Height: 5'3"
Weight: 130-140 lbs
Sleep Style: Side (mostly), back (sometimes)
This is my first time hunting for a new mattress. I went to the Purple store and ended up getting the Purple Restore in Firm, but I find that this mattress is too squishy for me and I wake up with muscle strain in my lower back. I am planning on returning it ASAP
Another mattress I've been looking at is the Bear Elite Hybrid in Firm, but I'm wondering if it would be too firm for me because of my weight? I don't want anything super rock hard, but I hate that the Purple mattress sinks unevenly depending on how I lay down (if that makes sense). Or I'm wondering if I should just avoid foam mattresses in general, any advice would be appreciated :)
Edit: I don't have any concerns about sleeping hot, but I would like something that will last a while since I spend a lot of time being comfy!

No teddy bears are to be allowed in Site 24 to prevent any confusion or mistaken identity. Any object that resembles a teddy bear is to be reported to the security team immediately.
SCP-1048 is a small teddy bear, which appears to be sapient and capable of movement by its own accord. Initially, this sapience was believed to be the extent of SCP-1048's anomalous qualities, and SCP-1048 was allowed free rein to roam the site it was contained at due to its seemingly amicable and affectionate nature. However, around seven months after initial containment, SCP-1048's true anomalous qualities became apparent after it was discovered alongside another teddy bear constructed entirely out of human ears. SCP-1048, as it turns out, is capable of making other fully sapient teddy bears out of various materials, which are all hostile and have exhibited extreme violence toward humans. Soon after its discovery with its first creation, SCP-1048 disappeared, and still remains at large.

Source Key

• [1048]: SCP-1048's main article
• [DYG]: Diary of a Young Girl
• [INT]: Interlude: New Toys
• [OKS8G]: Old Kansas Sector ~ 8: Gersha
• [5000]: SCP-5000
• [001]: Ihp/Locke's SCP-001 Proposal
• [TM]: The Minutemen
• [CC]: CAPSLOCK COLLUSION

Creations

SCP-1048-A

• [1048]: A teddy bear made entirely out of human ears, apparently made from one ear SCP-1048 managed to sever off of a researcher
• [1048]: Emits a high-pitched shriek that inflicted intense pain in the eyes and ears of everyone in a 10 meter radius, causing ear-like growths to appear on and in the bodies of those within 5 meters of it. The growths covered the victims' bodies in less than 20 seconds, and resulted in death by asphyxiation within 3 minutes due to their appearance in victims' mouths and trachea

SCP-1048-B

• [1048]: A teddy bear with a human infant inside of it, sourced from an aborted 8-month-old fetus
• [1048]: Does something that was expunged from documentation to a female researcher, causing her massive internal damage and causing a security team to be forced to terminate both it and the researcher
• [CC]: Was described as a "walking weapon of mass destruction" by Maria Jones

SCP-1048-C

• [1048]: A teddy bear composed entirely of rusted metal scraps of unknown origin
• [1048]: Maimed and killed several Foundation personnel with its body, noted by a witness to jump through people
• [TM]: Gave a man facial injuries that required notable stitching and left him with a permanent scar

Other Bears

• [DYG]: Used a different fetus to make a teddy bear
• [DYG]: Made a teddy bear out of a girl's father
• [OKS8G]: Makes teddy bears out of grizzly bears and other teddy bears
• [INT]: Created a teddy bear out of human eyes
• [5000]: Floods the streets of Paris with a massive army of teddy bears, including one that's as big as nearby skyscrapers
• [001]: Turns the anomalous crows spawned by SCP-1054-RU into teddy bears, which are used to facilitate further attacks against the crows it spawns, though SCP-1048's copies are ineffective against the crow instances spawned by SCP-1054-RU's "emergency" setting
  • The different types of crows produced by SCP-1054-RU are capable of producing a screech that negatively affects the nervous system and sensory organs of victims, invisibility, and outputting a high level of radiation
  • Crows produced by SCP-1054-RU's "emergency" setting are notably more hostile, are strong enough to tear off pieces of a person's flesh, and can repeatedly withstand direct hits from a handgun

Stealth

• [1048]: Has yet to be recontained by the Foundation following its disappearance, despite sightings at Site 24 demonstrating that its still within the site
• [1048]: Cuts off a researcher's ear in his sleep, seemingly without him noticing or waking up
• [1048]: Performs an abortion on a doctor in her sleep, again seemingly without resistance

Misc

• [1048]: Before its creation of SCP-1048-A, all Foundation personnel that had interacted with it responded positively to its affectionate actions, even D-class with normally sociopathic tendencies
• [OKS8G]: Became the mayor of Wichitaw in the Rat's Nest canon
• [001]: Is presumably able to withstand the high levels of radiation produced by instances of SCP-1054-RU-3

He only said it because it came up from his dad. 3 expensive gifts to one then one (that I know of) expensive gift to his last ex. Upward of $1000. He’s never bought me a gift on his own. He’s been with me a year and them <3 months. He’s gotten me a jacket, teddy bear (both of which he bought with my money as I’ve been supporting us both financially for the past 9 months) and a hair brush (which he bought on his own). I haven’t told him I’m upset but obviously I am. He’s told me he wants to marry me, have a family. And he hasn’t even bought me a gift ever besides those three things. I feel disrespected and like I’m not enough. Why did he buy them nice gifts and never me? What’s wrong with me?
I don’t know if I’m overreacting, if I’m being selfish, or what. Or if my reaction is normal so I’m seeking an outside perspective and how I can bring this up to my boyfriend or just how I can let it go. I know if I bring it up it’ll start a fight

In hindsight, I should have listened to the kill-bill alarm bells in my head when eight-year-old Cassie announced she and her cabin mates were going to skip out on camp activities and play Operation instead.
Though it’s not like I didn’t have things on my mind. Seven counsellors had gone missing—along with our head counsellor who was supposed to be taking care of us.
It started out fairly normal. I mean, one or two counselors wasn’t bad, right?
Lily and Joey had been drowning in sexual tension for a while, so nobody was surprised when they sneaked into the woods for what I could only guess was the most uncomfortable sex ever. But then they didn’t come back.
Teddy and Yuri went to look for them, and then they too also disappeared. It was almost like a wild animal was lying in wait for another unsuspecting teenager to cross its path.
With six of us left, I was definitely freaking out.
I wasn’t expecting summer camp to be like this. I did consider working in my local Sephora, but mom had a preference—and whether I was eighteen years old or not, she was getting her way. So, it was goodbye civilization, and hello Canadian wilderness.
There were fifteen kids queued up in front of me for lunch, and I was having a hard time keeping that optimistic Camp Redwood smile.
I couldn’t help constantly counting how many hours it had been since the latest disappearance, Connor.
He was supposed to be helping with getting the emergency generator going, after the electricity sizzled out.
The boy was gone an hour later. This was happening fast. Whatever was going on with the counsellors was burning through all of us. Would it happen to me?
I had seen so many TV shows and movies set in a summer camp where every camper and counsellor was doomed to die in the grossest way possible. Was that going to happen to us?
I tightened my grip around the stupid ladle I had found myself stirring, a giant pot of chocolate syrup. Watching watery chocolate drip from the edge, I felt nauseous. Of all the summer camp’s mom had to send me to, it had to be the one with vanishing counsellors and zero adult authority. Which meant we were the authority. Twelve teenagers who came to relax and babysit a bunch of little kids before college.
We had to put on brave faces and pretend everything was absolutely fine—and we weren’t all terrified out of our fucking minds.
At the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Harry offering piggybacks to a bunch of little kids, with one of the littles, Eleanor, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing.
From the look on the boy’s face, he wanted to stop. It was hard to keep a façade when reality was becoming harder and harder to bear. Abandoning his hat completely, Harry was dripping with sweat, trying to twist his lips into the Camp Redwood grin. But looking closer, as he galloped across the cabin with Eleanor holding on for dear life, the guy was ready to collapse. I didn’t blame him.
Entertaining the kids was supposed to be Teddy’s assignment—and he was who knows where. I had taken over lunch duties for Lily, who had joined the long list of the missing.
Harry was supposed to be joining the search party for the missing councellors, but had ended up becoming the little’s personal punching bag.
When I first met him, Harry Carlisle had been the kid who sat on the side-lines and offered sarcastic remarks and crude jokes. Now, he had been reduced to a playground ride the kids pretended didn’t have an off switch.
He had enjoyed maybe the first two rides to raise morale, but now I could see the strain in his eyes. “Ow!” Harry winced when the little girl’s fingers prodded at his eyes. “Hey! Eleanor, not my eyes!” He was dangerously close to toppling over, though managed to catch his footing, ordering all of them off of his back. “Horse Rides are over!” He cupped his mouth, shouting across the cabin when a group of kids surrounded him with equally terrifying faces. Harry backed away and threw his hands up. “Come on, guys, my back isn’t built for all of you!”
“Horsey!” The kids shouted back in a cacophony of giggles.
It was 10 against one.
Against two, if I got involved. Which wasn’t going to happen. There was no way I was putting effort into play-fighting a bunch of eight-year-olds. Harry shot me a hopeful look, though I pretended not to see, busying myself with slightly burned nuggets.
Running his fingers through thick strands of sandy colored hair, Harry pulled a face when a little girl, Phoebe, was brave enough to step forward.
“No.” Harry shook his head, squeezing the front of his counsellor shirt practically glued to him. The temperature still hadn’t let up, and it was heading towards 8PM. Night-time, I thought dizzily. It was almost bedtime, and still no adults. “I refuse to surrender,” He told her. “Phoebe, I am not joking around when I’m saying my back is hurting. We’ve been playing horsey’s for two hours.”
“So?”
“So!” Harry couldn’t yell or hiss, or swear at them. That was a big no-no with kids.
However, I could see he was coming close to breaking that rule. “Because I’m tired,” he said through a Camp Redwood grin, which was quickly twitching into a grimace.
I think all of us had given up with the fake enthusiasm when our colleagues started to vanish. Now, we were just shells of our former happy selves. “And… uh… did you know that if you ride a horsey at this time, the ghosts will come and get you?”
When a boy opened his mouth, his eyes widening with fright, Harry realized his mistake.
“I mean the nice ghosts! Yeah! The uh, the nice ghosts who haunt..I mean play in these woods? It’s a well-known Camp Redwood legend that ghosts don’t like horse rides. In fact,” his lips curved into a devilish smile now he had several faces staring at him. The kids dropped onto the ground to listen, their hands clasped in their laps. This was the quietest they had been all day. I could understand though. Harry had taken the reins around the campfire telling ghost stories for three nights in a row, and the guy was a damn good storyteller.
With every eye on him, Harry lowered his voice into a whisper. “Do you guys want to know what they do?”
The kids nodded with wide eyes.
“They sneak into unsuspecting cabin’s…”
“Harry.”
Rowan’s voice came from outside in a warning. The window was open, and the guy was standing watch to see if any counsellors came back. Since the only adult had disappeared, he had been appointed leader—and the guy was taking himself a little too seriously.
His warning was valid though. Sometimes Harry’s ghost stories were a little too scary for little kids, who’s Imaginations tended to run wild—especially at night. Olive, my cabin-mate, had to give up her bed for a little girl who was convinced Harry’s depiction of Slenderman, “The tree boy” was going to sneak into her bed and turn her into an apple seed.
“Did I say sneak into cabin’s? I meant dance around the woods…” Harry corrected himself. “And they look for their next unsuspecting victim…”
“Harry!”
“Friend.” Harry swallowed his words when a little boy’s eyes went wide. “I mean they are looking for a friend! So, the point of my story is…”
“Horsey rides get us new friends?” Phoebe wasn’t buying it. I could tell from the slight arch of her brow and her widening smile.
The girl shook dark curls out of her face, smirking. I think it was her pleading eyes which won him over. Because, with a sigh which definitely wasn’t joking around, the guy dropped onto his knees and practically spat at her to climb on his back—and she did, plonking one sparkling shoe on top of the boy’s spine with enough force to send him onto his stomach. I might have been imagining it, but since when were these littles so outlandishly spiteful?
The little girl was grinning. Not because she could ride her “horsey” but because Harry looked like he was going to either wring her neck, or wring his own. Mom had a “talk” before I started here, and she made sure to tell me that if adult authority is nowhere to be seen, little kids will start to act out.
I could definitely call it acting out, but I had spent all day with her several days earlier playing with dolls and having a teddy bear picnic when she admitted she didn’t want to swim in the lake with the other kids. Phoebe had been shy and only spoke to me through her teddy bear, so what had changed?
Could the lack of adults really be scaring the kids that much?
“Miss Josie?”
I wasn’t paying attention, half noticing some kids had just helped themselves, piling chicken nuggets and cookies on plastic plates and hurrying to their seats like I couldn’t see them.
Blinking away brain fog, I found myself face to face with Eli, who was probably my favorite camper.
You’re not supposed to have personal preferences when working with little kids, because your opinions could upset them.
However, it was incredibly hard not to like Eli.
Hiding behind a mop of brown curls, the boy was one of the more vocal kids in the group. Eli said he wanted to be an inventor when he was older, and he wanted to make robots. The kid had asked me if I wanted to see his robot collection, but I was too busy with setting up camp activities. Standing in front of me and clutching his tray, the boy was frowning.
“Josie, I just saw some kids steal chicken nuggets.”
I shrugged, shovelling a large portion on his tray. “Well, you can have some extra too.”
Eli’s smile wasn’t as big as usual. “Where’s Teddy?”
I pretended to be oblivious, hastily adding more nuggets to his tray as if I could keep his mouth shut with extra food. “He’ll be back soon! Teddy is just playing in the woods.”
“No, he’s not.”
At first, I thought I’d heard the boy wrong. The kid wasn’t looking at me, counting his nuggets as usual with the prongs of his plastic fork.
I leaned forward with my best smile. “I’m sorry, what was that, Eli?”
The kid lifted his head with a wide grin. “Can I borrow a knife, Josie?”
“Why do you need a knife?”
Leaning forward, the boy shrugged. “There’s a squirrel caught in a trap,” he said. “I want to put it out of its misery, Miss Josie. It’s in a lot of pain.”
That was… dark.
“Well, I can’t give you a knife…” I trailed off, my gaze finding Harry and the growing line of kids awaiting a horse-ride. “But! How about you go and ask Harry for a piggy-back ride?” I pointed to myself with a forced grin. “I’ll save the squirrel!” And when the boy’s eyes filled with tears and he shook his head, I reached out, grasped his hand, and squeezed it as tight as I could. “Eli, we don’t need to do that, okay? I’m sure the squirrel can be saved and I’ll make sure to take it to the vet, okay?”
“But what if it doesn’t need saving?”
I squeezed tighter. “I’ll save it, Eli. I promise.”
Eli didn’t look convinced, but he nodded with a grumble. “Okay.” He said, before twisting around and joining the other kids torturing Harry. Immediately, I left my station—whether Rowan liked it or not—and headed outside to look for this supposedly dying squirrel. That was something we didn’t need. The sky was darkening when I made it into the woods, cotton candy clouds blurring through the thick canopy of trees. Eli said it was near the sign pointing towards the lake. Though I couldn’t see anything. Odd. That thought retracted in my head, however, when I stepped forward, and a squelching sound cut through the silence of my own heavy breaths mixing with insect chitters and nightlife buzzing above me and beneath me. The wet sounding squelch twisted my gut, and when I stared down at the ground, I didn't know what I was expecting.
A squashed squirrel, perhaps? In Eli’s words, the poor thing had been on the edge of death. Though, when I was thinking about it, there were no animal traps around camp. That was basic health and safety. So, what the fuck was I looking at? The bottom of my shoe was caked in dried blood, but it was the thing which was stamped into the dirt which sent my heart into my throat. It looked like an eye.
But looking closer as I lowered myself to the ground, I glimpsed something metallic, something glistening around the pupil. I picked up a stick and prodded it, though the thing didn’t move. It was definitely an eye—the eye of some kind of animal, judging from the pigmentation and the color of the iris.
But it was the metallic pieces around the eye which was throwing me off. Part of a trap, maybe? It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that a poor critter had been ripped apart, and a wild bear had dropped its dinner near the camp—and the metal encasing its eye was most likely pieces of trap.
Peering closer, though, I glimpsed silver slithers in what appeared to be the destroyed nerve caked to my shoe. After scraping most of it off, I caught glistening pieces of blood stained metal catching the late-setting sun. This time, I pinched a piece between my forefinger and thumb. It didn’t look like a bear-trap. The metal itself wasn’t serrated or old. In fact, it was new.
Which begged the question: What was this thing?
Whatever it was, it had started converting what looked like a critter’s eye, before stopping. Was it a virus? When that thought slammed into me, I fell back with a hiss, swiping my hands on my shirt.
“What are you doing?”
I almost jumped out of my skin, diving to my feet.
Carmel was standing behind me, grasping what looked like her sixth or seventh coffee. The girl had been running to and from the coffee machine all day, and I had been silently counting how much caffeine she was consuming. Carmel had been a well put together and fairly popular girl when camp started. She immediately had everyone following her beck and call, all of the boy’s (and girl’s) following her around.
Carmel wasn't straight. She made that clear on the bus to camp, announcing she wasn’t interested in guy’s, and that she had a girlfriend back home. Still though, the guy’s still followed her because... well, she was pretty.
Carmel was my bunk-mate and had woken me up on three separate occasions at 6am to go through the exact same hair and makeup routine. Now though, there was no sign of makeup or even that she had brushed her hair.
Instead of its usual tidy blonde ponytail, Carmel’s curls were tied into raggedy pigtails with ribbons I was sure she had stolen from a camper’s doll. I think what was keeping her going was coffee.
Carmel regarded me with too-wide eyes and a Camp Redwood smile we all knew was fake. She was grasping onto her coffee cup for dear life. “Josie!” she jumped when I jumped, which almost made me laugh. “Rowan’s having an emergency meeting in his cabin,” she said.
“So, whatever you’re doing can wait.”
Her gaze flicked to the ground. “What… are you doing?”
For a brief moment, I considered telling Carmel I may have found what looked like a virus which turned flesh and blood to metal—before I remembered her reaction when a spider had crept into our cabin.
Whatever this thing was, keeping it a secret for now was probably what was best. Making sure I was standing on the thing, I shrugged. “I was looking for the others.”
Carmel cocked her head, before resting her coffee on the ground. “In the dirt?”
“Footprints, Carmel.”
The girl looked confused before shaking her head. “Okay, whatever. Tell the others I’ll be there in a sec, I just need to make sure the kids are okay. We’re putting a movie on for them in the lunch hall, so that will hopefully distract them for maybe two hours.”
I nodded. “Did anyone find a phone?”
“Not with signal.”
“Carmel.” I had to fight back the urge to yell at her to keep her voice down. Kids were curious, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some littles peeking into our conversation. “You’re okay.” I said softly.
“I mean, we’re not okay, because yes, things are very.. screwed up right now, but we need to be… optimistic.” I exhaled out a breath, searching for eyes in the dark. I tried to smile, tried to keep up that Camp Redwood façade we were all held hostage by until the last day of camp (According to rule 5 in the Camp Redwood counsellor handbook, all counsellors must retain a smile and a positive attitude. If any counselor is caught making a frowny face, or spreading what we call “unhappiness” we will be forced to send the counselor home).
At this point, I didn’t give a fuck—but part of me didn’t want to scare the little kids.
“No, Josie.” The girl grasped hold of my shoulders with a grin rivalling the joker. “I am so sick of being told to keep smiling, because what is that doing? Three of my cabin-mates are missing! I’m the one left, and Rowan and co expect me to keep up this act? We are fucked!"
She cupped her mouth. “F. U. C. K. E. D. We have zero adults, an unexplainable loss of power every few hours which makes no sense in the middle of nowhere—I mean what the fuck is out there which is sucking that much power, huh? There is no explanation! There should be an explanation. I should be able to think, “oh, yeah! That’s why! But no. Things are happening, and I don’t know why they’re happening. Rowan is trying to force us to act like things are okay —but in reality? He is shitting himself, Josie! We are ALL shitting ourselves!”
I took a step back, keeping hold of her hand. Carmel was trembling, her hands clammy and slimy entangled in mine. “He's just trying to keep the kids from freaking out."
She groaned, tears glistening in her eyes. “Okay, yeah! I’m blaming them because they keep acting like everything is okay—”
“Everything IS okay.” I turned to her with what I hoped was a reassuring smile—knowing damn well about the thing I’d found in the dirt. If that thing could spread, it would have a field day in an enclosed space like a summer camp.
I noticed my own hands which had been touching the thing making contact with Carmel, and dropped my hands, inwardly squirming.
If that thing was a virus, I was already fucked.
Maybe Carmel too.
If it was fast acting, it could explain the counsellor disappearances. I was already putting together a plan in my head as we headed back to the main cabin. We had to put together a search party. Some of us would stay with the kids, while a small group would venture into the woods to try and look for traces of the missing. If I was right, we would find a horror scene in the woods, and yes, that would be the time to panic.
If I was wrong, however, there was still hope.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Carmel’s voice sliced into my thoughts, and I took a moment to drink in the camp around us.
Usually, when the sky was turning twilight, it would be bustling with campers and counselors toasting marshmallows on the fire and gathering around to fall asleep to Harry’s ghost stories. Carmel would be knelt with a bunch of kids, watching a YouTube video they had all insisted on her watching, while Rowan would be hiding behind his book with his knees to his chest, his gaze glued to every page he flicked through, ignoring everyone.
Teddy, making funny faces for kids who were scared, and Connor, handing out plates of burgers and hot dogs. I remembered feeling safe and at home, cosy around the flickering orange of the fire as chatter turned to laughter and white-noise in my head. After the kids went back to their cabins, the group of us would resume positions around the fire, but this time it was more… intimate. With Allison in her cabin, we kind of ignored her rules all together.
Making out happened, because of course it did. Beers stolen from Allison’s mini fridge and raging hormones, as well as late-night skinny dipping in the lake did that. Couples went off into the woods, and we all felt completely comfortable and at home with each other.
Looking around at that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling was gone.
The feeling of family and familiarity and friendship. What I was looking at now was that same log we had all sat on, now turned on its side—hot dog buns and candy wrappers littering the ground. It was a ghost camp.
I could still see Connor’s jacket slung on the ground, and Lili’s bright pink ray bans sitting on a beer can. Because there were no adults to yell at us to clean up after ourselves. I was frowning at the skeleton of the fire when Carmel nudged me. “Hey.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “Josie? You didn’t answer my question.” Carmel wanted me to be the voice of reason, and I wasn’t that. I was just as scared as her.
There was only so much I could sugar-coat, and I gave up doing that after the third counsellor disappeared. All I could offer her was forced optimism.
“Yes.” I said. “Just keep the kids busy, alright?”
“Right.”
When I was twisting around and power-walking to Rowan’s cabin, I shouted over my shoulder, “Give them some of those animal crackers!”
“What animal crackers?”
I turned to elaborate, but Carmel was gone.
When I finally got to Rowan’s cabin, I was sweating through my shirt, and had an idea of what I was going to tell the others. It was… a thing. Which could be considered a disease or a virus—so it was vital that we split into two groups; half of us would search for the others, while the others would look for anything to get in contact with the outside world. An emergency landline, laptop, or cell phone.
I did have one problem, which was lack of evidence. All which was left from the thing I’d found was stuck to my foot. The rest of it was buried in the dirt. It was too dark to search for it, and we would be wasting time doing so.
All of that was in my mind and tangled on my tongue, one single string of incomprehensible gibberish I wasn’t even sure was English, when I stepped into Rowan’s cabin, where four sets of eyes met mine. Olive, cross legged on the floor with her arms folded, Harry, pacing up and down with a brand new bruise blooming under his eye, courtesy of Eleanor almost poking his eyes out—and Rowan himself sitting on top bunk, his legs swinging off of the side.
The guy wasn’t built to be our leader, originally being the laziest of our group, opting for sitting in a tree with a book, rather than helping set up camp activities. Yet he had become our default guy in charge because he so happened to be wearing the head counsellor hat when Allison disappeared. Admittedly, it suited him, the bright red of the cap contrasted his dark curls under a late setting sun through the back window, setting strands of straying hair on fire.
The hat was a little too big for his head, though, slipping over his eyes.
Rowan looked like a divorced father of two, dark circles bruising his eyes, and a very “dad-like” scowl curling on his lips.
With a clipboard pressed to his chest, and a pen he was chewing on, the boy resembled a grown man who had just caught his daughter coming in after curfew. “Josie.” Spitting the pen’s lid out of his mouth, he scribbled something down. I had no doubt he was tracking my attendance for these stupid crisis meetings. His eyes were wild, scanning me for answers. “Where the fuck is Carmel?”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it with my arms folded. “So, we can swear now?”
“Yes.” Rowan rolled his eyes. “There are no kids here, so go crazy,” he pointed at me with the pen. “Carmel. Where is she?”
“Keeping the kids busy,” Callan’s muffled voice came from the bottom bunk. I could barely see the guy lying on his stomach, his face stuffed into a pillow. “It was my idea to play Shrek for them, but the little shits said they haven’t seen it,” the boy lifted his head, his lips carved into a scowl. “I’m sorry, am I tripping? Everyone’s seen Shrek! Do these kids expect the Minecraft movie?”
“They don’t like that, either,” Harry stopped pacing the cabin. “Eleanor looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she liked it."
“Fortnite, too.” Olive said, a cushion pressed to her chest. “I suggested playing it a few days ago, and like, zero kids knew what it was.”
“Six counsellors are missing,” Rowan raised his voice over the other’s chatter. “And you’re questioning what games they like?” His eyes found mine once more. “So, Carmel is with the kids? You’re absolutely sure of it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I just saw her five minutes ago.”
“Great.” Rowan said, sarcastically. “I’m sure she won’t go missing under mysterious circumstances.”
“Stop.” Olive shot him a glare, throwing a cushion in his face. “I told you. They’re probably lost—- or maybe they went to get help?”
“We’ve all been trained to know every inch of these woods,” Rowan catapulted the cushion right back at her. “They’re not lost.”
“Well, where are they?!” Callan sat up, bringing his knees to his chest. I had never seen the guy looked this vulnerable. “Allison made sense. She probably had other duties, and left us to look after the kids. But six counselors? All of them disappearing—- our phone signal completely cutting out, electricity cutting off, not once, but twice? What is even sucking all of our power?”
“I got the emergency generator working,” Olive raised her arm. “Connor and I managed it before…” she trailed off.
“Before Connor disappeared.” Callan finished for her. “And before him, it was Joey, Lily, Mira, Yuri, Noah, and Teddy. Which isn’t a fucking coincidence,” he shot Rowan a look, who glared down at his lap. I could tell the boy didn’t want to lead all of us, come up with plans and answer questions we desperately needed answering. His job was to look after us, as well as the littles, and so far, he was doing a pretty good job. I could tell by his expression that he thought the opposite, but he had managed to keep the kids from finding out about something as sinister as someone actively kidnapping counsellors.
He made sure they were fed, entertained, and safe watching a movie—while we were scared for our lives. Rowan was keeping up the façade no matter how scared he was. The boy dropped his head into his lap with a sigh. It looked like he might fall asleep before he slammed the clipboard into his face to wake himself up.
Nobody wanted to admit what Callan was saying, but we were all definitely thinking it. “This was planned.” Callan continued.
“Someone out here is fucking with us, very clearly trying to freak us out. Now they've got six of us. ” He spread out his arms. “How long until one of the littles gets taken, huh? A bunch of 18 year olds aren’t going to satisfy them, so what about when they start taking campers? We are in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere with a serial kidnapper on the loose, and did we really just leave fifteen kids in the care of a girl who thought Australia was in England?”
“In Carmel’s defence, she was black-out drunk when she said that,” Olive murmured.
“Voice down!” Rowan hissed. “Do you want to scare them?!” His gaze flicked to me. “Did you do a headcount during dinner?”
I nodded. “Fifteen kids all accounted for. Ten are in the lunch hall, and five girls are in Cassie’s cabin playing Operation.”
“All day?” Olive spoke up. “Weren’t they playing that this morning? I tried to get into their cabin to give them breakfast, but they just shooed me away and locked the door.”
“Fuck.” Rowan ran his fingers down his face. “Alright, I’ll go and see what’s going on with them. Knowing Cassie and her friends, they’re probably zonked out on stolen candy. When all of the kids are accounted for in the lunch cabin, we gather outside.”
I swallowed, speaking up. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys about something.”
Rowan lifted his head, jutting the edge of the clipboard into his chin. “Go on…”
“I found something?” I pulled a face. “I mean, think I’ve found something?”
I wasn't sure how to explain to a dwindling group of exhausted teenagers that there may be something even more terrifying than potential kidnappers out there. Four blank faces started back at me, and Rowan leaned forward with a frown. “Like, in general? Josie, we don’t have time to go foraging.”
“You could call it a lead,” I said. “But I need your eyes to find it.”
“Uh-huh. But what is it?”
Thinking back to what exactly I had seen, I had no idea how to describe it. “It’s better if I just… showed you.”
Rowan looked sceptical, but nodded. “Alright. Josie comes with me. We’ll check out Allison’s cabin again to look for an emergency line, and you can show me whatever this ‘thing’ is you’ve found. Then we’ll escort Cassie and the other girl’s to the lunch cabin. Every camper needs an escort from now on. The rest of you? Act normal. If the kids see you freaking out, they will also freak out—and we need to keep up morale.” The boy pointed to Olive. “Olive, you sit in with the kids and look after them. Callan, check out the emergency generator. Harry, the kids see you as a playground ride, so use that to your advantage. Offer them horse rides if they’re scared. And with the ghost stories, it’s making it worse. Give them piggybacks.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
Rowan cleared his throat. “We all keep up appearances. If the others turn up, after getting high or… I don’t know, having an orgy in the woods—- I will fucking kill them.” The way he smiled through his teeth, jumping off the bunk, his toes primed like a wild animal, I knew he wasn’t joking. If this was a well-constructed prank the other counselors were playing, I had no doubt Rowan would rip them apart for leaving him as a reluctant leader. To my surprise, the others wandered off with their tasks.
I watched Rowan lift up his pillow and pull out a pack of animal crackers, ripping open the bag and pouring the contents into his mouth. He caught my eye, crunching through mini animal crackers. “I didn’t have lunch,” he said through a mouthful.
I couldn’t help feeling a sense of relief as we headed across camp, Rowan in front of me, while I lagged behind.
“So, what’s the plan?” I caught up to him, almost tripping over a log.
The guy didn’t turn around. “I am completely winging it,” he said through a choked laugh. “I have no idea what I’m doing, and if I’m honest? I just want to go home, dude. I haven’t looked after this many kids in my life, and if I have to smile one more time as a little brat, I am going to fucking lose my mind.” He heaved out a breath. “I am making this up as I go along.”
I laughed that time. “That’s… comforting.”
“Yeah?” He turned to shoot me a grin. “Well, rest assured I am just about as scared—if not more scared than you,” as we stopped in front of Cassie’s cabin, his gaze found mine. “Is it me…” he said softly, “Or does the lunch cabin seem quiet.”
He was right. The windows were dark when they should have been illuminated by the TV screen. Instead of answering, I stepped in front of him, grasping hold of the cabin door. “Cassie?” I knocked three times. “Girl’s, are you okay in there? It’s Josie and Rowan.” I tried the door, and it slid open. Shooting a look at the boy behind me, I turned back to the door. “We’re coming in, okay?”
“Wait!”
Cassie squeaked from inside. “But he’s not finished!”
Ignoring the coil of dread unravelling in my gut, I forced the door open and stepped into unusually milky white light which flooded the cabin. The first thing I saw was eight-year-old Cassie, sitting cross legged with her back to me. She was sitting in a circle with the other girls, no doubt playing their game.
When I stepped closer, however, I noticed something pooling across the wooden floor. It must have been juice or water that they had spilled. I took another step, but this time, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist and yanked me back. Rowan didn't speak, but his eyes were elsewhere. Initially, they had been drinking in the cabin before they found oblivion entirely. I heard his breath start to accelerate, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I had half a mind to pull away, before I saw the body shaped carcass the girls were sitting around. In the dim light of the cabin, it used to be a person. Teddy. I could still see parts of an identity, freckled cheeks and eyes which were still open, still staring at the sky.
But that was where the similarities to the missing counsellor ended. The thing which used to be Teddy was more of a shell, a scooped out thing resembling a human body. What sent me stumbling backwards, my mouth open in a silent scream, was the almost surgical efficiency of each organ's removal, like it really was a game of operation. His heart, lungs, and intestines were in one pile-- while his brain was cupped between little Cassie's bloody hands— and when my gaze found the little girl, Nina, hiding behind dark curly hair, I was seeing what looked like a toy robot’s head in her hands. In my head, I was thinking about the eye with the metallic pieces glittering around its pupil, and something turned in my gut.
Did I find a human eye?
I was staring at the crevice inside the boy's skull, and the boxes of surgical equipment piled on the girl's bunks, when Rowan finally pulled me back, and I was stumbling straight onto my ass. "We need to go." Rowan spoke through a croak. Cassie’s words rattled in my head. Teddy, I thought.
Teddy wasn’t finished.
"Josie. Get up. Now!" My head was spinning, and I was sure I'd thrown up. I didn’t even realize we had managed to stumble from the girl’s cabin before cool air grazed my face, tickling my cheeks. Something wet and warm, and lumpy was spattering the front of my shirt.
Before I could coerce words, the boy was pulling me to my feet, and I was seeing stars in my eyes, blinking brightly. When the two of us started forwards in a run, Rowan stopped abruptly. I followed his gaze to find several kids surrounding his cabin, where Harry, Olive and Callan were. Maybe I was hallucinating, but Eleanor and Phoebe, both of whom wielding weapons where I had no idea where they had gotten them—looked… taller? Rowan didn’t waste time, dragging me back. “Allison’s cabin.” He spoke in cry which became a sob, pulling me across camp, stumbling over rocky ground.
“We need a phone. Fuck, we need a phone. We need a phone.” Rowan was struggling to stand, occasionally bending over and choking up dust.
“They were playing Operation."
Literal operation.
“But they’re just kids!” I choked out.
Little kids, who had surgically removed every organ inside Teddy’s body.
Little kids, who were hunting the other counsellors down, and would surely be coming for us.
Allison’s cabin was thankfully further into the woods. When we were safe inside and Rowan was locking the door, I dry heaved several times, unable to get the sight of glistening gore splattering the cabin floor from my mind. “Josie.” Rowan was already tearing apart the cabin. “Work with me here, okay? We don’t… we don’t have fucking time to freak out, or to barf—we need to help. Now.” Rowan was almost in tears, and when he hit the ground on his knees, I took over. I searched Allison’s desk first. Nothing of importance, just documents and invoices. Digging through her draw, there was still nothing. We were running out of time.
Abandoning the desk, I went through her suitcase and bags. When I was crawling under her bed to try and find a weapon, Rowan hissed out. “Wait.” When I turned to him, he was still kneeling, but his foot was clamping down on a loose plank. The guy didn’t hesitate, pulling at the loose plank, which, to my confusion, revealed what looked to me like a trap door.
Rowan turned to me. “You’re kidding.”
I could only stare at the trap door revealing stone steps. He peered down, his voice echoing. “Allison has a fucking secret bunker?”
His lips curved into a surprisingly childish grin which took me off guard. “Oh, wow, that’s so cooooool!”
Lifting my head at the sound of loud squealing, I glimpsed a group of littles led by Eleanor stalking towards us. Eleanor had a hostage. Harry. And with the way she was sticking the blade of a scary looking knife to his throat, I figured she meant business.
Their height difference was almost comical. The eighteen year old guy had to hunch over so the little girl could successfully keep him prisoner. Behind them in the trees, I could see something illuminating the dark, an electric blue light bathing their faces.
So, that was there the power was going.
But what the fuck were these eight-year-old’s doing?
“Josie!” Rowan hissed from down below. He had already climbed down.
I joined him, struggling down the stone steps, before replacing the loose plank. If these kids were as smart as I thought, it wouldn’t take them long to realize the loose plank—also a trap door. Allison’s bunker was more of a control room. There were multiple screens lit up, a chair in front of a working MacBook. The phone-line was cut. But that didn’t make sense.
The kids were unaware of the bunker, so who cut the phone lines? Rowan was on the laptop, struggling to get through the password protection, so I turned my attention to piles of cardboard boxes.
When I opened them, I found myself staring at animal crackers.
There were hundreds of them, packed on top of each other. Looking further, digging through the boxes, I found a piece of old crumpled paper which looked ancient.
REGARDING PROJECT SPEARHEAD SUBJECTS:
PLEASE DO NOT INGEST UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. IF MULTIPLE SUBJECTS INGEST, PLEASE USE SELF DESTRUCT.
ONLY USE IN CASES SUCH AS IMMINENT DESTRUCTION TO THE PLANET/THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR.
(PLEASE CONTACT FAMILIES IN ADVANCE. MAKE SURE TO INGEST WITH WATER TO AVOID NEUROLOGICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS PSYCHOSIS, EXTREME VIOLENCE. PLEASE APPROACH SUBJECTS WITH CAUTION.
Something ice cold slithered down my spine.
Abandoning the boxes, I searched through a cabinet filled with files which were crumbling apart from age. I picked one at random and flicked through it.
Eleanor Summer’s.
Sex: Female.
DOB: 08/05/1977.
Initially, I thought I was reading the dates wrong. But then, with my heart in my throat, I was grasping for other files.
Eli Evermore.
Sex: Male.
'DOB: 08/03/1979.
“Rowan.” I managed to get out through a breath.
“Mm?”
“They’re not children.”
The boy rubbed his eyes, frowning. His eyes were half lidded, almost confused. “Huh?”
“Eleanor.” I whispered. “Is forty five years old.”
He nodded slowly, turning back to the laptop. “How do you spell… documents? I’m looking for digital versions but I can’t find any.”
“You don’t know how to spell documents?”
“It’s been a hard day.” The boy whined, tipping his head back and blowing a raspberry.
Whatever I was going to say was choked in the back of my throat, when a loud bang sounded from above, the sounds of childish giggling coming through the floorboards. But the laughter didn’t sound like little kids. No, it sounded like teenager’s who were acting like little kids. I stared at the boxes of animal crackers, and then at the file confirming Eleanor’s real age.
My own words shuddered through me, and I remembered finding Teddy’s dismembered carcass in Cassie’s cabin. When I had caught her gaze, the little girl didn’t look scared, and somehow, her fingers wrapped around the scalpel looked just right.
Like the little bitch knew exactly what she was doing.
“Helloooo?” Harry’s voice was a hysterical giggle. “Olly, Olly, Oxen freeee!”
“Are you in heeeeeeere?” Carmel joined in. I could hear their footsteps above, dancing across the room.
Clamping my hand over my mouth, I dragged my knees to my chest and prayed they weren’t smart enough to figure out we were right underneath them.
Knowing the truth about them, though? I wasn’t counting on it.
….
That was an hour ago.
We’re still stuck down here, and I can get a connection here—thank god. For some reason, Alison has blocked all social media. We need help. We’re at Camp Redwood, and these kids ARE NOT KIDS.
Whatever Project Spearhead is was designed to keep them here.
The phone-line is cut so we can’t get help from whoever was helping Allison. I am counting on you guys.
Get us out of here!

I had a regular childhood besides being sexually abused which I learnt to heal from I am not really sure whats wrong with me some people have called me mentally unstable others have tried telling me or at least implying im a psychopath or something which I dont believe but if its that way I dont really mind I will just move on with my life I also believe I am a pretty normal person despite some of my morals being seen a bit weird or morbid in my friends eyes Like I mentioned to my friend I beat my teddy bear up for fun and they were a bit werided out I also mess with my siblings in a few cruel ways but I think its just harmless fun so I dont understand why my friends tell me to stop it An example would that I tell my sister she is fat or looks like a cow
what are your thoughts? F13

I have a few old toys up for trading but i have no clue what their worth is, i got teddy bear, dragon balloon, cookie dough plush, 2 candles (or one im not sure lol), and 2 Christmas star frisbees, and the anna rattle. All my other stuff doesnt seem to be that much worthy compared to those i guess but i still would like to know what their worth even though a lot of people don’t seem to care much for toys

I am trying to save everyone but i didnt pick up the teddy bear in chapter1. Im at the point just before you enter the scrapyard, What do i do to still save kaitlyn? Or is there no option left? Everyone is still alive and no one infected except the unavoidable ones.

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Main hub thread with the full 131 rankings
Ball State comes in at one spot above in-state foe Indiana. and is the 3rd best program in the state behind Notre Dame and Purdue. Moving up to the FBS in 1975, Ball State’s had an underrated tenure, going 269-279-4 with 6 conference championships, 9 bowl appearances, and 11 weeks in the AP Top 25.

Best Seasons and Highlights

1. 2020: 10. Ball State: 7-1 (29.151) 2. 2008: 23. Ball State: 12-2 (19.624) 3. 2013: 43. Ball State: 10-3 (7.413) 4. 1988: 32. Ball State: 8-3 (7.382) 5. 2012: 41. Ball State: 9-4 (5.166) 6. 1989: 36. Ball State: 7-3-2 (4.173) 7. 1996: 36. Ball State: 8-4 (-0.777) 8. 1995: 47. Ball State: 7-4 (-1.286) 9. 1993: 35. Ball State: 8-3-1 (-1.292) 10. 1990: 51. Ball State: 7-4 (-5.881) 11. 1994: 59. Ball State: 5-5-1 (-11.641) 12. 2007: 67. Ball State: 7-6 (-11.913) 13. 1991: 58. Ball State: 6-5 (-12.407) 14. 1986: 67. Ball State: 6-5 (-15.698) 15. 1983: 69. Ball State: 6-5 (-18.520) 16. 1997: 71. Ball State: 5-6 (-19.737) 17. 2011: 81. Ball State: 6-6 (-19.965) 18. 2001: 78. Ball State: 5-6 (-20.533) 19. 1992: 75. Ball State: 5-6 (-20.690) 20. 2021: 87. Ball State: 6-7 (-21.746) 21. 2002: 72. Ball State: 6-6 (-21.776) 22. 2019: 87. Ball State: 5-7 (-22.103) 23. 2006: 76. Ball State: 5-7 (-22.140) 24. 2014: 90. Ball State: 5-7 (-24.446) 25. 2022: 98. Ball State: 5-7 (-25.017) 26. 2000: 81. Ball State: 5-6 (-25.264) 27. 1987: 80. Ball State: 4-7 (-27.212) 28. 2005: 97. Ball State: 4-7 (-30.054) 29. 2003: 91. Ball State: 4-8 (-32.432) 30. 1985: 86. Ball State: 4-7 (-33.751) 31. 2016: 102. Ball State: 4-8 (-35.128) 32. 2010: 104. Ball State: 4-8 (-40.296) 33. 2018: 108. Ball State: 4-8 (-40.344) 34. 1984: 91. Ball State: 3-8 (-40.722) 35. 2015: 111. Ball State: 3-9 (-45.086) 36. 2009: 109. Ball State: 2-10 (-48.654) 37. 2004: 110. Ball State: 2-9 (-50.524) 38. 1998: 109. Ball State: 1-10 (-59.094) 39. 2017: 127. Ball State: 2-10 (-62.173) 40. 1999: 113. Ball State: 0-11 (-70.806) Overall Score: 8230 (89th) 

• 212-248-4 record
• 4 conference titles
• 1-8 bowl record
• 2 consensus All-Americans
• 13 NFL players drafted

Ball State has been pretty consistent, with 26 of their 40 seasons since 1983 having 5+ wins. 4 conference titles is also not bad—3 came between 1989-96, arguably Ball State’s peak with 7 of those 8 years falling into the top 13 seasons in the chart above. It took them 46 years to win their first bowl game, failing on the first 7 tries before finally winning in 2020! Ball State’s 2 consensus All-Americans? 1 person—Brad Maynard, punter. Maynard averaged 46.5 and 45.8 yards per punt in 1995 and 1996, respectively. He was drafted in the 3rd round of the 1997 NFL Draft, and would go on to be the Bears’ punter from 2001-10.

Top 5 Seasons

Worst Season: 1999 (0-11 overall, 0-8 MAC)
While the world worried about the Y2K meltdown, Ball State worried about their program melting down. Going just 1-21 from 1998-99, 2 of their 3 worst seasons on this list, the program reached lows it had never seen. Coach Bill Lynch was an Indiana die-hard—he was born in Indianapolis, went to Butler, and since starting his coaching career in 1977, has only spent 2 years coaching outside the state of Indiana. This was Lynch’s 5th season with Ball State. While they weren’t getting manhandled (only one 30+ point loss) like some winless teams have, they weren’t particularly close to getting a win either (only 1 one-possession loss). They averaged 14.3 PPG while giving up 32.8 PPG, and were my 2nd worst team in the nation. Kicker Thomas Pucke was impressively inept, hitting just 2 of 8 FGs. He managed to hang around for 2 more years and convert 6 of 15 for a 4 year total of 12/31 on FGs for a 38.7 FG%.
5. 2012 (9-4 overall, 6-2 MAC)
The Ball State Football youtube channel put out a fantastic 15 minute recap of the 2012 season. Coming off a 6-6 year, there was momentum heading into 2012, but uncertainty with losing their top 2 WRs and an unproven defense. The year started with a bang, recording a school record 36 first downs against Eastern Michigan in a season-opening 37-26 win. Indiana took a 39-38 lead with 50 seconds to go in week 3—just enough time for QB Keith Wenning and kicker Steven Schott, who hit a 42 yard FG as time expired for the 41-39 Ball State win. Ball State got their second win over a Power 6 opponent the following week, beating South Florida 31-27 on another late win, this time Wenning to WR Willie Snead. After going back and forth with MAC competition, 6-3 Ball State headed to the Glass Bowl on election night to face #23 Toledo. Ball State rose to the occasion with another last minute TD to win 34-27. A 52-27 win over formerly-ranked Ohio, who had beaten Penn State to start the year, proved even more impressive. Ball State finished the regular season 9-3, with a loss to C-USA runner-up Blake Bortles and UCF in the bowl.
Ball State led the MAC with 15 all-conference selections. QB Keith Wenning threw for 3095 yards, with 24 TD and 10 INT, earning 2nd Team All-MAC. RB Jahwan Edwards had a monster year with 1410 rushing yards and 14 TD on 6.1 YPC, but only made 3rd team in a stacked MAC RB class. WRs Willie Snead, Jamill Smith, and TE Zane Fakes were all 1st Team MAC. Kicker Steven Schott was a Lou Groza Award semifinalist, going 25/32 on FGs, and punter Scott Kovanda was a Ray Guy Award finalist.
4. 1988 (8-3 overall, 5-3 MAC)
While 2012 was an offensive explosion, 1988 was about defense, boasting one of the best in the country. 1988 Ball State gave up just 15.5 PPG, while scoring 26.0 PPG. After a 7-1 (5-1 MAC) start, Ball State played Western Michigan (7-1, 5-0) for first place in the conference. Western Michigan took it in a 16-13 dogfight, and it wouldn’t matter much anyway, as Ball State dropped their last conference game 25-27 to Ohio. Back then, Ball State had an annual rivalry against Indiana State for the Blue Key Victory Bell, and the Cardinals got revenge for ISU’s 24-23 upset the year prior, winning 24-10. The most points Ball State gave up all season was just 27, and held opponents to 20 or less in every other game.
3. 2013 (10-3 overall, 7-1 MAC)
Picking up where we left off in 2012, Ball State returned Wenning, Edwards, Snead, Fakes, so this team had a lot of potential. Early wins included 31-24 over traditional MAC power Toledo, and 48-27 over Virginia, who had given up just 16 points or less in 3 of their first 4 games. Ball State lived up to the hype—and then some. Blowout wins over Western Michigan, Akron, and Central Michigan took them all the way to 8-1, setting up a matchup with 9-0 #20 Northern Illinois in the premier MAC game of the season. The winner would clinch a spot in the MAC title game, Ball State looking for their first title in 17 years. They went back and forth—deadlocked at 27-27 with 6 minutes left, NIU QB Jordan Lynch fired a 36 yard TD to take the lead, and a few garbage time scores gave NIU a nice looking 48-27 victory that was much closer than the score suggested. Ball State took out their anger on a hapless 0-11 Miami (OH) team to end the year, winning 55-14. Still looking for their first bowl win ever, they came as close as they’ve ever come, giving up a TD with 30 seconds left to lose 23-20 to Arkansas State. Still—an insane year for Ball State, winning 10+ games for just the 3rd time in school history. QB Keith Wenning threw for 4148 yards 35 TD 7 INT, ranking 6th in the nation in passing yards and TDs. RB Jahwan Edwards had his 2nd of 3 1000+ yard seasons, going for 1110 and 14 TD. He’d finish his career as Ball State’s all-time leading rusher a year later with 4558 yards and 51 TD. WR Willie Snead had the capstone of his college career with 106 catches for 1516 yards and 15 TD, ranking 3rd in the NCAA in receiving yards and TD. The 6’3 228 lb Jordan Williams proved to be a very good WR2 with 1000+ receiving yards, and would go on to have 200 catches for 2723 yards and 23 TD in his career, top 6 in school history in all of those categories. Wenning was a 6th round NFL Draft selection, and Snead went on to have a solid NFL career.
2. 2008 (12-2 overall, 8-0 MAC)
The 2008 team took the nation by storm. Ball State returned their all-conference QB, WR, TE, and 8 starters on defense from a 7 win team the previous season. Right away, with a week 2 35-23 win over Navy, they proved the prevous season’s win over them wasn’t a fluke. 2 weeks later, they’d make history, beating Indiana 42-20 in the program’s first ever win over a BCS team. Did they stop there? Nope. 3 weeks later they were 7-0, and #22 in the country. This was a great year for non-BCS teams, with Boise State and Utah also going unbeaten in the regular season. The beatings continued, as Ball State kept surprising everyone—38-16 over Eastern Michigan, 45-14 over NIU. Late in the year, #16 9-0 Ball State faced their toughest test of the season, heading north to play 8-2 preseason conference favorite Central Michigan. Down 7 points in the 4th quarter, QB Nate Davis guided the Cardinals back to a 31-24 lead, and a late interception sealed the deal. Ball State still hadn’t secured the MAC title game until the final week, where they beat 9-2 Western Michigan 45-22. Into the MAC championship we go. #12 Ball State was an overwhelming 15 point favorite over 7-5 Buffalo, who was just happy to be there. Ball State’s dream matchup quickly turned into a nightmare. Buffalo had 92 and 74 yard fumble returns for TDs, cruising to a 42-24 upset victory in which they were outgained by 200+ yards. Brady Hoke took the job at San Diego State, and a dejected interim-coached team got blown out 45-14 by Tulsa in the bowl.
QB Nate Davis, the original 2-gloved QB before Teddy “2 glove” Bridgewater was a thing, completed his illustrious college career, throwing for 3591 yards 26 TD 8 INT, leading the MAC in passer rating for the 3rd straight year, and winning 2008 MAC OPOTY. The 5’6 184 lb RB MiQuale Lewis was pound-for-pound one of the best players in college football, rushing for 1736 yards and 22 TD on 5.4 YPC, also racking up 325 receiving yards, ranking 2nd in the nation in yards from scrimmage and 1st in TDs. TE Darius Hill completed his career as one of the best TEs in MAC history, catching 40 passes for 670 yards and 7 TD to finish his career with 2473 yards and 31 TD. Unfortunately, WR Dante Love’s career came to an end 4 games into the season, one of Ball State’s best ever wideouts who caught 100 passes for 1398 yards and 10 TD in 2007. It was an amazing year for Ball State—but no hardware to show for it.
1. 2020 (7-1 overall, 5-1 MAC)
2008, or 2020 Ball State, who was better? The Ball State youtube channel(s) seriously make some of the best season recap videos of any school. After an opening 31-38 loss at Miami (OH), they were perfect the rest of the way. A 1-yard rushing TD with 6 seconds left secured a 38-31 win over Eastern Michigan to improve to 1-1. 2 weeks later, a 27-24 upset over Toledo improved them to 3-1. It was still a long season ahead with just a MAC schedule in a covid-shortened season, with the toughest games yet to come. A 45-20 road win over 3-1 Central Michigan thanks to 5 TD from QB Drew Plitt improved Ball State to 4-1, with 1 regular season game to go. This is where the 2020 team separated themselves from all other Ball State teams. Facing 4-1 Western Michigan with the winner going to the MAC championship game, Ball State was down 27-13 at the start of the 4th. After a 17-0 point 4th quarter, they had the lead with just seconds to go. Western Michigan tossing laterals around…OH THE ENTIRE BALL STATE TEAM IS ON THE FIELD!! And Western Michigan scores for the win!! Unbelievable!! It turns out though, one of the laterals was forward, and the refs award Ball State the victory. They go to the MAC championship game at 5-1!
Remember how 2008 Ball State came into the game 15 point favorites against Buffalo and lost? This time, the roles were reversed. Ball State came into the 2020 championship as 13 point underdogs to 5-0 Buffalo. And just like 2008, David slaid Goliath. Ball State took the MAC Championship 38-28, their first since 1996. But still, people hadn’t caught on. Ball State entered the Arizona Bowl as 6.5 point underdogs to #23 San Jose State. 35 minutes of game time later, and Ball State was up 34-0. When the final whistle sounded on a 34-13 bowl victory, it was the FIRST BOWL WIN IN BALL STATE HISTORY! While 2008 was a great year, 2020 takes the cake because they completed the quest of winning a conference title and bowl game. LB Brandon Martin was the MAC DPOTY, leading the conference in tackles with 90.

5th Quarter

Agree with Ball State’s ranking, ahead of in-state rival Indiana? What do you think of their program? Do you remember their 2008 and 2020 seasons?
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[Part 1]
Date: December 31st, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Eighteen, Desperation
It seems I’ve underestimated those doctors’ resolve badly. And I’ve equally overestimated their sense of self-preservation.
We’re down to the last few possible rescues out there, anything we find alive is a miracle to be kept going at all costs and we’ve started actually worrying about the dead. Yeah, we’ve just been leaving the dead where they lie before, no use worrying about them when there’s lives to save. But now we’re gathering them.
Hey, do you know how aliens are generally very weird about, like, blood? And us eating meat? They’re real squeamish, right? Wanna know what I saw this morning?
We’d ran out of painkillers yesterday. This morning I’d been following my partner, same lass that I drunkenly asked to lick me what looks like years ago by this time. She looked like a fucking bloodhound, I don’t know what she was doing but she found the poor guy, gal’s been doing this job for long enough I guess. Guy was severely dehydrated, nearby storage tanks had ignited or something bringing the whole building down, he’d become seriously trapped by his left arm that had already necrosed. Absolutely certain of infection.
Now, I’m strong. But I was not going to lift nearly three hundred kilograms of whatever this building material is. And all of our hydraulic lifters are dust at this point, we had no means of moving the debris. After checking for that, and finding it to be an impossible task, I setup to call the recovery vehicle to bring a few more people to see if we could move it.
“No time” she said “And he’ll lose it anyway”. I didn’t grasp, exactly, what she was saying at the time, but she asked me to get something hot. The fires from the storages here were still burning, even after so long. I figured she’d attempt to amputate the necrosed arm here and now, we did have some sharp tools with us and she was probably packing painkillers, right? So I prepared a very medieval cauterization tool using a piece of shredded metal.
She wasn’t packing painkillers. My survival knife had been dangerously chipped and bent out of shape when I freed a kid stuck in a locked armoire. The only sharp implement she had was her claws.
If any human reads this I want you to imagine. You’ve seen this kind of scene in media a lot, haven’t you? Having to make a choice to sacrifice someone’s limb to save their life. Maybe on old media someone bringing down a bonesaw on a soldier’s arm as they bite tightly down on a piece of leather. We’re the hardiest motherfuckers in this galaxy, aren’t we?
Now I want you to picture this tiny little teddy bear of an alien, who you’ve probably seen passing out at the mere mention of flesh. Imagine this little thing bringing those tiny claws down on someone’s arm and tearing apart flesh until the bone is showing, dislodging it away and finishing the cut with her bare hand. With that soulless, blank stare in her eyes. And the one getting torn apart isn’t some badass human soldier, it’s a meek little venlil, who’d probably barely even heard about what is going on, who was just some factory worker going about his day before the apocalypse came knocking.
He’s not going to be having nightmares about the arxur I can promise you that. Fuck I can’t even say I won’t be having nightmares of this scene. But she’d cut above the line of the necrosis, and he was freed. Ugh, the smell when I cauterized the wound… That wasn’t right… And he screamed for far too long, he should have passed out sooner, why was nature being so cruel this moment.
Back at the camp wasn’t any easier. It haven’t been easy for a while now… Suppose I better tell, I guess it’d be just plain disrespectful to those doctors pretending they’re saints. There were other things they brought in their personal belongings, things that weren’t, in the strictest sense, for healing people. A type of tool they’ve been using a lot, however.
Stimulants. And I don’t mean stuff like energy drinks, I mean “make the dead walk” kind of brain-busting stimulants. I’ve had to stop twenty eight cases of stimulant use. I’d asked myself earlier if perhaps zurulians didn’t have the same kind of stamina humans have, that isn’t true. Those people were taking their fucking bodies lightyears past their own limits, some haven’t slept in days. Everything to try to find one more living person.
There was a rotation on the triage VR rig, people have to sleep, right? So, I learned about a new kind of problem you can suffer, Somatic Shock. Wanna know what Somatic Shock is? It’s not just the human brain that does this wonderful thing of extending your sensations to your tools, of treating your tools as an extension of your body, seems like a pretty common trick of sapience. And do you want to know what happens when you spend Fifty. Fucking. Hours. Strapped to a VR rig without sleep?
That thing the brain does gets pretty strongly ingrained. And dragging someone out of the system causes somatic shock. It’s kind of like a version of phantom limb syndrome, but what they feel is what you’re doing with the rig. Dragging someone out of a VR rig in that state feels like you’re ripping their limbs out, that’s why it’s called somatic shock. He fucking said “Not as bad as the last time” to me when he stopped shaking “I blacked out back then”.
What is wrong with those people, they have no sense of self-preservation! You can’t help anyone if you’re dead! This isn’t a goddamn fucking last stand. At this point i’ve mostly turned to babysitting them instead of doing anything else.
Date: January 4th, 2137 Standard Terran Time - Day Twenty Two, Pyre
Today I caved in. Ever since I’ve realized they were using stimulants, they had offered them to me in case I wished. Not forced, just in case. Yeah I confiscated each and every one of those doses, before they killed themselves.
But today we were gathering the bodies, it was the very last stretch. We’re running low on literally everything, but at this point we’ve mostly accepted that whoever was left was dead, so we’ve gathered the bodies and identified them.
This… Is still a Federation world. Those poor people were killed by arxur, and also here I am. The help that was given was not requested, but I bet you all reading this know why we dealt with the bodies this way, yes? Doesn’t matter how much you think it’s right or wrong, when you’re here to help, the funeral rites are the ones of where you are. And, well… Here, it’s fire.
At least we tried making a pretty, respectable and honorable funeral pyre instead of anything else. Cremation is a thing, after all. But those ashes will scatter to the wind.
And so, as to not make this take multiple days, to make it end as soon as possible… I took a stimulant injection (yeah, straight into the blood flow, shows how potent the thing is). But i’m going to collapse to fucking hell afterwards, and i’m going to make each one of those damn doctors pass right the fuck out too. We’re done. We’ve done everything we could, everything we couldn’t and then a little bit more.
But despite all that, one thing… Horrified me. You see, that lass… She was watching the pyre burn. All of the others had kept as far away from it as possible, the newest guy, that one that was right out of college, had even thrown up at the sight of it. But no, that lass was watching it, and it made me worried. I went to check on her.
“Does… It smell like food to you?” was what she asked me. And honestly, after sharing this gods-be-damned nightmare with her, she asks me that? I was all ready to get extremely pissed off at her until I noticed what she was doing.
She was scraping her tongue with her claw almost maniacally. And she had even started to bleed. This… This was the lass that told me about how powerful their sense of taste is, how some things overlapped both their sense of smell and taste. The lass I had drunkenly asked to see how I tasted and identified my bad eating habits from that alone.
And that realization made me remember Placido. It was a huge fire, they even brought the armed forces to help the rescue operation, that’s why I was there. What stuck to me the most was the smell, that nauseating smell, the realization that the smell of burning human flesh was so indescribably close to the smell of pork…
And I realized the intent of her question was one word short of what her mouth said. “Does it smell like food to you too?”. Why is nature so completely fucking cruel like this? They’re herbivores and somehow, for whatever twist of fucking fate, because evolution is the worst engineer in the entire universe, whatever little chemical present in burning flesh didn’t just trigger their olfaction, but also their sense of taste.
It made me sick to my stomach to even consider it… And all I could say was “Yes”. I knew now why everyone else didn’t get close, just didn’t know why she did otherwise. But I did what I thought best, straight up grabbed her and pulled her away. Brought her back to the camp (of course we built the pyre far away, I wasn’t sure why at the moment but this must be why) and with an epiphany I… Jury-rigged something. My soap was almost gone, two thirds of it had been used to help sanitize tools at that point, but with my bent and broken knife I shaved little pieces of it into a water canteen, and managed to cobble together something with the vague smell of mint.
Wasn’t none of that buzz-giving smoke, but it was enough to help keep them sane. These people have such a terrifying drive to help people, but no discipline on how to help themselves. How’d they get like this?
Date: January 7th, 2137 Standard Terran Time - Day Twenty Five, Aftermath
Kiki, that’s what I’m calling her here, gotta call her something. Not putting anyone’s real names here, any good historian could match my diary here with the crew roster of the Beacon of Hope and figure out who she is but anyone else seeing this doesn’t get an identifier. Never asked those doctors if they’d let me talk about them, hence why no names.
Kiki reminds me of some people I’ve seen. Whole day she’d sometimes just seem to not be there, and then go back to her normal self afterwards. Right, we’ve finally come back up to the flagship. Dinnertime and she was eating a lot more, always pretty strong stuff. I went up to the most veteran guy I knew, the guy that had taken charge on the ground. Asked him if that was normal behavior and wanna know what he said? “There’s always a mission you don’t come back from, seems like this was hers” What even is going on here?
I tried to get more information, and he told me that it happens to everyone and it’s just a matter of time. One day your body comes back, but your mind stays on that mission, and can never leave. That every day you are both here and there, that every day you’re always at that mission, your mind never leaves it forever. This was very familiar, so I asked him what they do to those people and… “Nothing, they’re still part of the FRF” just a simple nothing. It said a lot, though.
I’m going to consider I’m talking to the future here, and these guys figured out what mental health is. At this time? What this guy said means a lot more than it looks. Nothing means not sending them to a place they wouldn’t come back from, he said they’re still part of the fleet too. You’ve probably read all the things I said earlier, these guys are pretty fraternal here. They help each other because they understand what they all go through
These guys know what post-traumatic stress disorder looks like, and now that I stop to think about his words… “it’s just a matter of time”... How many more of those guys have something like it? How many times were those distant stares during study time this happening instead of just thinking hard? They might not have a single study about this kind of stuff, but at least they try to be here for each other.
I thought there would be something for me to teach here but… There wasn’t. Not a thing. Can’t even talk about their self-preservation problems, I’ve seen plenty of humans do the same in disaster situations, even trained responders. Especially trained responders.
I’ve been spending the day around Kiki, trying to make sure she’s alright. Seems like she is, mostly, at least I can’t detect her getting worse aside from a few times spacing out. Gave her a stupid gift, one of my spare bars of mint-scented soap, smell seemed to help her get her mind out of things. That’s when she dropped a piece of information on me, she’d volunteered on a terran vessel. In fact, the entire unit had volunteered as crew on a terran vessel. Having been on the ground for what, twenty five days I’ve been out of the loop, but something’s going on.
Seems like we’ve got a but mission in Milieau, very big. I haven’t even contacted HQ back to report the end of our mission, didn’t have the strength of spirit to go wade back into the trenches so soon. And here they are, the first thing they do when they get home is ask “Where are we going next”. Been writing this to procrastinate calling, I guess I should follow their example.
Well, big mission indeed. Feds gone full mask-off, unreliable allies, time to rambo shit up. Turns out my unit back home is going to be part of ground operations, and my counterpart had been training with them. Those doctors are adding C-SAR (right, that’s Combat Search and Rescue to y’all reading this) to their repertoire and boy did the guy take to it like fish to water, it seems, guys back home really like the guy. Apparently he’s shocked some of them with his sense of humor, yeah, those guys will do that.
Meanwhile the whole unit I was with here had volunteered to join the hospital ships in that operation, we’re liberating a captured planet after all so we’re going to have a bunch of those in the wings. Actually the entire Beacon of Hope is going to field there, we’re on the way to the rally point right now. They’re going to distribute the excess crew (did I mention the Beacon of Hope generally has triple the crew it’s been built to operate with?) to our ships to alleviate the specialist crewing problems and then remain further back. There’s a wild difference between the facilities of a mobile field hospital like what the UN navy uses and what the Beacon of Hope has. Hell, their fuel barges even split off from the fleet to try and jury-rig their storages as material transport to get us a lot more supplies. This time they’re expecting things to go much, much worse.
Me… I’m going to see if I can try to convince HQ to let me field where this unit is going to, it’s probably going to be one of our hospital ships. Genuinely think I’d be more useful there, making sure those docs don’t burn themselves to death in their passion, than I’d be on a landing party. I know my guys got a good replacement for now.
Anyway, this was my piece. Dunno if i’ll want to write about the next op. You know, thinking on it… I bet this ship was running right in the rearguard of the fleet that showed up on Earth, no surprise they were the first to break with the feds to help us. We all know the feds messed up everyone with their shit, and who the hell knew that the ones they didn’t manage to break, were their doctors.
---
Yep, long enough I had to split in two despite planned as a one shot. Inspiration does that to ya.

Date: December 14th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day One
I am Sergeant Paulo Martinez, of the United Nations’ 12th Marine Regiment, field doctor. Unfortunately for my bosses, I’m not writing this diary for them. This one is for my sister. Yes you read that right, Maria, this one’s for you so i’m doing it the way I think you’d like it done.
So, lil’ sis the historian always talks about how the most fun historical discoveries are in mundane documents, a lot of stuff gets lost to time with just official documents, so when I told her I was going to visit Colia on official business, in fact at request of the Zurulian government, she just straight up begged me to keep a personal diary. Even if I never show her, in like a hundred years it’d be a more accurate story of what happens than any official report. So… This is it.
To explain better, in preparation for future operations the UN is trying to integrate alien advanced technology and methodology with ours, both to patch up theirs where it’s missing (as is often the case with their methods) and prop up ours (usually technical). My case, however, is a bit particular while being part of the same initiative. The government of Colia, that’s the Zurilian homeworld by the by, has requested a technical exchange with a field medic experienced in combat operations in order to help them prepare for the inevitable need for their famed medical expertise to be applied on the field, i’m not sure what my counterpart is going to be doing back home but I bet he isn’t going to be with the marines.
Anyway, it seems like I'm to be set up with a group of first responders for a grand total of a week, see what I can learn and see what I can teach. Shuttle (which is tiny, by the way, love those teddy bears but they’re tiny and their bespoke crafts are tiny) will be arriving in another hour and after that i’m to head for a briefing.
Okay! Still the first day, or night right now. I got to meet the crew I’m to be training with and got a better grasp of what I’m actually working with here. I made a mistake previously, it’s not first responders, I’m training with a unit from the First Response Fleet. Those guys have an entire fleet in charge of emergency response to any catastrophe, admittedly it’s not a very large one it’s just their flagship “Beacon of Hope” and a small group of support ships like two fuel barges (seriously what is their operational range to have fuel barges?) and some lander shuttles.
For a moment I thought it made sense why they sent a marine, those are military right? Nope, those are civilians as far as I can tell. I got to meet some of the people I’ll be training with though! They’re a fun bunch, and boy did they barrage me with questions. Remember the stories back early during first contact about aliens asking all sorts of stupid questions? Now picture that at quintuple speed and all of the medical variety, at some point I had to shut them all down. Not because they were annoying, mind, but because the questions started getting far outside of my field of expertise. I’m a marine combat medic, not an endocrinologist!
Which made me curious, so when I asked it turns out they’re all proper doctors! Out of a crew of twenty, because apparently the crews train together based on which lander shuttle they’re assigned to, we had ten surgeons of different varieties, three neurolinguists, two geneticists… I don’t even remember what the other five were but none of them with less than five years of schooling and all but one with at least eight years in the First Response Fleet, that other one was fresh out of getting his PhD, however.
Date: December 15th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Two, Training
Apparently the FRF has its own facilities for training and fleet maintenance. I woke up early to get a look at the place and… I admit I’m a little surprised? This doesn’t look like what I was expecting, because it feels familiar. There were a lot of restricted areas, expected in a medical facility, but this felt different because a medical college, what I thought this was, wouldn’t have armed guards.
It also wouldn’t have a starship drydock. And it wouldn’t be designed like this. This place looks more like a federation-style military base than anything you’d see a bunch of civilian doctors in. I wonder if they’re essentially contractors to the military?
After a short tour on my own I went to have breakfast, and if this didn’t look like every military mess hall in the universe I’d throw my stripes in the trash. Boy are the teddy bears noisy, though, if there’s one thing I can say they’d beat any marine at is making a goddamn ruckus. I readied myself for some bland vegan breakfast, which don’t get me wrong I get it they’re herbivores and all but I usually I really miss my protein and the taste you know, but I was very surprised. I couldn’t tell you the name of the plants I ate but… Just… How can vegan food be this tasty? I thought aliens didn’t know how to cook?
Well, I was sure as hell wrong about that. I’m actually writing this at the end of the day and I’m chewing on a raw root for heavens’ sake because this thing tastes like mint and cashews? Most aliens might not know how to cook but apparently the teddy bears aren’t most aliens in this case.
Anyway, back to some chronological telling. I also learned they love tea, they can’t really start the day without tea and I don’t mean the pansy stuff from Earth (i’m a coffee drinker), oh no. I never thought steeped flower leaves would give me the caffeine jitters, but I should have when I saw they were black. Right, one of the gals in my unit is a biochemist, and she made this very weird joke to me if I could taste the poison on the tea? Humans have gotta stop the damn capsaicin hype before they think we can drink actual poison.
Surprisingly tasty breakfast over, me and the unit went for the first training of the day. As part of a disaster response team they need to keep fit, so morning is physical training. Now, you’re going to read this and think it’s weird, right? Wouldn’t it be paramedics or firefighters doing this particular piece of job instead of full blown PhDs with doctorates and all that? Yes it’s that weird.
Running, pushups, pullups, you know the whole full body training regimen? That’s how it started, I thought I was going to smoke the teddy bears but… Good heavens, I can’t in good conscience say I did. I mean, yeah, I outperformed every one of them but that was close, I swear the only reason I outperformed them is because of mother nature because it sure wasn’t my training and I’m, not to toot my own horn too much, a goddamn marine.
Afterwards we had ‘deployment’ drills. Yes I’m calling them drills because at this point I’m certain those guys are military in some weird way. Deployment in this case refers to the simple act of exiting the lander shuttle and deploying the field hospital. Guy in charge of training said today they were going easy because of me since I’ve never done this before, to general cheer of the rest of the unit.
The basics of deployment training is, we all get inside the lander with the gear, wait a minute to simulate the landing procedures, then we unload the gear and set it up as fast as possible but prioritizing no mistakes. So off I went to start, first boarding the lander, which was the actual lander we were assigned to. When I asked I was told this was so we’d be familiarized with the idiosyncrasies of the equipment we’d actually use in the field, in fact all of the gear we were training with WAS the gear they used in the field.
My first surprise was how… Cramped the lander was. And by that I mean this was an eight-person craft carrying twenty plus enough medical equipment to set up a field hospital. This was frankly absurd, in order to create enough space for me two of them had to sit on my lap because there wasn’t enough room, half of them had to stay standing! “We don’t take up a lot of space” one of them told me.
Apparently, these lander shuttles are perfectly safe to ride standing and there were specific roles for people who were standing, they’re supposed to start moving some of the gear out the instant the landing ramp hits the ground. That’s what they’re supposed to do anyway, but that isn’t exactly what happened. The landing pad is equipped with some kind of setup to simulate the ship’s landing impact, and that was some movement discipline I haven’t ever seen before- I felt the downwards impact of the ship, but before elastic forces moved it back up as ships do when landing this hard, people were already moving.
They didn’t start moving gear when the landing ramp hit the ground. They moved so fast that the first piece of gear, the power generator, hit the ground moving into place less than a second after the tip of the ramp hit the floor.
The whole deployment training was four hours. We repeated the deployment procedures for four hours without rest, and it wasn’t simple. This isn’t a field hospital in human terms, my friends, no. One of the first things set up is a power generator, after that a communications array to call up the flagship, then they bring out the tents but those aren’t the simple bed and clean space affair. They use shielding technology to keep particulates out, the operation tent even uses that system to create an airlock to keep the air inside clean. There’s an entire miniature operation theater, there’s a rapid diagnosis rig with a whole ass ton of sensors operated with VR as well as two tents just for patient recovery.
Those are neither simple nor light pieces of kit. That’s some sci-fi supertech shit right there. The target deployment time is five minutes. Five. Fucking. Minutes. I don’t think I could set up a tent in five minutes. Hell, when they started moving I had to reign in my instincts, it looked like I was getting ready for breaching action. Oh, they were taking it easy and instructing me all the time, took them fifteen minutes to set up the entire field hospital.
After that bit of intense training, it was dinner time. Did you know that there is a specific kind of plant here that when you mix its dried and powdered leaves with some of the local flora it induces the maillard reaction? Fucking cold-fried tubers is what I got, it’s like those slightly citric cold fries that have all the good parts of fries but are cold? Alien food I swear, if I ever have to turn vegan I’m only eating at zurulian restaurants.
And then it was study time, gotta keep up on the latest medical science and they afford you time to do that. Pretty damn impressive library they’ve got, not just some proper paperback books mostly for historical value (did you know paper here is black and they use a dark red ink to write in it? Weird alien trees) but an immense digital library. I was a bit at a loss of what to do , I’m at best a paramedic not a doctor needing to keep up with the latest and greatest, thankfully one of the guys on my unit showed up with some first response manuals with the basics for every species. And then promptly dragged me to the unit’s study group because apparently the entire unit also studies together.
Man I thought that was going to be annoying, it thankfully wasn’t. Damn cheerful bunch they are, real classy body horror jokes as well. I’ll be honest I never thought I’d see an alien get dark humor, nevermind start it, but I like those teddy bears. Also none of that better-than-you crap I thought I was going to get either, they helped me out a fair bit memorizing some procedures (seriously, there’s a method for mouth-to-mouth on a bird that works, but boy is it going to be nasty) and awkward as it was having a nearby human was plenty helpful since they were all studying human medicine.
And oh, hey, that’s the door. I got invited for a bit of a welcoming party. I’ll add more when I get back.
Date: December 17th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Four, Hangover
Sooo… Apparently tea brewing is a far more complex and ancient art here I guess? Did you know there’s a kind of plant that builds up alcohol inside of it here? And with the right steeping process you get this very tasty alcoholic green tea that just sneaks up on you like a motherfucker? That’s why you’re not getting anything from yesterday, jesus fuck deployment drills, timed this time, on an ungodly hangover were not fun. Turns out this unit’s usual time is seven minutes, by the way.
Got to learn a fair bit about zurulian biology that night out, though. And clean up your mind, that’s not what I mean. Turns out they’re quite more sensitive to some chemicals than humans, or at least sensitive in different ways. They’re also WAY more open to recreational drugs, it turns out, especially in drinkable form.
One of ‘em got this thing that looked like an ashtray? And it was burning something. Dude just put it on the table and took whiffs of it now and then. I got curious and went to try and holy crap I got dizzy just getting close to it? Lum leaves, he told me, they give a nice buzz he said. Nice buzz? It’d have knocked me right out if I didn’t step back fast enough, apparently whatever’s in lum leaves at best works like a beer for them, though. And the weird part is he said it tasted good.
That was when I learned that zurulians have a damn fine sense of taste. Which, by the way, explained why they were passing by a rock and licking it at some point. I thought they were trying to weird me out but no it’s apparently some kind of palate cleanser, I tried but it just kind of tasted of rock. And, it turns out that their tongues can detect some usually-airborne chemicals as well! Including ones their noses can! They can detect some things as both taste and smell!
And apparently after the fifth cup of tea I was asking them what all sorts of things tasted for them and I could not tell you the answers because I should have stopped at my second. Except for one thing, I think whoever I asked was high as a kite too to accept it but I asked what I tasted like. Look I was really intoxicated as well. She said I tasted like I had vitamin deficiency? And… I don’t know, I know I never ate properly but how the hell do you tell that with your tongue?
Don’t feel it’d be very decent to ask that, though. You don’t make wise, or decent, decisions when you’re so out of your mind you get a thirty-hour hangover later.
As for the day, it’s been deployment drills and studying. But we did get to play with a few more toys between the drills and dinner, the unit got to test out (or well, make sure they were working) a bunch of fun-looking portable piston units, they also had a couple of plasma torches and a magnetic cutter (think a hydraulic cutter but instead of hydraulics it’s magnetism, looks silly but damn thing could cut through a support strut of a starship in half the time of a hydraulic). I, of course, didn’t get to play with any of those. They were built for zurulian bodies and according to the trainer if I ever were to work with the Fleet they’d just treat my body as another set of tools anyway. I mean I get it, nature gifted me a larger and stronger body than theirs, but he could have been less blunt about that.
Date: December 18th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Five, Emergency
Soo… See how I’m being cute with titles? Look you’re lucky I’m writing in english and not japanese or else you’d be getting triple-sized titles, I love me some good titles. I wish I was talking about emergency response training here, however.
I’m a diligent man, I haven’t been skimping on preparing my official report, in fact a third of study time I’ve spent on writing the report. Super detailed, put as much as I damn well could in those, described every last bit of tech, hell I described the seating arrangements per specialty for deployment because apparently you can shave seconds off of deployment with the correct arrangement. Even included the fact it was faster for me to just carry the two guys on my lap out and drop them on top (yes on top) of the storage unit going to the surgery tent than to wait for there to be enough space for them to hop off.
So my official report is out. I’m going to write a second, too, about whatever else happens. I made a quick call to HQ and got the go ahead too. Earth’s gearing up to fight the feds but that doesn’t mean the rest of this old bullshit war isn’t going on. There’s been an arxur raid on a colony world, apparently a venlil colony, and we’re deploying. Sorry, I’m not going to just go back home and wait for the call to action when I can help something going on right now. Plus I know it’s been just five days but damn, I like those guys. I hope dealing with a raid aftermath isn’t going to break them.
excuseme, what. Sorry, I am currently on the lander shuttle as we make our way up to the Beacon of Hope. I was going to finish there and then but I heard it… Someone talking to the newest guy “You get used to it”. You get used to it? Did they do this that often? Or was he just trying to be nice?
Not the time to ask.
Date: December 19th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Six, Stalking
The trip was fast. Alarmingly fast. I can tell the Beacon of Hope has probably the best FTL drive ever created or something like that. It was two thirds through the day when we got a message that we had arrived and were now on standby. And also, that I was being called up by the captain.
The trip to the bridge was surprising in two ways, the first because I didn’t need to bend down. The Beacon of Hope is built to accommodate even a Mazic in its interiors, and be able to work with an interspecies crew. The second was because of the austerity of the place as I expected a civilian ship to make some concessions, but any area that did not expect to see a patient was perfectly functional and wasteless in design. Only the patient areas seemed a bit more comfortable and even then, it seemed like it was more because of the patient’s needs.
The bridge was very much a spartan affair that took advantage of their species’ diminutive size, it was tucked closer to the center of the ship and was distressingly small despite the amount of staff present, though someone of a larger species (like me) could probably still do their job as an operator here but they’d probably have to do it laying down. Something that the layout of the chairs would seemingly permit. It was there that I met the captain, aliens might not be much for clothes, but they’ve right up there with us with hats. The only identifier he had was the rather classy dark blue hat which is apparently the base of the design of any air force hat in the galaxy too, I guess some pieces of design are universal. Later that day I had time to ask around, and it seems like their space military splintered off of their air force, unlike the navy back on earth.
And the captain told me some very, very impressive information. And some very distressing as well. First off, we had arrived before the Arxur, which in itself was baffling because I thought we had responded to an attack. Nope! It was an early detection system. I asked him, then, if we were so early why wasn’t a defense fleet instead of us? “I don’t know. And I’m afraid of knowing” At that point I dropped that line of questions, I guess it got pretty obvious, huhn? Then what’d he need me for, I asked. He was blunt, me being a predator, and a trained killer at that, he wanted advice.
I might have been a bit annoyed at the wording, but the captain of the most advanced, and genuinely unarmed, hospital ship I had ever seen asking me advice like that? What even was going on? He explained to me that we were hiding in the shadow of a planet close to the colony, directly opposite of where the arrival point of the Arxur fleet should be, and showed me the map. He knew I wasn’t a naval officer but if I had anything, if anything in my training, if anything in my instincts could help, anything to make sure the mission would work more smoothly.
Were we doing an evacuation? Not with just this ship. VIP extraction? First Response doesn’t do priorities like those. Dropping support for ground troops? What ground troops. No, we had no way to aid during the actual raid, this was the direct opposite of a warship. But the very second the cannibals left they were going to start dropping shuttles, every last moment counted and if that meant arriving before the threat it meant arriving before the threat.
I mean, I got nothing. I told him I got nothing, none of my training worked here and I couldn’t just summon some magical foresight to help. To which, he was grateful. Told me it was an assurance of a trained soldier couldn’t find flaw in the plans of ‘an old retired pediatrician’ and i’m absolutely fucking sorry?
At that point I had to ask, are they military? Oh no, they’re not. While sure the FRF was part of the military organization, it had no need for soldiers since it was basically just a large mobile hospital. Those were all civilians, including him.
Now, if any of my fellow humans catch this document when it’s still relevant or anyone at all a hundred years from now, I want you to consider what the average military competency of the federation species is like. They’d fall prey to the dumbest fucking ambush and if I remember right even the Arxur were pissing their fucking scales at a simple fighting retreat. Those people have been fighting longer than some countries have existed on earth and they got no idea how to wage war. And here was this ‘old pediatrician’ pulling some fucking grand admiral moves because his only focus was getting medical aid down on planet as fast as possible.
I waited to get back to my room to wait before I lost it. But still, we had a mission ahead of us and we’d need to prepare.
Date: December 21th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Eight, Fieldwork
Don’t have much time to write, there’s a lot of work to be done but I think I can skimp a few minutes of sleep for this, using voice to text for this one. I guess mumbling might help me sleep, too. We just landed, guys got deployment down to six minutes. Fuck, unit back home couldn’t move this fast with this coordination. Shit, they probably do those very often don’t they?
Each lander shuttle went to a different place, we’ve all got a huge area to cover with our shuttle’s crew. Flagship dropped a few comm buoys up there, we got a temporary planetary cover for the comms. Dunno how the fuck the shuttle slipped down when it did, last croc ship wasn’t even done taking off when we hit the ground, also the pilot’s a fucking maniac. Miles wishes he could pull a deceleration at that low height without splashing.
Fuck my feet. Fuck my legs. Fuck my back, everything hurts. Three guys stayed behind in the triage tent, two in the surgery tent, one on the radio, everyone else got to go out searching for people in pairs. They use this fancy headset thing with data feed from the flagship, scans for life signs, real advanced. Not perfect precision, though, still needs the people on the ground to cover the last hundred meters of range. “Well, that’s leftovers” fucking dark humor at this point. Fuck. We were going towards a lifesign marker when we ran into a corpse.
Right. Funny thing here, this is a federation world. Yeah I know I said it was a venlil colony but seems like not every colony split off from the feds when the republic did, makes sense. Don’t matter for those sons of bitches, someone need help they come for you. That was a venlil body, burning wreckage of a toppled building, half-eaten.
Fuck i’ve seen the worst goddamn wounds, saw people missing limbs, shit… Y’all of my unit on earth remember the Placido thing, right? So much fire. Y’all remember the smell of the burning bodies, don’t you? Saw some sick shit in the past but this? Seeing a half-eaten person?
And teddy bear says that damn joke. Pulled me outta the shock, at least… Wasn’t the first time they had to say that, was it? Wasn’t long until we hit that lifesign, though. Venlil kid, panicking the hell out when he saw me, bleeding like a fountain from a cut on the shoulder and side. Tried to calm the kid down, and what happens? Teddy bear just comes out of no fucking where and jabs something in the kid’s neck and they’re out like a light. We called for a recovery there.
Have you ever seen a motorcycle ambulance? How about a hovercycle ambulance? Yeah, shuttle had one as part of the gear, it’s a kinda funny piece of kit. Super tight to be a normal ambulance, but a zurulian can fit in there right fine with a patient, it’s got some magical gyro-stabilization because no way it could speed off like it did and fucking fly over a pile of debris like that without killing the ride, to say nothing of the patient. But fuck, I read the specs of the thing while we were taking the shuttle down, they’re written in the cockpit. Thing could apparently hit supersonic speed with a set of secondary thrusters it has, it wouldn’t do it for long because that’d melt the engine down completely but it could. Who the fuck puts that fucking speed on an ambulance?
You can see I’m lacking adjectives at this point? Because this is all so absurd. The recovery vehicle, that’s what it’s called, grabbed the kid and sped the hell off. “No bedside manners for us, let’s go” is all my partner said when we started heading for the next life sign. We had people who’d barricaded themselves in furniture and underground and couldn’t get back out, people who’d given up a limb to hide in a tight squeeze.
The worst were the ones that… They were still begging for help, ‘unfinished meals’ the fucking teddy said. How do you get so callous? Only from seeing this too much. Fuck is that what being a veteran in this job is? Dealing with this fucking horrorshow so much you get like that? But still, if their heart is beating it’s good enough, even those ones got help. I took a ride in the recovery vehicle with one of those.
Krakotl, it was. Don’t matter how much you hate the birds, you see one like that, torn open and half eaten begging to god to have one more second in this universe… You ain’t human if you can still hate. Idiot lizard decided to have a meal mid-bombardment, it looks like, building collapsed on him and pinned his body on the bird. I pulled the stone out of the bird, my partner dragged the arxur carcass out of the way, there was so much blood. You’d think that them not bleeding red makes it feel less like blood, it doesn’t. Sealant gel applied to the open blood vessels, beautiful thing that gel, it can basically serve as a physical barrier to prevent blood loss and it can be removed safely, and we wrapped them in a sealing blanket.
Sealing blankets are amazing emergency devices. They’re stored in this plastic bag because they need to remain wet, but you warp the patient in it and it constricts with just enough pressure to do what you need it to (there’s a control for it), in this case keeping the bird’s insides on the inside, and it’s soaked in a cocktail of antiseptics and painkillers that work for just about any species. It’s more than just soaked, even, the material it’s made of actually very slowly dispenses a low dosage of the fluids it absorbed serving basically like an IV drip in this situation. When the recovery vehicle arrived I tapped out, as they say. I’d accompany the patient to the base and take a moment to refresh myself before outing again in the next recovery vehicle call.
I’d like to say it was a wild fucking ride. But I didn’t even feel it, thing must have ship-class inertial dampeners somehow. They spared no expense for this fast rescue vehicle. And by the heavens that driver, I haven’t been around the pilot and the driver much since they had some separate training but this driver? Straight. Line. He’d only make a curve if going over an obstacle would take longer than around because he was not increasing the length of the trip by a single meter.
Also, the stretcher the poor bird was in? Gravity sledge. You heard that right, you know how costly and difficult miniaturized anti-gravity is, it doesn’t work without a much higher attached computational power than an object that size can handle. I bet it was receiving assistance from the vehicle. Moving them to the triage tent was easy, didn’t think there’d be much need for triage, mind, but that was the procedure. Full sensor suite you’d find at the best hospitals with three VR control sets to be able to perform multiple operations at once, I didn’t even think those things were mobile. The three on triage had a full readout on the bird in seconds, hear that seconds. So I did the last part of my job and wheeled the patient to the surgery tent with the report.
One thing I didn’t mention before is the fire. This wasn’t a farming colony, this is an extraction colony, they were pulling some manner of chemicals from the ground here and refining it. This place where we’re at mostly stored things, mind… Very flammable things. After the damn crocs were done being murderous psychopathic cannibals on the ground they decided to destroy everything just in case, of course the aftermath of dropping bombs on highly flammable storages is rampant fires. Just so you have an idea of the backdrop.
I got a bit of a chance to wash up after that patient, the boss (he’s apparently the most senior, in veterancy) ordered me to take a rest. So I took the chance to fish my soap from my personal belongings (we all got a bit of space to carry personal stuff down) and take a quick wash before sitting down here to take a nap.
Date: December 25th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Twelve, Fieldwork
What a christmas gift, eh? Playing heavy machinery in a nightmare. Been putting less of my first aid skills and more of my muscles to use and I don’t blame them for it, the heavy duty tools are all showing signs of wear by now, and I can replace them with my hands for some uses. They’ve got plenty of people that can stabilize a patient, they don’t have many tools.
I asked around a bit how long we were planning to stay, and whether there was a bigger relief fleet coming. “Until everyone’s saved” was the first answer and “Nobody knows” was the second. After all, this is ostensibly a Federation planet, and we were waiting on one of their relief fleets to show up. My next question was about, how long did we have supplies for, and the Beacon of Hope came geared for 30 days of operation with six ground crews. We had eighteen ground crews going, because the damage was extensive across the entire planet.
We had a third of the supplies we would normally have, and I’d be insulted if they didn’t start rationing supplies between ground crews. If the situation was this dire they’d have to make decisions about where their supplies would be best spent. Please heavens, let this place be a priority, I don’t want to teach those poor teddy bears how to do low-tech lifesaving.
So for now, we need to go easy on our tools to keep having them, and as luck would have it I’ve got enough physical capacity to replace them in about a third of their use cases. So for the last two days I’ve grown pretty accustomed to the recovery vehicle as I get moved from one place to another to move debris and carry things.
I’ve also noticed everyone seems a bit more relaxed when I’m around sometimes. Though I’ve the impression it isn’t quite my presence itself, that tends to happen right before I go take a nap. I don’t mind the weirdness, whatever helps those guys. They’re making me question the way everyone hypes up human stamina because they’re keeping right the hell up with my work shifts.
Date: December 28th, 2136 Standard Terran Time - Day Fifteen, Starvation
Well, that was the call I was hoping we wouldn’t have. Right when what we’ve started finding more and more is the deeply wounded and the infected.
We’ve been on the ground for twelve days, chances of survival of anyone at this point is minimal, but minimal isn’t zero and that’s good enough to keep working. Unfortunately, there are other ground crews in bigger population areas, which means a higher volume of minimal chances, which means they get the resource allocations.
The power generator should be good, each one lasts the full month so that won’t be a problem. But most of our miracle medicine will start having to be rationed, also the hydraulic lifters gave up the ghost. Not like they were bad but it was simply from excess of use, my back knows the feeling at this point.
We’re going to run out of antiseptics in three to five days if we keep going at this rate, as well. Hopefully we should have saved everyone that we can at that point. But there was a small miracle, or rather, there was a small underestimation on my part.
I thought I’d have to teach those guys how to save a life without their spacer tech and miracle medicines when we ran out of stitch-gel. Stitch-gel is a rapid-clotting agent that effectively serves as instant stitches, it’s amazing. And we ran out of it the soonest. Then a woman with a horrifying neck wound was brought in, gal went down fucking fighting she did, don’t know how she took down her would-be killer the beast’s claws were still dangling from her neck. The fuck kind of movie hero was she? But the moment we’d remove the damn things (also did I mention her lower body was burned? She definitely wasn’t moving on her own, those legs are gone) she’d bleed to death and there’d be nothing to do about it.
And here’s where I underestimated them. She was taken out of the surgery tent and got to the next shuttle to the Beacon, she certainly bled a lot but she did not bleed to death. The surgeon had opted to, instead of bringing anything personal like me, pack additional supplies as his personal items. Like a fucking mile of biodegradable stitching string and a whole ass set of needles, plus some weaker over-the-counter painkillers.
I thought I’d have to teach them how to handle some primitive medicine, but they came readier for it than I did. They knew they’d be sitting here until they ran out of resources. They gave up any possible nicety they could have brought to buy a few more days worth of supplies.
I’d say I was ashamed of my choices but I don’t think I am. I realized why they kind of gather around me before I take a nap- It’s not the nap, it’s my soap. I brought a mint-scented one, you know, when you can bring some niceties to help your mind in the field you do. Turns out the scent is doing some wonders for their mental health.
Pfft, big muscles and smelling nice, that’s what i’m doing right now. I’m cool with it, people often forget the effect some small things missing can have on a bigger operation. Dude done did an open heart surgery in the middle of a fucking field hospital to save a life, he deserves to take a good nap.
There’s something else but i’m not sure if I should say it. I know, history and all, but do I want people to remember this happened?
---
[Part 2]
Okay so I got an immense surge of inspiration to write this one. Mostly also 'cause i'm a little tired of the only depictions of our allies out there being their failures, I mean sure it's a great narrative driver but it gets a exhausting a bit.
Plus i've also been trying to writre something in the vein of this for like two months at this point so I changed format and story while keeping the important parts. And it seems i'll have to split it in two parts because I hit Reddit's limit.

There is an awesome rock rendition of Teddy Bear's Picnic during the scene in the Greek robbers' hideout (those who stole the truck with the mini nuclear reactor thingy in it)
AND I CAN"T FIND IT ANYWHERE
Shazam and other apps tell me that they don't know what it is and all the OST listings for Fubar ep5 list Mamma Mia and (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding