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Skeeter was fed up. It wasn't that he disliked communal dining, in fact he rather enjoyed meeting the other passengers who sign onto this direct route between cradle worlds. Nor was he dissatisfied with quality of the available dining, although to his taste, it could do with more garlic and more cayenne, but apparently both plants are unsafe to a good chunk of the other passengers. The Star Sailors could handle them just fine, but the Jaceu for example experience severe indigestion from mere cross-contamination. That, however, was beside the point. The problem wasn't so easily born as the xenos inability to make a proper hot sauce. No, he had a particular problem with a particular individual. Jerry had mouthed off, again, about the Republic and called the limited franchise a "fascistic relic of a bygone age kept alive by irrational paranoia about the nature of the galaxy," To which Skeeter had said, "Tell that to Auerstedt."
This lead quickly to a shouting match in the middle of the dining room where Jerry demanded an apology for Skeeter's use of the victims of the grubs, some of whom were his relatives. To which Skeeter had shouted that he was there, and some "lily-livered CIPpy cup with his nose so far up in the air he doesn't notice the blood he's slogging through" could take his opinion of service do something anatomically improbable with it. The episode very quickly descended to a surprisingly creative exchange of profanity and very nearly came to blows. Skeeter just couldn't understand why Jerry couldn't be in his presence for longer than five seconds without saying something astoundingly stupid about The Republic, the non-interference policy, Republican standards for applicant planets, or the earned franchise, and then immediately becoming belligerent when his assertions were challenged.
The most infuriating thing, to Skeeter anyway, was that Jerry was more than capable of being civil with anybody else, and had befriended both Suzie and Ivan, both of whom were at a complete loss as to why Jerry was such an unrelenting jerk to Skeeter himself. Even Skeeter had wished that he could make friends with Jerry, and it wouldn't have been the first time he'd befriended a CIPer. No more, Skeeter thought to himself as he marched his way to the captain's office, I can't handle his shit anymore.
By the time he'd made it to the door, he'd cooled off enough to not simply demand that he be allowed to put Jerry through the nearest airlock, and his fury had abated to a mere simmering rage. It was with therefore with some level of difficulty he managed to knock with a normal, or at least appropriate, level of force. "Enter," came Vexkeed's voice from within.
"Vex, I'm losing my damn mind," Skeeter said as he entered and took a seat in the oversized chair across from his friend.
"I have heard that you and Jerry had an argument."
"That's putting it politely. We hollered cusses at each other."
"If you're asking me to eject Jerry at the next stop, I'm afraid we would need his cooperation for such."
"Naw, right now I wanna strangle the prick, but that's just me bein' mad. I just want permission to modify my cabin. I don't know what the fuck his problem with me is, but it's just me he can't seem to be civil with, and I have a bit of a temper..."
"From my perspective, he has impugned you honor in such a way that a duel would be considered justified under our customs. We would simply need to find the nearest Magistrate to officiate it. I commend your restraint."
"Duels can't be undone," Skeeter said as the acknowledgement of his position cooled his anger further. "Even if it was just first blood was the terms, accidents happen. I don't want him dead for being a jackass, I just want to go two weeks without getting into a fight."
"I see. What is your proposed solution?"
"I want to modify our quarters, at my own expense, and I'll put everything back the way it was, but I want a kitchen I can use. I'll just cook for myself and take my meals in private. Jerry should be capable of not starting something when we just pass each other in the corridors."
Vexkeed flinched at the suggestion, his upper shoulders slumped, and his face took on a stricken caste as he said, "It is not well for you to confine yourself so."
"What'is not well is us fightin' and disturbin' all of the other passengers."
"The We Bring Friends from Afar to Joyous Meeting should have some quarters for heavyworlders in the first place. Our peoples are quickly becoming entwined with how quickly the Republic welcomed our ships and fleets into her borders. I expect upon returning to Better Texas, I shall have more Sneakies to take aboard."
"I still can't believe that caught on."
"When a meme sticks, it sticks," Vexkeed said with a placating gesture, "Please submit a design of a remodel with engineering, and we shall have your quarters more comfortable furnished within the day."
"Aye sir, thank you."
"I will speak to my wife about hosting you for dinner soon. I do not think it will be well to isolate you from social interactions."
Skeeter suppressed his urge to tell the captain that he needn't trouble himself, and excused himself to start redesigning the quarters he and his party occupied for Terran comfort.
Meanwhile, in said quarters, Kip paced nervously in the living room area while Ivan and Suzie lounged on the oversized sofa, at complete ease with the situation. Kip gave a glance to the unopened bulkhead again and muttered, "What if... they get in a real fight..."
"They won't," Suzie said without looking up from the discussion in the comments she was reading. It seemed that there was a lot of interest in Ixiand's nature walks as well as speculation over whether they'd allow rock climbing on some of the more interesting formations.
"Skeeter's whole face was bright red!" Kip exclaimed as he made another circuit of the space, "Jerry's too! I could smell their anger..."
"As could I," Ivan grunted as he watched the boy's frantic activity, "But even if Skeeter's temper gets the better of his mouth, he does not get violent from words."
"It looked a lot like Jerry might though..."
Suzie's eyes flicked up for a moment, "Naw, well, maybe. But Skeeter'd be okay in a fight."
"But I saw Jerry and Ivan practice fight..."
"Jerry is very good at that martial art, and so am I, and so is Skeeter. In a real fight like you're worried about though, Skeeter would not be so gentle as I am when it is sparring. Skeeter would win, and Jerry would be the one to worry about." Ivan explained.
Rather than reassure Kip it set him down a different path, "I don't think Skeeter would be happy about hurting Jerry. Just because they don't get along wouldn't mean that he'd get riptide pulled into hatred... I hope not..."
"Kip, you're frettin' a lot for somethin' that isn't that big a deal. People can just rub one another the wrong way sometimes."
"Even if they were to have a fight where Jerry is hurt, there is a good infirmary aboard. I am getting frustrated with Jerry over this. Besides, you should not be staying up late much longer. Do you not have an exam in the morning?"
Kip sat down on the floor and glared at nothing in particular as he muttered, "I had hoped there wouldn't be a school in space!"
"The Joyous Meeting is the home for the crew and their children. Did you really think that they wouldn't have at least one teacher aboard?"
"No... I did hope that my mom wouldn't talk to him though!"
Kip scowled at the snickering of his hosts, and didn't even notice the bulkhead opening. "Bed," Skeeter ordered as it closed behind him.
"Is everything..."
"It's fine, kid. Jerry and I don't get along, I have a temper and he can't stop picking a fight, and that's that. We won't be friends and it's okay. I'll just have to avoid the dining hall from now on, and our quarters is getting a remodel so I can cook."
"Wait, Suzie doesn't cook?"
"I bake," she said primly, "completely different."
Meanwhile Juno was glaring at Jerry in his quarters, her hands were on her hips, her tail was absently lashing the deck, and her voice lacked her usually purring quality as she asked, "Are you pleased with yourself? Are the things you said about servicemen vindicated?"
Jerry withered under her gaze and he muttered, "No."
"What exactly did you hope to accomplish?"
"I don't know... I'm such an idiot..."
"I won't argue with that, Jerry."
"I'm sorry..."
"Apologize to Skeeter, not me."
"I will, but I'm sorry for ruining your dinner."
A frustrated yowling escaped her throat as she said, "All you had to do was not accuse a REPUBLICAN NAVAL SERVICEMAN of standing on the corpses of grub victims! You KNOW what they went through to stop the grubs! You AGREE with what they did to stop them!"
Jerry's last vestiges of dignity left him as he snapped, "I just can't stand the man! I have no reason, I have no right, and I'm a complete ponce for it, but I can't stand the smug bastard!"
"Smug?"
"Handsome, successful, fucking covered in medals, married to a wonderful woman! How can a man be so damn happy? I can't stand it, and I know it's irrational! I wish I wasn't like this. I feel like a crab in a bucket trying to drag the man into misery with me."
"You wouldn't be miserable if you weren't so insistent on fighting with him."
"I know, Juno. I never said this wasn't all my fault..."
"If this whole mess stems from base jealousy, maybe you should just tell the man so."
"I think he's given up on me. Serves me right."
"That's no excuse to not even try to be better than you were," Juno said as she left the man to stew in his guilt.
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My Fellow Citizens,
I stand before you honoured to assume the sacred mandate you have given me. My love for this nation is abiding. My confidence in its people, unwavering. And my faith in God Almighty, absolute. I know that His hand shall provide the needed moral strength and clarity of purpose in those instances when we seem to have reached the limits of our human capacity.
This day is bold and majestic yet bright and full of spirit, as is our precious nation.
As a nation, we have long ago decided to march beyond the dimness of night into the open day of renewed national hope.
The question we now ask ourselves is whether to remain faithful to the work inherent in building a better society or retreat into the shadows of our unmet potential.
For me, there is but one answer. We are too great a nation and too grounded as a people to rob ourselves of our finest destiny.
This nation’s journey has been shaped by the prayers of millions, and the collective sacrifices of us all.
We have endured hardships that would have made other societies crumble.
Yet, we have shouldered the heavy burden to arrive at this SUBLIME moment where the prospect of a better future merges with our improved capacity to create that future.
To the surprise of many but not to ourselves, we have more firmly established this land as a democracy in both word and deed.
The peaceful transition from one government to another is now our political tradition. This handover symbolizes our trust in God, our enduring faith in representative governance and our belief in our ability to reshape this nation into the society it was always meant to be.
Here, permit me to say a few words to my predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari. Mr President, you have been an honest, patriotic leader who has done his best for the nation you love. On a more personal note, you are a worthy partner and friend. May History be kind to you.
For many years, Nigeria’s critics have trafficked the rumour that our nation will break apart, even perish.
Yet here we are. We have stumbled at times, but our resilience and diversity have kept us going.
Our burdens may make us bend at times, but they shall never break us.
Instead, we stand forth as Africa’s most populous nation and as the best hope and strongest champion of the Black Race.
As citizens, we declare as one unified people devoted to one unified national cause, that as long as this world exists, NIGERIA SHALL EXIST.
Today, Fate and Destiny join together to place the torch of human progress in our very hands. We dare not let it slip.
We lift high this torch so that it might shine on every household and in every heart that calls itself Nigerian. We hold this beam aloft because it lights our path with compassion, brotherhood, and peace. May this great light never EXTINGUISH.
Our administration shall govern on your behalf but never rule over you. We shall consult and dialogue but never dictate. We shall reach out to all but never put down a single person for holding views contrary to our own.
We are here to further mend and heal this nation, not tear and injure it.
In this vein, may I offer a few comments regarding the election that brought us to this juncture. It was a hard fought contest. And it was also fairly won. Since the advent of the Fourth Republic, Nigeria has not held an election of better quality.
The outcome reflected the will of the people. However, my victory does not render me any more Nigerian than my opponents. Nor does it render them any less patriotic.
They shall forever be my fellow compatriots. And I will treat them as such. They represent important constituencies and concerns that wisdom dare not ignore.
They have taken their concerns to court. Seeking legal redress is their right and I fully defend their exercise of this right. This is the essence of the rule of law.
Over six decades ago, our founding fathers gave bravely of themselves to place Nigeria on the map as an independent nation.
We must never allow the labor of those who came before us to wither in vain but to blossom and bring forth a better reality.
Let us take the next great step in the journey they began and believed in.
Today, let us recommit our very selves to placing Nigeria in our hearts as the indispensable home for each and every one of us regardless of creed, ethnicity, or place of birth.
My supporters, I thank you. To those who voted otherwise, I extend my hand across the political divide. I ask you to grasp it in national affinity and brotherhood. For me, political coloration has faded away. All I see are Nigerians.
May we uphold these fitting and excellent notions as the new Nigerian ideal.
My fellow compatriots,
The Nigerian ideal which I speak of is more than just an improvement in economic and other statistics. These things are important; but they can never convey the fullness of our story.
Our mission is to improve our way of life in a manner that nurtures our humanity, encourages compassion toward one another, and duly rewards our collective effort to resolve the social ills that seek to divide us.
Our constitution and laws give us a nation on paper. We must work harder at bringing these noble documents to life by strengthening the bonds of economic collaboration, social cohesion, and cultural understanding. Let us develop a shared sense of fairness and equity.
The South must not only seek good for itself but must understand that its interests are served when good comes to the North. The North must see the South likewise.
Whether from the winding creeks of the Niger Delta, the vastness of the northern savannah, the boardrooms of Lagos, the bustling capital of Abuja, or the busy markets of Onitsha, you are all my people. As your president, I shall serve with prejudice toward none but compassion and amity towards all.
In the coming days and weeks, my team will publicly detail key aspects of our programme. Today, permit me to outline in broad terms a few initiatives that define our concept of progressive good governance in furtherance of the Nigerian ideal:
The principles that will guide our administration are simple:

Nigeria will be impartially governed according to the constitution and the rule of law. We shall defend the nation from terror and all forms of criminality that threaten the peace and stability of our country and our subregion. We shall remodel our economy to bring about growth and development through job creation, food security and an end of extreme poverty. In our administration, Women and youth will feature prominently. Our government will continue to take proactive steps such as championing a credit culture to discourage corruption while strengthening the effectiveness and efficiency of the various anti-corruption agencies. 

SECURITY
Security shall be the top priority of our administration because neither prosperity nor justice can prevail amidst insecurity and violence.
To effectively tackle this menace, we shall reform both our security DOCTRINE and its ARCHITECTURE.
We shall invest more in our security personnel, and this means more than an increase in number. We shall provide, better training, equipment, pay and firepower.
THE ECONOMY
On the economy, we target a higher GDP growth and to significantly reduce unemployment.
We intend to accomplish this by taking the following steps:
First, budgetary reform stimulating the economy without engendering inflation will be instituted.
Second, industrial policy will utilize the full range of fiscal measures to promote domestic manufacturing and lessen import dependency.
Third, electricity will become more accessible and affordable to businesses and homes alike. Power generation should nearly double and transmission and distribution networks improved. We will encourage states to develop local sources as well.
I have a message for our investors, local and foreign: our government shall review all their complaints about multiple taxation and various anti-investment inhibitions.
We shall ensure that investors and foreign businesses repatriate their hard earned dividends and profits home.
JOBS
My administration must create meaningful opportunities for our youth. We shall honour our campaign commitment of one million new jobs in the digital economy.
Our government also shall work with the National Assembly to fashion an omnibus Jobs and Prosperity bill. This bill will give our administration the policy space to embark on labour-intensive infrastructural improvements, encourage light industry and provide improved social services for the poor, elderly and vulnerable.
Agriculture
Rural incomes shall be secured by commodity exchange boards guaranteeing minimal prices for certain crops and animal products. A nationwide programme for storage and other facilities to reduce spoilage and waste will be undertaken.
Agricultural hubs will be created throughout the nation to increase production and engage in value-added processing. The livestock sector will be introduced to best modern practices and steps taken to minimize the perennial conflict over land and water resources in this sector.
Through these actions, food shall be made more abundant yet less costly. Farmers shall earn more while the average Nigerian pays less.
INFRASTRUCTURE
We shall continue the efforts of the Buhari administration on infrastructure. Progress toward national networks of roads, rail and ports shall get priority attention.
FUEL SUBSIDY
We commend the decision of the outgoing administration in phasing out the petrol subsidy regime which has increasingly favoured the rich more than the poor. Subsidy can no longer justify its ever-increasing costs in the wake of drying resources. We shall instead re-channel the funds into better investment in public infrastructure, education, health care and jobs that will materially improve the lives of millions.
MONETARY POLICY
Monetary policy needs thorough housecleaning. The Central Bank must work towards a unified exchange rate. This will direct funds away from arbitrage into meaningful investment in the plant, equipment and jobs that power the real economy.
Interest rates need to be reduced to increase investment and consumer purchasing in ways that sustain the economy at a higher level.
Whatever merits it had in concept, the currency swap was too harshly applied by the CBN given the number of unbanked Nigerians. The policy shall be reviewed. In the meantime, my administration will treat both currencies as legal tender.
FOREIGN POLICY
Given the world in which we reside, please permit a few comments regarding foreign policy.
The crisis in Sudan and the turn from democracy by several nations in our immediate neighbourhood are of pressing concern.
As such, my primary foreign policy objective must be the peace and stability of the West African subregion and the African continent. We shall work with ECOWAS, the AU and willing partners in the international community to end extant conflicts and to resolve new ones.
As we contain threats to peace, we shall also retool our foreign policy to more actively lead the regional and continental quest for collective prosperity.
Conclusion
This is the proudest day of my life. But this day does not belong to me. It belongs to you, the people of Nigeria.
On this day, Nigeria affirms its rightful place among the world’s great democracies. There, Nigeria shall reside forever.
The course of our past and the promise of the future have brought us to this exceptional moment.
In this spirit, I ask you to join me in making Nigeria a more perfect nation and democracy such that the Nigerian ideal becomes and forever remains the Nigerian reality.
With full confidence in our ability, I declare that these things are within our proximate reach because my name is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and I am the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
May God bless you and May He bless our beloved land.

HELLO! I HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN UNDERTALE AND I AM PLAYING IT WITH FLOWERY! AND IF YOU'RE ASKING WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FRIEND, THEN THE ANSWER IS THE REAL FRIEND WAS THE PAPYRUS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY! YES, I HAVE FOOLED YOU INTO BELIEVING IT WAS A FRIEND THAT WANTED TO PLAY UNDERTALE, BUT IT WAS ME ALL ALONG! I'M SORRY FOR LYING, BUT I WANTED IT TO BE A SURPRISE!
SO I HAVE STARTED MY JOURNEY BY READING THE STORY ABOUT HUMANS AND MONSTERS, AND THEN I NAMED THE FALLEN HUMAN! IT WOULDN'T LET ME USE "PAPYRUS" SO I NAMED MYSELF "COOL"! AND THEN I SAW FRISK STARING AT ME ON A FLOWER BED, AND I CAN MOVE THEM! SO I GUESS FRISK IS WHO I SHALL PLAY AS!
I HAVE TRAVERSED INTO THE NEXT ROOM AND I MET FLOWERY! AND HE IS TEACHING ME ABOUT BATTLES AND LOVE, BUT THEN HE SHOOTS BULLETS AT ME SO I AVOID THEM UNTIL HE GETS VERY ANGRY AND TRIES TO KILL ME (VERY INACCURATE OF YOU, GAME!) BUT THANKFULLY, TORIEL HAS SAVED ME WITH THE POWER OF FIREBALLS, WHICH HOPEFULLY DIDN'T HURT FLOWERY TOO MUCH!
I'VE ARRIVED AT THE RUINS AND TOUCHED THE SHINY YELLOW SPINNING STAR THING, AND GOT FILLED WITH DETERMINATION FROM THE RUINS! I GUESS THAT'S HOW I SAVE! TORIEL SHOWS ME HOW PUZZLES WORK, WHICH I DIDN'T NEED HELP, BUT FRISK PROBABLY DID SO I'M GRATEFUL ANYWAY! A FEW SWITCHES FLIPPED LATER AND FRISK HAS ENTERED THEIR FIRST BATTLE! THE FIRST THING I NOTICED IS THE HUMAN DOESN'T HAVE A MAGIC OPTION, BUT I CAN WORK WITH THAT! FLOWERY SUGGESTED I SHOULD SPARE THE DUMMY OVER AND OVER, BUT THAT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING SO I TALKED TO IT INSTEAD AND TORIEL WAS PROUD OF ME! UNFORTUNATELY THE DUMMY WASN'T VERY INTERESTED IN TALKING WITH ME!
I ENTER THE NEXT ROOM, AND PREPARE FOR THE PUZZLE UP AHEAD THAT TORIEL HAS WARNED ME ABOUT! BEFORE I CAN READ THE SIGN ON THE WALL, I GET JUMPED BY A FROGGIT, SO I COMPLIMENT IT AND TORIEL SCARES IT AWAY (HOW RUDE!) I READ THE SIGN AND MEMORIZE THE CORRECT PATH, AND FLOWERY SAYS IT DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE TORIEL WILL HOLD MY HAND ANYWAY! INTERESTING HOW HE KNEW THAT, BUT HE IS GOOD AT PREDICTING THE FUTURE!
I ENTER THE NEXT ROOM AND TORIEL RUNS FROM ME, SO I RUN TO THE END OF THE ROOM AND FIND A PILLAR, WITH TORIEL HIDING BEHIND IT VERY POORLY, BUT I PRETEND TO NOT KNOW SHE'S THERE TO MAKE HER HAPPY! SHE RETREATS FROM THE PILLAR AND GIVES ME A CELL PHONE AND LEAVES! I THEN WAIT FOR TORIEL AND CALL HER SOMETIMES, BUT THEN I LEARN THE ANNOYING DOG IS HARASSING HER AND I LEAVE TO GO SAVE HER!
BUT AS SOON AS I LEAVE THE ROOM, TORIEL CALLS ME, SO I GUESS SHE HAS EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL! FLOWERY REFUSES TO LET ME STAY IN THE OTHER ROOM, SO ONWARD I GO! I TALK TO A FROGGIT AND IT TELLS ME ABOUT MERCY! I GET FILLED WITH DETERMINATION BY PLAYING THE LEAVES AND SAVE THE GAME! THEN I GO UP AND FIND A BOWL OF CANDY! FLOWERY SUGGESTS I STEAL ALL THE CANDY I CAN, BUT I ONLY TAKE ONE! I INSPECT THE CANDY, AND LEARN IT HEALS 10HP! INTERESTING!
I PREPARE TO LEAVE THE ROOM, BUT ANOTHER FROGGIT ATTACKS ME! I COMPLIMENT IT AND IT SHOOTS MAGIC FLIES AT ME, SO I DODGE THE MAGIC FLIES WITH EASE AND SPARE THE FROGGIT! THEN I ENTER THE NEXT ROOM AND FALL DOWN AND SEE TWO DOORS! FLOWERY URGES ME TO GO TO THE DOOR ON THE RIGHT, AND I GET ACROSS THE FALLING FLOOR AND ESCAPE TO THE NEXT ROOM!
AS SOON AS I WALK FORWARD, I GET A CALL FROM TORIEL WHO IS ASKING IF I PREFER CINNAMON OR BUTTERSCOTCH! FLOWERY SAYS IT DOESN'T MATTER WHICH OPTION I CHOOSE BUT DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHY IT DOESN'T MATTER, SO I CHOOSE CINNAMON! I WALK FORWARD SOME MORE AND GET ANOTHER CALL FROM TORIEL, WHO IS NOW ASKING IF I DISLIKE BUTTERSCOTCH! I THEN FEEL BAD FOR LEAVING THE ROOM BECAUSE SHE HAS THANKED ME FOR BEING PATIENT, BUT FLOWERY STILL DOESN'T WANT ME TO GO BACK! I PUSH A ROCK A BIT AND THE SPIKES GO DOWN, BUT I GET ATTACKED BY A WHIMSUN, WHO LOOKS VERY AFRAID! I TRY TO CONSOLE IT, BUT IT RUNS AWAY! BEFORE I CAN LEAVE TO THE NEXT ROOM, TORIEL CALLS YET AGAIN, ASKING IF I HAVE ANY ALLERGIES! FRISK ASKS WHY SHE'S ASKING AND SHE SUSPICIOUSLY SAYS THERE'S NO REASON!
I ENTER THE NEXT ROOM, AND SEE A BUNCH OF FALLING-GROUND THINGS! FLOWERY GETS BORED OF WATCHING ME FALL OVER AND OVER AND HELPS ME WITH THE PUZZLE! BEFORE I CAN LEAVE TO THE NEXT ROOM, I GET ATTACKED BY A MOLDSMAL! I FLIRT WITH IT, AND WE HAVE A VERY MEANINGFUL CONVERSATION! THEN I SPARE IT, AND LEAVE TO THE NEXT ROOM!
I SEE 3 MORE ROCKS AND START PUSHING THEM OVER, BUT THE THIRD ROCK IS ALIVE! FRISK ASKS IT TO MOVE, AND IT DOES SOME TOMFOOLARY, BUT FINALLY I GET IT TO THE BUTTON! BUT THEN IT MOVES OFF THE BUTTON AS SOON AS I APPROACH THE SPIKES!!! I ASK IT TO STAY ON THE BUTTON, AND IT FINALLY UNDERSTANDS, AND I AM ABLE TO ESCAPE TO THE NEXT ROOM!
I FIND SOME CHEESE AND GET FILLED WITH DETERMINATION FROM THE KNOWLEDGE THAT THE MOUSE MAY ESCAPE THE HOLE AND GET THE CHEESE, AND SAVE THE GAME! I INTERACT WITH THE HOLE AND THE MOUSE SQUEAKS AT ME! I THEN LEAVE TO THE NEXT ROOM!
I ENTER THE NEXT ROOM AND SEE NAPSTABLOOK PRETENDING TO TAKE A NAP! I TRY TO WAIT FOR THEM TO LEAVE, BUT THEY DON'T MOVE SO I UNFORTUNATELY HAVE TO MOVE THEM WITH FORCE! I CHOOSE TO CHEER AT THEM, AND FRISK SMILES AT THEM, WHICH NAPSTABLOOK FINDS FUNNY?? I GET HIT TRYING TO AVOID THE MAGIC TEARS AND CHEER AT NAPSTABLOOK ONCE MORE, AND FRISK TELLS THEM A JOKE! NAPSTABLOOK PULLS A SANS MOVE AND DOESN'T ATTACK, SO I CHEER ONCE MORE! NAPSTABLOOK TRANSFORMS INTO DAPPERBLOOK AND I CHEER ONCE AGAIN, AND WIN THE BATTLE! NAPSTABLOOK LEAVES AND I LEAVE TO THE NEXT ROOM!
I READ A SIGN AND IT TELLS ME ABOUT THE SPIDER BAKESALE, SO I GO BACK TO BUY SOMETHING, BUT I ONLY HAVE 3G! FLOWERY TELLS ME I SHOULD FIND MONSTERS AND SPARE THEM, AND THEY WILL GIVE ME MORE G! I GET HIT AGAIN, BUT I HAVE ENOUGH MONEY FOR A SPIDER DONUT, SO I GO BUY ONE AND INSPECT IT, AND LEARN IT HEALS 12HP! I THEN CONTINUE ON MY ADVENTURES! I ALSO SAVE AT THE MOUSE ROOM AGAIN, AND I AM AT FULL HP! HOW CONVENIENT!
I TALK TO THE FIRST FROGGIT IN THE ROOM, AND LEARN HOW TO GO INTO FULL SCREEN! AND THEN WE WONDER WHAT F4 STANDS FOR TOGETHER! I TALK TO THE SECOND FROGGIT IN THE ROOM, AND IT TELLS ME ABOUT YELLOW NAMES, WHICH AGAIN, I ALREADY KNOW, BUT FRISK DOES NOT, AND I AM THANKFUL FOR FROGGIT TELLING THEM! IT ALSO SAYS I WILL HAVE TO SPARE WITHOUT YELLOW NAMES, WHICH DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE TO ME AT THE TIME! I TRY TO LEAVE THE ROOM, BUT TORIEL CALLS ME AND TELLS ME TO LEAVE SPACE IN MY POCKETS FOR SOMETHING COOL I MIGHT WANT, AND I LEAVE TO THE NEXT ROOM!
I ENTER A ROOM AND LEARN I NEED TO FIND A SWITCH HIDDEN SOMEWHERE! FLOWERY TELLS ME TO LOOK AT THE TOP MIDDLE ONE LAST, SO I DO THAT AND FIND A RIBBON, NAPSTABLOOK, AND TWO VEGETOIDS! I INSPECT THE RIBBON AND PUT IT ON FOR EXTRA DEFENSES, AND BETTER LOOKS! I GET ATTACKED BY A MOLDSMAL AND A MIGOSP, AND I SPARE THEM WITH EASE, AND ESCAPE TO THE NEXT ROOM!
I FIND THREE PILLARS AND THREE DIFFERENTLY COLORED SWITCHES NEXT TO ALL OF THEM! THE SIGN SAYS THE ROOM IS GOING TO ROTATE, SO I MEMORIZE THE ROOM AND MOVE FORWARD! THE SIGN SAYS I SHOULD PRESS THE BLUE SWITCH, WHICH I REMEMBER IS BY THE FIRST PILLAR! BUT I GET ATTACKED BY TWO VEGETOIDS AND GET HIT! I ENTER THE NEXT ROTATION AND THE SIGN TELLS ME TO FLIP THE RED SWITCH, WHICH IS IN MY VISION! I FLIP THE SWITCH AND GET ATTACKED BY ANOTHER MOLDSMAL AND MIGOSP, AND SPARE THEM ONCE AGAIN! BY PROCESS OF ELIMINATION, I FIGURE OUT I NEED TO FLIP THE GREEN SWITCH, WHICH IS BEHIND ONE OF THE PILLARS! I LEAVE TO THE FIRST ROOM TO REFRESH MY MEMORY, AND AFTER SOME THINKING, I FIND THE GREEN SWITCH AND MOVE FORWARD!
I FINALLY ENTER A NEW ROOM, AND FIND TWO DIFFERENT PATHS! FLOWERY TELLS ME TO GO RIGHT, AND I FIND A FROGGIT, WHO TELLS ME TORIEL WAS HERE RECENTLY! I ALSO LEARN THAT FROGGIT IS INTIMIDATED BY TORIEL, WHICH IS STRANGE BECAUSE OF HOW KIND SHE IS! I GO UP TO FIND A GIANT CITY, AND A TOY KNIFE! I INSPECT THE TOY KNIFE, AND LEARN IT IS A DEADLY WEAPON, SO I DISCARD IT! I THEN GO TO THE OTHER PATH AND REUNITE WITH TORIEL! SHE HEALS ME AND TAKES ME TO HER HOME!
I ENTER TORIEL'S HOUSE AND SHE TELLS ME SHE WAS MAKING A PIE TO WELCOME ME TO THE UNDERGROUND! SHE ALSO TAKES ME TO MY NEW BEDROOM, WHICH I WILL BE STAYING IN FOR THE TIME BEING! I EXPLORE THE ROOM, AND FIND SHOES AND TOYS AND VARIOUS OTHER COOL ITEMS! I TURN THE LIGHTS OFF AND THE SONG TURNS INTO A MUSIC BOX VERSION! I THEN DECIDE NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO GO TO SLEEP, AND I WAKE UP TO A SLICE OF PIE SITTING ON THE FLOOR! HOW KIND OF TORIEL TO LEAVE THIS HERE! I INSPECT IT AND LEARN IT FULLY HEALS ME! THIS MUST BE A VERY VALUABLE ITEM! I LEAVE MY BEDROOM AND INSPECT THE PLANTS AND DRAWERS AND THE MIRROR! I ALSO FIND A LOCKED ROOM, AND A NOT LOCKED ROOM!
SO NATURALLY, I ENTER THE NOT LOCKED ROOM, AND LEARN IT IS TORIEL'S BEDROOM! INSIDE HER BEDROOM IS A BUCKET OF SNAILS, WHICH FLOWERY DESCRIBES AS "SURPRISINGLY GOOD", AND JUDGING BY HOW TORIEL TALKED ABOUT MAKING SNAIL PIE EARLIER, I'D SAY FLOWERY AND TORIEL EAT SNAILS! WHICH IS TOTALLY NORMAL, ACCORDING TO FLOWERY! I ALSO FIND TORIEL'S DIARY, AND DECIDE NOT TO READ IT TO RESPECT HER PRIVACY! I FIND THE MOST TSUNDERE OF PLANTS, CHAIRIEL, TORIEL'S BED, AND A BOOKSHELF THAT TELLS ME ABOUT TYPHA, OR WATER SAUSAGES! INTERESTING KNOWLEDGE! LASTLY, I FIND TORIEL'S SOCK DRAWER, AND I LEAVE THE ROOM!
I LEAVE THE HALLWAY AND INSPECT THE BOOKSHELF AND VERY OLD CALENDAR, AND THEN I TRY TO GO DOWNSTAIRS BUT TORIEL TELLS ME NOT TO! HOW SHE KNEW I WAS DOWN THERE, I HAVE NO IDEA. BUT ALAS, I MUSTN'T PLAY DOWNSTAIRS! I GO INTO THE LIVING ROOM AND FIND TORIEL READING A BOOK! I TALK TO HER, AND FRISK HAS THE OPTION TO ASK WHEN THEY CAN GO HOME?? FLOWERY TELLS ME TO LOOK AT EVERYTHING ELSE FIRST, AND SO I DO!
THE FIRE IS PLEASANTLY WARM, MUST BE MAGIC FIRE! I FIND A HISTORY BOOK ABOUT MONSTERS BEING TRAPPED BY THE BARRIER, AND ALSO I LEARNED ABOUT ASGORE'S INCREDIBLE NAMING SKILLS! I FIND SOME TOOLS THAT HAVE BEEN FILED DOWN, AND ENTER THE KITCHEN! INSIDE THE FRIDGE, THERE IS A BRAND-NAME CHOCOLATE BAR! THE SINK HAS WHITE FUR STUCK IN THE DRAIN, AND I CANNOT IMAGINE WHO'S FUR THAT BELONGS TO! I LOOK IN THE CUPBOARD TO FIND COOKIE CUTTERS FOR GINGERBREAD MONSTERS, TO WHICH FLOWERY SAYS HE REMEMBERS STEALING GINGERBREAD MONSTERS FROM TORIEL WITH THE MEDDLING CANINE ONE TIME, AND IT WAS A "BONDING EXPERIENCE", WHICH IS VERY NOT COOL OF FLOWERY, BUT I FORGIVE HIM! I FIND THE UPGRADED PIE, BUT IT'S SIZE INTIMIDATED FRISK AND I CANNOT GET IT! LASTLY, I FIND THE VERY CLEAN STOVETOP, AND LEARN FROM THE NARRATOR THAT TORIEL USES FIRE MAGIC TO COOK! INTERESTING METHODS, I PREFER USING NON-MAGIC FIRE, BUT IT IS WHAT IT IS!
I THEN TRY TO FIND ANYTHING ELSE TO LOOK AT, BUT FIND NOTHING. SO I AM UNFORTUNATELY FORCED TO ASK HOW TO LEAVE! BUT THEN TORIEL ASKS ME TO LISTEN TO HER BOOK ABOUT SNAILS AND I FEEL SUPER BAD, SO I LISTEN TO HER, AND I LEARN THAT SNAILS SOMETIMES FLIP THEIR DIGESTIVE SYSTEMS AS THEY MATURE! I DIDN'T NEED THAT KNOWLEDGE, BUT I HAVE IT NOW! AFTER SOME BOONDOGGLING, I GET THE COURAGE TO ASK HER HOW TO LEAVE, AND SHE RUNS AWAY! I LOOK THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE HOUSE, BUT I CAN'T FIND HER! I CALL HER, BUT SHE DOESN'T PICK UP!!
I FINALLY REALIZE THAT THE BASEMENT IS THE ONLY PLACE I HAVEN'T LOOKED, SO I GO DOWN THERE AND SEE TORIEL STANDING THERE! I WALK UP TO HER AND SHE TELLS ME SHE IS GOING TO DESTROY THE EXIT TO THE RUINS SO I CANNOT LEAVE! SHE TELLS ME TO GO UPSTAIRS BUT I HAVE TO CONVINCE HER TO LET FRISK ESCAPE, SO I CONTINUE MOVING FORWARD! TORIEL TELLS ME ABOUT HOW THE OTHER HUMANS THAT FELL DOWN HERE HAVE DIED TO ASGORE??? VERY INACCURATE YET AGAIN, GAME! BUT I DECIDE TO MOVE FORWARD ONCE MORE! TORIEL TELLS ME THIS IS MY FINAL WARNING, AND I CONTINUE MOVING FORWARD, AND SHE THROWS ME INTO BATTLE!
THE FIRST THING I DO IS TRY TO TALK HER OUT OF THIS, BUT FRISK CAN'T THINK OF ANY CONVERSATION TOPICS! IF ONLY I HAD BEEN THERE TO HELP!! TORIEL THROWS FIRE AT ME, AND I TRY TO CHECK HER FOR SOME EXTRA KNOWLEDGE! I LEARN TORIEL HAS 80 ATK AND 80 DEF, WHICH IS HIGHLY INTIMIDATING, BUT I CANNOT GIVE UP! I GET HIT BY HER NEXT ATTACK, AND I TRY TALKING YET AGAIN, BUT TO NO AVAIL! I TRY ONE FINAL TIME TO TALK, BUT FRISK JUST CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING!! I GET HIT TWO MORE TIMES AND AM BROUGHT DOWN TO 12HP!
EVENTUALLY, I SPARE HER, AND SHE REMAINS SILENT, BUT IT SHOWED TEXT THIS TIME! THAT MEANS I'M GETTING SOMEWHERE! I GET HIT ANOTHER 3 TIMES AND AM BROUGHT DOWN TO 3HP, SO I HEAL USING THE MONSTER CANDY! I CONTINUE SPARING HER, AND SHE STAYS SILENT, UNTIL EVENTUALLY SHE USES A QUESTION MARK! I SPARE HER YET AGAIN, AND SHE ASKS WHAT I AM DOING! I GET KNOCKED DOWN TO 7HP, BUT I CONTINUE SPARING! SHE TELLS ME TO ATTACK OR RUN AWAY, NONE OF WHICH I WILL BE DOING ANYTIME SOON! SHE ASKS WHAT I AM PROVING THIS WAY, AND I GET HIT, BUT LEARN SHE'S NOW ONLY DEALING 1 DAMAGE! I SPARE AGAIN, AND SHE TELLS ME TO FIGHT HER OR LEAVE, WHICH I AM STILL NOT DOING! I SPARE HER AGAIN, AND SHE TELLS ME TO STOP IT. I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY MORE TIMES I CAN TELL HER I'M NOT DOING THAT. SHE TELLS ME TO STOP LOOKING AT HER THAT WAY, BUT THAT'S FRISK'S FACIAL EXPRESSION, WHICH I CANNOT CONTROL! I SPARE HER AGAIN AND SHE TELLS ME TO GO AWAY! HOW RUDE. I SPARE AGAIN, AND SHE GOES SILENT AGAIN! I SPARE HER AGAIN, AND SHE LOOKS SAD, AND HER FIREBALLS ARE NOW AVOIDING ME! VERY SAD, BUT I'M DOING IT!
I SPARE HER AGAIN AND THE MUSIC CUTS OUT. SHE ASKS ME TO GO UPSTAIRS, BUT THE FLEE OPTION IS GONE. NOT THAT I WAS GOING TO USE IT ANYWAY. SHE TELLS ME SHE WILL TAKE GOOD CARE OF ME HERE, AND I'M SURE SHE WILL, BUT FRISK CLEARLY WISHES TO RETURN TO THE SURFACE! SHE TRIES CONVINCING ME TO STAY. I CONTINUE SPARING HER, AND SHE ASKS ME WHY I AM MAKING THIS SO DIFFICULT. UNFORTUNATELY I CANNOT ANSWER. SHE ASKS ME TO GO UPSTAIRS, WHICH I DO NOT! SHE GOES QUIET AGAIN, AND STARTS LAUGHING! SHE THEN CALLS HERSELF PATHETIC, WHICH IS VERY NOT TRUE!! SHE GOES QUIET AGAIN, BUT SHE FINALLY AGREES TO LET FRISK GO!
THE BATTLE ENDS AND SHE TELLS ME TO NOT GO BACK TO THE RUINS! I WILL TRY TO CALL HER SOMETIMES WHILE ON MY JOURNEY! SHE THEN HUGS ME AND LEAVES! AND I DIDN'T CRY! I SWEAR! I THEN CONTINUE MOVING FORWARD, AND I MEET FLOWERY AGAIN, WHO SHAMES ME FOR SHOWING MERCY, AND LAUGHS AT ME! BUT NOW I KNOW HIS PLAN ISN'T REGICIDE, SO THAT'S GOOD! I THEN WALK INTO THE DOORWAY AND READ THE CREDITS! AND THEN I ARRIVE AT SNOWDIN, BY THE GIANT DOOR!
I WALK FORWARD AND GET HARASSED BY SOMEONE'S SILHOUETTE! I REACH THE BRIDGE AND STARE AT THE SILHOUETTE AND IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZE THAT IT'S SANS! VERY INACCURATE AGAIN, GAME! I MET THE HUMAN FIRST! BUT THIS IS SOMETHING SANS WOULD DO, SO ALSO ACCURATE IN A WAY! FRISK SHAKES SANS' HAND AND HEARS THE WHOOPEE CUSHION! SANS THEN ACTIVELY DOESN'T DO HIS JOB, AND SOMEHOW GOES THROUGH THE BARS, SAYING THEY'RE "too wide to stop anyone", WHICH IS VERY NOT TRUE! THOSE BARS STOPPED EVERYONE!
FRISK HIDES BEHIND THE LAMP AND A VERY HANDSOME AND COOL SKELETON RUNS ON-SCREEN! I ALSO WATCH THE SAME CONVERSATION I HAD WITH SANS THAT ONE TIME PLAY OUT, SO GOOD JOB FOR BEING ACCURATE, GAME! BUT ALSO HOW DOES THE GAME KNOW ABOUT THAT?? ALSO, IT JUST DAWNED ON ME THAT SANS WAS HELPING ME WITH HIS GOOFY ANTICS??? ANYWAY, FLOWERY AND I LAUGH AT MY PUN, BOO AT SANS' PUNS, AND CONTINUE MOVING FORWARD! SANS ASKS THE HUMAN TO SHOW THEMSELF TO ME TO CHEER ME UP, AND IF SANS REALLY DID THAT, I THANK YOU BROTHER! IT DID IN FACT CHEER ME UP! AND THEN SANS LEAVES, AND SO DO I!
I GET FILLED WITH DETERMINATION BY THE LAMP'S CONVENIENCE AND SAVE THE GAME! AND THAT IS WHERE I SHALL STOP PLAYING FOR NOW, BECAUSE I NEED TISSUE! BECAUSE! I AM NOT CRYING!! I JUST HAVE SOMETHING STUCK IN MY EYE AND NEED TO GET IT OUT!! I SHALL PLAY UNDERTALE AGAIN LATER! I HAD A LOT OF FUN, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS VERY INACCURATE SOMETIMES!
-NYEHFULLY YOURS, PAPYRUS AND FLOWERY

I've been having so much fun with this little story. Here's part one if you'd like to read it in its entirety! But to summarize:
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick were sent on a survey mission together. Things went south, Aldrick made sure they were safe, and then Vr'ocria learned what human sleep is and how vulnerable humans are when they sleep. Vr'ocria's people don't sleep, but enter stasis, a form of rest in which they typically stand, and they are still slightly aware of their surroundings. Vr'ocria finds human sleep utterly adorable, and also decided she would protect Aldrick while he slept. And she also developed a massive crush on him. (Her scales turning purple is her version of blushing)
Vr’ocria ran the engine diagnostic again, and again it came back inconclusive. She slammed her fist on the dusty controls. “Blasted thing.” Of course she got stuck with the rusty, crusty old shuttle pod that no one else wanted. Why did these things always happen to her? She just wanted to do her job!
Not for the first time, she wished she had Human Aldrick for company.
It had been two moon cycles since Vr’ocria had last seen Aldrick. They’d only served on the one away mission together, and once they returned to the ship, they’d been sent their separate ways. They worked in separate departments, after all.
But that didn’t stop her from missing him. She’d only spent a few solar cycles with him, but somehow was already totally enamored by the human–the human who was supposed to be a terrifying, dangerous, nearly indestructible monster.
Vr'ocria had met a handful of humans during her service, and they were all polite enough. But Aldrick was the first human she'd ever spent any extended alone time with. It was on that away mission that Vr’ocria learned what “sleep” was: The human form of rest in which the human becomes completely unconscious, and thus, totally defenseless. Something about learning humans were even able of being defenseless at all, much less in such a complete way, had changed her entire perspective on them. She’d grown up always being told to fear the humans, the wild, indestructible humans.
She had been nervous enough to quake in her scales, but he was nothing but kind to her. And when she saw him sleep for the first time–planets, what a blasted cutie. During their few cycles together, she always stood by him when he slept and she went into stasis. Her people were still slightly aware of their surroundings while in stasis, so she would be able to protect him if there was danger.
She couldn’t help but worry about him ever since they separated. Who was going to keep watch while he slept? What if something happened, what if there was an ambush or a ship malfunction and he couldn’t wake up fast enough? She wanted to be there for him…
Vr’ocria cringed at the memory of when she asked her nestmate, Galek, about human mating rituals.
“You want to mate him? Are you insane?”
"No! I mean–well…" Vr'ocria reminded herself to keep her voice down; Aldrick was still sleeping in the next room. "I…Galek, listen–"
"He's a human!" Even through the communicator, she could hear his scales snap. "He's dangerous!"
"He's nice! When the away mission went wrong he made sure we were safe and–" her voice caught when she remembered the way Aldrick strolled fearlessly through a thunderstorm, one warm hand gripping her wrist, unflinching at every thunderclap and lightning strike in the sky that rattled her to her core, as he led them to a cave for shelter.
Galek sighed. "Vr'ocria, let it go. We are not compatible with humans, they do things differently anyway. They don't mate."
Vr'ocria stilled. "They don't?"
"No. Well, kind of? Ugh, why am I even telling you this…"
"Because I'm your favorite nestmate," Vr'ocria grinned.
"Shut up." There was no bite to his words. "Anyway, what I mean is that humans usually court each other first, and then mate. I think they call it 'marriage.' But that's all I know."
She hummed in thought. "This is good to know."
"Vr'ocria, I mean it." Galek was back in protective-nestmate-mode. "Drop it, it's a terrible idea. Humans are…it's just a bad idea, okay?"
"I'm not gonna do anything," she mumbled.
And what if he doesn't even like me anyway?
Her scales faded to a faint red and her shoulders slumped at the thought. Back in the present, she absent-mindedly flicked through the controls on the cracked panel in front of her. Maybe Galek was right, and she should just stay away from Aldrick altogether.
“Agent Vr’ocria, report.”
Vr’ocria jumped at the tinny voice that suddenly filled the cabin. She pressed the comm button. “Commander, this pod is–” she stopped herself from using a few choice words– “in a state of engine malfunction. I can’t even diagnose a problem. I’m not going anywhere in this thing.”
”Stand by.”
Vr’ocria drummed her fingers on the consol.
”Agent Vr’ocria, you’ve been reassigned to shuttle pod Delta. You will join a crewmate there.”
That’s right, Delta was a two-person pod. She groaned inwardly at the prospect of working with someone else in such a cramped space.
Vr’ocria tried not to drag her feet as she approached the Delta pod. The loading door was already open, and she climbed inside. “Hello? I’ve been re–”
“Vr’ocria!”
She turned towards the cockpit, and her scales flashed to purple in record time. “Aldrick?”
The human was beaming as he maneuvered through the tight space to approach her. “It’s so good to see you again!”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, silently urging her scales to go back to green. “Aren’t you in engineering?”
He shrugged, suddenly looking everywhere except her face. “I uh..I asked to be transferred to the survey department.”
“Why?”
His cheeks turned pink. They seemed to do that a lot. Vr’ocria really needed to ask the ship’s doctor if that was normal for humans or if he was getting sick. “Engineering just wasn’t doing it for me, y’know? Needed a change of pace. I volunteered for that one survey mission and it turns out I liked it, so why not try it full time?" He turned back towards the cockpit. “We should get going! I think this mission is gonna be more fun than the last one. The planet we've been assigned has a more stable atmosphere, so fewer storms."
So she and Aldrick would be working together, alone, again. Vr'ocria swallowed hard before following him to the cockpit. Oh, planets, why did these things always happen to her?
—
The trip to planet Theta-7 was quiet. Aldrick occasionally tried to engage her in conversation, but Vr'ocria pretended to be engrossed in her file pad. Guilt prodded her spine with every one-word answer and noncommittal grunt, but she was determined to keep her distance. Aldrick eventually fell quiet, and her scales nearly curled in on themselves in shame.
She avoided looking in his direction, but she still heard the sound of his canteen unscrewing and the slosh of liquid as he took a sip. Her nostrils flared at the odd, bitter-sable scent.
When she realized she recognized the smell, her eyes blew wide and she whirled to face him, dropping her pad. "What are you doing?" She nearly shrieked.
Aldrick lowered the canteen from his lips, looking startled. "Uh…drinking my coffee?"
"Coffee?" Another foreign word. "That's remfrylie! It's a deadly poison!" Her blood was rushing through her veins so fast she feared her scales would start to swell.
Aldrick laughed.
Laughed?
Her scales turned yellow and stood on end. "What is this?" She asked indignantly.
"I'm so sorry, Vr'ocria," he rubbed his eyes, still chortling. "I forgot, I should've warned you–humans call remfrylie 'coffee.' It's a beverage, we drink it. The caffeine in it gives us a boost of energy."
She stared at him.
As if making a point, he took another big gulp from the canteen, and smiled at her. "See? Totally fine."
Slowly, her blood slowed and her scales laid back down. But there was still a thrill of fear deep inside her–she'd become so enamored with him that she'd forgotten how dangerous he was. Drinking pure poison? Just for a boost of energy?
She turned away, embarrassed, a little afraid, and a little angry at him for scaring her like that. She bent over to pick up her pad from where it fell at her feet and went back to mindlessly flicking through her files.
Fabric rustled as Aldrick shifted in the seat next to her. "Hey," he said softly, "I really am sorry for scaring you. I didn't mean to do that."
"It's okay." Her voice was clipped and short.
Aldrick was quiet for a moment. "Is everything okay?" He asked slowly. "Have I…I mean, have I done something to offend you? I'm really sorry if–"
Guilt washed over her again. "No, no you haven't done anything." She finally looked over and tried for a weak smile. Now that she was actually looking at him, she could see the way he'd turned his whole body to face her, his fingers fidgeting at the edge of his seat and his warm brown eyes filled with worry.
Oh, that's right, humans had color in their eyes. Her people only had large black pupils, but humans had pupils with–what's the word–an "iris." She'd seen humans with brightly colored irises before, and while she found them beautiful, they also freaked her out. It was just so very strange.
But Aldrick's eyes…
The brown was a little closer to her own black, making them feel more familiar. In the tiny, cramped cabin, she realized that this was the first time she'd ever gotten a chance to really study his eyes up close. The brown seemed to swirl, and she noticed that there were layers of shades and colors floating around his pupils. And when natural light from a sun shining through the window hit them just right–
Aldrick cleared his throat awkwardly and turned to face forwards again. "Looks like we're here."
Vr'ocria looked forward and saw Theta-7's solar system quickly approaching. Oh, right. They had a mission to do.
—
Theta-7 was warm, just how she liked it. The sand, not so much. She tightened her boot laces twice to keep sand from finding its way inside.
The mission, thankfully, went smoothly. Walk, scan, record. Walk, scan, record. Being out in the field was different from working aboard the ship like she usually did, but she found she enjoyed it. With the agreeable weather, she quite liked the peaceful repetitiveness of the work.
Although, things were still awkward between her and Aldrick. She fought the urge to make excuses to drift away from him–since it was just the two of them, they needed to remain within eyesight of each other in case anything happened. As a result, she had a front row seat to Aldrick’s human antics. He climbed trees like it was nothing, crossed a stream by easily hopping from boulder to boulder, nibbled on plants he claimed were edible but that still made Vr’ocria’s scales ripple with unease, and even insisted on approaching a ferocious, furry creature with his hand outstretched and cooing “Hi kitty! Hi baby! Come here, let me give you scritchies, come on–”
Vr’ocria didn’t know what a “kitty” was, but a baby it definitely wasn’t. “Aldrick, please,” she called weakly.
“But she’s so cute!”
“It’s got claws! And look at its big teeth!”
Aldrick grinned as the creature crept closer. Its head came to Aldrick’s hip from where he knelt, still reaching out with his fingers and making a scratching motion in the air. “Naw, she’s just a little baby, aren’t you sweetie? Come ‘ere!”
Vr’ocria trembled on the spot as the creature was finally within arm’s reach of Aldrick. He began scratching its sandy-colored head, and to her disbelief, the creature closed its big eyes and leaned into his touch. “Oh, yes,” Aldrick positively giggled, “you’re such a sweet little baby, aren’t you?”
Vr’ocria could only stare, stunned, as he continued scratching the creature’s head, then its cheek and chin–extremely close to its massive fangs.
“All kitties like scritchies, huh?” he cooed at the…kitty.
Okay, they were kind of cute.
It, she corrected herself. The ”kitty” was cute. Not him. Definitely not.
She didn’t notice her scales flushing a soft pink as she watched him nearly pull the “kitty” into his lap, beaming and petting it. A gentle smile crossed her lips.
Aldrick glanced over at her and tilted his head. “You’re pink. That’s new, I haven’t seen that color on you before.”
Vr’ocria’s blood froze and her scales immediately flashed to purple. Blast. Shit. Fuck. Great, now she was picking up human curse words.
He blinked at the sudden change in color.
"Oh it’s–” she coughed, “it’s nothing. Just the heat, I think.”
“Are you okay?” He eased away from the creature as he stood, and it darted off into a hole in the rocks. “Do we need to take a break?”
Stop being so NICE, she growled inwardly. “No no,” she squeaked instead. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.” She buried her head in her scanner and walked briskly towards the next scanning zone.
When night fell, the two of them made their way back to the shuttle pod. They still had scanning to do, but it wasn’t safe to work through the night, so they agreed it was best for them to take rest inside the pod.
Once they were safely inside, Aldrick laid out what he called a “bedroll” on the floor of the cockpit, between the two pilot seats. Still dressed in his uniform, he laid down and shifted until he appeared as comfortable as he could get. Tugging a blanket over himself, he glanced toward Vr’ocria. “Well...good night.”
“Sleep well,” she murmured. She stood in the short aisle in front of him, facing the door, and began to enter stasis. Despite how much she’d come to struggle with her feelings for him, she was still determined to protect him while he slept.
It was in the middle of the night when Vr’ocria snapped back to full awareness.
Thud.
There it was again.
Shuffle shuffle.
She whirled around and threw herself on top of Aldrick, clapping a hand over his mouth as he jerked awake with a muffled shout.
“Shh!” she hissed. “Something’s out there.”
He stared up at her with wide eyes as she slowly removed her hand. She didn’t move from her position on top of him as she looked up and around the cabin, trying to discern where the sound was coming from.
Thud.
“The door,” Aldrick whispered, looking over her shoulder.
There was one last thud, then a beeping sound.
”Shit!”
Without warning, Aldrick was grabbing her shoulders and flipping them so that he was on top, and before she could even react, there was a core-rattling BOOM.
She couldn’t hear herself scream as a shockwave blew fire and debris over them, and then everything went dark.
Vr’ocria groaned as she came to, her head pounding. She found herself sprawled in the sand, looking up at the night sky. She slowly pushed herself into a sitting position, her limbs heavy. “What…” when her eyes focused, she gasped in horror.
The side of the shuttle pod where the door used to be now had a big hole blasted through it. Debris and supplies were strewn out across the ground, and judging by the drag marks, it looked like someone had dragged her body out and thrown her haphazardly into the sand.
She leapt to her feet, stumbled, fell, and jumped up again. Forcing her legs to steady under her, she stormed into the pod, and came face-to-face with a Norvidian pirate.
“Fucking pirate,” she roared, drawing her fist back and punching him right in the face. He yelped and dropped the thing he was dragging, and with horror, she realized it was Aldrick.
Something deep and primal flooded through her veins, and she grabbed the Norvidian's head. She slammed it against the wall, once, twice, three times, before dropping him to the ground, where he oozed yellow blood.
“Well that was fucking scary.”
Vr’ocria snapped out of her haze.
Aldrick was struggling to climb to his feet, and she darted forward to catch him before his face hit the floor. “Oh planets, oh my–Aldrick, are you alright?”
He rubbed a hand over his face, still looking dazed. “Yeah, I think–I think I’m okay.” He laughed, and it sounded a little hysterical. “Did you kill that guy?”
She looked over at the pirate, and somehow, she felt no remorse. “I hope so,” she growled. Logically, she knew the pirate was probably just tossing the two of them outside so he could raid their supplies. But the sight of him dragging a limp and pale Aldrick was burned into her memory, and her bright yellow scales rippled with rage.
“Jesus, you’re fucking scary when you’re angry.” He laughed again. “It’s kinda hot.” He turned pink and his face twisted in an expression she didn’t recognize. “Uh, pretend I didn’t say that.”
Vr’ocria didn’t know what it meant for something to be “hot,” so she played along and pretended she didn’t hear that. “We need to get you cleaned up,” she said instead. “Can you stand?”
Aldrick started to shift his legs, then went tense and dropped his head to her shoulder with a groan. It was then that Vr’ocria was able to lean forward enough to see his back, and she gasped.
The back of his shirt was in tatters, stained red with blood. Cuts and burns raced across his skin, and Vr’ocria knew that if she had taken the blast like that, she would be dead.
“Aldrick–” her throat felt thick, “Your back…shit–”
His breathing was ragged against her shoulder. “Hurts like a bitch,” he ground out, “but it won’t kill me. Just need to disinfect and bandage it.”
She laid him down on his stomach as gently as possible and rushed to the cockpit, praying that the first aid kit was undamaged. “Thank the planets,” she breathed as her fingers closed around the handle of an intact box.
She tried to steady her shaking fingers as she gingerly cut his shirt away and began dressing the wounds according to the kit’s instructions for treating humans. She also dressed the few injuries that ran down the back of his legs. Luckily–or unluckily–the damage was concentrated on his back. While she worked, she could see his muscles tense tight enough to crack, his teeth grinding and his hands clenched into fists so tight that his knuckles were white. She knew there had to be painkillers in the first aid kit, but she wanted to get his wounds dressed as fast as possible to prevent him from bleeding anymore. All she could do in the meantime was whisper quiet apologies.
Once she’d gotten him bandaged up, she finally dug through the kit. “Here,” she said as she fumbled with a bottle, “I found some pain killers, they’re supposed to be fast acting. You just let them dissolve in your mouth.”
She could tell he was in too much pain to move, so she held two of the pills up to his lips. He let her feed them to him, and after a few moments, he visibly began to relax. “Oh, that’s good shit,” he slurred into the floor.
“Feel better?” Vr’ocria asked hopefully.
“Yeah.” His voice was still crackly and weak. “Still aches a bit, but I don’t wanna scream about it anymore.”
“Good.” She stood and draped a blanket over him. “Now, stay put and don’t try to move. I need to figure out how to get us out of here.”
The shuttle pod wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. When she investigated the control panel, she found that the blast had knocked out communications, and their personal communicators were wrecked as well. “Great,” she mumbled.
Making her way back outside, she glanced around until she saw the pirate’s tiny craft a distance away. He must’ve landed out there so we wouldn’t hear him, she mused. She was reluctant to leave Aldrick alone, but she jogged the distance and pried the door open. The thing was a rust bucket, stinky and creaky, and she quickly decided she didn’t want to risk loading Aldrick up in that thing.
What to do, what to do…
Then she remembered: There was a survey outpost a few kilometers from here. She could take him there for professional treatment, rest, and to contact their ship.
When she got back to the pod, Aldrick was standing, leaning against the wall.
"How are you feeling?" She asked as she approached.
His eyes seemed clearer now as he looked up at her. "I've been worse," he said with a crooked smile.
Vr'ocria thanked the planets for human durability.
She let out a breath. "There's a survey outpost near here, due east. It's a few hours' walk. Do you think you can make it?"
Rather than answering, he stooped to pick up a blanket from the floor, shook out the dirt and debris, and threw it around his shoulders to cover his naked torso. "Let's go." He hopped easily out of the pod, and Vr'ocria could only shake her head in disbelief as she followed him. Humans truly were unbreakable.
It was still nighttime, but the clouds in the sky had cleared to reveal two big, bright moons that illuminated their way. Vr'ocria kept a close eye on Aldrick as they walked. While at first he seemed totally unaffected by his wounds now that they'd been dressed, she was beginning to notice the tight lines around his eyes, his white knuckles where he fisted the blanket, and the way each step he took was just a little shaky.
After walking in silence for nearly an hour, she finally found her voice. "Thank you," she said quietly, "for saving me back there."
He looked at her with those warm brown eyes and she thought she would melt. "Anytime."
Stupid purple scales.
They were halfway to the outpost when Aldrick collapsed. His knees hit the ground and Vr'ocria darted forward with a yelp to catch him before he went all the way down.
"Aldrick!" She shook him. "Look at me! Hey, hey…"
But all he could do was groan as his head lolled in her hands, slumping forward so that he sagged against her. Vr'ocria tried not to panic, but her scales stood on end anyway. "Aldrick!" This time her voice cracked.
Okay, okay, calm down, he's gonna be fine, he's human, it's gonna be okay… But doubt still twinged in her spine.
She ruffled her scales. Snap out of it.
"Okay. Aldrick," she took his face in her hands, "I need to put you on my back, but you'll have to help me."
He didn't respond.
She slapped him.
"Ow!" His eyes shot open. "Jesus, woman–"
"Look at me. I need to put you on my back, and you have to help me."
He blinked, eyes still cloudy, but finally nodded. It took some maneuvering, but Vr'ocria finally got him situated on her back–"piggy back style," he called it. She held his legs around her waist, and used the blanket to tie him to her. She could feel his warmth and heartbeat from where he was pressed against her back. His breath ghosted across the nape of her neck, sending tingles over her scales.
She tightened her grip around his knees as she walked. My human.
"You're pink again," Aldrick mumbled behind her ear.
Vr'ocria pressed on.
—
By the time they reached the outpost, her back was aching and her feet were sore, but she didn't care. She waved down the watchmen, and within minutes they were being swarmed by a med team. Aldrick was now fully unconscious and much too pale, and the medics wasted no time loading him up on a stretcher and carrying him to the med bay. When they tried to insist that Vr'ocria go to a separate room for evaluation, she snarled and snapped her yellow scales until they backed off.
She wasn't leaving Aldrick's side for a minute.
By the next morning, the med team had worked their magic and Aldrick was sleeping peacefully. He was curled on his side like he usually did, his face free of lines, lips parted, softly sighing with each breath.
Stupid human and his stupid cute sleeping.
She brushed his hair from his face, gently trailing her fingers across his cheek. Human skin was much softer compared to her scales, and warmer too. Aldrick had once explained that humans are "mammals," creatures that were "warm blooded." Her people were "cold blooded." Maybe that explained why she always wanted to touch him, hold him, feel his warmth…
Aldrick shifted and sighed, and her breath caught as he leaned into her hand. His eyes cracked open and he gazed blearily up at her. "Hi," he croaked.
She smiled. "Hi."
"You're still pink," he observed. "Are you okay? Did you get checked out?"
Blast all the planets. "I'm okay," she assured him. "My people turn pink when…when, um…I-I'll tell you another time," she stuttered. Galek was going to kill her.
Aldrick reached up to take her hand from where it still rested on his cheek. "Thank you for taking care of me."
She squeezed his hand. "Anytime."
This got so much longer than I thought it would 😂 How do we feel about one more part where these two idiots finally admit their feelings for one another?

A day late but we're here, my little cheeto eaters! Remember as always to grab your bingo cards and let's get our little long weekend slumber party going. This whole fucking thing is FORTY MINUTES LONG, you're all lucky that my sibling who was supposed to spend the day chilling at my place has apparently forgotten that plan.
​

• There's a new opening style than all her other vlogs. Not sure if that's because of Morgan but also I don't care enough to go hunt down exactly which influencer she cribbed this style from. It features a lot of horse butts. Also her using her phone in bed, which I thought she didn't do because she's mindful.
  • The music she uses is this song, which is DEFINITELY not copyright-free, so have fun learning how actual copyright law works, Paige! The lyrics playing over the are "there are times when/it feels right to/run away, run away/when you ask the same old questions/every day, every day/Why do I set the stage?/Why do I find my place on the pedestal?", because I guess Paige went to the Love is Blind school of "make sure the lyrics of whatever song you use are really, REALLY literal"
• Giveaway winners! Congrats to the three people who won a pile of Paige's old garbage! Don't worry though, if you didn't win her trash, she'll be doing a lot more of these because she "appreciates [us] guys so much" and "wants us to experience some of the things that I'm so grateful to get".
  • Nothing says grateful like giving away your extras to strangers and instead of doing anything to promote them like you were supposed to in return for getting them for free, using the existence of this stuff as a way to leverage yourself up on the algorithm.
    • There's also Dairy Boy in the giveaways, of course, because no one's buying it organically.
• She explains moving Louie, it's the same stuff she said on Instagram. Weirdly horses are like the only animal I've never gotten super obsessed with, so I have no idea how BS this is, but it's almost word-for-word her IG explanation, so it's the same level of BS that was. She does word this though as it being a "charity project" and "passion project" she "donated to", because there was a dearth I guess of places to keep your horse in the rich people part of Connecticut.
  • She has to first run to get a grazing muzzle so Louie doesn't overeat in the pasture. This sets off my internal bad animal treatment alarms in a huge way, but again, don't know enough about horses to know if this is warranted.
• Just kidding! Don't let Paige into a Tractor Supply unsupervised, she's too much of a ~country girl~ to not come out with "so much shit". She also got this beef jerky that looked "so good". It's Iowa Smokehouse beef jerky.
  • It apparently looked good because all she had for breakfast was coffee. Why she only had coffee I'm not sure, since it's not like she didn't have the time to get something better. Coffee and beef jerky for breakfast sure is a choice, and one I'm sure her intestines didn't make her pay for later. This summer is all about ~hot girl indigestion~.
  • Story time! This looks like "legit, real beef jerky", which Paige knows because when Paige was in boarding school she stayed with a family who had a lot of cows and they made their own beef jerky, which Paige was of course intimately involved in, I'm sure. Anyway this makes her have such high standards, which is why she loves when somewhere like Tractor Supply (an enormous fucking chain, Paige) or a "local country mart" sells jerky because it's always better.
    • Fun fact that took me less than thirty seconds to Google, this "real" beef jerky is also available on Amazon
• More of the same definitely not copyrighted song as she packs up Louie's stuff and moves him. There's a lot of woman laughing alone with salad shots as she packs up and pretends to talk to... someone and "carry stuff" (ie: stand around touching her own body awkwardly)
• Some weird things about this whole sequence - 1) the "farm" she moves Louie to appears to have very poor, dilapidated fencing, red flag for me. 2) Paige is wearing a white shirt and then a white cardigan the entire time while DEALING WITH A HORSE and it never gets stained or dirty, which tells me she did fuck all, 3) the only guy with her is this big bald much older man who I assume is the guy starting this venture, meaning he's almost certainly who films her cantering around on Louie without her wearing a helmet laughing, which is so unbearably awkward. Like imagine asking a random older dude to film you doing that in a pure white sweater, 4) when Paige brushes Louie he sheds SO MUCH. Is that bad? It feels bad. When a dog sheds that much, even in the spring, it usually means no one's been brushing it regularly, 5) Louie has such a dip in his back and it makes me wince every time, especially when Paige shows him next to another horse. I don't know what that's from, but I hate it and it doesn't look comfortable for him.
• Nance and Baloo are at home when Paige gets back so she's just going to "throw on a little outfit" and they're going to go out for Mother's Day in Brooklyn. Paige really, really didn't want to go into the city because I guess she's suuuuch a country girl (nice, Paige) but she's doing it for her mom and to see her sister
  • Oh my god she DOESN'T CHANGE HER SHIRT FROM THE BARN, she wears a white henley, what look like blue pajama pants, and a leather coat.
  • Nance steals some of Paige's clothes (how I don't know since they're totally different sizes) and according to Paige is"slaying the boots", a phrase I will pay actual cash money to never hear Paige say again
• Next morning, return of the out of focus camera, though it may have been by accident this time because it stays out of focus. Anyway serious business Paige with her serious business glasses is starting the day with some "desk work". Is that a thing? A phrase? What the fuck is "desk work"? Has anyone who actually does work at a desk ever called it that?
  • When she's in Europe it's definitely harder for her to sit and do computer work even though she has a laptop but starting the day on her desktop at the same time as her "whole team" (WHO) it really makes a difference for them being all on the same page.
    • Okay so my actual job in real life is doing shipping and order management for a small creative goods company. I know very intimately what goes into product development, order fulfillment, etc, and Paige is just straight up saying nonsense. Like I paused and gave serious thought to what possibly she could be talking about, and I don't know what all this "work" is. If she was making everything in-house that's one thing, but that's not work she could possibly be doing or overseeing from Europe. But if she's outsourcing stuff, having it sent to a warehouse, and, then paying someone to ship it out for her, I guess she's doing... development? But that makes no sense because again, she outsources everything. She isn't doing wholesale, there isn't a lot to arrange for pop-ups if everything is outsourced and pre-made and she's only supposedly having one this summer, she only has eight products so the website maintenance is pretty easy, as is accounting, and she only really sells stuff around a drop which she does maybe twice a year.......... like genuinely I'm baffled here. It's my job to do this exact same thing every day with products that aren't jeans or sweatshirts or whatever and I'm so, confused about what her "work" is.
    • Allegedly they're on the "final push" for so many big projects and you know what, if any of these projects involve Paige actually doing anything besides feeling three different samples of denim swatches or deciding which vendor she's going to outsource oven mitts to and saying "I like this" or "I don't like that", I will issue her an apology. I feel safe in the idea that I won't have to issue her an apology, but I will keep on on offer in the off-chance I'm wrong.
    • She just finished making a line sheet (genuine lol once I looked up what that was) and apparently we are going to freeeeak out when we see her new merch - sorry, elevated lifstyle products.
    • It's denim. She's been working on denim. She shows us the final washes but it's in direct sunlight so it's all blown out and out of focus so they look mostly white? But she got the "perfect color". IDK, it's a light wash. I prefer dark wash, actually. It's a lot more flattering and forgiving. But we've already determined my aesthetic and Paige's aesthetic are not the same aesthetic. She's nobly pushed back production six months because she refused to do a full run unless the wash was absolutely perfect. It was so expensive but she needed to love love love the denim, because it's really what she's passionate about and what she wants to do, she wants to be the best denim brand out there. You know, because she's hand-making this denim herself, not just sending instructions to low-wage Chinese workers while being afforded the privilege to fuss over the perceived quality for six months because she has parents who are willing to flush money down the toilet on this. Also, for the record, but denim is like... a choice? Like what is the vision, exactly, because every clothing retailer has some version of denim and people are already super married to their faves, so how exactly is this business model working for her, here. And it doesn't look like stretch denim either, which means it's going to fit a very, very narrow group of body types. Like speaking from ample experience crying in GAP dressing rooms over my "freakish" (read, not built like a popsicle stick) as a teenager in a time before jeggings, jeans are not forgiving and easily worn by everyone. The thing about what Paige is doing so far is that it's universal enough. You don't have to really tailor an oversized sweatshirt or trucker hat to fit you. Everyone can make room for another overpriced candle. But denim??? IDK girl, you do you.
• Paige makes Olivia a latte. Olivia comes in and say it's story time about coffee. Paige asks if she should turn off the camera for this and Olivia says no so Paige continues to film herself preening while Olivia tells her a story about how messy she is frothing milk. Paige spends the entire time interrupting her to go "no! No! No! No!"
  • They look at buttons and rivets and embossed leather patches for the back, and then sweatpants leg panel samples. Baloo hangs out with them and Paige tells him he's stinky. She eats toast.
    • WHAT IS THE POINT OF ANY OF THIS. She's not DESIGNING anything, she's just doing that thing like, you know when you're choosing your racer in Mario Kart and there are a couple hundred variations of wheels and chassis and you just choose the unique combos you want to put together? She's doing that but with generic clothing. I've been jokingly referring to her stuff as "elevated Zazzle" but this isn't even Zazzle because Zazzle you UPLOAD ACTUAL ARTWORK TO. Why is she re-inventing the wheel? What improvements does she think she's making TO A PROVERBIAL WHEEL.
• Not sponsored showing off gifting time! It's not in focus at all so we can't really see any of the products (professional!). One of the products she mentions is that she's friends with CYNTHIA ROWLEY'S DAUGHTER who has nepo baby'd her way into dropping oven mitts and aprons that look like Strawberry Shortcake's rejects. Like they're cute, but they're again little strawberries on white. Like tell me none of you silver spoon-ass bitches cook without telling me by making WHITE OVEN MITTS. Those will turn yellowish and burnt after, what a single batch of brownies? Taking a piece of toast out?
  • This haul includes her tennis Tommy bag. Not sure how she got it since she brags about it being "sold out everywhere even Poshmark and depop"
  • There is sooooooo much of this free bullshit. How does she even get this much free bullshit. Why do companies waste so much money sending this to people like Paige who don't fucking care and openly give it away. What is the point of an influencer. IDK at this point I'm spiraling, this vlog is like a third of the way through and nothing has happened.
• Paige unpacks with Nance. She has so many clothes and I don't think she's worn any of them. Full disclosure that this was the point I actually got annoyed and had to take a break and play some video games for fifteen minutes because while growing up comfortably or on the upper end of middle class in a generational wealth type of town has taught me a lot of patience for people with too much money, there is at some point a limit to how conspicuous over-consumption and waste I can handle, and that point for me came when I saw how many sweaters Paige has that look like they've never been worn. And the on top of this she has a giant suitcase of stuff she's going to depop! The environment? Never heard of her.
• Paige is going to get groceries. She's needed Nance's help to do all the hard stuff she's had to do today like going grocery shopping and having soooo many clothes. She goes to Trader Joe's, then goes to a horse shop and of course buys MORE SHIT SHE DOESN'T NEED. I'm not condoning what the French did when they invented the guillotine, like that was really violent and horrible, but the point is that the longer I watch this vlog the more I'm understanding their motivations.
• Paige goes on a sunset ride with her friend Lauren, this song plays in the background as a flagrant copyright violation, I realize at this point that there's no way this video is going to stay up without Youtube copyright striking it so I have to be extra detailed for posterity and we still have so much to go and this is going to take forever. Louie's back still looks horrible and as someone with inherited lordosis, I feel for him.
• Tommy facetime! He says exactly one sentence and catches a tiny fish, for those of you keeping track on your Bingo cards.
• Nance is still over Paige's house when Paige gets back because she never leaves. Paige is wearing old Dairy Boy sweats. At this point when I scrolled down to press the play button again I realized that Nance has posted a comment about how proud she is of Paige within seconds of the video being uploaded. I live with my mother and sometimes I still need her help on stuff like yelling at health insurance until they cover stuff for me and even I am confused by how codependent their relationship is. Like doesn't Nance have her own house? A husband? Other children? Paige has spent this entire vlog needing Nance's help to do everything from grocery shopping to folding laundry and acting like a teenager. It's a rich text for a therapist to one day unpack.
  • It's Taco Monday, this is just a dumb and boring version of Paige performing the white people taco night song. Also bewildering, Paige seemingly DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE TACO STUFF. It involves almost no cooking! She even bought the spices pre-packaged! She needs Nance's help on this too!
  • Undisclosed new cooking knife brand product placement. They are amazed that it............slices.
    • OH NO SHE SAYS SLAYING WITH BOOTS AGAIN ABOUT THE KNIFE END THIS MISERY
  • Ahahhahah the reason they're so impressed is because they've apparently been cooking with unsharpened knives. Like Paige didn't know you could sharpen knives. A master chef, ladies and gentlemen!
• Oh god we're only halfway through. Paige wakes up the next morning. She got so freckly yesterday (read: she's courting melanoma and is going to age like a raisin). She's going to go play tennis at a club in Greenwich her parents are members at (Note, she shows the logo which means you can spend five seconds googling to discover it's this club. Membership is invite only and it's gauche apparently to discuss how much membership costs, but the estimate is EIGHTY GRAND A YEAR. To be clear, that is nearly THREE TIMES the average American household income. Paige is the child of people who spend more in one year to play tennis a few times a week than most people do getting fucking doctorates, which clears up a few things for me: one, I've never gotten those texts where she casually demands Morgan Wallen pay her back tens of thousands of dollars like it's $50, but I guess to her it is like $50, and two, why everything about Paige and how she acts towards people and money in this video is a million times more effective at radicalizing people on economic policy than anything Bernie Sanders has ever lain awake at night dreaming of.
  • Camera going in and out of focus during this explanation.
  • Ah she's doing it with her mom. Again. Heaven forbid Paige breathe without Nance.
  • Oh also she has to shoot an ad in the tennis dress, but she definitely likes and would go to play tennis anyway.
• More unboxing undisclosed adver- I mean PR.
  • I'm so serious, tthe flagrant wealth being thrown around in this video and the amount of free stuff a trust fund baby with absolutely no merits or skills whatsoever is getting because she has 300K followers on Instagram that she probably bought half of is like the best argument for socialism I have ever seen.
• .Paige gets dressed in the third outfit of the day to go to the dentist. The pants are pointedly too big on her so they don't stay up in the waist and create this weird enormous kangaroo pouch around her crotch. She pairs that with a toddler sized medium t-shirt for a football team she's probably never heard of, a choker that looks like something a boy band member in the early 2000's would wear but out of fake pearls, and cowboy boots. It's... the look sure is looking, let's just say that.
• Paige opines on how much she prefers to do vlogs at home, but don't worry, she won't stop doing travel vlogs for us! (Oh thank goodness, where would we be without the insights we get from them.) She feels like they add variety to her channel (what, no, we LOVE coming with you to the barn to watch you ride without a helmet over unsourced music! five times a vlog!). Sometimes she feels like there's this pressure to show us as much as she can, which explains why all we see in her travel vlogs is hotel room bathrooms, tennis matches, and the tops of various tabletops in restaurants. Anyway she feels like there's pressure because in reality she's there for Tommy. Which we KNOW, that's the entire PROBLEM, Paige. If you were HONEST about the fact that being a WAG on tour sucks and you don't get to actually see the places you're pretending to really go and immerse yourself in, we WOULD HAVE FEWER COMPLAINTS AND YOU'D FEEL LESS ANXIETY, the problem is that you have to keep compulsively lying about how cultured you are and how you really ~got a feel~ for the location. Just stop lying!!! Stop!!! Lying!!! Challenge!!!!! The anxiety you feel and the reason you have to monitor this subreddit comes from your CONSTANT LYING.
  • Ugh she would NEVER have gone to ROME if it weren't for Tommy. I think this is a ploy for authenticity but boy is it coming across as privileged.
    • I do think in her own Paige way though this entire monologue she has is about something I've noticed her talking around a lot - I think she's afraid if she stops travelling and being a WAG no one will care about her. I think she's terrified of doing what makes her happy, which is being home, hanging out with her mom, riding her horses, and spending her parents' money. But if she just let herself do the things she actually liked and stopped trying to always pretend to be cooler and more interesting than she is, no one would keep paying attention to her, because it's not like she has a sparkling personality or wit or unique point of view. Like I'm an interesting person to talk to, but if I tried to make a vlog of my life it would be pretty boring. I work a 9-5 M-F job and the most interesting part of my life is when I go to a concert or craft fair on the weekend or one of my neighbors goes out of town and I watch their cat. It's not riveting, but I also don't need to be doing fascinating things in order to be or feel like an interesting person. But people like Paige who need to always be travelling and going to events and flaunting how busy they are are often really sad and empty people. They're not doing any of the little mundane things that make people happy and spending time connecting with the people around them, they're just always moving around because they're afraid if they stop for five seconds, people will see that the only thing they have going for them is all that movement and travelling. I think Paige is constantly torn between the anxiety that comes with constant travel and isolation and putting herself on display and removing herself from the things that bring her a sense of calm and security, and the anxiety that if she allows herself to feel calm and secure, she'll lose the attention she craves. IDK seems like a thing she shouldn't keep indirectly admitting to in vlogs, seems to kind of undercut half of her material, but what do I know.
  • Also she really is going to positively contribute to Tommy and his life and career, ie: she needs to go home and feels comforted by home because that's where her mom and Amanda wait on her hand and foot and everything is about her, which she misses when she's with Tommy because when she's on tour with Tommy she has to accept that he's the center of attention and she's not.
  • Her home vlogs have been performing the best, like, significantly. Since she probably buys views and comments, this just means she likes them better and therefore buys more engagement for them.
  • Apparently her analytics are telling her that 30% of her views are coming from the "explore" feature, which she says is YouTube rewarding her for being consistent, and, uh. No. Not how that works.
    • I mean yes if you buy engagement it will put you in the algorithm more, but this is the time in the video where she accidentally self-owns. If you're an actual channel getting actual views from people who actually enjoy watching you, then VERY LITTLE of your viewership should be coming from the "explore" feature, MOST of it should be coming from subscribers or regular viewers or people who watch similar content. That's how the majority of people watch YouTube or find new videos to watch. But if fully a third of your viewers are coming from what's essentially a randomizer button, that pretty much confirms Paige is buying views and/or that a lot of viewers leave after a minute or two. Because if her content was good on its own, people would see it and subscribe, and then she wouldn't need to rely on the "explore" feature. But if she, as she says, is consistently getting a third of her viewership from that feature, than that means that a third of people are just randomly watching whatever YouTube puts in front of them and not engaging with her at all, meaning the ONLY POSSIBLE explanation is that she's essentially buying enough engagement to keep appearing on the explore page, but buying the opportunity to be put in front of people isn't actually getting her a larger audience because what she's serving them is a warmed-over turd.
  • Anyway Paige is counting on you not knowing the extreme basics and trusting that she "knows someone who used to work at YouTube who told her that's how the algorithm works"
    • Um if you don't know about social media - no one who works at YouTube or any social media company knows how their algorithm works unless they're the ones writing it, and if they do know, they're not going to tell you because that's extremely valuable, proprietary information and also there's like a lot of papers and NDAs and non-competes they'd be breaking if they did. They're telling you to upload consistently because it's good FOR THE MEDIA COMPANY. The company is trading in being a content hub, so they need people to consistently be uploading content, ie: raising the value of their site in a way they don't have to pay for. That's the entire business model of every. Single. Digital media platform. Heck, that's how most dating apps work too. The product is data. They want you to be giving them free product.
  • "I don't know, like I don't like doing things just for social media anymore?" HAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH
    • And a week later you spent a weekend attending influencer parties in the Hamptons for....... what exactly. The scintillating conversation?????
    • She's very quick to say that's not the case if she has to shoot an ad! Loves shooting ads! Please keep sending her free stuff!
    • God this is taking me multiple hours but at this point I've sunk too much time in and also am convinced this won't stay up for copyright issues, so I'm taking a break to like, stretch and clean the bathroom, anything to get me moving and listening to my own thoughts which are in complete sentences.
• I'm back after cleaning the bathroom. I've been at this so long that my sibling has shown up. But I only have ten minutes to go and I REFUSE TO GIVE UP. This whole completely unhinged and unintentionally revealing rant has approximately a trillion uses of the word "like" is from 21:00 to 26:00 and if you want to watch it you can. I probably should have transcribed it for a full AP Lit level analysis, but I'm tired. If we're lucky, when Paige tries to re-upload this with copyright-free music, she'll have kept that in there.
• Paige ordered a shed! She's so excited!
• The fence looks mildly less jacked up when they go back. Paige is brushing Louie constantly in this video. Fourth time I think we've seen her do this. I feel like there's a lot more to horse care than brushing them and she only shows us this part because it looks aesthetic and she doesn't do any of the actual hard or necessary parts like shoveling horse shit, but what do I know.
  • This sequence uses unsourced but definitely copyright song number three!
  • Fun fact: Paige is the same fake brown color as Louie's dappled neck. Aw, you know how pets eventually look like their owners? Cute.
  • Shout out to Paige's friend (perhaps Amanda? Olivia? Can't keep the preppy brunettes straight anymore) who actually wears a helmet riding.
• Next day, we open with a bit of this song (not sourced, copyright infringement number four, possibly more that at this point I no longer notice tbh). Paige puts on boots to go to the new shed and realizes the vlog is going to be so long because she's never done a whole week at a time before. Because I've made it this far, I'm the best. (Aw.)
  • Paige calls Tommy to wish him happy birthday and films it, which seems... odd. Especially since she doesn't film it in a way where he can see she's filming.
  • Paige gets tea for breakfast (nutritious) and a coffee for the guy at the barn we must have seen earlier. His name is Aaron. I could do some google sleuthing and find him probably, but I don't care. Paige met him going on trail rides at her old barn. Do middle aged men usually hang out at barns doing trail rides? Just scoping out young idiots with disposable income? The whole thing seems sus. Apparently he has like seven kids.
  • Paige never realized how expensive pre-made sheds were, but it's a local business that makes it by hand! I assume the local business is called Costco And Sons.
  • More uncredited The Shins plays as Paige only loads the shed with blankets and nothing heavy or unpicturesque.
  • Another Tractor Supply run, at this point they're who really should be sponsoring Paige
  • Paige goes to say goodbye to Louie and he HIDES FROM HER IN THE WOODS
    • Girl.
    • Oh my god no wonder he's mad at her, they've been staying somewhere WITHOUT A STRUCTURE. He's been sleeping OUTSIDE. It got into the 40's every night in New England last week!!!
• Out of focus Paige talking about how she had suuuuuch a long day "running errands". Olivia didn't get to join Paige on her little horse girl excursions because she had to be at the warehouse and onboarding a new DB employee. Anyway Paloma is in town now
  • Paige learns that apparently you're supposed to be washing veggies as she prepares things to grill. PAIGE HAS BEEN COOKING THIS WHOLE TIME NOT WASHING VEGGIES. I.......... I am going to need to be sedated after this.
• Paige exfoliates and puts on a definitely not sponsored face mask
  • She's wearing skiing pajamas. In case we forgot she was a skier. Did you know she was a skier????
    • PSYCH, these are from previous ads with PJ Place but actually she really likes these and this one ISN'T an ad she just loves the product so much
• Paige is doing her makeup! We're at the end stretch! I'm almost there!
  • She took a day off of vlogging to go see her grandparents, but immediately segues into her Ulta trip. Because of her stupid grandparents, she didn't get to go to the barn, frankly how can she survive in these conditions.
  • Dairy Boy phone case plug! She was soooo specific about what she likes in phone cases and definitely didn't just choose between Zazzle, Redbubble, or (insert other brand here)
    • It's a shitty thin cover that looks like it protects your phone from approximately nothing and should cost $10 but I estimate she'll sell it for at least $40
    • Of course because Paige was so super particular about the details and business-minded when it comes to quality it took a long time to make........phone cases.......
  • Tommy calls and says hi
  • Paige rambles about her day and makes coffee. Tommy sent her peonies because he's "so cute". We see the phone cases and they're weird and ugly. More "gifting" (undisclosed advertising) that came in the mail
• Paige makes pickled red onions, every time she does it she changes the recipe a little bit even though she totally has a recipe and isn't googling. She starts pickling carrots which she says are going to "go bad soon" (that takes like six months, how do carrots even go bad?) She also does it in a water glass which, good luck ever drinking from that again without it tasting like vinegar.
• And then with no warning, it cuts off. That took me three and a half hours. It's been a journey and I hate it. If there is ever a vlog this long, I'm doing it in segments across multiple days because I'm exhausted by this much wealth and inanity. Time to go touch grass, start dinner, wash my vegetables before I do so. You know. The little things.

So far this works very consistently and can fuse a dozen weapons within about a minute if you do it correctly.
This is a variation of the shock glitch. So I will summarize the steps up until you have just put the shock emitter next to the item mount, fused the item to your weapon or shield, and are now standing in front of the mount:
Wear the full rubber suit (every piece).
Equip the one-handed sword or whatever.
Stand next to the pedestal, go into inventory, and unequip a piece of the suit.
Unpause and spam A while the inventory is closing. Keep spamming A until he pick up the sword as it is flying in the air.
Note: I find it is best to always equip the last item listed in the inventory, but am not sure why because if I don't then it doesn't dupe for some reason.

Okay! I am almost 5 weeks post-op and feeling better all the time so I'm finishing up my 3-part post about prepping for surgery.
First, I want to say this is a time to pamper yourself and allow others to pamper you. Tell loved ones what they can bring/do/make to make your life easier. There is a lot below but about half of it was gifted to me in some way.
Secondly, while overall recovery has been smooth for me, remember that pain management isn't entirely linear. There's all kinda of discomfort that will ebb and flow from nausea, constipation, gas, nerves/numbness, swelling, back strain from being on bed rest, the cramps from your first period...some of the meds gave me reflux and the antibiotics gave me a yeast infection. As one kind of discomfort resolves, another one may start to feel worse. Be patient.
​

• Commode, Toilet raiser or standing toilet safety rail - Sitting on the toilet was difficult for about a week. I kept a lined commode in our bedroom which my spouse had to empty for me.
• Shower stool/bench or hand rails + detachable shower-head - Showering was a little tricky too for that first week. There was at least one day where I was in so much pain I needed to shower sitting down. (I think you're supposed to shower every day post-op to keep the wound clean but I scaled back to every other day to simplify our lives.)
• Essential oil diffusecandles - Aside from just making my bedroom a healing space, because I had a bedside commode it was nice to manage the smell of pooping in my bedroom. Careful with hormone-disrupting fragrances though.
• Scar gel/tape and/or Vitamin E/Castor Oil - My scar tissue is healing really well which was important to me. After about 2 weeks I started a daily routine massaging the scar with castor oil for about 2 minutes. Then I would wipe off the oil in the shower and pat the wound dry. Then I place silicone tape on the scar during the day. Before bed, I remove the tape and put Vitamin E on the scar.
• Nightgowns - For two weeks, I pretty much lived in bed in my little night gowns. Finding something cozy that you can eat in, sleep in, and greet guests in without changing is nice. You won't want to wear anything at home or out that will feel tight around the wound or be too tricky to take off.
• Abdominal binder - I think I mentioned this on another post but I recommend wearing one if you are going out or will be standing around a lot. For the first 3 weeks, I tried to walk every day but I was easily fatigued if I didn't have the extra support. Don't get too dependent on it though as you want to slowly restrengthen your abdominal muscles too. The days I walked, my pain was down the following day.
• Ginger ale & saltines - While these aren't part of my anti-inflammatory diet, there were several early days where the nausea just made me want something easy on the stomach. I bought several cans of natural Reed's ginger ale on Amazon and got saltines without the salt.
  • I started most mornings with peppermint tea for the nausea which subsided as my need for narcotics decreased. After that, you might consider something like Raspberry Leaf Tea which supports toning the uterus.
• Dried fruit & nuts - Things like apricots and prunes will help ease constipation. Nuts are good protein if you are doing a plant-based diet. Protein is good for wound healing.
• For meals I do a lot of smoothies and soup w/ veggies to support getting Vitamin C and staying hydrated. I am happy to share specific recipes. Again beans are good protein and sweet potato is good fiber for the constipation. I also made Korean Seaweed Soup which I recommend cooking with grass-fed beef or seafood. It's a very healing soup which helps replenish iron.
• Probiotics - If you're not already taking some, I would start ASAP. Mine didn't totally prevent me from getting a yeast infection but I imagine it could have been worse without them. You can also try to up your yogurt. I would eat my seaweed soup with kimchi for an extra boost. My probiotics are also mixed with Papaya Enzyme (Papain) which may help with painful gas.
• Husband/Wedge Pillow - I used one to make it easier to sit up in bed during the day for the first few weeks.
  • Also make a logical plan for where/how you will sleep. Maybe use your guest room if you have one? I had to put an extra pillow between my husband and I to keep him from cuddling me around the wound area. If you live in a multi-floor home you might want to find a way to stay on the first floor to avoid steps. Is there a light switch near you if you wake up in the middle of the night? Maybe get a nightlight just to be safe.

Honorable mentions to things I had but didn't use:

• grabbereacher tool - a lot of folks struggle with bending down post-op
• chloroseptic spray - anesthesia can be rough and has occasionally given me a sore throat
• thermometer - of course post-op there is risk for infection, being able to take your temperature if you're experiencing symptoms will help you and your care team assess next steps...

I know financing the surgery itself can be tough - I saved up for a year. That said, if you can afford it, I think the recommendations above are generally "better to have and not need rather than need and not have." Consider the worst case scenario for your living situation. For example, on an earlier post I talked about getting a walking cane and someone said that "canes aren't necessary". Except, I live in a face-paced city where we walk everywhere and the cane has been very helpful in signaling to folks to slow down around me, offer a seat on the metro etc. Things you don't use you might be able to return or pay it forward to someone else in need. Or even use again if you have a C-section. And if you're trying to find these items for cheap, check your neighborhood message board/FB groups. There may be someone looking to get rid of one of these items.
And as always, do your own research and be in collaboration with your care team. Good luck!

--- Table of Contents ---
Summer 4984, 13 Doumoth
“Ugh! I hate this!” Daisy whined loudly, letting her head fall back to stare at the ceiling.
“Almost done…” Rerves said to reassure her, though he lacked his usual smile.
Ania picked up the last piece of armor, a steel vambrace, and began polishing with a groan to match Daisy’s, “When we aren’t cleaning, we're polishing, when we aren’t polishing, we're cleaning. How is this Paladin training?”
“If I wanted to be a servant, I would've joined their guild…” Thom’s small voice chimed in.
Shon said nothing. The five Squires, Shon, Daisy, Thom, Rerves, and Ania, sat under a shade in the Temple courtyard, polishing the knights' spare armor for the hundredth time. The sun beat down mere feet away, reflecting off the finished pieces as the shadow of their shade crept closer and closer, the sun climbing towards noon. The yard was mostly clear, the Paladins not on duty retreating into the cool stone fortress while those on duty only occasionally coming to check on the Squires' progress.
Ania had the right of it. Ever since they'd moved into the Temple proper and became official Squires, the five of them had done nothing but clean, polish, and memorize armor and weapon vocabulary. And complain… the others always complained. Shon just sighed as the four others continued to gripe. There was no point in it, the work needed to be done, and they were the ones assigned to do it. It didn’t matter how annoying or monotonous it might be.
Sometimes the younger Paladins would join them in polishing, caring for their own armor while the Squires worked on the spare pieces. The spares were used mainly by the enlisted, and only if they hadn’t finished buying their own sets yet. Occasionally a Paladin would check out a set to practice with. Although most of them had a preferred style, they needed to stay proficient with all types. At least that meant only half of the pieces the Squires had to clean were still polished from the day before. If the armor was never used, it really would be a useless task, instead of half useless as it seemed now.
The Paladins never complained…
The Squires hadn’t started out tired and annoyed. Daisy and Shon had been joined after their first week by Thom and Rerves, who both came from the capital city. They'd been friends growing up, Rerves was a noble, and Thom's family worked as their personal stewards, one step up from servants. A week after that, Ania arrived from a small village in the south. Only having known one Paladin and having never seen a proper Temple before, she'd been in awe of the fortress Temple of the city for at least a month. But then the excitement had given way to frustration, and -for Shon at least- boredom. And so the others had started complaining.
Their relationship with each other had started out warm enough. They stayed up late into the night, sharing their histories and dreams of their future as full Paladins. Shon joined them when prompted but mostly preferred to listen. He didn’t think he had any stories worth sharing, though they had bombarded him with questions after Veon-Zih’s first training visit. Just like everyone else, they didn’t seem to know how to deal with Shon’s quiet nature. But unlike everyone else, they hadn’t pulled away and stopped talking to him altogether. Except when they complained. Shon never complained. He didn’t see the point. When asked, he would say that they needed to follow orders. So they'd stopped asking him.
Shon held his last piece of steel plate carefully by the leather straps, wiping the last bit of polish off with a clean rag. He could see his reflection distorted by the curves and dings, and wondered if he could manage to draw the changes accurately when given a chance. The tinking of metal on metal sounded in the distance, and the Squires' heads shot up, followed by their bodies as they scrambled to their feet to salute the woman approaching.
General Rasnah was resplendent as always in her uniform, the chains of office clinking on her shoulders. She walked towards the Squires with her head held high and her hands clasped behind her back. With her was Master Veon-Zih and Shon felt his spirits rise just a little higher.
“At ease, Squires.” Sir Rasnah said as she drew to a stop just outside their shade. She waited until they'd taken the formal 'at ease' position, legs shoulder-width apart and hands clasped behind their back, “Report.”
Rerves took charge, as usual, “Sir, we're nearly done, Sir.”
“Just one piece left, Sir,” Ania added, then blushed furiously as she usually did whenever addressing a high-ranking officer.
Sir Rasnah nodded, then glanced to the sky. She then looked to Veon-Zih, who smiled and shrugged. Her lips turned up on half her face in what could almost be called a grin before she cleared it, serious again as she addressed the Squires, “You may have the afternoon off. Report to the kitchens and evening duties before sixth bell.”
“Sir, yes, Sir!” the Squires spoke in unison, Shon’s four fellows grinning broadly and sneaking happy glances at one another.
They held their positions until Sir Rasnah turned away, walking back to the Temple proper and leaving them to their freedom. Veon-Zih remained behind, smiling warmly at them and addressing Shon, “Lunch? I found a fine eatery a few blocks away.”
Shon nodded, finally smiling with the rest, “And practice?” he asked.
“After food,” Veon-Zih answered, stepping aside and gesturing towards the gates. Shon rushed to help the others put the clean and polished armor away, then jogged to Veon-Zih before falling into step with him as they left the Temple.
Veon-Zih waited until they were well clear of the gates before asking, “So what do you think of your fellow Squires?”
Shon sighed in answer, which made Veon-Zih chuckle for some reason. But the sigh hadn’t really answered the question, so Shon said, “They complain a lot.” he probably could have, and should have, come up with something nicer to say. But after hours of hearing them gripe while they worked, it was the only thing on Shon’s mind.
“There's nothing wrong with complaining, you know.” Veon-Zih mused. Shon merely shook his head. The knights never complained; he'd been watching them. If there was a job that needed to be done, they would do it. His fellow Squires seemed to complain before, during, and after every unpleasant assignment. Though never in front of the Paladin giving it.
“Do you honestly think the knights like polishing armor? Do you like polishing that much? Maybe you should've come to the Monastery after all. We don’t wear armor, but we have many fine statues that all need to be polished every day. Every little nook and cranny scrubbed clean and shining.”
He glanced at Shon with a grin, then leaned over to whisper, “They hate it too, but just like your fellows won’t complain in front of them, they won’t complain in front of you.”
“It needs to be done…” Shon tried to argue, though it sounded hollow considering his own, though silent, annoyance.
“A perfect excuse,” Veon-Zih stated, turning sharply down a side road, so Shon had to jog to keep up, “There are many reasons spare armor needs to be polished. The most obvious is that it's needed to stay in good repair. The task is assigned to Squires because it gets you intimately familiar with armor beyond just naming the parts. And because no one else wants to do it.
“That doesn’t mean we should be complaining about it…”
“Not in front of the officers, no. But amongst each other? Why not?”
Shon furrowed his brow but didn’t have an answer. Veon-Zih gave him one, “Joint misery creates companionship. Even if you have nothing else in common, everyone knows you all hate polishing already clean armor. Right now, I bet your fellow Squires are scratching their heads, wondering if you do actually enjoy the task. Some might even be wondering if they're worthy of being Squires. Since they complain, and you don’t.”
Shon’s steps faltered. Would they really think he was more worthy than them? For something so trivial as chores? He had to rush to catch up and argued, “But there's no point in complaining. We have to do it anyway.”
Veon-Zih sighed and stopped walking. He waited for Shon to turn to him then said, “But my statement still stands. Joint misery creates companionship. Your fellows take a risk in voicing their complaints to you, hoping that they're not alone in their opinions. What if they're the only ones who hate it? What if that really does mean they aren’t meant for the Temple? Just because they can channel divine magic doesn’t mean Hengist will choose them.”
Shon let himself ponder that for a while. The other Squires always seemed so sure of themselves, so excited to begin real training. Did they really have doubts and fears the same as he did? And what did that say about his assumptions? That they would complain and the knights didn’t? Was he actually judging his fellows as unworthy without realizing it?
“The Paladins really complained when they were Squires too?” he asked.
“I guarantee it.” Veon-Zih answered and started walking again, “I know I did, and all the other Monks in my class too.” he chuckled, “Sometimes routines like cleaning and polishing can be meditative. You can let your mind wander while your hands work through the familiar motions. But before you get to that point, or if you would rather be doing something of your choosing, then it's nothing but monotonous work. Necessary work, but still work.”
Following Veon-Zih around another corner, Shon pondered his Master’s words. They got all the way to the little eatery the Monk had been looking for, even took their seats, and gave their orders before Shon spoke again.
“I hate platemail the most…” he said. Veon-Zih arched an eyebrow at him, and he continued, “It’s bulky, and there's just so much of it. Then as soon as you're done, someone moves it aside and gets fingerprints on it again. Chainmail isn’t much better. You can’t see the fingerprints, but it’s hard to get the oil between the links. And yet water obviously has no problem with it because that’s where all the rust is.”
Veon-Zih laughed boisterously, throwing his head back and startling those at the closest table, “I hated the creases in the palms of the statues the most,” Veon-Zih held up his hand, his forefinger and thumb forming a circle, the other fingers extended, “how can so much dust cake itself in such a small space in only a day?” he complained, dropping his hand and shaking his head.
The waitress brought them their stew and drinks, and Shon started eating while Veon-Zih thanked her. Picking up his spoon, the Monk paused as he dipped it into his bowl, musing, “I wonder which parts your fellow Squires dislike the most?” Shon didn’t know, but he wanted to. Would they agree with him that the plate was the most frustrating? Daisy seemed to groan loudest at the leather, but their complaining always seemed to be general moans at the work as a whole…
“Maybe I’ll ask,” Shon mumbled, embarrassed for some reason.
“Or,” Veon-Zih took his first bite, then pointed at Shon with his spoon, “you could just tell them your least favorite, and they will open up and share their own.”
That’s what they expected of him, wasn’t it? They expected him to join in the conversation, not just answer questions… Shon could only nod.
***
Shon had grown so much. It was difficult for Veon-Zih to watch him without smiling. Only a head shorter than his Master, Veon-Zih could still see the ten-year-old oddity he'd spied upon almost four years ago in the church courtyard. And yet, he had grown so much. Veon-Zih wondered if anyone else could see it.
They practiced in one of the parks in the noble’s district. Veon-Zih thought it was important that Shon get out of Temple whenever possible, that he see the city and its people, to remember what he was training for, and why he wanted to fight. Shon was more like Veon-Zih, and his order of Monks than the boy would ever know. Or admit. He strove for perfection. Every punch, kick, and kata they worked through needed to go exactly right, or he would do it again. Like many Monks, Shon found true enjoyment in the process of working and growing better than his past self. But he was also different in a critical way. Shon wanted to use his strength. Wanted to protect people, fight evil. Many Monks never left the Monastery. A single Grandmaster could easily fell a small raiding force alone. Yet, so many chose not to fight outside their sparring rings and training.
Even Veon-Zih hadn’t left the Monastery because he wanted to help those locked outside its walls. He'd left because he believed he couldn't attain the perfection he strove for inside them. He'd wanted to be tested by the world, to rise to the challenges life presented and overcome them with his discipline and practice. Along the way, he'd learned to be more like Shon was naturally. He'd made friends from other orders, and saved countless non-combatants. Only after seeing the results of his fights, the grateful families reunited, had he realized the moral folly in his fellows and in himself.
They practiced and even sparred until well after fifth bell. The display at first earned them a few disapproving glares from the nobles and servants passing the park. Then they'd actually attracted a few spectators, who clapped as though watching a show. Shon blushed furiously at this, his pale cheeks growing pink as he tilted his head down, trying to let what was left of his now short hair slip down to hide his face. Yet, he never lost step or stopped the training. Veon-Zih had barely resisted laughing, though if more at the foolish watchers or his embarrassed student, he wasn’t sure.
Veon-Zih finally called their training to a halt, and Shon glowered at him. The boy had nearly gotten in his first solid hit in their sparring and was obviously reluctant to stop after making such progress. “It’s nearly time for you to get back, and Sir Rasnah will not accept me as an excuse for tardiness.” Shon’s eyes went wide, and fear replaced the look of frustration on his face. He ran his fingers through his hair, looking up at the sky to try and gauge the hour.
Veon-Zih chuckled, “I’ll race you back.” he said, a hint of mischief seeping through his voice. Shon arched an eyebrow and Veon-Zih could practically hear his thoughts. Run? Through town? You must be joking. “There's no law against running,” Veon-Zih argued with the boy’s expression, “Every moment offers us an opportunity to train. We're late, so this is the perfect opportunity to test our speed against time and run.”
Shon alternated his arched brow to the other side, looking down the road then back to Veon-Zih before confirming, “A race?”
In answer, Veon-Zih ran. He sprinted past Shon -though not at his full speed- before slowing down just enough to keep things fair. Shon bolted after him. Nobles, servants, and even a few guards gasped and called out in indignation as Veon-Zih and Shon swerved around them on the wide roads of the nobles' quarter. They were forced to slow when they reached the more densely packed streets in the city center. Shon was careful to run around the people doing their shopping but kept his eyes set ahead, planning his route and scaring those who noticed him out of the way with his intense blue stare. Veon-Zih was much more confident in his ability not to hit people and so brushed much closer, never quite knocking into them but often brushing their clothes as he passed.
Ahead a cart laden with crates and barrels ambled across the thoroughfare, and Shon slowed to a jog, trying to run around it. Veon-Zih lept, landing on his hands on the cart and propelling himself up and over before hitting the ground again and continuing the race. He heard the merchant curse and the bystanders gasp in surprise but was more amused at the growl of frustration that came from his student, who put on an extra burst of speed to try and catch up. Veon-Zih was half tempted to let him and half tempted to sprint all out and leave the boy in his dust. He chose to do neither and just laughed, continuing at the pace he'd set and soon coming into view of the Temple gates.
The Paladins on watch saw him coming and exchanged confused and nervous glances, drawing their swords but not barring his path. Veon-Zih didn’t slow his run until he reached the knights. Turning to the side and planting his feet, he slid past them on the cobblestones. Turning back as he slid to a stop, he found one of the Paladins facing him as though ready to fight and the other facing out as though looking for whatever force had sent Veon-Zih sprinting for the Temple.
Shon slowed to a jog and stopped before the knight facing him, breathing hard. “What’s going on? Squire report.” the Paladin demanded, still holding his sword at the ready.
Shon had to take a moment to catch his breath but eventually managed to gasp out, “Race…” before looking absolutely horrified at what he'd just done and said. “Sir…” he added quietly as if that might somehow make his unconventional arrival more acceptable.
“And you managed to keep up with him?” Sir Rasnah appeared from beyond the gate, arching a steely eyebrow and drawing sharp salutes from the Paladin guards who finally sheathed their swords.
“I went easy on him,” Veon-Zih assured her, earning a glare from Shon, who passed through the gates, still breathing deeply but no longer gasping for air. Veon-Zih hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Rasnah looked between the Master and student, finally settling on Shon, “Oh, don’t look at him like that, Squire. Master Veon-Zih could beat a riderless horse in a foot race.” which drew a befuddled look from Shon and a laugh from Veon-Zih.
“General Rasnah, Sir,” another man ran towards the gates wearing the uniform of an enlisted. A messenger from the city gates.
“It seems today is a good day for running,” Veon-Zih quipped as the guards allowed the man to pass and give his report.
“A wyvern has been spotted over the woods near Lakeland,”
Sir Rasnah didn’t respond right away. She narrowed her eyes at the messenger and spoke to Shon, “You have duties, Squire, hop to it.”
Shon saluted, though Rasnah still wasn’t looking at him. He glanced at Veon-Zih curiously, then turned to follow the orders.
Veon-Zih hesitated but decided to follow Shon. If he was needed, Rasnah would let him know.
“A wyvern?” Shon asked in a whisper.
“An abomination,” Veon-Zih explained, “Monstrous beasts with a body as large as a wagon, not including the tail. They fly like birds and will hunt anything that strays into their territory, including humans.”
Shon’s brow furrowed, and Veon-Zih patted him on the shoulder, “It'll be alright. They rarely attack settlements unless they're starving.” Which was good because a single wyvern could destroy a small town.
“What will the Temple do?” Shon asked as they reached the back door to the kitchens.
“That depends… most likely, they'll send a group to the village and watch the skies.”
“They won’t hunt it?”
“Maybe, and maybe not. Wyverns are dangerous enough that it’s a real risk to hunt one, but they also can’t be allowed to harm nearby towns. The Temple of Saint Giorgos will want it destroyed, but Sir Rasnah won’t needlessly risk her men if it isn’t necessary.” Veon-Zih explained.
Shon thought for a moment, then asked, “Have you ever fought a wyvern?”
Veon-Zih tried to make his smile reassuring, "Twice. Though I would rather not try a third time if it can be avoided.”
***
“Red, what're you doing?” Ran asked.
She rolled Her eyes, focusing again on what She was doing and not bothering to answer him. Her fingers ached, but She worked them into the cracks between the stones of the tower wall, shifting Her weight from one hand to the other and searching out the next handhold.
Brom laughed, and She heard the slap and woosh of breath as he pat Ran on the back hard enough to knock the air from the thinner man’s lungs, “Can’t you tell? She’s climbing!”
“Sort of…” Ran mumbled.
She wasn’t climbing up the wall, as much as She wanted to. Instead, She was up only about a foot off the ground and working Her way sideways around the tower. “Afraid of falling, Red?” Ran asked instead. That question was even more stupid than the last, and She arched Her neck back, holding tight to the wall and looking at him upside down.
“Really?” She asked in response to his denseness. He should know She wouldn’t be afraid of falling. She had fallen many times when She'd braved climbing the trees around the perimeter. Even broke Her arm once, and that hadn’t stopped Her from trying again with the splint still on. But that was when they used to let Her out more often, about once every other week. No, the thing that kept Her from climbing up the wall was the same thing that had stopped Her climbing trees. The same thing that stopped Her running around the tower at top speed while Brom or Ran kept time and She tried to beat Her record. And the same thing that kept Her from even crossing the tree line to play pretend in the woods.
Ran had the decency to look embarrassed, realizing his mistake eventually. There was only one thing that ever stopped Her from doing what She wanted, and even that often took multiple ‘lessons’ each time. Morndancer had grown increasingly erratic and more often violent of late. He would mutter to himself in draconic then give opposite orders to the journeymen and apprentices in common. Though everyone in the tower spoke both languages. He would lock himself in his room for days and hadn’t been back to visit his family or the Mages Guild in weeks. Shaloon would cover for him, but she wasn’t much better, cutting holes in reality and staring into the outer plains for hours on end, whispering. Half her words in draconic and the other half in common, mixing the languages in the same sentence.
Brom and Ran had refused to talk to Her about it, but She had listened at Her door when they thought She was sleeping. The Archmages were going mad. The eventual cost of power, they said. Though neither seemed upset that the same would happen to them eventually. Perhaps their lack of concern was the first sign they'd already started.
She continued Her climb, putting Her worries about Brom and Ran’s sanity out of Her mind for the time being. She would have plenty of time to stew about it when She was locked in Her room. For now, She wanted to enjoy being outside in the brief summer warmth.
A burst of sudden wind from above set Her hair whipping about Her face and nearly cost Her grip on the stones. Squeezing Her eyes shut, She tried to shake Her hair back, blowing at the strands against another huge gust before something heavy shook the ground behind her. She let Her head fall back again, so Her hair fell away from Her face, and She could see what had come upside down. The sight caused Her to fall off the wall.
Landing hard on Her backside, She scrambled to Her feet in a mix of awe and horror. A monster large enough to fill Her entire room and then some, stood in the clearing around the tower. It had a long sinuous neck and dull brown scales. It walked on great taloned legs in the back and the joints of its leathery wings in the front. It snapped at Archmage Shaloon as she jumped from its neck to the ground, its teeth as long as daggers and looking just as sharp. It didn’t bite the Archmage, who ignored it as she approached the journeymen.
“What are you three doing out here?” she demanded, mixing draconic with common and glaring at the two men who, for some reason, looked ashamed despite the permission they'd gotten to be out today.
The Firewyrm ignored the question, asking one of Her own, “What is that?” She pointed at the monster, not sure if She felt sad or disgusted at the sight of it. Both seemed odd emotions to have at the sight of a beast that could eat Her in two bites.
Fingers snapped, and She flinched, reaching for Her collar. The monster let out a strangled roar, thrashing its head wildly, its own copper collar shimmering with light and magic. “Another failure of our predecessors, thousands of years ago.” Morndancer exited the tower, his robes billowing around him.
Another snap, and the Firewyrm flinched again. But Shaloon just snorted, sneering at the other Archmage after stopping his torment of her mount, “The north-western Talon was gracious enough to lend us this sample after years of training. It should come in handy with the local draken who worship its kind as gods.” the beast snarled at the humans just out of reach but didn’t step any closer, digging its talons deeper into the ground and hissing, “It was a great success after the slaying. We’ve only had one greater.” she glanced at the Firewyrm who tilted Her head at the two of them, curious for more but sure they wouldn’t give it to Her.
Archmage Morndancer dismissed the defense of the monster’s existence with a snort, “And yet we are still facing the same problems as those before us. What information do you have?”
“A storm hit out at sea, and there are signs of another possibly brewing in Halakon.”
Ran swallowed nervously, and Brom stuttered, “Should we…?”
“No.” Morndancer answered the unfinished question, “There is only one thing that can stop these storms, and we are the only ones willing to make the sacrifices to do it.” he turned away from them, returning to the tower door before glancing over his shoulder, “Get back inside, we need more samples if we are to make up for our own successful failure.”
***
“Saint Giorgos says the wyverns are the last vestiges of the dragon’s evil in the skies…” Sir Rasnah sipped her tea thoughtfully.
Father Branston snorted, “Yes yes, and drakes are their evil on land, and leviathans their evil at sea. They are beasts, Rasnah, as old as memory.”
“Branston's right,” Veon-Zih shrugged, rolling his teacup between his hands, “They're terrible beasts with some magic to them, but they're no more intelligent than a drakwalf or horse.”
They sat together in Father Branston’s office to enjoy warm tea and a colorful sunset through his massive windows. But none of them could really relax with the news of a wyvern flying around the woods to the north. Just to the west of Hamerfoss.
“They've been known to hunt for sport,” Rasnah reminded them, her face pained at the memory.
“So do house cats.”
“House cats don’t pick off entire barbarian tribes over the course of a week.”
"I'm sure they would if they could,"
Branston sighed, reaching for his teapot and pouring himself another cup, “What will you do? If you need healers, I have a few skilled enough to go.”
Rasnah sighed, rubbing her forehead and resting her cup in her lap, “Perhaps one. I’ll send a group to watch. If it's sighted again, we'll have to do something.”
Veon-Zih cleared his throat to get her attention and arched a questioning eyebrow her way. The Paladin returned the look with a smile and said, “I will make sure they have a sending stone. If you're needed, I’m sure they'll wait for you to arrive before seeking it out.” her smile faded, and she stared into her cup, “If they really are vestiges of dragons then I suppose Saint Giorgos is right and all of them were evil.”
“Having a crisis of faith, Rasnah?” Branston asked softly, but with a smile, “Legends say Hengist was allied with goodly dragons.”
“Dragons of Gold and Silver and all the precious metals,” Veon-Zih finished for him, then added, “None of that matters anymore. All we can do is face the challenges life presents us with in the here and now.”
“Of course,” Rasnah agreed, looking up at her old friends and managing a lopsided grin, “And now we have a wyvern possibly claiming territory in our forests. Do you think Daunas will want to join the hunt? If necessary,” she added at the end.
“Mung's boy? He’s still stationed at Hamerfoss then?” Branston asked.
Veon-Zih chuckled, “I don’t believe he would forgive you if you didn’t let him.” his chuckle died, and the three gazed mournfully out the window. Remembering their last wyvern fight, and their friend lost in bringing it down. It had been their last adventure together.
-End of Part 1-
--- Table of Contents ---
All comments and are welcome and wanted.

Credit to u/SpacePaladin15
CW: cursing, mild spacism, mention of suicide (nothing too bad, I'm not u/BushBacon)
Memory transcription subject: Salvek, Human-Venlil Exchange Program Candidate
Date [standardized human time]: September 3, 2136
I hate banks. Or, more specifically, I hate the United Banking Service. I've never really used another bank, on account of my mother signing me up for a twenty-five year family plan for a cash bonus that never came (it was twenty-five thousand credits, I can't really blame her) but that just makes me hate this one more.
The fat, lazy Gojid on the other side of the bulletproof glass teller window tapped away at his keyboard in order to process my application for a loan. Above him I saw the UBS logo and motto: "Speed, Security, Success." All a load of vyalpic if you ask me. (I will die of old age before this loan ever comes through)
"Sooooo....." Thank the Herd, he was finally talking. I was worried his fat ass had a heart attack and died with how little moving he did. "Your credit score issss....." Oh Protector, just spit it out already! Now I get why predators have such violent impulses. (What if I can't control mine? What if we're worse than them?)
Brahk my intrusive thoughts. How does Jack control his so well? I resolved to ask him when my loan got processed, assuming neither of us starved to death in the meantime. (Speed, security, and success this dick)
"Seven hundred and ninety." Oh, thank Inatala. (Inatala hates predators, can I still say that with one as my best friend?) Venlil credit scores go from zero, being applied to people who took out million-credit loans and blew all the money on gear to unsuccessfully rob the bank they got the loan from, to one thousand, which went to those who panicked over a two credit overdrawn balance and had a heart attack whenever they were a week away from a loan's due date and it still wasn't paid.
Seven hundred and ninety was above average, since my parents had always taught me to manage my finances well, but only slightly above average since Jack's presence and the constant racism that came with it were more trouble than the government stipend was worth. (I would never send him back home, he's better to me than many Venlil)
I thanked the Gojid with sincerity that I meant none of, and asked "Is my loan approved?"
He told me "Yes, it's been approved at..." Oh Herd, not this again. How do his coworkers interact with him? "5% quarterly interest." That's not even bad. (Five percent might be a robbery, but for UBS banks it's decent) "You'll have six months to pay it off in full... or the interest will double every quarter." (Somebody should disband the United Banking Service)
I agreed to these terms, since they were the best I was going to get, and left without another word. Eight thousand Federation credits had just entered my bank account, making me a very rich man. (Not really, but it was the most I'd ever had)
Jack was sitting on a bench outside the UBS building tapping away on his pad. A more skittish Venlil would have assumed that he was plotting something or bathing in the virtual blood of his prey, but I knew better than to assume the game he was playing was predatory.
Never mind, it was absolutely predatory. An army of huge winged beasts descended on what looked like a walled fortress in the middle of a hellish landscape, and lightning rained down from the skies at Jack's command to pick apart what I assumed were strategic defenses. (He might not actively do predator things, but he is excellent at them)
Within thirty ticks of the timer at the top of the screen, the beasts were above the fortress raining destruction on whatever they pleased. A few soldiers ran out of a building near the center of the base, attacking Jack's army, but they were quickly dealt with. Without the defenses that were destroyed by what I assumed was orbital bombardment, the base was helpless against the conquering predator.
A chill ran down my spine as I saw the defenders being slaughtered. A Venlil general or admiral (there were actually surprisingly many when compared to the rest of our military) could accomplish such results but those types of Venlil were very few and often had mild cases of Predator Disease. (That needs a new name. Maybe Arxur disease? No, too scary)
Seeing an average human, whose only military experience was four years serving on a war boat (They still have a boat military? Herd, those predators love their weapons) complete what many Federation officers would struggle to do terrified me for good reason.
We Venlil had treated Humans like they weren't even sapient, just dirt or pests that we had to tolerate. And the rest of the Federation treated them even worse. What if they decided peace wasn't worth it? What if, in our fear of the Arxur, we unleashed a threat worse than them? (Could Jack spare me from a human cattle farm? I'd have to kill myself if he couldn't)
Venlil Prime would be the first world to fall. We'd all die of our own hubris.
"Hell!" Jack turned his pad down so I couldn't look over his shoulder anymore. "I'm sorry you had to see that." Why did he have to be sorry for everything? The way my species, my Federation, treated him and his kind always angered me.
I told him "Don't be sorry. It's not your fault your hobbies are so... you know." I didn't like using the word "predator". At least, not to describe humans. Jack was cool with me using it as long as it wasn't in a derogatory way, (since they are predators) but it just reminded me of how unjustly he and his kind were treated.
Jack clearly didn't listen when I said not to be sorry because he kept apologizing. "Yeah, but it's not your fault you're so damn skittish either. And it is my fault I played Clash... I mean the game here. I should've known better." Herd, why did he never stand up for himself? The exterminators can't be that bad!
I explained to him "You don't have to apologize, Jack. You never meant to scare anyone." and before he could keep apologizing (I know him too well to think he wouldn't) I changed the subject. "We have money at our disposal now, we can buy something from the Mellow Firefruit on our way to the train station."
Jack agreed, but he was worried about "spacists". (Oh Herd, has he lost it?) I asked "What in the Arbor is a spacist?" In case you don't know, the Arbor is where followers of the Great Protector go when they die. It's a huge forest with plentiful and delicious food, and no predators.
When I finally mustered up my courage and told Jack that the god I worship hates his kind, I was half expecting to die horribly by his unusually short claws or extremely dull fangs. (Are they so peaceful because of their lack of natural weapons, or do they lack natural weapons because they're so peaceful? I should ask Jack that)
Instead, he shrugged it off and told me that, apparently, "Jesus still solos." When I explained the Arbor at his request, he had the brilliant idea to convert to worshiping the Protector and then kill himself in order to appear there and scare the afterlife out of everyone else. He quickly and profusely explained that he would never actually do that, but Inatala would never have accepted him anyway so it didn't matter.
Anyway, back to real life. Jack told me "Oh, spacists? They're just space racists except I mushed the two words together. It's a play on words type thing." The words 'space' and 'racists' do not fit together in Venlilese, and frankly, I was astounded that the translator even gave me the concept. (I bought it second-hand from a Mazic who stepped on it one too many times, but it was incredibly cheap)
I told him "If you told anyone but me that the words 'space' and 'racists' fit together then you would be screened for Predator Disease." and he covered his mouth in the gesture that was universally recognized as a prey-safe predator's laugh.
"God, sometimes I forget you guys have a sense of humor."
Just then, I started walking. I was tired, like any Venlil would be after a long walk, a long wait in line and the anticipation of another long walk, but the thought of the sweet, delicious food at the Mellow Firefruit kept me going. (I have to get Jack some, he's been underrating Venlil cuisine ever since he first tried my subpar cooking)
Jack fell in behind me, then he moved up to be at my side as an equal. Us Venlil didn't care where you were in line, but I guess predators have different priorities. (Is thinking 'predator' as bad as saying it? That's a dilemma I need to deal with later) I asked him "How come your claws and... uh... those pointy front teeth are so small?" (I don't like talking about fangs, sue me)
Jack turned to look at me, jerked his head away a little, then he turned and looked at me again. He responded to my question, realized I was a Venlil, and realized I was Salvek, in that order. I was good at reading people. He told me "First of all, they're called nails and canines. And second of all, we've never needed claws so they never evolved." A predator never needing claws was absurd! When would Jack learn that he didn't have to lie to me?
I interrupted my friend's explanation by telling him "Jack, I'm not going to run away or faint just because you tell me that ancient humans hunted. I get it. Just tell me how you lost your claws."
Jack sighed. He didn't sigh a lot, only when he was driven to the end of his very long rope (Turns out that's a human idiom too! Who knew?) by someone else's, usually my, stupidity. "Salvek, we didn't lose them. We evolved to eat fruit from trees, and by the time we were eating meat we had at least developed the art of throwing rocks at things. There was never any need for them, and they never appeared as a result. Satisfied?"
Developing weapons early on did make sense for humans, given how good they are at combat, so I nodded. It wasn't really a Venlil expression, but those in the exchange program had learned everything they could about their human partners. (I'm saying human instead of predator! Progress!) "Yeah, that makes sense."
Jack continued, explaining about human 'canines'. We just called them fangs. "Canines were originally fangs, yeah," He lowered his voice when he mentioned fangs. "but when we made fire around a million years ago, we didn't need them anymore and so they got smaller. I'm no expert, but that's what I know."
That actually made sense. I knew the Arxur didn't eat cooked meat, since I found uncensored raid footage on an internet rabbit hole when I was fourteen, (I peed myself and had nightmares for weeks but no one has to know) but I always assumed humans shared that trait. Maybe I was just like the rest with how I kept comparing humans and Arxur. (Why am I capitalizing one and not the other? No one knows!)
Maybe I was just like the rest. Maybe one day I would lose control and run from Jack, or freeze up, or worse, call the exterminators, and then it would all be over. I could never live with myself if my damned instincts got him to hate me or got him killed. I've only known him for a few weeks, but when we met we just clicked.
It's still weird to me how the concept of platonic soul mates doesn't exist yet.
"That's it, right?" Jack asked while pointing to a red restaurant a few blocks away. That was it. I was about to eat good.
"Yeah, that's it. Come on, let's go!" I ran to the Mellow Firefruit faster than most humans could, on account of my species being designed for sprints, (or we're just better than them) and Jack tagged along in a brisk walk. He was probably trying not to be mistaken for chasing me and shot dead, or worse, set on fire.
I know most predators don't feel pain, but humans do. Why in the Herd didn't exterminators at least have the decency to kill them humanely?
A couple seconds later, Jack was waiting outside the restaurant and looking at his pad while I waited in line (In case nobody noticed yet, I hate lines) for my meal. Jack's meal too, since nobody wanted their entire customer base to leave the second they began serving humans. At least, that was the official reason. The real reason is that most Venlil are still racist.
After an agonizing minute and a half of waiting, since the Mellow Firefruit was a popular restaurant (for good reason, as Jack was about to discover) I finally got to order my food. "I'll have two yaccay salads, and two red fires please." Jack only asked for a salad, but red fires were excellent drinks and if he said no to one I would drink both. I was being smart with this.
"Okay, that will be 43.8 credits." All right, maybe not so smart.
I asked "44 credits?" in shock as my mind struggled to wrap itself around this sudden increase in price. The last time I got a meal here it was only twenty credits.
The cashier, a large green Krakotl who was a tiny bit taller than me, explained "Inflation. Those damn predators brahked up the economy and now we have this." Putting hate on my friend Jack wasn't something I would normally tolerate, but my father had always said it wasn't wise to anger the people who made your food. I just swiped my card across his card reader and stayed silent, like dad would have wanted.
"If you ask me, Sovlin was right."
Was my father really that wise? He probably didn't know what he was talking about.
"How can you say that? No one deserves what he did to Marcel." I shot back, managing to contain the venom in my voice.
The cashier retorted "No one sapient. But those... things that Tarva's dumb ass let roam our planet don't qualify." with barely-contained hatred. (Thank the Herd Jack doesn't have to hear this)
Before I could respond, however, the manager came with my order and reprimanded his subordinate. "Don't get into politics with customers, and certainly don't spit those lies in my establishment!" Maybe the Great Protector was still looking out for me.
The manager handed me my items and apologized profusely. "My cashier here is still new to Venlil Prime. He hasn't gotten used to the... the new arrivals yet. Herd, even I struggle sometimes, and I'm in the exchange program!"
I thanked him, explaining that it wasn't a big deal but the cashier should still be reprimanded, and brought our food to Jack. He wasn't playing that predatory (it was predatory, but predatory didn't necessarily mean bad) game again, but he was scrolling through his account on UHerd.
UHerd was the Venlil's main addition to the galaxy at large, being a huge social media service that Jack had described as "just like Instagram." when he first heard of it. Bleat was another large website just like it, but it was much less known than UHerd. (Fun fact: the U stands for Internet! Maybe not in English, but in Venlilese it does)
Jack never posted much, but he had me and a few mutual friends from the Program followed and he liked hearing what we were doing. I plopped down next to him and handed him his food. "Here, I got you something."
He picked up the salad nonchalantly, but when I handed him his drink, he inspected it curiously. "What in God's name is this doohickey?" He asked.
I told him "Try it, it's a red fire. It's good." and he did try it.
Jack exclaimed "Holy christ!" and the look in his eyes was comparable to what I saw the first time I agreed to being pet. "This is heavenly!" He guzzled the spicy fluid with hunger that would have terrified me if I hadn't seen him devour meals a dozen times before, (He'll eat me next I have to run I have to run run run run for it [oh, shut up already]) stopping only to praise its taste. "This is like the nectar of the gods!" Then "Shit, this is what I was missing out on? We gotta desegregate the restaurants immediately!"
That got him thinking, and I could almost see the money-making gears turning in his head. "You know, Salvek, what if we opened up a restaurant? You could be the official owner and waiter, I could cook some delectable earth recipes, and as long as no one saw me, we could make bank!"
I didn't like that idea. It sounded a lot like a recipe for disaster. I told him "Nah, it would be too hard for just the two of us. And besides, we already have the clothing business." Selling shirts online is a lot easier and cheaper than owning a restaurant.
Since Jack asked me a question, I figured I could ask one too. "Hey Jack, do you mind if I ask you a question?"
Jack didn't care, and he told me as much, so I continued. "How do you keep yourself in check all the time? How can humans control themselves so well?"
He paused for a bit, causing me to involuntarily panic, (he's looking for weak points, or exterminators, he's going to snap my neck for this) but I quelled these thoughts and there was no visible change in my expression. Finally, the colossal man spoke. "How do you do it?"
"W-what?" I stammered, and he picked up a leaf that was blowing in the wind before cherishing his last sip of the red fire.
He held the leaf up to my mouth. "How can you resist the temptation to just chow down on every plant you see? It must be exhausting." I took a brief nibble of the plant, despite it being completely unappetizing in nature, and he told me "See? Your herbivore instincts made you eat it! How can you keep them in check all the time?"
I wasn't a fool, not by any means. I knew he was mocking me. But the thought of a predator not having any predatory instincts was an entirely unheard of concept, bordering on heresy for some. It would probably have gotten me screened for Predator Disease if I spoke of it aloud, but I still spoke of it aloud. (There were no exterminators, I was fine) "So you're trying to say that you don't have predatory instincts? But what about the drive to hunt?"
Jack sighed again, muttering "So smart, but so damn stupid." in a low tone before he explained to me exactly what I wanted to know. "We have the need to eat meat in the same way you need to eat plants, because if we don't do it we die." That made sense. "But just like you don't have a primal urge to devour all the greenery in sight, we don't have any instincts of our own. Make sense?"
It did, but I was still struggling to wrap my head around it, so I just nodded and finished off my salad. Jack had apparently forgot about his salad, as he hadn't touched it. He opened the plastic carton, looked at its contents weirdly, and took a bite.
"This is mid." He told me, point blank. "Like, I don't mean to offend anyone, but it is mid. I'm not even hungry."
I was mildly offended, but there wasn't much I could change about his honest opinion, so I just told him "I thought it was good." and left it at that.
Jack slid his salad over to me (I love these things like my only son) and offered "You can have it. I don't want it." I would have accepted, but I wasn't hungry. Jack didn't really mind, so he threw his salad out and told me "Then we should get going. We have only [1/8 of a claw], I mean... 1/8 of a claw before our train leaves."
I agreed, getting up and walking to the train station, and Jack followed. I was well rested by then, so the brief walk was easy. Jack... Jack was Jack. He never got tired.
We actually made a pretty good pace to the train station, and within 1/16 of a claw we were on our way back to my home district and my third-floor apartment. I had money to my name, I had a huge predator (Human! Damn, those words get mixed up too much) friend, and he and I were about to make a truckload of credits. Life was good.
Previous Next comes when I say it comes

Preamble

I primarily play Hunter, so this is from my perspective as a Hunter player. Dungeons are probably close to my favorite thing in this game. They're topped only by new raids and secret missions. Although generally I like the secret missions a little less than the dungeons (with the exception of Presage which was one of my favorite activities in the game when it was in the game). I'm not the best player in the game, and I experience good days and bad days. So usually my solo/flawlesses take about a week from the point where I start my attempts to getting the completion. The only exception to this was Spire of the Watcher for reasons I'll discuss later. The important point for the preamble is that I didn't complete Spire until last season, even though I made more than a few solid attempts during the week it launched and the weeks after. I just couldn't figure out a strat I was comfortable with for Persys.
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There has been a lot of chat on this sub and others (and in my group lobbies) about this most recent dungeon's difficulty and it's boss HP scaling. Players like Gladd have made rant videos about the HP bars of the bosses (which is notable only because he usually opts to talk shit on people for things being too easy rather than too difficult). I myself spent the first two days of the dungeon's launch in three different 3-5 hour clears because I was helping out friends and figuring out the dungeon and DPS options. And then, I started my solo attempts. And while I haven't yet quite gotten my rhythm down for the final boss, I can reliably get to her solo now in less time than the first successful clear of the first boss took with a group. I also find that even though I haven't figure out how to consistently stay alive in her room yet, her shields are not all they're cracked up to be. I'm not even using Arbalest and they seem to go down quicker than some Barrier Champs... And this is what prompted me to write this post. Because I think people see things like final damage values in a certain light, and then they correllate that to their experience of fighting for hours without stopping to think about alternative explanations for what they're seeing and experiencing.
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And don't get me wrong. It's brutal the first time. The second time. And the third time. Ghosts of the Deep (GotD) has the largest quantity of endlessly intense add phases I've seen since Prophecy. Not even Duality can hold a candle to the sheer volume of enemies you'll defeat by the end of a normal run of GotD. So I'm going to discuss add pressure, discuss boss HP values, number of phases to get the kill, mechanics with a kill timer vs. mechanics without one, and "artificial difficulty" (and probably some other things). So buckle up, because we're gonna be here for a while.
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Difficulty of Dungeons in General

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First, lets just talk about difficulty in general in a pre-GotD world. And to do that, I think a bit of a history lesson is in order.
Shattered Throne
A thing that everyone should keep in mind when evaluating dungeons is that Shattered Throne (ST) as the first came about in an era before we could customize mods in our armor, and long before 3.0 anything was even dreamed of as a possibility. ST came about when the most "efficient" solo strat for killing the final boss was to sit on a pillar and plunk away at her with an infinite ammo Whisper of the Worm. And back then, this dungeon was a slog. Getting to the first boss (The Ogre) was tedious, even though it wasn't too hard. The Ogre itself though would wipe groups because they didn't understand how to pick up the buffs or how to stay alive in a room with little to no cover and a boss that would pin you to the wall with it's eyebeam if it got line of sight on you. Even now, this boss room can still fuck you up if you aren't paying attention and don't treat the Ogre with respect. Back then, this was a 3-4 phase kill IF you had 21% Delirium (which didn't even come out until two seasons after ST launched).
Once you got to the final boss, Dul Incaru's room is still one of the most bullshit boss arenas I've ever fought in. It's small, you've got three fucking huge HP sink knights, a million Psions and a Hive Witch that deletes you if she can see you for more than a second or two. I don't know how people did this fight without Anarchy to chain down the knights, but man was this fight hard to just stay alive in. But if you could, then you were rewarded with a fairly easy 1-2 phase boss (depending on which meta you were playing in) because the damage buff from the Knights buffed your damage significantly. But it also had a timer that would just kill you if you didn't cleanse yourself or kill the boss. Oh and cleansing required you to jump on an exposed plate in the middle and then shoot a crystal with the HP of a yellow bar enemy before you died.
If this all sounds reasonable by comparison, remember that you could only do Shattered Throne one week out of the month (once every three weeks). So yea, it was easier by comparison because you couldn't just run it any time you pleased so it HAD to be easier so that people could actually complete it in a given Strong Curse Week.
Pit of Heresy
IDK what to say about Pit other than that it was my favorite for a long time because I liked how it used verticality to make things feel immense. This dungeon suffered from (and still suffers from) bugs and inconsistent enemy behaviors in the first encounter and the totem encounter. This was also my first solo flawless (I had gotten ST solo, but not flawless). Pit was very approachable as a solo flawless, and I would still recommend it to most people looking to try one out for the first time, because it only has one actual boss encounter. The opening encounter is about as easy as ST's was, but a lot more fun because you could sword fly around.
The maze with the Ogres is the first time I heard people say that dungeons were using "artificial difficulty" (there's that term...). But this encounter is not even a little bit hard IF you take the time to learn a route to go. If you didn't do that and just floundered around complaining about the ogres being too strong and doing too much damage, then this encounter was the bane of your existance. And to this day, if I join Pit groups most of the time at least one if not both of the other people have no clue how to navigate this area. But once you have your route mapped and know that you can punch jump to move quicker with a ball, this mini encounter becomes a breeze as you just run from one to the next in the space of a couple minutes. But you can't do that unless you come in and actually practice and learn the route, learn how to kill the Hive in the caves, and learn how to get past Ogres that are in front of you. And this takes believing that it was possible to do.
The Totems is the true test. So many people would refuse to do this encounter without the ball dupe cheese and would swear it's impossible. For my part, on my clear I would kill two knights and bring two balls back and dunk both to get only one add wave. Which is still somewhat of a cheese, but it doesn't just skip the encounter. This encounter was the second place I heard people say the dungeon was just too hard for no reason. And sure, at first this encounter was extremely hard. It is probably still one of the harder plate defense encounters in the game (if you play it correctly) simply because of how many things you have to juggle to get through it. We're talking a stacking debuff that kills you if it gets too high, a totem that kills you if you don't touch it every few seconds, boomer knights raining death from above, endless waves of acolytes throwing thousands of solar grenades at you while thrall and exploding thrall rushed to push you off the plate. Oh and you had to kill mini-boss knights to get the ball to dunk. And yea, everyone would just cheese this encounter because back then it was the latest version of the "this is too hard and unfair" encounter.
The maze that came next also still throws people for a loop, and again required you to practice your route so you could navigate it safely. If you don't know your way around, then this part could take a long time and you might die many times trying to find your way. But again, just like the Ogres, once you know the way through, it's a piece of cake assuming you can platform past swinging pendulums.
And after all that, the final boss was not too bad. The adds were nowhere near as oppressive as they were at the totem, and the mini-bosses were all close by and in set spawn locations so you didn't have to run all over the place like in the opening encounter. The only part of this that was somewhat difficult was the actual dps phase because there was a timer to it, but you didn't get to see the timer. The boss would swing his huge flaming sword and leave piles of fire everywhere and cursed thrall would come in from all sides and you could only damage him while being in the middle.
For this I remember distinctly choosing to just go with Celstial Golden Gun and Anarchy with the plan to just blap him once, stick two Anarchy's to him and then kill Thrall. This took me like 5 phases to do (I think... It's been a while... but it was at least 5, possibly 6), but because it was consistent and I could do the rest of the fight easily with my other weapons, I went with it.
Overall, once I did this dungeon once solo, I immediately jumped back in (as soon as I was done) to do the solo flawless attempt in one go. And it was easy the whole way except for totems.
Prophecy
Prophecy was brutal. Prophecy was the first one to take me a week to do. I lived in that dungeon all week and I swear it was impossible without god roll Falling Guillotine, god roll heavy GL, and Trinity Ghoul with the catalyst and Witherhoard. There is so much RNG in these fights that it's not even funny. And I remember seeing many threads back then complaining that this new dungeon, while cool, used RNG to create "artificial difficulty".
The first boss had RNG affecting which motes you needed to deposit and how the shadows moved when you banked those motes. He had at the time some of the most oppressive add pressure in the game and he'd boop you off if you got careless for even half a second. This fight was SOOO easy to get yourself stuck in a position that you couldn't get out of and die... Oh and about 1/2 way through the damage phase he summoned a couple dozen goblins to make him immune, so you had to save you super for that so that you could kill them quickly without just losing half the phase... Oh and his shield would block your damage and swords. You had to hot swap Witherhoard with a Guilliotine back and forth to get him down in any kind of remotely quick time, and I'm pretty sure this was a 4-5 phase when I was first learning it and I got it down to a 2-3 phase by the time I was done. But the add phases in between those DPS phases took forever because of how the mote spawning worked and just how many fucking psions he threw at you. Sometimes you even had ot purposely kill the mote spawning Knights to spawn the wrong motes just so that you could alleviate some of the pressure. So sure, this fight only took 2-3 phases once you had it down... but it still took for fucking ever because of what happened in-between.
The Desert is boring. idk what else to say about it other than Trinity Ghoul shit on it.
The Cube Room required Trinity Ghoul. If you didn't have it, you weren't clearing the Acolytes and their Eyeblasts in time. We didn't have Jolt, ignite, or easy access to volatile. But the add pressure was such that you'd think we did... Trin Ghoul with Catalyst was the closet thing you could get to that.
This fight has it all. Minimal cover, many holes to fall to your death on accident, endless waves of strong enemies, snipers that spawn above you and when you kill knights, knights on the ground with you when you kill snipers. You had to kill two snipers to spawn two knights to get orbs. But the moment the knights died, the snipers respawned, and the acolytes spawned endlessly with their eyes. So as soon as you picked up all your motes and now had no weapons, there was shit spawning all around and snipers bearing down. Oh and I forgot to mention that Toland spawned randomly and sometimes on the ceiling (which I STILL to this day do not understand how to choose a side when he's on the ceiling). If he was on the ceiling, your 6 room run was now an 8 room run. Oh and the room it drops you into, and the color of motes you'd need are completely random. Some rooms were equal, some rooms favored light motes, some favored dark. So you could get a room that favored light motes, but you needed dark motes and there might be only 1 or 2 places to stand to be able to spawn those motes... So when you finally get to the "boss" it's easy sure... again because everything else was so damn hard that a hard boss at the end would have just been beyond cruel...
Rainbow Road is pretty, but I hate it because it's just long and boring when you're soloing it. Don't sparrow because you might fall.
Final boss was the definition of a nightmare and early on you were LUCKY to get a group that could three phase this thing... Most groups were going to do four, possibly five, maybe even six if things went horribly wrong.
It has everything we had in the last encounters. Random mote colors needed, random rooms being dropped into, and absurd add pressure the likes of which had not been seen in 3 man content to that point. On top of that, there was literally no where to hide because the boss was in all three corners bearing down on you. So you had to start this encounter off knowing where the psions and knights spawn ahead of time, planting witherhoard on them before they spawn and then deleting them to create the correct color within a minute or you would get overwhelmed instantly and have literally nowhere safe to hide. There was not one single part of any of those rooms that you could hide in for more than a couple of seconds until you cleared off one of the bosses AND killed the Ogre that spawned in his place.
Once you finished all three sides, you were off to DPS where we have a boss designed to thwart Well of Radiance by not only teleporting away down a long room full of platforms to jump to and Taken hobgoblin snipers, but also by throwing a teleport wall at you. You had to flawless this room solo if you were going to have a shot at 5 phasing this boss. I remember mastering my jumps and making sure I was getting double Witherhoard stacks on him (tagging him and putting one on the ground) at every platform he teleported to, while juggling the platforming, the snipers and his teleport death wave. And at the end of the run, you got a chance to dump some heavy into him (also briefly at the beginning to, but you needed to leave early to get ahead of the teleports and enemy spawns).
For most solo completions, this was a five phase boss or more. There might have been some streamers out there who could get him to four. I'm sure having mountain top and not killing yourself on accident with it was part of those loadouts (I didn't have it so that wasn't an option).
This dungeon was a nightmare to solo and even now I imagine the final boss is quite challenging to solo flawless, even if you can probably kill it in far fewer phases now due to power creep.
​

Modern Dungeons

This brings us to what I call the Modern Dungeons, which is Grasp of Avarice (GoA), Duality, Spire of the Watcher (SotW), and Ghosts of the Deep. We're going to spend less time here because these ones all have one crucial factor in play that the previous three didn't. They are all tuned with modern abilities and weapons in mind. So their bosses will be tankier than bosses of the previous three which were tuned for different times and different metas.
​
Grasp of Avarice
Released too early. Everything through the sparrow race is fantastic, but the Servitor and final boss fights drag on needlessly. I firmly believe this dungeon was originally scheduled to release with Season of Plunder, but was bumped up to release early because they wanted to pad out the anniversary pack due to Witch Queen being delayed.
This dungeon is very easy assuming you can do two things: complete the sparrow section and deal with the sniper shank in the final boss room. This shank that respawned every damage phase has as much HP as a Hero Nightfall boss. He's tanky as fuck, hard to hit, no crits, and he hits you for half your HP if you let him see you. So unless you had heavy to burn on him, you were doing what I did which was sticking the Scorch Cannon blast to him and charging it up to detonate. Killing this Shank alone for every boss attempt took more time than it took me to kill the Ogre at the first part of the dungeon. Between this guy and the boss tier vandal that also spawned with him, this boss had easily 5x as much HP as any other boss (if we think of these two guys like the shields on the bosses in GotD).
I hate this dungeon, but I love the theme.
Duality
While the final fight was plagued by bugs, this dungeon was awesome. It put pressure on you the whole way but also gave you space to breath where you needed it. All the encounters were about managing add spawns and racing the red world timer. I don't like the Dungeon overall because the teleporting that you do between bosses can leave members of your fireteam behind, and there just isn't much going on in the maps in general. It's very bland looking. But I loved the fights and I love the Calus voicelines.
​
Spire of the Watcher
I was so excited to get a Vex dungeon and Rasputin themed stuff. But damn was this dungeon a letdown overall. The chasing the node mechanic is a fantastic solo mechanic, but it sucks in group play because you end up with just one person doing it while everyone else just does adds. This is the same problem that RoN had, but that's a different topic. It's just not a good group play mechanic, and so in groups this dungeon just kind of sucks because you're stuck going at the speed of whoever is doing the nodes...
For solo play, this dungeon was mostly fine. The first half of it is a cakewalk once you have the nodes memorized.
The Harpy Boss is where everyone talks about the dungeon becoming a slog... but again this is a slog the player is in control of. The ask is to hit all the nodes to trigger damage, then you break a couple dozen eyes to render the boss vulnerable. The main thing people get stuck on is killing these eyes in a reasonable amount of time, but if you can do it then this boss was 2-3 phasable at launch with artifact mods. Currently it's about 4 phases on my Hunter, 5 if I make mistakes. But chaining the nodes together takes almost no time, so this fight overall has been reduced to a 20min fight at max, even if I do do a short 5th damage phase to chip off the last little bit of HP. But like Pit of Heresy from before, it requires you to memorize a route and a rhythm that allows you to do the nodes quickly. If you don't do that, then this fight will take an eternity.
For the final fight, I got very frustrated because I couldn't figure out a good damage setup, and I couldn't find any guides that didn't use gear swapping for hunters. It's frustrating because I think that while this is certainly optimal, it discourages creative problems solving that could lead to figuring out the best ways to actually do the encounter. I'm always feeling like were one or two patches away from this being nerfed (kind of how they nerfed it in Trials of Osiris). Once Strand came out, the mobility and damage resistance made this fight infinitely more approachable, and the super + a magazine of Xeno had this guy down in 5 quick phases. The only thing that would slow me down was if I had to farm for heavy ammo.
The hardest part of this fight by far is getting the first 5 red cable nodes hit. But again, this is something that the player can master if they spend time to actually study the fight. Just running in blind every time and raging at it for being "unfair" and "artificially difficult" will not get it done. But if you take time to figure out how to manipulate the supplicant spawns, then you can do this easily and you don't even need woven mail.
I don't like DPS on this boss because Wyverns are just too hard to precision hit without a mouse, so I feel forced to use non-precision weapons. I don't mind this sometimes, but for a solo boss I think restricting the player in this way is not good design.
​

Ghosts of the Deep

And now we're here. And if you've read this far, thank you. Don't worry, this will be short.
​
If we look back over the history of things, we can see that it wasn't uncommon for dungeon bosses to either have large HP pools, long mechanics phases, ammo/time sink enemies, bullshit ways to die, etc. It's just how these things go. And over time, all of them were moved into farmable status once we had time to figure out the best ways to do them.
The Shields
They are vulnerable to anti barrier. They melt to almost any super hit. But the critical part is that damage done to shields shows up in your total damage done. And since they take bonus damage from some things.... while they might go down easy with the right weapons, you'll still see numbers like 12million on damage because of the damage being done to the shields.
As I said near the beginning, I spent many multi hour attempts on these because we were using machine guns, and even when we'd wipe we'd get insane damage numbers. And I know for a fact that my Commemoration, no matter how good it is, doesn't do the dps that those numbers suggested. So stop acting like these bosses have HUGE HP values. They don't have any larger of HP values than any other dungeon boss on average. You're not doing 9million damage with your LMGs/Linears and a super. You weren't doing that against raid bosses, and you're not doing it here. This is simple deductive reasoning. For example one Light-Light-Heavy combo of Lament will destroy more than half of the first bosses' shield, if not completely destroy it. Lament combo does not do 1mil damage. But it does do close to that to his shield.
So the reality is that we don't actually know the HP values of the bosses. No one does. Anyone saying that do that doesn't have a reliable way to account for inflated shield hp/damage is wrong.
The solution then is not to complain that the bosses have too much HP, but to figure out ways of dealing with the shields. I just watched someone strip off the final bosses' shield with one Gathering Storm and a Levi Breath shot or two (and no he wasn't using Star Eater's either... He was using Assassin's Cowl and never swapped). He did enough damage that this boss was four phasable comfortably if you made no mistakes.
My own kill of the first boss also makes it feel like it's four phasable with no mistakes. But probably five phases typically while solo. And this puts them on par for other bosses in dungeon history. And like those bosses... a year or two from now, the new meta of the future will probably shit on these bosses and we'll be 1-2 phasing them and complaining that they're too easy.
​
The Add Pressure
What makes these fights drag is the adds. You have to have a build that shreds adds FAST. Because of RoN and all of last season, everyone is defaulting to LMGs for this and then wondering why the bosses take an eternity to kill... Add pressure also makes getting the mechanics done quickly very difficult until you spend enough time with the bosses to understand the spawns well enough to abuse them in your favor. Once you can do that, you can blitz through the mechanics in no-time and that (just like the bosses from ST, Pit, Prophecy, Duality, and Spire) is where you save time in your run. That is how you take your runtime down from 2-4 hours to 1.5 hours. Because if you take a long time to kill the adds, or if the adds are constantly forcing you to hide to recover HP, then you are adding time to the run that you don't need to add to the run. And it makes the boss phases feel worse because you spent 10 minutes getting to the phase, only for it to be over at 7% of their HP bar damaged. But if you practice getting that in between time down to 3-5min, and figure out a good weapon loadout... you find that in the time it took you to do two damage phases before for 7% each, you're doing four phases of 10-15% or more. And that's when it starts to shine through as possible.

Closing Thoughts

I don't know what I'd use on a Warlock or Titan because I don't play them much. But you need to find ways to stay alive. You can heal yourself with sublcass abilities and mods. And you can do DPS with things other than what you see on a stream or a youtube video. If you've done these before, then you know how to solve this problem.
There is no such thing as "artificial difficulty". This term refers to challenges that the player feels frustrated by to an unreasonable degree. But all difficulty is artificial. It's all scripted to be a certain difficulty or not. A boss having a lot of HP is no more artificial than a boss having less HP but a long ass mechanics phase. Or very low HP but very short windows for DPS. The bosses in GotD have extremely long DPS phases for how little is actually happening during those phases. All they do is attack you, move around, and spawn some Thrall. And you have what feels like 30-40 seconds of time to shoot at them... So Bungie "artificially" reduced the difficulty there by making the phase take long enough that you have time to deal with the adds and the shield and then still have a comparable amount of time to hit the real HP bar (compared to other dungeons). But right now, it's all fresh and new. And right now you aren't comfortable in the arena. And right now it feels unfair. But it won't in a month or three.
You heard it here first. My predication is that this dungeon will be talked about as one of the easiest released in a long time. And I believe this will be said of it before The Final Shape launches.
So I believe in you Guardian. You can do this. It is made to challenge you to solve the problem. If your solution isn't working, then come up with another one. You don't need a streamer to tell you how to play, or how to do a build. Don't just go for only safety because that too will add full hours to your run that you don't have to spend. Get comfortable with being aggressive. Learn to love riding the red blinking HP line between awesome and despair, and get in there!
TLDR: Ghosts of the Deep is not even remotely out of band compared to previous dungeons in their given release metas. Many dungeons have been outpaced by power creep, but all of them were brutally hard to solo/solo-flawless in their day.

BABY’S ARM HOLDING AN APPLE
By YippieYiYi
CHAPTER 1
The Bird of Paradise had been on the front steps for a year and wasn’t getting enough sun, it hadn’t produced a single flower. I got the two-wheeler, but couldn’t get the pot on by myself. There’s a young guy on the sidewalk walking towards me. He’s got on one of those yellow visibility vests, no shirt underneath, a pair of black nylon basketball shorts and heavy work boots. He’s carrying a backpack over one shoulder. He must work for the city. He’s tall and thin with a wiry body. It’s hard to see his face, he’s got a baseball cap on with a Florida Gator’s logo, and a pair of dark sunglasses.
“Hola”
“Hola yourself, I was born here.”
“Sorry, can you give me a hand moving this plant?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I hold the dolly and he pushes the plant onto it so I can tip it back. I push it to the backyard, he follows and helps get if off.
“Where do you want it?”
“In the corner, it’ll get a lot more sun there.”
He wiggles it into place and says “How’s that?”
“Perfect! Thanks a lot! Can I offer you a beer?”
“Sure.”
He follows me into the house and I motion to the couch. The soccer game is still on the TV.
I grab a couple of Dos Equis and sit next to him.
“What’s your name?”
“Carlos.”
“Hi, Carlos. I’m Rick. Do you work for the city?”
“Yeah, Public Works.”
“Cool. What do you do?”
“Whatever they tell me. Usually just put out traffic cones, stand with a flag to warn people to slow down, sometimes dig ditches.”
“You live in the neighborhood?”
“Yeah, I just moved back with my mom for summer break, she’s on the next block. I don’t have a car so my boss pics me up and drops me off in front of the church.”
“How old are you?”
“19”
He takes off his hat and sunglasses and puts them on the coffee table. I can see his face now. Beautiful soft features, a wispy mustache, and long straight hair he had tucked under the hat. His skin is cafe-au-lait, probably tanned darker from being in the sun all day. He’s skinny, but his muscles are defined. I try not to stare, but I can’t help it. There’s a large bulge in the front of his shorts, but I’m pretty sure it’s his cell phone.
“I didn’t mean to insult you assuming you spoke Spanish, but you do look Latino, and a lot of the road crews just speak Spanish”
“Nah, I was just playing with you. Both my parents are from Columbia, but I was born here. I speak enough to get by, but I’d probably be lost if I ever went there. We don’t speak Spanish at home. It just took me by surprise, I go to FSU, everyone there assumes I must speak English.”
He’s lying back on the couch, the vest wide open, his arms crossed behind his head, looking completely relaxed. I see a beautiful happy trail leading down his shorts and tufts of dark hair under his arms, but try to distract myself with the soccer game.
“You want another beer?”
“Sure”
I head to the kitchen, grab the beers and a can of mixed nuts.
I put the nuts on the coffee table and he grabs a handful. I don’t think he’s really watching the soccer game, it’s a re-cap of the 2022 World Cup. I see him looking around the room.
“Where’s the head?”
“That door there”
The bathroom opens right onto the living room, one thing I didn’t like about the house when I was house-hunting, but it was in a great neighborhood close to the beach. I can hear him pissing, a really strong stream like young guys have. He didn’t close the door. I hear a piece of toilet paper torn, he must be wiping the tip of his dick. I like when guys do that, I always do. I’m the type that washes my hands before I piss so I don’t get my dick dirty. He flushes then washes his hands.
“I hope you don’t mind I used your towel in there.”
He settles back on the couch, doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere.
“You wanna smoke a joint?” he asks.
“Sure, I’ve got a little time. I don’t have to be at work for a couple hours.”
“Where do you work?”
“I work a couple nights a week at Massage Envy downtown. I’m a critical care nurse but I needed a break after the pandemic, and I had my massage license anyway. That’s how I put myself through nursing school.”
“How’d you end up in this little town?”
“My father passed recently. I ended up inheriting enough money to move out of the state and buy a house. I had vacationed here and loved it, so I decided to move here. I love being able to walk to the beach and downtown.”
“You own the house?”
“Yeah”
“Shit, how old are you?”
“27”
“No way! You’re 27, own your own house, and work just a couple nights a week? Must be nice.”
“Like I said, I inherited some money. I still don’t know where it all came from, my parents never had much. My mother passed away a while ago, then after my dad died, I started getting statements from all these investment accounts in his name. It’s enough to take a break, but I’m going to have to get a job eventually, not sure if I’ll go back to nursing, though, I’m thinking maybe something else, just not sure what.”
Carlos lights the joint and passes it to me. I take a hit and get up to get an ashtray. I take a couple more hits and sit down, passing the joint back to him. As I’m walking back to the couch I can’t help but notice how incredibly handsome he is, in that kinda sweet, kinda rough way that always gets me. We finish the joint and make small talk about the World Cup.
“You dropped a couple.”
Without thinking I reach over and brush the peanuts from his crotch. He grabs my hand, pushing it away, and glares at me. I was embarrassed and stunned (and stoned). Slowly the glare turned into a small smile, and he put my hand back.
I was struck dumb, but started feeling his crotch. It wasn’t his cell phone. I was rubbing up and down through the fabric and felt it swell.
“Here, let me make it easier”
Carlos raised his butt and lowered his shorts and boxers to his knees and sat back down. His boxers were black with yellow smiley faces.
“Jeez! That thing’s as big as a baby’s arm holding an apple!”
Carlos burst out laughing. “What did you say?”
“I said your dick’s as big as a baby’s arm holding an apple. You’ve never heard that expression?”
“No, never. I guess us Spanish speakers don’t use it” he kidded.
“Maybe it’s a regional euphemism, it sounds southern though. Not sure where I first heard it.”
I swear, this guy was packing. Not only thick, but long, and the head was massive. I couldn’t stop staring. He was holding it and asked me to jerk him off. I turned towards him and put both my hands on it and started pumping. He grabbed the back of my head and forced it down. I got the head in my mouth but there was no way I was going to take any more. I kept pumping with my hands and he quickly came. I couldn’t swallow fast enough, my mouth filled and his cum spilled out of my lips onto the couch.
“God, I needed that. I don’t usually fool around with guys, but you seem cool.”
He pulled an elastic from his pocket, tied his hair back and told me to stand up. I stood in front of him and he dropped my shorts and started kissing my thighs. He took his time, licking and sucking my balls till he finally started on my dick. There was a thread of pre-cum he pulled off and wiped on his shorts. I’d never been too concerned with my dick size, it seemed pretty good and I’d never had any complaints, but I felt like a little kid compared to his.
“Sorry I’m not as big as you.” I felt stupid as soon as I said it.
“Shut up, it’s a pain. No one can blow me, and my girlfriend only lets me put it halfway in. Worst part is when I take a dump, I’ve got to hold it up so it doesn’t hang in the toilet water. Yours is the perfect size for blowing and fucking, so don’t get all self-conscious on me.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
“Shut up and let me blow you.”
So I did. He licked it clean and pulled up my shorts and started zipping them.
“No!”
I don’t trust anyone pulling a zipper up anywhere near my dick. I got the foreskin caught in it once when I was a kid and can still feel the pain.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful with this beauty, I’m gonna want to use it again I think.”
“What about this girlfriend?”
“Just a girl I was seeing at school, we went out together a lot, but I think it was more of a FWB deal. She lives in California so I won’t see her till next fall. Why she wanted to go to college in Florida is beyond me.”
“I’ve gotta get ready to go to work, you wanna stop by tomorrow on your way home?”
He smiles. “Sure.”
“So I guess you’ll be massaging a bunch of hot guys tonight, huh?”
“Fat chance. I’ve got three bookings, two women and one man, all over 70. One has sciatica, the other scoliosis, and the guy has weakness in his legs so I stretch and massage them to stimulate the nerves.”
I shower to get the smell of beer and pot off me, and grab a bite to eat before heading over to the massage studio.

If anyone has a minute, I would appreciate feedback! I'm a nervous public speaker. I'm sure it'll be fine, but I think I'll be more confident if I have some edits from strangers. Thank you!!!
[Partners name],
You know – everyone here knows – that I’m notoriously bad at decisions, whether it’s deciding on a life path or a movie to watch.
But I want you to know, as I stand here today, I’ve never been more sure about a decision in my life. I know with such uncharacteristic certainty that I want you to be the one by my side. After 10 years together, I know your ins and outs, I know your strengths and weaknesses, and I love you so much for all of them.
You’re the person I want beside me when the shit hits the fan. You’ve got a plan for every apocalypse. You’re steadier than anyone I know. You’re enthusiastically supportive of every project I take on. And if I ever misjudge my own capacity, you're there to help shoulder the load. You're just the right amount of driven and competent without being cocky. You’re shockingly patient and your heart is always in the right place.
I want you on my team to tackle all the big stuff life throws our way, because we make a great team. But I also want you with me for the everyday moments, because that is most of them, after all. I want to make you too much soup when you're sick and go on dates to the hardware store. I want to giggle at your silly dad-jokes. I want to fill our passports with stamps from around the world, and then come home to our little farm, to too many dogs, to sunsets in the orchard. I know I want these things with you, because we do them every day and I love our life. It's not always a walk in the park, but I vow to do the work.
I vow to celebrate the good times, and to stay strong for the rough times.
I vow to laugh with you, through sickness and in health.
I vow to support and encourage you in all that you do, whether that's racing bikes, becoming suddenly obsessed with microscopes, or planting half our property with popcorn.
I vow to keep planning adventures.
I vow to compromise - like whether we should get the chickens that lay as many eggs as possible, or the chickens whose feathers look like funny hairdos.
I vow to stand by you through life’s ups and downs.
I vow to be your unwavering partner and friend, and to love you all the days of our lives.
I am overjoyed that I get to make my best friend my family.

Updated May 2023
After changing reddit accounts and about a year since posting it, it seemed prudent to throw this up for visibility. :)
Few things are worse than not knowing what happened to a loved one. Which is what convinced Robin Ayou to get into a drop shuttle with a lifepod with basically nothing, then fire herself down onto an ocean planet where the only place that she could investigate was a tiny little patch of barely-even-land and pray she can survive long enough to find a way to get off the planet.
Nobody ever told Robin she was great at forward planning.
https://subnauticamap.io/belowzero - This map will provide direction/orientation for this guide, but BEWARE! It marks spoilers if you turn those on!

Touchdown

Once you've landed, you'll find some food and water to start you off scattered around the ship. You won't have to worry about getting cold, since standing next to your now-burning ship will warm you up and the meteors coming down don't actually paste you, they're mostly to stress you out.
Note that may not be the case later. The weather in this game is a serious thing.
Once you have your stuff, you'll find the drop pod on your HUD. Don't go straight to it, though. As soon as you hit the water, look for an indentation in the ground. You'll find some copper in there. Then, follow the northern glacial wall (That's to your right when you're looking at your lifepod) until you find a small cave, which will have some silver and gold. That'll get you started off nicely. Get to your lifepod, take a look at your fabricator. You'll find that the items you have blueprints for can be pinned to the top-right in your PDA by clicking on them in the blueprints tab, a useful feature when hunting for materials.
Your goals right now are your basic survival tools. Note that the kelp forest is a bad place to hold your stuff in your hand. The sea monkeys are kleptomaniacs and will gank your stuff. You can totally get it back though, it just means chasing after them a bit, which is annoying and wastes time. However, if you pull out a flare and hold it in front of them, they freak out and run away from you for a little bit.

Time To Get Rolling

Your first task, as indicated by the PDA, is to find Delta Island. This becomes relatively easy once you find a compass. If you've gone to the emergency cache you'll have the beacon blueprint so stock up on them before traveling so you can mark things. You're going to be making a lot of these but since you can toggle them it's not so bad, you'll just need a lot of beacons. Its south of where the drop pod lands. As you spread out your searching range you'll find that the sea floor drops down among twisty coral structures.
This area is called Twisty Bridges. It's the main go-to for coral samples and you'll want those. There's small bits of Alterra stuff scattered around the area. It's here you'll find mobile vehicle bay, sea truck and seaglide fragments. When you've been in the area for a bit, you'll hear what sounds like an SOS. It's worth checking that out and you'll find that this spot goes deeper than you might suspect. Makes you wonder what's down there, doesn't it?
Beyond Twisty Bridges lies the thermal spires, an area of volcanic activity and thermal smokers. Many sea truck fragments are here. The wildlife here is noisy and menacing sounding but if you don't hang out next to them they're easy to avoid. Smacking one with a blade will made it instantly turn and get the hell away from you. They don't like being hit. On the border between thermal spires and twisty bridges someplace is a small foundation platform with external grow beds for you to scan, but you can get these at Omega Station later if you're not sweating on it. There are large crevices and a few volcanic fissures out here. Beware the heat vents, but exploring those areas can pay off, later.
On the island, you'll find blueprints you need, as well as some materials like sulfur and horseshoe nuts. The latter are very useful to plant in the seabase you'll be wanting. Take care to look around thoroughly for blueprints you'll find useful, as not all of them are inside the buildings. Also, keep a sharp eye out for music disks which you'll find scattered throughout the game, especially in bases.
On the south-west corner of the island is a precursor artifact you can scan. Look for the beach with all the pengwings on it. The habitat builder can be found on a box outside Delta Station. Make sure to scan the map inside the sea base. There's also a PDA up by the comms tower.

Let's Go Explorin'

So, by now you've visited Delta Island, have had a good look around Twisty Bridges and you've probably discovered the sea monkey caves in Kelp Forest. If you haven't gone exploring in those, you really ought to. You'll find more MVB fragments there but that's also where the propulsion cannon blueprint can be found, the laser cutter, as well as a fair amount of gold and some precursor artifacts as well. Once that's all done with and taken care of, you've probably got at least a tiny seabase, but if you don't... what are you doing?
Go on, shoo. Go make a base.
...
Okay, got one now? Good! Hopefully it's someplace nice. Your basic sea truck can't get down to where you want to be going next but a depth module will take care of that. A MkII depth module will let you get to the very bottom of where you want to go. Where do you want to go? Koppa Mine. You'll find it on the western side of the island. Take care to look around when you find the door eventually, since there is a databox just inside the main doors, before you head down. It has the moonpool and will allow you to get that much earlier than you would through scanning it.
To drive the seatruck inside the mine, drive north from the entrance of Koppa mine, you'll come across a volcanic fissure in the seafloor nearby which has JUST enough space for you to fit your seatruck through it. The fissure leads right into Koppa Mine, allowing you to drive the seatruck inside!
The other alternative is actually spare air tanks. Totally a viable solution so long as you remember to refill them by equipping them once you're out of the water. You can swap them out mid-dive and extend your breathing time, which is handy since the prawn fragment blueprints you require are kinda far down there. If you're free diving in this way, note that the bottom chamber of the mine has a hole in the ceiling leading to a small cave system which will lead you back to the surface, as well as having a number of oxygen plants to keep you from choking on the way. The entrance to that is almost right next to the Delta Station docks.
Also note that Site Zero, which has useful blueprints, can be found by hugging the northern glacial wall and heading east along it. You can find it by checking breaks in the ice, one of them leads up to a small hidden cave where the base lies. But if you don't find it, you'll be directed here later. It just has some useful things to scan and a lantern fruit tree. There is a music disk here.

Way Down South

By now you've probably answered the SoS. If not, go do that. As you hang out with Al-An, he'll give you prompts to artifacts that you haven't found yet, if you dawdle in looking for the required number. At this point you should have the following:

• A sea base, even a basic one. The databox in Koppa Mine's entrance will grant you the moon pool but if you missed it, you can get the blueprint later following the storyline.
  
• Seaglide, knife, propulsion cannon, beacons, repair tool, scanner, flashlight, builder tool
  
• Seatruck with at least one depth module
  
• Prawn blueprints
  

Building the Prawn is surprisingly easy, but requires lithium, a material you probably haven't seen a lot of yet. There's a little scattered around in thermal spires, but only a little. You can find a lot at purple vents, but be careful to avoid the doom shrimp. A chelicarate hangs out here. There are other things in this area which are relevant to you which you'll want to mark out for later. There is a small seatruck crash site with a variety of fragments out here, if you find it, look around carefully for the music disk that's here.
Following the marker for the unknown pilots last position, you will find a green area rich in confusing cave systems. This area is the lilypads zone. Old girl can be found down near the signal, just look for the shimmering things on the wall, the hive minds. She's near them. Grab the seatruck defense module she has in there. Be sure to pick up the databox directly outside her base to get the stillsuit as well and if you follow the caves down where they turn blue you'll stumble on an old thermal plant of hers, where another databox lies. There's fragments scattered all over this zone as well as The mercury II stern, which lays on the border between lilypads and purple vents, as well as the bow, which is a little further in on the western side of lilypads. Be sure to explore the area thoroughly and take note of the massive crevasse near the middle of the zone. Inside the chunk of land here is Omega Lab, which will net you the external grow beds, nuclear plant, nuclear disposal as well as a couple new beds and the antenna plants. It's in this area you'll need to search for nickel later, so building a scanner station here is a good idea. Deep Lilypads holds an Al-An body part you'll require. Deep Lilypads is also the only place you can acquire the materials to manufacture benzene.
Don't go too close to the Lily Paddlers, unless you like being off your face, in which case go say hi, it's hilarious. Trust me. ;D
In order to disable the satellite for Dances-With-Reapers, you're going to need to wreck dive the Mercury II. Two of its sections can be found in purple vents, while the bow - the largest - can be found in Lilypads, west of Omega Labs floating island. You'll need the laser cutter for this. Your goal is to scan the parallel processors in the wreck, but there's all kinds of really useful stuff in there too, not to mention all the titanium. ALL the titanium. So be sure to drop beacons on these things, bring a spare air tank and bring your pathfinder tool. If you don't have the pathfinder tool, go look around in the caves full of emeralds between Phi Robotics docks and Phi Robotics itself. There is one up on a small ridge in one of those caves. If you can't find it, don't worry though, just bring flares and use them as breadcrumbs while diving to prevent yourself from getting too lost. The alien containment tank, reinforced dive suit, parallel processor can be found in these. A music disk is in the bow section on a bridge console.

LAND HO!

Aaah, glacial basin. How I hate thee. The basin is split into four sections, two for each part of the basin, north and south. South is where you'll probably end up first. You can find the docks to access this area by tracking along the northern glacial wall and continuing west until you come to the eye jellyfish. Check the radio tower next to the docks, there is a music disk there. The upper southern area is where Phi Robotics lays, as well as frost vase plants and spicy peppers. Both of those are excellent crops to grow, as they net you useful things. The spicy peppers scattered throughout the entirety of glacial basin essentially means that you'll not starve while out here so long as you're paying attention to what you're doing. Note that snow stalkers REALLY HATE FLARES. They'll make your trips out here annoying, even in the prawn, which is the best way to ensure the weather isn't a factor for you. Sometimes they're in the caves. Flares will make exploring these much safer.
You can get to lower glacial basin through the upper part, but it's a bit confusing and I prefer to access it via the glacial tunnel. Head south along the western glacial wall from the glacial basin docks and you'll find a tunnel which eye jellyfish are hanging out near. This tunnel leads directly to lower glacial basin and provides a convenient way to access the area without needing to travel through upper GB every time.
Northern Glacial Basin can be accessed by scanning the hydraulic fluid on the bridge, then repairing the bridge to cross it. DO NOT GO HERE WITHOUT THE PRAWN. SERIOUSLY. The grip arm is very handy to have out here and if you haven't found it, use a scanner room in Lilypads to find the sea monkey nests but it's not necessary so don't stress if you don't have it. Just don't use the snow fox. It's useless and handles like crap.
The iceworms here are dangerous if you stay still too long. Take your time, explore thoroughly and mark out any Alterra sites you find with beacons. A couple of these have the blueprints for the Thumper and this is your ticket to working in this area safely. A thumper will keep the iceworms away within a radius, ensuring you don't get whacked while picking stuff up outside the prawn.
Along the western wall of this zone is a small cave with three large ion cube deposits. Keep a sharp eye out for it, you definitely want those. At the north-east tip of the zone you'll find ice worm corpses you can scan that don't put you in mortal danger during the attempt.
Really funny seeing them pop up and chow down on snow stalkers, though. Pay back sucks, don't it? Al-An's body part is out here. Keep an eye out for the precursor cables and make sure to check all the caves, because the master gateway leading to Phi Robotics is here as well. The room containing the gateway leads to a small docks and tunnel with an ice wall you can cut through to easily access the middle of northern glacial basin from the docks. There is a music disk at those docks as well.

Going Down?

By now you're probably wondering where to go. Remember purple vents? The engine part of the mercury II has a crevasse leading down to where you need to go next. Once you've found the crystal caves, you better hope you picked up the defense module at Marg's base. It's sitting inside her room and sometimes gets knocked to the floor when Preston jumps you. You'll be wanting it for what's down here.
The Shadow Leviathan.
Ohhhh boy are they ever aggressive. Good news for you though, they patrol around on a set route and they don't go through the whole of crystal caves. You'll be looking for fragments here, as well as materials. Lots of gold, silver and kyanite in the crevasses in the floor of these caves. An Al-An body part, the final one, can be found at the bottom of a tunnel which is mouthed by a circular formation of crystals. Once you have it, you'll want to go even deeper to find the fabrication facility, forcing you to wander crystal caves until you find the blood crystal caves.

Oh Yeah, It's All Comin' Together

So, you now have everything you need to build your home boy a body. Once that's done, you'll be wanting to wrap up the bit with Sam. If you've explored lower southern glacial basin, you'll have found the cave with the frozen leviathan. Oh, and grab the music disk in the security bunker. Exploring this cave gets you some useful stuff. You know the little caves here with the blinking markers? Explore these with spy penglings! There's some useful stuff in some of them, actually. Including the antidote Sam hid. You can use that on the loader located on the upper part of the leviathan in the cave.
And... that's that! That's the whole game.

Tips and Tricks

• The air bladder can pull a tiny amount of air into your tank. It's not very much but those 10 seconds of extra air can save your life in a deep pinch.
  
• You can find lots of quartz if you hug the northern ice wall and roam east of west, but be careful of the brinewings. They'll freeze your ass, which can be inconvenient if you're low on air.
  
• Frost Anemone Hearts are actually a really great food source and should be picked up any time you can get them. They'll last forever in the fridge.
  
• Made your base with some helpful sea monkey neighbours? After awhile they stop stealing from you and begin trying to help you - but they don't know what you want! If you mark blueprints in your PDA, they'll try and bring you materials for that if they can.
  
• Most predators will back off if you feed them a fish before they bite you. This includes leviathans. You might still get hurt from them slamming into you or something but feeding them a fish will usually cause them to stop attacking you. This doesn't work against the shadow leviathan, it hates you and everything you hold dear. It doesn't know what those things are, but it doesn't care either. It just does.
  
• Spare air tanks are great and can be kept stocked in your sea truck, but remember to put them on to refill them.
  
• Animals will react to your behavior in some instances. Feel tree to try new things with them like feeding fish. You can even ride on glow whales! Some of them really hate flares too, like sea monkeys and snow stalkers.
  
• Surface bases are a completely viable thing in this game and some of the ice sheets have holes in them, allowing you to have a surface base with a dropped section for moonpools and water filters. Water filters will work outside of the water, but you don't get salt and they're much slower.
  
• Get the cold suit as soon as you can. It's in Phi Robotics. It changes your outside time from 2 minutes to 7 minutes, which is a huge difference. Without it, the prawn is the only way to explore the surface without constantly stressing about freezing to death. You can find the tufts of fur in snow stalker caves where the pups are, make sure you have a flare if you don't like getting nommed on.
  
• Can't figure out how to get on top of the ice sheet, but you want a base up there? Swim down deep and use the air bladder to get some height. You can build a hallway up there, then drop a ladder down into the water to make a surface base with an underwater docking section. Alternatively, you can probably get up there with the prawn and the grip arm.
  
• Speaking of the prawn and grip arm, you can totally launch yourself with it. Attaching the grip to the ground and using it to pull yourself into a jump will get you some serious air time, which is helpful for getting up small ridges on the surface. If you break the map and managed to get above it in the prawn, return to the player area. Being up there breaks progression completely and the only interesting thing is a leftover animation testbed east of glacial basin. The collision on terrain is also patchy here and it's possible to fall through the ground into the void. In your prawn. So don't screw around up there too much.
  
• Spicy peppers and coffee will both warm you up while on the surface, which makes the spicy peppers scattered all over the place pretty valuable.
  
• The greenhouse you get sent to can be found in Lilypads on an iceberg. The three large icebergs here all have things to find so be sure to search thoroughly.
  
• The crashed ship is a great place to get a lot of metal very quickly and will basically hand you a free sea base so long as you're willing to go keep picking it up. If you've already looted it all, give it awhile and check back later, sometimes new scrap shows up as the wrecks continue their eventual rot.
  
• Drop emergency caches of food, water, medpacks, batteries, power cells and flares along with a beacon and never be caught short on supplies because you went out looking for stuff and forgot to bring rations. D'oh!
  
• A small base specifically for replacing vehicles is very helpful when you lose one. Have the materials gathered beforehand and you won't have to spend a long time struggling to get them together after the bad feeling of having your stuff crunched.
  
• Be sure to look for creature eggs out in glacial basin
  
• Rock punchers are jerks and will kill stuff in your containment tank, so now you know, and knowing is half the battle. And the lives of your fish.
  
• There is no good way to scan the leviathans, but your scan progress gets saved if you don't scan other things, so letting it chow down on your seatruck and scanning it while it's distracted, then repairing your vehicle after, will allow you to get the whole scan after a couple rounds.
  
• Make scanner rooms everywhere. Solar panels and bio reactors are your friend. Nuclear power is better but not viable in early game. If you need magnetite, go to the glacial tunnel and look at the ice walls just where the tunnel curves upwards, you'll find ore fissures there with magnetite inside.
  
• Beacons, beacons, beacons. I can't stress this enough, litter them EVERYWHERE. You can toggle them on and off in your PDA, so having a bajillion around the map isn't really a problem and they're really useful.
  
• There are more precursor artifacts than Al-An mentions to you. Keep a sharp eye out, look everywhere and scan for ion cubes. Check icebergs for moulins, AKA hollow chambers inside. You'll need a laser cutter to access the ones you find.
  
• Tree Spires has a hell of a lot of uraninite in its cave systems, it's a good spot to stock up on it. Beware the chelicarate in the zone.
  
• The crystal caves are roughly the shape of a spiral. Knowing this makes navigating them a lot less mystifying. Mind you, it's still difficult. As usual, use beacons a lot. Also make sure to explore the cracks in the floor of the cave!
  
• Penglins/Pengwings drown if you leave them in the alien containment tank after hatching :( They have to hold their breaths. If you breed them, make sure to set them free.
  
• There are no large nodes for lead. You must search for galena outcrops with the scanner room. It's pretty much the only way to stock up on the stuff. The other one people have a lot of trouble with is Magnetite, which can only be found in lower glacial basin. You'll want a scanner room to find it. Upper glacial basin has a TON of lithium if you can handle the ice worms... as well as three large mining nodes for ion cubes hidden in a cave.
  
• Keep exploring Upper Glacial Basin even if you find the precursor body part. There are ice worm corpses and a slipgate out here for you to find. The slipgate links to the Phi Robotics slipgate and has a tunnel which leads directly back out to the docks that you can only cut open from the inside. There's also a music disk down there on a crate so keep a sharp eye out when you find it.
  

Good luck, Robin!

I don't know if I like the game honestly. I don't think it was worth 6 years of waiting. I don't even know if I'm gonna finish it sooner or later. I played through BotW without any problem and I was already seasoned for TotK, I already knew the map, the mechanics, etc... BUT, in this one, the amount of story-related places and events is so tiny compared to the amount of pure unfun grind you have to do to complete :
- once again more than 120 shrines, - the lighting of a map the same size as the overworld but flat, boring and ugly, - your battery, which has 24 units + something that makes them blue and last longer - your wardrobe, buying/finding ever piece of gear, the majority of which are in caves (how original) - the levelling up of your pieces of armour by the great fairies - the visit of every cave - the visit of every sky island - the visit of every zonaite mine - giving every bubbul gems to Koltin - finishing every minor quest - your full weaponry inventory upgrades via korok seeds
not counting to 100% the game you also have to find every korok of which there are once again 999, take a photo of every weapon, shield, bow, enemy, plant, etc. which makes TotK a MASSIVE game, but not in a good way. You see BotW had maybe 60% or 70% of all this workload, BUT it required a minimum of grinding, if at all, I just progressed through the story and only strayed a little from the path of the story to level up the inventory, do the side quests and all that, it came off naturally in a very professional and finely-tuned way. Here on the other hand, I spent countless hours grinding for zonaite, i've been exploring the vast extremely underwhelming depths of hyrule, i've already spent 105 hours on the game and i'm not even one third into it despite having beaten every main story boss in the span of 2 days, i'm saving the final boss for when i complete everything, like i did in BotW, which i finished in 175 hours with all the shrines, all the side quests, all the pieces of armour, and the maximum amount of inventory, DLC included. I will still have to grind a lot more than i already did to do that in this game, and grinding is not fun, this is not what i wanted.
Everything about this game is so underwhelming, the dungeons are still the types of small structures that you have to activate a number of terminals to beat the boss, the caves are all the same, the game doesn't look fun and didn't entice me to keep playing past the completion of the main story line. For a while, I didn't update to version 1.1.2, and i discovered myself the paraglider B+Y duplication glitch, and it gave me hope to finish everything in a reasonable time limit, frankly it made the game more fun, and seem achieveable. However i made the mistake of closing it once, the glitch was patched, and that has taken a serious toll on my will to play this particular game.
I don't care what the public says, for me, the zelda team really didn't release a fine-tuned well-thought-out game, it is blatantly pushing the BotW formula to its limits, letting everything loose, pushing the game engine to its limits for the sake of the player experience, while exacerbating every minor bad thing about it into a real dealbreaker. Some areas of hyrule were a bit too bland and uninteresting to explore ? BOOM we've doubled the size of the map, but the additional space is made of mostly flat terrain in complete darkness on which grows horrendous-coloured vegetation with absolutely no variation. The number of side quests, collectibles, and goals was a little too big ? BOOM now there's a ton more grinding to do. The story was kind of segmented and repetitive ? BOOM the elements of the story are now standardised and made exactly the same format and size, including the difficulty which stays the same no matter what.
The devs were clearly lazy about certain aspects, like the placement of zonai shrines which feels random, the difficulty of the enemies, how every piece of armor that you can't buy at a store is now hidden inside of caves, how practical ! You don't have to design a character, a quest, some adventure, or a zone, or a challenge, to reward the player with the item, you just pick a cave out of the 140 or so and hide it there.
BotW will, in my opinion, stand the test of time in a much better way, by its big but manageable size, its atmosphere and ambience (which is absent from TotK, the minimalist melancholic piano music isn't relevant anymore in a world that is generally doing well, alongside the newer more hollywood orchestra-style tracks), and the general state of care and precision that has been put into it. I'm kind of sad this is what ended up in my hands, I want to enjoy it so badly but I can't overlook the severe flaws it has.

Author note: The Cryopod to Hell is a Reddit-exclusive story with over three years of editing and refining. As of this post, the total rewrite is 1,933,000+ words long! For more information, check out the link below:
What is the Cryopod to Hell?
Join the Cryoverse Discord server!
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...................................
(Previous Part)
(Part 001)
...
On the world of Numaria, more than half a dozen Demon Emperors and twenty Demon Dukes march through the paradise-class planet's forests as they head toward Emperor Glinch's Stitched Wasteland.
Emperor Auger does not directly join the party. He stays back at the capital of his world, viewing the happenings remotely through the power of a subordinate.
But Yardrat does lead the party. He is joined by Emperors Fae, Dagon, and Nymph, as well as Duke Hamir and several other elites of their Hell. It becomes obvious to all the other demons present that the Fourth Hell of Punishment is truly the mightiest among all the others. Even mere Dukes can explode with the power of Emperors, should Auger choose to grant them that ability.
As for the First Hell of Damnation, its remaining members are truly a miserable sight. Bael has become the lone Emperor still loyal to his Hell, while Mephisto and Zamiel no longer care about the alliances of their species. Bael is joined by Vepar, formerly the Baron of Toxicity, now having evolved to the rank of Duke through the human-demon alliance efforts.
Vepar, while not an Emperor, is still an insidious existence. Like Mephisto, she can transform her body into formless clouds of poison gas. She can strike with venom and poison alike, paralyzing her foes or corroding their nervous systems with ease.
Also notably absent is Beelzebub, due to him forcibly becoming aligned to Jason Hiro. While Beelzebub might actually prove an incredible powerhouse if he were to continue fighting for the First Hell's benefits, the problem is that none can say whether his allegiances would make him privy to spilling secrets of this operation to the humans...
From the Second Hell of Lust, not a single Duke joins the party. This Hell has already thrown their lots in with humanity, so no members of the Mephisto Extermination Operation are eager to have their secrets blabbed. Defeating Mephisto could lead to a discovery about the potential for ascension past the rank of Emperor. No demon elite wants that information to fall into the hands of their enemies.
From the Third Hell of Blood, few elites remain. Many of them were slain by the Cherubiim, reducing their Dukes to only a sliver of the other Hells. The Emperor of Thirst, Kristoff, still walks the mortal coil. He is joined by two subordinates, Vespera, the Duke of Gloom, and Rhesus, the Duke of Predation. These are the elites he considers his Hell's most capable remaining powerhouses, and the ones most suited for the mission to bring about Mephisto's end.
From the Fifth Hell of Calamity, a large number of Dukes join two Emperors, Serena and Crow, as they trail along behind the other Hells.
Unbeknownst to anyone present, Emperor Yumagi is alive and well. The only demons who observed his return were those aligned with Mephisto. Not even Gorn is aware that Yumagi survived the Cherubiim's wrath, and Yumagi is strangely keen to keep his return quiet.
As for the Sixth Hell of Isolation, only Emperor Melody has chosen to come along. The other elites of her Hell simply aren't in the right headpsace to join her, following their fall to the Plague.
Yama's Hell, the Seventh Hell of Corruption, has fallen apart with its Emperor being absorbed by Mephisto. Now, its many darkness-aligned entities have scattered in search of a figure lost to time...
Yardrat, Fae, Dagon, Nymph, Bael, Kristoff, Serena, Crow, and Melody march on the Stitched Wasteland, along with twenty Dukes. A terrifying force in any previous era, but one that feels somewhat weak and vulnerable in the months following the return of the Cherubiim, as well as the two Wordsmiths, not even mentioning the enemy they might face should they fail to stop Mephisto's ascension.
Yardrat's glum expression does nothing to uplift the moods of the others around him. As he and the other Emperors run across Numaria's surface, weaving their ways through the dense forests and trees, Bael speaks up from the back.
"Hey, Yardy! Why are we runnin' like a bunch of chumps? Just pop us over to Glinch with those fancy portals of yours!"
Yardrat shoots a glance back at Bael without slowing down. "I can't. Glinch's minions have an uncanny ability to twist the space around themselves. I couldn't create stable portals once we're inside if my life depended on it. I've no doubt he bred them for the express purpose of keeping me from spying on him."
Fae jumps over a bunch of twisted prickle-vines, scratching her palm on their thorns. "Doesn't that mean if something goes wrong, you won't be able to yank us out of the Stitched Wasteland?"
"Trust me." Yardrat mumbles, sounding more than a little depressed. "You don't want to hear my answer."
"There is no need to concern yourselves with escaping." Crow says solemnly, deftly flying through the underbrush with her blue wings. "If Mephisto ascends, it won't matter where we flee. He will be capable of hunting us like deer."
Yardrat snorts. "Speak for yourselves. I enjoy running away if it means saving my life."
"Coward." Bael says. "A REAL man always fights to the end!"
"Aren't you in a woman's body now?" Yardrat shoots back. "You're one to talk."
"H-hey! Women can be real men too!" Bael protests. "Get with the times!"
Emperor Melody laughs. "You tell him, Bael! Preach it!"
Serena remains silent, merely rolling her sightless eyes at everyone else's childish barbs.
...
Five hours pass as the demons race through Numaria's forests.
Eventually, the trees begin to thin out, before abruptly disappearing altogether. As if erased by a nuclear bomb, the forest's cover vanishes to reveal a grey-colored lifeless plain lacking all traces of warmth and life.
The Stitched Wasteland.
As soon as the demon leaders reach the edge of the wasteland, they pause their flight to stop and look around.
"Glinch's domain is bigger than you might first believe," Yardrat explains, gesturing toward the horizon. "Offhand, I believe the last time we measured the Stitched Wasteland's diameter, it was nearly 500 miles. You can't even see the other side from here because it dips below the horizon. The good news is, we only have to travel halfway into the interior, where Glinch's central laboratory resides."
Dagon, the Emperor of Pathogens, kneels down to scratch at the ashen soil. He grimaces as it clings to his palm and starts to burn his flesh.
"Acidic." Dagon mumbles.
"Every time Glinch creates a new thrall, his domain expands." Serena explains. "His toxic miasma is invisible and odorless, but it destroys plant-life and lower animals with ease. It won't have any effect on elites like us, but it's best if you don't deliberately play with the soil he's corroded."
Dagon shakes the soil off his palm, grimacing as he has to clap his hands and rub them against his pants to stop the acid from burning him further. Luckily, one of the Dukes nearby has a weak healing ability, so they're ability to fix him back up.
"What a miserable shithole." Fae groans. "I do NOT get what Glinch enjoys about living here! I'd go crazy from boredom after a week!"
Bael laughs. "No kidding, toots. Why do you think Glinch is such a wacko? He already went crazy!"
"Oh. Fair point." Fae mutters.
The Emperors and Dukes start moving toward the center of the wasteland, following Yardrat's lead. They do not run, but move at a brisk walk, keeping their eyes peeled for threats. Ten miles in the distance, they spot a pair of strange aberrant creatures standing perfectly still, looking at one another with hollow eyes, but they can't make out the details of those figures at their current distance.
"Bael, watch out!" Serena suddenly shouts, startling everyone.
Every demon elite's head snaps toward Bael's general direction just in time to see an invisible creature materializing, its massive body poised with a giant claw up in the air, ready to slash down at Bael.
The monster's huge torso and comparatively tiny head and skinny legs contrast with its wretchedly massive arms, its mottled and rotted skin, and its beady green venomous eyes.
The instant it snaps its claws down to assassinate Bael, the dumb galump accidentally trips on a rock, stumbling and avoiding the monster's attack! Bael falls face-first in the soil and the creature's downward slash swishes across his back, barely missing him by a millimeter!
"Lucky!" Yardrat exclaims, his pupils the size of pinpricks.
Crow roars in rage. She leaps toward the monster, the strange deformed horror with proportions far different from any naturally born creature in existence, and she swings her fist at its chest!
THUMP!
Crow knocks the creature down, sending it skidding backward across the dirt to lay in a heap.
But Crow doesn't celebrate. To her shock, she didn't even manage to bruise the monster, only knock it on its ass! The frighteningly durable monster silently stands up, and its body rapidly fades away as it becomes invisible.
Not once does the creature make a sound.
"Everyone watch out!" Crow shouts. "This bastard is strong! I don't even know if I hurt it!"
The heart of every demon elite skips a beat as they try to look for any signs of the monster. Only Serena, with her Soul Sensing capabilities, manages to trace its vague movement.
"Over there!" Serena says, pointing in front of Yardrat.
The monster once again becomes visible as it tries to slash Yardrat in half, but he isn't caught off-guard and leaps backward, safely avoiding it just in the nick of time.
"TEAR!" Yardrat yells, gnashing his teeth.
The Emperor of the Void tears the air in front of himself, unable to properly create a portal, but still able to momentarily rip a crack in space straight across the monster's torso.
A shallow cut on its chest is his only reward.
"Lucifer's Tits!" Bael exclaims, climbing to his feet. "This thing is as tough as demonstone!"
Melody fires off sonic blasts at the monster, punching with her fists to try and blow out its eardrums, but her attacks have no effect.
The monster continues charging at Yardrat to try and cut him to pieces. As it does, Crow once again steps up to protect Yardrat, deflecting its rending claws with her steel-like feathers while dishing out punishment with her fists. Crow is without a doubt the most physically imposting member of the party, possessing more strength than any demon in existence except for Belial.
But even she can't manage to do more than knock the monster back!
The other Emperors quickly start pitching in. Dagon summons corrosive chemicals to try and melt the monster's thick hide. Nymph summons vines from beneath its feet to wrap its legs and keep it immobile. Kristoff summons bloodied blades to cut the monster from behind, slashing its back with swords made from his own plasma. Fae fires explosive projectiles with a low yield at the monster, taking care not to accidentally hurt her allies. Melody sends sonic shockwaves into the ground, trying to soften the soil to trap the monster in quicksand.
But the monster proves more frightening than any of the Emperors imagined!
Bael and Serena can't provide much assistance to the others. They watch helplessly as Nymph's vines corrode to ash, melted by the Stitched Wasteland's ability to destroy plant-life. Fae's explosions barely even knock the monster back. Dagon might as well be shooting the monster with a squirt-gun for all the use his chemicals have. Melody can't seem to accomplish anything either!
"Shit." Bael growls. "I gotta help them."
"You don't have any magic." Serena says.
"No. But I got this." Bael says, reaching down to touch his weirdly fancy belt.
When Bael activates the Matriarch's Armor, it begins popping out of his waist and engulfing him from head to toe in lethal-looking demonstone armor. His plated chest and spiked shoulders turn Bael from a dopey looking version of Ose into a commanding and fearful warrior clad in demonic armor, making Serena gasp in surprise.
"Bael?" Serena asks, unable to see the armor, but sensing that his soul has suddenly become difficult to detect due to something shrouding his entire body. "What did you do?"
"Ose gave me some armor." Bael explains. "It ain't mine. But we'll talk 'bout it later. I gotta help the others!"
Bael doesn't hesitate. He rushes toward the monster, joining Crow as a frontline tank to try and draw the creature's attention.
Crow barely even registers Bael's new appearance, shoving any concerns about the demonstone-clad warrior to the back of her mind. All she feels is relief when the monster's brutal strikes slow down as it starts slashing at Bael as well.
THUNK! THUNK!!
The brutish monster silently whales on the others. For ten minutes, Bael and Crow take the beatings of their lives while Yardrat slowly tears its skin and cuts its bones with targeted spatial distortions. He alone manages to injure the creature the most heavily, while the other Dukes and Emperors can barely offer much assistance.
Bael grimaces as the creature grabs him by his helmet, lifts him up, and throws him like a ragdoll. Bael cries out in alarm as he goes flying and lands in the dirt, two hundred feet behind the brute.
"Spawn of a- you piece of trash! Nobody throws Bael!"
He jumps to his feet and starts to run back toward the monster, only to pause when he senses movement.
Bael quickly turns around. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees what he can only mentally describe as seventeen snakes with baby-heads crawling along the ground toward him. The snakes have a single conjoined core body that ties them all together, but it appears as flat as a pancake. Like some sort of Hydra consisting of stitched-together body parts, this multi-headed monster uses its childish faces to drag itself toward Bael at a speed most distressing, causing his butthole to pucker up.
"Eee! Gross!" Bael cries. "What in the hellhound's anus is that?!
Like the previous monster, this 'Snakedra' freak doesn't cry out or make any noises. It silently slithers toward Bael while one of its heads remains elevated to gaze directly at him.
Not wanting his friends to be overwhelmed, Bael decides to try and take the monster on by himself. His eyes fill with determination, and he conjures Mjölnir in his grasp, summoning it from his belt.
"Bad snake!" Bael barks, lunging at the monster to smash one of its heads.
SPLAT!!
Bael crushes the first head with ease!
But as he raises the hammer to strike again, the monster pounces at him! Its sixteen remaining heads bite his armor and wrap around his arms and legs, smothering him and causing him to fall backward.
"Crap, crap!" Bael yells. "Uh, don't worry guys, I've got this! Just keep killing the big one! I've got this cunt right where I want him! YEEOUCH!"
The Snakedra squeezes with all its strength, trying to burst Bael's body like a watermelon. Luckily, the demonstone only creaks a bit and doesn't fold inward, allowing Bael to survive, albeit not to do much else.
Serena, seeing that the others are too occupied to help, decides to try and assist Bael in some way. Since her abilities aren't much use against the first monster unless it turns invisible, she turns her gaze toward the Snakedra.
Emperor Serena maintains a good distance between herself and the Snakedra. She closes her eyes, focuses her mind, then shapes her right hand into a claw pose, snapping it in the Snakedra's direction.
An invisible beam of soul energy travels the gaps between dimensions, drilling into one of the Snakedra's heads. Serena focuses with all her might, attempting to try and locate the monster's soul so she can manipulate or influence it.
Unfortunately, she finds that while the creature does have a soul, it has become a mish-mash of fifty other souls, all witlessly stitched together to create an aberrant, thoughtless machine for killing.
Pain. Pain. Pain. The Snakedra thinks. Pain. Pain. Pain.
Serena grimaces. Her eyes squeeze shut even tighter as she tunes out Bael's exclamations of how 'totally okay and fine' he is. She digs deeper into the Snakedra's psyche, eventually extracting a thread of its existence for her own benefit.
Serena's eyes finally open.
While most entities possess eyes that can 'see' the physical realm, even as an imp, Serena was blind from birth. She was never able to see the world around her, but all of that changed when she met her husband, Gorn.
He and her were only Imps at the time. They became Lords together, and upon her ascension, she gained a new type of vision utterly unique to herself.
The power to see the soul realm.
While usually incapable of influencing the material realm, the soul realm is the domain Serena has become most adept at influencing over the millennia. As an Emperor, her power has become quite substantial in this regard.
Serena tears a fragment of soul energy out of the monster. It doesn't even shudder, but she doesn't care.
With her soul-seeing eyes, Serena deftly manipulates the thread of soul energy, using her fingers to hastily but efficiently craft a Soul Puppet, something not unlike a voodoo doll.
After forming a Soul Puppet in the form of the Snakedra, Serena grabs it out of the air and begins wrenching its heads around, stabbing at its body with her fingernails, and otherwise torturing the false image as much as possible.
Not once does the Snakedra cry out in pain, but its body does twitch and spasm. It writhes and squirms, continuing to hold Bael steady, but sometimes weakening its grip as it loses control of different parts of its body at random.
Meanwhile, Bael occasionally feels the wretched monster weaken its grip on him. Bael might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but as an accomplished veteran of countless wars, he is well-versed in the art of combat.
Bael isn't certain why the creature has started to spasm, but he won't turn down any good opportunity that arises.
He calls forth the power of Mjölnir, summoning lightning from above to strike the hammer. The moment before the lightning falls upon him, the creature suddenly loosens its grip, allowing Bael to swing the hammer at its central body.
BOOOM!!
A terrific blast of thunder and lightning detonates on the Snakedra, making it recoil in agony, release Bael, and pull away from him.
Abruptly dropped on his ass, Bael jumps backward, leaps to his feet, and lifts his hammer high.
"Nobody gives me a squeeze without my OK, bub!"
Bael charges at the monster. He starts smashing its heads one by one, crushing them to bloody pulps while the creature uselessly writhes on the ground, taking the abuse without retaliating.
Five minutes later, Bael slays the bastard, putting it to death for the rest of eternity.
Tired and winded, Bael gasps for air. Never has he had a fight that left him out of breath, but even with the Matriarch's Armor, Ose's body is far weaker than Bael's ever was. He severely regrets losing his invincibility.
Bael turns around and spots Serena.
"Oh! Hey, whew! I just got done kicking that monster's ass!" Bael says. "Good thing I'm such a badass, I must have intimidated it into lettin' me go, heh."
Serena opens her mouth to correct him, but thinks better.
"Right. Excellent work, Bael. You're as capable a fighter as ever."
Bael grins inside his helmet. "Heh, damn right. Now, lemme help the others finish that fat ugly one off."
Bael charges into battle, this time equipped with Mjolnir. He transforms the hammer into his favorite weapon, Big Bonk, and swings the ten ton steel ball at the brutish monster's back.
BOOM!!!
Bael flattens the creature, burying it face-first in the dirt and giving Crow an opportunity to deliver a full-power punch to the back of its head.
SPLAT!
Her fist connects, and she crushes the monster's skull, spraying its brains out all over her feet.
Crow pants like a dog on a hot summer's day. Sweat pools on Yardrat's head from the amount of focus he had to exert to kill this first monster. Even Fae and the others look a little tired.
With the crisis momentarily averted, the demon elites look around, finally noticing Bael's new getup, as well as Big Bonk pressing against the brute's back.
"Bael?" Fae asks. "Hot damn, that's a sweet set of armor!"
"You really saved our asses!" Melody adds.
Crow glances toward the other dead monster. "You killed that one? By yourself?"
Bael thumps his chest. "Couldn't have done it without Ose's fancy-shmancy armor. The ugly bugger got so scared, it just laid there and let me beat it to death! Heh!"
"It just laid there?" Crow asks, glancing around. She notices Serena, then pieces the events together. "Oh, I see. Well, god job beating it by yourself, Bael. You still know how to kick tail."
"Damn right!" Bael proclaims, smiling from ear to ear.
One by one, the other demon elites figure out Bael didn't exactly defeat the monster all by himself, but seeing as how he's been so down ever since losing his powers, they don't want to hurt his feelings.
"We've only fought two creatures so far, but they were both terrifying." Yardrat points out. "If we have to face two or even three at the same time, we might die! Everyone, proceed slowly. Do NOT rush in. We need to pick Glinch's thralls off one by one."
The other demons nod.
"Right!"

On the world of Numaria, more than half a dozen Demon Emperors and twenty Demon Dukes march through the paradise-class planet's forests as they head toward Emperor Glinch's Stitched Wasteland.
Emperor Auger does not directly join the party. He stays back at the capital of his world, viewing the happenings remotely through the power of a subordinate.
But Yardrat does lead the party. He is joined by Emperors Fae, Dagon, and Nymph, as well as Duke Hamir and several other elites of their Hell. It becomes obvious to all the other demons present that the Fourth Hell of Punishment is truly the mightiest among all the others. Even mere Dukes can explode with the power of Emperors, should Auger choose to grant them that ability.
As for the First Hell of Damnation, its remaining members are truly a miserable sight. Bael has become the lone Emperor still loyal to his Hell, while Mephisto and Zamiel no longer care about the alliances of their species. Bael is joined by Vepar, formerly the Baron of Toxicity, now having evolved to the rank of Duke through the human-demon alliance efforts.
Vepar, while not an Emperor, is still an insidious existence. Like Mephisto, she can transform her body into formless clouds of poison gas. She can strike with venom and poison alike, paralyzing her foes or corroding their nervous systems with ease.
Also notably absent is Beelzebub, due to him forcibly becoming aligned to Jason Hiro. While Beelzebub might actually prove an incredible powerhouse if he were to continue fighting for the First Hell's benefits, the problem is that none can say whether his allegiances would make him privy to spilling secrets of this operation to the humans...
From the Second Hell of Lust, not a single Duke joins the party. This Hell has already thrown their lots in with humanity, so no members of the Mephisto Extermination Operation are eager to have their secrets blabbed. Defeating Mephisto could lead to a discovery about the potential for ascension past the rank of Emperor. No demon elite wants that information to fall into the hands of their enemies.
From the Third Hell of Blood, few elites remain. Many of them were slain by the Cherubiim, reducing their Dukes to only a sliver of the other Hells. The Emperor of Thirst, Kristoff, still walks the mortal coil. He is joined by two subordinates, Vespera, the Duke of Gloom, and Rhesus, the Duke of Predation. These are the elites he considers his Hell's most capable remaining powerhouses, and the ones most suited for the mission to bring about Mephisto's end.
From the Fifth Hell of Calamity, a large number of Dukes join two Emperors, Serena and Crow, as they trail along behind the other Hells.
Unbeknownst to anyone present, Emperor Yumagi is alive and well. The only demons who observed his return were those aligned with Mephisto. Not even Gorn is aware that Yumagi survived the Cherubiim's wrath, and Yumagi is strangely keen to keep his return quiet.
As for the Sixth Hell of Isolation, only Emperor Melody has chosen to come along. The other elites of her Hell simply aren't in the right headpsace to join her, following their fall to the Plague.
Yama's Hell, the Seventh Hell of Corruption, has fallen apart with its Emperor being absorbed by Mephisto. Now, its many darkness-aligned entities have scattered in search of a figure lost to time...
Yardrat, Fae, Dagon, Nymph, Bael, Kristoff, Serena, Crow, and Melody march on the Stitched Wasteland, along with twenty Dukes. A terrifying force in any previous era, but one that feels somewhat weak and vulnerable in the months following the return of the Cherubiim, as well as the two Wordsmiths, not even mentioning the enemy they might face should they fail to stop Mephisto's ascension.
Yardrat's glum expression does nothing to uplift the moods of the others around him. As he and the other Emperors run across Numaria's surface, weaving their ways through the dense forests and trees, Bael speaks up from the back.
"Hey, Yardy! Why are we runnin' like a bunch of chumps? Just pop us over to Glinch with those fancy portals of yours!"
Yardrat shoots a glance back at Bael without slowing down. "I can't. Glinch's minions have an uncanny ability to twist the space around themselves. I couldn't create stable portals once we're inside if my life depended on it. I've no doubt he bred them for the express purpose of keeping me from spying on him."
Fae jumps over a bunch of twisted prickle-vines, scratching her palm on their thorns. "Doesn't that mean if something goes wrong, you won't be able to yank us out of the Stitched Wasteland?"
"Trust me." Yardrat mumbles, sounding more than a little depressed. "You don't want to hear my answer."
"There is no need to concern yourselves with escaping." Crow says solemnly, deftly flying through the underbrush with her blue wings. "If Mephisto ascends, it won't matter where we flee. He will be capable of hunting us like deer."
Yardrat snorts. "Speak for yourselves. I enjoy running away if it means saving my life."
"Coward." Bael says. "A REAL man always fights to the end!"
"Aren't you in a woman's body now?" Yardrat shoots back. "You're one to talk."
"H-hey! Women can be real men too!" Bael protests. "Get with the times!"
Emperor Melody laughs. "You tell him, Bael! Preach it!"
Serena remains silent, merely rolling her sightless eyes at everyone else's childish barbs.
...
Five hours pass as the demons race through Numaria's forests.
Eventually, the trees begin to thin out, before abruptly disappearing altogether. As if erased by a nuclear bomb, the forest's cover vanishes to reveal a grey-colored lifeless plain lacking all traces of warmth and life.
The Stitched Wasteland.
As soon as the demon leaders reach the edge of the wasteland, they pause their flight to stop and look around.
"Glinch's domain is bigger than you might first believe," Yardrat explains, gesturing toward the horizon. "Offhand, I believe the last time we measured the Stitched Wasteland's diameter, it was nearly 500 miles. You can't even see the other side from here because it dips below the horizon. The good news is, we only have to travel halfway into the interior, where Glinch's central laboratory resides."
Dagon, the Emperor of Pathogens, kneels down to scratch at the ashen soil. He grimaces as it clings to his palm and starts to burn his flesh.
"Acidic." Dagon mumbles.
"Every time Glinch creates a new thrall, his domain expands." Serena explains. "His toxic miasma is invisible and odorless, but it destroys plant-life and lower animals with ease. It won't have any effect on elites like us, but it's best if you don't deliberately play with the soil he's corroded."
Dagon shakes the soil off his palm, grimacing as he has to clap his hands and rub them against his pants to stop the acid from burning him further. Luckily, one of the Dukes nearby has a weak healing ability, so they're ability to fix him back up.
"What a miserable shithole." Fae groans. "I do NOT get what Glinch enjoys about living here! I'd go crazy from boredom after a week!"
Bael laughs. "No kidding, toots. Why do you think Glinch is such a wacko? He already went crazy!"
"Oh. Fair point." Fae mutters.
The Emperors and Dukes start moving toward the center of the wasteland, following Yardrat's lead. They do not run, but move at a brisk walk, keeping their eyes peeled for threats. Ten miles in the distance, they spot a pair of strange aberrant creatures standing perfectly still, looking at one another with hollow eyes, but they can't make out the details of those figures at their current distance.
"Bael, watch out!" Serena suddenly shouts, startling everyone.
Every demon elite's head snaps toward Bael's general direction just in time to see an invisible creature materializing, its massive body poised with a giant claw up in the air, ready to slash down at Bael.
The monster's huge torso and comparatively tiny head and skinny legs contrast with its wretchedly massive arms, its mottled and rotted skin, and its beady green venomous eyes.
The instant it snaps its claws down to assassinate Bael, the dumb galump accidentally trips on a rock, stumbling and avoiding the monster's attack! Bael falls face-first in the soil and the creature's downward slash swishes across his back, barely missing him by a millimeter!
"Lucky!" Yardrat exclaims, his pupils the size of pinpricks.
Crow roars in rage. She leaps toward the monster, the strange deformed horror with proportions far different from any naturally born creature in existence, and she swings her fist at its chest!
THUMP!
Crow knocks the creature down, sending it skidding backward across the dirt to lay in a heap.
But Crow doesn't celebrate. To her shock, she didn't even manage to bruise the monster, only knock it on its ass! The frighteningly durable monster silently stands up, and its body rapidly fades away as it becomes invisible.
Not once does the creature make a sound.
"Everyone watch out!" Crow shouts. "This bastard is strong! I don't even know if I hurt it!"
The heart of every demon elite skips a beat as they try to look for any signs of the monster. Only Serena, with her Soul Sensing capabilities, manages to trace its vague movement.
"Over there!" Serena says, pointing in front of Yardrat.
The monster once again becomes visible as it tries to slash Yardrat in half, but he isn't caught off-guard and leaps backward, safely avoiding it just in the nick of time.
"TEAR!" Yardrat yells, gnashing his teeth.
The Emperor of the Void tears the air in front of himself, unable to properly create a portal, but still able to momentarily rip a crack in space straight across the monster's torso.
A shallow cut on its chest is his only reward.
"Lucifer's Tits!" Bael exclaims, climbing to his feet. "This thing is as tough as demonstone!"
Melody fires off sonic blasts at the monster, punching with her fists to try and blow out its eardrums, but her attacks have no effect.
The monster continues charging at Yardrat to try and cut him to pieces. As it does, Crow once again steps up to protect Yardrat, deflecting its rending claws with her steel-like feathers while dishing out punishment with her fists. Crow is without a doubt the most physically imposting member of the party, possessing more strength than any demon in existence except for Belial.
But even she can't manage to do more than knock the monster back!
The other Emperors quickly start pitching in. Dagon summons corrosive chemicals to try and melt the monster's thick hide. Nymph summons vines from beneath its feet to wrap its legs and keep it immobile. Kristoff summons bloodied blades to cut the monster from behind, slashing its back with swords made from his own plasma. Fae fires explosive projectiles with a low yield at the monster, taking care not to accidentally hurt her allies. Melody sends sonic shockwaves into the ground, trying to soften the soil to trap the monster in quicksand.
But the monster proves more frightening than any of the Emperors imagined!
Bael and Serena can't provide much assistance to the others. They watch helplessly as Nymph's vines corrode to ash, melted by the Stitched Wasteland's ability to destroy plant-life. Fae's explosions barely even knock the monster back. Dagon might as well be shooting the monster with a squirt-gun for all the use his chemicals have. Melody can't seem to accomplish anything either!
"Shit." Bael growls. "I gotta help them."
"You don't have any magic." Serena says.
"No. But I got this." Bael says, reaching down to touch his weirdly fancy belt.
When Bael activates the Matriarch's Armor, it begins popping out of his waist and engulfing him from head to toe in lethal-looking demonstone armor. His plated chest and spiked shoulders turn Bael from a dopey looking version of Ose into a commanding and fearful warrior clad in demonic armor, making Serena gasp in surprise.
"Bael?" Serena asks, unable to see the armor, but sensing that his soul has suddenly become difficult to detect due to something shrouding his entire body. "What did you do?"
"Ose gave me some armor." Bael explains. "It ain't mine. But we'll talk 'bout it later. I gotta help the others!"
Bael doesn't hesitate. He rushes toward the monster, joining Crow as a frontline tank to try and draw the creature's attention.
Crow barely even registers Bael's new appearance, shoving any concerns about the demonstone-clad warrior to the back of her mind. All she feels is relief when the monster's brutal strikes slow down as it starts slashing at Bael as well.
THUNK! THUNK!!
The brutish monster silently whales on the others. For ten minutes, Bael and Crow take the beatings of their lives while Yardrat slowly tears its skin and cuts its bones with targeted spatial distortions. He alone manages to injure the creature the most heavily, while the other Dukes and Emperors can barely offer much assistance.
Bael grimaces as the creature grabs him by his helmet, lifts him up, and throws him like a ragdoll. Bael cries out in alarm as he goes flying and lands in the dirt, two hundred feet behind the brute.
"Spawn of a- you piece of trash! Nobody throws Bael!"
He jumps to his feet and starts to run back toward the monster, only to pause when he senses movement.
Bael quickly turns around. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he sees what he can only mentally describe as seventeen snakes with baby-heads crawling along the ground toward him. The snakes have a single conjoined core body that ties them all together, but it appears as flat as a pancake. Like some sort of Hydra consisting of stitched-together body parts, this multi-headed monster uses its childish faces to drag itself toward Bael at a speed most distressing, causing his butthole to pucker up.
"Eee! Gross!" Bael cries. "What in the hellhound's anus is that?!
Like the previous monster, this 'Snakedra' freak doesn't cry out or make any noises. It silently slithers toward Bael while one of its heads remains elevated to gaze directly at him.
Not wanting his friends to be overwhelmed, Bael decides to try and take the monster on by himself. His eyes fill with determination, and he conjures Mjölnir in his grasp, summoning it from his belt.
"Bad snake!" Bael barks, lunging at the monster to smash one of its heads.
SPLAT!!
Bael crushes the first head with ease!
But as he raises the hammer to strike again, the monster pounces at him! Its sixteen remaining heads bite his armor and wrap around his arms and legs, smothering him and causing him to fall backward.
"Crap, crap!" Bael yells. "Uh, don't worry guys, I've got this! Just keep killing the big one! I've got this cunt right where I want him! YEEOUCH!"
The Snakedra squeezes with all its strength, trying to burst Bael's body like a watermelon. Luckily, the demonstone only creaks a bit and doesn't fold inward, allowing Bael to survive, albeit not to do much else.
Serena, seeing that the others are too occupied to help, decides to try and assist Bael in some way. Since her abilities aren't much use against the first monster unless it turns invisible, she turns her gaze toward the Snakedra.
Emperor Serena maintains a good distance between herself and the Snakedra. She closes her eyes, focuses her mind, then shapes her right hand into a claw pose, snapping it in the Snakedra's direction.
An invisible beam of soul energy travels the gaps between dimensions, drilling into one of the Snakedra's heads. Serena focuses with all her might, attempting to try and locate the monster's soul so she can manipulate or influence it.
Unfortunately, she finds that while the creature does have a soul, it has become a mish-mash of fifty other souls, all witlessly stitched together to create an aberrant, thoughtless machine for killing.
Pain. Pain. Pain. The Snakedra thinks. Pain. Pain. Pain.
Serena grimaces. Her eyes squeeze shut even tighter as she tunes out Bael's exclamations of how 'totally okay and fine' he is. She digs deeper into the Snakedra's psyche, eventually extracting a thread of its existence for her own benefit.
Serena's eyes finally open.
While most entities possess eyes that can 'see' the physical realm, even as an imp, Serena was blind from birth. She was never able to see the world around her, but all of that changed when she met her husband, Gorn.
He and her were only Imps at the time. They became Lords together, and upon her ascension, she gained a new type of vision utterly unique to herself.
The power to see the soul realm.
While usually incapable of influencing the material realm, the soul realm is the domain Serena has become most adept at influencing over the millennia. As an Emperor, her power has become quite substantial in this regard.
Serena tears a fragment of soul energy out of the monster. It doesn't even shudder, but she doesn't care.
With her soul-seeing eyes, Serena deftly manipulates the thread of soul energy, using her fingers to hastily but efficiently craft a Soul Puppet, something not unlike a voodoo doll.
After forming a Soul Puppet in the form of the Snakedra, Serena grabs it out of the air and begins wrenching its heads around, stabbing at its body with her fingernails, and otherwise torturing the false image as much as possible.
Not once does the Snakedra cry out in pain, but its body does twitch and spasm. It writhes and squirms, continuing to hold Bael steady, but sometimes weakening its grip as it loses control of different parts of its body at random.
Meanwhile, Bael occasionally feels the wretched monster weaken its grip on him. Bael might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but as an accomplished veteran of countless wars, he is well-versed in the art of combat.
Bael isn't certain why the creature has started to spasm, but he won't turn down any good opportunity that arises.
He calls forth the power of Mjölnir, summoning lightning from above to strike the hammer. The moment before the lightning falls upon him, the creature suddenly loosens its grip, allowing Bael to swing the hammer at its central body.
BOOOM!!
A terrific blast of thunder and lightning detonates on the Snakedra, making it recoil in agony, release Bael, and pull away from him.
Abruptly dropped on his ass, Bael jumps backward, leaps to his feet, and lifts his hammer high.
"Nobody gives me a squeeze without my OK, bub!"
Bael charges at the monster. He starts smashing its heads one by one, crushing them to bloody pulps while the creature uselessly writhes on the ground, taking the abuse without retaliating.
Five minutes later, Bael slays the bastard, putting it to death for the rest of eternity.
Tired and winded, Bael gasps for air. Never has he had a fight that left him out of breath, but even with the Matriarch's Armor, Ose's body is far weaker than Bael's ever was. He severely regrets losing his invincibility.
Bael turns around and spots Serena.
"Oh! Hey, whew! I just got done kicking that monster's ass!" Bael says. "Good thing I'm such a badass, I must have intimidated it into lettin' me go, heh."
Serena opens her mouth to correct him, but thinks better.
"Right. Excellent work, Bael. You're as capable a fighter as ever."
Bael grins inside his helmet. "Heh, damn right. Now, lemme help the others finish that fat ugly one off."
Bael charges into battle, this time equipped with Mjolnir. He transforms the hammer into his favorite weapon, Big Bonk, and swings the ten ton steel ball at the brutish monster's back.
BOOM!!!
Bael flattens the creature, burying it face-first in the dirt and giving Crow an opportunity to deliver a full-power punch to the back of its head.
SPLAT!
Her fist connects, and she crushes the monster's skull, spraying its brains out all over her feet.
Crow pants like a dog on a hot summer's day. Sweat pools on Yardrat's head from the amount of focus he had to exert to kill this first monster. Even Fae and the others look a little tired.
With the crisis momentarily averted, the demon elites look around, finally noticing Bael's new getup, as well as Big Bonk pressing against the brute's back.
"Bael?" Fae asks. "Hot damn, that's a sweet set of armor!"
"You really saved our asses!" Melody adds.
Crow glances toward the other dead monster. "You killed that one? By yourself?"
Bael thumps his chest. "Couldn't have done it without Ose's fancy-shmancy armor. The ugly bugger got so scared, it just laid there and let me beat it to death! Heh!"
"It just laid there?" Crow asks, glancing around. She notices Serena, then pieces the events together. "Oh, I see. Well, god job beating it by yourself, Bael. You still know how to kick tail."
"Damn right!" Bael proclaims, smiling from ear to ear.
One by one, the other demon elites figure out Bael didn't exactly defeat the monster all by himself, but seeing as how he's been so down ever since losing his powers, they don't want to hurt his feelings.
"We've only fought two creatures so far, but they were both terrifying." Yardrat points out. "If we have to face two or even three at the same time, we might die! Everyone, proceed slowly. Do NOT rush in. We need to pick Glinch's thralls off one by one."
The other demons nod.
"Right!"