"Whoa!"
As Doctor Neo Cortex was building an army of mutants to conquer the world with, he needed a general. One particular experiment caught his eye, a bandicoot that he would give the name Crashworth Cortex the First. But when it came time to brainwash the marsupial into being a leader, the machine malfunctioned, the bandicoot rejected. Escaping from his creator's clutches, Crash woke up on a beach on a nearby island, immediately setting off to rescue the similarly mutated Tawna. While he would lose contact with Tawna and instead spend his time with his sister Coco, Crash would constantly find himself butting heads with Cortex and his schemes. While he may not be the smartest, his determined athleticism ensured he would find all the crystals, gems, or any other object needed to stop any schemes of world domination.

Legend

Strength

Striking - Spinning / Sliding

• Smashes crates and sends enemies flying through the level¹
  • These enemies can include giant alligators³ and lions^N3
  • Hits enemies into a large metal fan to break it^N2
• In a Die-O-Rama, breaks a tree and causes it to fall on him^TTR
• Breaks a stone pillar^T
• Breaks laser generators⁴
• Knocks back scientists with a metal shield^N2
• Sends smaller foes flying^Sky-A
• Sends a robot flying back to damage machines and speakers⁴
• Hits away stone crates^CB
• Spins around large devices with a platform on one side and a net of crates on the other by spinning said net^T
• Skims rocks on water by spinning them^T
• Sends a boulder over a stream of lava to smash against an enemy¹
  • N-Sane Trilogy version^N1

Striking - Other

• Sends smaller foes flying with punches and kicks^Sky-A
• While brawling with Cortex, breaks through a wooden barrier^T
• Smashes Cortex through reinforced crates^T
• Beats up and breaks metal crates^CotT
• Forces open a trap door with a body slam²
• Breaks reinforced crates with a body slam²
• With an ability, creates a shockwave with his body slams that can destroy reinforced crates³
• Hits with a hammer hard enough to make a small shockwave^CB

Lifting / Throwing

• Lifts an dumbbell with ice weights^RR
• Lifts a dumbbell with stone weights^RR
• Lifts a dumbbell with larger stone weights^RR
• Spins while holding onto Cortex and a power crystal^T
• Holds Crunch over his head while slamming him to the ground^MOM
• Throws Cortex over a gap^T
• Throws Cortex into the mouth of a stone statue^T
• Lifts and throws stone crates^CB
• Throws a device an incredible distance to knock a cage off of a blimp^CotT
• Tears up a tree he's chained to^M2

Other

• Throws wumpa fruit at N. Gin's mech to damage and break different parts^N2
• Leaps around a room^Sky-A

Durability

Blunt Force

• Has an extended brawl with Neo Cortex^T
• Smashes through a wooden barrier while riding a mine cart^W
• Sent flying across a street and into a store window^A
• Struck by a ten ton and hundred ton weight^M2
• Hit and run over by a train^BB

Falling

• Drops a large distance¹
• Jumps off of a waterfall^CotT-DS
• Drops into a cave^T
• Belly flops onto stone⁴
• Falls a large distance onto metal^T
• Falls off a cliff into shallow mud⁴
• Thrown a huge distance through the air^T
• Is in a snowball as it drops off a cliff to smash Dingodile's house^T
• Drops out of Neo Cortex's tower and wakes up the following morning, washed up on the beach of another island¹

Explosive

• Can have their kart blown into the air^CTR
• Launched through the air by three crates blowing up beneath him^M
• Blown through the air by a mass of TNT crates^T
• Is in Cortex's lair as it blows up and emerges seemingly unharmed from rubble^M

Other

• Can be crushed flat in a kart^NK
• Electrocuted so his skeleton can be seen for a duration¹
• Electrocuted into ashes before reforming in the same cutscene^MOM
• Is in a space station as it falls to Earth, crashing into a cliff before landing, with Crash appearing unharmed from the experience. While falling he was holding Aku-Aku in front of him, but it's unlikely this provided him any particular protection^MOM

Speed

• Avoids Papu Papu's swings¹
• Evades blasts in a car while Cortex is chasing them in his own^TTR
• Dodges a freeze ray after it was fired when Crunch couldn't react^CotT
• Keeps ahead of giant chasing animals, such as a triceratops³ and a dragon^W
• Rapidly punches a giant robot^Sky-A

Skill

• Can wall jump^CotT
• Wall runs⁴
• Grinds on rails⁴
• Using flames and removing his trousers, distracts Papu Papu to get behind him for an attack¹

Jacking

In Crash of the Titans and Mind over Mutant, Crash can take over foes, mostly large creatures mutated by a substance called mojo called titans, by stunning them and placing Aku-Aku on their face.
Full Titan RT
General

• After stunning a titan, Crash can put Aku-Aku on their face and control them^CotC
• Titans collapse after being unmasked^CotC
• Jacking works on non-titans, with older mutated creatures like Dingodile and regular people like Neo Cortex being jacked^CotT-GBA

Notable Titan Feats

• All titans can break apart masses of stone^CotT and huge stone walls^MOM
• Scorporilla creates a fissure in the ground with its tail
• Spike can send a boulder flying into a huge tree, felling it^MOM-DS
• Ratcicle instantly freezes and shatters a massive amount of ice^MOM
• Grimly can seemingly slow time around it while moving normally^MOM

Other Abilities

Unlocked

• Double jumps³
• Rocket Jump propels him high into the air^NT
• Can spin for longer durations with the Death Tornado ability, using this to glide through the air³
• Can throw around TNT crates and pull in enemies with his spins^Sky
• Slides large distances with the Super Slide^NT
• With one ability can sneak across lines of stable nitro crates without blowing them up^W
• After getting Speed Shoes, can dash through levels³
• A bazooka that shoots wumpa fruit to defeat enemies and break crates³

Other

• Spins so fast he flies through the air¹
• Glides over gaps with a different kind of spin^CotT
• Burrows into the ground while still being able to stick his legs up and spin them^N2

Masks

Aku-Aku
The spirit of an ancient witch doctor, Aku-Aku has been protecting Crash since his first adventure. Since then, he's also played the role of being the fount of knowledge, knowing whenever evil is occurring and how to stop it.
Full RT

• On breaking an Aku Aku crate, the mask follows Crash to protect him from an attack¹
  • Opening another Aku Aku crate strengthens him, allowing him to protect Crash from two attacks²
  • Opening a third causes Crash to wear the mask temporarily, rendering him invincible for the period¹ while smashing through crates, even reinforced ones³
• Crash skates down areas on Aku-Aku^CotT
  • Can create fire around him while being used like this^CotT-DS

Lani-Loli
The quantum mask of space, Lani-Loli is the first to be found in Crash 4 and takes the role of guide and exposition dealer for the adventure.

• Causes certain items to phase in and out of reality for Crash to be able to affect⁴
• When used by a machine, causes rows of tiles to phase out of reality⁴
• Can sense rifts in space and open them when not being rampantly created by N. Tropy's device, with this likely being applicable to the other quantum masks⁴

Akano
The quantum mask of matter.

• Strengthens spins to break reinforced crates⁴
  • Hits back a large mutated N. Brio⁴
  • These spins deflect green magic⁴
• Causes spins to last longer, providing a gliding effect over gaps⁴
• Is forced to empower a machine, causing it to spin while creating extra energy beams⁴
• Launched out of a machine by an explosion before falling to the ground and entering a dimensional rift⁴
• Is notably heavy⁴
  • Traps Cortex beneath himself⁴

Kupuna-Wa
The quantum mask of time.

• Notably slows down time while allowing Crash to move normally⁴
  • Allows Crash to use ice falling down waterfalls as platforms⁴
  • Like this Crash can touch nitro crates and have time to exit the blast radius before they blow up⁴
• When used by a machine, changes the speed of platforms disappearing and reappearing⁴
• Knows of all time, telling that there's a significant event happening in Crash and Coco's near futures⁴

Ika-Ika
The quantum mask of gravity.

• Flips gravity for Crash⁴
• On waking up, flips gravity for several people in front of him⁴
• When forced by a machine, causes the screen to flip upside down⁴

Karts

General

• Jumps up a ledge^CTR
• Drops down a large distance^CTR
  • Does so again^NK
• All karts can take hits that blow them into the air^CTR and crust them flat^NK
• Capable of giving themselves boosts by drifting^CTR
• Karts go faster when wumpa fruits are collected, and when ten are collected the items used are changed to be stronger^CTR
• In Nitro Kart, the karts were modified to be able to drive along walls and ceilings in certain areas^NK
• After driving alongside a teammate for a while, a Team Up meter fills and allows both racers to use unlimited items for a period on activation^NK

Items - Offensive
These are capable of forcing open a door in the original game and remake.^CTR-N

• Bombs which roll along the road in a straight line, exploding on contact^CTR
  • Fully powered bombs have a larger blast radius^CTR
  • These can be blown up early on command^CTR
• Homing missiles^CTR
  • When powered up they are faster with better tracking^CTR
• Creates an electric shockwave around them^NK3
• Releases a warp orb from Crash 3 that chases after the racer in first place, shocking everyone in their path^CTR
  • When powered up it tracks each racer in front of the user in sequence^CTR
• Releases a tornado which targets first place, throwing any racer it meets up into the air^NK

Items - Traps

• Drops an oil slick^NK2
• Beakers which cause anyone running into them to spin out^CTR-N
  • Turn from green to red at full power, adding an extra effect such as slowing down the kart that drives into them for a while^CTR-N
• Crates of TNT which anyone running into needs to hop rapidly to remove before it explodes^CTR-N
  • These change into nitro crates that explode instantly when powered up^CTR
• Ice mines trap foes in a block of ice^NK
  • When fully powered they give the kart ice physics for the duration^NK
• Static orbs short out circuits on karts, slowing foes down while changing their weapon^NK
  • At full power, they draw racers in and reverse their steering for a time^NK

Items - Other

• Shields which protect against any one hit^NK
  • Can be launched like a bomb, with the fully powered shield protecting indefinitely until hit or thrown^CTR
• Speed boosts^CTR
  • Last longer when powered up^CTR
  • Can be used to evade a missile^NK
• N. Tropy's Clocks spin out and slow down all opposing racers for a period^NK
• Call upon Aku-Aku to speed up the kart and render them invulnerable for a bit^CTR

Tag Team Racing Cars

• In Crash Tag Team Racing, all racer's vehicles can merge with each other and break apart again at will^TTR
• Can drive through tree-shaped targets^TTR
• Have a variety of weapons with each car combination being able to swap between two, which can include wumpa fruit launchers and magnetic blasts
  • Missiles
  • A machine gun
  • Electric shotgun blasts^TTR
• Can be rocket propelled^TTR
• Can launch items as large as pianos^TTR

Other Vehicles

Ground

• The atlasphere is a large orb which Crash rolls around in^W
  • Used to seemingly imbue rolling rocks with power for Aku Aku to use^W
  • Can jump in a cage shaped like an atlasphere⁴
• Mine carts^W
• A pogo stick^CB
• Crash's Jeep keeps ahead of a rhino stampede^W
• Motorbikes³
  • Smash through large wooden barriers^N3
• A hovercraft^CB
• Drives a tiny tank which can drop mines^CB
• A tank which shoots ammo which destroys other tanks with one shot and rebounds off of walls^RR
• A mech which has a fruit bazooka on the arm^W
  • Breaks reinforced crates by jumping on them^W
  • Runs away from an explosion^W
  • A variant of it has a water cannon which, when empowered by Aku-Aku, hurts Crunch imbued with the fire Elemental^W
• A boxing mech^BB
• At one point pilots Mecha-Bandicoot, a Neo Cortex creation that can shoot missiles and energy blasts^T
  • Has a chainsaw arm that finishes off another mech^T
  • Flies^T
• A device which can attract and repel balls to hit enemies with while moving side to side^RR
• Any given animal he jumps on the back of, from boars¹ to Neo Cortex^T

Flying

• A hang glider^CotT-GBA
• Biplanes which shoot bullets that destroy the engines of much larger planes³
• Crash's Glider can shoot down tornado generators^W
• The Firefly locks on and shoots missiles which sink ships on repeat hits^W
• The Copter-Pak^W
• Jetpacks²
  • Can come with an energy blaster that can take down a blimp with blasts^XS
• Uses a flying carpet which allows him to shoot magic blasts from his head^NT
• A spaceship which shoots energy beams to rapidly crumple and destroy parts of Cortex and Ripto's machine^RR
• A motorbike which flies through space^XS
  • Appears to quickly circle the Earth^XS
• Rides a bat^RR

Water

• A wakeboard^NT
• Surfboards with engines that allow him to boost through water²
• A turbo boosted inflatable ring^RR
• A hovercraft with a weapon^CB
  • Can drop mines^CB
• An underwater propulsion device which can shoot missiles and dash forwards³
• A submarine which shoots missiles^W
  • Can drop explosives^W

Other Equipment

• Can carry a variety of items to increase health, damage, and turn Crash invincible for a short period^CotT-DS
• Capable of throwing out TNT crates^Sky
  • These crates can contain a jetpack and rocket for Crash to fire at the ground with for a time^Sky
• Uses scuba gear³
• Wields a rocket launcher which instantly turns sheep to ashes^RR
  • Can be charged to launch two rockets at once, and can release bombs^RR
• Throws Molotov cocktails that can destroy large amounts of stone in two attacks, and quickly builds a platform after the platform that was previously there were destroyed by Spyro's Molotov cocktails^RR

Other

• His mutation enhanced his senses and stamina^Sky-A
• Can pick up a 'freejack' which allows Crash to stun any enemy with a kick^CotT
  • Knocks back large foes with this attack^CotT
• Was hit briefly by the ray that turns animals into titans, though the process didn't complete due to a dead battery. Like this Crash had enhanced strength, breaking free of metal restraints and knocking back a titan, as well as the ability to jack them without Aku-Aku, but the mutation visibly appears to be gone by the end of the short^A
• Remotely controls a helicopter to shoot down parachuting devices intent on harming him^RR
• In a Die-O-Rama, creates a fire which quickly thaws out a frozen yeti^TTR
• Walks and jumps on clouds¹
• Only likes wumpa fruit⁴
• Comes with his own theme music^Sky-A

"As for me, heh, let's just say I'm doing just fine."

Yo i’m looking at this lil SRT8 jawn, i Got a RT now i could pay off fully but i know that gonna drop my credit and i probably won’t get approved than . So wit allat i was thinking i could jus take on both loans before the 45 days n pay off the RT and just sell it.
ALTHOUGH , i was looking at engine crates and i seen a 392 Hemi crate that would fit my wheel for 8k 🤷🏽‍♂️ n ngl i been thinking bout buying that jawn , but than you got pay for all the labor n everything . And i would have to switch up the interior n shit so it would have that look like the SRT

I got me an old 2002 Silverado 2500 with a duramax only 186xxx miles with an aluminum flatbed on the back. I plan on building a sleeperish street struck, 6-700 horse and 1200tq (ish???). The engine is in great working order, gonna do a little bit of routine stuff in there first. But what’s the word here guys?

Be me, a new mercenary company, Mason's Warmonkeys.
Also me: Stacked Crates Mod
I'm Rep 4 or so, rolling on a low difficulty contract. Standard Battlefield gig, weight limit is fairly low, 145, I think.
I have my very first heavy, a Archer which I have YAML'd up with some Lostech. Two PPCs, 4 medium lasers, two LRM 10s. XL engine, endosteel. A Hunchback II with twin PPCs and a royal variant Stinger with 4 medium lasers.
Drop into the mission. Optional objective: Investigate the anomaly. Uh-oh.
For those who don't play with Stacked Crates or don't have the particular settings enabled for it, occasionally Stacked Crates will drop a very high value crate full of Lostech or even a Mech (How do you think I got the Hunchback II?) but... it also drops a lance of defenders. I have found this lance is not based on your difficulty level.
I head up to a nearby hill, and I can ping them. Atlas. Atlas. King Crab. Highlander. Fuck. My. Life.
But... there's a voice in the back of my brain. They're all slow. All my mechs do at least 20 kph higher than they do. Maybe I can take one or two out. That'd be worth doing, particularly if I can get to the crate. I can't remember if I get the contents of the crate if I abort without completing the mission but... a part of me wants to try.
First thing is first, I run to the middle of the map where the mission objective is. The assault lance will pull agro from the incoming mission mechs, so I figure that'll at least be a distraction. The first atlas comes over the hill, and I start running away, sandpapering him with LRMs. He's replying back, but there's a series of sand dunes that I can run behind to mostly avoid taking to many of his LRMs. I work backwards across the map and up into the foothills around the edge. The little mechs the mission in spawning aren't doing much, but they're at least keeping most of the big boys occupied. Slowly, I wear down the first Atlas. "I'm punching out! Kill them for me!" the pilot screams as she shoots skywards.
This is going super well so far. *cue overconfidence* Except I keep hearing this noise. It's very loud but I can't place it. It isn't quite a long tom or sniper artillery. My hunchback has no chance. He turns back, because he's an idiot, and takes an arrow 4 to the chest. No more hunchback. Oooookay. That's not great.
I play a game of cat and arrow 4, breaking LOS as soon as I have a lock with my LRMs and dodging Arrow 4s like a Canopian Catgirl on Battle Powder. Then something wonderful happens. One of the mission mechs is equipped with flamers. And shuts the Atlas with the Arrow 4 down. The other two assault mechs are busy. I charge that Atlas, chewing it apart with lasers and PPCs.
There's only two left.
The Crab is a problem. Even staying out of his AC20 range, which I can't always do, he's trading me LRMs, and I don't have nearly the armor. By the time he's down, I'm in the red on... everything, and missing a PPC. But all that's left is the poor Highlander.
I can hear the bagpipes as this madlad stands his ground, encircled by three smaller mechs, and being peppered by LRMs from my battered Archer, which somehow, despite all the damage, has only lost the one PPC. *Cue nervous glances at that XL engine that seemed like such a good idea at the time*.
In the end, I'm out of LRM ammo, and I end up wading in with my energy weapons. Luckily, he'd turned to swat a Spider that was harassing him, and I got some clean shots at his back. Down went the last of the Assault mechs. Cleanup wasn't great, I lost another laser and a leg, and the Stinger lost an arm to the highlander, but victory was ours.
And in the crate? A brand new Hunchback II identical to the one I'd lost, -AND- a Spider 7V -AND- a shiny new Wolverine. Even including the DLC campaigns, that was the single most exhilarating battle I've ever had. So close to defeat, so many 'Oh Shit' moments, but in the end, the sweet taste of victory.
Oh, and the Archer? My beloved baby? Everything was repairable except one PPC. I don't know how. I don't know what Goddess of warfare blessed this mercenary company, but it was about 3 Million C-bills to get her back up and running again. I'm never selling this mech.

This is part of my little series about the adventures of Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick. If you'd like to read previous parts, they're linked below, along with brief summaries of each:
Part One: Alien learns what "sleep" is and how humans prefer to do it in a comfy bed with blankets and pillows. And they find it utterly adorable.
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick are sent on a survey mission together. Things go south, Aldrick makes sure they're safe, and then Vr'ocria learns 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 decides she will protect Aldrick while he sleeps. And she also develops a massive crush on him. (Her scales turning purple is her version of blushing)
Part Two: An alien + human adventure with such shenanigans as poison drinking, befriending dangerous wildlife, and fighting a space pirate. Oh, and they have a huge crush on each other.
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick end up assigned together for another survey mission. Vr'ocria tries to deny her feelings for Aldrick after a tense conversation with her nestmate about the danger of humans, but when they're ambushed in the night by a pirate and Aldrick takes a blow to save her, becoming injured in the process, she comes to realize just how strongly she feels for him. She kills the pirate, carries Aldrick to safety, and the two share a tender moment.
Part Three: When a cold-blooded alien has to cuddle a warm-blooded human for warmth
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick are assigned to an ice plant for their next mission. Aldrick chews out Command for assigning Vr'ocria there when they know she's cold-blooded and not built for the cold, and when the power goes out, they cuddle to keep her from freezing. They finally confess their feelings for one another, and Vr'ocria learns what kissing is.
Part Four: A human leaves a hickey on his alien lover. Her nestmate doesn't understand what a hickey is, and thinks the human injured her
Vr'ocria enjoys neck kisses, and asks Aldrick to indulge her. Later, she has a video call with her nestmate Galek. Galek is already wary of humans, and when he sees a bruise on her throat that she didn't notice, he figures out Aldrick is responsible and freaks out, thinking Aldrick intentionally hurt her. Vr'ocria dresses Galek down, explaining that it's not an injury, and also that he needs to get over it and respect her relationship with Aldrick.
Now for the new story!
TW: There will be blood and broken bones.
—
"I have a bad feeling about this."
Vr'ocria turned to Human Aldrick in the pilot seat next to her. He was drumming his fingers on the console, brow furrowed, as he watched the Xenthum solar system approach.
"What do you mean?" She asked.
"I dunno. I just–" he bit the inside of his cheek. "You ever just get an ick feeling about something?"
Vr'ocria frowned. "No. Can you explain it?"
He scratched the back of his neck. "It's hard to explain. Like, there's nothing wrong that I can tell about this mission, but ever since we got within visual range, I've had this gut feeling that we need to turn back."
Vr'ocria wasn't sure she understood, but she didn't like seeing him uncomfortable. "Well, we're here on orders–"
"I know, I know, I don't want to get us in trouble, I'm already on thin ice after yelling at Lieutenant Prax–"
"–but the minute anything starts to go wrong, no matter how small, we can turn around."
He glanced over at her. "Thanks," he said with a grateful smile.
They had entered the Xenthum system now. Its main planet was sparsely populated, used mostly as a trading outpost since it was so close to the Dridian border. The trick was navigating through the minefield of asteroid clusters. Aldrick let Vr'ocria take the lead piloting, since of the two of them, she was more skilled at delicate maneuvers.
They were almost to the planet when an alert pinged. Aldrick sat up to check the sensors.
"There's a ship nearby," he reported. "A big one."
"Where?" Vr'ocria pulled up the sensor on her screen. "I don't see anything. Just asteroids."
"Turn on the warp detector and increase the ion frequency."
Vr'ocria pressed a few controls. "Oh wow, you weren't kidding." She frowned. "It's way too big to be in the middle of an asteroid field. What are they doing?"
"I don't know, but I don't like it." She could feel the tension radiating from him.
"You want to get out of here?" she asked.
He chewed his lip. "Y'know what? Yeah. Let's at least take an alternate route, we can–"
But before he could finish, there was a loud BANG and they were sent flying from their seats as the shuttle rattled.
"What the fuck?" Aldrick yelled as he scrambled to his feet, lunging for the console. "Did we scrape an asteroid?"
Vr'ocria crawled back into her seat as well and banged out a few commands on her screen. Her blood froze.
"No," she said in a low voice. "It was phaser fire."
They'd been so focused on the massive ship that they'd missed the tiny shuttle creeping up from below them.
BANG. The screens flickered and glitched.
Aldrick cursed. "We've lost shields!"
There was another hit, then another, and another. Sparks were flying now, and the sensors were screaming as the shuttle's operating systems started failing.
Vr'ocria was tossed against the wall in one particularly brutal crash, and the last thing she saw was a broken panel flying right towards her face.
—
Everything hurt.
Especially her nose. The tang of blood clung to the back of her throat.
There were muffled voices somewhere nearby, and the sound of metal scraping. When she tried to move, she abruptly registered something cold and hard encircling her wrists.
"She's waking up."
Vr'ocria coughed, blood splattering from her lips. Moaning in pain, she managed to lift her head and crack her eyes open.
The scraping sound was the heels of her boots sliding across metal grate flooring as she was dragged by her wrists. She craned her head back, pain shooting through her neck, and realized that her wrists were clapped in rusty manacles. A massive blue hand fisted the rust red chains that suspended her arms over her head.
"Wha' th'fmm–" she slurred. Her brain felt like sludge.
Suddenly she was yanked even higher into the air, her toes just brushing the floor. A shock of cold assaulted her and she yelped, flinching as water dripped down her face.
"You awake now?"
A man was standing in front of her, tossing aside a now-empty bucket. There were several people, actually. All different species, all looking very pleased, and all wearing distinctive black Norvidian armbands.
Pirates.
A hand cracked across her cheek, sending more blood flying. She bit back a cry as the shockwave laced through her broken nose. "Fuck you," she spat instead.
The man chuckled. He was tall, muscles bulging through his coat, and his skin was blue. He must've been the one dragging her. "Picking up human words, I see."
Vr'ocria's blood turned to ice. "What have you done with him?" She demanded in a low voice.
His grin only widened. His teeth were crooked and rotting. "I'll be asking the questions here."
Her scales burned a bright and hot yellow and snapped as they turned on end. But before she could respond, his hand lashed out and grabbed her throat–not enough to choke her just yet, but enough to make her freeze.
"You're the lizard bitch from Theta-7, yes?" The grin was gone now, replaced by a withering glare.
Understanding dawned on Vr'ocria. Blast. Oh, blast.
He saw the realization in her eyes and slowly released her throat. "You are."
"What's it to you?" She snapped.
He sneered. "You killed one of my men."
"He attacked us first!"
Stars burst behind her eyes as the air was forced from her lungs, and it took her a moment to realize that he had punched her in the gut. All she could do was cough and gasp, trying to regain her bearings through the pain as he turned away from her and towards the others standing around. He raised his arms.
"We are Norvids!" He boomed, and the others whooped in agreement. "We stand together! We protect our own!"
Vr'ocria tuned him out as he kept proselytizing, using the opportunity to look around the room. It was massive and almost all metal with towering walls. Crane chains hung from the ceiling, and crates and barrels of different sizes were scattered about, everything dusty, rusty, and old. A storage room. An old cargo ship? She wondered. That would explain why it was so big.
She ran a quick headcount of everyone she could see. Seventeen.
But where was Aldrick?
Vr'ocria felt sick. You better be okay…you have to…please be okay…
The man–the captain, she guessed–finally turned back to her. He drew a dagger from a sheath strapped to his arm, and her eyes went wide.
"A life for a life," he growled, stalking towards her.
But before he'd made it even two steps, a voice rang out through the cargo bay.
"Don't you fucking touch her."
It was enough to stop the captain in his tracks.
Footsteps sounded from behind her, and Vr'ocria tried in vain to twist her body around.
But she didn't have to. The man approaching from behind came forward and stepped in between her and the captain, and she didn't have to see his face to know who it was.
"Aldrick," she nearly whimpered.
The caption sneered. "Well well, a little escape artist, are we?"
Aldrick was silent.
Deathly so.
Vr'ocria swallowed.
Even the captain, who was twice Aldrick's size, seemed to waver. Vr'ocria wasn't sure she wanted to know what he saw on Aldrick's face.
Finally, Aldrick spoke. "Any of you touch her, and you will die." His voice was so cold it pierced her to the bone. She could see his clenched fists trembling at his sides. He's not even armed!
The captain began to laugh, his voice echoing around the bay. The others laughed with him.
"And who's gonna stop us?" He demanded. "You? Little human, you don't know who you're messing with." He dashed forward, raising the blade, ready to strike.
"Aldrick!" Vr'ocria screamed.
But Aldrick dodged as easily as water flows through a river, ducking under the dagger and going for the captain's legs. He barreled his full weight against his hips, and with a shout, the giant fell, the dagger clattering from his grasp. Quick as a whip, Aldrick snatched it up–and drove it directly into the captain's throat.
Vr'ocria couldn't help but watch in horror as green blood frothed forth, spraying all over Aldrick. The captain's eyes were wide, and he choked and spasmed as his life drained out onto the dirty floor.
By now, the others were surging forward, shouting, screaming, and brandishing their own weapons.
"NO!" Vr'ocria screamed as they converged on him. She kicked and yanked uselessly at her chains, desperate to help, to do anything. The manacles bit painfully into her scales, some of them even popping off onto the floor, leaving beads of blood welling up in their wake. But the manacles did not yield.
When she looked back, she was terrified she'd see Aldrick lying dead on the floor.
But he wasn't.
In fact, there were three pirates–no, make that four now–sprawled lifelessly instead. Aldrick was a whirlwind of limbs and gnashing teeth–he ducked and dodged, spat and kicked, slashing at knees and elbows, slowly incapacitating or discombobulating each one until he was able to sink the dagger into throats, chests, between ribs–bodies were dropping--he was covered in blood now, eyes wild–
"BEHIND YOU!" Vr'ocria screamed.
Aldrick turned just a second too late, and a woman covered in dark fur landed a kick directly to his chest. He hit the floor, the dagger flying from his grasp. The woman pounced, her hands wrapping around his throat. His legs thrashed as he clutched at her hands, and he was just able to roll them over until he was on top. From there, he simply started punching, and punching, blood spraying his face with each hit.
A large man behind him had stumbled back to his feet. He lunged forward and yanked Aldrick up by the back of his shirt, throwing him bodily into the air, where he crashed against a metal crate.
He hit the ground and didn't move.
Vr'ocria was screaming. She didn't know if she was saying words anymore, but she was screaming, and blood was streaming down her arms now from how hard she was pulling against the manacles. All she could do was watch as the final three pirates approached her mate where he lay lifeless on the floor.
They stopped before they were in arms length, looking between each other. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but one of them finally edged forward and poked Aldrick's side with her toe.
Vr'ocria wanted to rip their entrails out with her bare hands.
He still didn't move. Seeming satisfied, they moved forward, and one bent to grab him.
All at once, her human surged back to life. The man closest to him hit the ground as Aldrick swung his legs around, sweeping the man's feet out from under him. Once he was down, Aldrick bashed a crane hook–one he must've picked up from the floor–into the man's skull so hard that it caved in with one blow. Still lying on the floor, Aldrick used his vantage point to kick the woman's knee backwards, and she collapsed with an agonized scream. One more strike with the hook, and she was silenced.
That left just one. The final pirate appeared to be reptilian like her, although he had large spines stretching across his head and shoulders. This one didn't try to rush Aldrick. Instead, he kept his distance, watching warily as Aldrick climbed to his feet.
"So it's true," the spined pirate said, "what they say about humans."
Aldrick returned a deadly stare. "And what's that?" His voice almost didn't even sound like his anymore.
"You're monsters. Demons. Scourge of the universe."
Aldrick grinned, but it looked more like a feral animal baring its teeth. "That's me."
The pirate's spines flexed. "You could join us," he said. "Join the Norvids. We'll find another crew, you can be captain."
They were circling now, Aldrick crouched like a predator ready to strike, the pirate shuffling back with his hands held out.
"You could be rich!"
Aldrick picked up a rusty chain from a barrel as he passed by.
"Think of the power you would wield!" The pirate cried desperately.
Aldrick still said nothing. He forced him back, and back, until the pirate realized, too late, that he was cornered between two crates. His back hit the wall and he slid down, cowering, as Aldrick loomed over him.
Vr'ocria could barely hear because of the distance, but the metal room carried Aldrick's low hiss as he bent down to the trembling pirate: "You hurt my mate. Now, you die."
The rusty chain crackled as Aldrick wrapped it around the pirate's neck in one fell swoop. He pulled the loop tight and the pirate clutched at the noose, his eyes and forked tongue bulging out. Then, with one swift and hard yank, an audible splinter-snap filled the room–and the pirate was dead before he hit the floor, his neck bent at an unnatural angle.
Aldrick dropped him in disgust. His back was turned, but Vr'ocria could still see his chest heaving.
He turned and met Vr'ocria's eyes, and the demented expression drained from his face. He stepped towards her, slowly at first, and then broke into a sprint.
It seemed like he wanted to throw his arms around her, but he came to a sudden halt before he could touch her, instead raising his shaking hands to her face. "Vr'ocria, 'ria, my Ria, I'm so sorry–" his voice broke and his eyes welled with tears that quickly spilled over and began running down his face, carving tracks into the grime and blood spatter.
"Aldrick," she whispered, drinking him in. He's alive.
"Hold on, hold on, I'll get you out of these cuffs, fuck–" he turned to the dead captain on the floor and rifled through his pockets until he produced a key.
He returned and had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the manacles, and with a scrape and groan of metal, the manacles cracked loose.
Vr'ocria collapsed onto Aldrick, her legs too weak to hold her up. Her arms fell over his shoulders, and he caught her around the waist. Together they sank to the floor until they were both on their knees, clutching at one another as if they would disappear.
Aldrick buried his face in her neck, shaking with silent sobs. Vr'ocria tangled her hands in his bloody hair, not caring about the mess. Her people couldn't weep like humans did, but she might as well have with the way her chest heaved with stuttering breaths, her scales burning bright red.
Aldrick clutched her tight enough to hurt, but she didn't care. "Ria, my Ria, my love," he gasped like a mantra.
She finally took his face in her hands and pulled him back, forcing him to look at her. "Are you alright?" She implored. "Are you hurt?"
He let out a half-laugh, half-sob. "You're asking me?"
She used her thumbs to wipe away some of the grime on his face. "You took on all of those people by yourself," she croaked. "And the way he threw you–planets, I thought you were dead."
His hands slid up her back to clutch her shoulders. "I'm alright," he assured her. "Bumps and bruises is all. But you–" he looked her up and down, rage rekindling in his eyes. "Son of a bitch, what they did to you–"
She shook her head. "They're dead now," she said firmly. "It's over and done." She leaned forward to squeeze him again, resting her head on his shoulder. "Let's just go home."
"Don't have to tell me twice." Aldrick rose, pulling her up with him. Her legs were still too unsteady to walk, so instead, he slid one hand under her knees and swept her up into his arms. She settled against his chest as he carried her out of the cargo bay.
"Should we be worried about any other crew members?" She asked, casting her eyes around the barren corridor.
Aldrick shook his head as he walked. He seemed to know where he was going. "It was just them."
"How do you know? And what happened to you, by the way?"
His arms tightened around her. "After you got knocked out, they locked a tractor beam onto the shuttle and pulled us inside."
They came to a fork in the corridor, and he turned left. "I thought they were just raiding for scrap metal and Union tech, but when they boarded the shuttle, they went straight for you. I–" his voice cracked. "I tried to protect you, but there were so many of them and I was so caught off guard..."
Vr'ocria stroked the nape of his neck with her thumb. "It's okay, it's not your fault."
Aldrick swallowed before continuing. "They took you away and locked me in an old storage container. Thankfully the hinges were on the inside, so I just popped the pins out once they were gone. I was able to access the ship's computer and scan the whole ship, because the idiots didn't know how to encrypt anything. All brawn and no brains, I guess. That's also how I was able to figure out where they kept their own shuttles, since ours is pretty busted."
"Is that where we're going?"
He nodded. "Anyway, I used the scanner to find your location, and then I just crawled through the air ducts so I could get inside without them knowing." He stopped. "We're here."
They'd arrived at a loading door with a rusty label that read "SHUTTLE BAY."
Twenty minutes later found them back out in open space in the least-old shuttle they could find. The engine puttered every few minutes, but with any luck, they'd reach their ship in an hour or so.
Vr'ocria had regained her bearings, and she was rummaging around the storage box at the back of the cabin. She finally found an old "in case of emergency" kit, but frustratingly, all the first aid supplies had been picked clean. She did, however, find an unopened package of wet wipes.
Vr'ocria took the wipes back to the front of the cabin. Ripping the package open, she knelt by Aldrick where he sat in the pilot seat.
"What're you doing?"
"Hold still," she murmured. She raised a wipe to his face, and began gently cleaning the blood off. His eyes became soft as she tended to him, throwing the dirty wipes aside one by one while she worked her way down his face and neck.
When she was done, he took her hand before she could get up. He reached for the package as well, and began wiping the blood from her arms, taking care around the nasty scrapes that marred her wrists. "We need to get these bandaged up."
"It's okay. They're not bleeding anymore, we have time."
Aldrick placed a hand on her cheek. "I love you so much," he whispered. "And I'm glad you're okay."
Vr'ocria leaned into his hand, closing her eyes. "I love you too."
Turns out it's REALLY hard to write fight scenes lol. I can see it happening in my head, but getting it down on paper is another story. I had fun though! And I hope I did it justice.
Thank you for reading!

Hey everyone. I’m a 22M and I’m currently enrolled in university. Me and my sister decided to get a puppy for my parents after my mom lost her sister and my father lost his brother. We figured it would get their mind off of their passing and get busy with the puppy instead. It’s been two and a half weeks since we’ve had him and he is going to be 3 months old in a week. During the past week, I’ve been regretting getting him. He has destroyed my life pretty much. I cannot find the time to go to the gym, I cannot study an online coding class that I had a planned to, I have not seen my friends, I missed a close friend’s graduation, I cannot get a job, I’ve had no sleep as he wakes me up multiple times during the night to go pee outside. I am losing my mind and I have not stressed this much my entire life. I can’t even sleep as I start stressing in my sleep and always watching over him in my dreams. I wake up with an insanely high heartbeat thinking he has done something wrong, even though he might be asleep in his crate. I think you get the idea. My sister lives at her own place with her two cats. My dad works night shifts, and when he comes home in the mornings, he’s super tired and needs to sleep. My mom has started going to school again and can’t really watch the dog. Point is I have to pretty much take care of him by myself entirely. We live in an apartment and I feel bad for him and for myself. Yesterday he was terrible. All he did was nothing but bark. He’s super moody. He peed inside even though he had just peed outside 15 minutes before. It just kept getting worse. He was up till 1 AM. Everything I put him in his crate he would just scream. His bedtime was supposed to be 10:30PM. He doesn’t like going out because it’s super hot. He pretty much never walks when I bring him out. Just lays down in the grass and eats it. He bit me so hard when I went to remove a tissue from his mouth. He hates his crate and never voluntarily goes into it to sleep. He doesn’t listen to me at all and therefore I can’t train him at all. Sometimes when he does listen, he gets mad at me after a few commands because I’m not giving him the food right away, and therefore I cannot provide him much mental simulation. I’ve bought him 300$ worth of toys and chews yet he still goes to bite the furniture and if I stop him from doing so, he gets angry at me. My parents are pressuring me to give it away. I don’t think he likes me at all. I’m at my limit, I had a breakdown yesterday and this morning I cried remembering how he used to run with me the first day I got him and now I need to give him away. Please help me out. Can anyone tell me the schedule for their puppy that worked? Where can I train him if I can’t do it at home? How many times a day and and how much water do I give him everyday? How much training does he need a day? How much should he walk? Please help me out with any tips you have. I’m starting to dislike him and can no longer see him in my life. I’m already busy and I will be even busier when I’ll need to go back to engineering school. I want to do the right thing and give him away if I have to.

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A quite harsh (EN/GER) PvE/RP server, active Admin, is welcoming all PvE/RP players who want to explore the large Prison Island of Scum at their own pace.
The start can be harsh since there are a lot more puppets roaming around in Towns and Bunkers
Name: ENDZONE (GEEN -- PvE/RP) IP: 176.57.171.142:28402 Location: EU West
Metabolism: Is lowered just a bit, eating twice a day is now enough. Mech Damage: Is set to 1.2 Puppets: x9 exterior, x5 inside, x3 Wild, spawn chance for all is 70%. Puppet Respawn-Timer in Bunkers and Towns is raised to 30 minutes, so once you have cleared out the hordes of Puppets, you get at least enough time to loot what you can before they are back. Suicide Puppets: Active Puppet Damage: 2.8 Loot rate: for stuff found in the world 1.2 and for containers 1.8 RP: more than welcome, but in no way a requirement or must-do to play on this server. NPC Trader: Are active, but a lot of items, like military equipment and almost all guns, scopes and large backpacks, are removed to encourage looting POIs and make that AK you find in some crate feel a lot more special. Magazines and basic Ammo types for any weapon are for sale at the Armory for a higher, price. Building mode: Unrestricted, few rules in place like not building in Areas that are patrolled by Mechs, don't block Bridges or main roads. Cargo Drops: Active, 30-45 minutes in-between Vehicles: A few Cars are scattered all over the Map, the same goes for dirt bikes and bicycles, more can be bought at the Traders or maybe bartered for with other players if anyone has a spare (Engine install works on the server) Nighttime: Will start at 22:00 and Sunrise is at 04:00 (max darkness) Restart times: 06:00 CEST and 18:00 CEST
Discord: https://discord.gg/SuGKYwEScS
-No Bot-shop no P2W, the server is Bot-free
-The start can be challenging if you just run into a town without any preparations because of the high number of Puppets, but the current settings keep it interesting even if you are fully geared out, there is always a risk of losing everything, crafting a bow is the best way to start off.
So if you are having problems just ask in chat, someone can give you a ride to a safer location or a Trader.
--Some additional Info:--
Trade Routes:
Salt: 1Kg Salt pack can be sold for a better profit at the C2 Trader and looted in bigger numbers at the Salt Ponds down in the Z2 Sector
Fishing: All types of fish can be sold to either the Saloon or the Boat-shop at any Trade Outpost, both will pay the same amount.
Hunting Animals: Animal heads from Bear, Wolf, Horse, Donkey, Goat, Buck, and Doe can be sold to any General Goods Trader.Any Saloon will pay some good money for skinned animals and animal parts (no steaks)
Puppet Hunter: At any general Goods trader Puppet heads and Eyes can be sold for a bit of cash.
Stalker: Depleted Plutonium and graphite can be sold to the Armory at any Outpost for a higher amount of money if you survive the Radiation...
Farming: Now your garden can be used to make some money as well, any Saloon will buy crops you can harvest from your garden for a little bit of rofit.

I did the calculations comparing with the previous car I bought, and to me it looks like private leasing it for a period of 5 years is more economical than actually owning the car. I'm a single person household and this would be my only car: is transporting groceries feasible considering boot space? I owned a Smart Roadster for 9 years and I made it work, but because the engine was in the back I had ample space in front. It seems that there is less boot space in the MX5? Can I transport a crate of 24 beers for instance? I'm Belgian, it's important to my people ;-) Also I'm 6"2' and haven't had the opportunity to test drive the car. How's headspace for my size? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a towering ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, with a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

A data lake is the act of creating that central repository of your structured and unstructured data whether that be a Hadoop cluster or Cloud Object Storage like S3 or ADLS.
You can run ad hoc read-only analytics on a data lake using many tools, and it is still a data lake.
When does it cross that line into become a data lakehouse?
It’s when you start implementing the components to enable data warehouse like functionality on that data lake that it becomes a lakehouse. The chief component among them is organizing your datasets into tables using a table format (Apache Iceberg, Apache Hudi, Delta Lake).
This enables things such as:

• ACID transactions for inserts, updates and deletes
• Smarter query planning (skipping data files that don’t need to be read for faster queries)
• Schema Evolution
• Time-Travel queries to query historical data
• Table rollbacks for disaster recovery

But a Lakehouse isn’t enough, with the exploding expansion of the quantity and use cases of data you need an OPEN lakehouse that allows your lakehouse tables to interOp with a vast array of tools without key features being hidden away behind proprietary platforms locking you out of tools you need and enabling creeping costs.
Apache Iceberg provides a community backed table format with an expansive and ever growing array of tool support for reading and writing.
Project Nessie provides an open-source data catalog to bundle your Iceberg tables and bring them from tool to tool with git-like operations, time-travel, rollback and more at the catalog level.
With these two technologies you have an Open Lakehouse with high tool interOp. As a bonus you can add the benefits of platforms like Dremio that bring you automated table maintenance, a semantic layer, a blazing fast query engine and more to make your open lakehouse turnkey without locking your data away from tools that are best for any particular job.

Greetings, Reddit Ensemble!
The current season's Prestige Cup cars are the Audi NEWING Alpil R8 RSR's. The cars were initially introduced in season 117 (December 10, 2020 - December 24, 2020) (Update 2.17.0) as Crew Championship Season (Top 10)/Milestone (20M Crew RP Prize) cars.
The gold star Audi NEWING Alpil R8 RSR will need between 2 and 3 stage 6s (might be doable with 1 stage 6) in order to beat the Cup or you can get thru the Cup with all stage 6s, uncommon, rare fusions and 5-10 epics. Don't forget to claim your free Prestige Cup crates in Rare Imports.
The Audi NEWING Alpil R8 RSR is a decent T5 car. This time the Audi's are not part of the Championship ShowDown, but the Prestige Cup crates are every 48 hours instead of 72 hours.
Audi R8:
The Audi R8 is a mid-engine, 2-seater sports car which uses Audi's trademark quattro permanent all-wheel drive system. It was introduced by the German car manufacturer Audi AG in 2006.
The car is exclusively designed, developed, and manufactured by Audi AG's private subsidiary company manufacturing high performance automotive parts, Audi Sport GmbH (formerly known as quattro GmbH). The car is based on the Lamborghini Gallardo and presently the Huracán platform. The fundamental construction of the R8 is based on the Audi Space Frame and uses an aluminium monocoque which is built using space frame principles. The car is built by Audi Sport GmbH in a newly renovated factory at Audi's 'aluminium site' at Neckarsulm in Germany. It is also the first production car with full-LED headlamps.
First generation (2006–2015):
The Audi Le Mans quattro (Audi R8 concept car) first appeared at the 2003 International Geneva Motor Show and the 2003 Frankfurt International Motor Show. The R8 road car (model code: Type 42) was officially launched at the Paris Auto Show on 30 September 2006. There was some confusion with the name, which the car shares with the 24 Hours of Le Mans winning R8 Le Mans Prototype (LMP). Initial models included the R8 4.2 FSI coupé (with a V8 engine) and R8 5.2 FSI coupé (with a V10 engine). Convertible models, called the Spyder by the manufacturer, were introduced in 2008, followed by the high-performance GT model introduced in 2011. The Motorsport variants of the R8 were also subsequently introduced from 2008 onwards. An all-electric version called the e-Tron started development but would only reach production stage when the second generation model would be introduced.
The car received a facelift in 2012 and a new model called the V10 Plus was added to the range. Production of the first generation Audi R8 ended in August 2015.
Second generation (2015–present):
The second generation of the R8 (model code: Type 4S) was unveiled at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show and is based on the Modular Sports System platform shared with the Lamborghini Huracan. The development of the Type 4S commenced in late 2013 and was completed in late 2014 (2015 model year in Europe, 2017 model year in the US). Initial models included the all-electric e-Tron and the V10 5.2 FSI along with the V10 plus. Unlike its predecessor, there was no manual transmission available and the entry-level V8 trim was also dropped. In 2016, the convertible (Spyder) variant was added to the line up which was initially available in the base V10 trim. In mid-2017, the high performance V10 plus Spyder was added to the range. A rear-wheel drive model called the R8 RWS was introduced.
In 2018 (2020 model year in the US), the R8 received a mid-cycle refresh with mechanical and exterior changes. The newer and more aggressive design language carried over from famous Audi models of the past and its appearance is slightly more angular up front. The refreshed model had substantial performance improvements over its predecessor. The base R8 gets a power boost from 532 hp to 562 hp, while the V10 Plus was renamed V10 Performance Quattro and the engine saw a power increase by 10 hp (7 kW), now up to 612 hp.
The Audi R8 e-tron (2015) was an all-electric version of the second-generation R8. Unlike the earlier 2010 prototype based on the first-generation R8, it actually entered production, but only on a small scale, with less than 100 units sold. It featured a 92-kWh battery.
NEWING:
NEWING Japan is a modification and custom shop that specializes in aerodynamic body packages. The customization for the Alpil body kit includes an over fender body style and smoother wrap. This also includes a high percentage of carbon fibre, reducing weight and decreasing drag. The kit pieces include front spoiler, side diffuser, rear side diffuser, rear wing, switch kit, carbon cover, and carbon rear wing.
You can beat race #28 on stage 5s.
Prestige Cup Thresholds (Gold Star):

• Speed Trap (Race #4) - 155 mph (249 km/h)
  
• Speed Trap (Race #10) - 188 mph (302 km/h)
  
• Speed Trap (Race #16) - 209 mph (336 km/h)
  
• Speed Trap (Race #22) - 230 mph (370 km/h)
  
• Sprint 0-100 mph (0-161 km/h) (Race #7): 5.109
  
• Sprint 0-100 mph (0-161 km/h) (Race #13): 4.307
  
• Sprint 0-100 mph (0-161 km/h) (Race #19): 3.693
  
• Stage 6 Race (Race #28): 10.417 (Gabriel with Porsche 911 RWB)
  
• Final Race (Race #30): 9.619 (Mateusz with McLaren F1 LM)
  

Full fused stage 5 tunes, stage 6 effects, maxed tunes and shift patterns:
Audi NEWING Alpil R8 RSR (Gold Star):

• Full S5s - dynos at 10.204 with the following tune:
  
  • NOS - 232/4.0
  • FD - 3.46
  • Tires - 53/47

Part	Dyno (sec)	Improvement (sec)
Tires	9.761	-0.443
Engine	9.881	-0.323
Nitrous	9.915	-0.289
Body	9.944	-0.260
Transmission	10.001	-0.203
Intake	10.019	-0.185
Turbo	10.039	-0.165

Audi NEWING Alpil R8 RSR (5 Gold Star Car, Tier 5) Maxed Tune and Shift Pattern:

• PP - 713
  
• Evo - 1897
  
• NOS - 298/6.3
  
• FD - 2.64
  
• Tires - 53/47
  
• Dyno: 8.143
  
• Test Run: 7.948
  
• Shift Pattern (Right side good launch, instant shift into 2nd at 6 mph, shift into 3rd at around 4000 RPM, shift into 4th at around 4200 RPM and NOS, rest shifts at 9500 RPM)
  

Audi NEWING Alpil R8 RSR (Purple Star):

• Full S5s - dynos at 10.102 with the following tune:
  
  • NOS - 237/4.7
  • FD - 3.40
  • Tires - 53/47

Part	Dyno (sec)	Improvement (sec)
Tires	9.638	-0.464
Body	9.715	-0.387
Nitrous	9.825	-0.277
Engine	9.829	-0.273
Transmission	9.908	-0.194
Intake	9.918	-0.184
Turbo	9.942	-0.160

Audi NEWING Alpil R8 RSR (5 Purple Star Car, Tier 5) Maxed Tune and Shift Pattern:

• PP - 713
  
• Evo - 1931
  
• NOS - 314/6.5
  
• FD - 2.62
  
• Tires - 53/47
  
• Dyno: 8.074
  
• Test Run: 7.884
  
• Shift Pattern (Right side good launch, instant shift into 2nd at 6 mph, shift into 3rd at around 4000 RPM, shift into 4th at around 4200 RPM and NOS, rest shifts at 9500 RPM)
  

Links:

• Information about Update 4.5 via the data mine - click/press (Text Version) and click/press (Chart Version)
  
• Information about Update 4.5 via the official CSR2 site - click/press
  

I've created a Ko-fi, because I don't want to limit the information that I provide with a pay wall. I'm thankful for all your support thru the years. I'll be more than happy if you can support me even further. Here's the link - click/press (Now you can use also Apple Pay and Google Pay).
Thank you for your support and time!
Happy racing and stay safe!

[Part 1](https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/131t1q9/first_contacts_part_1/)
[Part 5](https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/13rv3xp/first_contacts_part_5/)
​
“Let’s introduce ourselves to the Captain of this boat!”
Nathan pushed the door control and was greeted with a flashing Yellow light, the door had already been locked down, with that, he took two steps back and levelled his pistol at the bottom left of the door, he began firing his gun, spacing the shots around the edge working his way up the left and along the top of the door, reloading after 12 shots.
Reloading was done between two boxes, when one was empty, or low, he would push it into a belt pack he was wearing, a whir from the pack indicated that it was feeding new rounds into the box and within seconds it was full again.
It took a total of 20 shots for him to reach the place he had started, Nathan reloaded his pistol once more and stepped forward with a spring and brought his right foot up to kick the door, the sound was almost as loud as the gun, the metal finally giving in to the stress and falling away.
Beyond the door were a dozen command officers and four Axarli soldiers, they were already disarmed and ready to surrender, likely as a result of watching the carnage that Nathan had already inflicted on their defence forces.
Most of the Officers were Sovereigns of the Pearls, though a couple of Euterians and a Forgol were among them. “Which one of you is the captain?” Nathan’s voice was raised to an uncomfortable level for the Sovereigns who all covered their auditory antennae, one of the Sovereigns stepped forward her hands still clasped over her antennae.
“Everyone else on the floor, face down and arms out!” Nathan’s voice was still raised but he had lowered it a little. The remaining crew complied with his command.
Nathan lowered his voice back to normal conversational level and turned to the Sovereign Captain “Captain, I understand you are taking prisoners from the surface.”
“That is correct.” The Sovereigns were not able to speak Orvangian directly, so her words issued forth from a worn translator device about her neck.
“I would like you to call your crew and have them surrender.”
“I Do not know your species, but you stand with the Federation against our might!” the Captain and her Sovereign Officers all flourished their hands and feelers in a dance-like display.
I am not sure what happened next, a pulse of electromagnetic energy hit me and my suit was instantly fried, pain shooting through my body at the same time, I found myself laying on the floor the ceiling above me decorated with the flashes of Nathan’s pistol.
Despite the repeated blasts of that handheld cannon, I couldn’t hear a sound and I could see my thoughts around me as though I had engaged in the bond with an Orvangian, I was soon floating on a warm ocean of orange light, enveloping me in its softness.
My eyes drifted closed and Purple Valuri bloomed before me, the faces of my family and the distant arches of my home rose into the sky above. I whooped and laughed like Nathan as I clung to the velvety mane of a Plains Rasil, its legs pounding the landscape into the past behind me, we rose over the hills and across the savannah of Talloral and I Roared like the Volluk on the plains of Orvang.
Dreams fell away to a burning pain as consciousness returned to me, I was in a medical bay, opening my eyes was painful, the white surfaces and bright lights making them sting as much as my chest did.
A pair of Tilik were lingering close to my bedside with relief washing over their faces, they moved back and Nathan stepped into my field of view. His face now sporting several fine slices that welled up with red “Jin! We are glad you’re awake.”
The Tilik flapped their tentacles in agreement and I heard a muffled voice in the background. With considerable pain, I pushed myself into a sitting position so I could survey our situation.
We were still aboard the Separatist ship, in a medical bay, there was a pile of equipment blocking the doors and they had been welded closed, the Euterian officers from the bridge were strapped down to one of the beds though they were unconscious, the Forgol officer was standing beside Nathan a thin trail of white bile trickling from his nasal ducts a sign of the fear and discomfort he was in as a result of having Nathans Pistol barrel so far down his throat that it was likely brushing against his oral lymph nodes.
“What happened?”
Nathan bared his teeth at me, the Forgol seeming to shrink slightly at the expression “Those bejewelled Centipede guys pulled a McClain on us, blasted us with an EMP and Frag weapons.
“I had to shoot them and the power armour guys too, it was a blood bath.
“Your space suit took most of the damage and got fried by the EMP, but you got stuck pretty good yourself. Doc here says you had 28 flechette pieces in you.” Nathan gestured to one of the Tilik.
“The Bejewelled Centipede Guys are called ‘Sovereigns of the Pearls’ and the Power armoured guys are Axarli.” My voice was a little weak but it brought Nathan’s Smile back.
“So, there’s a whole army of those Axarli guys out in the hallway now, waiting for our surrender, but my new pal here says there is a service duct that runs through the floor of this room.” Nathan patted the back of the Tilik he had called Doc earlier.
“Even if we escape this room, where would we go?” I winced and even yelped a little as I swung my legs to hang over the side of the bed.
“Well, this ship’s sensors and weapons are out at the moment, I may have devastated the bridge a bit, so I need you and Doc to go down to the Shuttle and bring it around to their Hangar bay.
“Me and Mister Tactical Officer here.” He grinned at the Forgol officer still tasting his pistol. “We go down to holding, free your fellow crew members and meet you at the light frigate they have parked in the hangar.”
It was as insane as every other plan he had come up with, yet I couldn’t shake the fact that his plans seemed to work every time so I mirrored his thumbs-up gesture to him and slid off the bed.
Gravity on this ship was about 15% lower than what I was used to, which made standing possible, but I could feel the slices of pain in my chest and legs, medication was probably the only reason I was able to move at all.
Nathan passed me the Laser Rifle again and I pointed it at ‘Doc’ but Nathan pushed my gun down, “Woah there, Doc is on board with us, he is my newest pal ok.”
The Tilik’s cybernetic translator chipped in with a slightly musical tone “I don’t want to be here either.”
Doc moved to a floor panel and lifted it away, below was a narrow catwalk surrounded by bundles of cables and pipes. Nathan turned to the second Tilik medic “Remember what I told you!” it nodded and injected itself with a sedative, slumping to the floor within moments.
Doc dropped onto the catwalk and I followed, “Good luck Nathan!”
“Same to you Jin.”
Doc began heading left along the duct, Nathan and his hostage dropped in after us and lowered the panel back in place then headed right.
Doc and I soon arrived at a service shaft, it ascended about ten decks, but it went down to the very bottom of the ship, where we were going. The wall next to the duct had a rail mesh on it and a half dozen tractor lifts were parked here, Doc configured one and stepped off the edge, it grabbed him in its tractor beam and began a swift descent, I followed suit, setting it for deck 210 and stepping into the shaft.
The little rail-mounted tractor-beam device reached Deck 210 in under a minute, it would have been an exhilarating ride if it weren’t for the danger I was in.
Doc arrived a few seconds ahead of me and was waiting on the floor of the shaft when I arrived, he lifted a wall panel off once I dismounted from my tractor lift, beyond the panel was an engineering hallway, not far from the hub where a crate of Tilik still sat.
As we walked past the crate Doc read the top, “Can we let them out now?”
“Let’s take it to the airlock, we can let them out just before we exit the ship.”
Doc hooked a lifter dolly to the crate and began pushing it along with us.
We soon reached the airlock Nathan and I had used to enter the ship, my suit was damaged from the flechette attack, and the computer systems had rebooted now but I had to patch it before we could decompress, “Do you need any protection?”
“How long will we be in the vacuum?” Tilik are all able to survive for short periods out in space, but some are augmented for longer periods.
“About 20 minutes, maybe more.”
Doc took a magnetic field generator from the airlock and attached it to his harness, it would provide additional protection from radiation, which he was going to need so near those engine cones.
Once my suit was sealed, we stepped into the airlock and I reached out to the crate to push the release, as soon as the lid popped up, I pulled back and hit the airlock controls. It only took moments for the airlock to cycle and the outer door to open.
I took the lead out into the engine spaces and made my way back to the panel that Nathan had hastily welded back into place, with the laser rifle I shot each weld and then gave it a good kick, the panel breaking loose and floating away from the hull. It occurred to me that I had never done anything like this before, this was the sort of action that Nathan would have taken, it was exactly how he had gained access to the command centre, shot the door and kicked it open.
I didn’t dwell on the thought, the engines were still hot so I clambered out followed by Doc, the Shuttle wasn’t far away so we moved as quickly as we could manage.
It wasn’t long before we were in the rear of the shuttle, “Doc, can you fly?”
“No, I am a medical specialist, but I do have some engineering training.”
“See if you can get the laser banks back online.”
Doc pulled a repair kit from the wall and began a diagnostic survey, I left him to work and glanced at the device sitting on one of the chairs here, it was clearly the black case Nathan had recovered from the Endeavour, but now it was open, the lid was raised on a framework, becoming the top of the device, I recognised what it was, though I had never seen a portable one before, it was a Fabricator, able to manufacture items from schematic diagrams, the Doradul had several of them in the engineering bays but they were large and fitted into the walls.
I stepped through into the cockpit and strapped in, I wasn’t a pilot like Nathan but I had hundreds of hours of shuttle operations time, I could only hope that the battleship’s weapons were still disabled.
The shuttle detached from the Separatist ship and I kept close to the hull, moving as quickly as I felt comfortable doing at this distance. Once we were out from among the engine cones I turned onto the dorsal surface of the battleship, its cannons were all aimed forward now, sitting in their standby positions and none reacted to my presence.
I picked up the pace as I navigated between turrets and antennae clusters, not as reckless as Nathan had been, but I was ignoring my instructor’s safety rules as it knocked a radar dish off the surface of the battleship.
We were almost at the prow of the ship where the hangar was when the laser banks came back to life, I set them to strafing auto-targeting mode, so I could shoot any Axarli in the hangar with the squeeze of a trigger.
My reckless disregard for flight safety reached its peak as I passed the prow of the battleship, making a hard roll and braking as Nathan had done, I even bared my teeth when I completed the move without crashing.
“What was that!” I heard Doc’s Translator proclaim from the rear compartment.
The Hangar ahead was open an atmospheric shield keeping it from depressurising, I could see a few deck crew and some Axarli were targeted by the shuttle’s computer.
I advanced the shuttle through the shield so the weapons fire would not evacuate the atmosphere, the sudden shift from zero-G to the downward pull of the hangar’s gravity forced the shuttle’s nose thrusters to fire and shook the shuttle. As soon as we were through the shield I pressed the trigger and the shuttles laser bank began to fire, deck crew scattered to shelter while Axarli troops began to return fire.
There was plenty of space in the hangar, the Light Frigate stood like a tower on the Port side allowing me to make evasive moves and even take cover. It didn’t take long before the hangar deck was largely clear, even the Axarli had retreated into the surrounding hallways and rooms to avoid being incinerated by the shuttle’s laser.
After they withdrew I had little to do but hover and wait for Nathan to arrive, Doc came into the cockpit once we had stopped firing “What now?”
“Until Nathan and my crew arrive there is not much we can do.” The Tilik had sided with the Separatists back during the war and Doc deciding to join us was beginning to bother me, why would he sign up for fleet duty only to abandon it?
“Doc, why are you here?”
He looked slightly puzzled at my question, “You mean why did I decide to join you and Nathan?”
“Yes, why would you sign up for fleet service in the Separatist army only to abandon your post now.”
“I didn’t sign up, you know we share our home planet with the Norold.”
I gave an affirmative gesture.
“Well since the Separatist council decided to rebuild the fleet they needed crews, and the Norold were quick to support the new fleet, they decided that every family of Norold and Tilik would provide one person for the fleet forces.
“This was easy for them, they have families of dozens each, but Tilik families are usually no more than five to eight, so to protect my family from reprisals and my mother from forced service I stepped in to replace her.”
Doc deflated in the co-pilot’s chair, I was aware that the Tilik were very peaceful before the Separatist war, many believed that they were not enthusiastic supporters of the Separatists, especially since the planet Ghoat was still a member of the federation despite being a Tilik colony.
“So, you figure that the Separatist fleet will write you off as a casualty now and your family will be safe.”
“Exactly, the Euterian Officers don’t know I am siding with you, my colleague understands and promised to keep it secret, the Fleet will compensate my family and send condolences.”
Through the window of the shuttle, I saw weapons fire again, a group of Axarli backing out of their cover position and under fire from a combination of Plasma Fire and the unmistakable streaks of white thunder that Nathan’s pistol issued forth.
I opened fire again, clearing away the Axarli that had broken cover, moments later Nathan emerged with twenty of the Doradul’s Crew and one Forgol captive, they were using Axarli sidearms and seemed to be carrying makeshift shields.
Axarli in other covered positions began firing on them so I lowered the shuttle and fired back, Nathan pushed his team toward the frigate and up the gangway.
I moved the shuttle to cover them as much as possible, taking dozens of hits from plasma casters, their rifles were not going to fell the shuttle quickly but the damage was already mounting up, soon my laser bank was down again and moments later navigation followed.
“Jin, we are about to launch.” Buddy’s voice sounded over my suit’s com system.
“OK, I am right behind you, I will need to dock soon, my navigation is out.” As soon as I finished speaking, my Warp drive went offline as well.
The Frigate began to ascend moments later, I turned and pushed out ahead of it escaping the weapons fire before anything else went down. The frigate soon followed and once it was clear of the battleship’s hangar its shuttle bay door rolled open and launched the emergency shuttle that was blocking my path.
The moment the bay was clear I manoeuvred into it, the frigate’s tractor beams bringing me to a safe landing, the bay doors closed and the ship jumped to warp moments later.
Doc and I disembarked from the shuttle and took the elevator to the bridge, there were a half dozen members of the Doradul crew here, manning stations. All but one were auxiliary bridge crew, ones that would take night shifts, the only member of the primary crew here was the Secondary Ops Officer, he and I shared the same rank, though he was technically my superior.
In the pilot’s seat was Nathan grinning his toothy grin at me, “Welcome to the Endeavour 2.”
[Part 1](https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/131t1q9/first_contacts_part_1/)
[Part 5](https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/13rv3xp/first_contacts_part_5/)
(I am running a little behind on writing this last couple of weeks so there may be a missed week in the near future, I will do my best to prevent that, but be warned.)

Just wrote a short story about memory problems. Maybe some of you can relate to it.
Where memories fade, love's essence ignites.
A car crash into a pine tree shatters the facade of a once seemingly blissful marriage. Jack's desperate attempts to bring down the tree with a chainsaw leave his wife, Hazel, wondering what has become of their bond. Is he still the same man she fell in love with three decades ago? As Hazel battles her fears, "Journey to the Treetop" invites readers on an emotional ride through the tumultuous landscape of a mind affected by memory loss.
‐---------------------
CABIN ROAD is the gateway to paradise.
But why does this feel like a path to hell?
I smash into a tall pine tree that stands in the middle of the otherwise straight gravel road. I've gone around it hundreds of times before. But now, my fingers are firmly gripped on the steering wheel, disregarding all my commands. Have I become paralyzed?
A potato is wobbling on the dashboard, having obviously leaped out of the potato crates in the back seat. Jack gets out and strides to the front bumper. His lips press into a thin line as he appraises the destruction and cost of fixing it. Nothing should hold him back from swearing. But he maintains his composure, anger simmering just beneath the surface.
The memory of thirty years of marriage fills my mind. I question whether this man has drugged me. A fleeting thought that he might have crashed the car surfaces, but it seems too much of a stretch. I take a deep breath and try to clear my head.In the rear-view mirror, Jack gets an axe from the trunk. He comes and gazes at me from my window, his eyes looking heavy and weary—like two precious pearls inside their oyster-like shells. I straighten and open the window:
“Thank goodness it wasn't worse.”
“I'll chop it down.”
“That’s a pretty big tree, Jack.”
Jack blinks several times.
“I do have a chainsaw...”
“Yes.” I wonder what stories this tree has witnessed during its lifetime. Will we see the marks of our journey on its rings? There’s always something that gets squeezed in tighter, begging to be unraveled.
“I'll drive you to the cabin and grab the chainsaw,” Jack says. “Prepare some coffee while I'm gone.”
Our short passage to the cabin around the bend is like shifting through the fog of memory. I'm in the kitchen. My fingers clench around the coffee tin can and spoon. Bewilderment engulfs my brain. I spot Jack with his saw. He slips around the corner, the curve of his bottom visible through his tight work trousers. I feel anxious about the crash. Did I deliberately hit the tree?
The measuring spoon slips from my hand. It drops onto the floor along with the tin can. I clean up the mess. Could someone drive into a tree on purpose? Accidents do happen after all. It's fascinating to see him take on this role of being so chivalrous. Far away from his academic duties.
As the chainsaw outside whines, I scroll through social media on my phone. People arguing about something or other makes me tired. I pick up a copy of Science magazine from the coffee table and scan through an article titled “Quantum Communication Across Interstellar Space,” authored by Jack. As usual, the details go right over my head. I like to amuse myself with the idea that it speaks about communicating with individuals who have passed away.
Billy's message pops up. He asks for money for a fishing trip with his buddies somewhere in Lapland. I am more than happy to support him since he’s enlisting in the army soon in July. My big boy.
I tell him about the car crash, and he gives me advice about a car repair store. Jack comes back earlier than expected. He plops into his seat, sweat beading on his forehead and the smell of resin emanating from him. He seems disappointed.I pour coffee to the brim.
“Did the saw get stuck?”
Jack shakes his head and adds sugar to his mug.
“It got shattered under the tree. I stumbled...”
Silence descends slowly, like dust.
“My helmet cracked.”
“Do you want me to buy new parts when I go to the store?”
“No need.”
“But there's pruning and cutting to do first.”
Jack takes a bite out of a cinnamon bun.
“I can sharpen the axe.”
“Ask the neighbors for help, that's what they're for. You can also mow the lawn while I'm away.”
“The grass is already short— it'll die off.”
“You don't want ticks taking over! Think about your mother's joint pain. She would roll in her grave if—”
“Cremated?’
“Yes!” My answer is like a flyswatter, leaving no room for further discussion or quantum physics.
Jack is busy chewing on the bun. His regular coffee breaks, which have become part of his daily routine in his sixties, have honed impressive jowls.
We enjoy our coffee and stare at the lake. Calm as a mirror. I have a feeling Jack will soon suggest fishing. As I gather my things to leave, I call to him:
“Don't hurt yourself. Should I bring more buns?”
“I was thinking of skipping the sugar and wheat...”
I simply smile in reply.
“Can you refuel the car?” Jack asks.
I'm already off. The door slams shut in the middle of his sentence, but Jack knows better than to expect a response.
I jump into the driver's seat and immediately notice forgotten potato baskets in the back seat, but my mind drifts away before I can do anything about it. As I pass by our old well, I remember that we need to discuss connecting the cabin to a new water source. No matter what it costs, it needs to be done. Why should I agree to be responsible for our running water anymore?
I collide with something hard. Airbags abruptly inflate around me, disorienting me as my vision blurs. Struggling to escape from the tangled mess of seatbelts and inflatable bags, it feels like I'm an old person trying to climb out of a bouncy castle.
My gaze rests on the scene before me, but my thoughts can't understand it. I have plowed into a tree stump. The tree stretches over the ditch. Nearby the chainsaw lies crushed. The cutting chain is nowhere to be found.
I get back in the car. Should I phone Jack for an urgent call? Inhaling slowly helps me stay calm. Why didn’t he mention the tree stump?
Someone taps on my window
I jump and my neck stiffens up. I reach for the window switch.
“I should have told you about...” Jack says.
“The stump?”
“Didn't you see the tree on the ground?”
“I'm sorry. I was daydreaming.”
“Great galaxy, Hazel! You're burning through our last savings as if money grew on trees!”
Jack is being truly authentic with me. I stare back at him like some big-eyed exotic species from Madagascar that I can't identify in all this chaos. Jack opens the door and starts to put the cushion back in its place. We turn on the engine, giving the accelerator a test ride.
“Let's go to a repair shop. I'm sure our insurance will cover this,” Jack suggests. “We can say that we had an accident with a reindeer.”
“You're supposed to report it to the police or game warden if you hit an animal,” I reply.
Jack pauses for a moment. He then reverses and drives forward again, but when he looks into the rear-view mirror, he slams on the brakes.
“I have a better plan.”
He retrieves an orange towing strap from the trunk, a burst of determination on his face. He connects the stump and the tow hook.
“Get ready. We’re going to take a quantum leap here.”
We buckle our seat belts with a single click as we prepare for the inevitable disaster. We had already made so many mistakes together, starting with raising our children—though sometimes failing was just part of parenting.
Jack revs up the engine. A sudden lurch forward, then Jack howls in pain as the stump smashes through the rear window, clambering through the seats and lodging itself onto the gearbox, trapping Jack's hand. He veers off toward the ditch. The Milky Way spins around us, potatoes fly in the air and suddenly, all is quiet. We find ourselves upside down—surrounded by earthy potatoes and broken glass.
I try to break the silence:
“I just remembered: Billy's friend can repair cars at the vocational school much cheaper.”
Jack looks so pale, his face almost white. I guess he’s contemplating the next step.
Through the cracked windshield, I see the chainsaw chain lying in the ditch. How did it come to be rusting away? Maybe everything will go back to normal if we sit here and wait.
It feels almost as if we are flying in outer space, my nerves slowly calming down. But then a sudden stillness strikes that is anything but soothing.
“Jack, I’m feeling a bit dizzy…”
No answer.
“Jack...”
I snap open my eyes and the scene in front of me has changed drastically. It’s like I’ve been sucked into some kind of surreal void.
I hear a tapping noise on the window. An apology and then a loud thud; a huge rock has been hurled through the glass. A stench of strong aftershave ferments around me. A burly arm reaches across to release the seatbelt. An elderly man growls something crude, nothing like Jack's usual scout-like words.
My eyes close as I'm being cradled away, and visions of Jack's mathematics and symbols flicker around in my mind. Is the soul truly free when there is no force of gravity to pull us down?
I don't know who my savior is, but I can sense his worry as his face reddens. He is in military garb.
I come to as I feel my head thudding against the rubble. Instantly, I yearn to run away, contemplating that perhaps this experience is only a dream, and I'm back in the cabin chamber, tucked securely underneath a cosy blanket. A blanket that grants me the power to perform heroic acts like disappearing in a puff of smoke.
“Are you okay?” he speaks in a familiar voice.
Fingers brush over my clothes, picking out pieces of glass. My pocket contains an odd bulge—a potato? Suddenly, everything clicks: an aged Billy, wearing a major's rank insignia. How could he have achieved that rank so fast?
“Son, what are you doing on this tree ring?”
Billy peers at me from across the way, accompanied by a mysterious female figure. “We came to check on how you're doing,” Billy says. “Do you remember what happened?”
I raise my head and look around. There's nobody in the driver's seat of the car.
“Where is Jack?” I manage.
Billy furrows his brows like a detective would when weighing evidence. An image of the classic TV show Columbo flashes through my mind—he could lull suspects into a false sense of security before dropping the hammer of his sharp intellect on their inconsistencies. But I'm not hiding anything here. Though why are modern shows so bad? That's another mystery entirely.
“Mom, what were you doing out here? The road is an absolute disaster zone, with the car smashed up in the ditch.”
My thoughts swim haphazardly as Billy reads something from my expression, then casts his eyes towards his new girlfriend for assistance.
I try to get up but it hurts too much. Instead, I reach into my pocket and feel a sandy-sharp potato there. Maybe I can still wash it off.
“I’m fine,” I reply. “I need to get back to plowing the field... baking buns for Jack... buying a chainsaw...”
The darkness returns and I feel my body shiver. I'm in the car, traveling down bumps I've known for quite some time. Soon, I’m settled inside the cabin's living room on the couch. The coffee maker is gurgling in the corner of the room. Billy is on a call with a doctor about how to deal with grief and coping alone; it seems someone had died while cutting down a tree last year. He gets furious and threatens to take away the keys from the person he's talking to. It might be a good idea; many people have too many keys that they don't use anyway.
My head is spinning with thoughts about Jack's absence. Where did he go?Someone runs water over potatoes while a pot clatters on the stovetop. My temper rises as I wait for Jack's return. I won't stay here by myself without an explanation from him. I call out for Jack until there's no sound left but my coughing voice.
I crave sausage soup, and I know I must go to the store. As I try to move forward, I am wading through tar. They guide me to the coffee table. According to Jack, time runs faster the more hunched your back becomes. Let it be and let us sit here, motionless, gazing at the tips of our shoes. Surely, time has slowed down in this moment.
Billy reaches out and takes my hand. A handsome, greying gentleman. His girlfriend also places her hand on top of the pile. Her name is Ewa. A beautiful name, something familiar about her.
But did I hear her calling me mother?
In the yard, a squirrel hops with a cone in its mouth. It freezes and stares at me. I avert my gaze. My hands suddenly look wrinkled. I summon the inner strength that I've been striving to find for an eternity:
“Do we have to leave now?”
Billy exchanges glances with Ewa and then looks outside.
“You don't have to walk this path alone, Mother.”
We finish our coffee without saying another word. The wind sweeps across the lake. A pair of swans take flight, and a duet of gentle honks echo across the water. A shivering cold envelops me. Billy and Ewa take me to the car. The potatoes can wait.
The sun blazes brightly above us as we travel the cabin road; shapeless clouds dot the horizon and suddenly I sense a presence—as if someone is waving to me.
I surrender.
I believe I will be warmly welcomed.

I don't mind going to a lawyer, not sure what kind of lawyer I need though.
So my head/gasket started to leak. I took it to my normal mechanic and he confirmed it but told me I'd have to take it somewhere else. I called around and found one place willing to work on it.
They took it apart and put it back together a few times. First they replaced the head gasket but it still leaked. They took the heads to another shop that confirmed one was cracked. They replaced it and it still leaked.
The mechanic figured out they had stripped the threads for the block. They tried tapping it and all that but it didn't work.
They've supposedly been trying to find a new block but they haven't been able to locate one.
It's been a year (yes I've been making payments on this car the whole time too).
At this point is it reasonable to get a lawyer to look into forcing them into buying a crate engine or something because they have basically made my car inoperable with no end in sight?
Or getting reimbursed for all my car payments made with no car?
I'm also concerned that other problems will occur now because the car has been sitting so long without driving, without the battery being charged (which I had just replaced a few months before the head leak).