truly sealed. The hazard sign placed out front by the forest service still stood, but bent and tattered; its purpose now redundant. Nothing would ever get in or out of that mine ever again, or so I hoped.
Three other rangers arrived only minutes after the explosion and ran to Rick, who was still lying on the ground, clutching his rifle. One of them yelled at Rick, demanding to know what had just happened and where the missing ranger was. Rick pointed towards the collapsed adit and said, “It took him in with the dynamite.”
Ben got away with a broken leg, and I only sustained a few bruises, but dealing with the situation's trauma was much worse. The forest service never made any public announcement about the ranger killed in the blast, and they wrote it off as an accident. No one other than the rangers believed our story, and even still, they have publicly denied the events I wrote above. But, I understand their decision in a way. The public wouldn't believe them even if they told the truth, and people ridicule what they don't understand. However, I still hope some of you will believe my story and heed my warning to stay out of abandoned mines.
And just remember, there are people out there, like the forest rangers, who work in the shadows to protect us from things we can't understand. And they do it all without the expectation of glory or recognition. Try and respect everyone because you never know who the hidden heroes are.
submitted by NJ-216 to nosleep [link] [comments]

Masark's Guide to Trade - Sidewinder to Type-9 Heavy - Third Edition

So, you've just started the game and want to build wealth. This guide will take you from the Sidewinder and explain the process of both the trade in rare commodities, then later how to trade in bulk commodities and also present builds for trade ships from the first Adder up to the Type 9 Heavy. It is not necessary to strictly follow this guide in its entirety at once. Taking some of your accumulated profits to buy a second ship to explore or engage in combat is recommended so you don't burn out on one activity. You'll make sufficient credits after a few hours (particularly once you reach The Real Money) to afford such ships.
Or maybe you've been playing for awhile, but have been exploring or engaged in combat and now want to trade to make money to further your pursuits in those fields or just want to try trading for a change of pace. In that case, you'll want to skip forward to a ship that matches your available means.

Part 1 : Welcome To The Galaxy Commander.

If you're a brand new player, you'll want to play around within the Pilots' Federation District for a while. Missions will be your main source of money, as trading isn't too hot. I would recommend trying some of each kind of mission to get a feel for what each of them involves. All the missions in the District are deliberately simplified so you can perform them in your starter Sidewinder or one of the other early ships available in the District. Bounty hunting is another option, which will involve going to either a nav beacon or a resource extraction site (Avoid the Hazardous ones. These are maximum difficulty places where system authority ships won't go) and killing wanted NPCs. Watching for the sight of lasers firing in the distance, which will indicate that there are System Authority ships (space cops) in a fight with a criminal, then dashing over to help out and collect some easy bounties is a good money maker, though it can be a bit risky if you shoot a bit too much and end up catching the attention of someone with heavy guns.
If you insist on trading within the District, I believe the best route available would be hauling Superconductors from Otegine to Dromi, then hauling Resonating Separators back. This will yield you about 3600cr each loop for each tonne of cargo space you have.
When you advance in a rank, you will be offered a second mission named "Exploring The Galaxy", offering a very tempting 100,000 credits. Ignore that mission for now. That mission will send you out of the District whether you're ready or not and your District permit will be permanently revoked as soon as you land at a station outside of the District.
A recommended early ship progression would be first to the Adder, then to the Cobra MkIII. Both of these are good multipurpose ships suitable for doing anything. When selling a ship, it is advisable to sell off all the modules separately and downgrade all the core internals to the cheapest ones possible. This is because selling modules gets you 100% of their cost back, whereas selling a ship only gets you 90% of its value back, including for any modules it is equipped with. While this won't matter much in the District, where you're dealing with small ships and low rated modules, but that 10% loss can become quite significant later in the game, so it's a good habit to get into.
As an aside, when upgrading ships, be sure to keep the pulse lasers from your starter Sidewinder (store them before you sell it). Gimballed weapons seem to be hard to come by within the District (which seems ridiculous to me), so you're likely to reuse those lasers as you upgrade ships.
If you're sticking to cargo and courier missions and really want to get out of the Sidewinder, you could move up to the Hauler early on, then to the Adder and Cobra. Or if you like the combat stuff, the Eagle, Viper MkIII, and Viper MkIV are worthy options. The Viper MkIV can also be used as an alternative to the Cobra MkIII. It can be outfitted almost identically to the Cobra below and will have only marginally less cargo capacity and jump range.
A Cobra MkIII outfitted with the District's finest parts will look something like this. I would recommend building your way up to that, then building a stockpile of credits (I would recommend a million or so, but more is always useful if you want to spend more time practicing) so you have the cash available to do further upgrades when you leave.
Now that you feel confident in your skills and are probably bored with the limited offerings of the District, take that "Exploring The Galaxy" we mentioned above. This mission will send you to a random nearby system.
Once you've arrived there and turned in the mission, I would recommend making your way to Celsius Hub in the HR 6828 system if the mission didn't send you there. This station has reliable outfitting so we can spend some of that money you saved up on making your ship better.
Now, upgrade your frame shift drive to a 4B (or 4A if you saved up enough extra), your shield generator to a 4D, your class 3 cargo racks to class 4, your fuel scoop to 2B, and install a point defense turret on your second utility hardpoint. The end result should look like this. (A Viper MkIV will look like this). Whether to keep the weapons on or not is your choice. Dropping them will net you a little more jump range, but only a little (about 0.25ly), so keeping them is entirely fine if you don’t want to go unarmed.

Part 2 : A Commander's First Trade

Now you're ready to start trading.
For a first foray into trading, I would recommend rare trading. This is optional, as rare trading is less profitable than bulk trading, but I recommend doing a circuit or two of it as it gives you practical experience in navigation, long distance travel, fuel scooping, and how the mass of your cargo affects your ship's characteristics.
Rare trading involves Rare Commodities, which are special, unique commodities that are only sold from one specific station in limited quantities and are in demand everywhere else. Their prices are not subject to normal supply and demand forces, but rather are determined by the distance from the purchase station. The further you go, the higher the price gets, up to a point of diminishing returns at about 140ly and a hard cap at 200 or so. They are specially marked in the commodity market with a star, a different colour, and their unique names.
My recommended rare circuit is Rares Circuit 1. It is an old and proven circuit that has been around since shortly after the game's release. It's also quite simple, involving just grabbing as much rares as your ship will hold moving along the top or bottom line, then jumping to a sell location, at which point you sell everything you have. Then run along the opposite line, buying up commodities until full, then going to the opposite sell location, selling, then starting over. The Rajukru Diamond is another option for a rare trading route, though I personally find it excessively complicated, with juggling multiple commodities to sell at different locations.
Note that you want to make sure to select the "Fastest" routes when plotting rather than the "Efficient" routes. The latter will take the smallest jumps possible to save on fuel, whereas the former will take the longest jumps to get you were you're going quickly.
If you’re fortunate and a system is in a Boom state, you may be able to fill your hold right there without needing to use the other systems in that branch of the circuit.
As you get money, feel free to upgrade your ship modules, especially your FSD. As mentioned above, you get back exactly what you paid for it when you sell a module, so upgrades are never a waste. But always make sure that you have enough money on hand to cover your rebuy, as shown at the bottom-left of the home tab of your ship’s Internal panel. This can be thought of as your insurance deductible and is the amount you will have to pay to get your ship back should it get blown up. If you don’t have enough to cover that, you will be given a free Sidewinder like the one you started in, basically putting you back to square 1 (though with your remaining credits, ranks, etc. still intact).
Continue this for a run or two or until you feel like advancing.

The Exploration Alternative

Rather than going to rare trading at this point, Road to Riches offers an alternative means of money making and progression (it will also guide you to unlocking your first engineer if you have Horizons). This is an exploration-based method that involves going around within and near human inhabited space ("The Bubble") scanning known Earth-like and Terraformable planets. As among the changes in 2.4 was a very large buff to the value of these scans (to hundreds of thousands per planet), this is a highly effective means of making money, and it can be done in the Sidewinder you start with (with some upgrades). Down to Earth Astronomy has a good video on this subject. You can potentially do this in just the starter Sidewinder with a few upgrades, like this build. If you don't have enough money for the detailed surface scanner, you can omit that and just do the FSS scanning, then buy the scanner later when you've got a couple scans under your belt and turned in your first load of data. The Hauler makes for an excellent ship upgrade from the Sidewinder for this task, with much better jump range, more fuel capacity, and ability to fit a bigger fuel scoop. This is about the kind of build you would aim for in that regard and could afford after just a handful of scans. The Cobra MkIII can also be used, in a build like this, though it will end up with less jump range than the Hauler, making travelling between systems slower In addition to money making, this is highly useful for getting rep with factions (e.g. for obtaining the permits to Alioth and Sirius), as handing in exploration data will quickly raise your rep with the station's owners.

Fuel scoop usage

Your fuel scoop will automatically deploy and start collecting fuel when you come close enough to an appropriate star. Since you usually need to fly near a star to line up with your next jump destination, you can refuel on the way using "passive" or "rush" scooping. Just simply fly tightly in supercruise at full throttle around the yellow line (this indicates the area where your FSD cannot function. If you fly inside that circle and get too close to the star, you'll be yanked out of supercruise and take some damage. If this happens, you’ll have to wait 30 seconds for your FSD to cool down. Then you’ll need to point your ship directly away from the star (on an “escape vector”) in order to jump back to supercruise and continue what you were doing) until your can see your destination This will get you perhaps half a tonne of fuel per star. While this isn't enough to fully refuel from the jump, it does significantly extend your effective travel range.
While you're running the rare circuit, you will need to stop for fuel on the long legs to Witchhaul and Orrere even with the above rush scooping. Rather than finding a station (the graphic lists several inhabited systems along that line), we will just stop to do some serious scooping to refuel. To scoop for fuel, go to an O, B, A, F, G, K, or M class star (these are the first 7 class of star in the galaxy map when you select to show by star class. Mnemonics to remember these include Oh Be A Fine Girl/Guy Kiss Me (keeps them in order of temperature), and KGB FOAM (Putin in a bubble bath), among others). See this guide by the Fuel Rats for guidance with pictures. When you plot a route on the galaxy map and don't have enough fuel to make the entire journey without refuelling, it will mark the last scoopable star in the route before you run out as a "fuel star". Due to the above passive scooping, you'll likely get a jump or two past that before you run out, but you should open up the map and glance at the route every so often to check what your fuel and refuelling status is. If you don't see a yellow circle, go into your Internal panel, select the Ship tab, then the “Pilot Preferences” tab, and turn on orbit lines. A "fuel scoop active" display will appear in the middle of the cockpit display when you get close enough, showing the scooping rate (in kilograms per second), a fuel gauge, and your ship's heat level. You want to fly in and get the scooping rate to about 2/3rds of the scoop's maximum rate to prevent overheating (This is assuming a D-rated power plant. you can go higher if you have a higher rating power plant, which output less heat). For the 2B scoop you should have on your Cobra, that will be about 43kg/s Once you're near that rate, throttle down to zero. This will leave you sitting near the star scooping and creeping along at 30km/s. Now you just wait until you have finished refueling, then just throttle up to full, and pull away from the star. Wait until the "fuel scoop active" display has disappeared before activating your FSD for the hyper jump, or you will likely overheat and damage your ship.
As a last resort, if you've messed up and stranded yourself in an uninhabited and unscoopable system, contact The Fuel Rats. These guys are an awesome player group that assist stranded players by delivering fuel to them.

Dealing With Interdictions

It's likely you'll get interdicted at various times while trading. Your objective in the interdiction minigame is to keep your ship pointed towards the "escape vector", which moves around randomly. When you have your ship pointed on the vector, but your interdictor doesn't, you gain in the game and vice versa. If you fill your blue bar, you'll dump them out of supercruise while you go on your way. If you lose, you'll suffer a 30 second cooldown on your FSD, during which you'll be vulnerable to their weapons fire. So if you feel like you're losing the minigame, you should throttle to zero and surrender to the drop, which will only incur a normal 5 second cooldown before you can jump back to supercruise. Once you're in normal space, immediate hit your boost (default tab) to open up the range. Even if you can't get out of range, the damage of most weapons drops off considerably with distance. Now just wait 5 seconds until your frame shift drive has finished cooling down, then either jump back to supercruise or jump to the next system in your route. If you find yourself mass locked (this occurs when you're close to a ship larger than yours), fire your chaff to scramble their weapons, then choose whether to continue charging back to supercruise ("low wake") or to select another system to jump to ("high wake"). Intersystem hyperspace jumps are immune to mass lock from other ships, which makes it a good option if you've been interdicted by a ship much larger than yours, which will slow your supercruise charge to a crawl. Just select a random nearby system in your

On Armament

The builds I offer in this guide are all weaponless, relying on shields, chaff, and point defence to allow them to escape from pirates. Those of a more aggressive disposition may instead wish to remove any would-be threats rather than fleeing from them. While mines were briefly useful armament for traders, improvements in NPC AI have rendered them basically useless, with NPCs easily dodging them, even at low ranks. Thus, if one intends to act as a Q ship, you will want to select more conventional weapons. Lasers and multi-cannons have long been a standard loadout for the good reasons of being easy to use and providing a useful balance of thermal for shields and kinetic for hull. I personally use such a loadout on my trading Cutter.
Alternatively, the new ship-launched fighters are another option for pirate swatting if you have Horizons and are using a ship capable of equipping one. Equipping a hangar will require sacrificing at least a class 5 compartment (32t of cargo), and likely more as you'll probably want stronger shields than the basic A rated minimum shields I use on all this guide's builds. Further details on SLFs can be found in my writeup on the subject.

Part 3 : The Real Money

So you're tired of rare trading and are ready for real trading, yeah?
Go to eddb.io and use the loop finder. Set the search to the following parameters
Now hit Find Loops. It'll sit there for a moment, then give you a list of loops, sorted by their profit. If you like the look of one of them, start running it. Otherwise tweak your search and hit it again.
If you run out of commodities on your loop, hit the finder and get a new one. This can be quite boring, so I would recommend Netflix (or another streaming site or your favorite torrent site) and a second monitor. You can often find the latter for cheap on second-hand sites like Craigslist, Kijiji, and others.

Part 4 : Time For A Real Trading Ship

Once you’ve collected about 5 million credits, you’ll be ready to advance to a new ship. Specifically, the Type-6 Transporter, otherwise known simply as the T6. This is a significantly bigger unit than your Cobra and will more than double your cargo capacity, and with it your profits. This is your general build.
I would recommend purchasing your ship at a system under the influence of Li Yong-Rui. The effect of this power on his subject systems is that all ships and modules are sold at a 15% discount, which lets you upgrade ships significantly sooner. This purchase price reduction also translates into a reduced rebuy cost, meaning that getting blown up won’t hit the wallet quite as hard. Conveniently, there is a station near Witchhaul that is within his sphere that has all the parts you need, specifically, Zamka Station in LHS 191. For all other builds in my guide, you can find an appropriate Li Yong-Rui station by hitting the $ icon at the top-right of the Coriolis display. That will send you to an EDDB search page. There, simply select Li Yong-Rui under the Powers dropdown and hit Find stations again. If you don’t get any results, remove modules (preferably starting with the cheapest ones) from the Station Sells Modules box and redo the search until you do get results.
Optionally, if you don’t mind staying in the Cobra for a hour or two longer or want to upgrade from the Type 6, you could opt to upgrade to an Asp Explorer (commonly known as the AspX) when you accumulate about 14 million credits. While it only offers a small increase in cargo capacity, it gives significantly better jump range, allowing you to run longer loops faster and thus improve your credits per hour.
Now back to looping!

Giving back

EDDB.io relies on contributions of station data from users in order to keep its trade information up to date in the dynamic universe of Elite:Dangerous. The most popular tool to submit said data is the Elite:Dangerous Market Connector. This program pulls the commodity market data (as well as information on available ships and equipment) from the Elite Dangerous API server and sends it off to the EDDN (Elite : Dangerous Data Network, the system that eddb uses for its data). It can also record that data locally for use with other tools, as well as send star system information to the EDSM (Elite:Dangerous Star Map) and keep a local log of all systems visited.

Contingency Planning

In the event that you find yourself with little money, a low-capital method of rebuilding your funds is to use the galaxy map to locate a system in the Outbreak state. Stations in these systems will have very high levels of demand (and consequently, very high prices) for Basic Medicines. Use eddb.io's Find Commodity tool to locate a nearby system with a decent supply of them, then start hauling them in. This will yield profits in the 2500-3000ct range. While this is less than for the above loop trading, it requires much less in the way of starting capital. A T6 full of high value will cost you several hundred thousand credits, whereas a full load of Basic Medicines will be less than 30,000, allowing easy rebuilding from poverty.

Part 5 : Further Progression

When you’ve acquired about 25 million, it’ll be again time for another upgrade. This time, you’ll be getting a Type-7 Transporter (aka the T7). This will nearly triple your cargo capacity. Though note that you’re moving up to a Large ship, which means outposts will no longer be trading destinations for you, so on the loop finder, you will want to set Landing Pad to L rather than Any.

An Optional Upgrade

When you’ve gotten your credit balance up to about 70 million, you may wish to trade in the Type 7 for a Python. While this will entail a minor downgrade in cargo capacity (16t), unlike the T7, the Python is a medium ship, capable of landing at outposts. This gives it the freedom to select sometimes-more-profitable loops involving those stations. Additionally, it’s a significantly more enjoyable ship to fly and I personally consider it one of the best-looking ships in the game.
You may wish to stay in the Python for awhile longer so as to make enough money that you can purchase the next ship outright without selling it. The Python is a highly versatile ship usable for many game activities, including being an excellent mining ship and great for background simulation play, so I would recommend keeping it around for your non-trading career.

Part 6 : The Ultimate Trading Ship

Once you have 110 million, you’re now ready for the ultimate trading ship in Elite:Dangerous, the Type-9 Heavy. This massive brick of a ship is the slowest and least maneuverable thing in the game, but it also carries a huge 752t of cargo in its depths for huge profits with every trip.

Part 7 : Beyond The Ultimate?

For progression past the T9, the Imperial Cutter is the only competition, with no other ship coming close to the cargo capacity of either of these ships. Purchasing a Cutter requires one to hold the rank of Duke in the Imperial Navy, which will take some effort to acquire. This post gives a highly effective method that will get you a Duchy within hours. I personally regard this ship as the best trading ship in the game. While it has slightly lower cargo capacity than the T9 (720t vs. 752t), it more than compensates for that with it’s superior jump range, better speed, stronger shields, and gorgeous looks.

Part 8 : Player Trading

With the introduction of fleet carriers, trading with other players is an option for making money. Carrier owners can create buy and sell orders on their carriers and will often post them to this subreddit, /elitecarriers, and /PilotsTradeNetwork for others to fufil. Loops invovling these carriers are usually not quite as profitable per tonne as regular loops (as the carrier owner is taking their cut), but are much faster, as the carrier will typically be parked right within a few lightseconds of the buy/sell station, allowing good profits per hour.
Though it is important to note that profits from trading with fleet carriers do not count towards your Trade rank progression. If you're wanting to get to Elite in Trade, you'll want to ignore carriers for the time being and stick to station to station trading.
submitted by Masark to EliteTraders [link] [comments]

But Everyone Calls their Planet Dirt!

"We'll want to minimize the amount of our tech they can get their hands on before full capitulation," Intelligence Officer Rouel noted. "To go from undetectable from a distance to an orbital communications relay network in only five hundred years suggests a remarkably high innovation score."
​
Admiral Crassock flicked an ear tuft and nodded. "The less we give them to reverse engineer, the less we'll bleed. Are there any other warning flags?"
​
"No, sir," Rouel answered. "They launch their satellites with chemical rockets. Even first generation counter-grav is more cost effective, so we can reasonably assume they don't have it. Since you can't do FTL R&D on a planet's surface without destroying it, no counter-grav means no FTL, which means no reinforcements. A separatist colony would have retained enough tech for an outward facing system defense network; a penal colony would have an inward facing one. Since this system has neither, this must be this species's homeworld."
​
"Has there been any change in the habitability report since the original survey?" the admiral asked. CRX-4 sat right in the sweet spot of the habitability assessment, with most of its landmass in the subtropical zones, but enough temperate and arctic real estate to ensure that over 90% of galactic species could live there with only adornment grade protective clothing. Only a handful of the most extreme outlier species would need more than class three environmental gear to survive somewhere on the planet. The only reason no one had snapped it up when it was first discovered was that its location was simply too remote to be practical. But borders had expanded in the intervening centuries, and now the Wingover Heromancy was close enough to claim the planet and defend that claim against any contenders.
​
"Surprisingly little," the intelligence officer answered. "They must have had their industrial revolution at an atypically low population benchmark, and learned how to clean up after themselves fairly quickly. Another indication that they have an abnormally high innovation score."
​
"What about their physiology?" Admiral Crassock asked. "It won't constrain their combat effectiveness as much as it would for a less innovative species, but it must still influence their tactics."
​
Intelligence Officer Rouel nodded. "Here, we have visuals on them." He flicked a command to the display, but then began reading off the data anyway. "Mammalian bipeds, hair sparse except on the top of the head and a few other locations that vary by individual. Moderate sexual dimorphism--subtle but enough to render co-ed sports competitions impractical for any but strictly recreational purposes. Very conflicting reports on strength and stamina, suggesting that they have a use-it-or-lose-it physiology. Atypically high resting metabolic rates, even for endotherms."
​
"Meaning that a middle of the sleep cycle surprise attack will have to be perfectly executed in order to retain the advantages of a surprise attack?" the admiral interjected.
​
"Precisely," Rouel answered. "Viviparous with a gestational period of nearly a year and roughly two decades to maturity. Birthrate appears to inversely correlate with wealth, which suggests a lack of innate control over their reproduction. It's difficult to determine their typical lifespan--hereditary and environmental factors apparently can alter it by as much as 50%; the current primary suppression of their life expectancy appears to come from a tendency toward extreme recklessness in their adolescent males."
​
"That will make ground combat...interesting..." Admiral Crossack said. "I think i'll tell the training officers to put their most creative minds on designing the practice scenarios for the ground units."
​
"With a combination of innovative and reckless, i'd suggest putting the truly diabolical minds on the air unit training scenarios," Captain Hussend said, his reptilian muzzle parting in a grin of malicious glee.
​
"Looking for an excuse to pull out that black box scenario?" Admiral Crossack asked the captain of his fleet's contingent of planetary troops. Returning his attention to the intelligence officer he asked, "Do we have to worry about attempted MAD?"
​
"FTL research is noisy enough that we'd detect it long before they managed to weaponize it." Rouel answered. "As much easier as that is than using it for travel, it's still far from easy. They do have fission reactors providing some of their power. There's no evidence that they ever tried to weaponize that technology, however; we'd see fallout scars if they'd done any testing. I'd still recommend seizing those nuclear power plants and any fuel processing facilities as quickly as possible."
​
Admiral Crossack nodded. "Unless you find something else before we arrive within targeting range of the planet, i think we'll remain in stealth mode until we're in position to take out all of their satellites simultaneously. Their ground based sensors should be sufficient for them to realize we have orbital superiority. If that isn't enough to make them surrender, it will be Captain Hussend's turn to call the shots. Do we know what they call themselves? If we're going to demand that they surrender sovereignty of their home planet, we can at least do them the courtesy of using their name for it."
​
"They call themselves 'humans'," Intelligence Officer Rouel answered. "The planet they call Ferrari. Oddly, it's the same in all twelve of their languages; perhaps it was inherited from some archaic language that is no longer used."
​
---------------------------------------
​
The initial attack went off perfectly. All of the satellites around Ferrari disintegrated within a few seconds of one another, with no wasted shots from the WHN ships. Almost as soon as they realized that all of their satellite communications were down, the humans began evacuating their civilians toward a series of massive underground bunkers.
​
"I can't tell if that's an overpowered communications laser, or a weapons test modulated to carry data to give them plausible deniability if it fails," the Communications Officer reported when the humans finally replied to the Wingover Heromancy's surrender demands.
​
"Retaliation will make them assume their weapons are strong enough to damage our ships," Captain Hussend predicted.
​
Intelligence Officer Rouel concurred. "My recommendation would be to politely ask them to dial back the power on that laser as it's clearly intended for communication over much longer distances. Imply that it's merely signal degradation due to overexposure, not anything that threatens to actually damage our receiver."
​
Admiral Crossack considered the suggestion for a few moments and then told the communications officer, "Do it."
​
After some negotiation with the humans over optimal signal strength, the transmission settled on the image of a human in what appeared to be their civilian formal wear. "President Chen, of the Faction Arbitration Council," the human identified himself. "Since you're asking for our surrender rather than simply glassing the planet, you must want it intact, which means you're going to have to come down here and take it. It would be easier to negotiate a land for tech swap--except that none of us has the authority to order everyone else to stand down. You'd have to negotiate with each faction separately if you want the whole planet. And since you opened with an attack, even if it was just on infrastructure and not personnel, rather than a diplomatic contact, half of them are going to insist that you're nothing but thieves and bullies, no matter how big an empire you might happen to have behind you.
​
"The short version," President Chen continued. "If you want this planet, you're going to have to come down here and take it."
​
"If we refrain from firing on your evacuating civilians, will you refrain from salting the Ferrari?" Admiral Crossack asked.
​
"Salting the--?" the human President's forehead wrinkled as he tried to puzzle out the phrase. "You mean, 'salting the earth'?"
​
"Isn't that what i said?" Admiral Crossack asked. "I understand that the connotations of synonymous words can vary, but the denotation should be similar enough for understanding. And every terrestrial species calls their planet some cognate of Fertile Soil or Solid Ground. It requires relatively advanced astronomical knowledge to realize that the planet beneath one's feet has anything in common with the wandering stars in the night sky, after all."
​
The human's eyes widened, and then his face went curiously blank. He just figured something out, and he's weighing the tactical considerations against the strategic ones, Rouel guessed silently.
​
"We won't start an atrocity contest as long as you don't," President Chen said. "Not all of our cultures agree on what does and what does not constitute war crimes, but as long as you refrain from targeting civilians and don't use biological or chemical weapons, they should all remain within the parameters of what most warriors consider an acceptable level of occupational hazard."
​
"What's the most common opinion on eating your kills?" Captain Hussend asked, displaying his mouthful of large reptilian teeth.
​
"In extremis only," President Chen answered. "There are a few superstitions that hold that eating hearts or certain other organs can be a way to appropriate your enemy's virtues, but far more of us regard it as a way of declaring your enemy to be an animal rather than a person. Cannibalism as a last ditch alternative to death by starvation will generally be overlooked, but ritual practice is not tolerated."
​
Captain Hussend nodded. "That is a common consensus among most polities and species as well. I suppose that any trophy taking would best be justifiable as preserving DNA samples to determine who is dead and who is missing once the war ends?"
​
"Oh, the nerds are going to love you," President Chen muttered. "Is there anything else we need to discuss, or is it time for you to either reconsider your invasion or else 'bring it on'?"
​
"My troops are already dropping," Captain Hussend answered with another toothy grin.
​
---------------------------------
​
"Woah, hey, there's no need to get nasty," Pedro said as his eyes locked onto the tray of surgical implements. "I'm a civilian. I've got no reason not to spill the beans."
​
"Civilian," the mantis looking interrogator scoffed. "You killed at least forty of our soldiers, and crippled over a dozen more."
​
"I'm just a guy trying to defend his home. If your people had just obeyed the 'no trespassing' signs, nobody would have died," Pedro responded.
​
"In any case, it's your medical condition that's responsible for any nastiness," the interrogator informed the human captive. "The squad that dug you out from under that landslide thought they were recovering a corpse for autopsy. Growing replacement organs for your ruptured ones was straightforward enough, but your species is violently allergic to all of our existing bone glue formulations, so your broken bones are going to have to heal the slow way. I'm told that broken ribs are even more painful than a fractured thoracic plate."
​
"Convenient," Pedro said. "You get to dose me with enough painkillers to keep me from guarding my tongue and still claim you're just trying to help me."
​
"Quite convenient," the interrogator agreed. "Also a useful argument against those who claim that compassion is nothing but a waste of resources. May i have your full name for the next exchange of survival records?"
​
"Pedro Fook. I'm seriously tempted to give you the correct spelling instead of the one English speakers will pronounce correctly, but i'm too tired for that game."
​
The interrogator paused to listen to what the linguist was telling him through his earpiece and then clacked in amusement. "Very droll. I can accept that a civilian would have sufficient motive for attacking our troops, but i find your effectiveness implausible."
​
Pedro answered, "Why? Hunting the free-range livestock gets us kill training. Paintball games give us tactical training against opponents as smart and creative as we are. Wilderness hiking and camping gets us survival training. And VR lets us familiarize ourselves with the stuff that would be too dangerous to do for real."
​
"But how are you coordinating your attacks?" the interrogator asked.
​
"We aren't," Pedro answered. "We're spread out enough that we aren't likely to get in each other's ways; and we all grew up reading the same books, watching the same movies, and playing the same games, so we all have fairly similar ideas as to what tactics are likely to work in what situations. We don't need to win, we just have to keep harassing your people enough to prove we haven't abandoned our claim until the military gets here. If you had a prior claim, you should have planted a flag or left a beacon in orbit or something, so we'd have known we needed to negotiate instead of just moving in."
​
"Habitable planets are far to precious to be left in the hands of those who can't defend them," the interrogator replied. "There are a few interstellar species so xenophobic that they will glass a planet that someone else beat them to. If you can't keep us from taking it when we want to preserve it, you'd have no hope of keeping them from destroying it."
​
"You still could have tried negotiating first and attacking second," Pedro replied angrily. "Counter-gravity tech would be well worth sharing a planet over. Possibly even giving one up if we could have come to an arrangement regarding the people who have put down roots too deep to be willing to move to a different one. Too late for that now, though."
​
"You have no FTL," the interrogator said. "How would you leave, and how could you have come here from somewhere else."
​
"Why do you think we--ohhhhhh..." Pedro suddenly realized, "You never did solve the energy discharge from getting it almost right problem. You had counter-grav, you could just do your research and development in deep space where failures wouldn't destroy your planet. We had to focus on miniaturization instead, so the energy release was small enough to contain, until we could consistently get it right. Then we scaled back up until we had something suitable for a mass transit system. By the way, the emergency evacuation portals can be weaponized, so i'd advise against backing us into any corners. And our home planet isn't on this network, so even if you manage to capture a control unit intact, you can't get all of us!"
​
"Do you know where it is, in spatial terms?" the interrogator asked.
​
Pedro started to shrug and them stopped when his ribs objected. "Galaxy cluster on the other side of the Great Attractor from here, if i remember correctly. We've got at least a hundred planets scattered across a dozen different galaxies, as best the astronomers can tell. There's one that's suspected of not even being in the same universe."
​
"What does Ferrari translate as," the interrogator asked.
​
"Did anyone notice that paved track with the freestanding garage near my house?" Pedro responded. "That car in there, that's a Ferrari."
​
The translator listened to something on his earpiece and then said, "Four-wheeled ground vehicle, internal combustion engine--used for recreational racing?" Getting a nod from Pedro he went on, "The car is named after the planet?"
​
"No," Pedro answered. "The planet was named after the car; the car is named after the guy who founded the company that originally manufactured it. No clue what the etymology on his family name is."
​
"I see," the interrogator said. His insect-like anatomy and stridulatory vocal apparatus didn't prevent him from being noticeably disturbed by what he'd learned.
​
-------------------------------------
​
"But everyone calls their planet 'Dirt'," Admiral Crossack objected once he finished watching the recording of the interview.
​
"But they're not from here," Captain Hussend said. "It would have been obvious, except their method of getting here flies in the face of everything we know about FTL tech. We've got enough seismic surveys now to know those bunkers are nowhere near big enough to hold everyone who went into them. Not even with true stasis tech or physiology that would allow for adult cryofreeze. Can't swear on the former, but we know they don't have the latter."
​
"A pity this Pedro never studied enough physics to explain how their portals work. He can tell us what they do, but not why," Intelligence Officer Rouel said. "They probably sent anyone who did have that knowledge home in the first wave of evacuations. A pity we didn't know to stop them."
​
Captain Hussend disagreed. "Just as well we didn't. If that portal tech really does have the same energy discharge problem as conventional FTL, they have at least planetary, and possibly system scale, MAD. Firing on evacuees would have been a disaster."
​
"And Pedro thinks they've sent enough shuttle parts through that portal for them to reverse engineer the counter-gravity tech," Admiral Crossack said glumly. "Doesn't know enough to guess how long that will take, or which direction they'll try to hit us from once they have it. I suppose i can't really blame him for not bothering to study astrography with the way their portal network ignores physical distance, but it's blasted inconvenient for us."
​
"And President Chen still insists that negotiation is impossible until their military arrives in force--no one currently on planet has the authority or the firepower to force all factions to abide by any agreement," Rouel noted, equally glum. "We need to crack one of those bunkers open, see what's in there."
​
"Already in planning," Captain Hussend said. "And i just ordered it moved to the top of the priority list."
​
That was when the bunkers in question exploded. A number of blunt conical projectiles erupted from each site, propelled by an unholy mixture of chemical rockets and conter-grav.
​
"Those missiles have shields," one of the point defense sensor techs reported.
​
Captain Hussend's pupils went to full dilation and he lunged for the fleet wide communication toggle. "All personnel, stand by to repel boarders. Projectile loadout, not concussion."
​
Admiral Crossack stared at the captain in consternation. "That firefight is going to be a nightmare for damage control."
​
"If they can survive that kind of acceleration," Hussend waved a hand at the display that was tracking the missiles' progress, "and be able to fight afterwards, then while concussion injuries may still be a nightmare for the survivors' nearest and dearest to deal with, they won't do us any good."
​
"Notify me as soon as all of these presumed boarding missiles have either docked or been destroyed," Admiral Crossack told the sensor officer sorrowfully. Then he turned to the main console and began reciting a lengthy series of authorization codes, concluding with, "Assimilator boarding protocol to standby."
​
"You think they're that dangerous, sir?" one of the other ship commanders asked on a private channel.
​
"MAD only works if it truly is mutual," Admiral Crossack explained. "We don't know how many planets these humans have or where they are; we cannot allow them to have that information about ours. A species that scores as high as this one for both aggression and innovation is not something we want to have to fight a defensive war against."
​
Even with the deranged acceleration produced by the hybrid drive systems, it was several long minutes before the boarding missiles began impacting against the orbiting ships. The smaller, faster ships had been sent racing away from Ferrari. Half of them immediately headed to various WHN stations to relay the information acquired so far; half of them loitered on the fringes of the system to see how events played out. The larger ships, however, needed too much time to bring their main engines up to full thrust to escape the attack via distance.
​
The human soldiers from the last of the boarding missiles to arrive were greeted by an automated sounding, "Assimilation boarding protocol activated. Detection of any breaching charge will activate the self-destruct on all WHN ships within one astronomical unit."
​
"What did we do that spooked them that bad?" a human from a different boarding party wondered.
​
"If that translated correctly," the squads senior member answered, "they're using a protocol intended for somebody else. Still, we must have spooked them at least a little to go with one that all-or-nothing."
​
"I'm getting painted with a sensor laser," a third man reported. "Can they eavesdrop on us without cracking the radio encryption?"
​
Admiral Crossack figured it was time to offer his proposal. "If you refrain from penetrating any further into our ships, we will withdraw to the fringes of this system until we can negotiate terms for retrieving our planet-side personnel as well as your own return. We will also order our ground troops to return to and remain in the currently existing fortified positions for so long as there are no attacks on those positions. Is this cease fire acceptable?"
​
"You will refrain from attacking the positions we currently hold?" one of the human boarders asked.
​
"We will," Admiral Crossack answered.
​
"Terms accepted."
​
-----------------------------------
​
Negotiations went as well as could be expected when the humans were reluctant to allow enough Heromancy shuttles near the planet to lift all of their personnel at once and the WHN officers were reluctant to leave a contingent of the size they could lift at one time on the planet alone. The boarding parties, in contrast, had been returned as soon as the humans could satisfy themselves that the shuttle was not booby trapped--neither they nor the WHN was happy about the active self-destruct contingency.
​
Eventually a compromise was reached in which the last of the Heromancy bases on Ferrari was to be converted into an embassy. It wouldn't actually attain that status under Heromancy law until the Council of Winglords formally recognized at least one of the human governments, and required a Winglord's presence to attain at least consulate status--but nothing prevented the humans from granting it formal diplomatic recognition in the meanwhile.
​
President Chen and Admiral Crossack sat facing each other in one of the lounges of the future embassy. "Exactly how much authority do you have to negotiate?" President Chen asked.
​
"Officially, none," Crossack answered. "Treaties must be ratified by the council and negotiated by a Winglord. Unofficially, i should be able to give you reliable guidance as to what terms will be acceptable and what will not. How much of a courtship dance will be required to get those terms accepted, i can't guess until i know which Winglord will be conducting the official negotiations."
​
"Seems strange to give you the authority to start a war, but not to finish it," Chen observed.
​
"Ordinarily," Crossack explained, "a Winglord would have been dispatched as soon as we realized the situation was anomalous. However, they happen to be in the middle of the once a decade Grand Conclave, the one time when Winglords whose disputes cannot be reconciled by legal means are permitted to seek normally illegal forms of redress. Any Winglord not participating still wants to be there to keep an eye on those who are."
​
"Normally illegal...such as dueling?" Chen guessed.
​
"Precisely. I was able to attend the last Conclave, and the preparation rituals, intended to preclude cheating, are so humiliating that it can be safely assumed that the participants were not going to be satisfied by anything less than blood." Crossack added, "Technically it's not limited to Winglords, but the requirements for ordinary citizens to challenge anyone are much more stringent. The conventional wisdom is that the less one has to lose, the less likely one is to be deterred by death and dishonor."
​
"Hmm, i suppose i can see the logic in that." A communication device pinged, and President Chen looked at the display. "What is a Voice, among your people?"
​
Admiral Crossack's ear tufts straightened. Finally, for good or for ill, he would know what was to be. "Both a courier and a seal of authentication. They make no decisions, but they speak with the authority of the full Council of Winglords. They are generally superlative specimens of species that have powers of persuasion or coercion, which is another reason they are so rigorously trained to be bearers of law only and never lawgivers."
​
"I see," Chen said slowly. "If she's coming with an arrest warrant, like you were speculating about a few days ago, we're willing to offer you asylum."
​
"I find exile more unpalatable than death and dishonor combined, but i am honored by your willingness to have me," Admiral Crossack said. "I am a bit puzzled by it, however. I was the one who ordered the attack on your world, after all."
​
President Chen shrugged. "You only fought with those who wanted to fight, and the conter-grav tech we captured is more than adequate compensation for the infrastructure damage. And the special ops teams that boarded your ships were flattered by the fact that you felt you had to pull out your worst case scenario contingency to stop them. The penultimate contingency apparently wasn't good enough. Er, i hope that was your worst case contingency."
​
"Worst case for contingency triggers," Crossack agreed. "There's self-destruct every ship in the system now, and trigger a system sterilizing solar flare, but those are direct triggers, and the latter is for scenarios that so far remain purely hypothetical. And the problem was that your people only needed to capture one ship, while i had to keep every single one out of their hands."
​
"Your people haven't figured out that the counter to a gray goo scenario is to build nannites that eat nannites?" Chen asked rhetorically. "What are the Assimilators, anyway?"
​
"The reason we don't do implanted technology unless there's no viable alternative medically and keep augmented reality to the absolute minimum needed for non-lethal training," Crossack said. "As best anyone has been able to tell, the Assimilators started as a faction in a VR role playing game. Somewhere along the line the species that originally created the game switched from external device full immersion VR to cyborg tech augmented reality and the players started LARPing. Sometime after that, they stopped their practice of only cyborg modding volunteers who wanted to join their club and started modding anyone they could catch."
​
Crossack grimaced and continued, "As long as they needed a full surgical suite to perform the modifications, they were strictly a law enforcement problem. Unfortunately, before the last of them could be hunted down, they got their hands on some kind of replicant nano-tech that lets them infiltrate a neural link into a person without that person's knowledge."
​
"There's no such thing as a person with a direct brain-computer interface who isn't one of these Assimilators," Chen asked for clarification.
​
"No," Crossack sighed. "Any network they manage to link into, any person directly connected to that network immediately gets converted. How they do it, we're not sure; the leading hypothesis is that they've managed to create a computer-based intelligence with persuasive or coercive powers of a type and power that require a person to either take the Voice's Oath or else accept lifetime quarantine. But we just don't know. The good news is that as long as you keep your tech at arms length, it's perfectly safe, or at least they can't do anything that a conventional hacker couldn't. But it does mean that we can't infiltrate their network to figure out what in the seven blue perditions is going on with them. There are some aspects of a neural link that an external interface just can't mimic."
​
"That could be a problem," President Chen said. "Thankfully, we can't run cable through a portal--it gets cut anytime there's a power blip--but we've got way too many people with medical implants. Your people don't happen to know how to repair spinal cord injuries, do they?"
​
"Some species yes, others no," Crossack answered. "In our efforts to provide medical care to POWs of your species, we found that the treatment had to be provided immediately to be effective, and that which treatment protocol would work varied by both the cause of the damage and idiosyncratic factors. We had to guess right on the first try for treatment to work."
​
"Figures," Chen said. "Any vaccine for their nannite infiltrators?"
​
"A vaccine...for nannites?" Crossack asked in surprise.
​
"Why not?" Chen asked. "Any sufficiently advanced nano-tech is indistinguishable from biology; so why not borrow a page from the bio-control handbook?"
​
"I don't believe there's any such thing," Crossack answered slowly. "Many species can induce sufficient sensitivity to trigger a lethal allergic reaction, but that means walking around with a lethal allergy to many common structural and medical materials."
​
"That would be problematic," Chen agreed. "I need to pass this information about the Assimilators along as quickly as possible. Excuse me for a few minutes."
​
"Of course," Admiral Crossack said. Once President Chen had left the room he stood and began pacing. Curiously, knowing that a Voice was en route and that he would not have to wait much longer to have his hopes and fears regarding his future resolved was making the delay harder rather than easier to endure. After a few laps of failed attempts to resign himself to further waiting, he went to the door and asked the officer guarding it to find out how soon the Voice was expected to arrive.
​
"The Voice's shuttle has landed and the humans are trying to figure out what size and type of escort is appropriate to her rank," the officer reported. Then he blinked and flicked his tail in confusion. "Sir, a Voice is her own escort, isn't she?"
​
"The humans don't know that. A Voice speaks with the authority of the full Council of Winglords, but the humans have no official relationship to the Wingover Hegemony until the Voice delivers her words--assuming she has been given words to that effect."
​
"Precisely, Winglord Crossack."
​
Crossack turned to face the new arrival. The female was tall and so ethereally slender that she was nearly translucent. "Voice Laurelliana," Admiral Winglord Crossack said, having met this particular Voice before. He started to bow, but then the implications of her greeting caught up to him and his ear tufts straightened so hard they nearly snapped. "Wait, what--?"
​
"For recognizing that the impossible was possible in time to avert disaster, for valuing the welfare of the Heromancy above your own pride, for a lifetime of exemplary service, you have been granted the title of Winglord and a seat on the counsel."
​
Admiral Winglord Crossack needed some time to reply as he first had to persuade his throat to stop trying to swallow itself. At last he said, "I am well aware of how badly things could have gone if i had been any slower to admit that the humans must have some other, unknown means of bridging the distance between worlds--but i would have thought that barely enough to buy me an honorable retirement, given that i lost a war i chose to initiate. Then too, i would never have arrived at that understanding so quickly without Captain Hessend and Intelligence Officer Rouel, and their many subordinates who had the wisdom to recognize which reports required immediate attention."
​
"You followed standard procedure to the letter until it was made clear that you were not dealing with the kind of situation which that procedure was intended to cover. You therefore cannot be faulted for initiating the conflict. You were also able to admit that the inconceivable had occurred. To not only be able to stretch your thinking to accommodate what was previously unknown and unimagined, but to do so in time to keep defeat from becoming disaster--this is a capacity much needed in a Winglord, and rarest to find. Many prepare for the impossible; but how can anyone prepare for what he cannot imagine?"
​
Crossack nodded, conceding the point, and the Voice continued, "Many admirals find it almost physically painful to yield overall command to the captain of their ground forces and be relegated to providing fire support. Many of those who have no difficulty yielding command are reluctant to reclaim it when the priority returns to space-side operations, preferring to avoid responsibility. But you have never shown any hesitation in either direction, preferring to let the responsibility rest where it can best be fulfilled."
​
Crossacck shifted and flicked an ear tuft and said, "It helps that i trust Captain Hessend's judgement."
​
"And you never once have tried to claim the credit for your subordinate's efforts," Voice Laurelliana smiled at Crossack.
​
"Eh, stolen honor is not," Crossack replied.
​
"Many say it," the Voice said. "Few live it. The appropriate commendations for those you cited credited with identifying the anomalies here have already been issued. The Vaerins claim to have solved the regeneration resistance problem in draeliks; if Hero Hessend chooses to risk the as yet inadequately tested treatment, the Council will cover his expenses."
​
Hero fits a lot better on him than Winglord sits on me, Crossack thought. "I can't predict whether Hero Hessend will take that offer. He keeps his own counsel when it comes to his injuries."
​
"Is something wrong?" Voice Laurelliana asked President Chen, who'd returned partway through her conversation with Crossack and had been staring at her ever since.
​
"You look much like the description of some of our more insidious legends," Chen told her bluntly. "As unlikely as it is to be anything other than coincidence, it is still difficult to keep the resemblance from inducing significant levels of paranoia."
​
"At least you prefer to lance the boil at once rather than dance around the issue while it festers ever deeper," Laurelliana said, dropping her gaze to indicate that she was speaking as herself and not as a Voice. "Long and long ago, or so it is said, while we were still planet-bound, mine and certain of the other will-bending species dealt with those who abused their powers by exiling them to another world. Your portal network suggests that this is not so impossible as we had thought. If your species has suffered from predation by one of our outcasts, i wouldn't blame you for being paranoid where my kind is concerned."
​
"The conspiracy nuts are going to have fun when they hear that," Chen said with a sigh.
​
Voice Laurelliana lifted her head again. "The council wishes to extend formal diplomatic recognition to your people, but we are suffering from some confusion as to which entity we should be extending that recognition to. Some clarification as to your political structure is needed."
​
"Ah," President Chen said. "I can see how it might. Each of the factions on this planet is considered a sovereign nation, although they're a bit more easy-going about their borders than was, or for that matter still is, customary back on earth. The Faction Arbitration Council is precisely what the name says, a neutral forum in which the factions can hash out their differences and save face by accepting a compromise suggested by a neutral party instead of their opponent. We have no real authority, but we do provide a place where you can address all of the factions at once."
​
"It sounds as though you have all of the responsibility of a Winglord, and none of the power," Voice Laurelliana said.
​
Chen shrugged. "I may only have the authority of a debate moderator, but most of the time that's all i need. As for the times when it is not sufficient, well, the prospect of imminent destruction tends to have a remarkably clarifying effect on everyone's priorities."
​
"I suppose it would," the Voice said. "Whose military did you call in?"
​
"The Liberation Hegemony doesn't claim sovereignty over any but it's native States, but they do provide military protection and economic assistance to anyone who abides by what they regard as the minimum standard of human rights. Which usually works out in practice to 'you can have whatever laws you want as long as you make it easy for people who don't like your laws to leave'. Which is why you never see a planet on the Hegemony network with fewer than seven factions--easy to leave requires that there be a compatible place for you to go."
​
"So we can treat with your Faction Arbitration Counsel as a planetary power, and this Liberation Hegemony as a regional one?" Voice Laurelliana asked, and then added "--to the extent that that's a coherent concept with the way your portal network allegedly ignores distance."
​
"Yes," President Chen said. "There's also the Golden Bureaucracy Bloc. Don't buy anything from them without reading the fine print, and never take out a loan from them. The only reason they aren't ruling us all is that the Hegemony is perfectly willing to apply Alexander's solution to Gordian red tape."
​
"Cultural reference," the Voice said. "Not clear from context."
​
"Sorry," President Chen replied. "Gordias was some guy who tied a really complicated knot and said that the man who untied it would rule the world. Alexander came by a while later, looked it over, and used his sword to cut it apart. After he went on to conquer a larger chunk of the world in less time than anyone before him, the locals where Grodias left the knot decided that this counted as 'untying' it."
​
"So keep it simple, and in good faith, when dealing with the Hegemony, because you never know what they might decide is underhanded enough to void the contract?" Crossack guessed.
​
"This system of yours...works?" the Voice asked uncertainly.
​
"As well as anything else we've tried," Chen answered. "Mostly due to the fact that most of us have gotten too lazy to want to bother proving that we could run other people's lives better than they can. MAD helps keep the peace, too, of course. Although, the fact that exile is always an option does tend to leave people favoring lethal forms of self-defense."
​
"Now that would explain a lot," Winglord Crossack said. "I should go mention that detail to Hero Hessend--he's a bit sore over the fact that it was your civilians bleeding his men so hard."
submitted by Petrified_Lioness to HFY [link] [comments]

JoJo's Bizarre OC Tournament #5 - Round 5 Match 5 - Bert and Lemon Demon vs Casey Williams and Perseus Drakos

The results are in for Match 3…
After one final wood-splintering impact, the clock tower suddenly fell back to it’s relative silence, broken only by the constant mechanical whir of the heavy gears. Keith glanced down through the central railing, and upon seeing Jenny’s writhing, pain-cursing, barb-filled body embedded into the wooden floor four stories below him, wiped blood from his nose before limping toward the south wall.
The Temple had made no effort to conceal their newest addition, at least not yet; two walls of a completely different color jetted out of the southwest corner of the building to form a sort of corner-closet, protected by a heavy locked door. Spying a toolbox still open next to the setup, Keith’s eyes rolled as he sent a remaining cactus clone down to the fifth floor to see if the handyman had the key on him. He drew a long breath, the thought of his lost teammates still weighing heavy on his mind; the fight had let him vent the frustration from the news of their loss, and the anger he felt was likely to thank for pulling him through. With any luck, this whole scheme would be for something-
”Eeaaaugh..!” A scream from the earpiece Keith removed during the fight made him jump, immediately reaching for his pocket to re-equip the device. Metal objects fell onto a marble floor followed by something heavier, “Peart you… fucker… that book… since when..?” Heavily labored breathing made background noise tough to parse, but the deep voice of the reply was clear enough.
“As I said before being so rudely interrupted, Mr. Killian, Fate blesses it’s devoted with myriad gifts; open eyes to see the path before us, and a bulwark of faith to see our journey safely.” The voice grew louder, approaching Kilroy’s body. “Trespassing onto this holy ground will not go unpunished, for you nor your friends in the tower. Tell Ms. Stanton when you see her that her district is now in better hands.”
Keith gritted his teeth, running to the ladder to meet his cactus clone halfway with the key. That Syndicate idiot better have been right about this... He fumbled at the lock, clicking his tongue as he finally got it to turn. Inside was an almost completely barren set of shelves, holding only a small clear plastic case containing what looked to be a bloody heap of rags. Keith was momentarily transfixed, half-surprised to see anything at all, reaching in to grab the case and peer at it from different angles: it was two pieces of connected magenta-colored cloth, one thin and sporting what looked like eye holes while the other was larger with a cartoonish smile design, both badly faded and covered in blood; a mask of some kind? It looked like some kind of combination of a domino mask and a cloth mouth-mask, anyway…
Before he could remove it from the container, a loud crash of glass came from below, pulling Keith back to the present and over to the railing.
Jenny’s body was gone from the fourth floor below, leaving a trail of blood droplets leading to a nearby now-broken stained glass window. Keith nodded, making for the nearest ladder and sliding down to follow in escape. Stepping out onto a vertical path of cacti footholds, sirens and alternating red-and-blue lights approached the gate to the grounds below.
The Winner is Keith Moon, with a score of 71 to Jenny Kidd’s 67!
Category Winner Point Totals Comments
Popularity Underground Exodus 19-11 A reminder that a two-vote lead can go a very long way when exactly eight people get votes in, what started as an initial lead on Jenny’s part transformed over time into exactly the opposite in number by the end.
Quality Tie 21-21 Reasoning
JoJolity BADD GUYS 21-25 Reasoning
Conduct Tie 10-10
Industrial District, Red Clay Correctional Facility, Later That Night
The metallic canine maw of Kaksi yawned, disinterested in the droning speech coming from the other side of the plexiglass wall. His user sat motionless on the prison cell bed, bathed in bright halogen light from all directions as she chewed away at her fingernails, staring blankly at the wall ahead of her with a tired expression. An attorney stood flanked by armed guards in the hallway adjacent, rattling off legal technicalities and case details at the seemingly distracted Emily. “...is apparently dismissible in court. I guess the court of Los Fortuna hasn’t heard of Stands yet, so evidence gathered using one is ‘tantamount to circumstantial at best’. Morons.” Aile sighed heavily, rubbing the bridge of her nose before continuing her ramble.
Emily shot a glance at the suited attorney while her eyes were closed. Why are you doing this, Aile? Her eyes shot back to the wall ahead of her before she could be caught. Months together and I couldn’t give you the time of day. Refused to. I treated you like dirt, you had every right to leave and never look back… but you still…
“...and the trip here, good lord.” Aile’s legal rant had, at some point, turned into a personal one. “Those ANVIL pricks seized the bridge, apparently. Had to get in by police boat, thank god the city could spare one in all this chaos. And even with an armed police escort, I was stopped every ten seconds by some checkpoint! The guards must be stressed out of their minds, some of them were just staring off into space, like we weren’t even there! PTSD, maybe? I swear, when the city council hears about the conditions of this facility…”
Would take an army to stop you, wouldn’t it? An army, or one heartless idiot with her head up her ass… I was afraid. Afraid of dragging you into this fucking catastrophe I call a life. I didn’t believe you were strong enough…
The electronic bleep of a guard’s radio interrupted the one-sided conversation. “Thirty seconds, Ms. Panther, facility is going on lockdown.”
“Lockdown!? I’ve been through hell to be here for five minutes and you’re kicking me out?!” AIle’s hands wrung her manila envelope violently, nearly tearing it’s documents in half. “I am legally required to relay my client all necessary information pertaining to her case and-”
“Out of my hands, ma’am. We got an incoming prisoner and the facility is already at maximum alert. All non-staff need to be escorted out to secure the indoctrination process. Twenty seconds.”
Aile sighed angrily, straightening out the red sleeve cuffs underneath her blazer before addressing her client once again, stepping closer to the glass and speaking in a hushed tone. “It’s chaos out there, Emmie. The city’s enough of a wreck that it’s spreading out here. I’m doing what I can, but if things get any worse…” She sighed, putting a hand on the glass to eagerly await a response.
You’ve done too much already! Emily’s eyes were still fixed on the wall ahead of her, feigning indifference even now with her mind racing. I’m sorry for using you, I’m sorry for putting this damned city ahead of you, I’m sorry for everything! Aile, please..! Standing from her bed, Emily turned away from her company and moved to her sink, muttering a blunt: “I’ll live.”
“Time’s up. This way, Ms. Panther.” Aile took in a shaky breath as she stepped back, clearing her throat and turning on a dime to begin marching down the hall with a scowl. Looking back at Emily, who’s hands were planted on her sink looking down at the running water, the attorney ended the meeting with a very curt, impersonal, and disappointed response:
“Goodbye, Emily.”
The intrigue of the Gambler, the Church, and the city of Los Fortuna continues to build up. Meanwhile, under new management from the super-stylish Man in Black, a security company outsources developing a training regimen to four unscrupulous Stand Users. There’s only a few hours left to vote in that when this post goes up, so please give it a look - and a vote - if you haven’t!
Scenario:
Midnight Sun University District - A basement space underneath CaraMel’s Confectionery - Afternoon
“Hmmm hmm hm! Hmm hm hmm! Something something I don’t know any Japanese~”
Cutesy hum-singing filled the small, dimly lit well-ventilated chamber, as large bronze boots tapped against the sterilized floor, dark hands washing intensely before donning heart-covered rubber gloves, goggles, and a face mask, arranging and rearranging all number of medical-looking equipment, strange vials and flasks. Of course, she was still wearing plenty of pink, a lab coat over shorts over leggings, looking quite a bit more like a mad scientist than a chef, minus an onion-shaped hair net. Just because she was dressed for the utmost of lab safety and sanitation didn’t mean CaraMel Dansen couldn’t be cute, after all.
She leaned in towards one particular test tube, kept within a glass case, holding a cluster of mysterious white semisolids which seemed to be moving, throbbing, and giggled, waggling her finger at the glass. “Feeding time’s soon, don’t worry! Oh, I wish I could put this on Insta today… But I must be strong!” She pumped her arms. “For his memory’s sake, I will resist you, social media!”
Down the stairwell outside, a pair of sneakers hurried, let through a backdoor by the restaurateur’s younger brother, then hurrying down a stairwell, quite audible in the franticness of its pace. Finally, a sweaty pale hand moved towards the locked door.
Knock knock knock knock.
Rhythmic. Fist positioned against different distinctive parts of the door. This was the secret knock.
So, a Stand body emerged to superheat a locking mechanism, causing its metals to weaken and the door to open, the yellow-hatted thirtysomething on the other side giving CaraMel an unamused look. “That’s a huge fire hazard, you know… If it was anyone but you, you would be yelling about that.”
“Well, I’m just different! Anyway, c’mon, check out what Violet found me in Drankwater’s houseboat-lab! You know what it is, don’t you?”
“I… No, how could I?” Theodore Lloyd was confused, stepping in and idly tapping at his eyepiece-Stand, ‘To Make Believe,’ as he continued, “just because I’m Institute doesn’t mean I can identify every weird thing that one of you guys discovers with a passing glance… Why was she going through his things anyway?”
“Because I asked Oh No to ask her to!” She peppily answered, before growing, momentarily, more serious, “after what happened with the Ocean Soul… What he died for, and having that taken away in an instant, I just couldn’t help but think. The old wizard didn’t just do things for no reason, yeah? The sort of explosive growth you could accomplish with Calamus Root… I knew for certain he must have something in mind for it, some reason to go capture it personally. Something he was working on, yeah?”
“I… I suppose that makes sense, but.” Teddy blinked. “You say that like No didn’t care about that part, so then why-”
“All Oh No wanted was to learn to talk to that sea monster… Communicate, get it to open up. His entire term for the Institute’s cooperation with Peres was that Holiday would split the Stand off, let him keep and help the big angry sea monster communicate with a world that it never got the chance to understand. If you talked to him, you would’ve known that way way way before me!”
“That… That sounds like that person, yes.” He stammered, pacing around carefully.
“Mhm!” She nodded. “Anyway, one of the things that fascinated the Wizard most was Bert… Both as a harmless novelty, a ‘homunculus,’ and then, as the thing that destroyed Capital Island, broke fate, and killed like twenty-thousand people. He’d been studying his actions, researching his history, all for what’s in this tube here.” She gestured to it again. “A ‘bioweapon’ meant to be capable of ‘killing Bert…’ That’s what was in the Water Tower, hidden away, and what I intend to finish, with or without those groundbreaking medical advances people literally died for only for that to be wasted at the last moment!” Her voice grew even higher and cuter; a sure sign she was seething so hard she could set a person on fire. “No is still grieving over the Ocean Soul, so I wanted to ask you to arrange for it… Get the Institute to watch over this thing, and let me help cultivate it.”
“I see… Heh. Guess he’s looking after us even now, then… Of course I’ll help.” He tilted his head, reading over what he’d just discovered of the ‘bioweapon’ with his own Stand… Unsurprised, ultimately. “Where do you factor into this, CaraMel? I thought you’d totally lost interest in biotech… I didn’t even know you’d kept all this stuff.”
“It’s for when I get the food science urges!” She pivoted and huffed, crossing her arms over her chest and shaking her head. “And anyway… I became a chef instead because I wanted to make people smile. To be fed and happy and enjoying good food in a nice place and living, yeah? I know Drankwater would scoff with Dollars behind my back for that, but… He was still a mentor of mine, and this is something I can do so the final projects of his life weren’t for nothing. That ‘Bert’ is a threat to the entire planet if not dealt with… And nobody can smile in a world so terrible!”
She kicked her boot against the ground, then, before adding with a roll of her eyes and a grumble, “plus, now that Byron went and got himself labeled a terrorist and killed a bunch more people, basically every big plan I had in the works for celebrating this February is shot. So I almost have something sort of resembling free time now!”
Teddy chuckled at that, and was about to ask what else he could do, when his phone began to vibrate, and despite not recognizing the number, he had a strange feeling about this… It needed answering.
“Y’hello, Mr. Lloyd… Is your refrigerator running?”
A chill ran down his spine, then. That old, jovial voice… It couldn’t be..! Paralyzed with unease at what he was encountering, all he could say, then, was a small, “y… yes..?”
“Well…”
A dial tone rang out at Teddy’s feet; the very floor tiles below him seemed to transform into cell phone screens beneath him.
Then, as his companion tried to shout something, tried to send her Stand forward to retrieve him, a Sonic blast from those newly-reformed floor tiles sent him and her Stand flying into the walls, knocking over countless pieces of equipment with a very clearly audible punchline to the booms.
“YA BETTER GO CATCH IT!”
The girl’s Stand only just able to stop anything from outright killing the weaker, older Stand User proved, predictably, far from the end of the troubles in the room. As Teddy struggled to stand with CaraMel’s Stand’s support, an old man in a bike helmet, flanked by a Stand of his own, stepped into the doorway, cracking his knuckles.
“Eheh… Refrigerator running. Sometimes, the classics can still crack you up, yeah?”
Naturally, CaraMel was knocked to the ground as well by the blast having struck her Stand, not to mention her own proximity to it, ears ringing and pained as she tried to gather her bearings, hearing a thumping against the walls closest to the ventilation shaft for the small room, only for the grate to be knocked out as something oblong and vaguely humanoid emerged, dress shoes stepping down with feet by her head, before with entirely too much flexibility, a stark white one-eyed figure was staring down at her and twisting his neck.
There was something dark atop the being’s head, something she was having trouble making out, resembling… A cap of sorts, resembling a buck-toothed dog, with…
Bert was wearing a fucking hat in the shape of Goofy, still boastfully bearing the tag from Walt Disney World.
“Yes, hello, I’m here to pick up an order… I hope you’ve kept it warm.”
CaraMel was alarmed, confused, in a horrid state of fight or flight, as her Stand could only be in one place at all, yet needing to protect Teddy, herself, and the bioweapon… How the hell was she supposed to do all three while boxed in like this?
“You gave quite the speech, Dansen…” Bert continued as they paced around, the air tense even through the funny joke Lemon had cracked. His hand rested on the table the weapon’s tube sat on, and and he continued, “it was quite inspirational, I think… And quite enlightening.”
He reached for the weapon, and CaraMel called out. “No, don’t!”
“Don’t what? You are developing something meant specifically to take my life… Is it unfair of me to wish to investigate that? Now, let’s see what-”
With a look on his sole eye indicating genuine surprise, Bert’s hand accidentally slipped and knocked the specimen meant to kill them to the ground, where it spilled out with a crack! The chef and the art school dean both cried out.
“…haha! My fingers slipped! And right now, I don’t feel very dead… Not ready yet, as you said. Though that shouldn’t be a surprise, with what a nostalgic sight that was.” He contorted his neck to the tense scene with Lemon, Lloyd, and CaraMel’s Stand, over 180 degrees away, though turning his head the opposite direction would have been easier. “Lemon, companion and ally, tell my story, why don’t you? Or at least, introduce it…”
“Gotcha!” The old man agreed, “see, my buddy Bert here… Some stuff in a lab made him, and he got out! And then they came here!” Lemon knew more, but he knew a bit when he saw one, and knew that Bert would want to hear themselves talk. It was why, for a Bertsmas gift, he got his good pal two cell phones.
“I was born by what many deemed random luck, some chemicals mixed together just right in some lab… But such things, the creation of life anew, are not the domain of happenstance, or of old men with white beards… No, it’s as I told Walter on my sabbatical, when I popped into his secret chambers to discourse on life extension.” He took a seat on a counter. “‘New life’ is the realm of ‘God,’ don’t you agree? Yet I exist, and I uniquely survive, and I will find a way to yet create life anew myself.” He stood up, then, spreading his arms. “To blaspheme in this way is only within the realm of I, Bert, the one who subverted fate! Who raised the dead! I am going to supersede God itself, whatever form He takes. What chance did two graduates cooking in a basement have to deter me?”
“You…” Teddy stammered again, clearly terrified, but looking to CaraMel, stood. “Your self important vision will die. You will be nobody’s God… You’ll be just another footnote in this city.” He turned, then, to his companion. “CaraMel, recall your Stand. Protect yourself, please. I won’t slow you down here. Do what you must.”
“But… N-no! I refuse to let you play hero now! Think about-”
“Ahahahahahehheaaahhh!” Bert laughed heartily, then, and Lemon snickered as well. “You have gall, you two… I can acknowledge that much at least. Yet it’s funny to me that you think either of you is leaving this room.”
Around the start of CaraMel and Teddy’s conversation - The streets of the College Town
hey casey jill’s rly upset cuz a friend of hers did some dumb bullshit again
the journalist? oh no… how bad?
not like war crime bad but ‘legit a srs dick move and self important about it’ bad
ugh. that’s always a pain… why tell me, though?
well bc im tryna console her an figured she could cope with sweets!
as one does.
as one does
anyway yea. u mind runnin to caramel’s an pickin up some of those sweet onion cream filled donuts? just a huge dozen to go to town on. ill pay u back promise. well have girls night itll be gr8
sure! jillian seems nice, and i never mind helping a friend of a friend!
Casey Williams looked over that text log again as she made her way to the Confectionery which had so often been a hotly desired source of nutrients and socialization about the college town and adjacent areas, frequented by students, faculty, and people just living in the very expensive college town alike, but most popular of all among young women, children, and couples, no doubt because of how cute and pink the place was.
Food was damn good, even if it tended to be pricey. One of those onion donuts honestly sounded real good right now, though…
Thus, to that end, Casey kept walking, stepping off of a trolley and moving through a piece of environmental art she’d grown entirely used to by now, something where that Andre guy sought to successfully recreate something looking like a recursively looping set of stairs in the middle of a public park, only to notice something in the corner of her eye; Perseus Drakos was sitting up high on one of the stairs in question, waving down at her and, with a cheery tone, calling out, “afternoon!”
Then, he seemed to slip off of the heavy drop, yet still bore a confident look on his face. This time, he’d have an awesome heroic entrance; he’d do a somersault and jump up right in front of his teammate, and it would be so awesome, and-
“Ow!” He winced, hitting the soft grass below as Casey looked concerned, offering him a hand up.
“Are you alright? That was a hell of a-”
“I’m fine!” Desperate to save face, Perseus jumped up, putting his fists at his hips and puffing out his chest. “The glass dragon won’t shatter like that! That’s all I wanted to prove to you right now!”
“Are you well? You must let me catch you before you run off like that!” The Stranger’s ethereal voice came through, then, as it manifested, fixing Perseus’ posture as he tried to shoo his Stand away.
“I got it, c’mon. I know what I’m doing!” He sighed, then, before turning back to face Casey. “So what brings you out this way? Mind if I tag along? I’d been trying to survey this area for signs of trouble or villainy, but so far it’s… Pretty safe. I think I could use more scenery!”
“Oh, I wasn’t doing much, actually,” Casey answered, “just headed down to CaraMel’s to pick some stuff up for Violet… Cheering up a friend, so basically an emergency, yeah? I’m sure it wouldn’t be any trouble for you to hang out, though.”
The Stranger and Perseus both gave Casey blank expressions.
“What? Don’t want to after all?”
“CaraMel’s closed early today. Like, right after breakfast early…” Perseus huffed. “I was gonna buy myself lunch there, too, so it was really bothersome…”
“…huh, really. Hope nobody’s sick or something.” She got her phone out. “Guess I’ll just let Violet know that-”
“Wait.” The Stranger’s voice cut her off, then, and Casey and Perseus looked to him. “Think about who we’re dealing with here… This Violet Lange. It isn’t the first or last time she’s goaded one of us towards something or another on secretive, even duplicitous pretenses. And with how connected she is… There’s no way she didn’t hear anything about that. Couple that with how CaraMel’s has been used as a base of operations for the University Board before, and…”
“She was trying to get me to do something else?” Casey asked, catching on now. She considered Violet a friend, but she really could be a pain sometimes like this…
“Exactly. Whatever it is you were actually sent there for… Proceed with caution, if you mean to proceed at all.”
“Forget that!” Perseus defied his Stand’s warning. “If it’s that important, and that dangerous, we’re going to be a part of it! Don’t abandon your friend, and don’t even say a word about leaving me out, either! Because if you do, I’ll just follow you anyway!”
Casey… Couldn’t rebut a word of that, and neither could The Stranger. Both simply nodded. “Follow my lead, and don’t do anything crazy, alright?”
“Why are the ceilings so high here..?” Perseus asked as he led the way into the closed-yet-unlocked door. “I mean, it’s basically a bakery with house space above it, right? But so much bigger than everything else…”
“Because it’s artsy… And I imagine Mr. Dansen appreciates the distance from all the kitchen noise, with his condition.” Casey mused. “Makes for a real nice climbing spot. Once I ran into that ‘Black Angel’ eating up there with Wrenn, and it really is a great view-”
Their conversation was stalled, then, by the realization of what lay before them, tossed through a glass display case and with a rolling shelf knocked over. A tall, hurt-looking figure with blue hair was struggling to keep it from crushing him, a sight which, with an “oh my God!” from Casey, both MFAs hurried to remedy, helping pull him free and sit him up.
“What happened?!” Perseus asked, not noticing a response, before realizing exactly why… The man’s ears were bleeding profusely, worse than anywhere else he’d been injured.
“Hhh… hhahh…” He struggled to steady himself, trying and failing to stand and move towards a backdoor. “Sister’s… Still down there… Old man… Phones… Ghk, fuck..!”
The young man collapsed again, quickly being steadied by Casey, who looked him in the eye and spoke slowly, yet firmly. “Don’t worry. We’ll help her. Just… Clear out.”
Someone is attacking CaraMel’s..? But what for? Violet… Is this what you really sent me for?
With that, then, she had to pick up her pace and run into the backdoor stairwell. Perseus had already begun to charge in.
The stairwell was decorated with pink carpet and soft orange wallpaper, the railings a clean, sleek white. It was quiet… Uncomfortably quiet.
Then, a door down below opened, and Casey had to grab Perseus by the back of his shirt to stop him from rushing blindly down to meet the threat.
“I swear, to try and assassinate me with the first trick I ever learned… The audacity of it all. Well, at least that’s been nipped in the bud.”
Casey and Perseus both froze, then, feeling their skin crawl. Of course, both had heard the recordings of Jack Aurel’s final stand, of the way a serial killer and an artificial human challenged him… And that self-important tone was unmistakable.
“Hehh, yeah. Say, d’you think her brother’ll still sell us bagels? I know the sign said they’re closed today, but I really got a hankerin’ for an everything with dog-cream-cheese.”
“Regardless of his willingness to sell to us, there will be bagels, my friend. I assure you they will be delectable!”
“Ehehh, awesome! Can’t wait to-” Lemon Demon stopped, then, his humorous tone momentarily evaporating. “There’s someone up there. Two of them, looks like.”
“Ah! Excellent catch,” Bert praised Lemon. “Lucky we ended that fight unscathed and unexhausted, then… I have a feeling that they’ll be more of a worthy trial than those two were.”
Casey gasped, then, still trying to bide her time, observe their moves, now that the element of surprise was gone completely.
“Yeah, you’re telling me, Bert. Imagine if we were hot off the heels of those Red Carpet guys, or Jack, or even that keytar guy… I told you about how I barely beat him, right? Still a dang shame, that… Gotta respect a man in a thong rockin’ and rollin’ in the ID. Reminded me of me back in the day!”
Perseus felt himself grow even tenser, then… Angry, beyond even his usual hatred for villains, at such words passing. “Casey… This guy… I think the old guy has to be the one to…” He had seen how utterly devastated Aaron had been at the news of Rudolf’s death, and to hear someone speaking so casually about it, having clearly seen it, been there, probably been responsible…
He called out, heroically, “Hey, Bert! Old-timer! Chat up all you like, because this is the last fight you’ll ever fight! Here and now, it’s over for you!”
Before he could charge, however, Casey grabbed him and began running up the stairs, well aware that at this point, a fight in the stairwell was inevitable… Hell, hearing something like that, and knowing what was at stake, she couldn’t back away in good faith either!
Every fight she’d been in so far, she could run away, leave the dirty work to someone else, but here, she wasn’t going to simply cower behind a child. She would get them a tactically advantageous spot, work out a plan, and beat these bastards here and now!
“Those kids sound kinda mad… Hope I didn’t strike a nerve there.” Lemon remarked, nonetheless preparing for battle. He knew kids, how hotheaded they could get. This wasn’t a situation he could defuse with a funny joke or two, and hell, he didn’t really want to.
“We’ll be striking more than just nerves in a moment, Lemon… We’ll be striking up another chapter in the Book of Bert. Just try not to bring the whole house down. Those bagels won’t taste half as good with drywall and concrete in them, after all.”
OPEN THE GAME!
(Credit to CaptainSpooky27 for yet more awesome match art!)
Location: Inside of a stairway. This is a general reference image of the layout of the stairway. Note this image does not match up to the stairway in the match, only the general structure. So the railings, floors and stairs themselves are different.
Here is a top down view of the general layout. The left and right sides are flat and the south and north are the stairs. The center is completely open. The stairs go upwards following the arrows.
The flat portions are each 5 meters long and 2 meters wide. The stairs are 1 meter wide and there is about 9 meters between each floor.
Bert and Lemon Demon start at basement level (on what would be the right side) and Casey and Perseus are 25 meters vertically above the other team and on the left side.
Goal: RETIRE your opponents!
Additional Information: Leaving the stairwell over the course of the match is prohibited. After all, there are civilians and bagels that will be in great danger if you retreat now!
Team Combatant JoJolity
Suburban Regalia Bert “I see, you're above me... you're hanging on a branch, huh?!” You are starting from the very bottom of this stairwell, but rise and rise you will, until you tower over this entire city! Make creative usage of the verticality and arrangement of the stairwell!
Suburban Regalia Lemon Demon “What would Koichi think if he sees a lit lighter resting on top of a piece of bread..? Would he think nothing of it? Definitely not! He would extinguish the flame!” Last big fight you went in, you destroyed an entire factory, and that looks like it got people real mad… Best to avoid that, and besides, bagels are on the line! Ensure that the stability of the building isn’t compromised over the course of the match!
Masters of Funky Action Casey Williams “If they stand just 'above' you, it'll be over.” You have the high ground, and you intend to make damn good use of this fact. Make creative usage of the verticality and arrangement of the stairwell!
Masters of Funky Action Perseus Drakos “For 24 hours, you are to guard that lighter without letting the flame go out!” These guys think they can just bust into someone’s home, someone’s business, and smash it to bits like it’s nothing? You will protect this place, and its occupants! Ensure that the stability of the building isn’t compromised over the course of the match!
Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
As always, if you would like to interact with the tournament community and be among the first to get updates for the tournament, please feel free to PM a member of our Judge staff for an invite to our Official Discord Server!
submitted by boredCommentator to StardustCrusaders [link] [comments]

hazardous waste drop off locations near me video

The Dumpster Depot - Best Dumpster Rental Prices Organics recycling part 2 - English SWA Electronics Dropoff wastemanagement - YouTube 10 MOST TOXIC Places On Earth - YouTube Prints & Formulas--Illegal Dumping in South Fresno Hoarding Clean Up CALL (888) 647-9769 Richmond CA, Meth LabCleanupBloodTear Gas Battery Recycling is Easy! A PSA from CalRecycle

Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) - What You Can Do. Locations and Hours. Five Steps You Can Take. Buy only what you need. Read and follow labels. Store properly and in labeled containers. Take leftover quantities to the a drop-off site. Use safe alternative products when possible; Please Bring: Automotive Fluids (must bring a disposable container) Acceptable household hazardous waste includes the items listed below. You can dispose of 20 gallons of liquid waste or 75 pounds of solid waste per visit. Transport it in plastic crates, cardboard boxes, storage bins, or in other containers that are easy to see through and access. Waste brought in trash bags may not be accepted. AA and AAA ... Household Hazardous Waste Programs and Collection Schedule Select your town from the following list to find local dates. We will continue to update the list as new dates become available. If your town does not appear on this list, your municipality may not be holding a collection event this year. Hazardous Waste Drop Off Near Me. If the Household hazardous waste is solid, such as batteries or fluorescent bulbs, there is usually another option through large retailers such as Home Depot and Lowe’s. Usually, these solid items are also accepted at city programs. Still, liquid household hazardous waste is not suitable for drop off at these ... Waste and environmental impact Find a local hazardous waste disposal service Certain household products may pose a risk to human health or the environment if not disposed of correctly. HHW/E-Waste should be stored in a secure container/box in a cool, dry environment away from children and pets. In case of a spill or release of a hazardous material (explosive, ignitable, combustible, etc.), please call your local Fire Department. Protecting public health and the environment remains our highest priority. Free Household Hazardous Waste and E-waste Disposal for OC Residents Leftover household products that contain corrosive, toxic, ignitable or reactive ingredients are considered Household Hazardous Waste (HHW). Products such as paints, cleaners, oils, batteries and pesticides that contain potentially hazardous ingredients require special handling when you dispose of them. Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) includes items such as batteries, paint, household cleaners, and propane tanks. These materials need separate disposal to prevent harm to you and the environment. You can properly dispose of all HHW for free by making a drop-off appointment or visiting a take-back location. Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Drop-off Centers Due to COVID-19, operating days and hours are subject to change. Some services may be temporarily suspended or facilities may temporarily close. ... 2. Our hazardous waste vendor unloads your car 3. You're on your way. Delaware County sponsors four (4) Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Collection Events each year. If you’ve ever participated in an event, you leave with a good feeling knowing you’ve disposed of your hazardous items in a responsible fashion. To back up a bit…

hazardous waste drop off locations near me top

[index] [9322] [3099] [5839] [5231] [5289] [3595] [7033] [4311] [2799] [7380]

The Dumpster Depot - Best Dumpster Rental Prices

Learn how to use Ramsey County’s organics recycling drop-off program (part 2). From the DIRTIEST Cities, to nuclear wastelands ; these are the 10 MOST TOXIC Places On Earth. HEY YOU ! There are more awesome videos being made every week,... All batteries in California must be taken to a Household Hazardous Waste disposal facility, a universal waste handler, or an authorized recycling facility. To learn more about reducing, reusing ... Most people associate needles with a hospital or clinic setting, but many of us now use “sharps” – needles, syringes with needles, and lancets like the kind ... The Dumpster Depot offers 10, 20, 30 and 40 Cubic Yard Dumpsters at Rock Bottom Prices in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Anytime there is a violent crime or suicide that produces biological waste such as blood and other bodily fluids there is a need for crime scene cleanup. The police department does not offer this ... Residents of district 5 and district 7 are mobilizing to protect their communities from illegal dumping. This chronic problem plagues neighborhoods that are already overburdened by other pollution ... for free at the solid waste authority. there are 7 convenient locations to keep your home clutter free, while conserving natural resources and keeping our environment clean. to find an electronics ... Welcome! Please email [email protected] with customer concerns. We aim to foster open dialogue, and reserve the right to remove posts that violate YouTube policies or contain profanity, solicitation ...

hazardous waste drop off locations near me

Copyright © 2024 top100.luxsportcars.site