Smoke.shop.near me

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Well, this is new at least.
I've never had to quell a riot before.
Empress, please. This is more a brawl. When there's a riot, we'll let you know. We have seen riots, and this is no riot.
Okay, fine. There's something like two dozen people here and I see what looks like to be more security people, Mariens and Aviens and some Azurians on the edge of things, trying to get a handle on what is going on. Note to myself, I should go visit their offices later. Chairs from nearly restaurants have been taken and broken into clubs, and there is shouting and smoke and the clashing of flesh on feather on bone.
Wait, why is there smoke?
"Ava, Um'reli is there a fire here? I see and smell smoke."
"Um, one moment Melody.... Yes, there is a report of a small fire, but there's also this warning - it says something like Fire Suppression Offline, local assistance is needed." Sounds like we had some kind of Starbase wide fire suppression system but it doesn't work anymore."
All the Builder controlled parts of this place are broken. What is going on here? Was it on purpose or did they just fail because nobody was around to maintain them? "See if you can get it back online. It doesn't have to work forever, just to see if we can knock down the smoke. Turn the air scrubbers and air cycling too here, I don't want people getting ill from the smoke."
"On it, Melody." Um'reli is checking into it while Ava is helping with an overview of the area. It's a wide open area, kind of like the promenade on the lower level, but this area is... nicer? It has parks and gardens! We need to come up here more often. Why is it so drab down closer to the docks.
Well, it's nicer when a riot isn't going on I mean.
Sigh. Fine. Let's stop the riot and figure out what is going on. I take a moment and concentrate, and my crown and wings spring into existence. In fact, let's make those wings bigger and brighter. I'm going to need to be seen and heard. I connect to the Starbase, locate the local public address system - mentally wave to Um'reli and Ava as I go by! - and then...
S̴̨̲̗̥̯̯̩̤͒̎̔̽͊̐̚ṫ̸̝̱͈̙̆͋̌o̴͎͗̌̿̀̍̏̿̚͝p̸͚̐̀̕ ̶̯̌̈́f̵̤͙̪̖̗͖̳̼̺̐̏̊̒͒̈́̀̚̚i̵̡͈̼̱̭̼̻͖̳͋͒̄̊̾͌g̵͚͐͆̀͂͑̌h̶̛̤͙̆̋̍̄͑̓͠t̶̘̖̪͒́i̴̢̞̜̠̠͋n̷̛̪͚͙̞͚͒̀̃̔͂͊̊g̶̢̡̠͍̥̙̹̼̓̃͗ͅ!̶̨̥͎̄͘͝
I swear, it never gets old. Like I pressed pause on a video, everyone immediately stops. I put some work into my command this time, I specified fighting so that they can still move and breathe, but sure enough, everyone stops.
I put a little extra oomph into my presentation and tower over everyone. They turn towards me, fearful and I have their attention.
"Now then. What is going on here. Why are you fighting?"
Everyone starts talking all at once.
"-They started it when-"
"Those liars said that the Empress wasn't-"
"-There isn't enough food for-"
Wait that one. Another one about food? I heard a few of those at the presentation earlier.
"Cease your chatter. You. What was that about food?" I point to the Azurian close to me who mentioned food when they were all talking at once.
"Empress, the results of the last two harvests have been 15 and 20 percent lower than in previous seasons. The population here isn't dropping either. If this keeps up, the garden planetoid won't be able to support us!"
Okay that's serious, but it's not like ' drop everything and have a riot' serious - at least not at the numbers they gave me. What else is going on?
"Thank you, it's important to learn this. Please come to the Throne later and explain to me in more detail about your concerns. That's not enough to have a riot though, is it?"
"Oh the riot? No, that's not about the food supply. It's about them-" They point across the plaza "-not believing that you're holy."
Oh.
One of them, a Aviens, shouts from across the area "You're just someone who showed up and got lucky! You're not holy at all!"
Hisses and curses from this side of the plaza.
Awkward.
Well hold up now. This isn't fair to me. I never said I was holy, they just decided.
You did elevate The Smell of Soil After Rain to bishop during that presentation yesterday. I wonder if they're going around causing trouble in your name.
Hmm.
I stride out across the plaza to the other side. As I approach the people who think I'm not holy they shrink back. I wonder why for a moment and realize my wings and crown are still burning bright. Oops. Nothing like trying to convince people to stop arguing about my alleged godhood while looking like an angry God. I tone down the wings and crown (but I don't remove them entirely) and approach the Aviens who yelled that I wasn't holy. "Was The Smell of Soil After Rain coming around, giving you a hard time?"
The Aviens visibly crumbled. "They said that my family would be forgotten if I didn't attend services. That you ordered it. They said they'd remove my children from school."
What.
"What? No. Absolutely not. I am Empress, I don't need to be your God too. So long as you recognize me as Empress and Builder that's enough. Worship the way you please, or don't worship at all. Atheism it not forbidden."
I turn back to both sides of the crowd. "I will not punish those who choose not to worship me! So long as you accept that I am Empress, that I rule here, that's enough. Nobody here has to also worship me. I will... speak to my Bishop about their... enthusiasm. Nobody here will be compelled to worship. So please. Return to your homes after you assist the security forces here in cleanup."
Everyone looks around at each other, then back at me, still with crown and glowing wings, then back at each other and starts picking up litter and broken pieces of chair.
I turn back to the Aviens who I was talking to, put away my wings and crown and kneel down gently to speak just to them very quietly. They look up at me wide eyed.
"Just for your own information - and if pressed by anyone else I will deny it forever - you're right. I'm just a person who did something stupid, and now I'm Empress. My name is Melody, I like coffee and computer systems and being able to have time alone to read." It's almost a whisper.
They blink in surprise. This was completely unexpected for them. "Hi Melody, my name is Roar of Thunder and I work in an office building down on the docking level. I'm not entirely sure what our job is, but it's not difficult work. I enjoy cooking during my free time."
I stand back up. "It's wonderful to meet you Roar of Thunder. I love your name too." I look around as people continue cleaning up. "Tell you what Thunder. Come up to the Throne tomorrow. I bet we can find a more... stimulating job for you with us."
"That's... that's a wonderful opportunity Empress. I will be there tomorrow."
I spend a few minutes helping clean up the riot. I mean, why not, I'm here already, everyone will love it, and it's something to do. In the meantime Ava and Um'reli seem to get the fire supression going enough to fog some water over the smokier parts of the plaza and soon enough the smoke has dissipated and things are - if not clean - then at least cleaner. I give my thanks and as I get up to leave, one of the Mariens in the security coloration approaches me.
"Empress, thank you for coming up. We didn't even get to report back to headquarters that a riot had broken out yet, how did you know?"
This time I grin impishly. "This is just one of the things that can happen now that the Builders are back. We have eyes and ears all over and can assist quickly when needed. If you'll notice, we even got the old fire suppression foggers going in this sector. Hopefully soon we can get them operating everywhere again."
The Mariens looks amazed and salutes me sharply, then bows. "I am known as Kilad, Empress. I know my supervisor would love to thank you personally."
Ah wonderful! I was hoping to go see more of the security forces. What a nice coincidence.
"Please lead the way Kilad. I would love to meet them."
Kilad walks me across the plaza and through a park. There are trees and greenery, but of course I don't recognize any of the plants. They're very dark green and fragrant though. I wonder if they originated on a planet that has a dimmer star than Earth or our other colonies. Less light might cause them to evolve darker coloration to squeeze every drop of energy out of a weaker star.
We walk through the park and come out in another plaza, just like the one near the train station. At the far end of this one is another large, original looking building made out of the same stone as the Starbase and Administration offices and Bank. Clearly some of the institutions here were original - or the buildings were and they have been repurposed.
Kilad opens the door and I follow. Inside is a bustle of activity. Mariens, Aviens, and all the others are here. The Mariens are all colored the bright yellow of security while those without chromatophores are wearing smart yellow uniforms. Kilad walks up to a low desk in the back of the atrium. There's an Azurian sitting there in a yellow uniform with silver piping along the top. They must be the supervisor. Kilad salutes the Azurian and gives a report.
"Kilad, returning from the suspected riot near the hub station. Suspicions were confirmed, it was a riot between people arguing about the holiness - or not - of the Empress. Luckily the Empress herself showed up to quell the riot and explain that while people can worship her if so desired nobody will be forced to. She also explained that she will speak to her new Biship, The Smell of Soil After Rain about his proselytizing and ask him to tone it down." Kilad gestures behind themselves to me. "Additionally, the Empress herself is here, she'd like to speak to you."
At that, the Azurian looks behind Kilad and nods. I love how it seems like every single Azurian doesn't really care that I'm the Empress. It's refreshing. "Empress." They nod. "Thank you for your assistance, and for the official confirmation that nobody is required to worship you."
"It's quite all right. I'm glad to be able to get the word out that worship is not compulsory. Everyone is free to worship - or not worship - however they see fit. Can you explain to me what the role of your forces is here? It doesn't have to be a whole history, just the basics."
"Yes, Empress. We are the Security force on Reach of the Might of Vzzx" He pronounces Vzzx with a pop on the end. "This station is 100 people, and there are at least a dozen more across the whole of the Reach. We mostly help settle small disputes, assist with investigating petty crime and quell the occasional riot. For the most part, the residents of the Reach are relatively calm and open to working together. There is friction here and there, same as with anywhere, and with living spaces so tight conflict can break out. But, there is a strong sense of collaboration and community here too. You probably saw people cleaning up the riot they caused after it was quelled. That's not because you were there, that's a normal occurrence"
"Do you know any history? Do you know the role of your forces when they Builders were here in force?"
They indicate no, and seem a little sad about it. "Few records exist from then. When I was young, I asked some of the oldest staff here and they made it sound like things were much the same back then as now. It was probably different in that there were Builders able to detect and react to things sooner - like you and your Builders did today - but I imagine the day to day operations were much the same then as now."
"Thank you for the history lesson. What's your name?"
"I am Commander Sep."
"Thank you again Sep!" I incline my head slightly and walk out. I do wonder if I'm being too casual with everyone for a moment, but really this is who I am, how I want to rule. I hear FarReach's words and I'm reminded that she thought I was changing. That's not what I want to happen. I'm going to keep on walking around and talking to people and trying to learn as much about my new home as I can.
My new home. That's what the Reach is.
And I'm here to protect it and its residents.
I spend the evening up here visiting shops, talking to people, trying to learn as much as I can. It turns out most everyone here went down to the Throne this morning, so people are open later today to allow folks who missed their morning shopping to be able to get things.
I stop by a restaurant that looks nice and go to get dinner by myself. After I shoo away the entire staff who practically fell over themselves to be the one who took care of me and gently remind them they have other patrons who also need help, I enjoy my meal and even try out some of the tea that everyone here seems to drink. It's no coffee, but it's pleasant in its own way. It's hot and sweet and herbal and smells slightly of anise. I should see if I can get more to bring back. I think Um'reli might like it.
After dinner, I stroll slowly back towards the train and connect to the Reach and look for Ava and Um'reli. "Ava, Um'reli, where are you?"
"We're back at the Royal Dawn. Where are you Melody, it's so late!"
Is it? Hmm, I should figure out timekeeping here. It's hard to believe it's only been a few days since I left FarReach, I'm probably still on ship's time.
"Oh, after the brawl, I went and met the Security forces up here, and then I walked around talking to people, and got a nice dinner. Um'reli you have got to try this tea they have! I think you'd really like it."
"Oh? Thanks Melody, I will check it out next time we eat. Um, are you coming back? Omar is back too, he has a report about the High Line."
"I'm walking back to the train station now, I'll be home in a bit. No more than half an hour probably. Omar, do you want to tell me about it now while I walk or wait until I get back?"
"How about when you get back Melody. It still odd talking to people like this, it feels like I'm having a discussion with myself."
"Sure thing Omar, see you in a bit."
I make my way back to the hub station just as a train pulls away. As I watch it go, an Aviens is running down the platform. "No no no no, I can't miss my train! They're going to be so mad!" They reach the end of the platform and their feathers ripple and they look despondent.
"What's wrong? What about the next train?"
They look up at me and then see who I am and jump a little." E-Empress! I didn't expect to see you here. Um" And they bow.
"Yes yes, that's fine, but not really necessary unless I'm like, doing royal stuff. What's the matter? You sounded so sad."
"Oh Empress, that was the last train! There isn't another until tomorrow! I have to get back down to my home, my parents are going to be so upset to find out that I missed the last train home again and have nowhere to stay." They're practically in tears.
"Oh no! Well, I have to get down a level too so I can go home. I had no idea that was the last train - I'm still getting used to time here, it's different than where I'm from. Let me see what I can do. What's your name?"
"Oh, thank you, thank you Empress! My name is Sound of the City."
"It's so nice to meet you Sound of the City! Let's see about finding a way for both of us to get home."
I lead them to a seat on the platform and sit next to them. They snuggle up next to me and yawn deeply. Surprised, I look over and realize they're so young! It's just a child. If they were human, they might be a teen. All the more reason to get them home. I lean back a little and connect and search for the train subsystem.
Ah, there it is. They were right, that was the last scheduled train. Luckily though, when you're a Builder, you don't have to worry about things like schedules. Let's see, what train is closest... hmm? Whats that? There's something here marked 'Royal transport - offline' and it very close. Looks like it's over in a siding near here.
I dig a little deeper and it seems like it's a whole train just for the Empress. They must have used it when the previous Empress was traveling around the Reach. I remember in my dream how proud Aeche was of the transit system, I wonder if this was related to it? Well, it's the closest train, and this way I won't mess up tomorrows schedule either. I touch the train gently, and it activates. Basic systems check indicates nothing is wrong. I call the train. After only a minute, there's the trilling chime that indicates a train is coming.
"Sound, look. I found a train."
They blink sleepily and look up and gasp at what they see.
I have to admit, it is impressive. The Royal Transport is a subway train, but turned up loud. It's royal blue and gold and gilded with sweeping flowery designs. It's only three cars - the other trains seem to be between 6 and 10 cars - but what it lacks in length it makes up for in elegance.
I'm almost sad that the station is empty, this is something that needs to be seen.
"This train is beautiful, Empress! This is how we're going to get home?"
"Yup. It's the Royal Transport. It was designed for the Empress to move around the Reach in style."
We approach the door and I step in. It's carpeted! It's so plush. Sound of the City stands at the door, not coming in.
"What's wrong Sound? Come in"
"A-are you sure? It's a train for the Empress."
"And as Empress, I'm telling you it's fine. Please, come aboard. I'll take you home. It's only two stops."
I reach out my hand and they nervously take it and step in. The doors hiss shut behind us. I lead us to a seat and we both sit down. Only after we are seated does it begin to roll away, nearly silently. Sound once again snuggles up and is nearly asleep instantly. While we ride I search the train mentally. Oh! There's a log! The last time this train was used was...
74 years ago? That's it?
My head spins a bit. That's not that long at all. The Administrators had said that there hadn't been an Empress for 'three generations' I guess if they're not that long lived that could account for it. Also, given the robustness of what we build for space on our side of the galaxy, it would explain why things didn't really break down over here. It would also explain why the Gate system was almost completely intact. 74 years though. That's hardly any time at all in an interstellar empire.
But, the K'laxi! My last memories were of touching the Gate and doing an upload before going to visit them. They said that their histories and religion that mentions me and the Gates is a thousand years old.
What happened? Why were the K'laxi ignored? When did the last Empress touch the directory stone? The timing of everything doesn't make sense.
I really have no way of finding out here. Once High Line has been refitted, I think I need to go to the Wilds of Besmara, that mostly destroyed Starbase we saw first and see what happened there.
Then, the train rolls to a stop. Just as silently the doors hiss open and were back at my station. "Sound, wake up, we're here." I say gently. They rustle and blink and realizing they were sleeping on the Empress jump up, embarassed. "I'm so sorry!"
I laugh gently. "It's find Sound. I'm pretty tired too. Let me walk you home."
This is the latest I've been out, and the Reach is so quiet! The lights are down low, but it's still easy to see. Sound said they lived close to the station and they lead me there. It's a little block of apartments in between the bank and the Administrative offices. Convenient location, I bet this place was expensive.
As we approach the door, an older Aviens opens it ahead of us. Clearly upset they point a finger. "Sound of the City, you are late. How did you even get home, the last train arrived a while ago. Were you wandering around causing trouble after you got here?"
"No Father! I was working late to help Gemli finish up inventory and ran to catch the last train. I missed it, and thought I was done for when..." Sound gestures behind them to me. In the low light, I flare the crown and wings just for a moment and darken them again. There's a gasp and the adult Aviens bows low. "E-E-Empress! What are you doing here?"
"I too missed the last train home, and ran into Sound of the City weeping that they were going to be in trouble and had no way of getting home. I was able to call the Royal Transport and bring them and myself back home. I just wanted to make sure they made it home safely. I don't believe Sound should be punished, it seems that they got caught up helping a friend."
"O-of course Empress. Sound, get inside and wash up, it's past bedtime." Sound of the City hesitates a moment, then runs up and hugs me tight. "Thank you, Empress." and they wave and run inside.
"You're very welcome Sound of the City." I look at their parent and narrow my eyes just a bit. "They did not bother me, they did not put me out, I was helping because I wanted to. Do not give them trouble about this."
Their head bobs a nod. "Of course Empress. Thank you Empress, I really am grateful you brought them home. They get caught up helping friends and lose track of time. It's a regular occurrence with them."
"There are worse problems to have than being late because one is helping friends. People like that are what makes the Reach home."
"You're absolutely right Empress. I will do well to remember that."
"Good night then."
"Empress." The bow again and close the door gently.
I walk home, my head filled with worry about why the timeline for things isn't lining up. Something is wrong here.
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Leaving work today, I walked past a fairly lively smoke shop near 34th and 5th. I was pretty curious and thought I'd give it a shot and maybe get lucky. Maybe score some decent shit before heading home on the train.
Let me tell you, they had damn near EVERY Stiiizy product in stock. Thinking it too good to be true, I asked the lady behind the counter for a few different blunt & joint packages so I could look them over and scan them. She looked at me crazy like: "you really about to scan these?"
Hell yeah, I'm bout to scan these! They are already likely overpriced (like every 'smoke shop' in Manhattan is), and I'm not trying to be ass out over some expired or fake weed.
- I scan the first blunt 5 pack.... ❌ FAIL
- I scan the next joint pack........ ❌ FAIL
I look at the lady, and just tell her: ".....you know what? This ain't gonna work."
​
I tried *shrugs*. I'm headed out to Cali soon anyway 🌴
​
​

NARRATOR: (Black screen with text; The sound of buzzing bees can be heard) According to all known laws of aviation, : there is no way a bee should be able to fly. : Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. : The bee, of course, flies anyway : because bees don't care what humans think is impossible. BARRY BENSON: (Barry is picking out a shirt) Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. : Ooh, black and yellow! Let's shake it up a little. JANET BENSON: Barry! Breakfast is ready! BARRY: Coming! : Hang on a second. (Barry uses his antenna like a phone) : Hello? ADAM FLAYMAN:
(Through phone) - Barry? BARRY: - Adam? ADAM: - Can you believe this is happening? BARRY: - I can't. I'll pick you up. (Barry flies down the stairs) : MARTIN BENSON: Looking sharp. JANET: Use the stairs. Your father paid good money for those. BARRY: Sorry. I'm excited. MARTIN: Here's the graduate. We're very proud of you, son. : A perfect report card, all B's. JANET: Very proud. (Rubs Barry's hair) BARRY= Ma! I got a thing going here. JANET: - You got lint on your fuzz. BARRY: - Ow! That's me!
JANET: - Wave to us! We'll be in row 118,000. - Bye! (Barry flies out the door) JANET: Barry, I told you, stop flying in the house! (Barry drives through the hive,and is waved at by Adam who is reading a newspaper) BARRY== - Hey, Adam. ADAM: - Hey, Barry. (Adam gets in Barry's car) : - Is that fuzz gel? BARRY: - A little. Special day, graduation. ADAM: Never thought I'd make it. (Barry pulls away from the house and continues driving) BARRY: Three days grade school, three days high school... ADAM: Those were awkward. BARRY: Three days college. I'm glad I took a day and hitchhiked around the hive. ADAM== You did come back different. (Barry and Adam pass by Artie, who is jogging) ARTIE: - Hi, Barry!
BARRY: - Artie, growing a mustache? Looks good. ADAM: - Hear about Frankie? BARRY: - Yeah. ADAM== - You going to the funeral? BARRY: - No, I'm not going to his funeral. : Everybody knows, sting someone, you die. : Don't waste it on a squirrel. Such a hothead. ADAM: I guess he could have just gotten out of the way. (The car does a barrel roll on the loop-shaped bridge and lands on the highway) : I love this incorporating an amusement park into our regular day. BARRY: I guess that's why they say we don't need vacations. (Barry parallel parks the car and together they fly over the graduating students) Boy, quite a bit of pomp... under the circumstances. (Barry and Adam sit down and put on their hats) : - Well, Adam, today we are men.
ADAM: - We are! BARRY= - Bee-men. =ADAM= - Amen! BARRY AND ADAM: Hallelujah! (Barry and Adam both have a happy spasm) ANNOUNCER: Students, faculty, distinguished bees, : please welcome Dean Buzzwell. DEAN BUZZWELL: Welcome, New Hive Oity graduating class of... : ...9: : That concludes our ceremonies. : And begins your career at Honex Industries! ADAM: Will we pick our job today? (Adam and Barry get into a tour bus) BARRY= I heard it's just orientation. (Tour buses rise out of the ground and the students are automatically loaded into the buses) TOUR GUIDE: Heads up! Here we go.
ANNOUNCER: Keep your hands and antennas inside the tram at all times. BARRY: - Wonder what it'll be like? ADAM: - A little scary. TOUR GUIDE== Welcome to Honex, a division of Honesco : and a part of the Hexagon Group. Barry: This is it! BARRY AND ADAM: Wow. BARRY: Wow. (The bus drives down a road an on either side are the Bee's massive complicated Honey-making machines) TOUR GUIDE: We know that you, as a bee, have worked your whole life : to get to the point where you can work for your whole life. : Honey begins when our valiant Pollen Jocks bring the nectar to the hive. : Our top-secret formula : is automatically color-corrected,
scent-adjusted and bubble-contoured : into this soothing sweet syrup : with its distinctive golden glow you know as... EVERYONE ON BUS: Honey! (The guide has been collecting honey into a bottle and she throws it into the crowd on the bus and it is caught by a girl in the back) ADAM: - That girl was hot. BARRY: - She's my cousin! ADAM== - She is? BARRY: - Yes, we're all cousins. ADAM: - Right. You're right. TOUR GUIDE: - At Honex, we constantly strive : to improve every aspect of bee existence. : These bees are stress-testing a new helmet technology. (The bus passes by a Bee wearing a helmet who is being smashed into the ground with fly-swatters, newspapers and boots. He lifts a thumbs up but you can hear him groan) : ADAM==

• What do you think he makes? BARRY:
• Not enough. TOUR GUIDE: Here we have our latest advancement, the Krelman. (They pass by a turning wheel with Bees standing on pegs, who are each wearing a finger-shaped hat) Barry:
• Wow, What does that do? TOUR GUIDE:
• Catches that little strand of honey : that hangs after you pour it. Saves us millions. ADAM: (Intrigued) Can anyone work on the Krelman? TOUR GUIDE: Of course. Most bee jobs are small ones. But bees know that every small job, if it's done well, means a lot. : But choose carefully : because you'll stay in the job you pick for the rest of your life. (Everyone claps except for Barry) BARRY: The same job the rest of your life? I didn't know that. ADAM:

What's the difference? TOUR GUIDE: You'll be happy to know that bees, as a species, haven't had one day off : in 27 million years. BARRY: (Upset) So you'll just work us to death? : We'll sure try. (Everyone on the bus laughs except Barry. Barry and Adam are walking back home together) ADAM: Wow! That blew my mind! BARRY: "What's the difference?" How can you say that? : One job forever? That's an insane choice to have to make. ADAM: I'm relieved. Now we only have to make one decision in life. BARRY: But, Adam, how could they never have told us that? ADAM: Why would you question anything? We're bees. : We're the most perfectly functioning society on Earth.
BARRY: You ever think maybe things work a little too well here? ADAM: Like what? Give me one example. (Barry and Adam stop walking and it is revealed to the audience that hundreds of cars are speeding by and narrowly missing them in perfect unison) BARRY: I don't know. But you know what I'm talking about. ANNOUNCER: Please clear the gate. Royal Nectar Force on approach. BARRY: Wait a second. Check it out. (The Pollen jocks fly in, circle around and landing in line) : - Hey, those are Pollen Jocks! ADAM: - Wow. : I've never seen them this close. BARRY: They know what it's like outside the hive. ADAM: Yeah, but some don't come back. GIRL BEES: - Hey, Jocks! - Hi, Jocks! (The Pollen Jocks hook up their backpacks to machines that pump the nectar to trucks, which drive away)
LOU LO DUVA: You guys did great! : You're monsters! You're sky freaks! I love it! (Punching the Pollen Jocks in joy) I love it! ADAM: - I wonder where they were. BARRY: - I don't know. : Their day's not planned. : Outside the hive, flying who knows where, doing who knows what. : You can't just decide to be a Pollen Jock. You have to be bred for that. ADAM== Right. (Barry and Adam are covered in some pollen that floated off of the Pollen Jocks) BARRY: Look at that. That's more pollen than you and I will see in a lifetime. ADAM: It's just a status symbol. Bees make too much of it. BARRY: Perhaps. Unless you're wearing it and the ladies see you wearing it. (Barry waves at 2 girls standing a little away from them)
ADAM== Those ladies? Aren't they our cousins too? BARRY: Distant. Distant. POLLEN JOCK #1: Look at these two. POLLEN JOCK #2: - Couple of Hive Harrys. POLLEN JOCK #1: - Let's have fun with them. GIRL BEE #1: It must be dangerous being a Pollen Jock. BARRY: Yeah. Once a bear pinned me against a mushroom! : He had a paw on my throat, and with the other, he was slapping me! (Slaps Adam with his hand to represent his scenario) GIRL BEE #2: - Oh, my! BARRY: - I never thought I'd knock him out. GIRL BEE #1: (Looking at Adam) What were you doing during this? ADAM: Obviously I was trying to alert the authorities. BARRY: I can autograph that.
(The pollen jocks walk up to Barry and Adam, they pretend that Barry and Adam really are pollen jocks.) POLLEN JOCK #1: A little gusty out there today, wasn't it, comrades? BARRY: Yeah. Gusty. POLLEN JOCK #1: We're hitting a sunflower patch six miles from here tomorrow. BARRY: - Six miles, huh? ADAM: - Barry! POLLEN JOCK #2: A puddle jump for us, but maybe you're not up for it. BARRY: - Maybe I am. ADAM: - You are not! POLLEN JOCK #1: We're going 0900 at J-Gate. : What do you think, buzzy-boy? Are you bee enough? BARRY: I might be. It all depends on what 0900 means. (The scene cuts to Barry looking out on the hive-city from his balcony at night) MARTIN:
Hey, Honex! BARRY: Dad, you surprised me. MARTIN: You decide what you're interested in? BARRY: - Well, there's a lot of choices. - But you only get one. : Do you ever get bored doing the same job every day? MARTIN: Son, let me tell you about stirring. : You grab that stick, and you just move it around, and you stir it around. : You get yourself into a rhythm. It's a beautiful thing. BARRY: You know, Dad, the more I think about it, : maybe the honey field just isn't right for me. MARTIN: You were thinking of what, making balloon animals? : That's a bad job for a guy with a stinger. :
Janet, your son's not sure he wants to go into honey! JANET: - Barry, you are so funny sometimes. BARRY: - I'm not trying to be funny. MARTIN: You're not funny! You're going into honey. Our son, the stirrer! JANET: - You're gonna be a stirrer? BARRY: - No one's listening to me! MARTIN: Wait till you see the sticks I have. BARRY: I could say anything right now. I'm gonna get an ant tattoo! (Barry's parents don't listen to him and continue to ramble on) MARTIN: Let's open some honey and celebrate! BARRY: Maybe I'll pierce my thorax. Shave my antennae. : Shack up with a grasshopper. Get a gold tooth and call everybody "dawg"! JANET: I'm so proud. (The scene cuts to Barry and Adam waiting in line to get a job) ADAM: - We're starting work today!
BARRY: - Today's the day. ADAM: Come on! All the good jobs will be gone. BARRY: Yeah, right. JOB LISTER: Pollen counting, stunt bee, pouring, stirrer, front desk, hair removal... BEE IN FRONT OF LINE: - Is it still available? JOB LISTER: - Hang on. Two left! : One of them's yours! Congratulations! Step to the side. ADAM: - What'd you get? BEE IN FRONT OF LINE: - Picking crud out. Stellar! (He walks away) ADAM: Wow! JOB LISTER: Couple of newbies? ADAM: Yes, sir! Our first day! We are ready! JOB LISTER: Make your choice. (Adam and Barry look up at the job board. There are hundreds of constantly changing panels that contain available or unavailable jobs. It looks very confusing)
ADAM: - You want to go first? BARRY: - No, you go. ADAM: Oh, my. What's available? JOB LISTER: Restroom attendant's open, not for the reason you think. ADAM: - Any chance of getting the Krelman? JOB LISTER: - Sure, you're on. (Puts the Krelman finger-hat on Adam's head) (Suddenly the sign for Krelman closes out) : I'm sorry, the Krelman just closed out. (Takes Adam's hat off) Wax monkey's always open. ADAM: The Krelman opened up again. : What happened? JOB LISTER: A bee died. Makes an opening. See? He's dead. Another dead one. : Deady. Deadified. Two more dead. : Dead from the neck up. Dead from the neck down. That's life!
ADAM: Oh, this is so hard! (Barry remembers what the Pollen Jock offered him and he flies off) Heating, cooling, stunt bee, pourer, stirrer, : humming, inspector number seven, lint coordinator, stripe supervisor, : mite wrangler. Barry, what do you think I should... Barry? (Adam turns around and sees Barry flying away) : Barry! POLLEN JOCK: All right, we've got the sunflower patch in quadrant nine... ADAM: (Through phone) What happened to you? Where are you? BARRY: - I'm going out. ADAM: - Out? Out where? BARRY: - Out there. ADAM: - Oh, no! BARRY: I have to, before I go to work for the rest of my life. ADAM:
You're gonna die! You're crazy! (Barry hangs up) Hello? POLLEN JOCK #2: Another call coming in. : If anyone's feeling brave, there's a Korean deli on 83rd : that gets their roses today. BARRY: Hey, guys. POLLEN JOCK #1 == - Look at that. POLLEN JOCK #2: - Isn't that the kid we saw yesterday? LOU LO DUVA: Hold it, son, flight deck's restricted. POLLEN JOCK #1: It's OK, Lou. We're gonna take him up. (Puts hand on Barry's shoulder) LOU LO DUVA: (To Barry) Really? Feeling lucky, are you? BEE WITH CLIPBOARD: (To Barry) Sign here, here. Just initial that. : - Thank you. LOU LO DUVA: - OK. : You got a rain advisory today, :
and as you all know, bees cannot fly in rain. : So be careful. As always, watch your brooms, : hockey sticks, dogs, birds, bears and bats. : Also, I got a couple of reports of root beer being poured on us. : Murphy's in a home because of it, babbling like a cicada! BARRY: - That's awful. LOU LO DUVA: (Still talking through megaphone) - And a reminder for you rookies, : bee law number one, absolutely no talking to humans! : All right, launch positions! POLLEN JOCKS: (The Pollen Jocks run into formation) : Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! LOU LU DUVA: Black and yellow! POLLEN JOCKS:
Hello! POLLEN JOCK #1: (To Barry)You ready for this, hot shot? BARRY: Yeah. Yeah, bring it on. POLLEN JOCK's: Wind, check. : - Antennae, check. - Nectar pack, check. : - Wings, check. - Stinger, check. BARRY: Scared out of my shorts, check. LOU LO DUVA: OK, ladies, : let's move it out! : Pound those petunias, you striped stem-suckers! : All of you, drain those flowers! (The pollen jocks fly out of the hive) BARRY: Wow! I'm out! : I can't believe I'm out! : So blue.
: I feel so fast and free! : Box kite! (Barry flies through the kite) : Wow! : Flowers! (A pollen jock puts on some high tech goggles that shows flowers similar to heat sink goggles.) POLLEN JOCK: This is Blue Leader. We have roses visual. : Bring it around 30 degrees and hold. : Roses! POLLEN JOCK #1: 30 degrees, roger. Bringing it around. : Stand to the side, kid. It's got a bit of a kick. (The pollen jock fires a high-tech gun at the flower, shooting tubes that suck up the nectar from the flower and collects it into a pouch on the gun) BARRY: That is one nectar collector! POLLEN JOCK #1== - Ever see pollination up close? BARRY: - No, sir. POLLEN JOCK #1:
(Barry and the Pollen jock fly over the field, the pollen jock sprinkles pollen as he goes) : I pick up some pollen here, sprinkle it over here. Maybe a dash over there, : a pinch on that one. See that? It's a little bit of magic. BARRY: That's amazing. Why do we do that? POLLEN JOCK #1: That's pollen power. More pollen, more flowers, more nectar, more honey for us. BARRY: Cool. POLLEN JOCK #1: I'm picking up a lot of bright yellow. could be daisies. Don't we need those? POLLEN JOCK #2: Copy that visual. : Wait. One of these flowers seems to be on the move. POLLEN JOCK #1: Say again? You're reporting a moving flower? POLLEN JOCK #2: Affirmative. (The Pollen jocks land near the "flowers" which, to the audience are obviously just tennis balls) KEN: (In the distance) That was on the line!
POLLEN JOCK #1: This is the coolest. What is it? POLLEN JOCK #2: I don't know, but I'm loving this color. : It smells good. Not like a flower, but I like it. POLLEN JOCK #1: Yeah, fuzzy. (Sticks his hand on the ball but it gets stuck) POLLEN JOCK #3== Chemical-y. (The pollen jock finally gets his hand free from the tennis ball) POLLEN JOCK #1: Careful, guys. It's a little grabby. (The pollen jocks turn around and see Barry lying his entire body on top of one of the tennis balls) POLLEN JOCK #2: My sweet lord of bees! POLLEN JOCK #3: Candy-brain, get off there! POLLEN JOCK #1: (Pointing upwards) Problem! (A human hand reaches down and grabs the tennis ball that Barry is stuck to) BARRY: - Guys! POLLEN JOCK #2: - This could be bad. POLLEN JOCK #3: Affirmative. (Vanessa Bloome starts bouncing the tennis ball, not knowing Barry is stick to it)
BARRY== Very close. : Gonna hurt. : Mama's little boy. (Barry is being hit back and forth by two humans playing tennis. He is still stuck to the ball) POLLEN JOCK #1: You are way out of position, rookie! KEN: Coming in at you like a MISSILE! (Barry flies past the pollen jocks, still stuck to the ball) BARRY: (In slow motion) Help me! POLLEN JOCK #2: I don't think these are flowers. POLLEN JOCK #3: - Should we tell him? POLLEN JOCK #1: - I think he knows. BARRY: What is this?! KEN: Match point! : You can start packing up, honey, because you're about to EAT IT! (A pollen jock coughs which confused Ken and he hits the ball the wrong way with Barry stuck to it and it goes flying into the city) BARRY:
Yowser! (Barry bounces around town and gets stuck in the engine of a car. He flies into the air conditioner and sees a bug that was frozen in there) BARRY: Ew, gross. (The man driving the car turns on the air conditioner which blows Barry into the car) GIRL IN CAR: There's a bee in the car! : - Do something! DAD DRIVING CAR: - I'm driving! BABY GIRL: (Waving at Barry) - Hi, bee. (Barry smiles and waves at the baby girl) GUY IN BACK OF CAR: - He's back here! : He's going to sting me! GIRL IN CAR: Nobody move. If you don't move, he won't sting you. Freeze! (Barry freezes as well, hovering in the middle of the car) : GRANDMA IN CAR== He blinked! (The grandma whips out some bee-spray and sprays everywhere in the car, climbing into the front seat, still trying to spray Barry) GIRL IN CAR: Spray him, Granny! DAD DRIVING THE CAR: What are you doing?! (Barry escapes the car through the air conditioner and is flying high above
the ground, safe.) BARRY: Wow... the tension level out here is unbelievable. (Barry sees that storm clouds are gathering and he can see rain clouds moving into this direction) : I gotta get home. : Can't fly in rain. : Can't fly in rain. (A rain drop hits Barry and one of his wings is damaged) : Can't fly in rain. (A second rain drop hits Barry again and he spirals downwards) Mayday! Mayday! Bee going down! (WW2 plane sound effects are played as he plummets, and he crash-lands on a plant inside an apartment near the window) VANESSA BLOOME: Ken, could you close the window please? KEN== Hey, check out my new resume. I made it into a fold-out brochure. : You see? (Folds brochure resume out) Folds out. (Ken closes the window, trapping Barry inside) BARRY: Oh, no. More humans. I don't need this. (Barry tries to fly away but smashes into the window and falls again) : What was that?
(Barry keeps trying to fly out the window but he keeps being knocked back because the window is closed) Maybe this time. This time. This time. This time! This time! This... : Drapes! (Barry taps the glass. He doesn't understand what it is) That is diabolical. KEN: It's fantastic. It's got all my special skills, even my top-ten favorite movies. ANDY: What's number one? Star Wars? KEN: Nah, I don't go for that... (Ken makes finger guns and makes "pew pew pew" sounds and then stops) : ...kind of stuff. BARRY: No wonder we shouldn't talk to them. They're out of their minds. KEN: When I leave a job interview, they're flabbergasted, can't believe what I say. BARRY: (Looking at the light on the ceiling) There's the sun. Maybe that's a way out. (Starts flying towards the lightbulb) : I don't remember the sun having a big 75 on it. (Barry hits the lightbulb and falls into the dip on the table that the humans are sitting at) KEN:
I predicted global warming. : I could feel it getting hotter. At first I thought it was just me. (Andy dips a chip into the bowl and scoops up some dip with Barry on it and is about to put it in his mouth) : Wait! Stop! Bee! (Andy drops the chip with Barry in fear and backs away. All the humans freak out) : Stand back. These are winter boots. (Ken has winter boots on his hands and he is about to smash the bee but Vanessa saves him last second) VANESSA: Wait! : Don't kill him! (Vanessa puts Barry in a glass to protect him) KEN: You know I'm allergic to them! This thing could kill me! VANESSA: Why does his life have less value than yours? KEN: Why does his life have any less value than mine? Is that your statement? VANESSA: I'm just saying all life has value. You don't know what he's capable of feeling. (Vanessa picks up Ken's brochure and puts it under the glass so she can carry Barry back to the window. Barry looks at Vanessa in amazement) KEN:
My brochure! VANESSA: There you go, little guy. (Vanessa opens the window and lets Barry out but Barry stays back and is still shocked that a human saved his life) KEN: I'm not scared of him. It's an allergic thing. VANESSA: Put that on your resume brochure. KEN: My whole face could puff up. ANDY: Make it one of your special skills. KEN: Knocking someone out is also a special skill. (Ken walks to the door) Right. Bye, Vanessa. Thanks. : - Vanessa, next week? Yogurt night? VANESSA: - Sure, Ken. You know, whatever. : (Vanessa tries to close door) KEN== - You could put carob chips on there. VANESSA: - Bye. (Closes door but Ken opens it again) KEN: - Supposed to be less calories.
VANESSA: - Bye. (Closes door) (Fast forward to the next day, Barry is still inside the house. He flies into the kitchen where Vanessa is doing dishes) BARRY== (Talking to himself) I gotta say something. : She saved my life. I gotta say something. : All right, here it goes. (Turns back) Nah. : What would I say? : I could really get in trouble. : It's a bee law. You're not supposed to talk to a human. : I can't believe I'm doing this. : I've got to. (Barry disguises himself as a character on a food can as Vanessa walks by again) : Oh, I can't do it. Come on! : No. Yes. No. : Do it. I can't.
: How should I start it? (Barry strikes a pose and wiggles his eyebrows) "You like jazz?" No, that's no good. (Vanessa is about to walk past Barry) Here she comes! Speak, you fool! : ...Hi! (Vanessa gasps and drops the dishes in fright and notices Barry on the counter) : I'm sorry. VANESSA: - You're talking. BARRY: - Yes, I know. VANESSA: (Pointing at Barry) You're talking! BARRY: I'm so sorry. VANESSA: No, it's OK. It's fine. I know I'm dreaming. : But I don't recall going to bed. BARRY: Well, I'm sure this is very disconcerting. VANESSA: This is a bit of a surprise to me. I mean, you're a bee!
BARRY: I am. And I'm not supposed to be doing this, (Pointing to the living room where Ken tried to kill him last night) but they were all trying to kill me. : And if it wasn't for you... : I had to thank you. It's just how I was raised. (Vanessa stabs her hand with a fork to test whether she's dreaming or not) : That was a little weird. VANESSA: - I'm talking with a bee. BARRY: - Yeah. VANESSA: I'm talking to a bee. And the bee is talking to me! BARRY: I just want to say I'm grateful. I'll leave now. (Barry turns to leave) VANESSA: - Wait! How did you learn to do that? BARRY: (Flying back) - What? VANESSA: The talking...thing. BARRY:
Same way you did, I guess. "Mama, Dada, honey." You pick it up. VANESSA: - That's very funny. BARRY: - Yeah. : Bees are funny. If we didn't laugh, we'd cry with what we have to deal with. : Anyway... VANESSA: Can I... : ...get you something? BARRY: - Like what? VANESSA: I don't know. I mean... I don't know. Coffee? BARRY: I don't want to put you out. VANESSA: It's no trouble. It takes two minutes. : - It's just coffee. BARRY: - I hate to impose. (Vanessa starts making coffee) VANESSA: - Don't be ridiculous!
BARRY: - Actually, I would love a cup. VANESSA: Hey, you want rum cake? BARRY: - I shouldn't. VANESSA: - Have some. BARRY: - No, I can't. VANESSA: - Come on! BARRY: I'm trying to lose a couple micrograms. VANESSA: - Where? BARRY: - These stripes don't help. VANESSA: You look great! BARRY: I don't know if you know anything about fashion. : Are you all right? VANESSA: (Pouring coffee on the floor and missing the cup completely) No. (Flash forward in time. Barry and Vanessa are sitting together at a table on top of the apartment building drinking coffee)
: BARRY== He's making the tie in the cab as they're flying up Madison. : He finally gets there. : He runs up the steps into the church. The wedding is on. : And he says, "Watermelon? I thought you said Guatemalan. : Why would I marry a watermelon?" (Barry laughs but Vanessa looks confused) VANESSA: Is that a bee joke? BARRY: That's the kind of stuff we do. VANESSA: Yeah, different. : So, what are you gonna do, Barry? (Barry stands on top of a sugar cube floating in his coffee and paddles it around with a straw like it's a gondola) BARRY: About work? I don't know. : I want to do my part for the hive, but I can't do it the way they want. VANESSA: I know how you feel.
BARRY: - You do? VANESSA: - Sure. : My parents wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor, but I wanted to be a florist. BARRY: - Really? VANESSA: - My only interest is flowers. BARRY: Our new queen was just elected with that same campaign slogan. : Anyway, if you look... (Barry points to a tree in the middle of Central Park) : There's my hive right there. See it? VANESSA: You're in Sheep Meadow! BARRY: Yes! I'm right off the Turtle Pond! VANESSA: No way! I know that area. I lost a toe ring there once. BARRY: - Why do girls put rings on their toes? VANESSA: - Why not? BARRY:

• It's like putting a hat on your knee. VANESSA:
• Maybe I'll try that. (A custodian installing a lightbulb looks over at them but to his perspective it looks like Vanessa is talking to a cup of coffee on the table) CUSTODIAN:
• You all right, ma'am? VANESSA:
• Oh, yeah. Fine. : Just having two cups of coffee! BARRY: Anyway, this has been great. Thanks for the coffee. VANESSA== Yeah, it's no trouble. BARRY: Sorry I couldn't finish it. If I did, I'd be up the rest of my life. (Barry points towards the rum cake) : Can I take a piece of this with me? VANESSA: Sure! Here, have a crumb. (Vanessa hands Barry a crumb but it is still pretty big for Barry) BARRY:
• Thanks! VANESSA:
• Yeah. BARRY: All right. Well, then... I guess I'll see you around.
  : Or not. VANESSA: OK, Barry... BARRY: And thank you so much again... for before. VANESSA: Oh, that? That was nothing. BARRY: Well, not nothing, but... Anyway... (Vanessa and Barry hold hands, but Vanessa has to hold out a finger because her hands is to big and Barry holds that) (The custodian looks over again and it appears Vanessa is laughing at her coffee again. The lightbulb that he was screwing in sparks and he falls off the ladder) (Fast forward in time and we see two Bee Scientists testing out a parachute in a Honex wind tunnel) BEE SCIENTIST #1: This can't possibly work. BEE SCIENTIST #2: He's all set to go. We may as well try it. : OK, Dave, pull the chute. (Dave pulls the chute and the wind slams him against the wall and he falls on his face.The camera pans over and we see Barry and Adam walking together) ADAM:
  
• Sounds amazing. BARRY:
  
• It was amazing! : It was the scariest, happiest moment of my life.
  

ADAM: Humans! I can't believe you were with humans! : Giant, scary humans! What were they like? BARRY: Huge and crazy. They talk crazy. : They eat crazy giant things. They drive crazy. ADAM: - Do they try and kill you, like on TV? BARRY: - Some of them. But some of them don't. ADAM: - How'd you get back? BARRY: - Poodle. ADAM: You did it, and I'm glad. You saw whatever you wanted to see. : You had your "experience." Now you can pick out your job and be normal. BARRY: - Well... ADAM: - Well? BARRY: Well, I met someone.
ADAM: You did? Was she Bee-ish? : - A wasp?! Your parents will kill you! BARRY: - No, no, no, not a wasp. ADAM: - Spider? BARRY: - I'm not attracted to spiders. : I know, for everyone else, it's the hottest thing, with the eight legs and all. : I can't get by that face. ADAM: So who is she? BARRY: She's... human. ADAM: No, no. That's a bee law. You wouldn't break a bee law. BARRY: - Her name's Vanessa. (Adam puts his head in his hands) ADAM: - Oh, boy. BARRY== She's so nice. And she's a florist! ADAM: Oh, no! You're dating a human florist!
BARRY: We're not dating. ADAM: You're flying outside the hive, talking to humans that attack our homes : with power washers and M-80s! That's one-eighth a stick of dynamite! BARRY: She saved my life! And she understands me. ADAM: This is over! BARRY: Eat this. (Barry gives Adam a piece of the crumb that he got from Vanessa. Adam eats it) ADAM: (Adam's tone changes) This is not over! What was that? BARRY: - They call it a crumb. ADAM: - It was so stingin' stripey! BARRY: And that's not what they eat. That's what falls off what they eat! : - You know what a Cinnabon is? ADAM: - No. (Adam opens a door behind him and he pulls Barry in)
BARRY: It's bread and cinnamon and frosting. ADAM: Be quiet! BARRY: They heat it up... ADAM: Sit down! (Adam forces Barry to sit down) BARRY: (Still rambling about Cinnabons) ...really hot! (Adam grabs Barry by the shoulders) ADAM: - Listen to me! : We are not them! We're us. There's us and there's them! BARRY== Yes, but who can deny the heart that is yearning? ADAM: There's no yearning. Stop yearning. Listen to me! : You have got to start thinking bee, my friend. Thinking bee! BARRY: - Thinking bee. WORKER BEE: - Thinking bee. WORKER BEES AND ADAM: Thinking bee! Thinking bee!
Thinking bee! Thinking bee! (Flash forward in time; Barry is laying on a raft in a pool full of honey. He is wearing sunglasses) JANET: There he is. He's in the pool. MARTIN: You know what your problem is, Barry? (Barry pulls down his sunglasses and he looks annoyed) BARRY: (Sarcastic) I gotta start thinking bee? JANET: How much longer will this go on? MARTIN: It's been three days! Why aren't you working? (Puts sunglasses back on) BARRY: I've got a lot of big life decisions to think about. MARTIN: What life? You have no life! You have no job. You're barely a bee! JANET: Would it kill you to make a little honey? (Barry rolls off the raft and sinks into the honey pool) : Barry, come out. Your father's talking to you. : Martin, would you talk to him? MARTIN:
Barry, I'm talking to you! (Barry keeps sinking into the honey until he is suddenly in Central Park having a picnic with Vanessa) (Barry has a cup of honey and he clinks his glass with Vanessas. Suddenly a mosquito lands on Vanessa and she slaps it, killing it. They both gasp but then burst out laughing) VANESSA: You coming? (The camera pans over and Vanessa is climbing into a small yellow airplane) BARRY: Got everything? VANESSA: All set! BARRY: Go ahead. I'll catch up. (Vanessa lifts off and flies ahead) VANESSA: Don't be too long. (Barry catches up with Vanessa and he sticks out his arms like ana irplane. He rolls from side to side, and Vanessa copies him with the airplane) VANESSA: Watch this! (Barry stays back and watches as Vanessa draws a heart in the air using pink smoke from the plane, but on the last loop-the-loop she suddenly crashes into a mountain and the plane explodes. The destroyed plane falls into some rocks and explodes a second time) BARRY: Vanessa! (As Barry is yelling his mouth fills with honey and he wakes up, discovering that he was just day dreaming. He slowly sinks back into the honey pool) MARTIN: - We're still here.
JANET: - I told you not to yell at him. : He doesn't respond to yelling! MARTIN: - Then why yell at me? JANET: - Because you don't listen! MARTIN: I'm not listening to this. BARRY: Sorry, I've gotta go. MARTIN: - Where are you going? BARRY: - I'm meeting a friend. JANET: A girl? Is this why you can't decide? BARRY: Bye. (Barry flies out the door and Martin shakes his head) : JANET== I just hope she's Bee-ish. (Fast forward in time and Barry is sitting on Vanessa's shoulder and she is closing up her shop) BARRY: They have a huge parade of flowers every year in Pasadena? VANESSA: To be in the Tournament of Roses, that's every florist's dream!
: Up on a float, surrounded by flowers, crowds cheering. BARRY: A tournament. Do the roses compete in athletic events? VANESSA: No. All right, I've got one. How come you don't fly everywhere? BARRY: It's exhausting. Why don't you run everywhere? It's faster. VANESSA: Yeah, OK, I see, I see. All right, your turn. BARRY: TiVo. You can just freeze live TV? That's insane! VANESSA: You don't have that? BARRY: We have Hivo, but it's a disease. It's a horrible, horrible disease. VANESSA: Oh, my. (A human walks by and Barry narrowly avoids him) PASSERBY: Dumb bees! VANESSA: You must want to sting all those jerks. BARRY: We try not to sting.
It's usually fatal for us. VANESSA: So you have to watch your temper (They walk into a store) BARRY: Very carefully. You kick a wall, take a walk, : write an angry letter and throw it out. Work through it like any emotion: : Anger, jealousy, lust. (Suddenly an employee(Hector) hits Barry off of Vanessa's shoulder. Hector thinks he's saving Vanessa) VANESSA: (To Barry) Oh, my goodness! Are you OK? (Barry is getting up off the floor) BARRY: Yeah. VANESSA: (To Hector) - What is wrong with you?! HECTOR: (Confused) - It's a bug. VANESSA: He's not bothering anybody. Get out of here, you creep! (Vanessa hits Hector across the face with the magazine he had and then hits him in the head. Hector backs away covering his head) Barry: What was that? A Pic 'N' Save circular? (Vanessa sets Barry back on her shoulder)
VANESSA: Yeah, it was. How did you know? BARRY: It felt like about 10 pages. Seventy-five is pretty much our limit. VANESSA: You've really got that down to a science. BARRY: - Oh, we have to. I lost a cousin to Italian Vogue. VANESSA: - I'll bet. (Barry looks to his right and notices there is honey for sale in the aisle) BARRY: What in the name of Mighty Hercules is this? (Barry looks at all the brands of honey, shocked) How did this get here? Cute Bee, Golden Blossom, : Ray Liotta Private Select? (Barry puts his hands up and slowly turns around, a look of disgust on his face) VANESSA: - Is he that actor? BARRY: - I never heard of him. : - Why is this here? VANESSA: - For people. We eat it. BARRY:
You don't have enough food of your own?! (Hector looks back and notices that Vanessa is talking to Barry) VANESSA: - Well, yes. BARRY: - How do you get it? VANESSA: - Bees make it. BARRY: - I know who makes it! : And it's hard to make it! : There's heating, cooling, stirring. You need a whole Krelman thing! VANESSA: - It's organic. BARRY: - It's our-ganic! VANESSA: It's just honey, Barry. BARRY: Just what?! : Bees don't know about this! This is stealing! A lot of stealing! : You've taken our homes, schools, hospitals! This is all we have! :
And it's on sale?! I'm getting to the bottom of this. : I'm getting to the bottom of all of this! (Flash forward in time; Barry paints his face with black strikes like a soldier and sneaks into the storage section of the store) (Two men, including Hector, are loading boxes into some trucks) : SUPERMARKET EMPLOYEE== Hey, Hector. : - You almost done? HECTOR: - Almost. (Barry takes a step to peak around the corner) (Whispering) He is here. I sense it. : Well, I guess I'll go home now (Hector pretends to walk away by walking in place and speaking loudly) : and just leave this nice honey out, with no one around. BARRY: You're busted, box boy! HECTOR: I knew I heard something! So you can talk! BARRY: I can talk. And now you'll start talking! : Where you getting the sweet stuff?
Who's your supplier? HECTOR: I don't understand. I thought we were friends. : The last thing we want to do is upset bees! (Hector takes a thumbtack out of the board behind him and sword-fights Barry. Barry is using his stinger like a sword) : You're too late! It's ours now! BARRY: You, sir, have crossed the wrong sword! HECTOR: You, sir, will be lunch for my iguana, Ignacio! (Barry hits the thumbtack out of Hectors hand and Hector surrenders) Barry: Where is the honey coming from? : Tell me where! HECTOR: (Pointing to leaving truck) Honey Farms! It comes from Honey Farms! (Barry chases after the truck but it is getting away. He flies onto a bicyclists' backpack and he catches up to the truck) CAR DRIVER: (To bicyclist) Crazy person! (Barry flies off and lands on the windshield of the Honey farms truck. Barry looks around and sees dead bugs splattered everywhere) BARRY: What horrible thing has happened here?
: These faces, they never knew what hit them. And now : they're on the road to nowhere! (Barry hears a sudden whisper) (Barry looks up and sees Mooseblood, a mosquito playing dead) MOOSEBLOOD: Just keep still. BARRY: What? You're not dead? MOOSEBLOOD: Do I look dead? They will wipe anything that moves. Where you headed? BARRY: To Honey Farms. I am onto something huge here. MOOSEBLOOD: I'm going to Alaska. Moose blood, crazy stuff. Blows your head off! ANOTHER BUG PLAYING DEAD: I'm going to Tacoma. (Barry looks at another bug) BARRY: - And you? MOOSEBLOOD: - He really is dead. BARRY: All right. (Another bug hits the windshield and the drivers notice. They activate the windshield wipers) MOOSEBLOOD== Uh-oh! (The windshield wipers are slowly sliding over the dead bugs and wiping
them off) BARRY: - What is that?! MOOSEBLOOD: - Oh, no! : - A wiper! Triple blade! BARRY: - Triple blade? MOOSEBLOOD: Jump on! It's your only chance, bee! (Mooseblood and Barry grab onto the wiper and they hold on as it wipes the windshield) Why does everything have to be so doggone clean?! : How much do you people need to see?! (Bangs on windshield) : Open your eyes! Stick your head out the window! RADIO IN TRUCK: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Carl Kasell. MOOSEBLOOD: But don't kill no more bugs! (Mooseblood and Barry are washed off by the wipr fluid) MOOSEBLOOD: - Bee! BARRY: - Moose blood guy!! (Barry starts screaming as he hangs onto the antenna) (Suddenly it is revealed that a water bug is also hanging on the antenna.
There is a pause and then Barry and the water bug both start screaming) TRUCK DRIVER: - You hear something? GUY IN TRUCK: - Like what? TRUCK DRIVER: Like tiny screaming. GUY IN TRUCK: Turn off the radio. (The antenna starts to lower until it gets to low and sinks into the truck. The water bug flies off and Barry is forced to let go and he is blown away. He luckily lands inside a horn on top of the truck where he finds Mooseblood, who was blown into the same place) MOOSEBLOOD: Whassup, bee boy? BARRY: Hey, Blood. (Fast forward in time and we see that Barry is deep in conversation with Mooseblood. They have been sitting in this truck for a while) BARRY: ...Just a row of honey jars, as far as the eye could see. MOOSEBLOOD: Wow! BARRY: I assume wherever this truck goes is where they're getting it. : I mean, that honey's ours. MOOSEBLOOD: - Bees hang tight. BARRY:

• We're all jammed in. : It's a close community. MOOSEBLOOD: Not us, man. We on our own. Every mosquito on his own. BARRY:
• What if you get in trouble? MOOSEBLOOD:
• You a mosquito, you in trouble. : Nobody likes us. They just smack. See a mosquito, smack, smack! BARRY: At least you're out in the world. You must meet girls. MOOSEBLOOD: Mosquito girls try to trade up, get with a moth, dragonfly. : Mosquito girl don't want no mosquito. (An ambulance passes by and it has a blood donation sign on it) You got to be kidding me! : Mooseblood's about to leave the building! So long, bee! (Mooseblood leaves and flies onto the window of the ambulance where there are other mosquito's hanging out) :
• Hey, guys! OTHER MOSQUITO:
• Mooseblood!

MOOSEBLOOD: I knew I'd catch y'all down here. Did you bring your crazy straw? (The truck goes out of view and Barry notices that the truck he's on is pulling into a camp of some sort) TRUCK DRIVER: We throw it in jars, slap a label on it, and it's pretty much pure profit. (Barry flies out) BARRY: What is this place? BEEKEEPER 1#: A bee's got a brain the size of a pinhead. BEEKEEPER #2: They are pinheads! : Pinhead. : - Check out the new smoker. BEEKEEPER #1: - Oh, sweet. That's the one you want. : The Thomas 3000! BARRY: Smoker? BEEKEEPER #1: Ninety puffs a minute, semi-automatic. Twice the nicotine, all the tar. : A couple breaths of this knocks them right out.
BEEKEEPER #2: They make the honey, and we make the money. BARRY: "They make the honey, and we make the money"? (The Beekeeper sprays hundreds of cheap miniature apartments with the smoker. The bees are fainting or passing out) Oh, my! : What's going on? Are you OK? (Barry flies into one of the apartment and helps a Bee couple get off the ground. They are coughing and its hard for them to stand) BEE IN APARTMENT: Yeah. It doesn't last too long. BARRY: Do you know you're in a fake hive with fake walls? BEE IN APPARTMENT: Our queen was moved here. We had no choice. (The apartment room is completely empty except for a photo on the wall of the "queen" who is obviously a man in women's clothes) BARRY: This is your queen? That's a man in women's clothes! : That's a drag queen! : What is this? (Barry flies out and he discovers that there are hundreds of these structures, each housing thousands of Bees) Oh, no! : There's hundreds of them! (Barry takes out his camera and takes pictures of these Bee work camps. The beekeepers look very evil in these depictions)
Bee honey. : Our honey is being brazenly stolen on a massive scale! : This is worse than anything bears have done! I intend to do something. (Flash forward in time and Barry is showing these pictures to his parents) JANET: Oh, Barry, stop. MARTIN: Who told you humans are taking our honey? That's a rumor. BARRY: Do these look like rumors? (Holds up the pictures) UNCLE CARL: That's a conspiracy theory. These are obviously doctored photos. JANET: How did you get mixed up in this? ADAM: He's been talking to humans. JANET: - What? MARTIN: - Talking to humans?! ADAM: He has a human girlfriend. And they make out! JANET: Make out? Barry!
BARRY: We do not. ADAM: - You wish you could. MARTIN: - Whose side are you on? BARRY: The bees! UNCLE CARL: (He has been sitting in the back of the room this entire time) I dated a cricket once in San Antonio. Those crazy legs kept me up all night. JANET: Barry, this is what you want to do with your life? BARRY: I want to do it for all our lives. Nobody works harder than bees! : Dad, I remember you coming home so overworked : your hands were still stirring. You couldn't stop. JANET: I remember that. BARRY: What right do they have to our honey? : We live on two cups a year. They put it in lip balm for no reason whatsoever!
ADAM: Even if it's true, what can one bee do? BARRY: Sting them where it really hurts. MARTIN: In the face! The eye! : - That would hurt. BARRY: - No. MARTIN: Up the nose? That's a killer. BARRY: There's only one place you can sting the humans, one place where it matters. (Flash forward a bit in time and we are watching the Bee News) BEE NEWS NARRATOR: Hive at Five, the hive's only full-hour action news source. BEE PROTESTOR: No more bee beards! BEE NEWS NARRATOR: With Bob Bumble at the anchor desk. : Weather with Storm Stinger. : Sports with Buzz Larvi. : And Jeanette Chung. BOB BUMBLE: - Good evening. I'm Bob Bumble. JEANETTE CHUNG:

• And I'm Jeanette Chung. BOB BUMBLE: A tri-county bee, Barry Benson, : intends to sue the human race for stealing our honey, : packaging it and profiting from it illegally! JEANETTE CHUNG: Tomorrow night on Bee Larry King, : we'll have three former queens here in our studio, discussing their new book, : Classy Ladies, out this week on Hexagon. (The scene changes to an interview on the news with Bee version of Larry King and Barry) BEE LARRY KING: Tonight we're talking to Barry Benson. : Did you ever think, "I'm a kid from the hive. I can't do this"? BARRY: Bees have never been afraid to change the world. : What about Bee Columbus? Bee Gandhi? Bejesus? BEE LARRY KING: Where I'm from, we'd never sue humans.
  : We were thinking of stickball or candy stores. BARRY: How old are you? BEE LARRY KING: The bee community is supporting you in this case, : which will be the trial of the bee century. BARRY: You know, they have a Larry King in the human world too. BEE LARRY KING: It's a common name. Next week... BARRY: He looks like you and has a show and suspenders and colored dots... BEE LARRY KING: Next week... BARRY: Glasses, quotes on the bottom from the guest even though you just heard 'em. BEE LARRY KING: Bear Week next week! They're scary, hairy and here, live. (Bee Larry King gets annoyed and flies away offscreen) BARRY: Always leans forward, pointy shoulders, squinty eyes, very Jewish. (Flash forward in time. We see Vanessa enter and Ken enters behind her. They are arguing)
  

KEN: In tennis, you attack at the point of weakness! VANESSA: It was my grandmother, Ken. She's 81. KEN== Honey, her backhand's a joke! I'm not gonna take advantage of that? BARRY: (To Ken) Quiet, please. Actual work going on here. KEN: (Pointing at Barry) - Is that that same bee? VANESSA: - Yes, it is! : I'm helping him sue the human race. BARRY: - Hello. KEN: - Hello, bee. VANESSA: This is Ken. BARRY: (Recalling the "Winter Boots" incident earlier) Yeah, I remember you. Timberland, size ten and a half. Vibram sole, I believe. KEN: (To Vanessa) Why does he talk again? VANESSA:
Listen, you better go 'cause we're really busy working. KEN: But it's our yogurt night! VANESSA: (Holding door open for Ken) Bye-bye. KEN: (Yelling) Why is yogurt night so difficult?! (Ken leaves and Vanessa walks over to Barry. His workplace is a mess) VANESSA: You poor thing. You two have been at this for hours! BARRY: Yes, and Adam here has been a huge help. ADAM: - Frosting... - How many sugars? ==BARRY== Just one. I try not to use the competition. : So why are you helping me? VANESSA: Bees have good qualities. : And it takes my mind off the shop. : Instead of flowers, people are giving balloon bouquets now. BARRY:
Those are great, if you're three. VANESSA: And artificial flowers. BARRY: - Oh, those just get me psychotic! VANESSA: - Yeah, me too. : BARRY: Bent stingers, pointless pollination. ADAM: Bees must hate those fake things! : Nothing worse than a daffodil that's had work done. : Maybe this could make up for it a little bit. VANESSA: - This lawsuit's a pretty big deal. BARRY: - I guess. ADAM: You sure you want to go through with it? BARRY: Am I sure? When I'm done with the humans, they won't be able : to say, "Honey, I'm home," without paying a royalty! (Flash forward in time and we are watching the human news. The camera shows
a crowd outside a courthouse) NEWS REPORTER: It's an incredible scene here in downtown Manhattan, : where the world anxiously waits, because for the first time in history, : we will hear for ourselves if a honeybee can actually speak. (We are no longer watching through a news camera) ADAM: What have we gotten into here, Barry? BARRY: It's pretty big, isn't it? ADAM== (Looking at the hundreds of people around the courthouse) I can't believe how many humans don't work during the day. BARRY: You think billion-dollar multinational food companies have good lawyers? SECURITY GUARD: Everybody needs to stay behind the barricade. (A limousine drives up and a fat man,Layton Montgomery, a honey industry owner gets out and walks past Barry) ADAM: - What's the matter? BARRY: - I don't know, I just got a chill. (Fast forward in time and everyone is in the court) MONTGOMERY: Well, if it isn't the bee team.
(To Honey Industry lawyers) You boys work on this? MAN: All rise! The Honorable Judge Bumbleton presiding. JUDGE BUMBLETON: All right. Case number 4475, : Superior Court of New York, Barry Bee Benson v. the Honey Industry : is now in session. : Mr. Montgomery, you're representing the five food companies collectively? MONTGOMERY: A privilege. JUDGE BUMBLETON: Mr. Benson... you're representing all the bees of the world? (Everyone looks closely, they are waiting to see if a Bee can really talk) (Barry makes several buzzing sounds to sound like a Bee) BARRY: I'm kidding. Yes, Your Honor, we're ready to proceed. JUDGE BUMBLBETON: Mr. Montgomery, your opening statement, please. MONTGOMERY: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, : my grandmother was a simple woman. :
Born on a farm, she believed it was man's divine right : to benefit from the bounty of nature God put before us. : If we lived in the topsy-turvy world Mr. Benson imagines, : just think of what would it mean. : I would have to negotiate with the silkworm : for the elastic in my britches! : Talking bee! (Montgomery walks over and looks closely at Barry) : How do we know this isn't some sort of : holographic motion-picture-capture Hollywood wizardry? : They could be using laser beams! : Robotics! Ventriloquism! Cloning! For all we know, : he could be on steroids! JUDGE BUMBLETON: Mr. Benson?
BARRY: Ladies and gentlemen, there's no trickery here. : I'm just an ordinary bee. Honey's pretty important to me. : It's important to all bees. We invented it! : We make it. And we protect it with our lives. : Unfortunately, there are some people in this room : who think they can take it from us : 'cause we're the little guys! I'm hoping that, after this is all over, : you'll see how, by taking our honey, you not only take everything we have : but everything we are! JANET== (To Martin) I wish he'd dress like that all the time. So nice! JUDGE BUMBLETON: Call your first witness. BARRY: So, Mr. Klauss Vanderhayden
of Honey Farms, big company you have. KLAUSS VANDERHAYDEN: I suppose so. BARRY: I see you also own Honeyburton and Honron! KLAUSS: Yes, they provide beekeepers for our farms. BARRY: Beekeeper. I find that to be a very disturbing term. : I don't imagine you employ any bee-free-ers, do you? KLAUSS: (Quietly) - No. BARRY: - I couldn't hear you. KLAUSS: - No. BARRY: - No. : Because you don't free bees. You keep bees. Not only that, : it seems you thought a bear would be an appropriate image for a jar of honey. KLAUSS: They're very lovable creatures.
: Yogi Bear, Fozzie Bear, Build-A-Bear. BARRY: You mean like this? (The bear from Over The Hedge barges in through the back door and it is roaring and standing on its hind legs. It is thrashing its claws and people are screaming. It is being held back by a guard who has the bear on a chain) : (Pointing to the roaring bear) Bears kill bees! : How'd you like his head crashing through your living room?! : Biting into your couch! Spitting out your throw pillows! JUDGE BUMBLETON: OK, that's enough. Take him away. (The bear stops roaring and thrashing and walks out) BARRY: So, Mr. Sting, thank you for being here. Your name intrigues me. : - Where have I heard it before? MR. STING: - I was with a band called The Police. BARRY: But you've never been a police officer, have you? STING: No, I haven't. BARRY:
No, you haven't. And so here we have yet another example : of bee culture casually stolen by a human : for nothing more than a prance-about stage name. STING: Oh, please. BARRY: Have you ever been stung, Mr. Sting? : Because I'm feeling a little stung, Sting. : Or should I say... Mr. Gordon M. Sumner! MONTGOMERY: That's not his real name?! You idiots! BARRY: Mr. Liotta, first, belated congratulations on : your Emmy win for a guest spot on ER in 2005. RAY LIOTTA: Thank you. Thank you. BARRY: I see from your resume that you're devilishly handsome : with a churning inner turmoil
that's ready to blow. RAY LIOTTA: I enjoy what I do. Is that a crime? BARRY: Not yet it isn't. But is this what it's come to for you? : Exploiting tiny, helpless bees so you don't : have to rehearse your part and learn your lines, sir? RAY LIOTTA: Watch it, Benson! I could blow right now! BARRY: This isn't a goodfella. This is a badfella! (Ray Liotta looses it and tries to grab Barry) RAY LIOTTA: Why doesn't someone just step on this creep, and we can all go home?! JUDGE BUMBLETON: - Order in this court! RAY LIOTTA: - You're all thinking it! (Judge Bumbleton starts banging her gavel) JUDGE BUMBLETON: Order! Order, I say! RAY LIOTTA: - Say it! MAN:

• Mr. Liotta, please sit down! (We see a montage of magazines which feature the court case) (Flash forward in time and Barry is back home with Vanessa) BARRY: I think it was awfully nice of that bear to pitch in like that. VANESSA: I think the jury's on our side. BARRY: Are we doing everything right,you know, legally? VANESSA: I'm a florist. BARRY: Right. Well, here's to a great team. VANESSA: To a great team! (Ken walks in from work. He sees Barry and he looks upset when he sees Barry clinking his glass with Vanessa) KEN: Well, hello. VANESSA:
• Oh, Ken! BARRY:
• Hello! VANESSA: I didn't think you were coming. : No, I was just late. I tried to call, but... (Ken holds up his phone and flips it open. The phone has no charge) ...the battery... VANESSA:

I didn't want all this to go to waste, so I called Barry. Luckily, he was free. KEN: Oh, that was lucky. (Ken sits down at the table across from Barry and Vanessa leaves the room) VANESSA: There's a little left. I could heat it up. KEN: (Not taking his eyes off Barry) Yeah, heat it up, sure, whatever. BARRY: So I hear you're quite a tennis player. : I'm not much for the game myself. The ball's a little grabby. KEN: That's where I usually sit. Right... (Points to where Barry is sitting) there. VANESSA: (Calling from other room) Ken, Barry was looking at your resume, : and he agreed with me that eating with chopsticks isn't really a special skill. KEN: (To Barry) You think I don't see what you're doing? BARRY: I know how hard it is to find the right job. We have that in common.
KEN: Do we? BARRY: Bees have 100 percent employment, but we do jobs like taking the crud out. KEN: (Menacingly) That's just what I was thinking about doing. (Ken reaches for a fork on the table but knocks if on the floor. He goes to pick it up) VANESSA: Ken, I let Barry borrow your razor for his fuzz. I hope that was all right. (Ken quickly rises back up after hearing this but hits his head on the table and yells) BARRY: I'm going to drain the old stinger. KEN: Yeah, you do that. (Barry flies past Ken to get to the bathroom and Ken freaks out, splashing some of the wine he was using to cool his head in his eyes. He yells in anger) (Barry looks at the magazines featuring his victories in court) BARRY: Look at that. (Barry flies into the bathroom) (He puts his hand on his head but this makes hurts him and makes him even madder. He yells again) (Barry is washing his hands in the sink but then Ken walks in) KEN: You know, you know I've just about had it (Closes bathroom door behind him) with your little mind games. (Ken is menacingly rolling up a magazine) BARRY:
(Backing away) - What's that? KEN: - Italian Vogue. BARRY: Mamma mia, that's a lot of pages. KEN: It's a lot of ads. BARRY: Remember what Van said, why is your life more valuable than mine? KEN: That's funny, I just can't seem to recall that! (Ken smashes everything off the sink with the magazine and Barry narrowly escapes) (Ken follows Barry around and tries to hit him with the magazine but he keeps missing) (Ken gets a spray bottle) : I think something stinks in here! BARRY: (Enjoying the spray) I love the smell of flowers. (Ken holds a lighter in front of the spray bottle) KEN: How do you like the smell of flames?! BARRY: Not as much. (Ken fires his make-shift flamethrower but misses Barry, burning the bathroom. He torches the whole room but looses his footing and falls into the bathtub. After getting hit in the head by falling objects 3 times he picks up the shower head, revealing a Water bug hiding under it) WATER BUG: Water bug! Not taking sides!
(Barry gets up out of a pile of bathroom supplies and he is wearing a chapstick hat) BARRY: Ken, I'm wearing a Chapstick hat! This is pathetic! (Ken switches the shower head to lethal) KEN: I've got issues! (Ken sprays Barry with the shower head and he crash lands into the toilet) (Ken menacingly looks down into the toilet at Barry) Well, well, well, a royal flush! BARRY: - You're bluffing. KEN: - Am I? (flushes toilet) (Barry grabs a chapstick from the toilet seat and uses it to surf in the flushing toilet) BARRY: Surf's up, dude! (Barry flies out of the toilet on the chapstick and sprays Ken's face with the toilet water) : EW,Poo water! BARRY: That bowl is gnarly. KEN: (Aiming a toilet cleaner at Barry) Except for those dirty yellow rings! (Barry cowers and covers his head and Vanessa runs in and takes the toilet cleaner from Ken just before he hits Barry) VANESSA: Kenneth! What are you doing?! KEN== (Leaning towards Barry)
You know, I don't even like honey! I don't eat it! VANESSA: We need to talk! (Vanessa pulls Ken out of the bathroom) : He's just a little bee! : And he happens to be the nicest bee I've met in a long time! KEN: Long time? What are you talking about?! Are there other bugs in your life? VANESSA: No, but there are other things bugging me in life. And you're one of them! KEN: Fine! Talking bees, no yogurt night... : My nerves are fried from riding on this emotional roller coaster! VANESSA: Goodbye, Ken. (Ken huffs and walks out and slams the door. But suddenly he walks back in and stares at Barry) : And for your information, I prefer sugar-free, artificial sweeteners MADE BY MAN! (Ken leaves again and Vanessa leans in towards Barry) VANESSA: I'm sorry about all that. (Ken walks back in again)
KEN: I know it's got an aftertaste! I LIKE IT! (Ken leaves for the last time) VANESSA: I always felt there was some kind of barrier between Ken and me. : I couldn't overcome it. Oh, well. : Are you OK for the trial? BARRY: I believe Mr. Montgomery is about out of ideas. (Flash forward in time and Barry, Adam, and Vanessa are back in court) MONTGOMERY-- We would like to call Mr. Barry Benson Bee to the stand. ADAM: Good idea! You can really see why he's considered one of the best lawyers... (Barry stares at Adam) ...Yeah. LAWYER: Layton, you've gotta weave some magic with this jury, or it's gonna be all over. MONTGOMERY: Don't worry. The only thing I have to do to turn this jury around : is to remind them of what they don't like about bees. (To lawyer)

• You got the tweezers? LAWYER:
• Are you allergic? MONTGOMERY: Only to losing, son. Only to losing. : Mr. Benson Bee, I'll ask you what I think we'd all like to know. : What exactly is your relationship (Points to Vanessa) : to that woman? BARRY: We're friends. MONTGOMERY:
• Good friends? BARRY:
• Yes. MONTGOMERY: How good? Do you live together? ADAM: Wait a minute... : MONTGOMERY: Are you her little... : ...bedbug? (Adam's stinger starts vibrating. He is agitated) I've seen a bee documentary or two. From what I understand,
  : doesn't your queen give birth to all the bee children? BARRY:
  
• Yeah, but... MONTGOMERY: (Pointing at Janet and Martin)
  
• So those aren't your real parents! JANET:
  
• Oh, Barry... BARRY:
  
• Yes, they are! ADAM: Hold me back! (Vanessa tries to hold Adam back. He wants to sting Montgomery) MONTGOMERY: You're an illegitimate bee, aren't you, Benson? ADAM: He's denouncing bees! MONTGOMERY: Don't y'all date your cousins? (Montgomery leans over on the jury stand and stares at Adam) VANESSA:
  
• Objection! (Vanessa raises her hand to object but Adam gets free. He flies straight at Montgomery) =ADAM:
  
• I'm going to pincushion this guy! BARRY: Adam, don't! It's what he wants! (Adam stings Montgomery in the butt and he starts thrashing around)
  

MONTGOMERY: Oh, I'm hit!! : Oh, lordy, I am hit! JUDGE BUMBLETON: (Banging gavel) Order! Order! MONTGOMERY: (Overreacting) The venom! The venom is coursing through my veins! : I have been felled by a winged beast of destruction! : You see? You can't treat them like equals! They're striped savages! : Stinging's the only thing they know! It's their way! BARRY: - Adam, stay with me. ADAM: - I can't feel my legs. MONTGOMERY: (Overreacting and throwing his body around the room) What angel of mercy will come forward to suck the poison : from my heaving buttocks? JUDGE BUMLBETON: I will have order in this court. Order!
: Order, please! (Flash forward in time and we see a human news reporter) NEWS REPORTER: The case of the honeybees versus the human race : took a pointed turn against the bees : yesterday when one of their legal team stung Layton T. Montgomery. (Adam is laying in a hospital bed and Barry flies in to see him) BARRY: - Hey, buddy. ADAM: - Hey. BARRY: - Is there much pain? ADAM: - Yeah. : I... : I blew the whole case, didn't I? BARRY: It doesn't matter. What matters is you're alive. You could have died. ADAM: I'd be better off dead. Look at me. (A small plastic sword is replaced as Adam's stinger) They got it from the cafeteria downstairs, in a tuna sandwich.
: Look, there's a little celery still on it. (Flicks off the celery and sighs) BARRY: What was it like to sting someone? ADAM: I can't explain it. It was all... : All adrenaline and then... and then ecstasy! BARRY: ...All right. ADAM: You think it was all a trap? BARRY: Of course. I'm sorry. I flew us right into this. : What were we thinking? Look at us. We're just a couple of bugs in this world. ADAM: What will the humans do to us if they win? BARRY: I don't know. ADAM: I hear they put the roaches in motels. That doesn't sound so bad. BARRY: Adam, they check in, but they don't check out!
ADAM: Oh, my. (Coughs) Could you get a nurse to close that window? BARRY: - Why? ADAM: - The smoke. (We can see that two humans are smoking cigarettes outside) : Bees don't smoke. BARRY: Right. Bees don't smoke. : Bees don't smoke! But some bees are smoking. : That's it! That's our case! ADAM: It is? It's not over? BARRY: Get dressed. I've gotta go somewhere. : Get back to the court and stall. Stall any way you can. (Flash forward in time and Adam is making a paper boat in the courtroom) ADAM: And assuming you've done step 29 correctly, you're ready for the tub! (We see that the jury have each made their own paper boats after being taught how by Adam. They all look confused) JUDGE BUMBLETON:
Mr. Flayman. ADAM: Yes? Yes, Your Honor! JUDGE BUMBLETON: Where is the rest of your team? ADAM: (Continues stalling) Well, Your Honor, it's interesting. : Bees are trained to fly haphazardly, : and as a result, we don't make very good time. : I actually heard a funny story about... MONTGOMERY: Your Honor, haven't these ridiculous bugs : taken up enough of this court's valuable time? : How much longer will we allow these absurd shenanigans to go on? : They have presented no compelling evidence to support their charges : against my clients, who run legitimate businesses. : I move for a complete dismissal
of this entire case! JUDGE BUMBLETON: Mr. Flayman, I'm afraid I'm going : to have to consider Mr. Montgomery's motion. ADAM: But you can't! We have a terrific case. MONTGOMERY: Where is your proof? Where is the evidence? : Show me the smoking gun! BARRY: (Barry flies in through the door) Hold it, Your Honor! You want a smoking gun? : Here is your smoking gun. (Vanessa walks in holding a bee smoker. She sets it down on the Judge's podium) JUDGE BUMBLETON: What is that? BARRY: It's a bee smoker! MONTGOMERY: (Picks up smoker) What, this? This harmless little contraption? : This couldn't hurt a fly, let alone a bee. (Montgomery accidentally fires it at the bees in the crowd and they faint
and cough) (Dozens of reporters start taking pictures of the suffering bees) BARRY: Look at what has happened : to bees who have never been asked, "Smoking or non?" : Is this what nature intended for us? : To be forcibly addicted to smoke machines : and man-made wooden slat work camps? : Living out our lives as honey slaves to the white man? (Barry points to the honey industry owners. One of them is an African American so he awkwardly separates himself from the others) LAWYER: - What are we gonna do? - He's playing the species card. BARRY: Ladies and gentlemen, please, free these bees! ADAM AND VANESSA: Free the bees! Free the bees! BEES IN CROWD: Free the bees! HUMAN JURY: Free the bees! Free the bees! JUDGE BUMBLETON: The court finds in favor of the bees!
BARRY: Vanessa, we won! VANESSA: I knew you could do it! High-five! (Vanessa hits Barry hard because her hand is too big) : Sorry. BARRY: (Overjoyed) I'm OK! You know what this means? : All the honey will finally belong to the bees. : Now we won't have to work so hard all the time. MONTGOMERY: This is an unholy perversion of the balance of nature, Benson. : You'll regret this. (Montgomery leaves and Barry goes outside the courtroom. Several reporters start asking Barry questions) REPORTER 1#: Barry, how much honey is out there? BARRY: All right. One at a time. REPORTER 2#: Barry, who are you wearing? BARRY: My sweater is Ralph Lauren, and I have no pants.
(Barry flies outside with the paparazzi and Adam and Vanessa stay back) ADAM: (To Vanessa) - What if Montgomery's right? Vanessa: - What do you mean? ADAM: We've been living the bee way a long time, 27 million years. (Flash forward in time and Barry is talking to a man) BUSINESS MAN: Congratulations on your victory. What will you demand as a settlement? BARRY: First, we'll demand a complete shutdown of all bee work camps. (As Barry is talking we see a montage of men putting "closed" tape over the work camps and freeing the bees in the crappy apartments) Then we want back the honey that was ours to begin with, : every last drop. (Men in suits are pushing all the honey of the aisle and into carts) We demand an end to the glorification of the bear as anything more (We see a statue of a bear-shaped honey container being pulled down by bees) than a filthy, smelly, bad-breath stink machine. : We're all aware of what they do in the woods. (We see Winnie the Pooh sharing his honey with Piglet in the cross-hairs of a high-tech sniper rifle) BARRY: (Looking through binoculars)
Wait for my signal. : Take him out. (Winnie gets hit by a tranquilizer dart and dramatically falls off the log he was standing on, his tongue hanging out. Piglet looks at Pooh in fear and the Sniper takes the honey.) SNIPER: He'll have nausea for a few hours, then he'll be fine. (Flash forward in time) BARRY: And we will no longer tolerate bee-negative nicknames... (Mr. Sting is sitting at home until he is taken out of his house by the men in suits) STING: But it's just a prance-about stage name! BARRY: ...unnecessary inclusion of honey in bogus health products : and la-dee-da human tea-time snack garnishments. (An old lady is mixing honey into her tea but suddenly men in suits smash her face down on the table and take the honey) OLD LADY: Can't breathe. (A honey truck pulls up to Barry's hive) WORKER: Bring it in, boys! : Hold it right there! Good. : Tap it.
(Tons of honey is being pumped into the hive's storage) BEE WORKER 1#: (Honey overflows from the cup) Mr. Buzzwell, we just passed three cups, and there's gallons more coming! : - I think we need to shut down! =BEE WORKER #2= - Shut down? We've never shut down. : Shut down honey production! DEAN BUZZWELL: Stop making honey! (The bees all leave their stations. Two bees run into a room and they put the keys into a machine) Turn your key, sir! (Two worker bees dramatically turn their keys, which opens the button which they press, shutting down the honey-making machines. This is the first time this has ever happened) BEE: ...What do we do now? (Flash forward in time and a Bee is about to jump into a pool full of honey) Cannonball! (The bee gets stuck in the honey and we get a short montage of Bees leaving work) (We see the Pollen Jocks flying but one of them gets a call on his antenna) LOU LU DUVA: (Through "phone") We're shutting honey production! : Mission abort. POLLEN JOCK #1: Aborting pollination and nectar detail. Returning to base. (The Pollen Jocks fly back to the hive)
(We get a time lapse of Central Park slowly wilting away as the bees all relax) BARRY: Adam, you wouldn't believe how much honey was out there. ADAM: Oh, yeah? BARRY: What's going on? Where is everybody? (The entire street is deserted) : - Are they out celebrating? ADAM: - They're home. : They don't know what to do. Laying out, sleeping in. : I heard your Uncle Carl was on his way to San Antonio with a cricket. BARRY: At least we got our honey back. ADAM: Sometimes I think, so what if humans liked our honey? Who wouldn't? : It's the greatest thing in the world! I was excited to be part of making it. : This was my new desk. This was my new job. I wanted to do it really well. :
And now... : Now I can't. (Flash forward in time and Barry is talking to Vanessa) BARRY: I don't understand why they're not happy. : I thought their lives would be better! : They're doing nothing. It's amazing. Honey really changes people. VANESSA: You don't have any idea what's going on, do you? BARRY: - What did you want to show me? (Vanessa takes Barry to the rooftop where they first had coffee and points to her store) VANESSA: - This. (Points at her flowers. They are all grey and wilting) BARRY: What happened here? VANESSA: That is not the half of it. (Small flash forward in time and Vanessa and Barry are on the roof of her store and she points to Central Park) (We see that Central Park is no longer green and colorful, rather it is grey, brown, and dead-like. It is very depressing to look at) BARRY: Oh, no. Oh, my. :
They're all wilting. VANESSA: Doesn't look very good, does it? BARRY: No. VANESSA: And whose fault do you think that is? BARRY: You know, I'm gonna guess bees. VANESSA== (Staring at Barry) Bees? BARRY: Specifically, me. : I didn't think bees not needing to make honey would affect all these things. VANESSA: It's not just flowers. Fruits, vegetables, they all need bees. BARRY: That's our whole SAT test right there. VANESSA: Take away produce, that affects the entire animal kingdom. : And then, of course... BARRY: The human species? : So if there's no more pollination,
: it could all just go south here, couldn't it? VANESSA: I know this is also partly my fault. BARRY: How about a suicide pact? VANESSA: How do we do it? BARRY: - I'll sting you, you step on me. VANESSA: - That just kills you twice. BARRY: Right, right. VANESSA: Listen, Barry... sorry, but I gotta get going. (Vanessa leaves) BARRY: (To himself) I had to open my mouth and talk. : Vanessa? : Vanessa? Why are you leaving? Where are you going? (Vanessa is getting into a taxi) VANESSA: To the final Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena. :
They've moved it to this weekend because all the flowers are dying. : It's the last chance I'll ever have to see it. BARRY: Vanessa, I just wanna say I'm sorry. I never meant it to turn out like this. VANESSA: I know. Me neither. (The taxi starts to drive away) BARRY: Tournament of Roses. Roses can't do sports. : Wait a minute. Roses. Roses? : Roses! : Vanessa! (Barry flies after the Taxi) VANESSA: Roses?! : Barry? (Barry is flying outside the window of the taxi) BARRY: - Roses are flowers! VANESSA: - Yes, they are. BARRY: Flowers, bees, pollen!
VANESSA: I know. That's why this is the last parade. BARRY: Maybe not. Could you ask him to slow down? VANESSA: Could you slow down? (The taxi driver screeches to a stop and Barry keeps flying forward) : Barry! (Barry flies back to the window) BARRY: OK, I made a huge mistake. This is a total disaster, all my fault. VANESSA: Yes, it kind of is. BARRY: I've ruined the planet. I wanted to help you : with the flower shop. I've made it worse. VANESSA: Actually, it's completely closed down. BARRY: I thought maybe you were remodeling. : But I have another idea, and it's greater than my previous ideas combined. VANESSA: I don't want to hear it!
BARRY: All right, they have the roses, the roses have the pollen. : I know every bee, plant and flower bud in this park. : All we gotta do is get what they've got back here with what we've got. : - Bees. VANESSA: - Park. BARRY: - Pollen! VANESSA: - Flowers. BARRY: - Re-pollination! VANESSA: - Across the nation! : Tournament of Roses, Pasadena, California. : They've got nothing but flowers, floats and cotton candy. : Security will be tight. BARRY: I have an idea.
(Flash forward in time. Vanessa is about to board a plane which has all the Roses on board. VANESSA: Vanessa Bloome, FTD. (Holds out badge) : Official floral business. It's real. SECURITY GUARD: Sorry, ma'am. Nice brooch. =VANESSA== Thank you. It was a gift. (Barry is revealed to be hiding inside the brooch) (Flash back in time and Barry and Vanessa are discussing their plan) BARRY: Once inside, we just pick the right float. VANESSA: How about The Princess and the Pea? : I could be the princess, and you could be the pea! BARRY: Yes, I got it. : - Where should I sit? GUARD: - What are you? BARRY: - I believe I'm the pea. GUARD: - The pea? VANESSA:
It goes under the mattresses. GUARD: - Not in this fairy tale, sweetheart. - I'm getting the marshal. VANESSA: You do that! This whole parade is a fiasco! : Let's see what this baby'll do. (Vanessa drives the float through traffic) GUARD: Hey, what are you doing?! BARRY== Then all we do is blend in with traffic... : ...without arousing suspicion. : Once at the airport, there's no stopping us. (Flash forward in time and Barry and Vanessa are about to get on a plane) SECURITY GUARD: Stop! Security. : - You and your insect pack your float? VANESSA: - Yes. SECURITY GUARD: Has it been in your possession the entire time? VANESSA: - Yes.
SECURITY GUARD: Would you remove your shoes? (To Barry) - Remove your stinger. BARRY: - It's part of me. SECURITY GUARD: I know. Just having some fun. Enjoy your flight. (Barry plotting with Vanessa) BARRY: Then if we're lucky, we'll have just enough pollen to do the job. (Flash forward in time and Barry and Vanessa are flying on the plane) Can you believe how lucky we are? We have just enough pollen to do the job! VANESSA: I think this is gonna work. BARRY: It's got to work. CAPTAIN SCOTT: (On intercom) Attention, passengers, this is Captain Scott. : We have a bit of bad weather in New York. : It looks like we'll experience a couple hours delay. VANESSA: Barry, these are cut flowers with no water. They'll never make it. BARRY:
I gotta get up there and talk to them. VANESSA== Be careful. (Barry flies right outside the cockpit door) BARRY: Can I get help with the Sky Mall magazine? I'd like to order the talking inflatable nose and ear hair trimmer. (The flight attendant opens the door and walks out and Barry flies into the cockpit unseen) BARRY: Captain, I'm in a real situation. CAPTAIN SCOTT: - What'd you say, Hal? CO-PILOT HAL: - Nothing. (Scott notices Barry and freaks out) CAPTAIN SCOTT: Bee! BARRY: No,no,no, Don't freak out! My entire species... (Captain Scott gets out of his seat and tries to suck Barry into a handheld vacuum) HAL: (To Scott) What are you doing? (Barry lands on Hals hair but Scott sees him. He tries to suck up Barry but instead he sucks up Hals toupee) CAPTAIN SCOTT: Uh-oh. BARRY: - Wait a minute! I'm an attorney!
HAL: (Hal doesn't know Barry is on his head) - Who's an attorney? CAPTAIN SCOTT: Don't move. (Scott hits Hal in the face with the vacuum in an attempt to hit Barry. Hal is knocked out and he falls on the life raft button which launches an infalatable boat into Scott, who gets knocked out and falls to the floor. They are both uncounscious.) BARRY: (To himself) Oh, Barry. BARRY: (On intercom, with a Southern accent) Good afternoon, passengers. This is your captain. : Would a Miss Vanessa Bloome in 24B please report to the cockpit? (Vanessa looks confused) (Normal accent) ...And please hurry! (Vanessa opens the door and sees the life raft and the uncounscious pilots) VANESSA: What happened here? BARRY: I tried to talk to them, but then there was a DustBuster, a toupee, a life raft exploded. : Now one's bald, one's in a boat, and they're both unconscious! VANESSA: ...Is that another bee joke? BARRY:

• No! : No one's flying the plane! BUD DITCHWATER: (Through radio on plane) This is JFK control tower, Flight 356. What's your status? VANESSA: This is Vanessa Bloome. I'm a florist from New York. BUD: Where's the pilot? VANESSA: He's unconscious, and so is the copilot. BUD: Not good. Does anyone onboard have flight experience? BARRY: As a matter of fact, there is. BUD:
• Who's that? BARRY:
• Barry Benson. BUD: From the honey trial?! Oh, great. BARRY: Vanessa, this is nothing more than a big metal bee. : It's got giant wings, huge engines.

VANESSA: I can't fly a plane. BARRY: - Why not? Isn't John Travolta a pilot? VANESSA: - Yes. BARRY: How hard could it be? (Vanessa sits down and flies for a little bit but we see lightning clouds outside the window) VANESSA: Wait, Barry! We're headed into some lightning. (An ominous lightning storm looms in front of the plane) (We are now watching the Bee News) BOB BUMBLE: This is Bob Bumble. We have some late-breaking news from JFK Airport, : where a suspenseful scene is developing. : Barry Benson, fresh from his legal victory... ADAM: That's Barry! BOB BUMBLE: ...is attempting to land a plane, loaded with people, flowers : and an incapacitated flight crew. JANET, MARTIN, UNCLE CAR AND ADAM: Flowers?! (The scene switches to the human news)
REPORTER: (Talking with Bob Bumble) We have a storm in the area and two individuals at the controls : with absolutely no flight experience. BOB BUMBLE: Just a minute. There's a bee on that plane. BUD: I'm quite familiar with Mr. Benson and his no-account compadres. : They've done enough damage. REPORTER: But isn't he your only hope? BUD: Technically, a bee shouldn't be able to fly at all. : Their wings are too small... BARRY: (Through radio) Haven't we heard this a million times? : "The surface area of the wings and body mass make no sense."... BOB BUMBLE: - Get this on the air! BEE: - Got it.
BEE NEWS CREW: - Stand by. BEE NEWS CREW: - We're going live! BARRY: (Through radio on TV) ...The way we work may be a mystery to you. : Making honey takes a lot of bees doing a lot of small jobs. : But let me tell you about a small job. : If you do it well, it makes a big difference. : More than we realized. To us, to everyone. : That's why I want to get bees back to working together. : That's the bee way! We're not made of Jell-O. : We get behind a fellow. : - Black and yellow! BEES: - Hello! (The scene switches and Barry is teaching Vanessa how to fly) BARRY:
Left, right, down, hover. VANESSA: - Hover? BARRY: - Forget hover. VANESSA: This isn't so hard. (Pretending to honk the horn) Beep-beep! Beep-beep! (A Lightning bolt hits the plane and autopilot turns off) Barry, what happened?! BARRY: Wait, I think we were on autopilot the whole time. VANESSA: - That may have been helping me. BARRY: - And now we're not! VANESSA: So it turns out I cannot fly a plane. (The plane plummets but we see Lou Lu Duva and the Pollen Jocks, along with multiple other bees flying towards the plane) Lou Lu DUva: All of you, let's get behind this fellow! Move it out! : Move out! (The scene switches back to Vanessa and Barry in the plane) BARRY: Our only chance is if I do what I'd do, you copy me with the wings of the plane! (Barry sticks out his arms like an airplane and flys in front of Vanessa's face)
VANESSA: Don't have to yell. BARRY: I'm not yelling! We're in a lot of trouble. VANESSA: It's very hard to concentrate with that panicky tone in your voice! BARRY: It's not a tone. I'm panicking! VANESSA: I can't do this! (Barry slaps Vanessa) BARRY: Vanessa, pull yourself together. You have to snap out of it! VANESSA: (Slaps Barry) You snap out of it. BARRY: (Slaps Vanessa) : You snap out of it. VANESSA: - You snap out of it! BARRY: - You snap out of it! (We see that all the Pollen Jocks are flying under the plane) VANESSA: - You snap out of it! BARRY: - You snap out of it!
VANESSA: - You snap out of it! BARRY: - You snap out of it! VANESSA: - Hold it! BARRY: - Why? Come on, it's my turn. VANESSA: How is the plane flying? (The plane is now safely flying) VANESSA: I don't know. (Barry's antennae rings like a phone. Barry picks up) BARRY: Hello? LOU LU DUVA: (Through "phone") Benson, got any flowers for a happy occasion in there? (All of the Pollen Jocks are carrying the plane) BARRY: The Pollen Jocks! : They do get behind a fellow. LOU LU DUVA: - Black and yellow. POLLEN JOCKS: - Hello. LOU LU DUVA: All right, let's drop this tin can
on the blacktop. BARRY: Where? I can't see anything. Can you? VANESSA: No, nothing. It's all cloudy. : Come on. You got to think bee, Barry. BARRY: - Thinking bee. - Thinking bee. (On the runway there are millions of bees laying on their backs) BEES: Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! BARRY: Wait a minute. I think I'm feeling something. VANESSA: - What? BARRY: - I don't know. It's strong, pulling me. : Like a 27-million-year-old instinct. : Bring the nose down. BEES: Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! CONTROL TOWER OPERATOR: - What in the world is on the tarmac? BUD: - Get some lights on that!
(It is revealed that all the bees are organized into a giant pulsating flower formation) BEES: Thinking bee! Thinking bee! Thinking bee! BARRY: - Vanessa, aim for the flower. VANESSA: - OK. BARRY: Out the engines. We're going in on bee power. Ready, boys? LOU LU DUVA: Affirmative! BARRY: Good. Good. Easy, now. That's it. : Land on that flower! : Ready? Full reverse! : Spin it around! (The plane's nose is pointed at a flower painted on a nearby plane) - Not that flower! The other one! VANESSA: - Which one? BARRY: - That flower. (The plane is now pointed at a fat guy in a flowered shirt. He freaks out and tries to take a picture of the plane) VANESSA: - I'm aiming at the flower!
BARRY: That's a fat guy in a flowered shirt. I mean the giant pulsating flower made of millions of bees! (The plane hovers over the bee-flower) : Pull forward. Nose down. Tail up. : Rotate around it. VANESSA: - This is insane, Barry! BARRY: - This's the only way I know how to fly. BUD: Am I koo-koo-kachoo, or is this plane flying in an insect-like pattern? (The plane is unrealistically hovering and spinning over the bee-flower) BARRY: Get your nose in there. Don't be afraid. Smell it. Full reverse! : Just drop it. Be a part of it. : Aim for the center! : Now drop it in! Drop it in, woman! : Come on, already. (The bees scatter and the plane safely lands) VANESSA: Barry, we did it! You taught me how to fly!
BARRY: - Yes! (Vanessa is about to high-five Barry) No high-five! VANESSA: - Right. ADAM: Barry, it worked! Did you see the giant flower? BARRY: What giant flower? Where? Of course I saw the flower! That was genius! ADAM: - Thank you. BARRY: - But we're not done yet. : Listen, everyone! : This runway is covered with the last pollen : from the last flowers available anywhere on Earth. : That means this is our last chance. : We're the only ones who make honey, pollinate flowers and dress like this. : If we're gonna survive as a species, this is our moment! What do you say?
: Are we going to be bees, or just Museum of Natural History keychains? BEES: We're bees! BEE WHO LIKES KEYCHAINS: Keychain! BARRY: Then follow me! Except Keychain. POLLEN JOCK #1: Hold on, Barry. Here. : You've earned this. BARRY: Yeah! : I'm a Pollen Jock! And it's a perfect fit. All I gotta do are the sleeves. (The Pollen Jocks throw Barry a nectar-collecting gun. Barry catches it) Oh, yeah. JANET: That's our Barry. (Barry and the Pollen Jocks get pollen from the flowers on the plane) (Flash forward in time and the Pollen Jocks are flying over NYC) : (Barry pollinates the flowers in Vanessa's shop and then heads to Central Park) BOY IN PARK: Mom! The bees are back! ADAM: (Putting on his Krelman hat) If anybody needs
to make a call, now's the time. : I got a feeling we'll be working late tonight! (The bee honey factories are back up and running) (Meanwhile at Vanessa's shop) VANESSA: (To customer) Here's your change. Have a great afternoon! Can I help who's next? : Would you like some honey with that? It is bee-approved. Don't forget these. (There is a room in the shop where Barry does legal work for other animals. He is currently talking with a Cow) COW: Milk, cream, cheese, it's all me. And I don't see a nickel! : Sometimes I just feel like a piece of meat! BARRY: I had no idea. VANESSA: Barry, I'm sorry. Have you got a moment? BARRY: Would you excuse me? My mosquito associate will help you. MOOSEBLOOD: Sorry I'm late. COW: He's a lawyer too?
MOOSEBLOOD: Ma'am, I was already a blood-sucking parasite. All I needed was a briefcase. VANESSA: Have a great afternoon! : Barry, I just got this huge tulip order, and I can't get them anywhere. BARRY: No problem, Vannie. Just leave it to me. VANESSA: You're a lifesaver, Barry. Can I help who's next? BARRY: All right, scramble, jocks! It's time to fly. VANESSA: Thank you, Barry! (Ken walks by on the sidewalk and sees the "bee-approved honey" in Vanessa's shop) KEN: That bee is living my life!! ANDY: Let it go, Kenny. KEN: - When will this nightmare end?! ANDY: - Let it all go. BARRY: - Beautiful day to fly. POLLEN JOCK:

• Sure is. BARRY: Between you and me, I was dying to get out of that office. (Barry recreates the scene near the beginning of the movie where he flies through the box kite. The movie fades to black and the credits being) [--after credits; No scene can be seen but the characters can be heard talking over the credits--] You have got to start thinking bee, my friend! :
• Thinking bee!
• Me? BARRY: (Talking over singer) Hold it. Let's just stop for a second. Hold it. : I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone. Can we stop here? SINGER: Oh, BarryBARRY: I'm not making a major life decision during a production number! SINGER: All right. Take ten, everybody. Wrap it up, guys. BARRY: I had virtually no rehearsal for that.

Sealinies
Surrounded by Kazari, Finn, Iyexi and Archer, Maila faced her mom, the majestic Mermista. Exhaustion veiled Mermista's features. Being a mom was a hard job, especially when one of your kids was a manchild named Seahawk.
"So, like, what's up, mom?" Maila blurted, hands on her hips.
With a hand massaging her temples, Mermista began, "Okay, so, my spies tell me there's this weird cache box thingy floating around in the open sea. It's, like, radiating some strange vibes."
"So, I guess you want us to go play detective, huh?" Maila's voice dripped with sarcasm.
Mermista let out a long, tired sigh. "Maila, you're gonna be queen one day. Your dad and I thought this would be good for you. You know, learning on the job?" Mermista fetched a pair of keys and lobbed them towards Maila.
"Take the Dragon's Daughter 7. Try to forget that you’re half-Seahawk and don’t fuck this up, okay?"
Maila caught the keys mid-air, stuck her tongue out at her mom. "Well, mom, that snarkiness is why dad scores higher on my favorite parent scale!"
Mermista retaliated by launching her trident at her, missing by miles.
"Haha, missed, bitch!"
"Just scram before I break your neck!"
The Open Sea
Maila was in her element on the Dragon’s Daughter 7, feeling like she ruled the world. "Yay!" she screamed, her voice swallowed by the ocean breeze. Kazari leaned lazily against the railing, idly swirling sparks of havok magic between her fingers. “So,” she began, “has your mother been a moody bitch-canou?”
Maila chuckled lightly, “Yeah, but she’s still pretty cool. She once made sure Finn’s trauma isn’t worse than it is…” she droned.
Kazari furrowed her brow, the magicat’s head tilted slightly.
“Trauma? Maila, what the fuck are you-?”
Maila pointed to the other magicat, Finn, curled up in the fetal position, while Archer and Iyexi were doing their best to confront them. “Finn, just relax, okay?” said Archer.
“We got you, buddy!” Iyexi held Finn’s hand.
“Finn?” Kazari approached her fellow magicat. “Are you okay?” she asked, her aussie accent softened over the years.
Finn looked up at Kazari, saying, “Y-yeah, I will be once we finish this damn mission!”
"Don't sweat it, Finn! You can have a good sob with your moms once we're done!" Kazari jested, a glint of mischief in her eyes.
"Actually, I can't really be around my moms at the moment…"
"Wow, way to rain on the fun parade..." Kazari responded, her teasing tone deflating a bit.
Maila was busy fiddling with a radar when a blip appeared on the screen. "Hey, guys, I think we've got a hit!"
Everyone rose from their spots and huddled around the mermaid-pirate princess. There it was, the cache box, several feet beneath them.
"Alright, looks like this box is tucked away in a sea cave! Kazari, I could use your help hauling this thing, it seems pretty hefty. Your havoc magic should do the trick," she explained, handing out wetsuits to the team.
Kazari merely nodded, stripping down to her underwear, leaving Finn blushing like a ripe tomato. Kazari didn't miss a beat, she winked at the flustered magicat, taunting, “Guess you've hit the jackpot, tiger. Snap a picture, it'll last longer,” before wriggling into her wetsuit, and the others followed her lead.
One by one, everyone dived into the azure depths with the only expectation being Finn who said, “You guys go ahead, I’ll…stay back and watch the boat…”
Maila shot them an empathetic look as she dived in. Maila's seafoam green jacket melted around her legs, which fused into an aquamarine fish tail.
"Alright, stay close," Maila directed, speeding off into the depths with the rest of the team in her wake.
Kazari lagged slightly, swimming alongside Archer and Iyexi. She asked, "What's up with Finn? They seem off-kilter."
"Finn has a thing about water, but it's their story to share, not ours," Iyexi replied, a serious undertone in her voice. Kazari simply nodded in response, understanding the sentiment.
As they neared the cave entrance, Maila called out, "We're here. Kazari, you're up with me."
“Got it,” Kazari replied, swimming up to join Maila at the cave's entrance. The other two hung back slightly, providing cover and watching out for any surprises.
The underwater cave was darker than the surrounding sea, its entrance guarded by a mess of coral and sea plants swaying lazily in the current. Maila and Kazari had to maneuver carefully to avoid disturbing the fragile underwater life. Once past the entrance, they turned on the small lights attached to their suits, illuminating the gloomy interior.
The water inside the cave was cooler and eerily still, reflecting the beams of their lights in strange, distorted patterns on the rough cave walls. They advanced slowly, the silence broken only by the sound of their own breathing and the occasional crackle from their comms devices.
There it was, nestled among an outcropping of rocks, the cache box. Its metallic surface was half-buried in the sand and encrusted with layers of marine life, making it seem more like a part of the cave than an alien object.
Maila signaled to Kazari, pointing towards the box. With a determined nod, Kazari conjured her havoc magic. The sparks danced around her arms and core before reaching out towards the box, lifting it gently from its bed of sand and rocks.
Just when they thought everything was going smoothly, Kazari's eyes widened at a pattern she spotted. It was unmistakably similar to those cursed spiders they had encountered before.
"What the hell?" Kazari blurted out.
"Kazari, what's up?!" Archer and Iyexi's voices crackled through the comms, their concern palpable.
Maila followed Kazari's gaze just in time to see the sand beneath them begin to swirl and shift. "Guys, we need to move, now! We're not alone down here!"
Before they could react, the ocean floor erupted in a cloud of sand and debris. As the dust cleared, a massive, monstrous squid revealed itself.
"HOLY SHIT!!!" Iyexi's exclamation was barely audible over the chaos.
"We have to secure the box!" Maila commanded, doing her best to keep her cool in the face of the terrifying creature. As the squid lunged at them, they swam as fast as they could, the cache box in tow. Their hearts pounded in their chests, the adrenaline fueling their swift escape.
Through gritted teeth, Kazari shouted, "Alright, I'll keep the squid busy, you guys secure the box!"
"On it!"
Without wasting any more time, they all lunged forward, each grabbing a corner of the cache box. Maila, thanks to her mermaid physiology, found the task easier. A mermaid's strength is volumetric - directly proportional to the amount of water in contact with her body. In the vastness of the open sea, Maila was easily the strongest among them.
As they struggled with the box, Kazari swam headfirst into the fray. Her aim was to distract the gigantic squid long enough for the others to make their escape. It was a dangerous plan, but it was all they had. With a deep breath, she charged towards the monstrous creature, ready to face it head-on.
With a determined look, Kazari summoned her havok magic. Electricity crackled around her, creating an impressive, almost mesmerizing display. It felt like pins and needles pricking her scalp, but she had to ignore it. And just as she hoped, the squid turned its focus to her, tentacles lunging in her direction.
Seizing her moment, Kazari pushed off the cave wall, dodging the squirming tentacles with agile precision. She swam underneath the box and latched onto Maila’s tail, swimming swiftly to join the group.
"Archer, teleport us out of here, now!" Kazari's voice was firm, carrying the urgency of their predicament. They needed to get out, and they needed to do it fast. Archer did just that, warping the four, and the box onto the boat, in front of a perplexed Finn.
"Are you serious?!" Finn's voice echoed through the communication devices as the crew scampered back onto the Dragon's Daughter 7. Maila made a beeline for the console, revving up the ship's engines and steering them away from the underwater chaos.
Minutes later, when they were safely away from the giant squid and the adrenaline had started to wane, Finn repeated their earlier question, this time more slowly, "Can somebody please tell me what the FUCK just happened?"
Maila, steadying her breath, managed to give them a succinct answer: "Giant squid. But we did get the cache box!" She hoped that her words carried some reassurance. Despite the unexpected challenges, they'd succeeded in their mission.
“Welp, in any case, let’s crack this fucker open,” said Kazari.
Wanting to contribute, Finn popped out their claws and broke off the lock. Inside the box, were all aging weapons: an armcannon, a trident, a set of power boosting gloves, bow and arrows and a short sword and sheath.
At first, their faces reflected nothing but underwhelmed surprise. This was what they had risked their lives for? A bunch of old, worn-out weapons? But then, the realization dawned on them. These pieces were more than just weapons…
"Guys! If I'm not totally off-base here, these weapons... they look like they were crafted by the First Ones," Maila announced, her eyes wide with realization.
"The First Ones, you say?" Iyexi mused, carefully picking up the armcannon. "Well, in that case, they might actually be of use to us."
Archer nodded, his hands running over the bow and arrows. He sensed the age and craftsmanship in the simple tools. Meanwhile, Finn took hold of the gloves, inspecting them with a quiet curiosity.
As for Maila, she found herself gravitating towards the trident, a sense of familiarity washing over her. Kazari, on the other hand, chose the tanto and its sheath, a certain fondness evident in her gaze.
"Well, regardless of where they came from, they're definitely going to give us a boost for shop class," Finn commented, breaking the momentary silence. "So, at least there's that, right? Right, Kazari? Uh, Kazari?"
They all turned to look at Kazari, who seemed to be in a sort of trance. Her gaze was fixated on a rock outside the ship's window, where an unusual, smoky blob was swirling around…
Later that night…
Alone in the quiet of her dorm room, Kazari found herself captivated by the aged sword she had claimed earlier. It had an undeniable charm, a feeling of history that was too intriguing to ignore. With the sword resting in her lap, Kazari leaned back in her chair, her sketchbook splayed open on her desk.
Her pencil danced across the page, guided by her hand as she poured her thoughts into a flurry of lines and shapes. But there was one shape, one image, that kept resurfacing in her mind. The smoky blob she had seen swirling around the rock.
"What is that thing I keep seeing?" she wondered aloud, her gaze flicking back and forth between her sword and her sketchbook. "What is it trying to show me?" As the night deepened, Kazari found herself lost in her thoughts, her curiosity piqued by the mystery of the swirling smoke and the sword.
ALSO AVAILBLE ON AO3

FirstNext
Well, it only took Canada burning and the East Coast turning into smoky rendition of a Mexico filter for this chapter to finally reach completion. Regularly-scheduled programming should hopefully resume after July 4th. Until then, drink some water, don't do gender reveals in the forest, and hang in there, guys!
Pursuant to Imperial Decree 10928, and in recognition of the reservist nature of the unit, the 1st Rocket Artillery Regiment has been found to satisfy the standards outlined in the Decree. However, in light of the significant budget and nonmaterial resource allocations that were required to bring the aforementioned unit up to levels considered satisfactory by existing standards, additional considerations beyond readiness and training levels must be taken into account.
Throughout the appeals process, you have repeatedly indicated that you believe rocket artillery to still have a place on the modern battlefield, citing recent reports from the Terran Planetary District command of the Sol System sector, as well as early after-action reports from the Intervention on Raknos, which you claim to support your argument. However, further investigation into this claim by independent analysts on behalf of Armored Warfare Command has found it to hold no merit in light of the recent restructuring outlined in detail in prior communications. Simply put, neither the Empress, nor her advisors, believe that the maintenance and garrisoning of units intended strictly for low-intensity counter-insurgency operations remains doctrinally viable.
Additionally, the excessive monetary and nonmonetary resources you requested in preparation for the evaluation, in light of the on-par, verging on substandard performance of the 1st Rocket Artillery Regiment, even accounting for the large number of fresh troops that needed to be drawn down from other posts to fill out its ranks, is highly suggestive on the part of you, the honorable Ashira Rakishal. This discrepancy is of high importance, and you may rest assured that it has already been publicly filed by the time this letter appears in your inbox.
Such a discrepancy is indicative of either incompetence or corruption on your part. Commanding officers may face demotion or a possible dishonorable discharge for the former, or, for the latter, a fine totalling no more than one-and-a-half times the estimated sum of the damages assessed, guaranteed dishonorable discharge and a potential prison term of no more than four years. Due to there being no evidence to suggest the latter, the former approach has been suggested by the Armored Warfare Command. Effective fourteen (14) days after this order is signed, your rank will be reduced and you will be relieved of commanding the Regiment. You may be restationed at this time, and your government-issued devices may be deactivated to facilitate this restationing. The 1st Rocket Artillery Division, in accordance with Decree 10928, will be dissolved and its assets relocated to other units wherever possible. Any remaining property will be auctioned under section 12.57.3(g) of the Naval and Marine Surplus Handling Act of 651 at the Val’tira Central Forwarding Depot.
Ashira finished reading the letter, but the words meant nothing to her. She hadn't slept in half a week, if not longer, in anticipation of the results from her hearing. In fact, she'd hardly gotten up from her desk; the 1st RAR was on leave until the final verdict would be announced publicly, and it was all she could do but to refresh her inbox every few minutes and watch mindless clips in the background that she hardly heard and never managed to remember a word from.
She tried reading it again, but the letters seemed to float off the screen, each one wrapped in a halo of bluish white screen glow. Nothing made sense.
'We were found to be satisfactory, but then… why does it talk about my rank? Am I getting promoted? There was something about dishonorable discharges, too, so… are some of my girls getting let go? I guess I will have to break the news to them. And it said something about budget overruns… well, mom still owes me from when she forgot to get me anything for my eighteenth last month, so I guess she can pay them back for all the equipment and training I had to authorize…'
Her thoughts were already drifting off into a vague haze when her stomach made a low noise, reminding her of the fact that she hadn't eaten in hours, mostly because her supply of food had run dry. Almost in a trance, she rose from her desk and, almost on autopilot, set about getting ready to go out and do some shopping, as she always did. The floor of her living quarters was almost entirely hidden by weeks-old discarded packaging, mountains of dirty clothes, and bottles half-filled with liquid that was either expired juice or urine. Narrow paths snaked through the mess; one to the bathroom, one to her bed, and one more still to the door, which she now slowly shambled towards.
Ashira pulled a pair of battered combat boots over her bare feet - she'd run out of socks that didn't offend her senses some weeks prior - without bothering to lace them, shoved her wallet into the front pocket of the fireproof jumpsuit she wore with absolutely nothing underneath and hadn't changed out of all week, and shoved the door open to head out. Immediately, the smell - or, perhaps, a lack thereof - of the corridor hit her. All the sleeping quarters were locked. It was quiet. Though her boots were heavy, her footsteps barely made a noise as she plodded along the thick, purple and topaz-blue carpet that lined the floor.
The door to the lobby was propped open by a cleaner's cart, and a heavy perfume of chemical detergents wafted through the opening as she approached. In the lobby was a small, older Helkam male, with his long and, in places, graying hair tied back with a beige bandana that matched his civilian contractor's coveralls, just as his green noise-canceling headphones matched the company logo on his uniform. He was dutifully mopping the already nigh-spotless polished stone floor, and there was only a narrow dry strip connecting doorway to doorway.
“‘Scuse me,” she mumbled, tapping him on the shoulder to alert him to her presence. “Coming through.”
He flinched away from her touch, and she flinched away from him, as though his own shock was contagious. “The fuck, you touch me!?” He exclaimed, whipping around to face her, mop at the ready like a Turox-prod. His face burned a pale but furious violet, contorted with fear and a readiness to fight. But, just as suddenly as he’d come to face her, his expression became one of confusion. His mop dipped down, and they stood in silence for a split second that seemed to drag on for entire minutes. Then, he made an odd face, as if of disgust or contempt, and stepped aside, motioning for her to pass by him.
Ashira would have been puzzled by this, if only she were not so frazzled and caught up in her own thoughts. She stepped outside and was immediately hit by a cool breeze; it was night out, and the wind blew in just as it always did. Not that it bothered her much; over the previous months, she had found that it didn’t seem to affect her very much. The only reason she wasn’t feeling the full brunt of the evening gales was that the buildings around the officer’s quarters were mostly two- and three-story affairs, their height and old, weathered stone cladding the last specters of the prominence and prestige the base enjoyed in the long-before times. Before the Unification Wars were but a distant memory. Before the Periphery had become the final, unconquerable frontier. Before the Empress-damned mess that was Raknos. Before Rocket Artillery had become hopelessly obsolete.
The wind blew, relentless and steadfast, as she trudged towards the only place on-base that still had its lights on. The general store. She didn’t know what she wanted to buy there, nor if there would indeed be anything on the shelves that she’d want to buy, but she felt she had to try, anyway. The only rest she could get now was chemically-assisted, either through over-the-counter sleeping pills, or copious volumes of booze, or, when the going got particularly rough, a combination of both. She was vaguely aware of the damage she was probably inflicting upon her organs, but she figured that they were a worthy sacrifice. Still, some days she couldn't fall asleep, even boozed up and medicated as much as she would dare, so she would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, hoping that the splitting headaches she would get from that chemical cocktail would make her ears ring loud enough to drown out her intrusive thoughts.
The store wasn't particularly warm when she entered, and it reeked of cigarette smoke and mildew as always. The nearest set of shelves to the door were stocked with bags of some sort of imported breaded meat snacks labeled Pufriyah - Ancestral Recipe, Modern Taste! across the top shelf and cases of Red Grains across the bottom, as if some long-forgotten planner had seen into the future and anticipated Ashira's shopping habits exactly. Without much thought, she pulled a case of the Reds off the bottom shelf, her back, which had been sore for months by then, crying out in pain that just barely cut through her apathy. She threw a few bags of the Pufriyah snacks on top of it, entirely indifferent to their name, slogan, and brown-furred chibi mascot that spoke to their Rakiri intended consumer base.
'It's all just carbs and protein at the end of the day,' she figured. It wasn't like she could taste much of them anyway, had she really cared to learn their flavor. It was close to a month prior that she'd caught a nasty cold, and her constant sleep deprivation and stress hadn't lent themselves to it clearing itself up on its own. Her senses of taste and smell were unnecessary to her whipping her unit into shape, she'd decided, once she learned that the antivirals she needed to take to make her symptoms clear up would need her to be on bed rest for three straight days. She could always take them later, anyway.
The bottles of Red Grain clanked against each other as Ashira heaved the case onto the checkout counter. The bags on top of it slid off, and she only just caught them in time. The noise awoke the lone cashier, another civilian contractor, from her nap atop her wobbly three-legged stool. She quite inelegantly hopped off of it and came to lean against the counter with one hand, the other lazily waving the scanner of a specialized Data-Slate over the merchandise.
"ID for the Reds," the cashier groggily slurred out, patting down her many pockets in search of a cigarette box. "Standard procedure, nothing personal against you."
Ashira stared at her, dumbfounded, for a few moments too many, before it hit her that she needed to pull up her Marine Profile on her Slate. Mumbling an apology mixed with an excuse, she reached into one of the few - albeit cavernously huge - pockets of her fireproof suit and produced the grimy government-issue device in question. The lock screen was set to her ID, just to make such common interactions go by quicker.
She pushed the Slate across the counter, expecting to get it slid back to her in a few moments, and maybe a manufactured smile and a nod if the cashier noticed the Rakishal House crest in the corner and realized she was of noble blood. But this time, none of that happened. The woman across from her frowned, squinting as she analyzed something about the ID, her face no more than perhaps a few centimeters from it. She looked up at Ashira, then back down at the ID, then back at her, and then all of a sudden her confusion melted into some odd mixture of shock and disgust. She wordlessly pushed the Slate back across the counter, scanned the case of Red Grain, and then motioned to a now very baffled and somewhat offended Ashira that she was free to leave.
In her sleep-deprived state, Ashira had barely the mental capacity to remember where the door was, much less to ponder the deeper meaning behind what had transpired. Vowing to come back the next day, after getting a good night's sleep, and get the insolent cashier fired, she trudged out of the shop, back to the officers' quarters, where the Helkam man was still toiling away in the lobby, now wiping down the Turox-leather seats, and into her own suite.
She brushed the most egregious of the trash from her bed, with the arm that wasn't clutching the spoils of her trek to her chest, and allowed gravity to gracelessly guide her into its soft, fitted-sheet embrace. With a sigh of barely-felt relief, she cracked the cap off her first bottle with her tusks and took a long, well-earned swig.
The next thing she knew, it was morning.
Everything hurt. Ashira's muscles all ached like she'd run every Deathshead Commando bootcamp course, back-to-back, without stopping. Her head felt like a bloated, rotten gourd, ready to burst at the slightest touch. Even though her eyes were closed, what little light made it through them felt as though it was piercing straight through her eyeballs and into her brain. However, through it all, she noted an odd, almost pleasant sensation that she hadn't felt in so long, she'd almost forgotten the word for it.
'Empress all-powerful, this must be the first time in almost a year that I've had a full night's sleep!'
Ashira would have kept laying there, exactly where she was. The room was quiet. No one needed her. Her unit was stood down for another few days. She could just stay in bed, in peace, and wait for the pain to subside. But the very second she considered that possibility, her bladder cried in agony, and she simultaneously came to the realizations that she would not be able to hold it in for even a minute longer, and that she was wearing her only set of relatively-clean clothes.
She pushed herself up and onto her feet, and that motion sent showers of sparks cascading through her vision, even as her eyes stayed firmly shut. Her ears rang from the pain as though she'd stuck her head between the prongs of a colossal tuning fork, her limbs felt numb as she stumbled through her room, and the only way she could tell up from down was from the direction gravity kept pulling her every time she lost her balance.
She hit the door frame to the bathroom by chance, only recognizing it as the right one by the light switch her elbow painfully caught. From there, she went entirely by feel. There was the sink, the towel rack, the soap dispenser, the shower door… and finally, having run out of wrong things to blindly grope around for, her hand bumped into the tank of the toilet. Even bending down made her head fill with the pounding beat of her heart, every pulse seeming to try and push her brain out of her skull through her eyes and ears. She nearly blacked out as she sat down.
The next thing Ashira knew, she was doubled over her sink, dry-heaving, her fireproof pants pulled back up around her waist but neither zipped shut nor clipped together at the front. She knew for certain that nothing had come up, because she was newly aware of the desiccated dryness in her mouth and throat, as if all her flesh had been replaced with fine-grit sandpaper. Still lacking the resolve to open her eyes, she blindly clawed at the knobs of the sink until water began to pour, and then began scooping handfuls of it into her mouth.
After a few gulps, she began to feel a bit better. Her mouth, though it still felt dry as ever, was at least now rid of the horrible, sour, metallic taste that she hadn't registered until it was gone, and the unintentional splashing of water onto her face did wonders in helping her start to truly wake up. The very next instant, though, a numbing pain spread across her hands and face, and down her throat. The water was freezing cold.
That didn't deter Ashira, though, and she kept drinking until she knew that she would not be able to swallow a drop more without throwing up. Her hands were numb from the frigid water, as was her face. Icy rivulets streamed down her chin and throat and under her unzipped collar, leaving cool, glistening trails across her breasts and stomach.
Somehow, this numbness that spread across her fingers and cheeks seemed to have carried over to her hangover, as well, though whether it was the rapid cooling, or the much-needed hydration, or both, she neither knew nor cared. Her head now hurt with the intensity of just any old headache, her skin did not feel two sizes too small for her organs, and her muscles and joints barely ached with any more intensity than they usually did.
She opened her eyes for the first time since she'd gotten out of bed, ready and eager to take full advantage of her hangover cure while its effects still lasted, and almost fell over as she stumbled away from the mirror in shock. The reflection in the mirror was decidedly not her.
Bloodshot eyes stared out at her from dark, sunken orbits; two craters on a puffy face rendered a waxy, pale bluish lilac by months of near-total involuntary isolation from the daylight. Raven hair framed that lifeless visage, once kept neat and short, now a wild, greasy, and, above all, long Seetcha's nest. It had once had lively sun-bleached streaks where her beret and headset did not fully cover it, from when she would ride head-out in her trusty command Ishtarti-603, but they were now mere faded tips spread unevenly through the carbon-black tangle.
The rest of her was not in much better shape. Her bust, though always on the fuller size, was nonetheless noticeably larger than it had been the last time Ashira had inspected her reflection, and doubtless was the cause of her incessant back pain. In the same moment, she became aware that her breasts rested not against the top of her six-pack - which, while rarely worked out and never particularly defined, had, in its mere presence, still been a point of quiet pride for her - but at the upper limits of a beer gut, whose faint outline was visible even under the baggy suit she was wearing for the umpteenth day in a row, and which stood as a testament to the inertia she had descended into while trying to force the RAR into motion.
'Fuck, there's the evidence of my battle. Mom was right, I do eat like a Turox before the slaughter. I have no self-control. Why do I even bother with this restructuring business if I can't even keep to my own damn fitness goals?' Her gloom, though deep and all-consuming while it weighed upon her soul, dissipated just as quickly as it set in. 'But I knew it would happen, so why does it surprise me? I knew going in that I was burning myself up in the present to keep future me warm. It's just a few kilos. A dozen at most. No big deal. Just need a bit more exercise for a month or two and I'll be right back in parade shape!'
It did, however, make her think to place an order with the on-base supply depot for some new clothes. With the Unification Day festivities looming, it would simply not do for this quite temporary distortion of her Noble figure to be so brazen, she firmly decided.
The order would have to wait, however. When Ashira brought out her government-issued Data-Slate from her front pocket in a familiar motion, already compiling a list of all the workout gear, field uniforms, and parade garb she would need in a size up, the device, in an apparent bout of unruliness, first resisted her efforts to turn it on, and when it was finally made to do so, simply boot-looped endlessly on the startup screen. For all intents and purposes, it was a Slate-shaped paperweight, and Ashira didn’t even have enough physical documents in her possession to make use of this one purpose it had left.
‘First my clothes, now the one Slate mom can’t track me on. What’s next, is my ID going to expire all of a sudden? Will my physical Chit card have a bad contact?’
There was only so much she could take at one time, so she decided to do the sensible thing and get something to eat before returning to dealing with her problems. She pulled out her Slate. It was almost noon.
'No one needs to see me like this. How can I command the regiment if they see me in such a state? I'll order breakfast - well, lunch now, but who's really counting? - and I can join everyone for dinner, once I get a chance to order in some new clothes, and shower, and maybe do something with my hair.'
With a practiced motion, so automatic it was almost a reflex, she swiped through the interface until she found what she was looking for. There, between Combatters forum sites, was a saved page for the Hungry Gal's order menu. Her chit was already saved in the system. All she needed was to tap on "Large Hot Meal #5 - Drink Combo" and…
CHIT DECLINED - PAYMENT BLOCKED
"That can't be right," Ashira muttered aloud as she tapped the button again, over and over, to the same effect. "It's a government card. Unless- ah, right, it must be the new policy they were talking about! Can't believe they made food expenses count as personal expenditure only, the nerve of these credit-pinching…"
She went into the payment details section of the page, switched the number to her personal one, and selected "Large Hot Meal #5 - Drink Combo" again. This time, a new message appeared.
INVALID ACCOUNT - DEACTIVATED
The gnawing hunger in her stomach disappeared in an instant, replaced by a solid iron bar of dread. Why was her account deactivated? Who could have done it? The only other person with access privileges was her own mother, and why would she…?
Ashira knew the answer. She didn't want to know it, to acknowledge that she knew it for fear of what it meant, but she did. With shaking hands, she opened the notification screen of her Slate, and saw she had unread messages from her family group chat. She tapped that notification, expecting a deluge of fury about her weight, her spending habits, her slovenly appearance in public, or any manner of other things, but there was but one message, sent earlier that morning. It was from her mother, indeed, but it was just four words long.
I got the letter.
She wanted to protest, to scream, "What letter could you possibly mean?," but she couldn't. A memory, hazy from the fog of insomnia that had dulled her thoughts at the time, played against her volition in her mind. The words hadn't made sense to her then, but they did now. Robotically, she closed the message from her mother and searched through her inbox for one marked with a government seal. She opened it, and read it in silence. The last few lines were the hardest to read, because by then the tears had begun to well up in her eyes.
It was over. Her career, her noble status, her finances, her life as she knew it… they were all gone, and it had taken just one letter to send it all crashing down.

First, Previous, Next
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Victor sat at his kitchen table and stared at the tablet in his hand as he blew on his morning coffee. It had been a busy week, setting up areas for construction with enough room for the nano-forge, then using it to build auto-factories to build more mining drones and more forge spiders to gather more resources and clear out more areas.
Thus far he had Ingot Storage 1 complete and the forge spiders pathed to bring back and sort them. Then Hydroponics 1 was complete, the auto-farmers were programmed and with any luck in about six weeks he’d have wheat, oats, barley, corn, beans, rice, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, okra, mushrooms, squash, and many more fruits and vegetables.
Today he was working on Meat Lab 1. Set up was pretty straight forward, the equipment and power were in place, and the specimens were brought from dimensional storage to the grow labs, it was just the pathing necessary to cultivate, harvest and can the meats. His budget was limited here, he had chicken, beef, and pork cultures, and that was it.
Who would have thought his life savings, his parents life savings, and the sale of his ancestral home still couldn’t get him everything he wanted to start a new life on a colony world? He tapped his tablet a few more times before he was satisfied with the pathing, he pretty much copied it over from Hydro 1, they both canned the food in the end anyways.
He then checked on his mining drones, they were busy little beavers, and had found a remarkable amount of usable materials. More than even the satellite estimated for this location, he sent a few of them two days ago to cut a shaft down to the petroleum reserves, it appears that they had indeed succeeded in locating it.
He brought up the auto-factories that he had built from the nano-forge, numbers three and seven were idle, so he started constructing hauler drones to pump the raw petroleum into their internal tanks and then bring them up to Storage 1, where they can unload into new tanks. This will solve my plastics issue… I hope.
Yup, everything was going smoothly. Even if he never made it back to the empire, at least here he could have a little piece of it, with all the modern conveniences he was used to. “Screw living in places like Wuzhen. They didn’t even have indoor plumbing!” He muttered as his attention was brought to a notification on his tablet. INTRUDER ALERT. ____________ Pan ran as though her life depended on it. Well, actually it did, for the instinctive Ox-Kin that were chasing her would kill and eat her if she were caught. Being Rabbit-Kin her small and agile frame allowed her speed and maneuverability, but the Ox-Kin instinctuals didn’t have to run around trees, they could just push them aside!
Her wagon and all her goods were lost, she was dirty and scared. There was a clearing up ahead and her heart dropped, nowhere to hide, and the stream would slow her down, she was trapped now! She frantically looked from left to right as she continued to run, looking for some way out as the Ox-Kin roared behind her tearing up the ground as their razor sharp hoofs slammed into the ground.
She heard a sound as if there were thunderstorm raging, but it did not end, it simply got louder. She looked up in time to see a black figure on wings of fire plunge towards the ground. She didn’t stop, if it would distract the instinctuals then she would use it to her advantage and hopefully escape this terrible fate.
Suddenly she heard a sound as if someone were rubbing the rim of a meditation bowl, only hundreds of times louder, then screams of pain, several thuds, and then silence. She turned her head to see the black figure stand upright and to her astonishment, all the Ox-Kin were down.
No, not down, dead. Cut in half, obviously in mid gallop for the halves of their bodies were separated by meters. She slowed to take in the strange figure, its helmet magically disappeared behind him, showing a foreign face with short cropped black hair and eyes she had only seen on portraits of the Eternal Empress. _____________ “It’s ok, they’re all dead now. Waste of good beef if you ask me, but it’s a little too close to cannibalism for me. Had enough corpo-starch in the guard to last me a lifetime.” He said as she stopped to take a breath. He slowly started walking over to her.
Pan backed up, rather involuntarily, as this man had just slaughtered half a dozen instinctual Ox-Kin in the blink of an eye.
“Whoa, calm down, not gonna hurt you. Just want to ask you a few questions, I’m Victor by the way, what’s your name?” He asked, hands out to show he meant no harm.
Pan finally caught enough wind to take her hands off her thighs and straighten up, one of her bunny ears fell across her face, a sign of how exhausted she truly was. “I’m… Pan… Sorry, still trying to catch my breath.”
The strange man cocked his head to the side and she noticed it wasn’t just a helm he had been wearing, At first she thought he was wearing all black clothing, but it was actually armor, very intricate armor. “Are you a cultivator? I’ve never seen a male cultivator before.”
Victor chuckled, “I’ve been getting that a lot lately. The answer is… complicated. Now, about those questions. Shall we walk back to your home while I ask?”
Pan shook her head, “The only home I had was my wagon. I was a trader who bought and sold goods. The instinctuals destroyed it while I was gathering water. I heard my Ox bellow and when I came up from the stream it was being eaten, the wagon destroyed, my wares nothing more than shredded trash.” She looked down and started to cry as the realization that she had just lost everything took hold.
Victor put on his officers face, oh boy. Here come the water works. “Shh, calm down, it’s only a wagon. It’s a thing, and things can be replaced.”
She looked up to him and lowered her hands, “Perhaps to a powerful cultivator, but I am but a lowly peasant girl. I will have to sell my self on the streets to eat now!” She buried her face back into her hands and wailed.
“Oh for Emperors sakes!” Victor thought as he scooped the small woman up in his arms. This prompted a sharp “Eeek!” From her as he activated his jump jets. _____________ Pan was terrified. Rabbit-Kin were not made for flying. The strange cultivator had scooped her up in his arms as though she were a small child and launched them into the air. She tried to scream, but the air screeching by her face seemed to carry the noise away. Though she doubted anyone could have heard over fire erupting from his wings.
Suddenly they landed and she was set down. She looked around and saw they were on a ledge, far up the mountain where the Ox-Kin had chased her. The ledge had a metal rail all the way around it but she saw no way to reach it other than flight.
The strange man must have brought his helmet back up before they launched into the air, because he had it up now. He turned to the mountain and it split open before him! After retracting his helm he simply said, “Follow me, since you don’t have a home, I’ll bring you to mine.”
She followed him into the mountain, expecting it to be dark and cold, but to her surprise it was warm and light shown down from the ceiling as if it were daylight! The walls were smooth stone, and after a few meters in the mountain closed behind them, only it seemed to do it twice, once inside and once outside.
She continued to walk until they came to a strange door with a wheel in the center. The cultivator spun the wheel and opened the metal door. She had never seen so much worked metal in all her days. Even the blacksmith shops lacked the amount, or skill she saw here.
After she entered into a small chamber, Victor closed the door behind them and walked to a strange outcropping on the wall and turned around. The armor up close was neither new nor perfect, she saw dints and dings, and scorch marks in places. Then she jumped back as it split in half and Victor stepped out in nothing more than short pants covering his man-hood.
She blushed and diverted her eyes, but not before noticing the rippling muscles, scar tissue, and little round metal discs at regular intervals all over his body. He covered himself with a very plush white robe and slippers before opening another door that was identical to the first. “Should I wear slippers as well, Master Cultivator?”
Victor looked back, “That won’t be necessary, the cleaning drones will handle any mess we cause.” Pan pondered on what a drone was. A servant perhaps? Was that why he brought me here, to be one of his servants? Or was it something else? Oh no, she mentioned having to sell herself, did he expect her to be one of his mistresses? She wouldn’t be opposed, for he was a handsome man, but what kin was he?
She almost missed what was said next. “This is my humble abode, you’re welcome to stay here for a time while I get my bearings on this land.” Victor said as he walked over to the table and picked up a piece of see-through glass. Magical runes and pictures flared into existence as he tapped at it before setting it back down.
Pan could barely speak. This place was what she would expect in the Imperial palace. There was no kang, or open fire, but it was the perfect temperature and humidity. She saw a large couch, tables, chairs, cabinets of wood, a countertop with a strange steel bowl and what looked as if it were a well pump above it.
The back wall had multiple doors, the two that were open showed one to be a bed room, with a huge bed, the other was tiled with a white chair, it almost looked like a throne? How strange she thought as she peered into the room to see a chamber of fogged glass also inside the room.
Victor noticed her curiosity, “That is the bathroom. Come here, I’ll show you.”
Pan followed Victor into the bathroom as he demonstrated the toilet, explaining rather embarrassingly how it worked and how to use it, he then showed her the glass chamber with the odd steel handles.
“This one is hot, and this one is cold, you turn them both on until you get the temperature just right to clean yourself. On the wall there is liquid soap, shampoo, and conditioner, though I keep my hair close, so the conditioner wouldn’t be as necessary as say someone with your long hair.” He explained.
Pan was shocked as the saw the stream of water pouring from the wall. What manner of magic was this? “I have never seen a male cultivator, but it is known they are master craftsmen, can you all create such magical wonders?”
Victor shrugged, “No idea, I’ve never met another, uh, male cultivator.”
Pan considered, “Could I, maybe use this chamber to clean up? This mornings activities have left me a little soiled.”
Victor nodded, “Of course.” He reached into a small cabinet and produced a large piece of fluffy cloth and placed it on another steel rail outside the chamber. Before placing a smaller version of it inside the chamber on a rack. Finally he reached back into the cabinet and produced a robe much like he was wearing and placed it on a hook behind the door.
He then pointed to the small one inside the chamber, “That is a wash cloth to clean yourself with the soap, use the shampoo here on your hair, and then after rinsing it out, rub the conditioner in and let it sit a bit before finally rinsing it out. Then dry yourself off with this towel, and put on the robe I placed on the door.”
Pan nodded, “What will you do with my clothes after I remove them?”
Victor sniffed “Probably burn them.” He thought to himself. “I will provide you with clothes to lounge around the house.” He turned around and closed the door behind him.
Pan used the ‘toilet’ surprised at its efficiency to clean itself with water before turning on the water stream and adjusting the knobs until it was pleasant. She took to cleaning herself with gusto, for she had never had such luxury. Even the tubs at the inns she could sometimes visit were not this nice.
She heard the door open, and through the smoked glass she could see that Victor seemed to be gathering her things from the floor and leaving behind something on the ‘toilet’. After getting herself more clean that she thought she ever had in her entire life she sighed and decided she needed to get out.
After fiddling with the knobs and nearly freezing herself before turning them the proper way she reached out and grabbed the ‘towel’ and found it did an amazing job of drying her. Afterwards she tied the cloth up in her hair, careful not to get her ears and examined the clothes he brought her.
There was an article of clothing like what he wore, the short pants, but smaller, and tighter. She assumed it was for the same purpose and put it on, then she found a soft pair of pants, like men would wear, but of much finer and softer material. Finally, there was a form fitting shirt that she found left little to the imagination, but she had little choice to but to put it on. Finally there were thick, luxurious slippers on the floor and the robe on the back of the door.
She came out of the bathroom to find him at the strange counter, cooking. “A man who cooks for a woman? I know he is a foreigner, but I have never heard of this happening.” She thought as he waved her to the large table.
“I missed breakfast this morning, your little tussle with the Ox-Kin ladies kind of put it on hold, have you eaten?” He asked.
Pan felt the hunger pains when he asked as she shook her head.
He chuckled as he continued his work, “No, I guess you didn’t get a chance to eat this morning either.
How do you like your eggs?”
Pan was confused, “Um, I prefer them cooked?”
Victor looked back before saying, “Scrambled it is then.”
After a few minutes and some toiling around the cupboards he dropped off a huge plate in front of her. “Normally I’d let the auto-cook prepare the food, but since I’m getting everything up and running at the moment it’s missing a lot of ingredients. So, I worked with what I had, scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and toast.”
She stared down at her plate, it mostly looked familiar, but the white porridge was a bit different. He handed her strange utensils before pushing two strange bottles with seasonings in them with holes punched in the top. She watched as he used the utensils to eat, and attempted to do the same.
The spoon was easy, she had used those for soup, but the tiny pitch fork and knife were difficult. Victor noticed this and stood up, went to a cabinet and pulled out a drawer and brought back metal chop sticks.
Pan stared at them, they were perhaps brass, possibly even gold, her mouth dropped, these utensils would have been worth more than her wagon! Victor looked up from his food, “Is everything ok? Is there something wrong with the chopsticks?”
Pan hurriedly put the chopsticks to work grabbing up the slivers of pork. “No, no. This lowly peasant girl was merely in amazement at the quality of the utensils.”
Victor nodded as he watched her eyes go round with amazement after chewing on the bacon. Before she dug into the eggs and tried the grits, deciding they needed the seasonings, which she found was salt and a form of pepper, she nodded before cleaning her plate.
Victor sat back, his own plate clean, “Now that’s a healthy appetite, I wasn’t sure a girl your size could finish a plate like that.”
Pan flushed, a bit embarrassed, “It was no doubt due to your cooking expertise. But I still don’t know why you brought me here.”
Victor stood and took her plate and utensils and opened a strange metal door under the counter and placed them into a metal chamber before closing it back. “You said you were a traveling merchant, which means you go places and hear things. I’m new here and have questions. Therefore we can help each other.”
He ushered Pan to the plush couch and sat down, she took the time to pull her hair out of the towel and he took it from her and went into the ‘bathroom’ a strange name as there was no bathtub inside it and returned to sit at the opposite side of the couch.
Pan let him sit before asking, “Ok, you have questions, what do you want to know?”
Victor took a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking, “Why do you have rabbit ears? Why do people in the villages have monkey tails or goats eyes? And what the hell is up with these instinctuals that are more animal that people?” _______________ It had been hours and Pan was actually feeling mentally drained. The man before her was not a cultivator. Whatever he was, she doubted many cultivators except the Empress could hope to match him. The more he showed her, the more she was certain his powers were unlimited. She didn’t know whether to bow in awe, or run in terror.
Not from this plane of existence is how he put it. Meaning from the realm of the divinities maybe? She did not know for sure.
“So, this Eternal Empress came along a few thousand years ago, united the lands, built a wall and a government, and now uses her armies and cultivator sects to maintain law and order across her lands?” He asked.
Pan nodded, “Yes, before her we were broken into tribes that warred against one another constantly.”
Victor paced in front of her, “So she is immortal, like me. That’s good and bad, good in that she may have the knowledge to get me home. Bad, that she could see me as a threat and has tons of resources.” He suddenly stopped pacing. “I’m hungry, are you hungry?”
Pan was not going to say no to a free meal, as she literally had nothing to her name now. Not even her clothes. “I could eat master… er Victor.”
He started off to the ‘kitchen’ and opened the top to the large metal door and produced a round item wrapped in flexible glass? Or was it cloth that looked like glass? “Victor is fine, I’m going to make a Pizza, I doubt you’ve ever had one, but trust me, they’re great.”
As he worked they continued the questions, “So cultivators are broken up into sects, each one with its own goals and agendas, but all loyal to the Empress?”
Pan nodded, “Yes, and then the Iron Legions are armored mortals who keep the peace throughout the empire, although none of the towns around here are large enough to boast a garrison.”
The metal and glass hinged door was opened and the round cake like object that was placed on a pan was put into it and the door closed. “Ok, twenty minutes and we eat. So tell me, what kin is the Empress?”
Pan looked confused, “The Empress is the Empress, she has no kin.”
Victor wiped his hands on a small dish towel, “So you are rabbit-kin, I’ve met tiger-kin and boar-kin, and others, but she has no kin?”
Pan made a sudden connection, “No, she is like you. She has no kin.”
Victor dropped the dish towel on the counter, “So she’s human.” ________________ “Curse that damnable Victor Cane!” Mei swore as she and Xiang pushed the wagon to free it from the mud once more as the Ox pulling it simply lacked the strength to free it.
Xiang looked to her sect sister, “My my, Mei.” She chuckled at her own word play. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were getting fixated on the male.”
Mei stared daggers at her companion, she knew she could feel the killing intent, but as they were both second tier, it did little. “The male was aloof, arrogant, cared nothing for face, and ignored me on the battlefield!”
Xiang grinned even more as she climbed aboard the wagon and took the reins. “Don’t think the rest of your sisters haven’t noticed the way you talk about him, you cover your interest with complaint, but it is a thin sheet.”
Mei reached down to her left hand, “He put his hand on mine in the Inn before he flew away on wings of fire. He was trying to comfort me on the loss of our sisters.”
Xiang turned her head sharply, “You didn’t put that in your report, this is the first any of us have heard of it.”
Mei sighed, “I don’t know what to think of it. Male cultivators are so rare, just seeing one outside of the the sect inner circles is a rarity. Most of us never get to even speak to a male cultivator unless we ascend to a high tier within the sect, making us worthy of being in their presence. I wanted to cherish it.”
Xiang smiled as she looked back to the ox before snapping the reins, “I would cherish it too, this is a hard life, mortal men would break in our embrace, but a cultivator male would not. He was a good looking man for a foreigner too.”
Mei shuddered, “That he is, even if a bit rugged, he is evidently a soldier after all.”
Xiangs mischievous grin was back, “I knew it, you were pining over this Victor!”
Mei’s killing intent was definitely felt by Xiang this time as she laughed uproariously at her friends discomfort.
“Fear not my OLDER sister, for in one passing of the moon we will be in the Celestial City and you can deliver your prize to the Empress. I am sure after this you will get to see your handsome soldier again. That is, if the Empress doesn’t take him as her own.” Xiang sang the last part with glee.
Mei stopped glaring, “You don’t think she would do that do you?” She asked.
Xiang laughed so hard she almost fell off the wagon.

Introduced a new map module: DCS: Sinai
Introduced a new campaign: UH-1H The Huey Last Show Campaign by SorelRo

DCS World

• Infantry no longer smoke when injured or killed
• ME. Weather widget: Broken alignment. Not enough space for strings - fixed
• Ships. Arleigh Burke aft launcher is missing the 'boom' sound when the SM-2 missile is fired - fixed
• ME. Mission Editor freezes when creating a new group - fixed
• AI Aircraft. AV-8B. Incorrect deck landing and takeoff in some cases - fixed
• AI Aircraft. AV-8B can't take off from FARP and sea shelf objects - fixed
• GUI Error when try to select track in some cases - fixed
• Ground units. In some situations, the collision of a bullet and a unit is not registered - fixed.
• MP. Server CTD if the client is destroyed due to a trigger and the client leaves the server - fixed.
• Historical mode. Egyptian list of units tuned.
• MP. There is no confirmation window when exiting the MP via the role selection menu - window added
• ME. ATC always shows AM radio modulation even if scene role set to FM - fixed
• AI Aircraft. MiG-31 will be able to simultaneously launch up to four R-33 missiles to four targets.
• Improved rendering of sea water surface in FLIR.
• ME. Aircraft payload view will stay open when "Additional Properties" tab is open.
• FLIR. South Atlantic Map IR render is adjusted.
• AI Aircraft. AI fighters will attack specialized interceptors like MiG-31 type if they are tasked with attacking fighters.
• MP. Server CTD on unit:destroy when player controlled - fixed
• Incorrect display of the horizon visibility boundary in TV mode of targeting pods - adjusted
• VR. Left eye has issues with lights on terrain and buildings - fixed lightmap applying in multi-viewport setup
• ME. MK-84 and some other bombs are missing in the Bomb in Zone Condition of trigger - fixed
• MP. Dedicated Server: slot spamming causes 100% CPU load and server unreachable - Fixed

DCS: F-16C Viper by Eagle Dynamics

• Added Velocity Search With Ranging (VSR) - Instruction video DCS: F-16C and F/A-18C Velocity Radar Modes Update (COMING SOON)
• Added MTR LO (71 knots) and HI (110 knots) function from CTRL (knots) page of FCR for radar AA modes
• Added Sinai IA Instant Action missions
• Fixed: Markpoint created from FCR GM has large offset from what is designated
• Fixed: Offset Aimpoint altitude is entered from DED with negative values
• Fixed: ASEC and DLZ persists in FCR after switching to NAV mode
• Fixed: TGP Mark point incorrect in weapon MAN mode
• Fixed: ACM 30x20 locking outside the HUD limits.
• Fixed: IAS incorrect on Marianas with very high head winds
• Fixed: Radar able to track targets that are terrain masked
• Updated BFM Instant Action Mission

DCS: F/A-18C Hornet by Eagle Dynamics

• Added Velocity Search (VS) - Instruction video DCS: F-16C and F/A-18C Velocity Radar Modes Update (COMING SOON)
• Added Sinai IA Missions
• Fixed: Enabling one-look raid removes target offboard information
• Fixed: Stuck B sweep on the edge of the DDI after locking on to the target
• Fixed: Slewing after Offset designation moves the WP symbol on the HSI
• Fixed: Extrapolated radar trackfiles continue to update the AIM-120 with the true position of the target
• Fixed: Precise coordinates discrepancy between F10 map and the cockpit
• Fixed: TWS won't show a trackfile until 6 raw hits (bricks) are detected
• Fixed: AZ/EL and RDR ATTK pages show info for jamming target
• Fixed: Offset symbol moves in SA page
• Fixed: SA page shows HAFUs ranked as 0, for trackfiles below rank 9
• Fixed: Stepping away from first track file takes two presses
• Fixed: Training mission carrier moves when it should be static
• Fixed: Airspeed in HUD on Marianas is doubled in very high head winds
• Fixed: Time on Target seems too fast when setting ground speed
• Fixed: Radar able to track targets that are terrain masked
• Updated Hornet BFM Instant Action missions

DCS: AH-64D by Eagle Dynamics

• Made it possible for AI to use IAT
• Added Sinai IA Instant Action missions
• Added Windshield wipers clear rain drops
• Added for AGM-114L new icon for ME
• Fixed: George manoeuvres are not predictable and almost deadly
• Fixed: LST switch in front cockpit moved to A in cold starts (auto-start and manual starts)
• Fixed: AGM-114L seem to fail to hit targets fired while aircraft is moving
• Fixed: APU desync between PLT and CPG
• Fixed: "George" will say "in range" when it is not
• Fixed: Player-CPG cannot launch AGM-114L after AGM-114K
• Fixed: George evaluate LT switch position when Player leaves CPG seat
• Fixed: Yaw limit after you don't launch AGM-114L at once
• Fixed: Constraint box fixed after last missile
• Fixed: George launched AGM-114L from 9km when in weapons free mode
• Fixed: AGM-114 typo in weapon label
• Fixed: FCR defaults to wrong mode in specific power on conditions

DCS: Mi-24P Hind by Eagle Dynamics

• Fixed: Radio desync in multicrew
• Fixed: R-863 radio does not turn on channel 11 on Pilot-Operator seat in multicrew
• Added: Quick Start missions for Sinai map

DCS: UH-1H Huey by Eagle Dynamics

• Fixed: Minigun animation is missing in MT
• Fixed: WIP Throttle control over FCU logic for new engine model. (Before helicopter would be able to takeoff on throttle idle)
• Fixed: WIP Fuel consumption tuning after new engine model implementation

DCS: Mi-8MTV2 Magnificent Eight by Eagle Dynamics

• Added: Quick Start missions for Sinai map
• Fixed: Crash caused by asymmetrical gunpods jettison

DCS: Supercarrier by Eagle Dynamics

• Fixed: MT - long range lineup light not visible
• Fixed: Deck markings not showing in mission editor MT

DCS: FW 190A-8 by Eagle Dynamics

• Pitot light indicator now works without ground power (pitot heating functions still have known issues)
• Fixed: Double bind for Start Switch

DCS: FW 190D-9 by Eagle Dynamics

• Fixed: Double bind for Start Switch

DCS AJS-37 Viggen by Heatblur Simulations

• NEW: Added over 100 user requested keybinds (with special thanks to Munkwolf et al.).
  • Does not affect existing keybinds.
• RB-05 Overhaul:
  • Fixed RB-05 only able to be steered with radar in A0.
  • Fixed launched RB-05s automatically setting radar to A0 (without moving the switch).
  • Fixed subsequent launches sending the first missile to Valhalla.
  • Fixed steering commands being sent to the missile beyond 30s.
• Included several BK-90 fixes:
  • Fixed STD switch erroneously affecting pattern setting.
  • Inhibited display of BK-90 HUD symbology above 500m.
  • Max distance release cue not showing correctly.
• Added U-22 Jammer Mode E (always transmits).
• Added non-tracer AKAN gunpod.
• Fixed Jammer warmup not being skipped during hotstart.
• Fixed U-22 (old) warning light not showing during warmup.
• Fixed X-TANK BRÄ light showing <50% RPM instead of <70%.
• Fixed airbrakes not auto-retracting with landing gear releasing.
• Added feature that allows airbrakes to be stopped in an intermediate position.
• Added “_(...)” to keybinds for l10n. Now keybinds are localizable.

DCS F-14 Tomcat by Heatblur Simulations

• NEW: Major Ground Handling and Suspension Overhaul Phase 2:
  • Significant suspension and ground handling qualities update.
  • Increased Brake Torque.
  • Adjusted kneel actuator rate.
  • Completely redone strut forces and dynamics.
  • Adjusted kneel spring energy.
• Fixed aircraft spawning kneeled on carrier hot starts.
• All hot starts now spawn with the parking brake engaged.
• Adjusted default takeoff trim for carrier spawns.
• Fixed incorrect delay in ejection sequence.
• EIG brightness adjusted with ambient illumination.

DCS: JF-17 by Deka Ironwork Simulations

• Fixed: SMS supports for PL-12
• Added: Weapon Qualification missions

DCS: SA-342M Gazelle by Polychop Simulations

SA342 - Common to all

• Updated external textures to PBR standard
• Added raindrops on canopy
• Interior lighting and reflections updated
• Flight model
  • Entirely rewritten FM
  • Overhauled engine and rotor behaviours
  • Updated mass and payload mass parameters
  • Many new behaviours added or reworked (ground effect, flapback/blowback, retreating blade stall, density altitude, ETL…)
  • Engine surge effect from rapid collective movement added
• Force Feedback support added
• Removed ‘Easier Controls’ special option
• Removed ‘Rudder Trimmer’ special option (replaced with new trim options)
• New trim options for cyclic and pedal behaviour when using ‘Force Trim Interrupt’
  • None - has no effect
  • Instant - trim position instantly set to current cyclic/pedal position
  • Fade In/Fade Out - trim position will move to current cyclic/pedal position over short time period (<1sec) (also applies to ‘Trimmer Reset’)
  • Applied upon Recentering - trim position will apply instantly only when cyclic/pedal position is recentered
• Updated controls indicator
  • Red marker shows control position
  • Grey marker shows trim position
  • Autopilot markers removed for further consideration
• Updated/added network animations
• Implemented IFF panel (limited functionality)
• Updated autopilot system
  • Airspeed/Altitude hold mode removed for further consideration
  • “Auto-collective” removed for further consideration
  • Added light indicators for auto-hover (CSV) and heading-align (ALV) autopilot modes
  • Autopilot master switch will not engage/will disengage if pitch, roll or yaw SAS disabled
• Added smoke display system
  • Smoke launchers can be equipped in the rearm/refuel screen
  • Smoke launchers have a new input to toggle on/off
• Collective can be hidden by clicking on base of collective
• Added tablet navigation aid
  • Tablet can be disabled from mission editor
  • Tablet provides map, heading, airspeed and groundspeed GPS information
• Updated slip ball to be less erratic
• Fuel warning light now flickers if below 80L

SA342L

• Added new weapons:
  • 2x/4x Mistral
  • 2x/4x HOT3
  • HMP400 gunpods (100, 200, 400)
  • Selectable GIAT M621 20mm

Replaced Viviane screen with periscope sight

• Replaced Viviane control panel with periscope control board
  • Periscope provides two zoom levels
  • Toggleable gyro stabilisation
  • Selectable reticles for estimating distance
  • Connected to ‘VIS’ mode on Artificial Horizon same as Viviane
• Pilot sight can be hidden by clicking on mounting of pilot sight
• AI now able to fire HOT3 missiles
• Added ground crew option to remove doors
• Added option to shoot multiple pylons if the weapon is from the same type

SA342M

• Viviane camera code overhauled
• Viviane multicrew synchronisation improved
• AI now able to fire HOT3 missiles

SA342 Mistral

• Removed playable version (now replaced by SA342L)
• Removed Custom Cockpit options

SA342 Minigun

• Added special option to decouple minigun from head/camera view
• Added inputs for keyboard/joystick control of minigun
• Added inputs for mouse control of minigun
• Added clickables and inputs for minigun safety, sight powebrightness and IR laser

SA342 Known issues and work in progress

• Auto-hover (CVS and ALV modes) are work in progress and may not function reliably yet
• PBR overhaul is a work in progress. Most liveries will look too glossy until they have custom RoughMet textures applied. This will happen over the next few DCS World updates.
• Our in-house Mistral ATAM has been replaced by ED’s which is very susceptible to flares.
• Mistral ATAM tubes protective cap not yet animated

DCS Mirage F1 by Aerges

Short range IR missiles:

• Fixed AIM-9J lock-on audio not being heard.
• Sidewinder missile will not perform SEAM (scan pattern) anymore as this mode was not implemented in the real F1.
• 'Cannon 600/Identification P' throttle button will now uncage Sidewinder missiles (except AIM-9B). If no target was detected at this moment, the seeker head will drift randomly following the background IR heat. The seeker will return to the boresight once the 'Cannon 600/Identification P' button is released. I.e. if a target is tracked, the button must be held pressed to keep the seeker on the target.
• AIM-9JULI launch delay was reduced to 0.4 seconds (AIM-9B/P/J still have 0.8 seconds).
• Magic 1 and 2 scan now is a 5 degrees wide rectangular pattern.
• Fixed Magic missile scan pattern. Sometimes the scan pattern size was excessively increased.
• Updated Magic missiles instantaneous seeker FOV. It is now 3.4 degrees wide.
• Wingtip missile energization switch now always spawns in ON position.
• Wingtip missile cooling time increased.

Flight model and control system:

• Adjusted yaw damper response (both amplitude and frequency).
• Adjusted wake turbulence behaviour. Now the aircraft won’t be so much affected by turbulence in yaw.

Autopilot:

• Fixed control stick slow jitter in some situations when AP was connected.
• Fixed autopilot roll issues that caused disconnection in MP (and in SP after a longer time).

Gyroscope system fixes:

• Fixed bug that impeded full alignment of the gyros if the Gyro mode switch is moved out of stop before the aircraft has AC power.
• Gyro failure overhaul:
  • Added new gyroscope related failures.
  • Fixed general gyroscopic central failure (it now works as described in the manual’s failures section).
• Changed CAP (heading) failure light logic to no longer depend on the attitude gyroscope state.

Various systems changes:

• Fixed missing decimals in loaded radio presets.
• Increased alternator overheating time.
• BARAX lights test logic will be always working now, disregarding the system test status.
• INS overhaul (first step):
  • Improved alignment steps and precision in all modes.
  • Accelerating during alignment now generates a malfunction in the INS and requires full realignment.
  • Fixed ALCM mode.
• Corrected oxygen test logic to follow manual description. Now the needle moves from full to empty to full again until the test button is depressed.
• Fixed oxygen indication energization logic. Now, when pressing the OXY TEST button, the oxygen indicator will be energized by the emergency AC bus 1 instead of the main AC bus 2, thus allowing the oxygen level to be read with the engine off.
• Fixed Standby Horizon attitude reference symbol movement with keyboard inputs.
• Fixed initial position of the ejection seat clickspot before it is pressed for the first time.

3D model and textures:

• Fixed the size of white dots in the Autopilot control panel.
• Fixed circuit breaker label (C de GYRO circuit breaker was incorrectly called NAV).
• Improved BR-250 bomb texture.
• Fixed the spherical indicator, it now shows the correct pitch attitude.
• Fixed the standby horizon, it now shows the correct pitch attitude.

Miscellaneous:

• Updated the Flight Manual.
• Updated the startup training mission: Highlighted the NWS high sensitivity button. Specified that the "I" key on the keyboard sets the throttle to idle.
• Added PHIMAT chaff pod to versions CT, CR, ED, BD, EQ, BQ. (Only visual for now).
• Added Stick Hide/Unhide keybind.

DCS: C-101 Aviojet by AvioDev

• AIM-9M launch delay was reduced to 0.4 seconds.
• Magic 1 and 2 scan now is a 5 degrees wide rectangular pattern.
• Fixed Magic missile scan pattern. Sometimes the scan pattern size was excessively increased.
• Updated Magic missiles instantaneous seeker FOV. It is now 3.4 degrees wide.
• Fixed missing decimals in loaded radio presets.
• Fixed startup training mission (EN, ES and CN). The aileron control test trigger should now work.

DCS: Flaming Cliffs by Eagle Dynamics

• Double pylons with B-8 rockets don't work on Su-27/33 - fixed

DCS: Black Shark 3 by Eagle Dynamics

• ME. Incorrect mass of payloads - fixed
• MP. 2011 version instead of 2022 when looking at other clients - fixed
• Rotor gearbox sounds updated

DCS: Combined Arms by Eagle Dynamics

• Fixed - Player can't use HE shells in the second stage if in the first stage set 0 HE shells.
• Fixed - "Zero-sight" mask in iso-view IR or NVG on MBT Abrams.

DCS: Normandy 2.0 Map by Ugra Media

• Added scene of Spitfires factories in Hampshire
• Added scene with flags and warehouses from machinery at Heathrow Airfield
• Added the port of Le Treport
• Added two fishing boats
• Added fishing boat routes
• Added underground tunnels in Paris
• Added new tram routes in London
• Added wooden piers
• Improved radar tower scenes in England and France
• Improved port scenes for Portsmouth, Dunkirk, London
• Improved traffic of trains and cars
• Added earthworks at English airfields Kenley, Ford, Chailey, Needs Oar Point, West Malling, Gravesend
• Improved scenes of Orly, Saint-Andre-de-lEure, Amiens-Glisy, Carpiquet, Gravesend, Kenley airfields
• Improved tent and sandbag shelter scenes at Ford, Chailey, Gravesend, Kenley airfields
• Part of metal car bridges replaced by stone ones
• Improved range of visibility settings for city objects
• Improved life settings for objects
• Improved lighting of objects
• Destruction models are optimised
• Added steps on Tower Bridge, Mirabeau Bridge, Alexander III Bridge
• Fixed errors in the Chailey, Farnborough, Ford, Kenley, Beny-sur-Mer, Bazenville, Deux Jumeaux airfield scenes
• Fixed errors in taxiways and car parks at Chailey, Farnborough, Ford, Kenley, Lymington, Orly, Villacoublay, Saint-Andre-de-lEure, Creil, Cormeilles-en-Vexin, Carpiquet, Sainte-Laurent-sur-Mer
• Terrain errors on the French coast have been fixed
• Levelled terrain in the ports of Portsmouth, Dunkirk, London, Boulogne-sur-Mer
• Fixed errors in land textures near the Isle of Wight and on the coast of the landing zone
• Corrected collisions in Louvre Museum arches, military school in Paris, Luxembourg Palace, Tower, Victoria Station, Liverpool Street Station, Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace
• Fixed errors at Cumberland and Newhaven Forts
• Fixed the hands on the clocks at Victoria Station, Big Ben and model churches
• Increased texture resolution for minimum settings
• Improved cliffs on the coast of France
• Added large size flags

Campaigns

The Enemy Within 3.0 Campaign by Baltic Dragon:
General. Fixing typos, updates to briefings etc.

• Mission 01. Fixes to coordinates in subtitles. Removed unnecessary files from the mission.
• Mission 04. Added missing line for Pontiac. Updated on-screen messages so that player won't loose some of the comms.
• Mission 05. Removed duplicate briefing images. Updated flight plan (removed wrong WP1).
• Mission 06. Updated wrong kneeboard card with frequencies.
• Mission 07. Updated kneeboard and briefing images.
• Mission 09. Updated briefing images. Fixed issue with Overlord AI overstepping custom comms.
• Mission 11. Updated Player Group ID. Balancing of the difficulty for the infantry attack near the mosque.
• Mission 12. Fixed wrong VO for Lotus. Fixed overlapping comms for Raider.
• Mission 13. Fixed issue with missing debriefing. Minor typos fixed.
• Mission 15. Changed frequencies for some assets, so it is easier to manage the radios now.
• Mission 20. Updated mission date. Made some friendly units invisible so that they are not engaged by Russian SAMs.

DCS: F/A-18C Flaming Sunrise Campaign by Sandman Simulations

• Documentation – typos fixed
• All missions – typos fixed
• All missions – planning charts included in in-game kneeboard
• All missions – sidenumbers changed to be more realistic

DCS: F/A-18C Raven One: Dominant Fury Campaign by Baltic Dragon

• Horizontal Update. Updated and fixed skins for the campaign
• Mission 01. Fixed problem with AI flights not taking off and carrier turning constantly
• Mission 08. Fixed issue with Red orbiting around the carrier after takeoff
• Mission 12. Added safeguard for AI engaging the SAM sites

DCS: F/A-18C Inherent Resolve Campaign by Looking Glass

• Adjusted ALL mission start/wait times - users can start aircraft quickestart mission quicker
• Mission 5 - Barrel bombs - improved gameplay, added audio for fox calls player and wingman, improved AI, landings, sequencing
• Mission 11 - Chemical Alley - added immortal mode, improved gameplay, Enemy defences reduced, AAA FX improved, timings for tanker fixed
• Other bugs/errors corrected
• Mission End on mission fails has now been removed for ALL missions

Three New Terrifying True Scary Tales
​
Number One: The Pool
​
Now, this happened a very long time ago. I am not going to mention when or where though and I am submitting it anonymously. I don’t want people going back and finding out more about it and then lashing out of me.
​
I was 13 years old and my brother was 11. As I mentioned, this happened a long time ago and I think today, not a lot of parents would put a 13 year old in charge of an 11 year old. But this was not unusual at all back then. In fact, I was looking after my little brother all the time before either of us even hit 10 years old.
​
After a while, of course, always keeping my eye on him began to get very annoying. It interfered with my hanging out with friends. It was quite a drag when I would try to talk to girls. It was just a pain in the ass, really.
​
Anyway, one day during a really hot summer, our parents decided to drop us both off at the local swimming pool for the day. My dad had to work and my mom had errands and stuff to run plus work do to do for the church. It was so hot and there was no way we could afford air conditioning. We had one old fan in the house and a sprinkler in the yard that we could go play in. But the swimming pool was the much better option.
​
Of course the pool was very crowded. Lots of families would drop their kids off there during the summertime. And of course, even though I knew it already, my mom stressed to me, “Keep an eye on your little brother at all times.”
​
Some of my friends were at the pool too. I got to talking to them and they told me about this new girl who moved into town. She would be starting school that fall and supposedly she was really hot. So of course, I wanted to check her out. I knew the lifeguards would be watching my brother in the water, so he would be fine.
​
I went with the guys and the girl was really cute. My buddies all dared me to approach her, which was admittedly a brave thing for a 13 year old boy to do. Of course, I couldn’t chicken out in front of them, so I did just that.
​
She was a very sweet girl. We actually ended up talking for a little while. Her parents were at the pool though, and they called her back after too long. So I went back to the water to see how my little brother was doing.
​
The only problem was that I couldn’t see him anywhere in the water. This was a small town in a rural area, so although I said the pool was crowded, it wasn’t like a water park is crowded though. I should have easily been able to pick him out of the water. He just wasn’t there.
​
I went and searched around the area surrounding the pool and didn’t see him there either. My heart started beating faster and I began panicking. I went to the building where the showers and concession stand were. He wasn’t there either. You couldn’t leave that pool without going through that building, though. I asked the attendant if a 11 year old boy had left the pool on his own in the previous hour and he told me no.
​
I then went to the lifeguards and my buddies. I thought maybe there was a chance that I had missed him. It’s easy to occasionally miss someone in a crowd. The lifeguards ordered everyone out of the pool. Fortunately, there were no drowned children in the pool. Unfortunately, my brother was nowhere to be found outside of the pool.
​
The lifeguards had to call my mother at the church. I had never before lost track of my little brother like this before. I had no idea what to expect when she showed up. I was only thankful that the police were already at the pool or she probably would have whipped my ass right there in front of the entire pool.
​
The trouble I got into at home isn’t something that I want to go into very much. My butt very much has PTSD from the experience. But that was minor compared to the fear I felt for my little brother. Hell, I didn’t even have time to feel guilty although that I knew that I was. I was only concerned for him and wondered what would happen.
​
All day and night, I expected the police to bring him home. But that didn’t happen. I expected it the next day too. But it didn’t happen.
​
The town organized a search to look for him. I kept expecting to hear from them that they had found him. But that didn’t happen either.
​
After about a week of my brother not being found, I began fearing for the worst. I began thinking that he was dead. And I was terrified every waking moment of my life, expecting to absolutely hear the news that his dead body was found.
​
Nearly two weeks after the disappearance, we got a phone call from the police. They had found my brother and thankfully, he was alive. But unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.
​
Remember the attendant telling me that no boy had left on his own? Well that’s because the boy left with one of the lifeguards who was getting off duty. He had lured my brother out of the pool and into his car with promises of ice cream, something he and I rarely ever got. And my brother went to his house with him.
​
For all of that time, he kept my little brother locked up in his basement. He didn’t do anything sexually to him, thank God. But there was a lot of mental and some physical torment when my brother wouldn’t do what he was told to you. But the scariest part for him was thinking he would never get out and be with his family again.
​
Here is another weird part. The lifeguard wasn’t an adult. He did this while his parents were out of town for a few weeks. They came back early and caught him. And if you think I felt bad for my parents’ punishing me, what they did to him had to be legendary. The police thought he was either planning on killing or releasing my brother before his parents got home. But no one ever knew for sure.
​
He had to live with it without much help for a long time. Mental health assistance had a very bad stigma back then. But we’re both still alive today and he forgave me a long time ago.
​
Number Two: Taking the Garbage Out
​
A few weeks ago I went outside at around 3am to move the garbage to the curb since pickup would be in the morning. I often do this in the middle of the night. I just tend to keep weird hours and as the weather warms up for the summer I find the warm nights preferable to the sweltering days.
​
I’m not worried about bothering my neighbors since I don’t use noisy bins and all of the houses right next to me are currently empty. I actually find the quiet of the neighborhood at night quite relaxing.
​
Unfortunately since I don’t use bins animals are able to get into the bags a bit easier and while this doesn’t happen often it had happened on this night. So I was outside picking up the strewn around garbage and putting it into another bag when the silence of the night was suddenly broken by multiple police sirens.
​
At first they seemed distant and while they startled me it was not at all unheard of to hear sirens at night here. But usually it would be one in the distance. As I listened, still bagging the garbage, I could tell it was multiple sirens and they were getting closer. Then just as suddenly as it started it stopped again. There was just silence. By the time they stopped they sounded maybe four blocks away.
​
For a moment the night was silent again and I began hauling the bags to the curb when the neighborhood dogs began barking all at once. It was like every dog in the neighborhood had gotten the cue to start barking. Many were even howling. It continued for maybe a minute and once again it just stopped as suddenly as it had started.
​

I realized I hadn’t heard any barking or howling while the sirens were going and that’s normally how it would work. These dogs had started up separately from the sirens and just stopped all at once. It just wasn’t normal. I went back to the side of the house to grab more bags when the silence was broken a third time. 

​
Just a single chime in the night. Like someone getting a phone notification. This sound wasn’t blocks away. This sound was here. RIGHT HERE. No more than feet away. As I said, the houses around me are empty.
​
I was done. The rest of the garbage would wait until morning. I didn’t see anyone close by but that just made it worse. There was someone close by that I couldn’t see. I immediately went into the house to leave the garbage for the morning.
​
I don’t know if these things were related. If the cops had been chasing someone who’s fleeing had caused the dogs to bark. Someone who received a message on their phone as they approached my house. Or if it was all just a coincidence. But I won’t be taking the garbage out at 3am anymore.
​
A Commuter’s Nightmare
William M.
06/30/2021
​
Back in the 80s, I worked at the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank in San Francisco while living and commuting from Oakland, CA
​
My job as Registrar, took me all over Northern California, during Blood Drives at hospitals, clinics, major corporations, etc., where we would sometimes witness firsthand, the dead, being placed on gurneys, running out of the Coroner's or Medical Examiner’s rear doors, and down the sidewalks, because they simply didn’t have enough room or staff inside the morgues to process them. Mortuaries were having problems too due to the massive overload where deceased loved ones were admitted but not processed or interred for months or even years at a time.
​
I remember watching the News and reading newspaper accounts of E.R.s in hospitals, clinics, etc. so clogged with patients, that 1 in 10 would die waiting to just get in to see a Dr. It was a Public Health and Safety nightmare. It was a National disgrace. It was politically orchestrated mass murder. It was the B purge of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
​
I remember, starting work early on one of many Blood Drives (the A.I.D.S. epidemic was just getting started) and having to catch the first B.A.R.T. (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train out of the station at about 4:00 am, where morning after morning I would witness hundreds of people sleeping on the benches, or the sidewalks, or on the streets outside, waiting for it to open.
​
Hundreds of others would be seen walking around like zombies in the early morning freeze amid the concomitant yelling, screaming, moaning, begging, and pleading, all of it looking like a newsreel of the death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
​
Many times, I was woken at home in the middle of the night, to the sounds of people howling and cursing outside my window at some real or imagined threat, until either the police came, which usually took hours because they were spread so thin, or some tenant, or other, ran them off.
​
I remember the time I woke up to the sound of a woman’s voice begging in the early morning cold for someone to help her. She kept repeating it over and over growing weaker and weaker until it was little more than a whisper.
By the time I’d gotten up, armed myself with the steel-reinforced baton I’d purchased at a Police Supply store, and ran the 5 floors down to the ground floor, I found her sitting in a taxi shivering from the 42-degree drizzle coming in off the Pacific. The cabbie told me it was alright; she was just cold and needed someplace to rest and warm up; He’d drop her off at one of the nearby shelters.
​
At the time, I was living in a local Residence Hall on Lake Merrit in Oakland, California which was little more than a converted Hotel from the San Francisco/Oakland Gilded Age of the late 1920s. It had 5 floors and a penthouse with a capacity of about 200. I never saw it get much beyond about 30 residents. It sported a full kitchen, dining area, big screen tv viewing room, swimming pool, and a recreation room with pool, foosball, and darts.
​
I lived with a friend, at the time, on the 5th floor just under the penthouse. There was an elevator, but like most refurbs, it didn’t work. That meant we'd have to climb 10 flights of stairs every day to reach our room. The best part was that we had the entire floor to ourselves. I guess nobody wanted to climb that many stairs. Because we were both runners, it was a little like running the 900 feet to the top of Angel Island, running across The Golden Gate Bridge and back, or running the 3.4 miles around Lake Merrit twice a day.
​
Because there was no air-conditioning, all the windows were left open during the summer months, but along with whatever cool air the San Francisco/Oakland Bay would bring through the gaping nearly wall-length vault ceilinged windows, it was always accompanied by the teeming, screaming City of Oakland street din: cabbies, buses, cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, scooters, police sirens, ambulance, fire department, pedestrians, hustlers, druggies, break-dancers, prostitutes the homeless, et al. Day or night, winter or summer, it was like living in a jet engine test lab, somewhere on the 9th level of hell.
​
Of course, we could always close the windows against the noise 5 stories below. But if it was summer, with all the humidity coming off the bay, we’d roast like 2 suckling pigs in our own sweat even if we used a fan.
​
One night after a particularly grueling day at work, I came home, climbed Mount Everest (or at least K-2) to my steaming little abattoir, tore off my sports jacket, shirt, and tie, and fell into a coma-like sleep only to awake some 4 hours later to the sound of someone slamming a door, over and over, seemingly as hard as they could. It was about 2:00 am and raining so hard the water was pouring through the open window and flooding the floor and carpet. The sound was coming somewhere down the hall from one of the other units.
​
After about the 15th or 16th slam to my inner ear, I was up, as in a trance, running like a lunatic from unit to unit and window to window, covering the entire southside of the 5th floor; battening down the hatches, and getting drenched in the process. It was, how should I say: exhilaratingly infuriating. I was supposed to get up in 2 hours and commute to work in the upper peninsula.
Having unconsciously completed this Sisyphean task and realizing that there was zero chance of getting any sleep, I donned my foul weather gear, equipped my trusty baton (I used to tuck its 2 ½-foot length up my sleeve when running), and headed out the front door to Lake Merrit which was just outside the main entrance. From there, I trotted to the sidewalk circling the lake, and began to run.
​
As I ran counterclockwise against a torrential rain with a gale-force wind broken only by the occasional intermittent rainbow-hued lightning flashes which blinded me to almost everything around me, I almost ran into someone up ahead who was walking in the same direction.
​
He was hunched over against the wind and rain and wearing a long heavy winter coat. Unusual for that time of year, I thought. Whenever I would run in public, I always made it a courtesy to let people know when I was approaching especially from behind. I’d blurt out a perfunctory:
​
“Excuse me.” Followed by a conciliatory:
​
“Sorry.”
​
But apparently, the person ahead either didn’t hear me or didn’t care because, when I was about 6 feet from him, he suddenly turned around, exposing a darkened contorted face, jagged teeth, and a guttural growl that would have stopped a charging 600-pound Grizzly.
​
The sheer force of the malevolence emitted from this inhuman thing almost made me stop, but because I was moving so fast, the inertia along with the gale force wind and lightning strikes propelled me past him (or it), and fingering my steel-reinforced baton, I, in turn, steeled my nerve and kept running. I looked back only once to reassure myself that he (or it) wasn’t following.
​
Running on the leeward side now, with the rain at my back, I ran past a group of men in a circle smoking or drinking or doing whatever noxious or illicit thing I imagined, when, feeling charged with my own adrenalin, or the anger and resentment at that woman’s searing pleas for help, or the spook I’d almost run into, or just the gross injustices thrust upon the world in that dank, dark and dangerous time, I almost stopped, baton in hand, intending to take on the whole group: I may go down, I told myself, but at least I would take one or two with me.
​
Just then, the lightning struck particularly close to where I and they stood and the sheer blinding flash and concussive boom shook all of us enough to break up their conspiratorial collaboration and my righteous crusade; just enough, that is, to shove me headlong around the next bend, to the long straight full out dash to the front doors, the 5 floors, 10 landings, and 50 risers to rain-sodden home.
​
To get to work every day, I'd have to commute to the upper peninsula by using 3 buses, 1 train, and 1 cab and after a 10 or 12 or sometimes 14-hour day, I would have to take the same to get back. This meant that if I didn’t go out, make dinner, eat, or watch tv, I just might get about 4 hours sleep. Commuting took between 2 to 3 hours, one way.
​
Once on the way home, almost every stop was crowded with commuters. I was told that it was because there were so many buses down for repair. The ones still running were so filled beyond capacity, that the shocks and springs were sitting on the chassis, and stop after stop proved nearly impossible to take on any more passengers. Still, and despite the few getting out at every stop, the driver would take on even more and just pack them in.
​
I remember him yelling for people to get back behind the yellow line over and over. By then, he was long past any semblance of reason; his patience frayed to a single maniacal thought, his voice raspier and raspier, his manner, more and more brusk.
​
I can still see when he finally lost it; jumping up, out of his seat, with a nickel-plated 38 Caliber Revolver pointing at one of the passengers; an elderly woman, screaming from the top of his lungs:
​
“Get back behind the yellow line!”
​
I can still hear the woman begging the driver:
​
“Please...” while the passengers behind were practically trampling each other to get out of the line of fire.
I remember the sad, exhausted urgency in her voice; she really was trying to move back, but how could she, an old woman, do that with all those people blocking her way? Everyone knew this was an impossible task; everyone except the maddened driver. He just kept glaring, and bellowing with his gun out pointed right at her and the other passengers.
​
"Back up and make room" he yelled.
​
‘Or else what?’ I thought. ‘You're gonna kill an old woman?'
​
Getting up out of my seat, pushing my way through the throng who were pushing against me to get away, I managed to get within about 6 feet from the front when, roaring through the din and my fear and anger, I ordered the bus driver to:
​
“Put the gun down!” And again, with even more rage and authority:
“Put the gun down, now!”
​
The bus driver shocked that it might be a cop, or worse, shakily, put his gun back in his concealed carry holster and hypnotically sat back down. He resumed driving without saying another word. I got out at the next stop, along with the elderly woman. She was so shaken, that she busted out crying. I held her still fuming despite the close call because I would now have to wait for another bus and after that, 2 more; the train and a cab to get home. I wasn’t going to make it until well after 8:00 pm. As soon as I got home, I reported the bus number and the driver to Muni.
​
Many of the commuters I'd see day to day, or share a seat with were victims of the purge just trying to get out of the rain or the cold, or the wind, or the sun, even for just a little while. For them, it was easing the agony of living on the street, even just a little. For many of us regular commuters, during those dark times, it proved to be the same.
​
On one of the final buses that would take me to the train and across the bay, I remember standing, with about 50 others, on Market Street waiting. Like ours, stop after stop was so packed with people, some were standing in the street because there was simply not enough room on the sidewalk. The ones in the street would stay where they were for fear of losing their place and missing their connection and having to wait another hour, or more, to catch another.
​
Because the rapidly descending elevation of the southbound streets ending at Market Street from the upper peninsula were so steep and the transverse angle of the turn so sharp, some of the buses would skirt the edge of the curb, sometimes rolling up over it onto the sidewalk putting them dangerously close to the commuters waiting on the other side.
​
If there were any people in the street, especially the old or the infirm, they would either have to get out of the way and lose their place in line or hope the bus driver stopped before completing the turn. Most of the drivers would. Once there was one who didn’t.
​
I remember the television and newspaper account about an elderly woman waiting at one of the stops during the pm rush hour. When the bus made the oblique turn way too fast at 25 miles per hour she was either too close to the edge or standing in the street when she was hit by the side view mirror across the face and the left side of her head.
​
She went down under the wheels and her body got hung up under the chassis. The bus driver too full of passengers to stop, or late for his break, or just too coked up to notice, kept on heading for the Embarcadero before he realized something was wrong. By then, the woman had been dragged over a quarter of a mile. No one knew for sure whether the concussion from the mirror or the relentless dragging was the cause of death. I guess it didn’t matter to her anymore, one way or the other. It mattered to a lot of those who witnessed the whole thing though; screaming and yelling, block after block, trying to get the bus driver to stop.
​
To get across the Bay to San Francisco from Oakland or back, one alternative to the nightmare bus commute was the B.A.R.T (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It was quiet, clean, air-conditioned, and fast. Traveling under the Bay, it could span the 13 miles in minutes. Once I’d reach the train station, by bus, from the Oakland side, I’d descend one of the many street-level entries to the below-ground turnstiles which led to the train platform. Of course, there were always hundreds of derelicts, homeless, hustlers, etc., hanging out by the turnstiles waiting for their chance to slip through and get on any one of the many trains that serviced the Bay Area, but sometimes, especially after a scuffle with B.A.R.T. Security or the San Francisco/Oakland Police, they’d scatter to the winds (or the shadows as it were) until everything calmed down and then they'd be back at it again, day and night.
​
Almost every week I'd hear about someone falling, or being pushed, or jumping down onto the third rail, which would either short-circuit the line and knock out the power or if it was particularly grisly, halt service entirely. Because service resumption could take hours, waiting passengers would have to go back up and out onto the street and catch another train, take a cab or a bus or just walk or, as was often the case for me, run.
​
Once, I remember running to the next stop when I was ascending to the upper peninsula because the previous connection didn’t show up which meant it would have added another 45 minutes to my commute. The choice was obvious and inevitable: I could either
“wait to be late” or go for it. I chose the latter.
​
You just can't imagine what it’s like to run at a 20-degree angle uphill for about 2 miles while wearing dress slacks, dress shoes, a white shirt and tie, and a sports jacket, in San Francisco, during the summer, with the humidity until you’ve tried it. It’s, how should I say: exhilaratingly infuriating.
​
Running, I came upon a stand-alone, transmission shop, right in the middle of a residential area. The owners must have paid a pretty penny to get away with that one. There were police cars, the fire department, a metro ambulance, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a marked County Coroner’s Office vehicle scattered around the shop.
Some people along with some of the employees: their first names embroidered on their shirts, were standing on the sidewalk just outside the property watching. They’d been there for about an hour when I stopped to ask one of them (Bob) what happened.
​
Wearily he said:
​
“The girl who worked in the office answering the phone and typing up orders was shot to death by her boyfriend. The boyfriend got away but she was still down there being processed. God, she was only 24 years old. They’ll catch him, though. He hasn’t got a chance.”
​
'Nope,' I thought.
'In this town, I don’t expect he would.'
​
I was late again when I got home. Vaulting the 5 floors to reach our loft, I held my friend close, the entire night. She was ok with that. So was I.=

“Jeeze prom already,” groaned Mai. She and I have become great friends. “What no one has asked you,” I state. We get to our outside table and wait for Bryan and Knight She takes the little bento box out and eats he chicken salad before telling me “No with these glasses I look like Velma from the Scooby gang.” Knight comes and sits next to her and says, “I like Velma Daphne is annoying.” She blushes and I ask where Bryan is “He’s trying to get into Hannah’s pants” Bryan comes up and tells Knight to shut up. “I was not she wants tutoring in Biology” we all giggle but then Bryan gets out his notebook about the mine tunnels. I tell them about my dream “Seeing the floors shake it could have been what my cousin calls a backdraft. If the fire started in one end because of the oxygen it got carried into the tunnel below that bathroom and spared from there.” After lunch we sneak into the building and go see the area where the old bathroom was. We find a classroom and the door is unlocked. After I went in, I felt the presence of the boy I first saw. “The fire was hot and fast we all smelled smoke and it smelled like cleaner.” Telling him in my mind “think it was Ether maybe used in the mines, but I am not sure.” He tells me about the rumbling when we are interrupted “Hey what are you four doing in here its lunch time outside.” I tell everyone “Yeah outside buy the grass “and everyone follows me outside. Once out at the grass I get everyone up to speed “Alright Scooby Gang here is what the boy now I know his name Jimmy Dawson.” I told them what he said in the class but then he pops up next to us to ask about the school now “It look different” I look around and gather everyone near me, so it looks like we are having a conversation.” It got rebuilt after the fire, Bryan when the wing was built over the old bathroom and theater area.” Bryan scrolls through his notes and tells us “In 2003 before that it was all portables and theater were held over at the community center.” Bell rings and we get to class but before that Knight asks Mai to prom, “Really you are asking old four eyes” I ask Mai why no contacts and she says, “Mom and Dad work hard at the church but with my astigmatism no contacts except out of pocket.” Bell rings and it’s time for class, “See you after school Bea” Bryan says. I forgot we were going to learn some more dance lessons no one knows, not even Knight. Once I get my homework done and Bryan sets new clean dishes out, we get out back and practice some steps. “Alright now left, right forward backwards, it’s just a box step nothing to be nervous about.” His Mom puts on some Dwight Yoakam and with Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music… we learn the box step. Bryan is still nervous. Kayla agreed to go with him but she’s on the dance team and he wants to impress, “You have some basics down “but before I finished, he asks to slow dance. “She likes to slow dance and I don’t want to step on toes.” I can only smile it’s so sweet and Kayla is a nice chick, so I pull out my phone and put on Play it Again its slow enough but still has a good beat, “Save us Luke Bryan” he groans but we get the slow dance finished. I scooter past the cemetery and hear some men speaking Chinese I guess; I shall ask Mai what some of this means. Getting ready for school I looked up some words that I could identify by sheer luck, and one was Zai xiuxi it means at rest so hopefully Mai can put the rest together. “Good morning, Grandma Dee where is Mom?” Grandma says Mom went to work early so she can be home later to go shopping for Prom dresses. My turn to groan “I don’t even have a date, and no one is jumping at the chance to ask the weirdo out.” Grand ma feeds me some bacon and eggs, “You are not weird and there is still time baby.” “Good morning, Scooby Gang, up for an adventure at lunch” Bryan was especially chatty today. We all nod and agree to meet by the back gate after the bell rings. Walking to my second period class Jim appears and tells me “Be careful young lady those tunnels are still dangerous, not safe.” I ran into the door frame and some boys chanted “Weird “so now it official. Lunch came around and Mai is jazzed she also confirmed that the men might be saying in Mandarin we are not at rest “which makes since because I bet, they just buried them, and they did not get any dignity. We see the boys and Bryan shows us his big surprise. “Check this out see those old looking barns, well they are entrances to the mines, look I took pics off dad’s maps.” We looked through them and yes, they did have an entrance because the operations were near here. “Great find maybe we get down there and solve this because there are some restless souls here and I can help them move on.” We group text about going to the tunnels and agree Mai can spend the night and the guys will meet us at the entrance. Logistically we will figure out how to get there. Friday comes around and Mai gets in the car with Mom and I. “Its nice to see you Mai we will get pizza and wings for dinner tonight since it’s a sleepover.” Mai and I agree and set up the air bed for her “Okay girl spill any dress yet and what do the rents think.” She tells me they like Knight, but his look concerns them, and she has told them many times he does not worship the devil. After dinner Mom leaves for work and an hour after that Grand ma Dee is driving us to the old barns “Look I am responsible for you too and the boys I guess so don’t go to far in and here’s some flashlights.” The boys show up on bikes and are a little worried about Grandma “Don’t worry she just drove us she heard us talking and didn’t want us to get hurt.” All three of us walk carefully inside and already I can see the commotion from that day. Turning a curve, I stop everyone and listen to a man talk about a charge. “The charge was to short dam foreman was a cheapskate the bang was instant” I scream and fall backwards thankfully everyone caught me. “No one stood a chance this was no accident that foreman did this because of money there was no more, and it was finish or not be paid, so he tried to speed things up with more dynamite.” The janitor wasn’t at fault as the mining company was. 

“Jeeze prom already,” groaned Mai. She and I have become great friends. “What no one has asked you,” I state. We get to our outside table and wait for Bryan and Knight She takes the little bento box out and eats he chicken salad before telling me “No with these glasses I look like Velma from the Scooby gang.” Knight comes and sits next to her and says, “I like Velma Daphne is annoying.” She blushes and I ask where Bryan is “He’s trying to get into Hannah’s pants” Bryan comes up and tells Knight to shut up. “I was not she wants tutoring in Biology” we all giggle but then Bryan gets out his notebook about the mine tunnels.
I tell them about my dream “Seeing the floors shake it could have been what my cousin calls a backdraft. If the fire started in one end because of the oxygen it got carried into the tunnel below that bathroom and spared from there.” After lunch we sneak into the building and go see the area where the old bathroom was. We find a classroom and the door is unlocked. After I went in, I felt the presence of the boy I first saw. “The fire was hot and fast we all smelled smoke and it smelled like cleaner.” Telling him in my mind “think it was Ether maybe used in the mines, but I am not sure.” He tells me about the rumbling when we are interrupted “Hey what are you four doing in here its lunch time outside.” I tell everyone “Yeah outside buy the grass “and everyone follows me outside.
Once out at the grass I get everyone up to speed “Alright Scooby Gang here is what the boy now I know his name Jimmy Dawson.” I told them what he said in the class but then he pops up next to us to ask about the school now “It look different” I look around and gather everyone near me, so it looks like we are having a conversation.” It got rebuilt after the fire, Bryan when the wing was built over the old bathroom and theater area.” Bryan scrolls through his notes and tells us “In 2003 before that it was all portables and theater were held over at the community center.” Bell rings and we get to class but before that Knight asks Mai to prom, “Really you are asking old four eyes” I ask Mai why no contacts and she says, “Mom and Dad work hard at the church but with my astigmatism no contacts except out of pocket.” Bell rings and it’s time for class, “See you after school Bea” Bryan says. I forgot we were going to learn some more dance lessons no one knows, not even Knight.
Once I get my homework done and Bryan sets new clean dishes out, we get out back and practice some steps. “Alright now left, right forward backwards, it’s just a box step nothing to be nervous about.” His Mom puts on some Dwight Yoakam and with Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music… we learn the box step. Bryan is still nervous. Kayla agreed to go with him but she’s on the dance team and he wants to impress, “You have some basics down “but before I finished, he asks to slow dance. “She likes to slow dance and I don’t want to step on toes.” I can only smile it’s so sweet and Kayla is a nice chick, so I pull out my phone and put on Play it Again its slow enough but still has a good beat, “Save us Luke Bryan” he groans but we get the slow dance finished. I scooter past the cemetery and hear some men speaking Chinese I guess; I shall ask Mai what some of this means. Getting ready for school I looked up some words that I could identify by sheer luck, and one was Zai xiuxi it means at rest so hopefully Mai can put the rest together. “Good morning, Grandma Dee where is Mom?” Grandma says Mom went to work early so she can be home later to go shopping for Prom dresses. My turn to groan “I don’t even have a date, and no one is jumping at the chance to ask the weirdo out.” Grand ma feeds me some bacon and eggs, “You are not weird and there is still time baby.”
“Good morning, Scooby Gang, up for an adventure at lunch” Bryan was especially chatty today. We all nod and agree to meet by the back gate after the bell rings. Walking to my second period class Jim appears and tells me “Be careful young lady those tunnels are still dangerous, not safe.” I ran into the door frame and some boys chanted “Weird “so now it official. Lunch came around and Mai is jazzed she also confirmed that the men might be saying in Mandarin we are not at rest “which makes since because I bet, they just buried them, and they did not get any dignity. We see the boys and Bryan shows us his big surprise. “Check this out see those old looking barns, well they are entrances to the mines, look I took pics off dad’s maps.” We looked through them and yes, they did have an entrance because the operations were near here. “Great find maybe we get down there and solve this because there are some restless souls here and I can help them move on.”
We group text about going to the tunnels and agree Mai can spend the night and the guys will meet us at the entrance. Logistically we will figure out how to get there. Friday comes around and Mai gets in the car with Mom and I. “Its nice to see you Mai we will get pizza and wings for dinner tonight since it’s a sleepover.” Mai and I agree and set up the air bed for her “Okay girl spill any dress yet and what do the rents think.” She tells me they like Knight, but his look concerns them, and she has told them many times he does not worship the devil. After dinner Mom leaves for work and an hour after that Grand ma Dee is driving us to the old barns “Look I am responsible for you too and the boys I guess so don’t go to far in and here’s some flashlights.” The boys show up on bikes and are a little worried about Grandma “Don’t worry she just drove us she heard us talking and didn’t want us to get hurt.” All three of us walk carefully inside and already I can see the commotion from that day. Turning a curve, I stop everyone and listen to a man talk about a charge. “The charge was to short dam foreman was a cheapskate the bang was instant” I scream and fall backwards thankfully everyone caught me. “No one stood a chance this was no accident that foreman did this because of money there was no more, and it was finish or not be paid, so he tried to speed things up with more dynamite.” The janitor wasn’t at fault as the mining company was.

I am sitting in my car, having a meltdown because the battery is dead. And I worked myself up to ask for help from my roommates in dealing with it bc they know car stuff is a lot for me.
And then neither of them really helped me. So I worked myself up again to walk to the auto body shop near my apartment and ask for help. They gave me a portable jumper and vague instructions. Fine, google is free. I follow the instructions and… my car doesn’t start.
I’m still not getting any help from anyone, I don’t know if I did something wrong. It already took a lot for me to ask for help from my roommates, let alone the men at the auto body shop. And I hate dealing with my car anyway. I don’t have the money to deal with it and the whole experience is completely overwhelming.
Plus I’m standing out on the street and the entire sky is curtained in toxic wildfire smoke.
If there’s something else wrong with my car I’ll have to pay so much money to fix it. And deal with more people. Which is truly the most difficult part about this for me. And I’m just really feeling it all right now. I feel incapable, I feel anxious, I feel like I want to scream.
EDIT: one of my roommates came to my rescue. We got a mechanic to help and it’s running now. But woof that was rough. I probably had that meltdown building for a while.

‘Surviving The Win’.
…
Chapter 009 - A.
…
Santa Claus, had initially checked his list, and found that a Fairy Pipe had made its way into request, in the 21st Century.
The Fairy Pipe, is to be given to Andrew Thomlinson, he conceded, turning through some papers, although he couldn't make out why it said, from, “Eldritch.”
Was it more likely, Nicholas had wondered, that Eldritch was a nod to the entirety of the Elf Kingdom as the name would seem to suggest, or merely the alleged person, named Eldritch Spellbound.
Who is that, Nick? asked Mrs. Claus, coming forward with a glass of milk for her husband, and a bowl of milk for their cat.
As far as I know, he announced, Eldritch is the sort of person, who only ever existed, in the mind of, Avem Smith. However, he continued, Eldritch is also the nickname of one of our young beneficiaries in the future, by the name of Andrew. His name appears as such, as of 2004, anyhow.
…
Nick walked out of their Fairytale Cabin to the Shed Of Lost Objects, located by their Barn where the Reindeer could be found.
“Curio Adhurio,” he reacted aloud, upon locating the small Smiling Rock. It was on a Shelf, and would later find it’s way into Perry’s hands. We should let Ben out for a while, he stated. He continued to leave the Shed, carrying a bottle of Zinfandel, as well. The reason for this, not being altogether evident, yet.
Carrying both items out to the Elf’s Workshop (an enchanted, overlarge, walk-in, OMRISS Cupboard), which operated by an ancient Medean Mean (or, Magical Modality), wedding each and every promulgatory to it’s prime, and by sāwa (an Arabic word, meaning to regularize or settle), as it is related to their word imil for make or do, unless of course by istahwā/h-w-y
اِسْتَهْوَى
Meaning to fill with passion, to make desirous, to enamour, to seduce, and/or to gain.
An en-dezlegare or resolver… with a key.
…
The entrance to this Elf's Workshop, was about large enough to afford a small to regular-sized person through. He found it propped open.
The Bottle of Zinfandel, known as Zin was a “Goesting”/“Lust,” Alcohol.
…
The elves, as usual, were hard at work.
Claus rang their work Bell. In his hand, he held the Silver Key Ring. He told them all to cease, and leave for approximately 45 minutes. They would alert Mrs. Claus. He needed her outside, once they were in the Cabin.
The elves ceased their work in the shop and exited.
Pitching the Rock onto a clear spot on the Floor of the Room, he poured out an Offering of Zinfandel, before closing and locking the Giant Omriss Door.
The Clauses waited outside the Cupboard 40 minutes and then into early Dusk.
Instinctively, their cat, “Loose,” came forward to light the way for both Nick, and Ma.
…
They were feeding the Reindeer when it happened. A peculiar light shone, from out of the window of the Shed Of Lost Objects.
Nick saw this, and took it as his cue to walk back over to The Shed Of Lost Objects. The Delva La Plume Pipe had appeared. Nick went in to retrieve it.
Supposedly, it had been made of Tatter’s Old Trick, “Flower.”
Good!... he stated, portentiously satisfied.
Walking back with it, he was addressed by Mrs. Claus, who couldn’t really see why Nick hadn’t just settled for one of their Poinsettias, or crafted a pipe, himself. She returned to the Cabin.
…
15 further minutes in, and Santa had heard a Loud Thump in the Giant OMRISS. He stood back, and unlocked the door... then, opening.
Ben? Is that you in there?
Yes it’s me Mr. Claus, said the depth of a murky voice of rather picky decisiveness. He was hidden in the shadows.
Well, come forward. I have something of yours. Actually, something of importance to discuss, about it. I need your blessing. Is this your Delva La Plume Pipe?
Yes, we’ll of course, replied Ben. It’s blessed by Lasagna.
May I give it away to someone? Nick’s voice wavered a little. He was referring to, “Ben’s,” Delva La Plume Tobacco Pipe, after all. It being a very sensitive matter to open about, let alone giving it away.
Golly, Nick? what are you going to give me in return for it? This Flower Pipe is a Sacred Item of mine. It had the Blessing of a Pixiu Money Dragon’s Yen. Those pertain to Ien/Tobacco Smoke, and of course Gum, as Resin. How did you find it, by the way?
Only by how lost you were, yourself, Ben. Which is why I summoned you to confiscate it. You hold to too much, making you your own lost artefactuary. How about I give you a job, to occupy yourself with? Do you mind?
Stepping forth a, “Krampus-looking,” Ben, known as, “GAAP (for Lust),” to the Hebrews’ Demonolators, appeared as a dark fog, with two cool yellow eyes. What type of job, asked Ben. He was most perturbed by the idea of losing his tie to the Dragon. It had been near him, almost his entire life. Now, he’d been bidden back in time to see Nick.
Nick handed him a Blessed Fairy Birch Twig, stating, I would like you to watch over Andrew.
Ben, agreed. Okay, no problem! But how do you want me to be to any of the men or women on the merchant’s end of the tally involved. Those with Tobacco… or, furthermore, Andrew, himself. What about the picture?
Mainly, Nick asked? The Saint, now being shocked, and a bit sorry to hear the Demon's plaintive-sounding consideration. Mainly, I pray you’ll treat them mercifully. I bid you off of them. First, however, I have something to read to you.
What could that be? asked Ben, a little agitated.
What I have here, is the boy named Andrew's, soul legal, written out.
A legal, why would he have even needed it? Asked Ben.
He was Naughty, said Nick.
And you still want to give him my pipe? Ben was flabbergasted and shook his head in disapproval, The fog dissipating and then reaccumulated.
Yes, but if it’s any consolation, I’m having you involved on the matter of this topic, to assign you to a task. You can follow me around for gift deliveries.
Okay, he sighed, let me hear it. Away!...
An Elf of exceptional hearing, well guarded, and of swift feet, ran out to take the pipe away, and then ran back to the cabin.
After a medium-length discussion, Ben was satisfied, and entered back into the Cupboard.
Santa’s last words to Ben, were… Just, be moderate. You are, by your Goetic, “Lust Spirit,” naming, a commoderator of amounts of passion in dibs, but we need to keep that, clean. You also put the Darker Passions into what you see to. I’m going out on a limb here, but hopefully that very thing, won't impact anything, other than our N’Oel Nights, and the Pipe. You know how we aim to role our Presence, in the World.
…
The Winged-and-Horned Shade, of Ben, after clamouring back into the Cupboard, was silent.
Slowly… and MOST surely, Santa twisted the Silver, Locking Key. This, without a word of lib, and doing so, with a certain determination.
It must be noted, that a similar smaller make of this magical re-animating Cupboard, later made a popular movie.
Not without stress, Nick later wiped his brow. I hope he didn't have too hard a time with this new arrangement… Nick had been sweating for what he might end up having to go through over the Holiday visits (with Ben in tow, that is).
Pulling a delivery sack, from out of the Barn and coming back to the Cupboard again. He opened it a final time.
He found only the rock on the floor, and after sweeping away the muddy dirt, and doing a bit of cleaning, he put the rock, pipe, and bottle of goestling into the pack. He had Mrs. Claus file all of the Elves, then, into the OMRISS, bidding them, goodnight.
Upon awakening, they would be only noddy toys. Except for the good ones. Those? The immortal Hadibi’ndula.
…
Remember:

1. The OMRISS is a Real World Cupboard. While Fictional in it’s Movie-Premise, it is a had in of Nursery Rhyme in it’s very Sinching Synopsis. A bidden in of Fairy Tales, and built to the scale of a Mother-Hubbard-Sized hole in a home, it Sinter Crofts, as though enchanting Knacked Wood. While bidding, “idle-timed,” it neither ins wood living nor dead, but delivers any of it, and all of it, to take off as life anew, by how it had new life in it ever bidden. In this way, it is alike a Comardin'd Haduzen Christic.
2. The Former Word Gas, mentioned in the Chapter on Goz, Relates to Gos and Gauze, or Phantoms, as well as Petroleum. Thus, Benzine.
3. The Suffix of Which, “-Zin,” rather, as a, “Zinfandel,” Is a Goestling Alcohol, or Alcohol Spirit, and, when by the Phantom Bal/The Ghostling Ben, is the Lusty Demon, named GAAP/TOAB.

• This, in particular, is alleged, and while found in Aleister’s involvements of his acclaimed Solomonic Magic, none of his work, may be taken overly seriously, as for any good. That is, because, if the Demon Science is truly a Fatherless/Bastard science of no good method or intention to God, reading it puts your soul in jeopardy.

As it is load of diabol heresy, and when we know that Demon’s are indeed real, it surfeits your God will, to operate as his accountancy-recastecaller (in a, however bidden), and the very need of reform of a man with No God Say. He was lored as a religious Ba’aler of religion… to say that it mattered, but as caste, and with spirit possessions admitting him forward, not enough concession of (God) control, could be in it. The unholy Ceremonial Art, if made, not only by unholiness, but impious countenance being his main ten.

• If I must, I would mock my own writing for yet another true as in bidden moment, to have you read in, yet another line of beneficial advice. The Holier People, as well as other People of Age Enough to Drink, can control the Spirits as mentioned above, only as insofar AS a Zinfandel might be their only reality (or any other Alcohol), but not the Demons, themselves.

They, for Judaeo-Christians Prophets, need a proper coursing (as routed out and then sealed, as out in a sanction, and never bidden). Also, demons must occasionally be bound and cast into the pit or hellfires, though this turns a Carnic Karmal relaying, of, which they do create by their being off-put, which causes a hay, when it need be maintained as a need for reminders of moral hall-calls. That is, not fraternizing amourishly over them.
Reason as in it, being, that it enburdens followers by demon lawing, and the apostates then vie for their pry at buying out the prelacy, by fay-way none the wary, no matter where Revelations had in. We need Fellowship's Service, in gracious God support. Not con-arded rapture of hierarchical courts. Not all is bidden. Heretic in me.
Alcohol, apart from all and any demon loring, is at a shy when imbibing wisdom for Heaven, and therefore, not recommended for anyone (especially not those who are ill of conscience, judgementally off righteous God call, or leprous).
The reason why, being if the person were ill, they were already unclean and alcohol is low-kosher. This means that, if any were taken, only a little should be allowed, and only for one, as we do not want all people on it.
If a proper handle is lacking, then it is recommended left out of it.

1. For the purposes of this story, Santa only drinks milk, and no Zinfandel, is had, by either of the Clauses, nor their elves.

Aside from alcohol, people need to possess a Spiritual Sobriety. Minding what God says being of the utmost importance in how they do. This is important to maintaining God Line Vitality to the Prayer, aiding the power of Scripturally Appropriate Discernment in Usefully Testifying Matters, as well as being a Better Bid, on the off, for Righteous Judgement Calls in Heaven’s Jurisdictional Witness and Guard the Flock, and Any, helping All the Kingdom to know Him (The Christ), and Life itself.
…
Well, Ben's off to drive Andrew crazy! Pa mumbled to himself, coming back into the Cabin.
Andrew doesn’t know, but that Osé of his, is a Snow Leopard/Uncia Uncia, which exemplifies Unk/Twain/Wit, through an Ounce/One, making it’s Were-Cat/Ju-Ju transformation, by All One, as an Oni Spirit.
The Oni, will now, I hope, feel only occasionally bidden to discipline Children with the Madenning, “Fairy Birch Twig,” and only the Naughty, as a Krampus, and while around the Winter’s Holiday when I can Supervise and offer Gifts to People.
…
How did you win Ben, so fast? Ma asked.
I told him that Andrew was divining with a Dictionary, by Bibliomancy or Book-Fortune-Telling, and got landed with the names Spellbound and Eldritch before 2004, Monarch and Bishop in 2007, and then finally, in 2020, Signature. That making a minimum of 5 Nicknames.
Signature? said Mrs. Claus. How dreadful. The pipe is Andrew's then?
By all accounts I'd have to say so, but my Records mention, the Pipe is to be given, from Eldritch.
Where should we send it to? she asked.
As no Eldritch Spellbound truly exists, I suppose we should send it to all of El-Dom, until such a time as Andrew receives it.
…
I’ve got the document right here. It truly says it all.
Andrew thought that random lot drawing was only a random act. But it’s that very random act that plods (if not by plotting), a path. Some forms of lot drawing are unbidden. We leave it at, that Andrew, hadn’t known God.
Later, he figured that the white light leading him through pages of his (fortune-told), Self-Naming Ceremonies was a Holy Spirit Guide, when it was, in fact, an Evil, Insanity, Demon Spirit named Osé, making him follow a long, drawn-out, Ghost-Written, Trail, of, “Eldritch”/”Creature”/”Bucca,” “Monarch”/”King”/”Faust,” and, “Bishop”/”Pope”/”Jack Frost, naming.
He had a Signature written out on a Letter to Christ, when he divined the word Signature, though!
Oh, is Signature his name, now?! Look after all names, they said? This little man is responsible for having us look after everyone, then… She gave a faint laugh, then wincing in the snow. His Birth Name, though?
He wrote it out prior, unwittingly.
Where was it located? asked Mrs. Claus.
Well, on a Note to God saying, more-or-less, that he’s a, “Psalm 139”/”Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”-Believing, as well as an, “Isaiah 11”/”God's Animal Safety Promise”-Indebted, “Over-Kill-Joy,” Repentant Sinner who goes over the top obsessively in small circuits, but still believes in The Lord.
Do you think he’s ready for this Fairy Pipe? Asked Mrs. Claus.
It came from Tatter’s Flower, and Ben had it enchanted somehow, with a Dragon, said Nick admitted embarassed. Anyhow, Andrew aimed to confess that he’s a, “1 Corinthians 5:5 Repentant,” and will have to wait to see the Christ, without usurping the Church, by abiding good protocol in the World. In the Interim… Not really. I think he needed to feel gifted.
Nick! Ma warned. This could go horribly wrong! Well, what? Do you think he’s acquitted of it, by Secret Societies involvements over his head, ‘surping him by summonry?
If they Governed his Movements, that’s why the coincidences are down to Spirits of Wickedness in High Places being the multiple homes he's moved to. Anyhow, let’s have some Hallongrotta.
Remind me again, why The Delva La Plume is the one he needs and not a Poinsettia. Mrs. Claus asked.
He needs one that’s Christened/Named, and, Ma! Pa whined, lastly, it's not that there aren't other Fairy Pipes to be made, but I’m pretty sure they have to be prayed for, to be received properly. This is the right one for, “El's New Nativity.”
I’ve had enough Nicholas, and you even wasted our Zinfandel. I’ll see you in the morning.
…
As for, on whether, he was Signed?
I just so happen to know he's still in Osé, and not all-out Satan malurky! Nick fittered secretly to a mouse, Osé means honorific title in Japanese.
But how was it to be… In Ba’al or even exorcizable..
Andrew Thomlinson, sat in his room, browsing the Global News and Weather, on his Smart Phone's Internet. The year was 2018.
Kali? he asked. Are you sure we should do this? He put out a cigarette into his ash mug (a rather conventional ashtray?).
One more, Magic Drew Bear, his cherubim replied.
Well, you said three, but I don’t know, he said.
They were onto a third.
Then they'll know that you and I are meant to be.
A third fire, could put the world in dire peril… Andrew, hesitated. Both fell in Phantom Love over never meeting and discovering Opera.
You know, I don't really believe in this stuff, but who am I? I'm not real. Everything's realler than I am! We'll make it three fires and that way, if your theories are true, we'll be able to locate them and prove them and if they locate you, we can find a way of announcing our love before them all. I'm sure they'll manage a way of bringing us together, that way.
…
But Kali, who are you, again, asked Andrew, dearly, and half disbelieving as he picked up another cigarette. You called me a Magic Drew Bear one day, and I'm not lying, that won my heart, but I don't even own the better part of my own apartment or dollar to get us started off together, yet. How will we ever find a way to live together?
You'll come to get me from the East Coast of Canada, she said. In all regalia, and sweep me off my feet... Either that, she said, or you'll meet me at my hospital.
That story always changes.
…
Kali had met him, at first, in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, in a vision, where she had stood outside his apartment window shuffling her feet, but when Andrew had looked, she hadn't actually been there.
At least, that's how it had started.
Now it was that, the two, were playing a very dangerous game, of placing Faustian Fairytale bets, on the landscape of the, "known," world.
In, “Clement.”
On one hand, Andrew believed in girls, on the other hand he didn't know why he had to feed this one birdfood or get off his butt and find a job, before the war or, better still, he didn't know why he had to lend to starting the minor Apocalypse, which would inevitably start the war, then followed up by the real Apocalypse, afterward. Nobody ever let him in on those sorts of dire detailings.
It's an Ion.
Like a Kirby, you're saying? His friend couldn't believe him. The pink demon puffoon from the video games?
Well, the way I see it, all fires are synchronized in some way, though they never appear so. Think of two synchronized blinking lights. Now, command them ionic. Only, those two lights fly around, and sync their, "behaviours and patterns," while all over the place, or the planet. And then, take it one step further... they're never truly only even ONE pair.
Why do they fly around?
I think they fly around to examine every known or unknown thing in existence. When they're at rest, it's because they've found enough Spark, Combustible Material, and my guess is, Air. They're really all over the Universe that way, only we can't tell for their Disparity and Scale and the Fires.
So they just inhale, things combust, and then they dwell in their ember and/or maybe die down a bit to continue? Yeah... Drew, that's lame. Kirby's not a real demon.
But don't you see. I know that! They're not actually Kirby. They're one little ion commanding an existence circuit.
Then the question I'd ask is, are they (or is it), necessary to existence, or better yet, do they command it?
You know what? Since I saw the manifestation of those fires on the ninth of September, from my bet with, "Invisible," Kali, last year, I'm kinda growing more wary of flickering lights...
…

• CRACK! *

“WHAT ON EARTH WAS THAT?!!!”
…
A Lady stepped out of a Car and turned to face the two of them.
The Card: "Sparing you any details on how my ashes may have been in slight, I've commanded you into my furnace for how the furnishings were not in right."
~ Andrew writes loopy letters, said one girl, while giggling, back in his Junior High. And I couldn't tell who he was trying to impress. You... Or Jim Davis. ~ A Bat flew in and settled into the tree (it had been the Eaves Trough).
OKAY... Tags off, and Let Me Know How Everything Fits! His mom, got back into the car, waved and drove off.

Author's Note: This original work had once been created in hopes to be an original Star Wars story. The author has adapted the story to be its own original work taking place in the franchise. In particular, the author has chosen between the movies of Episode 6 and 7. Main characters, battles and other major events will either be cut out or referenced. This is not a fanfiction. All characters were created from the author aside other characters, such as the sentient species, items like blasters, were created and rightfully owned by Lucasfilm.
17 Standards Years Ago
She recalled the day when her brother was gone for good. Little Sorella was 6 years old. She and her brother, Dearthair, 12 were on their own in Kail.
Kail was Coruscant's smaller twin, on the grassland planet Miero. The town had stone adobes of shops and homes, everyone full of giddy and glow. Out to the south laid Neero, a spaceport settlement. On the occasion, some folk traveled to Neero to obtain exotic goods to sell back in Kail.
Despite the hearty prosperity of Kail, Sorella, and Dearthair were orphans. They hid in their ruined home, once full of glee and joy, now faded, cracked, and sloppy. Clothes, pots, pans, holograms, and drawers with emptiness now occupied the home.
Their parents ventured to Neero, trusting Dearthair to take care of the place while they were gone.
Later that day, an investigator visited the home to confirm that their parents, had died while protecting a kid from being taken away by traffickers.
With no parents, they were brought to the next town, Grangor. Yet, both knew, they couldn't stay there. The foster center was a heap, a dump. The caregiver didn't care about the kids trashing the place, she just wanted her money from the adoption fee to bid and brag about how she won another bet on Odupiendo racing. The children there began to form groups, making turfs and destroying each other's territory.
Not to mention, the possibility of separation. Their chances were even higher considering families of Grangor could only afford for 2 children to raise. They knew if either one of them left, they would no longer be the family they once knew before.
So by the next day, Sorella and Dearthair escaped and stayed in Kail. All it became was their next worst nightmare. The town had been ransacked by raiders. The community now had to use its funds to restore what was lost. And that meant raising prices and trips to Neero to resell exotic goods for better deals.
Despite this, they went back to their home and pondered about the food they would eat and how they could keep the place up.
At first, they begged for a bit. And when begging didn't work, one would pickpocket the distracted fool. They used any credit they acquired to quiet the rumbles in their stomachs.
Dearthair even began to ask for jobs around town but no one wanted to hire them. Not enough money to pay, one vendor noted. Had they not used the funds, there would've been a chance.
However, sometimes, if the shipments they received or the abundance of the crop were good, a few of the family friends they knew would stop by and give the siblings food. One of them, Kli, a Zeltron, tried her best to visit often, cleaning their home and cooked meals. She told them she would have offered her place but unfortunately, due to audits visiting, she did not want to risk them being taken back to foster care. (After all, for her, it was hard to lie. She hated telling a lie).
The siblings didn't mind, they appreciated the help.
They did eventually stop pickpocketing aside Dearthair who had gotten better at it. He promised to stop but he figured a few credits wouldn't hurt.
He was almost caught once at the same time as the day Sorella last saw him.
Dearthair was eyeing around a restaurant, searching for a clumsy idiot. There were a few visitors from other worlds here, whining and belching their sorrows away about some rumored war. This prompted Dearthair to steal without worry. Who would even notice? Even the bartenders would be too busy to give these drunks their drinks and people chatted about their life at tables.
As he passed by a few patrons, talk fumbled into the air. "Did you hear?" a Rodian stammered. "They're taking the children....just come in and start shooting..."
"What is the New Republic going to do about it? Nothing!" a Twi'lek snapped.
"I've heard that they use certain techniques....they don't remember who they were," an elderly man huffed.
Dearthair grumbled. None of these clients seemed to be carrying a huge sum of credits. Most looked down on their luck. Then there was...
He spotted a drunken human fool, slamming his credits on the counter. The human had on shiny boots with a blaster at his side, and gold linings on his coat toppled with a furry vest. "Moar!" he yelped. "Dang tenders....can't even affurd a proper dr...visit Kail they said, the best place to hide and..."
Dearthair slithered by the human's side, eyeing the gold before his eyes. He glimpsed around the room, checking for onlookers one last night in case anyone had the idea to look.
He stopped as he felt the human turn to him. "Hey kid...cun you tell sumone to hurry it up? I hit the jackpot today!"
"Oh, did you?" Dearthair said, raising his eyebrows.
"Sure did," the human burped. "Got me a hefty bounty and now I lay here low. I heard this place was the besst. It's gone to crap. You all this money for nothing....you might as well just take off to another place....they say a storm's brewing....so run if you an..."
"Really, huh?" Dearthair continued, now secretly roaming his hand in the human's coat pockets, scrambling for credits.
"Kid, listen to me, HIC-UP, you're better off on your own if I were you." The human sneezed and tossed his credits on the counter to the bartender. "Yo tender, gimme another one of those bluey thingies. The watchmacallit with the special."
"That's unfortunate," Dearthair hummed, now counting how many credits he had in his hand before shoving it in his pocket.
The human swirled around in his seat, causing Dearthair to flinch. He froze, terrified that he was caught. The human hadn't seen it but the way his eyes stared at the boy...it was like he knew.
He proved to be wrong as he sighed. "Kid, I know I...HI-CUP...may look like a fool but...never turn your back down on an offer. Look around...no one's coming to help you. The town got ransacked by raiders and do you get? Nothing. You have to use everything on your own to 'fix' your problems. Yet if it was Neero, oh, for sure, let's make it all pretty and shiny for the tourists. And yet they stop the imports because of the darn fear of theft."
"Well, everyone helps when they can," Dearthiar noted. "A little bit of help can go a long way."
"Yeah, but to be a man...you have to learn to be on your own. You wanna be someone's babysitter fine. They admire you more though...when you can show you can stand on your own two feet. That's what everyone wants. So guess what...if this upcoming war starts and the New Republic ain't doing a lick of Bantha dong to help....then my allegiance is to those who offer me a place."
The human glanced at his new drink sitting quietly, took one long chug, and laid his head on the counter to sleep.
Dearthair breathed in and out, full of relief. The other customers were still busy with their worries. Digging in for a few more credits, he booked out of the restaurant, heading back home.
He knocked on the door and sounded the bell, alerting Sorella he was there. She led him in and they counted the credits.
"1,000 credits," Dearthair noted. "Enough for 2 loaves of bread, some pieces of fruit, blue milk, porridge from Kali's and maybe we'll have enough to buy The Last Starfighter." He nodded to the holoprojector they had propped by the window along with a few holograms.
"Can't wait to watch that one, I heard from Yue it was a good show," Sorella said.
They went out to buy the items and returned home happily. Yet, Dearthair's mind did not venture off from the human's words. Even when watching The Last Starfighter, he kept thinking back to that old kook's speech. Were they truly doomed to be there?
Well, he knew the guy was drunk but still...his words held some truth.
Kail was surely picking its place back up but time proved other areas were now suffering. Neero was barely getting any more exotic goods, causing another economic shift, leaving Kail to sell only what they produced around them. And last of Grangor, pfff, who knows. And with words about war, kidnappings, and no one helping....it made Dearthair wonder how he could escape this.
He stared at Sorella, intentively interested in the hologram. She had become a bit of a handful now. Kli wasn't around as much considering she was preparing her shop for inspection. Sorella once had almost set the house on fire by trying to cook some food. Or that other time when she tried to take some strange "candy" from an alien, he had to swipe her away.
He was the one who had to take charge, making sure they had food, she wasn't going anywhere she shouldn't be, keep aware of who was at the door, and how to pickpocket....come to think of it, he surely could've survived by himself. Still, he knew Sorella was all that was left of the family he knew.
His parents...they would be so proud of him, doing all he could to provide for himself and his sister. Yet, there was only so much he could do now.
"Hey, Sorella?" he asked as the hologram ended, the hero fading in the blue light. "Do you ever think about...getting away from here?"
Sorella thought for a bit. "I don't know...I mean...I like it here. It can be rebuilt. We just need to get more money."
Dearthair felt his heart clenched. "Well, what if you had to get away from here....and go anywhere else?"
"Well, yeah, I would go but then I go back over here," Sorella beamed.
"What is it that you love about it here?"
"Well, how it used to be. Remember when Kli would give us those Oprair cakes, Ronen with the Swirly Tumblers, Jei let us play with the Pikies. This...is home to me. I can't imagine leaving it." Sorella's eyes glistened with tears. "And Mom...Dad..."
Dearthair swung his head. He circuited his eyes back to Sorella only, seeing her stare into space, more tears plundering down.
He felt guilty seeing her eyes like that. It would eat him up next, reminding him about his parents. It reminded him though what a baby she was...she could never keep her emotions in check. She was always so sensitive when it came to things that bothered her, like when he told her to be careful about cooking.
"Are we going to go away?"
Sorella's eyes were now on Dearthair, awaiting an answer.
Dearthair shook his head. "The only one coming and going is me," he said, patting her head. "You're staying here."
Sorella laughed. She yawned and got up, heading towards her room. "Goodnight, Dearthair," she said. "Thanks for always looking out for me, brother."
Dearthair smiled. "Of course," he said, his eyes averted away. "Anything to keep family together."
She didn't remember the exact time, but it happened at the darkest hour of the night. Sorella woke up to hearing screams, and loud wails booming through the atmosphere.
Then came the smoke. She sniffed the air, a wisp of charcoal and harsh heat filling her lungs. She coughed a little before getting up, wondering if maybe it was Dearthair this time trying to cook (he had his moments too).
Instead of the glare from the windows, she saw bright gleams of blazes erupting around the other homes.
"What?" she gasped, checking around and seeing the chaos unfold before her eyes.
A few of the homes were destroyed, either eaten alive by the pulsing inferno or shattered apart.
People were running everywhere, bellows echoing and confusion amassing.
What the hell was going on?
"Dearthair! Kail's on fire!" Sorella yelled, running to her brother's room. She went inside to see he wasn't there. "Dearthair?"
BOOM!
The house shook wildly. Sorella stumbled to keep her balance. She ducked under a table, stayed for a few minutes, and then bolted out to the door again, to peek.
She now saw one of the sources of the chaos. Before her eyes was a white armored abomination, its hideous nightmarish visor scanning around for its next victim. Behind its body, it held a giant tank and in its hands, a huge gun with a nozzle. The abomination aimed the nozzle at a home and enraptured its flames from the gun. It engulfed the house in seconds.
Sorella gulped, stepping back inside her home. Danger lurked behind her as she twirled around to see flames were now entering her home.
Sorella shrieked and scampered out.
She took no notice of the abomination known as the Flametrooper, eyeing her running away. "We have one here, near the homes," he noted.
Sorella mindlessly searched around. "Dearhair!" she cried, wondering where he was. She even looked for the adults, any familiar faces but no one stopped, they continue to run without care.
"Help!"
Sorella turned to see a kid like her now snatched up by another abomination. This one had a different visor, its helmets more delicate with design and he carried no tank, just a blaster in his hand. "That's almost all of them!" the second abomination, the Stormtrooper said, carrying the struggling kid away.
Sorella felt a verge of tears and bellows in her body but she knew she had to escape. In times of danger like this taught by Dearthair, she knew she had to run.
She darted past a couple more homes before she then saw one of the Stormtroopers takes notice of her. "Get her!"
She crawled through gaps, between walls, under trenches, anywhere to get away from the horrid monsters.
She never turned around.
Sorella made it safe once she had entered a small hole in a broken-down store, its entrance blocked by the fallen beam supports. The troopers behind her attempted to fight their way in, clashing with the beams. She ran to the back entrance and shut the door, hoping for some reason at least that would stop them.
She turned around to see another nightmare. The Stormtroopers with the kids were heading inside large vehicles. Kids all stuck together, hugging one another and crying. A few bodies laid on the ground. Some folks still fought the troopers, which unfortunately ended in their demise.
"You won't take him away from me!" a mother yelled. She was on the ground the second she jumped at a trooper.
Sorella hid behind a crate, peering from above. She spotted him.
"Dearthair?" she said, seeing a familiar figure. He was guided by two Stormtroopers, heading inside one of the large vehicles.
"No, Dearthair!" Sorella yelled.
She foolishly ran forward, only to be picked up by someone. Kli held her in her arms, rampantly charging towards a land speeder.
"No, my brother!"
"We'll find him," Kli said. "I'm sorry, Sorella, there's nothing we can do. You will die!"
"I don't care, I don't want them to take my brother!".
Sorella's eyes misted. Her vision blurred as she turned from the inferno of homes to the somber kids in vehicles and looked back to the land speeder, a few others joining them. There were the last of parents, shopkeepers, and their children.
"Hit it!" Kli said as she strapped herself and Sorella in.
"No, Dearthair!" Sorella said, turning around.
The pad to the vehicle closed up, sealing the familiar figure's fate.
"No! Turn back! Turn back!" Sorella pleaded. "Mom...Dad...brother!"
No one gave her any recognition as the land speeder surged forward, Kili holding Sorella tightly, trying to calm her.
"We have to tell everyone about this," Kli hollered. Get the New Republic, contact the other planets around us and..."
She never finished her words as a huge blast exploded behind them, sending the vehicle tumbling.
All Sorella remembered from this part was that she was flying in the air for a bit and hit the ground, knocking her to sleep.
Thanks for reading this if you made it to the end! This is my first time writing in a while (I know I probably messed up some stuff) and I'm all about improving at my craft. Critique away every little bit, just help me to know what I can do to improve!

Part 26: https://www.reddit.com/Viidith22/comments/141nvay/my_roommate_is_slenderman_part_26/
(Terry)
I awoke an hour later, brain pulsing. I was in the back of the van laying on the floor, “The prodigal son returns, welcome back you crazy son of a bitch!” Tucker laughed.
“Took on a god face to face. Pretty sure the only one with bigger balls than that would be Abraham. Though, balls didn’t save you.” Doc said, looking up from his book.
“Took the last core I had, but at least I can say I’ve killed a god now.” Tucker snickered with a smirk.
“Concentrated light, can’t say it’s what I would have thought of, but it was effective.”
“Yeah, wasn’t effective portably until we came across some anti-matter from a crashed–”
“What?” I tried sitting up but failed.
“Right.” He stood, propping up the left row of seats, and pulled out a black case. Flicking it up he aimed it down at me, “Anti-matter annihilation laser. Think you can piece it together.” There were about five lenses that each shrunk, narrowing the barrel to a tip. Everything but the lenses was coated in a vanta black paint, “Each lens reduces the energy state while also–”
“I couldn’t give less fucks if I pulled them out of Doc’s patients. You killed him with that thing?”
“Yup, his head’s probably gettin' breathed in from the wildlife out here.” He clicked the case shut, put it back in place, and sat.
“And the data is intact?”
There was a brief pause, “While it is, I feel it’s important to be more concerned about yourself. You have major skull fractures, a concussion, you’re missing your face flesh, your back had to be clotted to avoid you bleeding out, and you are severely low on blood. You should be sleeping right now.”
“I just, I had to know.”
“Knowing you, you’ll be back on your feet in–”
I passed out again before he finished talking.
---------------------------------------------
When I awoke, I was on my bed, Sepratine was applying herbs to my face, “Ho–”
“16 hours, Doctor Sadist and Rachel are busy. You really ought to be more cautious, this isn’t one of your video games.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind. You heard from Jones?”
“No, apparently he passed out at the wheel after he parked. The Sadist said they’d be out for a while. He’s having Rachel look them over once she finishes a project she’s working on.”
“Shouldn’t you be helping her?”
She put her mortar down and sighed, “Flip onto your side, I need to replace the bandages on your back, then you need to eat.”
She finished tending to me in silence, then went to cook. The whole time, I just wanted to get up and finish everything. But even if I did, the data wasn’t fully recovered until it was sifted through. So I resigned to wait until the detective got back to me.
Sepratine came back a while later with a plate toppling over itself and a glass of water. Not to get too detailed, but both were empty in a matter of… 30 seconds or so? “Now get back to sleep. Your face should be back to normal in another day, and your skull is still fusing back together.”
“Let me know when Jones has the info.” She stood, taking my plate and cup.
“Someone will I’m sure. Get some rest, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t. You were reckless enough… Whatever, goodbye.”
-------------------------------
When I came to again, my face was dry, the medicine Sepratine had put on felt like a cracked desert, leaving a green crust behind. I stood, heading to the bathroom to wash my face. I took my meds, then removed the bandages from my back. Heading back to my room, I grabbed my phone, seeing several missed calls and texts. I immediately opened the message from Jones.
Call me when you wake up, I’ve got it, you’re not gonna believe where it is.
The phone rang four times, “Eh? Terry, that you?” He yawned.
“Yeah, what’s the deal?”
“You remember when you first met me?”
“No.”
“Well, I was headed to a town down in southeastern Oregon, one that wasn’t on any maps. And you’re not gonna believe this shit, but Tenyit Lane, the place I went, that’s where he’s being held.”
“So you know where I need to go?”
“Yeah, the place is a hot zone for organizations. There’re at least seven that I’ve recorded since I first went, and that’s not including–”
“And?”
“Well, point is, there’s security everywhere, people are gonna be everywhere, and the police and government officials are gonna be too busy counting bodies to care about one missing person.”
“Send me the coordinates.” I took a picture of my wall, putting the phone back against my ear.
“I’ll do you one better, I still have an old map to the place, I’ll send it over.”
“I don’t care what you say, I am paying you after this.”
I was already out the door, wearing nothing but a hoodie and sweatpants. I started the car, threw on EDM, and headed down to find Joseph.
------------------------------
A grey smoke rose in the night air above the town. I had a good ten miles left on the empty road before getting to the one stop on the entire strip. As I climbed the mountain, I turned my windshield wipers up more and more. The road was coated in a light crust of white, the speckles dropping ever so carefully in the light wind.
As I rounded a bend, I saw a flicker of headlights through the pine trees. Rounding the next one, I saw the lights again, this time coming around their own turn, before heading in my direction. The snow picked up as I met the gaze of the other driver, it was her.
I screeched to a stop, whipping a U-turn that nearly sent me into the rails. I stopped, having noticed her car was pulled over to the railing too. I jumped out of my car, running over to her, and grasping her in my arms, “I thought I’d killed you Tresca!”
Setting her down, my brain fully processed its surroundings. The person in front of me was Joseph, he was a bit shocked, but the rest of him reminded me of how he looked when we first met, “I-I’m sorry, I just–”
“Look, Terry. Honestly, it’s great to see you, great to have clear evidence I’m not crazy, great to know all those fun ass memories at the apartment were real. But…”
“I’m just so glad you’re okay.”
He smirked, but his eyes were hollow, “Yeah, okay…”
“I mean, you’re alive though!”
“Terry, this isn’t going to work.” He looked up, “I can’t ignore what you said when you saw me.” He looked back at me, nervous, “I read up on you, it was intrusive, and I’m sorry for that, but I can’t keep being a replacement. I need to live my own life, I need to get away from all this, I…” His eyes filled, but refused to streak, “I want to live a life away from all of this. I know a normal life isn’t really an option anymore. But I still wanna do what I can.”
“You… read my files?” I glanced at my phone, thinking about the picture I’d taken before leaving, “Which ones?”
“Your old life, hers too. Once I got ahold of my files, I decided to do some digging. I was me, but not I guess, I had to get an understanding of who the people I used to know were. I know about Tresca, I remember your conversation with Maerod.”
“I…”
He waited for a while, a few cars flew by us before he took the rope, “I will never regret the time we had. We had fun, we had some adventures and even a few emotional tipping points. Without you and everyone else, I’d probably have a slab of a ruck on top of me now. I don’t feel like dying anymore, but I also don’t feel like living. I’m sorry, but… I need to find my life out there.” He threw his arm up, gesturing around, “But if I stay with you, I’ll never get that chance.”
I tried to maintain myself, for seemingly the first time, taking Joseph as a person in. His overgrown brown hair, his blue eyes, broad shoulders, bland outfit. “You look different from before.”
“I feel different.” He shot a breath out his nose.
I staggered, “Let me grab something from my car before you go. You mind coming with?”
He nodded, gazing up at the grey sky. Several more cars flew past us as we made our way to mine. When we got there, I pulled out a small bag,
I reached into my car, pulling out the contract, “This was the guy that placed a hit on your wife. He’s dead now.”
A car flew by, lighting up his face to reveal his frozen face, “Y-you mean it? Who killed him?” He snatched the paper from my hand, looking over the entire sheet.
“The detective put on her case, the original guy is my understanding. Goes by Jones, he’s a P.I. now.”
“Really? Where is he?”
I cleared my throat, “You su–”
“Positive, where is he?”
I rubbed my arm, but looking at his hopeful face, I caved, “Apex Investigation Office, downtown Albany.”
He hugged me, “Thank you… Seriously, this…” He cried into my stomach for a time before pulling back and recomposing himself. Rubbing his nose dry, he turned around.
“Wait!”
He stopped, turning his head to me, “Yeah?”
I held onto my phone, debating to show him the picture or not. We stood still as two more cars flew by, followed by one with sirens. I pushed my phone back into my pocket, “Where are you going?”
He turned back to his car, holding up the contract, “To repay a debt. You’ll get yours too one of these days.”
Sitting in his car, he drove off without another word.
I sat in mine, pulling the phone from my pocket, and opened the gallery. I had one recent picture, it was one of the walls in my room, one with several posters. All of which were had drawn anime style portraits of Tresca. “Maybe Abraham was right, and maybe, Joseph has the right idea too.”
----------------------------------------
(Joseph)
Epilogue:
I dried my face as I left him behind, unsure of what to do first. I sat with music blasting for the first hour, mind flashing through the events like a slideshow. When I eventually came across a convenience store. It was a 24/7 place, the kind that had hot dogs on the roller for days at a time, and the only people that worked there couldn’t get a job anywhere else.
I pulled into a parking space and picked my phone off the passenger seat. I’d already decided I’d go to the detective’s place last. But I’d never been to Rachel’s before, and I didn’t remember her phone number. “What if I?”
I dialed a number, letting it ring a good five times when “Chad’s Cads how can I help you?”
“God, tell me that isn’t the name of your shop.”
“Joseph? Is that you bro?”
“Yeah, it’s been a while, good to hear from you.”
“Where the hell have you been man!? Terry’s out look–”
“It’s all sorted now. I don’t mean to be callous, I promise I’ll catch you up to speed later. But do you have Rachel’s number?”
“Oh, yeah. Everything good dude?”
“Yeah, she apparently told Terry to have me see her when he found me, so…”
“Oh for sure.”
“So can you send me her number?”
“Oh right, yeah. Good luck bro, come by when you have time. I wanna see how strong you are.”
“Sounds good Chad.” I hung up, smiling. A minute or so later, I had her number.
“Joseph?” Her voice was smooth.
“Hey Rachel I…”
“Chad messaged me.”
“Gotcha, Terry said you wanted to see me?”
“Yes, there’s a lot you need to know biologically if you want to pass for human.”
I sighed, rubbing my side, “Where should I meet you?”
“I’ll send you the location, Sepratine will be here too.”
“Oh, yaaaaaay.” She was alright, but she always had a whole bag of chips on her shoulder.
“See you soon. Oh, and did you happen to feel an aching in your right side at any point?”
“More than you know.”
“How frequently?”“Well, I was starved for a few days at one point, aside from that though I’d say a couple times a week if not more?”
“...Was that the entire time you were gone?”
“Not entirely sure, the first month or so is still kind of hazy, but since I was moved into town yeah.”
“...Okay, just… See you when you arrive.” Click
“I thought Doc was supposed to be the cryptic one of the bunch,” I smirked, a tear forming in my eye. “Goddamnit.” I wiped it, clicking the address she’d sent me, and heading on my way. Only after I picked up some gas station food.
-----------------------------------
“Oh my.”
“It’s me.” I did jazz hands, wearing a faux smile.
“Your soul is much… larger than I anticipated. Come inside, I’m sure you’re hungry.”
A whiff of cedar and sweetgrass slapped me in the face, “Wow, that’s… pungent.”
“Apologies, my sense of smell isn’t very strong, and Sepratine is….”She took a sharp intake of breath, closing the door behind me.
Looking around, the house seemed pretty standard, aside from the greenhouse in the living room, “So uh, what’s this you got goin here?”
“Take your shoes off please,” She did the same, “Creating chemicals from what’s in the air is taxing, it’s more convenient to just have the plants you need on hand.” She headed toward a door down the hall, “My equipment is downstairs.” She opened the door and I followed.
The air was a solid 80 or so, with humidity so thick it was like snorkeling, pollen so strong it activated allergies I hadn’t had since I was five. “Quite the quaint home you have here.”
“Oh right, sorry again.”
“No, you’re good, I’m just gonna need a few boxes of tissues is all.”
“Oh Jo–Joseph, my gods, you’re… wow. Different is a word, what happened to your soul?” Sepratine was turned to us, standing in front of a table with apparently every plant unknown to man of it.
“That’s kinda why I’m here.”
“Oh right, don’t mind me, just running a few experiments, Rachel has the perfect climate down here for a few plants.”
“Alright Joseph, hop on the bed.” Rachel stood in front of a wooden table, I couldn’t help but notice vials and jars stacked neatly on a counter that circled half the room, as well as a set of tables that held assorted plants with different lights hovering over them.
I sat on the table, “You need me to turn my head and cough?”
“No, first I need you to eat. It’ll be easier if you’re digesting food.”
She headed to a small closed-off area, then came back, plate in hand. Mostly just leafy greens. Maybe some kind of bean too?
“Go ahead, this should pass through you at just the right speed for me to catch it.” She turned, heading to another room, “Oh right, when you’re done I’ll need you to take off your shirt and lie down.” Then she headed through a door.
A few minutes passed and I finished the salad. Putting my plate on an open section of a counter and throwing my shirt to the side, I laid down, “Sepratine, you know anything about Vampirism?”
“Only rumors, they’re rare, so you’re the only one I’ve met.”
“Rarer than what you are?”
“Dryads are uncommon for sure. But given my personal experience, I’d say you’re one of a kind.”
“Awwwe, thank you.” I said sarcastically, “But is that all? They’re rare?”
“You’re here for Rachel because they’re rare. She’s met something like five, even got to do a lab experiment on one of them, saw how their stem reacted to stimulus. She’s the closest thing to an expert I can think of.”
Rachel made her entrance with the smack of the door on the wall, “Alright, don’t worry Joseph, I’m not going to cut you open today, I just want to see how large your stem has gotten. Based on your soul, you might be around half to ¾ vampire. But the only way to tell for sure is to see the size of your stem.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask, but everyone else I’ve met who knows about it has been a psychopath. What’s a stem?”
“Oh, kind of like a parasite is my current understanding.” She picked up a large metal plate, pressed it against my stomach, and used a metal rod to probe my right side.
“Come again?”
“Well… it’s more like a symbiotic relationship? Consider it another organ, only it’s wrapped around a portion of your large intestine. A full vampire has them fused, and it becomes an addition. But a partial, you can still see where they are two entities.”
“So you can cure me?”
She scoffed, “No.” Putting the plate and rod away, she pulled out a roundish object and squeezed some kind of gel onto the end before rubbing it against my right side. “If it’s removed, both entities die. You’re a symbiote now, you each rely on each other. In return for giving it nutrients, it gives you cells that allow you to regenerate anything short of half or more of it. They’re akin to stem cells, but enhanced. It extracts your DNA and replicates what it needs to to keep you alive for as long as possible. That’s the working theory I currently have anyway.”
“So I have a parasite in me?”
“A symbiote, you two aid each other, there are only benefits for each of you. Not to mention the enhanced soul… which I’m not entirely sure what causes that yet. Though the more vampirized you are, the more spiritual power a vampire seems to have. Considering that’s how it’s been with the last five, it’s only an assumption. But if that is the case, I am curious about the correlation.” She put the device down, handing me a towel, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see the images I got back. Time to see how far along you are.”
Patting me on the stomach, she walked out of sight, and I wiped my side down. Sitting up, I hopped off the table, picked up my shirt, throwing it back on. Then, it was dark.
---------------------------
My eyes shot open, I was upright on the hardwood table, eyes darting around for the threat.
“Relaaaax, you’re fine.” Rachel and Sepratine stood beside me, and I loosened up, wired as hell.
Standing, I regained my balance, “Which one of you knocked me out?”
“Neither.” Rachel said, offended, “You fainted, you had several nutrient deficiencies, and call me crazy, but I don’t think you were willing to hear what I had to say.”
I mulled it over, a burst of panic surging when I thought about the thing inside me. But I managed to push it back into its little jar. Which I promptly placed back on the shelf with the rest of my emotions. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, now. But I have to be honest with you, the ultrasound came back more worrying than I expected. You’re only about ¼ so far. Your soul is far larger than any of my calculations suggested.”
“Right on.”
“Joseph, you have far more potential than I expected. While I advise safety, occasionally fasting may build up your soul to around as strong as Smudge.”
“Cool beans.”
“The issue is that you have an extremely high-functioning stem. You’ll need extremely nutrient-dense foods with extremely specific nutrients to maintain yourself as you are, let alone grow stronger. I’ll have what you need, but if you don’t want to go on a killing spree every few days, you’ll need an extremely strict diet.”
“How much is that gonna run me?”
She sighed, rubbing her eyes, “Quite frankly, I’ll charge you what it costs me. I don’t want you going on a murder frenzy. You’re my friend, but that’d also guarantee your death. As not only an alchemist, but a scientist, I can’t allow that. I’ll charge you at the end of each month. How does that sound?”
“Cool, do you have an estimate?”
“Joseph I feel you are hearing me but not listening.”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“This will be in the ballpark of 1500 dollars a month, and that’s alongside normal meals. Which should help you not only maintain but build up. The pain will feel like you’re being digested if you get to the point of dangerous starvation. Now, repeat everything I just said back to you.”
When I did from start to finish, she rubbed her face, “Alright, you can pick up your supply weekly from here. For now, though, I have something that should hold you over until next Friday, when I’ll have the actual supplies.”
She helped load a few milk crates into my overstuffed car, and when I went to start my car, she gestured for me to roll the window down. “Yes?”
“There are places you can get help you know?”
“I think I can handle the vampirism thing.”
“Joseph…” She stared at me, tugging at my bucket of guilt, tipping it ever so slightly.
“I’ll be fine. Thank you Rachel.” I flicked the button up and the window went with it as I pulled out of her driveway in the suburbs of West Salem.
-----------------------------
“Joseph?” The familiar guy behind a desk just across from me stared, eye agape.
“D-Detective? What uh… what happened to your erm… you?”
“Long story. What happened to you?”
“Long story.”
He chuckled, “Guess you were in that town for a while. What are you doing here?”
I held up the contract, “I’ve got a debt I needa pay.”
-------------------------------------
Author’s Note:
Hey guys, 4Shot speaking. Holy FUCK guys. This has been my longest-running series, it’s been 3.5 years in the making. Hell, it was the series that got me into this whole writing shebang. It feels weird to be saying goodbye to Joseph, given this series has been with me since the start. I’ve seen my ups alongside this story, and those who read or listened to the poker scene in my detective series will know I’ve had my downs.
Though, it’s not exactly the end. I have one final series I’ll be writing to wrap everything up. Those who have followed my first three may notice a trend. And yes, the final series will be a continuation of Jones’ tale. It’s been a long time coming, and I hope to complete it before february, which is when I’ll be taking an extended hiatus. I’ll be back, but I have some things I want to do first. This entire unraveling story will have been a part of my life for over 4 years by then, something like that is hard to just let go, and I have some life I wanna experience. So I may be gone for around 6 months to a year when I’ve finished the Detective’s story.
I’m glad so many of you have enjoyed my stories. I honestly never expected to go anywhere with any of this, thought I’d give this series up around part 3, and writing would just be another dead hobby of mine. But here we are. Honestly, there are a lot of people to thank, but the main people are my boy TeeStache who got me into writing, NaturesTemper who picked up my terrible rough draft of this series, and Viidith who first found my detective series and asked to narrate it, and proceeded to narrate my Lighthouse series.
It’s been a crazy ride out there, and I only intend to make it crazier in the future. Thanks again guys, cheers.

Imagine walking into a burning building, and everyone laughs and tells you the fire’s all in your head. When no one believes you, are you going to stay to burn up with them? Every passenger in that crowd waiting to embark on the luxury cruise was already dead—they just didn’t know it yet! I stared through the windows of the terminal at the magnificent Seastar, at the broken glass and spatters of blood that only I could see… and then I fled.
Without warning a single soul.
What would have been the point? My name is Cassandra—I see death six days before it happens, and can feel it if I shake a cold hand—but no matter what I do, I can never, ever prevent it.
My flight took me as far as the escalators before a flash of purple brought me screeching to a halt. Lily Tsuki? No—it wasn’t the purple-haired musician who’d given me with cruise gift card. But suddenly I remembered how I’d been looking forward to hearing her performance aboard this very vessel…
Oh God…
It was one thing to turn my back on doomed strangers. Terrible as it sounds, it’s a bit like reading about a catastrophe in the news. Quite another thing to abandon somebody I knew! Could I really leave her to become one of the bodies putrefying in the belly of the Seastar? Every time I ordered a drink at my favorite bar, I’d remember I hadn’t even tried to save her!
“Fuck!” I cried, fumbling for my phone. “Oh, fuck me sideways… how much time…?”
Ninety minutes.
Ninety minutes to get on board, find the musician, and… what? Convince her to disembark?
How?
And yet my feet were already turning toward the gangplank—because as it turns out, I would rather plunge headlong into a ship full of the rotting dead than face an empty piano bench and the guilt that no amount of alcohol would ever drown. But to have any chance at persuading Lily, I’d need to know how the passengers died. This meant that in addition to finding a purple-haired needle in a Titanic-sized haystack, a horrifying task loomed ahead of me. I was going to have to do something I had not done in a very long time—plunge directly into my vision. Walk into its very maw and face whatever gruesome horrors lurked at the source of that nauseating odor.
I was going to have to find the bodies…
… and whatever killed them.
Boarding
The stench was so overpowering after crossing the gangplank that I dropped to my knees and dry heaved. The flow of passengers moved around me past the concierge desk. I must have looked exceptionally sick, because a pretty girl in a suit skirt approached, asking if I needed assistance. She reached out a hand to help me up—cold!
I staggered away from her and inside. Then—because I felt I might throw up—quickly found my way out to the promenade deck and the blessed breeze.
Lifeboats hung overhead. Beyond the rail, the sea sparkled in the afternoon sun. Cushioned loungers lined the deck. None were in use, presumably because the pool, patio, spa, and other amenities on the upper decks had much more attractive areas for lounging. I leaned against the rail and gulped the air, listening to the waves splash against the side of the boat, noting blood spatters further down—but nothing signifying the cause of the blood. Just vague signs of violence.
After circling the entire promenade deck and spotting only the occasional bloody spatters, I gritted my teeth, pulled my shirt collar up over my nose, and plunged into the nearest door.
The Seastar’s interior had the atmosphere of a luxury hotel. People milled about the restaurant and shopping area, buzzing with excitement, talking about cabaret shows and fine dining, while perky crew members answered questions, all perfectly oblivious to the putrid sweet rotting stench. I’d most likely find Lily Tsuki at the piano lounge, but since I didn’t yet have any plausible explanation for what had happened to the passengers, I continued wandering, entering a bustling café overlooking the ship’s grand staircase. Stepping over an enormous blood stain on the carpet, I passed the counter, nauseated by the fancy pastries behind their glass cases, peering among the tables and chairs. Paused when I spotted an eyeball in a teacup. No trace of how it got there. No body with an empty socket. Just the eyeball, swirling in a congealed bloody jelly at the bottom of the cup…
I scurried away, snatching a cloth napkin to cover my nose.
The interior darkened as I ascended the central staircase. No electricity, I noted as I clutched the railing. Why would the power be cut? A storm?
But storms don’t scoop out eyeballs with a dessert spoon….
Coming onto deck 6, I peered down a long, dim corridor lined with passenger cabins. To passengers coming and going, the hall was illuminated by electric lighting—but since I was seeing the ship six days in the future, the narrow hallway vanished into blackness. With no way to enter the cabins, and nothing much to see here or in the other dimmed halls of the passenger decks, I ascended until I reached the pool.
Pool Deck
Deck 9 opened to wide panoramic windows, dining, a spa, and of course the pool. I emerged outdoors with relief, removing the napkin from my nose as the sea breeze gave some respite from the odor.
Around me, people partied in bikinis and beachwear and suits, sipping all manner of drinks around the sky-blue swimming pool. A young woman stretched on a blood-spattered lounger, oblivious to the gore beneath her tanned figure. A few bodies floated among the swimmers, bloated and discolored. My vision shimmered briefly as a teen boy swam right through one of the bodies, splashing as if it were not there. My heart lurched when I realized that it was his own, albeit dressed in different clothes—
“Oof!” I grunted as a small figure bashed into me, her arm grazing mine.
“Sorry!” cried a little girl in a pink swimsuit, bolting by as her mother yelled at her to watch out for people.
I tried not to think of how cold the little girl’s arm felt. Counted the bodies: eight in the pool. One by the towel bin, head caved in. I made a circuit of the pool, occasionally brushing against people—cold, cold, cold.
No survivors, it seemed.
But why?
That was when I spotted a shirtless old man sitting at a table under an umbrella. I froze, goosebumps prickling along my skin. Unlike the floaters, there was no obvious reason for his death. His back was to me, the bare skin of his shoulders gray and blotchy. In his hand he held a broken drinking glass. He was positioned in repose… so what killed him?
My heart quickened as I moved round to the front of him.
His mouth hung open, shards of glass and a mangled tongue lolling out, crimson trailing down his shirt front. The source of the chewed glass was obvious—the cup in his hand was broken, its jagged edges bloody.
He’d died choking on the glass.
“What the fuck is happening here?” I whispered.
Forward Stairwell
The jogging track and the sundeck—decks 10 and 11—offered a stunning bird’s eye of the pool and ocean, but I did not stop to take this in as I circled to the bow, opting to take the forward stairs down, rather than central.
The stench hit me like a cloud.
I had to stop as I descended into the dim stairwell, clinging to the railing, doubled over, gagging. It was so so bad. My eyes watered. My stomach bucked. And it was dark. Thank God for my phone’s flashlight. I fumbled it on and, napkin firmly over my nose, plunged down into the depths… The phone’s thin illumination flashed along the carpeted stairwell and the hall of the first of the passenger decks. I kept descending. Paused at an unidentifiable slick red mound. I was examining it under my light when a crewmember jogged up to me and asked, “Lose something, miss?” “Just my marbles,” I muttered, shooing the crew member away and inadvertently brushing his hand. Cold. I turned my attention back to the mound.
A slimy pile of intestines on the stairwell… trailing down to a disemboweled body.
Intestines… eyeballs… eating broken glass… nothing about this makes sense! I swiveled the beam to check further downward.
That was when I found the source of the odor.
My path down was obstructed by a mass of bodies. The ones underneath seemed to have been trampled, but the ones on top… I squeezed my watering eyes and retched against the wall. Some of the bodies bore horrible mutilations—fingers bent and twisted, joints out of alignment, faces smashed in and jaws torn open. Many more appeared to have been crushed in the press of bodies. Best guess, there was a wave of panicked people rushing upstairs from below, colliding with a wave of others fleeing down from above.
Why this staircase? What was near this part of the ship?
The cabaret lounge, I realized. No electricity. No elevators. This was the nearest stairwell to the auditorium.
Closer. I was inching closer to uncovering the fates of the passengers. And yet, I still had no idea what the passengers were fleeing from. Who were the attackers? Or… I thought of the eyeball. The glass chewed and swallowed.
An icy pinprick at the base of my skull whispered the question I didn’t want to ask…
Why? Why did some of the passengers go mad, and do it to themselves?
Piano Bar
I took the long way round to the cabaret theatre, going all the way back up the stairs and coming down on the central staircase, only to detour on hearing the notes of a piano. I found myself in a cozy lounge and spotted a purple-haired figure at the keys. And just in time—the ship was due to depart in less than half an hour!
“Lily!” I rushed over.
The musician’s face lit. “Oh it’s you, friend! You made it!”
“You’ve got to get off the ship!”
“Off the—”
“I know it seems crazy but you’ve got to! Everyone on board is going to die—I’ve seen it because I’m psycho!” I heard it a second later and smacked my forehead. “I mean—psychic! PSYCHIC!! I can see the future.” At her scrunched eyebrows, I burst, “Look I know how I sound, but I’ve been able to see things since I was a little girl, and I am telling you that this ship is going to go dark! The engines will cut out! People are going to flee and trample each other on that forward staircase…” Launching into a rapid-fire recounting, I was just getting to the eyeball in the teacup when she interrupted:
“You’re afraid of some sort of terrorist attack?”
“No, no! No! It’s almost like… a kind of madness, a contagion, that spreads through the ship—”
“A zombie apocalypse?”
“Not zombies…”
“Poltergeists? Possession?” She played a riff from a horror movie. “Should we call an exorcist?”
“We should leave!” I checked my phone. “Quickly!—"
“What an odd duck you are! I can’t imagine any sort of catastrophe as big as you’re saying. You know this ship has tons of safety protocols. And even if I did believe some disaster were drawing near—do you really think I could abandon crowds and crew?” She looked at me over her glasses, shimmering purple lips curving in a smile. “Listen friend, if this were the Titanic and I was the only one who could see the iceberg, I’d stay to steer us right, not run off leaving everyone to die!”
Icy fingers raked along my spine. Even if she wasn’t taking me seriously, she was right—I did have a moral obligation to save people. An obligation I’d been trying to fulfill ever since I was a little girl, until the attempt killed my brother, and even after, I kept trying for years and years…. until at last I realized that there is no way to change anything. That is why I call myself Cassandra. For the Greek prophet doomed to predict the future but never be believed. Try and prevent what I’ve foreseen? You might as well try and pluck the stars from the sky!
Every hand I’d touched was cold. Everyone on board would die.
My fists balled, fingernails digging so hard into my palms they bled. “You really have no idea what you’re asking of me…”
“Oh, I’m not telling you to stay. I’m just explaining why I have to. Besides, I’m under contract.” She winked and focused on her playing as guests entered and sat at nearby tables.
She had no idea! None whatsoever! If I thought there was even a sliver of a hope, I wouldn’t abandon people! Oh, if this happy-go-lucky musician understood the futility!!
But she will, came another, darker thought. She will know the full depth of the horror coming…
“No,” I whispered.
“Huh?” She shouted, “Wait—friend, where are you going?”
But I was not listening. The cabaret theatre—was the answer there? The reason for the crush of bodies in the forward stairwell? I rushed past the cafe with the eyeball in the teacup, through the grand doors into the cabaret hall—
—but the cabaret hall was surprisingly quiet, save for a light touch of classical music. A few passengers mingled here or there, unnoticing of the cadavers draped on chairs and tables. The stage itself was pristine, the wood smooth and polished in the fading orange light through the windows. Apparently, the origin of the panicked flight up the forward stairwell was not this grand entertainment venue—nothing here supported that theory.
Nonetheless, I gave the place a thorough search until my phone’s battery ran low, and then I returned to the grand staircase.
In one direction lay passenger cabins. In the other, the gangplank back to the port terminal and safety.
“It’s not too late to be a coward, Cass,” I said. “Run from the ship, run from the empty piano bench at the bar, find a different, cheaper hole in the wall to crawl into like—like the cockroach you are…”
Always the survivor, eh…?
Or… or, I could try just one more time. “‘Hope,’” my brother always said, “is the thing with feathers.”
And look what happened to him! flashed through my mind. My heart slammed against my ribcage. I’d just die too, unless I left in the next—how many minutes? I checked my phone, but it was dead. Like I would be if I stayed.
A horn sounded the Seastar’s departure. A distant cheer rose up from the upper decks and balconies. I felt a brief panicky impulse to run back out on deck and throw myself off the ship… but in truth, my fate had already been decided before the ship’s horn blew. I hadn’t been paying attention earlier, but I’d been rubbing and rubbing my hands, and finally realized they were cold. Probably had been since I’d boarded. I shuffled leaden feet toward the passenger cabins, guided by my phone’s light to the brass number plate for 4044—my cabin. Reached for the knob and stopped.
That smell—dread squeezed my intestines like a wet rag.
Smoke. Burnt meat.
I wrinkled my nose and opened the door.
Orange rays shone through the window, the sunset so vivid it almost gave the illusion that the room was on fire. The walls and ceiling were charred. The edges of the mattress and sheets a smoldered ruin. But the worst damage was the small sofa by the coffee table. Broken bottles scattered round. And there on the sofa—
My fingers went limp on the door handle as I stared into melted sockets of a body charred beyond recognition. A dark line encircled its wrist. The blackened remnants of a charm bracelet.
My bracelet.
While the man on the pool deck swallowed glass, I would succumb to the insanity here, dousing myself in alcohol and flame—
—immolating myself.
[Part 1]
[Part 3 UPDATE]

Hi. 34/M. And I hate my body because of it's inability to heal from injuries.
Three years ago, I became disabled during the prime of my life, age 31, after an allergic reaction to a pharmaceutical. I nearly died from it, I was crippled, and I required 5 surgeries over 2.5 years (soon to be 6 it appears) to walk without aid again. For about 3 months at the beginning of this year, I was feeling better. Not "normal", but nearing a new normal where I'd soon be able to shop for my own groceries or go for leisurely half hour walks. Not so fast.
After so many surgeries I had to implement a stretching routine to get going in the morning. On 4/20 I woke up knowing something was seriously wrong under my right foot. Doing a simple, basic downward dog every day for 2 months suddenly did me in. How pathetic huh.
Went to my foot doctor. X-rays we’re normal. Ultrasound showed some inflammation. 7 weeks out from the onset, I'm at a loss. I've done EVERYTHING you can think of. Threw the kitchen sink at it from day one. Every conservative care measure and hocus pocus "cutting edge" technology stupid conning doctors threw at me. Nothing. At about 5 weeks, I had an MRI done. The MRI was unremarkable, so there is now officially no explanation for this pain. Now I have doctors telling me it's "in my head" and just a "hyperactive nervous system." That sort of medical gaslighting is very triggering because that's what I was told when I had ruptured tendons. No, there is something wrong. It "healed". Just incorrectly. I'm almost at 2 months and at my wits end and if it doesn't heal in another month, I'll need another surgery. I'm so tired of the money pit of conservative care that doesn't work even 1% for people like me. I see people have an open fracture with a bone sticking out of their leg and recover in 12 weeks. I can't heal a ligament the size of a fingernail.
I wish doctors would stop blowing smoke up my ass. Not only do I hate my own body, I generally dislike the human body. Sure it's a miracle in some ways, but when I see a video of a Great White shark that got its back sliced open by a propellor and see it make a full recovery with new cartilage a week later, I feel so insignificant and pathetic. After 200,000 years our bodies still haven't evolved to repair collagen like tendon, ligaments, and cartilage the same way we repair muscle and bone and we can't do it even with modern medicine.
Every video I've watched on this injury I have the comments are littered with people going "did you heal? I'm 6-12 months out and not healing", people just begging for answers from strangers that they're not getting from their doctor and they just don't heal. I'm starting to have feelings of strong dislike for my body for its inability to do its job with very simple injuries.
One of the ways I understand body dysmorphia plays out is self harm. Well, as a result of the 5 surgeries I developed a painkiller addiction. But they really don't help with pain anymore. Paradoxically, they make it worse after a while. But I still take them to numb the emotional pain and self hatred. I use 9 of them a day to induce very deep 10 hour sleep. I shower once a week.
And because of my inability to heal injuries, I can't workout. I'm 5'10 and 215 pounds. I feel my healthiest and look my best at 185, and physically am not even capable of doing the work to drop the 30 pounds that make me feel my best.
I'm so sorry if this is not body dysmorphia. I'm ready for the downvotes I always got and always deserved on previous Reddit accounts. I just don't know where else to go. No one calls or texts anymore. I'm just tired. My birthday is on Sunday and I hope nobody calls or texts. I know they're doing it because they feel obligated and don't really want to hear my shit, throw me 10 minutes of pity and then I won't hear from them until Christmas. I haven't socialized in 3 years because I don't want anyone to see my body in its most pathetic form.

This gonna be a long one but I figured id share my story after lurking here for a while to let everyone know that making good money, creating independence, and enjoying your business can all happen in a short amount of time!
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I was a young lad back at the age of 17 trying to figure out what i was going to do with my life. I was barely getting through school, was more interested in working and making money. I was on a program where my senior year i only attended school 3 days a week and only went until 12:00pm. This gave me the opportunity to go work my awful part time jobs at car washes and car dealerships detailing cars. It was at this time i thought i could start a little side gig selling mobile detail service in my neighborhood. It took off and i started really getting client and making some money but nothing that would justify full time work when i graduated. I also did not really enjoy the work. I was always good with my hands, i worked on my own cars, built my own ramps and what not when i rode BMX bikes growing up and walls always able to create and see drawings in my head for assembly and put them to paper. I was set to graduate halfway through my senior year so i could start working.
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My Father has been in the commercial glazing industry for his entire life, at the time of my graduation he had been at a very large midwest privately owned commercial glazing company as a project manager. He hesitantly despite knowing about my pot smoking and partying habits got my foot in the door and got me an interview and a job in the fabrication shop fabricating the glazing systems to go out into the field for install. I started out as the low guy on the pole just freshly turning 18, getting put with the grumpy ass old men to assemble frames and caulk all of the system dams for water control. I hated it. After about 2 months i got the opportunity to run the fabrication and assembly for a small commercial storefront project with 2 helpers in the shop. This meant i got all of the cut specifications, field an assembly drawings, and details. I essentially had to start with raw full length stock materials and cut, layout and install the clips and brackets, build the frames, caulk and weap, pack and ship the project. This is when i realized that i could actually do something with this because by this time i had essentially learned the ins and outs of every commercial glazing system on my own in my freetime from product manuals so i could at least set myself apart from the other guys in the shop. I finished the fab job 2 weeks ahead of schedule without any mistakes that had to be corrected in the field. I worked in the shop for another 2 weeks and the operations manager decided i should go to the field to learn the installation process since i had progressed quickly.
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I started in the field the same way i did in the shop, they where testing me to see if i could handle the vulgar, raw, and miserable world of commercial construction field work. I spent 3 months on a large curtainwall and storefront installation project. I started by caulking dams on curtain wall that had to be stick built in the field. I then go promoted to setting glass and running oil covered vinyl all day to hold the glass into the system. They then bumped me up i got to sit in a boom lift all day and caulk ssg glazing systems. I at this point met a girl in a the state i was from on vacation and because things weren't going well at home and i kind of hated what i was doing i decided to move there.
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I moved to this new state and secured a position at a company that built and installed their own residential and commercial glazing systems. Conservatories, folding glass walls, skylights, and more. The position i took was a field laborer traveling to install conservatoires throughout the northeast. I started with a crew of roughneck guys and quickly found my pace and was learning the system quickly, managing my tasks on my own, and the big thing was i became the go to guy for layout with the foreman. I really enjoyed layout and was damn good at it. After 7 months traveling i didn't like being on the road and by coincidence got a call when i was in Maine that next week from the management team that they wanted to bring me into their massive fabrication and manufacturing facility to better learn the system and the preparation process for everything before it got to the installers.
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I went home and started working in the assembly department, essentially all of the parts for the structures where cut, pre drilled and prepped and the assembly team built the structures in the facility to ensure everything was going to work in the field. this really gave me the full up and up on the entire process of the system they produced and used. After 2 months i was brought in and offered a position in estimating.
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I joined the estimating team and spent 6 weeks learning every in and out of their entire product lineup, pricing structure, how to assemble professional estimates and proposals and i learned intermediate level AutoCAD drafting. I essentially would get a project on my desk and draw the structure as it was to be built in cad then used the drawings to create my takeoff and bid the job. i did this for 6 months before i realized how awful the management, staff, turnover, and moral was within this organization. I made the dumbest move i could have ever made and left a job paying 70k a year to an uneducated almost 20 year old with no other employment lined up.
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i did end up securing a position as a senior pm at another small commercial glazing company that set me up for failure by allowing their estimator to underbid every large project but ridiculous amounts of money before i arrived without anyone noticing. so every job that cam across my desk was a disaster from the get go. I spent 9 months putting out fires, managing gc relationships that where toxic due to the position i was put in etc. But i did learn critical project management procedures and how to deal with emergencies on the fly and client management in tough scenarios.
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Fast forward a bit and i moved back to my old state with said girl and take a job at a failing commercial glass company as a field/shop laborer and stayed for 3 months. I Left and took an opportunity to try residential glazing by installing custom glass shower doors, i ran my own truck did 3 installs a day with a helper and did this for 9 months. I had an opportunity come up to work with one of those 1 day bath install companies that advertise religiously. I had just built my first home, my fiance was unemployed and i needed more cash badly.
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I met with their operations manager and it was all layed out that i would be an employee but only would be payed a percentage of the cost of the sold job for the bathroom upon completion of install. I essentially had all control in my hands to make as much or as little as i wanted but it was all up to me. Despite the lack of a safety net i took the risk and accepted the offer. i trained with another installer for 2 weeks and set out on my own. Typically these companies sell these jobs for 8-11k depending on the exact scope and accessories. 2 man teams where typically doing a job in 12 hours or basically a day in a half and the jobs where all over the state. I thought there had to be a more efficient way to do it because i got 10% of the job sold price as my pay. by the time i paid for a helper, my fuel, and what not 800-1100 in 2-3 days wasn't enough. I let my helped go and decided i was going to do it on my own. After spending weeks trying new methods to get faster and create a better product i was doing install on my own in 8-10 hours and clearing 3-4k a week gross before taxes and fuel expenses. I was hungry to be successful and finally make good money. This continued for about 5 months until they hit a sales dead period and there wasn't enough work to keep all 4 install crews busy but maybe 1 job a week and i approached my operations manager about another opportunity in the company. Patio conversions
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Essentially this was a window and door, bath, and conversion company. These conversions consisted of taking existing covered porches and patios and turning them into 3 season or 4 season rooms. so you got the whole package. layout, framing, insulation, windows and doors, electrical, hvac, and interior and exterior finishes. these job paid big. on average a job takes 5-10 days and pays out 8-16k dollars to the installer. of course i had a couple helpers but i was absolutely crushing it after only a couple of months. This is where i really started to learn the ins and outs of commercial construction.
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One day i was approached on a Facebook page about a gentleman with a residential remodeling company near me that was looking for an operations manager. they specialized in high end luxury remodels and also made their own cabinets. I met with him and decided even though the operation seemed small and mismanaged i could make it work. I took a pay decrease so i could work less hours and be home more as my fiancé had just had our daughter and the other company didn't even let me off to go to the appointments.
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What i didn't know was that the owner of this business was the slimiest most Narcisitic, ego fueled person i have ever met in my entire life. He was running a GC business with the expectation that every sub, employee, etc was going to be a LEGEND and create only the most perfect unmatched quality product when given low Quality materials, piss poor planning, awful schedules and communication, etc. I quickly learned that i was going to be burned if i didn't think of something quick because the castle was under siege and i saw what was coming. i am 21 at this time. Well inevitably the following week i as an operations manager trying to keep a sinking ship afloat and out in the field tearing up tile from an under slab plumbing leak from before i was at this place, trying to rebuild an entire kitchen in 3 days by myself and i just was over it. Told him that i was putting in my notice and was done. I get called into the office that Friday and was told i was being let go, i was given a personal check for my weekly salary of 1000 dollars and made to sign a non compete and hold harmless agreement if i wanted my pay. i was paid as a 1099 under the table so he wasn't responsible for costs associated with employees. Basically i set myself up to get screwed. i signed everything took my check and left. Check bounces, im broke, he wont pay and im jobless with a fiance and a 6 month old. This was the lowest i had ever felt in my life and i literally was about to loose everything.
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It was at this time my wheels started turning and i realized that all of these residential companies i worked for had multiple things in common. The client communication was terrible, their execution was terrible, and their image was awful. They looked all shiny and great during the sales process but as soon as they had a contract and a check the client experience didn't matter. So i thought to myself, i know construction now, i now a fair amount project management and business operations, and i see a hole in the market. so i started my company with the little money i had left. i registered with the state, bought a logo from someone on fivver, made a facebook page, a wix website, and started marketing.
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This was great but it takes time to pickup traction and get jobs, i wasn't going to make money being a handyman so i needed supplemental income with flexibility in my schedule. I connected with a local fence contractor who was small and needed and installer who got paid by the linear for building fences. The money was decent but the work was hard and labor intensive. But it gave me a chance to hire a couple guys and teach them how to do it so i could start jobs and leave the jobsites to run estimates for my company. After many free estimates and 1:00 am mornings in the office writing quotes i just wasnt getting the jobs i needed. I needed a way to make sure someone wasn't tire kicking before i spent time and money doing a free estimate. So i started charging $200.00 for an in home consultation and bid package which would be credited to the client in full if they used us for the project. This was not well received due to me not being able to present it correctly in the pitch over the phone but when i did holy shit it worked like a charm. my conversion rate on estimates went form 16% to over 65% in a matter on 3 months.
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I started getting good big jobs in good neighborhoods, i started finding really great subs and built my list. I started building brand image, internal documents, repeatable procedures for every job etc. this went on for a year and a half and i finally made 85k take home my first full year in business. Then the covid thing happened.
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I thought everyone is freaked out and doesn't want us in their homes for estimates etc. how do i difference myself and create a luxury experience for clients without being intrusive during the lockdowns. i had started modeling basic things in SketchUp and new there was a lot of opportunity in 3d rendering. so i shifted our model and we became a design build firm. So essentially we are selling a design and rendering package to clients with a bid so that they can see what their project would look like before we ever go under contract. The rendering sells the job no matter the cost as long as you have the correct client base and are pre qualifying well.
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I had a friend i grew up with that had gotten an architecture degree and was doing SketchUp 3D modeling, renderings, and 2D architectural drawing sets for a shed company as a freelancer and we can up with pricing and decided i was going to pursue this model. So i learned how to be a sales wizard and started selling $1,500-$5,000 design packages over the phone before i ever stepped foot in someones home. we designed and went through the process and send them a price. if they use us they get a full credit applied to the job for the amount of the design if not they own the drawings and information. I was making 50% GP on designs for jobs that never sold just to go out and measure and spend some time going through it with my designer. Our close rate on paid design bids sent went to 86%. This was the end of year 2 going into year 3
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Year 2 Gross Revenue was $364k
Year 3 Gross Revenue was $597K
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This is all on my own using subs, no in house staff, off the shelf management software, no paid marketing. Just Facebook groups, referrals, and subs.
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In June of Year 3 I streamlined my process. I farmed out all business management (bookkeeping, Payroll, Phones, Etc.) and created a concrete repeatable process and procedure system that would be used on every job to ensure consistent management and quality. I hired a project manager and got him trained to manage all of the subs and all aspects related to the field and installations.
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I am Proud to say that at June 1 of 2023 at 26 years old with only one Employee we have contracted and collected deposits on $848,000.00 worth of work, our schedule is booked until the middle of September and we are on track to hit just over 1.1 mil in total revenue at an average gross profit of 47%.
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I have no formal training in business management, project management or anything to get me to this point. i have spent countless hours researching, reading, failing, and fixing everything in my business. its a cut throat game but if your willing to work your ass off and never quit, do amazing work, and make sure you prioritize client experience start to finish you will have people waiting years for you to do their job.
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We are booked through April of 2024 for outdoor projects. Find a hole in the industry in your service area and take full advantage and change the remodeling or building game so us contractors can be looked at as professionals who have earned our ability to enjoy what we have worked for instead of drunk hacks in a shitty pickup.
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Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk, get to work!

I would like to start this by saying I know this is long I'm sorry, it's a drawn out situation. I'm diagnosed with depression and general anxiety, I over think everything because lots of childhood trauma. I don't have access to therapy (financial reasons) but I take medication prescribed by a primary family doctor. I am mentally draining myself every day thinking about which would be the better decision and have weighed the pros and cons of both but still am at a crossroads and the anxiety is eating away at me. I have self sabotaging patterns towards things that are good for me thinking I don't deserve them, but I also when in bad situations tell myself "I deserve better" so I don't know if my decision would be based out of repeating trauma or breaking the pattern. I'm trying to make the best decision for myself and would like to hear others thoughts.
I (22F) met my boyfriend (23M) 2.5 years ago online who lived an hour away and it became a steady blossoming love that grew over the span of a couple months. When we got together we were still living at our parents houses, saw each other often and things were great. Even after we got out of the honey moon phase we were always communicating our expectations, feelings and thoughts, hearing each other out wholeheartedly, looking within ourselves to self improve, smoked some ganj, went on adventures/traveled, sex was good, had stable incomes, and it was a great partnership. Then something shifted a year in, it wasn't any particular thing that happened but it was a definite shift.
I remember around the time the shift happened, depression was getting to him and my cat had developed bladder stones and was blocked and needed urgent care. Kitty recovered well and is healthy, but the whole vet ordeal sent me into over $3,000 in debt and took so much of my savings. I confided in my partner emotionally, also saying I would need financial help because I needed to pay roughly $90 a week to pay off a loan from care credit of $2,200 in 6 months before I got hit with an insane APR. We had stable jobs but that was still a huge hit and we both already had credit card debt.
For some reason he decided it was a good idea a couple weeks after that happened to go down to part time at his job when he was working full time. His job paid around $15ish for full-time and $13ish for part time. He said it was because he disliked the job which was totally fine, but instead of looking for a different job he went down to working 15-20 hours a week. I understood him wanting to not work there because being stuck at a job you hate sucks, but I didn't understand why he didn't get a different job entirely, instead of going down to part time especially knowing I needed his financial help.
Eventually our financial situation got very tight because of both of our circumstances and he ended up rarely working at his job (like one 5 hour shift a week). He ended up racking two grand of credit card debt and my savings got drained down to a couple hundred while before it neared two grand. Throughout the next couple months we didn't do any more fun things and it would consist of him doing odd side jobs to get a couple $20's in cash for bare necessities. He attempted to get stable full time jobs but would quit a month in because he didn't like it (before securing a different job), would fail a pre-employment drug test (he messed up doing the fake pee), or got fired because of tardiness, or having a workplace accident and then failing the drug test that followed. I was really understanding through all this and did my best to be there for him, but I was so drained.
I'd kept my stable job the entire relationship and a couple months into the rough patch I eventually got a raise from $17 to $19.50 and was providing a lot of the necessities for our relationship while also trying to keep the relationship "fun" (picking up the tab to a restaurant, going to a movie, mini golfing, arcade, etc.). After about a year passed going through this rough patch I started to become resentful. I'd communicate with him how I felt alone in trying to fuel this relationship. He started emotionally clocking out, not doing romantic things anymore, not putting effort into finding jobs (it would be months in between job attempts), and he would hear me out and apologize for everything and then would say it's because of depression. I understood depression so heavily and I encouraged him to reach out for help. He was on his parents insurance and it provided free doctors visits and free therapy allowing him to switch his therapist for free at anytime if he didn't like them, but he was so reluctant to use those resources. Eventually he started trying medication but said it didn't work so he switched it to something else and then said that didn't work either, but he was pretty inconsistent with taking his medication. He'd schedule visits with his therapist and call last minute before the appointment saying he wouldn't be able to make it or just didn't show up in general with no warning.
It seemed like he just kept getting worse and didn't have any will to get better. When it came to our sex life I told him sex positions I liked and he would rarely do them, all while we would do the positions he liked almost every time. When it came to cuddling it was always me holding him with his head on my chest but never the other way around. When we would be grocery shopping and I would be buying all the groceries he wouldn't even push the shopping cart or pick up heavy things (not refusal, just never offered). I felt like he was benefitting from me while I was suffering. I brought up to him that I felt alone all the time and it was always met with a sincere apology but no changed behavior.
Eventually I gave him an ultimatum that I was going to leave if things didn't change. Then he would change for a couple weeks and then it would go right back to what it was. I would communicate with him again and again and it felt like I was nagging him to meet my needs. I felt like I must've done something wrong, at the very least enabled the behavior. I wanted to move out, go to the gym, eat right, get my life together and he didn't have near as much will to do those things as I did. I was so filled with resentment I started emotionally clocking out, and then that's when he started to change things.
He started doing all the things I've been asking him to do for over a year (some things have still not changed though) and he 's about to get a job he's dead set on keeping, he found a medication he thinks is working, and we have plans to do fun things this year, but I'm so weary. I'm having a hard time putting faith into his ability to offer stability. I'm also having a hard time building that trust back into him after all the empty promises he's made.
At the height of our "conflict" (we never yelled at each or name called) we were having a discussion on financial matters...again.. and when I expressed I was tired of buying food for the both of us he said "Well I just won't eat then" and when I told him I was tired of being the only one to pay for the fun dates to keep our relationship exciting he said "I never asked you to spend that money." Yet for an anniversary present I made a "date idea" jar and it was filled with little pieces of paper with cheap/free/at home/outside date ideas. I gifted it to him and only ONCE has he expressed interest in using the jar, and when he pulled a piece of paper out and read the date idea he said "I don't feel like doing that" and put the piece of paper back in the jar, then back on the shelf.
It feels like it's only changed because I've begged him and said I'd leave if things didn't change. But now that he's proven he was fully capable of doing all those things all along, and just watched me suffer while I held up both ends of our relationship, it makes me wonder what would happen if he spiraled into another depressive episode. Would this same thing happen again?
He's a kind man who's always there to lend a helping hand if asked, my family adores him, he's the kind of man that would NEVER cheat, he has good friends that respect and love me, he's caring to animals, he listens attentively when I have something to say, etc. but I wonder to myself... is that the bare minimum as well? Now that he's doing a majority of the things I asked, is it wrong to leave? I just still have so much resentment left and no idea how to get rid of it and I still find myself emotionally distant. Or is it valid to leave because it took so much begging and suffering to get here and I can't guarantee it won't happen again? TL;DR - Boyfriend was putting A+ effort into the relationship in the beginning, stopped putting in effort a year in and was putting in basically nothing, then after me communicating frustrations multiple times and finally an ultimatum, he straightened up but it still doesn't feel legit.

Proof of me with some of the stuff. It's far too big to get it all in one picture:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/1mH8TmA8soPhtdE67
After 30 years of obsession and nearly 20 years of passionately collecting, I'm planning on parting with my Texas Chainsaw Massacre collection. If you’re interested in my backstory, scroll to the bottom and I’ll tell you all about it.
I don't know if this is the largest of its kind, but I know I've put an absurd amount of effort, time and money into building this collection. Everything has always been kept in a smoke free, climate controlled space, with minimal exposure to small dogs.
There are over 400 individual items, ranging from action figures, masks and posters, to comics, apparel and various pieces of media. I have several rare/vintage items, including an original 1974 Bryanston one sheet signed by 6 cast members, a rebuilt replica Poulan 245A (don’t try to tell me it was a 306A…you can literally tell the difference between the two saws and see that he uses the 245A in the film), also signed by 6 cast members, a signed original Bryanston Press Book and lobby cards, as well as a life-size Leatherface with his right ear flap signed by Gunner Hansen (the original Leatherface), and much, much more!
I'm no photographer, but I think I've taken decent pictures of everything. I have listed Google Photos links where the items can be seen, each separated by category. I’ll be adding comments to each photo with a description or link to a site where the item can be seen in detail.
PHOTOS
Figures and Toys
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZjGSr1T5NBGJ9Nzy8
Comics, Books and Magazines
https://photos.app.goo.gl/dFJ7doojqAT29FVw7
Posters and Wall Art
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zTyqPkqWWWuN9tAy7
Media (Blu-rays, DVDs, LaseVideodiscs, VHS, CDs and Vinyl Records)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/JZSqT2dLZqcTGByr8
Masks, Costumes and Accessories
https://photos.app.goo.gl/egfSCwmjWZjCA6Yv9
Apparel, Accessories and Keychains
https://photos.app.goo.gl/mPhbM2ki3xpvAJRNA
Rarities
https://photos.app.goo.gl/YxsXoEwY1GEgE27V6
Everything Else
https://photos.app.goo.gl/w1DXgG2NwWF2M32s6
Authenticity of Signatures with Photos
https://photos.app.goo.gl/G62MkG5jrpV6P3Kz9
All Items in One Folder
https://photos.app.goo.gl/3BVb52mnbxNKvHA2A
BACK STORY
In the 80’s and 90’s, you’d see scary movie VHS box covers when you snuck off to the horror section in Blockbuster. They were terrifying, and it was made even worse by the general “taboo” of horror movies. You’d go to school and whisper things among your friends, “Pssst…have you heard of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? It really happened!” You’d act tough talking about these things with pals, but deep inside, they scared the **** out of you!
When I was 10 years-old in 1992, my family took a vacation to visit extended family in Florida. We stayed with my grandmother, who at the time, was a sweet 4’9” British lady of advanced years (she passed in 2014). In her living room, she had a bureau/chest of drawers that I snooped around in when no one was around. In the second drawer from the top, resting on the pile of junk inside, was a VHS copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I took it and hid it away in my suitcase.
Fast forward a couple months, we’re home from vacation, and I had been waiting for the next time my parents would leave me home alone so I could pop the movie into the VCR. One night, they did. That night, I watched it. This was a really bad idea…
I grew up in Tennessee. It’s a GORGEOUS state, with lots of forested areas. I happened to live in a field on 13 acres, surrounded by the woods, without a neighbor in sight. So from the minute the movie was over, until sometime in my early teens, I was convinced that Leatherface would come bursting through the trees and into the house to kill me.
Even though I grew out of it and though it was silly, it didn’t stop my subconscious from developing near-nightly nightmares of that XL chainsaw-wielding maniac.
In the early 2000’s, I wandered into a comic shop. There, behind the counter, without a box, was an 18” Leatherface. The 2003 remake was new and it sparked an interest in me. When I saw this figure, I knew I had to get it. I did. That’s where it started. It took a few years to realize this was a coping mechanism for the trauma the movie (and me) inflicted upon my childhood.
From there, the collecting became more intense. I went to horror conventions around the country (Dallas, Indianapolis, Nashville, etc), having new items signed by the remaining cast members. I haven’t stopped or slowed down since. I literally always have items on pre-order.
That’s it. That’s my story.
Thanks!
ChainsawMassacreGuy

Hello, Reddit community! I'm reaching out to you today because I've been going through some unsettling experiences lately, and I'm not sure if I'm just being paranoid or if there's a genuine reason for concern. I would appreciate your insights and advice.
It all started during the lockdown period when I was feeling lonely and ended up making friends with people involved in criminal activities. However, once I started working, I made the decision to distance myself from those negative influences. That's when things began to take a strange turn.
A few months after cutting ties with these individuals, I started receiving anonymous phone calls on a monthly basis. Curiosity got the better of me one time, and I picked up the phone, only to hear an unfamiliar voice disclosing personal details about my workplace and my behavior. Naturally, this left me quite unsettled. I took the necessary precautions by changing my phone number, hoping to put an end to these strange occurrences.
Months later, however, while I was out shopping, someone approached me and asked if a certain old friend of mine was part of my family. I was taken aback and questioned why they thought that. The person claimed that they had seen me together with this old friend, but that simply wasn't true. This incident further fueled my growing paranoia.
Just two weeks after that incident, I observed some suspicious-looking individuals lurking near my workplace while I was taking a nap. I thought I overheard them discussing plans to harm someone. Needless to say, this intensified my already heightened state of paranoia. Yet, as the months passed, nothing actually happened, and I tried to move forward with my life.
However, the situation took another disturbing turn when I visited a prostitute the following year. Once again, I received an anonymous call, this time in Turkish, my native language, even though I'm currently residing in another country. The caller accused me of repeatedly contacting their number and threatened to ruin my life. This encounter deeply unsettled me, reinforcing the feeling that someone has been searching for me for years.
Adding to my growing concerns, just yesterday, I noticed a suspicious-looking individual in a car staring at me intently for a solid five minutes without averting his gaze. This incident left me feeling extremely unsettled and concerned for my safety.
As of today i went for a walk to fight my fear but i was scared from everybody and when i was having a smoke in front of my door there stopped a car and couldn’t stop myself thinking that somebody wanted to know my adress but i was too afraid to look because i didnt want to draw attention to myself
Now, Reddit, I turn to you for advice and perspective. Am I simply being paranoid, or do these experiences warrant genuine concern? Should I consider leaving the country to ensure my safety? Your insights and guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all in advance for taking the time to read and respond.
Edit: i was never involved in criminal activities but i had some friends that did some drugdealing

Hello, Reddit community! I'm reaching out to you today because I've been going through some unsettling experiences lately, and I'm not sure if I'm just being paranoid or if there's a genuine reason for concern. I would appreciate your insights and advice.
It all started during the lockdown period when I was feeling lonely and ended up making friends with people involved in criminal activities. However, once I started working, I made the decision to distance myself from those negative influences. That's when things began to take a strange turn.
A few months after cutting ties with these individuals, I started receiving anonymous phone calls on a monthly basis. Curiosity got the better of me one time, and I picked up the phone, only to hear an unfamiliar voice disclosing personal details about my workplace and my behavior. Naturally, this left me quite unsettled. I took the necessary precautions by changing my phone number, hoping to put an end to these strange occurrences.
Months later, however, while I was out shopping, someone approached me and asked if a certain old friend of mine was part of my family. I was taken aback and questioned why they thought that. The person claimed that they had seen me together with this old friend, but that simply wasn't true. This incident further fueled my growing paranoia.
Just two weeks after that incident, I observed some suspicious-looking individuals lurking near my workplace while I was taking a nap. I thought I overheard them discussing plans to harm someone. Needless to say, this intensified my already heightened state of paranoia. Yet, as the months passed, nothing actually happened, and I tried to move forward with my life.
However, the situation took another disturbing turn when I visited a prostitute the following year. Once again, I received an anonymous call, this time in Turkish, my native language, even though I'm currently residing in another country. The caller accused me of repeatedly contacting their number and threatened to ruin my life. This encounter deeply unsettled me, reinforcing the feeling that someone has been searching for me for years.
Adding to my growing concerns, just yesterday, I noticed a suspicious-looking individual in a car staring at me intently for a solid five minutes without averting his gaze. This incident left me feeling extremely unsettled and concerned for my safety.
And as of now intry not to analyse people too much to not draw attention to myself but today when i was smoking in front of my door i also saw a car stopping 5m away while i was waiting for my mother to open the door
Now, Reddit, I turn to you for advice and perspective. Am I simply being paranoid, or do these experiences warrant genuine concern? Should I consider leaving the country to ensure my safety? Your insights and guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all in advance for taking the time to read and respond.