Mainstays steel stacking chair

The building had a reputation for being haunted. Kids would dare each other to go inside, but unlike other places around town, they would actually see something- or at least claim that they did.
Little Jamie Curry, 9-years-old, went into the basement of the abandoned Leatherman’s complex on a dare and saw a zombie. He said he knew it wasn’t just some guy in an outfit because the zombie had a grapefruit-sized hole in its chest, and he could actually see right through the middle of the thing. He had run right past his group of friends who were patiently waiting outside, screaming and wetting himself as he went.
Another young kid from my town, Alicia DeSilva, 11-years-old, said it was all a bunch of garbage, that she wasn’t afraid of a run-down factory building, except for maybe the asbestos which her uncle told her “rots your lungs from the inside”. She had said she would even go inside it at night. Why not? After all, there were no such things as ghosts or boogeymen.
One of her friends told Alicia that if she went inside Leatherman’s main building at night, grabbed something from the basement and brought it back out for their mutual inspection, the friend would pay Alicia five dollars. Alicia had gasped. Five bucks was a good amount to someone like her. With five dollars, she could even get a kit so that she could finally fix her bike tire. They all met in front of the building, and Alicia disappeared into the dark fire doors on the side of the building, full of bravado and still laughing as she went inside.
Except unlike Jamie Curry, Alicia never came back out screaming and wetting herself, never had a chance to tell some unbelievable story about what she encountered in the fetid basement of that place. Her body was never found. The police were called after a few hours, and they searched the entire building from top to bottom. They were able to follow some fresh footprints in the dust that might have been Alicia’s, but when they got to the basement, the prints just disappeared- as if the person making them had simply gotten sucked up into the ceiling. And yet they did find one thing, the only real evidence left in the entire building that night. What they found still gives me nightmares sometimes.
One of her eyeballs was inside a snowglobe. The glass and foundation of the snowglobe were all intact, and there were no signs of foul play anywhere on the decoration. It was as if it had been manufactured that way- with that blue, staring eye floating lazily next to plastic mountains and white glitter snowflakes.
In my nightmares, I often see an old woman shaking that snowglobe, an old hag who cackles and whose split lips form into a dreadful smile as she stares directly at me. The eye and the glitter all hang suspended in the water for a moment, then begin to fall slowly, the eye spinning rapidly as it drifts down the front of the globe. And when it’s stopped, I see it is looking directly at me, and it still looks frightened.
***
OK, so that last paragraph was pretty dark. But what I’m trying to communicate is just how terrifying that place is. The kids in school know what’s going on, though, at least in a general way. After all, Alicia and Jamie came from among them, and they’re not the only ones. Others have gone into the building before. And Matt wants me to go with him tomorrow to look at it.
Maybe that’s why the dreams are getting worse. Maybe that’s why I’ve woken up screaming twice in the last few hours. Because there was something else, too, something else I saw in my nightmares. In that building, around the back walls, there were dozens of kids. Their skin was chalk-white, their hair and eyes all pure black. They were dead. And then thousands of “Missing” posters started to fly down, all of them of smiling children. I looked between the ones surrounding me and the posters and noticed that some of them showed these same kids. I turned to run but little rotted hands started pulling me down and then, I was sitting straight up in bed, yelling and pleading.
I really don’t want to go in that building tomorrow.
***
OK, so Matt and I went inside the doorway. No way was I going in the basement. But just the front doorway… well, that wasn’t too bad. I even stuck my head in and looked around inside.
Matt didn’t see it, but I did. There was something huge in the front hall. It wasn’t much more than a silhouette. It looked like a very tall, very thin man in a suit whose neck was all twisted and strange. It came off his chest like a snake’s, turning and curling back on itself, and at the end it had this reptilian face. Everything about the man was hairless and slimy. I could smell the strange stuff on his skin.
But by the time I had gotten Matt’s attention and pointed it out to him, the guy was gone. I don’t know how he disappeared so fast.
Matt was making fun of me as we walked home afterwards, pointing at random alleyways and asking, “Do you see him there, too?” and then laughing. It wasn’t that funny. I’ll prove to him there was someone in there.
***
I convinced Matt to come back with me. I need to see what’s in there. He wasn’t thrilled about it, but I told him an older kid offered to pay $10 for a souvenir from the place, and that I’d split it with him if he went with me. All of this was total crap, of course. But I want to see what was in there, and I definitely want these dreams to stop.
“You know, you’re lucky you have a friend as brave and manly as me,” Matt said, puffing up his little bird-chest. “After what happened to those other schmucks, everyone has been avoiding this place like the plague.”
“Yeah, but unlike all of them, you know it’s just a building,” I said. He gave me a funny look then.
“It’s just a building, but you know something actually happened,” he said. “I was talking to my dad about it, and he said maybe a homeless guy was living there, totally deranged, and maybe he cut out Alicia’s eye and kidnapped her.” He stated this was the seriousness of a news anchor recounting bits of total bullshit for the audience. I smiled at his grave expression, repressing an urge to laugh. He looked over at me disapprovingly. “It could have happened, you know. Homeless people are homeless because they’re crazy. My dad says so. Maybe one of them just went really crazy and started taking souvenirs off of people’s bodies.”
“I guess,” I said. We were most of the way through the old industrial part of town now. Shuttered factories and condemned buildings stretched out on both sides of the street. A fat, limping raccoon walked lazily out of a nearby alleyway. He gave us a sideways glance, stopping for a moment, then kept on maneuvering his round frame forward. Something that Matt had said had given me pause.
“You know,” I said, “it’s kinda weird that we don’t have homeless people out here. We have all these empty buildings, yet most of them camp out on the sidewalks on Main Street. I’ve never seen a single homeless person sleeping in one of these buildings, and I’ve never seen one even close to the Leatherman building. It’s like they have some sort of sixth sense to avoid the place.”
“Clearly they’re smarter than you and me,” Matt muttered. We were walking past the rusty metal chain link fence around the property. He looked pale and his eyes were wide. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Right then, my instincts screamed at me to run.
“Yes,” I said simply, walking in first, taking the flashlight out of my pocket. “I need to know. For sure. Either way, I’d like evidence. Either it is my imagination, or something supernatural actually exists within and around this building.” An old, musty smell permeated the huge hallway. I looked up and down it, wondering what was missing. Then I realized- it had no graffiti. It had to be the only abandoned building I’d ever been in without tons of graffiti scrawled on the inside.
In some places, the walls had begun to buckle, and whole sections were crumbling and coming down. Farther ahead, the ceiling had collapsed inwards, blocking half of the main hallway off. Downstairs, lights started turning on, and the entire building started to come to life. I looked at Matt, who was looking dazed.
“Bro, what the hell is that?” he asked. I had no idea.
“Someone’s in here with us,” I said. “Let’s go check it out.” He looked at me like I was insane.
“Are you mad? What if it’s cops? What if it’s tweakers pulling out all the metal?”
“We’ll be quiet, and just peek around the corner,” I said. “I think we’re meant to see this. Don’t you want to know what’s going on here?” He scowled.
“I’d much rather get home alive,” he said, but he followed me reluctantly. There was a rhythmic hum coming from the floors now, as if machinery were coming to life. A sign, dirty and covered in spiderwebs, pointed to a staircase on the right. I looked down it, seeing bright light flood into the stairwell corridor, despite the fact that there was no electricity running to this building. We started down the staircase to the basement level. There was a smell of ozone in the air, a cyclical rhythmic humming that popped and buzzed. I took a deep breath, wondering what I would see down here. Then I poked my head around the corner.
There were conveyor belts stretching against the basement, their legs embedded into the cracked concrete floors. Beams and pillars ran up from the floor to the ceiling every ten feet or so. And it looked like there were countless workers just sitting on each side of the conveyor belts, sitting in crooked wooden chairs with splintering legs and backs. But it was the workers who caught my attention most of all. They looked… strange.
“Does something look off to you?” I whispered to Matt, who had been standing behind me only a moment earlier. But I got no reply. I figured he was too engrossed in the bizarre nature of what we were seeing to respond.
The workers, if that’s what they were, looked blurred, as if in an overexposed picture with a long shutter speed. Their skin appeared to writhe and crackle, some of their heads constantly turned from side to side, and their limbs… all of them appeared to be missing limbs. I saw pale, white bodies without arms, without legs, even without heads, but they all still continued working in unison, moving in that jerky, blurred way.
“Jesus, Matt, do you see?” I asked suddenly, my eyes widening. “Do you see what they’re doing?” I looked forward in horror as I saw human bodies rolled down the conveyor belts. The people were still alive. They were naked, many of them crying and covered in blood. As they passed by the workers, the blurred hands quickly took pieces of their skin off. Glistening sheets of it were raised by other workers walking along between the lines, and they would give an admiring look at the large pieces of skin, smiling eerily as their heads writhed from side to side and blurred in my vision.
And I saw the kids from my dream, the kids from the missing persons posters, all in the corner. They were huddled, emaciated, with wide, staring eyes. They trembled and cowered as some of the workers came over to grab them and throw them on the belts.
I turned to get the hell out of there, and that was when I realized Matt was no longer behind me. I caught a glimpse of something dark and massive moving at the top of the stairs, disappearing around the corner. I was alone. I know I should have stayed and looked for Matt, but instead, I ran. I got out of that place and went home and hid under my blankets.
I thought 13 was old enough to deal with this, but it has gone way beyond what I thought.
***
Matt’s parents are calling. My parents stand at the bottom of the stairs, my mother holding the landline in her thin hand, my father looking disturbed. They tell me that Matt is missing, that he never came home last night. What should I tell them? Certainly not the truth. If I started talking about the things in that building, I would be forced into a psychiatric ward before the week was up.
The police stopped by and asked me a few questions. I told them all straight-up lies. “No sir, I haven’t seen him, and I have no idea what happened to him.” But what else could I say? That he was taken by something from a nightmare?
I have to go back. I have to try to rescue Matt. I shouldn’t have ran like I did, but seeing those things cutting up people like that… it scared the shit out of me. Tonight, once my parents go to sleep, I’m going to sneak out, and everyone will think I’m a hero if I bring him back. If I don’t, I’ll probably end up as just another stupid missing kid who ended up way over his head.
***
I went back. I made it out, but I think they’re coming for me. There was something in the basement.
All of the conveyor belts were gone, the lights were off, the rhythmic hum had disappeared. It was as if the other night was all a hallucination- except for, of course, Matt is still missing. His parents are freaking out, and I can’t even tell them I know what happened to him, kinda.
Going into the building alone was terrifying. My legs felt like wood, and I kept glancing behind me every second as if I were hearing imaginary pursuers. But I walked through to the staircase, and I saw nothing.
I went down to the basement, peeking my head around the corner. It was just a mostly empty basement, some broken furniture and old boxes stacked in one corner. I shone my light all over and saw no one. But there was a light coming from the far corner, a faint, glowing, orange light. A feeling of dread came over me.
I crept slowly forward, trying to find the source of that light. A faint smell of smoke and roasting meat seemed to creep through the air. Off past the last line of boxes, I saw what looked like a small crater on the floor. There was a hole there with glowing fire underneath. Cracks spiderwebbed out from it in all directions for a few feet. More curious than afraid now, I peered forward and looked down.
Beneath the abandoned building, there was another world. It had fire licking the walls and ground, and in the middle of this inferno, I saw Matt. His face was a map of blackish-purple bruises, his head was cocked at an unnatural angle, and I saw blood pouring out of his ears and nose. He looked up at me, and the bones in his neck grated together. I saw his spine was broken and his entire throat was crushed inwards.
“Help me,” he croaked. “You brought me here, now help me. You can’t leave me. They’ll come for you next…” All around him, I saw hands reaching up- the pale, jerky hands of those strange workers. They grabbed Matt and dragged him back down to the fire. I saw other horrid creatures in the flames, some laughing and insane, others shrieking in agony. Large, black insectile silhouettes moved through the smoke and flames. And then, like one, they started coming up towards the hole, coming up to the building where they would be free.
I ran then, and I never went back. I know now that Matt is dead. I can’t sleep. Every time I look out the window, I see shapes in the front yard- blurred humanoids with missing limbs, hiding in the bushes and trees, and constantly inching closer.

So I recently got a job at this video store in my town. The place has been open for as long as I could remember. And through circumstances I will not get into now, I was hired there. Now, I am using the term ‘Video store’ very loosely here. It’s more of a large storage facility that just so happens to rent out VHS tapes. And weirdly enough, the store actually gets quite a few customers.
I am only one of three employees that work at the store. There is also the manager but I had only seen him once throughout my whole time working here. One of the employees that works with me to serve the customers is a girl, who I will call Sunny. I see Sunny at the front desk, or in the break room making her 100th coffee. There is also Jared, the store's Archivist. He does as his job title implies. He is given a box of VHS tapes and is told to watch, catalog, and sort them into the store.
The store itself is a whole different story. On the outside, it just looks like your average brick and mortar warehouse. The inside however, if I may describe it in one word, is dark. I have no idea why but there are now windows in the store. The only windows being the glass doors at the front entrance. So when you need to navigate the store, in search of a tape, you need to bring a flashlight with you. And even with a source of light, the place is like a labyrinth. Going deeper into the store proves to be the most frustrating and stressful part of the job. As you need to do it quickly if you don't want the customer to grow impatient. I now cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for Sunny. As she does the night shift at the store. So it is dark inside and out.
Lastly there are the customers. They are peculiar to say the least. They range from salesmen, homeless people, Even clowns that one time. I've heard from Sunny that when it is night shift. You get some weird customers.
So, now that I have told you what my job is, Ill tell you what got me into this mess. I just arrived at the store early this morning. When I do, I always find Jared in the break room, making himself some tea. This time he wasn't there. “Hey Sunny, where’s Jared?”
Sunny turned her head to face me while she was making herself coffee. “He called in sick today. The manager also wants to see you upstairs in his office.
My stomach churned when she said that. The first time I met the manager I was instantly freaked out by him, his skin was almost perfect. like a wax doll, And his ear to ear smile with perfectly symmetrical teeth made me shiver, he looked like an idyllic business man, almost like a living parody of one.
I walked up the metal stairs to his office and opened the door. The manager was sitting in his chair filing some paperwork. He asked me to sit down. “So new employee. How are you coping?” His voice was sincere yet eerie. He gave that familiar ear to ear, perfect teeth grin. “Good sir.”
“Amazing news new employee! Now as you may have heard from the night shift employee. Our archivist has called in sick. So I’ll be making you the surrogate archivist for today.” the manager said. Opening his desk drawer and pulling out a key, the key’s head was painted with a pale, sickly green color. “Now I know that you have only been working here for how long?”
“Oh uh, 1 month sir.” I answered. His face contorted into what looked like a surprised face. “ 1 whole month. So you have fitted in nicely? Got along with the two employees?” He stretched out the ee’s in ‘employee’ to make his point. “Yes sir.”
“Good then. Now the green key is to unlock the archivist’s office. The night shift employee will guide you. If you do a good job, then I will give you a bonus for this week's wages. But any mistakes. Well, the consequences will be costly.” The seriousness of his tone completely caught me off guard. A hot, red fuzzy feeling grew ever present in my gut. “I-I understand sir.”
“Alrighty-yo then. Now get moving.” the manager turned his focus back to the paperwork. I took the green key from him and walked down the iron steps.
Meeting Sunny below. She took me to the archival room. “Alright. The door opens with the green key, you have it?” she looked back at me. I took the green key out of my pocket to show her. “Okay, now listen to me. If you are in any trouble. There is a black phone near the bottom of the steps. There will be two options on it. Being the front desk and the manager's office. Press the front desk if you need my help. You understand.” her voice was assertive. I nodded solemnly. She said goodbye and walked away from me. I waved and looked back at the door in front of me.
Opening the door I was surprised to find a long dark stairway leading into the inky abyss. I took out my small flashlight and flicked it on. Flashing the light down the stairway it just showed more steps. With a long sigh I stepped down, closing the door behind me. The soles of my shoes tapped against the steel steps. Sending a slight echo throughout as I descended. To keep my mind off of the fuzzy feeling in my gut, I started counting every step I took. When my foot hit the smooth concrete floor at the bottom, I had counted around 50 steps.
I flashed the light across the basement. The walls were simply just featureless, smooth concrete. The only things in the basement were Four shelves, all different colors ranging from red,purple,blue and green. An old CRT Tv near the middle of the room, it looked like one of those old tv’s teachers would wheel into class to play a movie or something.
There was also an old desk hugging the wall, only a few feet away from the CRT Tv. Some journals lay strewn about. With a singular page torn out, laying on a bunch of notebooks. I came closer to read the page. Here is what is said;
“Hey Buddy. So if you are reading this then that means that I am probably at home, in bed, coughing my lungs out. I haven't been feeling well yesterday and decided to write this note as the manager is probably going to ask you to do my job. So I’ll be leaving this note here with the rules on what to do.
1st— All the tapes you need to watch are in the box near the Tv. Pop them in and watch them. If you didn’t finish a tape. Whether it be for having explicit imagery or it was just causing too much distress. Pop it out and slap a Golden star sticker on the side.
2nd— there are four shelves, all different colors. Red is for if it is explicit stuff. Purple are for tapes that seem normal but give you an uneasy feeling, make your body ache, pain etc. Blue are for tapes that are just static and random flashing lights. And lastly green is if the tape is just a regular old by the books VHS.
3rd— there will be a notebook titled ‘Volume-124’ lying beneath the page you are reading. Make sure to document what you saw on those tapes. If you don't know how you should document them. Just look at some examples in the notebook itself.
4th— Do not. Under any circumstances. Watch a VHS with a red strip of duct tape stuck on its side. If you encounter one, then please leave it. Don’t touch it. Don't look at it. Don't even think about it when you see it.”
That was all the letter had to say before I turned around and looked at the box, lying near the Television set.
Opening the box I found it filled to the brim with neatly stacked VHS tapes. I decided to take my phone out of my pocket to check the time. 8:30.
I sighed and put my phone back in my pocket. Best to get it done and not slack off.
The first few tapes that I watched were slightly unnerving. Some were old cartoons that made my body feel stiff. Others seemed to be videos of crime scenes. I wrote down what I saw on the volumes. The examples I had to look at in the notebook just showed I had to write short sentences with a clear point on how they made me feel, what was the tape about and what category it ends off with an ascending number. ‘Tape 2234’ and then ‘Tape 2235’.
I won't be talking about all of the ones I saw. But there were a few I had to mention. There was one that was some old student project film about a half bunny, half man that was going on a rampage throughout a college dorm. The blood and viscera made me think that the practical effects of this movie were realistic. I am a bit too realistic. So I thought of just putting it on the red shelf and moving on.
Another VHS featured a documentary about this old farm. Retelling the generations of its inhabitants and how they seemingly died of strange causes. Like being impaled by a tree branch or seemingly strung up in the barn. It was actually quite a bit entertaining in the way you find murder documentaries entertaining. It was descriptive with the details. Which is technically telling ‘explicit information’, but again, no gore or frightening material. Si just just put the tape on the desk and told Jared I didn't know what to do with it.
I was finally now finished down to only two tapes. I now saw the tape with red on it. Now if I was an absolute idiot I would have watched it. Ignoring the rules laid out by my good old friend Jared. Don’t get me wrong, I was very much tempted to pop it in and watch it. See why it was so forbidden. See if it is a snuff film. But well, the fear of actually seeing a snuff film and getting in trouble for it, stopped me.
So I took the VHS That lay beside it. The name of it was scribbled on its side. ‘Lisa.’
I inserted it into the player. The subsequent screen that flashed on the tv was of a cellar door. The footage had an unusual blue, distorted filter to it. Like the camera that was filming was submerged into water. I sat there in the uncomfortable fold up chair, Staring at the screen unblinkingly. After some indeterminate time had passed. I stood up from the chair. My gaze upon the screen now gone. The sound of screeching metal erupted from the television. I jumped and cursed under my breath. Quickly flicking my gaze back at the screen.
The Rusted cellar doors were now open. Revealing a deep void. I stood. The warm fuzzy feeling I had felt was now ever present across my whole body. From the void, a pale hand emerged. It was heavily contrasted against the blackness behind it. The arm stretched out and grabbed the dead grass in front of the cellar. Then slowly. Another pale hand appeared. Doing the same as the others. The arms now seemed to haul up a ghostly looking woman. Her long, jet black hair covering her face.
Suddenly, the arms propelled the figure out of the cellar, moving swiftly and smoothly towards the screen. I couldn't help but give out a startled gasp as I was jumpscared by the video. The figure of the woman was now inches away from the supposed camera filming her. Her face is now slightly visible.
The skin on her cheeks and jaw were stretched thin. The iris of her eyes is a deep crimson color. I never in my life expected what was about to happen.
With an eerie determination, she pressed her hand against the screen, her pale fingers pushing through, defying the boundaries of reality. I couldn't help but scream in terror. She started climbing out. Water spilling over from the film world into mine. Her long black hair trailing along as half her body was now out of the television.
My fight or flight response kicked in as I grabbed the metal fold up chair and hurled it at her, then booked it for the stairs. Now I know that I had counted 50 steps on this stairway, but my feet probably landed on only a quarter of them as I was jumping hurriedly across 2 to 3 steps at a time.
Reaching the top of the stairs in leaps and bounds.
I grabbed the handle of the metal door and pulled. It didn't budge. Looking behind me I saw she was now crawling up the stairs like a feral beast. Rapidly approaching. I pulled the green key out of my pocket but it slipped and fell onto the floor.
The ghost woman was only 6,5, only 4 steps away from presumably ripping my souls out of my body and sending me to hell. So, out of sheer panic. I thrusted my leg out. My foot connected to her face with enough force that she lurched backwards and started falling down the steep stairway. The woman was wailing out until her head landed on the step. Her screams cut short with a loud crack and tumbled hearing her tumble the last few remaining steps before silence.
I was cupping my hands over my mouth. Trying my best not to scream. I stood there for what felt like an eternity before I slowly started descending back to the basement. The now familiar glow of the Tv showed that the woman was very much not moving.
An inky black liquid was seeping out of her opened skull onto the smooth concrete floor. I then remembered what Sunny had told me. And so I looked around and saw the black phone on the wall near the steps.
The only buttons on it had the words ‘manager’s office’ and ‘front desk’. I took the handset of the phone and pressed the ‘front desk’ button. A short beep came out the receiver before I heard Sunny’s voice.
“I’ll be right over.” is all that she said to me. That was an hour ago as of typing this. So now here I am asking you this question. How do I dispose the body of a ghost?

John asks for permission, for a change, to do something unorthodox. Does he get permission? Does it work? I hope you enjoy!
The next chapter will be out on Tuesday.
Terran Space Story: The Lieutenant Saga
Academy Days First Previous Next
Chapter 118: Master Escalator
1 Day Later. March 13th, 2267. 08:00 Slip Space – Captain’s Ready Room
John was sitting in his chair pleading his case to Admirals Dufresne and Dickinson. He had a hard time reading the men as they both had steeled themselves to reactions. Neither man appeared happy with the situation they were in. John wasn’t responsible for the situation, but it was undoubtedly clear- he was the one that lit the match.
“Sirs, now more than ever the Icarus needs to die. We kill her and this bullshit pirate alliance ends,” John said.
“How would you presume to do this,” Admiral Dickinson said, “The Icarus isn’t going to attack you if you have battlecruiser or battleship support.”
“Give me two more cruisers and four frigates. We ought to be able to make do with that,” John said.
Admiral Dufresne was the first to show a bit of emotion, “How are you going to pull that off?”
“There’s a large pirate base in the Altair system. If Naval Intelligence data is to be believed, and frankly I have no reason to suspect otherwise, it’s their primary staging point in this sector. It’s also lightly guarded at the moment because the pirate fleet is elsewhere.”
“So, you mean to toss gasoline onto the fire,” Admiral Dickinson nodded, “That could work. It does carry a fair amount of risk though. What if the pirates attack a colony.”
“Civilian sentiment leans strongly on us but it’s a simple majority at this point,” John said, “If they attack civilians then that sentiment is pegged against them.”
“He’s not wrong. The sentiment against them will grow slowly over time if they stick to attacking military assets. And frankly, we have far more of them than we do ships to guard them,” Admiral Dufresne said, “The problem is the request for ships. We don’t have any ships to give you.”
“There are six ships in the Altair system already,” John said pointedly.
“Which are there defending the military installation located there,” Admiral Dickinson said, “What would you have us do? Shut it down and transfer the crew?”
“Yes. For an inner-core system, it’s a shithole. The pirates built this base years ago but abandoned it. They came back recently, and we’ve tolerated their presence instead of snuffing it out,” John said, “I’m also going to need several prison transports rerouted. I see four empty ones within a day and another six that could be used for the same purpose that is two days out.”
“Can you work with Lieutenant Cohen again? You came down hard on him before,” Admiral Dufresne.
“It is unexpected, but I need his help more than I dislike him as a poor captain. It seems my critique of his actions has at the very least improved his ability to captain his ship though.”
“You have a go,” Admiral Dickinson said, “If this doesn’t work out in your favor this could end very poorly for us all.”
“Then I’ll have to ensure that it doesn’t, sirs,” John saluted then before ending the communication.
He had the green light and acquired more ships. Would it be enough? Time would tell. Even with their reinforcements, there was no guarantee that it’d work. But John knew his abrasive personality would get under his enemy’s skin. At a bare minimum, this action would draw out some of the pirates.
March 15th, 2267. 01:00 Altair System – In Orbit around the moon of the second planet
The pirates had not expected a fleet of Confederate ships to attack their base. In the past several months the Altair system served as a fuel stop for passing ships. Warships, of which dozens upon dozens came through the system, were there briefly and then left. The pirates were confident their reactivated base would be safe.
How wrong they were. Then again, how could the pirates predict the Confederacy to go on the attack so quickly? Their typical response was to pull back and guard, then push out. There was always time following an attack to breathe and generate momentum. This time though, that was not the case, this was not John’s way of responding to an attack.
Their base had been brutalized by orbital bombardment. All defensive weaponry, down to the last missile battery, had been utterly destroyed. There was nothing but wishful thinking preventing an assault on the base from happening. The pirate’s morale was low, but they were already prepared for an assault and had dug themselves in.
They were going to make the Confederates pay for each foot of the base they took. Heavy weapon platforms had been erected in the base’s hangars. They knew about the super-heavy power armor and were prepared for it. Or so they thought.
Leading the charge was a brash lieutenant with a somewhat bloodthirsty mood toward pirates. Even more scary, for the pirates that is, is that he was leading the charge on the base. John’s armor had been repainted pitch black. One knee pad was checkerboarded with white and red squares. His helmet was painted bronze, and its face shield had that distinctive white skull he always bore.
The Confederate attack on the enemy base didn’t go according to how the pirates presumed it would occur. Sure, they stormed the docking bays, but they did so after a team of Confederate scouts gained access to the base from a secret entrance on the surface of the moon. Those very same scouts’ mission was to disable the docking bays’ atmospheric shields. An inelegant manner of attack, but none of the pirates were wearing void suits.
Why fight a dug-in enemy when you can simply space the lot of them? Facing heavy weapons deep inside the base was unlikely. In the docking bays though? There was plenty of space to fire them without worrying about the structural integrity of the base. John’s plan was as cunning as it was ruthless.
The transport ships came in quickly and disgorged their armored cargo. Seven hundred and fifty power-armored foes began to fan out into the base. Fifty stayed behind to dismantle, or destroy, the heavy weapons and ensure the pirates don’t do anything to their rides home.
John led the charge down one corridor, “With me, we’re going to rush their central command.”
A squadron of marines, all wearing the older and diminutive suits of power armor, fell in behind John. They charged down the corridor. Unlike John, they did clear the intersections just in case. Some small arms fire came from in front of John, but the moment the pirates saw the hulking mass run towards them they bugged out quickly.
John arrived at the door to the central command of the station. It didn’t open when he pressed the console button in the frame. It also didn’t open when he smashed the button with a closed fist. That gave time for the Marines that were with him to catch up to him.
With his fingers extended John’s right hand shot forward at the point the two doors met in the middle. Both doors bent slightly inward because of the force imparted onto them. John followed that up with his left arm and forced the doors open.
No matter the number of protestations the door’s locking mechanisms gave, the Broadsword’s power was overwhelming them. The locks then succumbed to the imparted force, and the broken doors were wedged into the door frame.
John stepped inside and drew his battle rifle deftly, “Hands up, compliance or death, your choice.”
The guards on either side of the door jumped backward in shock. They immediately dropped their guns and held their hands up. Virtually everyone in the room did that save for the two men sitting at the central console.
“Last chance assholes, hands up,” one of the Marines barked.
“This is a…” the presumed leader said from his seat.
John wasted no time and fired a single round from his rifle. It was a through and through, though thankfully there wasn’t anyone else behind the man taken out as collateral damage. The man that was standing to the side of his boss looked at John, then at the console, and back at John.
“Flinch and you're dead,” John growled.
“Everyone back the fuck away from your stations,” another Marine said as he walked along the outer edge of the room to John’s left.
The second in command tensed up. John reacted almost instantaneously to the man’s action. Whether he was or wasn’t going to do something didn’t matter. In that moment the presumption was he was going to do something bad. John fired off another round. He fell backward, gasping on the ground for a few moments before his life gave out.
John walked over to the console. The self-destruction screen had been pulled up but had not yet been activated. He hovered his hand near an input port. Eve then directed the suit to connect its external cable from John’s wrist to the port.
“Eve, lock out the pirates from their systems and share with our friendlies the locations of all hostiles,” John said calmly.
“Understood,” Eve said as she was already well underway in taking control of the station.
“This Falchion Leader to all teams, the central command is ours. Tactical readouts are to be shared momentarily. Continue with mop-up operations.”
“Sir, the room is secured. All weapons have been taken from the prisoners,” the sergeant of the squad of marines said.
“Excellent,” John said as he carefully removed his helmet, “Now then, who’s going to spill the beans on what y’all are planning and doing?”
“Why should we talk to you?” one of the guards answered.
“Your choice is talking to me instead of Naval Intelligence. I’m a whole lot friendlier to deal with.”
“I doubt that you just merced both our bosses,” another pirate said.
“True, but I ain’t going to make you suffer. I at least have the decency to put you down in one shot.”
“Some comfort that is,” an older-looking man from the rear of the group said, “I’ll take my chances.”
“What can you offer me?” the youngest-looking member of the gaggle of pirates said.
“Don’t you dare tell them anything Tiffany!” huffed another one.
John made a couple of gestures to the Marines. All of the pirates were ushered into a conference room. Two of the Marines watched over them. Tiffany, the traitor pirate, looked confident standing in front of John. Perhaps too confident for John’s taste.
Her corroboration of events wasn’t actually needed. John looked at his wrist and noticed that Eve already pulled highly detailed information on the pirates’ activities. But if there was an opportunity, she really was looking for leniency, John wouldn’t overlook free intel.
“Speak, now,” John said as he loomed large over the young girl.
“This is merely a waystation. We acquire goods and ammunition for pirate vessels. We aren’t…”
“Spare me that bullshit. This isn’t just a waystation. This is home to three different pirate factions,” John hissed, “That’s your first strike. You won’t get another one.”
The young girl took a small step back. Her confidence had left her. In place of that was pure terror. She didn’t know what to do or say anymore. Her eyes darted around the room, in fact the room felt considerably smaller than it had just moments before.
“What do you want to know?” she said as she looked at the floor in shame.
“The truth,” John said before leaning down to get closer to her, “The whole truth.”
“The Alpha and Omega, Pirate Brothers, and the Void Sovereign groups used this as their base. There was an uneasy alliance between the three. None were big enough to take out all their rivals, so an odd partnership formed here.”
John turned and walked near a console, “All of this is known to me.”
“They also made this a port of call of sorts for other pirates. They were charged an arm and a leg, but it brought a steady stream of money and recruits in. When the Confederacy announced their anti-pirate actions, they shut the station down cold and we all left to parts unknown,” the girl continued to stare at the floor, “That was until the hunting appeared to have ceased. We returned and reclaimed our base. At that point, a decision was made to be less boisterous about our base.”
The girl took a deep breath before speaking again, “The Icarus came to visit. She was in rough shape. They called in favors from all three groups and began retrofitting the ship here. My group had to deal with them in the past, and some sizable debts incurred to the Icarus.”
“This is the base that retrofitted the Icarus?”
“It is, yes,” the girl said, “We acquired a retrofitting dock several years ago. We’ve done a fair amount of business using it.”
“Where are the records of this retrofit?” John asked sternly, “I presume you kept detailed records of their upgrade.”
“It should be on our mainframe, or it could be partitioned off into some secret storage. They clearly didn’t want any records of what was being done to the ship kept anywhere.”
John grinned as he turned to face the young girl, “A request your leaders clearly and flagrantly disobeyed.”
She nodded.
“Who knows where that information is?” John said as he looked at his wrist’s holographic outputs.
Eve was listening to the conversation and was already searching for the hidden data. If this story was true and a copy of it was saved it could be an amazing coup of data intelligence. That is if it were true. But the dejected look of the young girl suggested to John that she was telling the truth.
“Jamis. He’s the tall black guy with the grey beard.”
“Corporal, take her to a more secure place away from the rest of her ilk. I’ll decide what to do with her later.”
“You said…”
John raised a finger to shush her, “I promised nothing. You tried to offer me false intelligence. You and I are far from done speaking.”
“Private, bring Jamis from that room, we need to have a conversation.”
The corporal saluted John and walked over to the room. The door on the room’s right side opened. In walked another squad of marines. Their sergeant was leading the way.
“Sergeant Decker, how goes containment?”
“Fighting is contained to a single sector. The pirates there have chosen death over life. We should be completed with the operation within the hour.”
“Excellent. Begin transporting the prisoners to the ships immediately. None of the adults, irrespective of their age, are to be included with the women and children.”
“Sir, even the eighteen-year-olds? There’s a number of them…”
“Include them with the rest of the men. The courts can settle the matter of their punishment or guilt.”
“Understood,” Sergeant Decker saluted John and turned around.
“Jamis, I hear y’all had an interesting guest a while back,” John said to the tall man being held firmly in place by two marines in power armor.
“What do I get out of helping you? And what assurances do I have that you’ll hold your end of the bargain?”
“Clever strategy,” John grinned as he had Eve activate the communication systems, “Hey Mark, how’s life?”
Mark Wilhelm, John’s one-time boss at Naval Intelligence’s Miami Base appeared on screen, “What can I do for you?”
“What criminal history does a Jamis Miles, one-time Alpha Centauri citizen and current pirate affiliated with the Void Sovereign group, have?”
Mark looked down at his console. He then split the communication screen in two. Jamis’ profile appeared on the right side of the screen. A litany of crimes he had committed began to be displayed on the screen. About a third of them he had served his time successfully for but there were some pretty serious charges on the list that had not been adjudicated yet.
“Seems your bargaining position is a bit dubious. There are at least five charges that we can put you away for life,” John said.
“Thirteen actually given his age,” Mark added in his normal monotone way.
“I need a deal and assurances that you will follow through with it,” Jamis hissed back.
“What kind of deal would NI offer?” John asked.
“What are we getting in return?” Mark quipped, “You kind of brought me in mid-conversation as you normally do.”
“Ahh, that’s my bad. Supposedly detailed information on the Icarus’ most recent refit.”
Mark nodded and looked deep in thought. Jamis looked at both men’s emotionless exteriors and didn’t know what to expect. As the silence continued, the more worried and agitated, he grew. He didn’t feel comfortable in his bargaining position. More than that, he trusted none of these men at all. Especially the man in the large suit of armor. There was a callous viciousness underlying his actions that rubbed Jamis the wrong way.
“It’ll depend on…” Mark began to speak but was quickly interrupted.
“No, I get assurances on a deal before I say one goddamned thing.”
“The clock is ticking Jamis. My VI is searching for all known servers and data feeds. If I find it before you do there won’t be a deal,” John said as he turned to face a pair of Marines in the room, “On that note. Corporal, go to this man’s quarters on the station. Flip the place apart, I want every square millimeter scanned and checked for any hidden compartments.”
“Yes sir,” the corporal quickly saluted John.
He and another Marine quickly left the room. John turned to look at Jamis. He loomed large over the man.
“Tick-tock, Jamis.”
“I won’t quite be the antagonistic asshole my former associate is, but ultimately the deal we make with you is going to depend on what you have. What we glean from it is ultimately going to determine the degree of leniency you receive.”
“I want the deal in writing.”
“Which you’ll get, but you are going to have to give me something to work with so I can propose a deal. I won’t be offering any deals, and my superiors certainly won’t sign off on anything, without you telling me what intel you have. Once we receive it and it checks out to what you tell me now, then we can affirm the proposal.”
Jamis shook his head. He wanted more. So much more in fact. But he was not in a position of power. He had some leverage but not much. The concern he had was what could he bargain.
“I want to walk.”
“Not happening,” Mark replied instantly, “That’s not realistic given your checkered past. Were it not for these serious charges I could consider it. But your history warrants a prison sentence.”
“Minimum security, no hard labor. Ideally on the frontier,” Jamis said.
“If you provide us sufficiently detailed information on the Icarus, I’ll remove hard labor from your location. And super-max facilities. We will not offer more than that.”
“Five-year sentence. I want a chance to get out before I’m old and crippled,” Jamis said.
“Minimum fifteen-year sentence, with a parole hearing guaranteed after year five. NI will recommend parole at that time provided the data checks out and you have received appropriate good credit during your stay with us.”
“Three years till the hearing.”
“Five. But I’m going to defer the charging of several of the more egregious ones. If you get out and fall back into your pirate ways we’ll throw the book at you,” Mark stared down the pirate, “No matter how old you may be.”
“Make it five years on parole with a caveat that the remaining charges are expunged permanently, and I’ll agree.”
John smiled. This attack would provoke a response from the pirates. Instead of waiting, like they presumed they’d do, the Navy attacked immediately. Worse, the pirates lost an important staging ground for their attacks. And thousands of prisoners and family members were taken. This would no doubt anger the pirates, but it would also attack the morale of their fleet too.
By the end of the day, everyone would be transferred off the station. A substantial amount of stolen goods was reacquired by the Navy and shipped away to a nearby station. Farther eroding the pirates’ capabilities to wage war.
The last thing John did before they left the system, they detonated several warheads they brought over from the transports within the station. One more station was forever taken from the pirates. If they were lucky, they’d find out exactly what systems the Icarus was upgraded with. With that knowledge, they could develop an attack plan to precisely defeat the Icarus. Now they needed a bit of luck to draw that accursed ship out and engage it in a proper battle.

“We found three more towns, just like this one, every fifteen to twenty miles,” the man reported, his eyes wandering past the leader of their little group to where another man seemed to be waving his fingers in the air, “and what in the world is the doctor doing?”
“Haven’t a clue,” the leader replied, not looking up, “and that squares with what Robert found, seems like there are towns all the way around this forest.”
“I did manage to get close enough to one of the villages to listen in on the locals,” the first man continued, “they spoke of a Count staying in the tavern.”
“A count?”
“Some kind of nobility,” he shrugged.
“Might be a good place to start,” the leader nodded, “from what we’ve been able to gather there’s an extensive, surprisingly advanced civilization in this new land.”
“Not the kind of thing we can clear out on our own, even if we had our guns.”
“Second team should be arriving in a week, not much to do until then. Steve and Rob are out hunting, so go ahead and relax for now,” the leader gestured behind him to where the rest of their squad was resing.
“So,” the newly returned man said, walking over to the man still waving his fingers in the air like he was writing with them, “what are you doing?”
“You haven’t been messing with this whole Nature thing?” the doctor asked excitedly.
“No, been too busy trying to save our people,” he replied dryly.
“Well you should,” the doctor continued, either ignoring or completely missing the tone of the reply, “in a few days I’ve figured out more about the Erlham field than I have in the last year of testing!”
“You mean the… energy stuff that transported us here?”
“It can do so much more than transport people! I mean, all I did was wonder if I could use it to write, and assist my research, and- and,” he gestured to the empty air he’d been waving his finger about, “apparently only I can see it like this, but still, just this indicates so much more!”
“Oh no, you got him going there Akleson,” another of the soldiers chuckled, “in a few minutes he’ll be going on about field interactions and the nature of the soul.”
“Bah,” the doctor dismissed with a wave of his hand, “you’ll see when I manage to stabilize a rift so goods can be sent through, not just people.”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know, but I might.”
*****
The ascender known as Lord Flameblade stretched and let out a loud yawn, the open air of the western fields, normally fresh and crisp, was tainted by whisps of smoke. Still, he didn’t mind, it was good to get out of the mansion now and again.
“Lord Flameblade,” a deep man’s voice said from behind him, “we finished on this side.”
“Oh good,” Flameblade replied, turning to face a mountain of a man who couldn’t have been more at contrast to the ascender if he’d tried. His hair was dark with streaks of white as age slowly caught up, compared to Flameblade’s light blonde. The ascender had a muscled, but agile build and wore simple trousers and a plain tunic while his counterpart wore blood splattered plate armor covered in recently made dents and scratches. Even his face was covered in various scars that spoke of years of combat and experience where Flameblade’s skin was smooth and unblemished like a noble. In all regards the casual observer would think the ascender the weaker of the two.
No one else would make that mistake.
Despite his size, the hard glare in his eyes and perpetual expression of disdain, he acted with deference towards Flameblade. And not just the politeness a military veteran might show a naïve politician, this was true respect that one would imagine only other warriors could earn.
“Why are they so far away,” flameblade asked, nodding past the armored man to where a group of others in similar armor, all showing signs of recent battle, stood, watching him nervously.
“You scare them, Lord,” the larger man replied, glancing past Flameblade to the field of smoldering bodies that were the man’s handywork.
“Your boys did well,” Flameblade countered, gesturing to the smaller pile of bodies the Knights had stacked up.
“Right,” the knight said carefully, “I was in their place once, you know, decades back.”
“And look where you are now,” Flameblade said cheerfully.
“Few of my fellow Slayer Knights survive from that period, and fewer still remember all that happened… When King Robert took the throne.”
“Oh,” the ascenders expression fell.
“I haven’t said anything-.”
“Then don’t,” Flameblade interrupted, “your memory of that time might not be as good as you think. Hard passage of years can muddle ones recollection.”
“Of course, Lord,” the man bowed his head, the most he could do easily with his armor on, “I meant no disrespect.”
Flameblade sighed as the large knight retreated, turning to look at the field of monster bodies. After a moment he decided that he needed to fight more and vanished, as if he’d been little more than a mirage.
*****
“Welcome to the church of Dalvos,” Lex said cheerfully as she led Gregory into a large chapel atop the great stone of Templeholm. Dozens of people scurried around on various tasks, some replacing candles that had burned down over the night, others sweeping the floor and still others spoke in hushed tones with other priests.
“Sister,” an older man approached them, speaking to Lex, before Gregory could respond, “are you here to assist with the Vier-Mutts?”
“Are they acting up already?” Lex asked, “I thought we had another couple years.”
“So you aren’t here following a Sign?”
“I am, but I thought it was for this man,” she nodded towards Gregory, “newly arrived Ascender who met up with the convoy I was guarding. Thought the sign was so I could bring him here.”
“The gods often accomplish many things with one sign,” the older man smiled, turning towards Gregory, “greetings Master Ascender. Are you here to try and earn the blessing of the Protector?”
“Thinking about it,” Gregory shrugged, “I found out recently just how… little power I have. And how much I need.”
“He jumped in to save the convoy from Arch-Wolves,” Lex explained, “wasn’t even a part of it at the time. I think he’d make an excellent Herald of Dalvos.”
“I see,” the older priest said, “are you familiar with how blessings work?”
“Only what I was told at the Church of Guidance.”
“They are good at covering the general information, but every god’s blessing is different. If you like I can explain the details of it to you this evening. With the Mutts coming we need all the help we can get.”
“Mutts?”
“A recurring monster hoard that descends on the kingdoms from the north every decade or so,” the priest explained.
“If the Slayer Knights are pulling north it would explain the Arch-Wolves that attacked the caravan,” Lex nodded.
“Indeed, there are always too few protectors and too many who need our protection. Such is our charge.”
“Well, I’m happy to help out, blessing or not,” Gregory said, “but I’m unsure how much help I can be.”
“Ascenders are known to grow fast, especially in the crucible of combat. If you are willing to help I’m sure the Sister here will be willing to train you, even if you don’t ultimately join our order.”
“I also promised him a new spear, his broke defending the convoy I was charged with,” Lex added.
“Easily done,” the priest nodded, “if the spear-tip is still intact finding a new haft is a simple matter. Sister, if you’ll show him to the guest quarters I’ll see what I can arrange.”
“Of course,” Lex replied as Gregory handed over his peace bound spear point. Despite not being a full weapon, it still needed to be bound, apparently.
“This your God Gifted weapon?” the older priest asked, inspecting the weapon, “I don’t recognize the style.”
“It was the one given to me by the fairy when I first arrived, if that’s what you mean,” Gregory replied, “are those weapons special?”
“Hardly,” the priest smiled, “the messengers of the gods steal them from craftsmen all over the world.”
“Many will leave out ‘good enough’ weapons for the fae to steal, so they don’t take their better works,” Lex added with a smirk.
“Indeed,” the priest nodded, “I should have a replacement haft by morning. We can discuss the Blessing of Dalvos then.”
“How much will it cost?” Gregory asked.
“Nonsense,” the priest waved off his offer of payment, “any who are willing to risk themselves to protect the people of this realm may stay here without charge.”
“How long do we have until the Vier-Mutts make their move?” Lex asked as the priest pocketed the spear tip.
“The Slayer knights are preparing a scouting force to go out, end of next week. I expect we won’t have more than a month past that, but only the gods know for certain. Your brothers and sisters have been arriving constantly.”
“Sounds like the horde will appear soon then.”
“Indeed, only a fool would go north in these conditions.”
*****
“Extra sword, check,” Nathen said, looking over his pack, “a week of rations, incase I can’t find anything to hunt, check… Water, flint and steel, rope… all check. All I’m missing is a ten-foot pole,” he chuckled to himself, before tossing the pack over his shoulder.
“So now, to find some mountains,” he continued, looking over the plains that surrounded Templeholm, “ah, there they are. Time to find this legendary blade!”
With that he began walking North.
***** Discord - Patreon *****

By Chuck Hustmyre
William Bailey's forehead shattered the mirror like a sledgehammer. The last thing he remembered before he blacked out was the feeling that he was falling through the mirror. Sub-cranial hematoma, a concussion, maybe even a cracked skull--that had to be the reason for the strange feeling. The mirror was mounted on the wall just to the right of the bar, four feet tall by about three feet wide. As consciousness slipped away, common sense and his strong belief in the rational world told him that he couldn't fall through the mirror. He must have bounced his head off the wall and be falling toward the floor.
It seemed like just a second or two before William's eyes popped open. He lay on his back, on the hard wood floor of Fausto's, with Johnny Davis towering over him. Big Johnny probably wanted to finish him off, maybe kill him, and finally end their twenty-year-old feud. Either Big Johnny Davis and the ceiling lights above him were spinning, or William's head was spinning, but either way something wasn't right.
He raised his head and looked to his left, toward the bar. Except the bar wasn't there. Instead, he was staring at the bathrooms. That didn't make sense. It must be his brain that had gotten spun around. William turned his head and peered over his size-ten wingtips at the busted mirror. The wooden frame and most of the glass still clung to the wall, the rest sat broken on the ground. The bar had to be on his left. He looked again, and still saw the bathrooms. A brain bruise, maybe some fluid pressure building up might be the cause of it.
"Get up!" Big Johnny Davis said.
William looked up at him. Johnny stood behind him, just beyond his shoulders. Perfect place for him to stomp my head into the plank floor. Except Johnny Davis was holding out his hand.
"Come on, we've got to get out of here."
Davis looked scared. It was the first time William Bailey could ever remember Johnny Davis looking scared. William had always been scared of Big Johnny, but Big Johnny wasn't scared of anything or anyone.
Police sirens wailed in the distance.
Johnny glanced over his shoulder. William craned his neck to look where Johnny was looking, saw he was staring at the front door like a man terrified something bad was going to come through it. Big Johnny looked down at him again and pumped his hand. "Come on, get up. They'll be here any second."
"Who?" William asked. "Who'll be--" But before he finished, Big Johnny Davis reached down, grabbed him by both arms, and jerked him to his feet.
As he was dragged toward the door by the only man in town who truly hated him, William glanced up and saw the rusted metal sign nailed above the door. He had to have a concussion, probably severe; that had to be it, because the letters on the sign were backward. It said TUO.
As Johnny Davis pulled him out the door, William heard tires skid on the pavement.
"Where's your car?" Johnny asked.
William twisted away from the big man's grip, then turned to his left. "In the alley." He started to run, still not sure exactly what he was running from.
Behind him, Big John shouted, "The alley's over here."
William kept running but turned his head back toward Johnny. "I know where the alley--"
Something hit him across the midsection and toppled him to the ground. He got his hands up just in time to break his fall and managed to keep his head from slamming into the sidewalk. When he looked up he saw a shopping cart tumbled onto its side.
Once again, William found himself lying flat on his back, this time amid the spilled contents of the cart. It had been filled with junk: paper bags full of dirty clothes, canned food, bags of potato chips, a diamond shaped, orange road sign, and other trash that looked like it had been collected from back alley garbage bins.
The homeless man who'd been pushing the cart was scrawny, and wafer thin. His skin was the color of old shoe leather, and he wore a long gray beard, tangled and matted with food and bits of filth. He was sprawled on the ground next to his cart, half sitting up, staring at William with his bright blue eyes.
Car doors slammed, men shouted.
"You better get going," the homeless man said, as he cocked his head. "The police after you?"
Police!
Before William could assure the old man that the police weren't after him--he was a respected businessman and family man--someone behind him grabbed him under both arms and pulled him to his feet. William turned and found himself staring into the face of Johnny Davis. "The alley's that way," Johnny said, pointing to the other side of Fausto's. With one hand gripping William's jacket, Johnny dashed across the front of the bar toward the alley. The alley--right there, plain as day--on the other side of Fausto's, right where it shouldn't be, where it couldn't be. William had been here a thousand times. As you stepped out of the bar, the alley was on the left, Brockton's Ace Hardware on the right. Now everything was mixed up and in the wrong place.
Johnny Davis turned down the alley, dragging William behind him. After just a few steps, a spotlight flashed in front of them.
"Stop!" a voice commanded. "Get on the ground."
William couldn't see because Johnny was in his way. "Who's that yelling?" he asked.
Big Johnny stopped and William plowed into his back.
"Get on the ground," the voice boomed again.
William poked his head out from behind Johnny Davis's back. The blinding white light was in his face. He couldn't see a thing.
POP! POP! POP!
Gunshots.
Big Johnny sagged, then crashed to his knees. Instinctively, William bent forward and grabbed hold of Johnny. "What's the matter?"
More pops.
Johnny's big hand reached out and shoved William back toward the street. "Back door," he wheezed, then plunged forward onto his face.
William stood alone. Behind the white spotlight he saw blue police lights flashing. He was totally exposed.
POP! POP!
He saw flashes--little yellow spurts of flame--as something tugged at his jacket.
William had said "back door." What back door? Fausto's had a back door, but it didn't lead anywhere except to the open space behind the building used for trash and deliveries. Twenty feet of asphalt between the bar and the back of the building on the next block. William had parked his car at the end of the alley, but the police cars--or whatever they were--had the alley blocked off. The building behind Fausto's also had an alley that ran alongside it, but the owner had closed it off to keep the bums out. He'd put up a gate, padlocked it, and topped it with razor wire. It was a dead end.
Two more pops. Dead end or not it was better than standing here and getting shot. William turned and ran. He burst through the front door of Fausto's, dashed through the bar, past the shattered mirror, hit the back door at a dead run, and was outside behind the bar within seconds.
He could see the tail end of his car sticking out from the corner of the building, but with the cops blocking the alley, his car was useless to him. William glanced across the open space to the alley that ran next to the other building. The gate, the padlock, the razor wire--all still in place. To his right an overflowing garbage dumpster sat beside the back of Fausto's, jammed against the fire ladder.
The fire ladder.
An iron ladder bolted to the cinderblock wall.
William looked up. The top of the ladder was lost in shadow, but he knew it went up two stories to the roof. Last summer, when the toilet had stopped up, he'd come out back to take a leak and had stood behind the dumpster, peeing against the wall like a kid, one hand draped over the bottom rung of the ladder.
He slipped behind the dumpster. The smell made him gag. The bottom of the ladder was four feet from the ground. William reached up as high as he could, grabbed hold of the third rung, then hauled himself up.
Through the partially open back door came the sounds of heavy feet pounding on the hard wood floor of the bar.
Halfway up the ladder, he was exhausted--and scared. Shaking, he white-knuckled the ladder. Being more than ten feet off the ground terrified him. He needed a break, just a second or two to catch his breath. There was enough moonlight so he could see into one of the second story windows. Inside, junk was piled everywhere. Old barstools, a busted jukebox, furniture stacked almost to the ceiling. Years ago, old man Fausto lived on the second floor, but Jake, who'd bought the place from the old man and had decided to keep the name, used it for storage.
Below him, William heard the back door thrown open so hard it banged against the wall. He scrambled up until he reached the top of the ladder, then hoisted himself over the edge of the roof. Down on the ground a voice shouted, "There he is, up there."
Another gunshot. What the hell was going on?
The unmistakable sound of feet--fast feet, in shape feet, boot shod feet--scurrying up the ladder. Standing on the tar and pebble roof, William glanced around for something he could use as a weapon, shocked he was even thinking of such a thing. A five gallon plastic bucket was all there was. It stood upright, filled with rainwater. He picked it up and peered over the edge. A uniformed policeman was three quarters of the way up the ladder. Two more cops were right behind him.
William looked at the heavy bucket in his hands, thought about just dumping the water onto them but knew it wouldn't stop them. There was only one way to stop them, and that was to knock them off the ladder. He thought about warning them, maybe trying to scare them away. But they were cops. You couldn't scare them away.
So why had they shot Johnny Davis, and why were they shooting at him?
The first officer looked up and saw William staring down at him with the bucket in his hands. Their eyes locked for just a second and the cop stopped. In those eyes that stared back at him, William saw an almost maniacal determination that sent a shiver down his spine. The officer held his grip on the ladder with his right hand while his left dropped to the pistol resting in his gleaming leather holster. In one smooth motion he drew his gun and raised it toward William.
William Bailey tossed the bucket down the ladder. A shot rang out an instant before the heavy bucket thudded into the cop's head. Like a gruesome traffic accident happening before his eyes, William couldn't help but watch as the policeman fell, taking his two partners down with him. The last thing William saw before he turned away was a jumbled heap of black uniforms resting on the concrete below the ladder.
* * *
Hiding in the shadow of a telephone booth, thinking. Home. He had to get home. Had to get back to Marge and the kids. Maybe somehow he could explain what had happened. Vincent, his attorney, he would know what to do--maybe--but he was a civil lawyer not a criminal attorney. He wrote contracts and did personal injury on the side; he didn't get people out of jail who'd killed a cop by dropping a bucket of water on his head and knocking him and his buddies off the side of a building.
As the cab he'd been waiting for pulled up, William stepped out from the dark and climbed into the back seat.
The driver turned around. "Where to?"
William pulled the door shut. "Uptown. 1721 Audubon Court."
"Fare's gonna be about fifteen dollars. After dark, I gotta have the money up front."
"What?"
"Company policy." The cabbie shrugged. "A lot of drivers been getting stiffed."
William opened his wallet, pulled out a twenty and handed it across the seat. The driver took it and almost slipped it into his cash box, then took a second look at the bill. His face tightened. "What the hell is this?"
"Huh?"
With the bill stretched between his hands, the cabbie stared at it for a second then looked up at William. "You're either the dumbest counterfeiter who ever lived or you've been had."
"What you are talking about?"
The driver faced the bill toward William but didn't hand it back to him. "It's printed backwards."
William looked at the twenty-dollar bill in the man's hand. It looked like--it was--an almost brand new bill, nothing wrong with it as far as he could tell.
"Get out of my cab," the driver said.
William didn't know what the man was talking about but knew he didn't want to get out. This cab was his only way home. He reached for the twenty. "If you don't like that one I've got another--"
The driver pulled his hands away. "I ain't giving this back. I got to turn it in to the police." He dropped one hand behind his seat back, then came up clutching a pistol, an old German Luger by the looks of it, the muzzle aimed straight at William's face. "In fact, I bet they give me a reward if I bring you in with it."
William jerked the door handle and rolled out into the street. He sprang to his feet and ran, the driver's yells just background noise. Has everyone gone crazy or is it just me?
Home. He had to get home.
* * *
Rain. Driving, relentless rain. William was just two blocks from Fausto's. In two hours, that's as far as he'd gotten--one block an hour. Police cars prowled the neighborhood, shinning spotlights into every nook and cranny, lighting up every shadow. Everyone in Fausto's knew his name. He'd been going there three or four nights a week after work for years. The cabbie had his address. William had given it to him when he told the hack driver where to drop him.
Ten o'clock at night, with nowhere to go and no way to get there, William sat behind the closed Goodwill store, under an overhang that barely kept the rain off of him.
Huddled in the dark, head sunk between his knees, he hadn't heard anyone approach.
"You don't look so good."
Startled, William looked up, prepared to run again. It was the homeless man he'd knocked over outside the bar. The one with the shopping cart and the leathery skin. William relaxed a little. "Excuse me?"
The man pushed his cart closer. "You're not supposed to be here."
William looked around. "Why not?"
The old man grinned, half his teeth gone.
William found it nearly impossible to tell his age. The guy could be forty and maybe had lived a hard life, or perhaps he was a well-preserved seventy, pickled by a lifetime of booze. William waved him off, expecting a plea for money. "I can't help you."
The old man stopped just a few feet away. "Everything's out of place isn't it?" He had a strange lilting voice. Almost like an accent.
And he was right. Everything was out of place--from Johnny Davis to the cab driver--everything was wrong.
Strapped to the back of the old man's shopping cart was a plastic sign about the size of a loaf of bread. William recognized the sign, the words, the colors, the logo of a local supermarket chain, all were familiar to him, but the letters were backward, unreadable.
Rainwater ran down William's face. He pointed to the sign. "Why's it written like that?"
The old man looked at the sign then back at William. "Like what?" he said, then shuffled away behind his basket.
* * *
The rain came down even harder. William slouched in a darkened doorway across the street from Fausto's. Nothing made sense. Everything was messed up, backward, out of whack. Almost like this wasn't his home, like he was a stranger seeing it for the first time.
But that was crazy. He'd grown up here, gone to Brother Martin High School, dated Jenny Underhill who went to Cabrini, lost her to Johnny Davis, then got her back only to lose her again the first year of college to some kid who drove a Mustang. Two years later William married Marge at Saint Luke's. They had two kids.
This town was his home. He recognized it. He knew the people here, Big Johnny and Zeke, the bartender at Fausto's. But things were different, little things. John Davis for one. In trying to help him, the big man had gotten himself killed. That wasn't John Davis--at least not the one William Bailey had known since seventh grade. Everything looked the same but wasn't. Nothing was quite right.
But they knew him--or someone like him.
A strange sensation crept over him that made the hair on the back of his neck rise. Maybe he didn't belong here. Maybe everything wasn't as it appeared. Maybe this wasn't his home. But if that were true, then whose home was it? Another thought, even scarier seeped through his brain. If he was here, who was there--at his home?
Crazy.
William dropped his head into his hands. Just considering such nonsense was a waste of time. Yet, here he was scanning the street, thinking of going back inside Fausto's, back to that mirror.
Not much time to think about it. The bar closed at three AM and it was already two-thirty. When he'd left--run for his life with Big Johnny--most of the mirror was still in the frame hanging on the wall.
Something about that damned mirror.
But Fausto's was dangerous, so a couple of hours ago William had found another mirror. In the men's room of a twenty-four hour gas station. The Chevron on North Rampart.
He had approached it cautiously, afraid he was going mad. As he peered over the sink into the mirror, he saw what he always saw, his own reflection. Holding up his left hand, he looked at the image in the mirror, at the watch strapped to his wrist. He noticed that the man in the mirror wore his watch on his right hand. Just the opposite.
William stood in the gas station bathroom for twenty minutes before he worked up his nerve. Finally, he took a deep breath, leaned back, then slammed his forehead into the dirt-streaked mirror. The glass shattered and cut his head. Blood dribbled off the tip of his nose into the sink. His reflection stared out at him from the other side of the mirror, blood running down his face, too.
I have gone crazy!
So the gas station hadn't worked out. Ducking police cruisers, William had wandered the streets, his head reeling. What was he doing?
On the sidewalk, he found a sopping wet magazine that the wind had blown up against the side of a newspaper machine. The cover caught his eye. He picked it up. It was printed backwards, the letters reversed, words running right to left. The spine was on the right. As he flipped through the pages, he couldn't read a thing. Then William had an idea.
In the bathroom of an all night restaurant he held the wet magazine up to the mirror. Perfect. The reflected image was normal, spine on the left, words running left to right, all the letters printed correctly. He could read it clearly. But what did it mean?
Then he drove his head into that mirror. The glass cracked. Someone walked in, a skinny waiter wearing an apron. He stood gawking as William leaned over the sink with tears of pain filling his eyes.
The waiter looked at the broken mirror, then jabbed a finger at William's bloody forehead. "What the hell are you doing?"
"An accident," he mumbled, pressing his fingers against the fresh cut.
The waiter turned. "I'm calling the cops."
William Bailey ran.
Now he was huddled in the rain staring at Fausto's across the street. Because he had nowhere else to go.
He stood and walked toward Fausto's. When he was halfway across the street, a police car glided around the corner, headlights reflecting off the wet pavement. The cops in no hurry, just cruising. William forced himself to keep walking, not to run. One foot in front of the other. In the downpour, odds were that the cops wouldn't even recognize him.
But they did recognize him.
The police car slid to a stop as its high beams clicked on and its blue strobe lights started popping. Both front doors flew open.
Like a sinner seeking the sanctuary of a church, William ran straight for Fausto's door. As he burst inside, Zeke looked up from behind the bar. "William! What the hell are you doing here?"
He ignored the bartender, running right past him, eyes focused on the broken mirror and its busted frame hanging on the wall.
Zeke again, "The cops been looking all over for you. Say you killed two officers and--"
Behind him the front door banged against the wall. "Police!" a voice behind him commanded. "Stop."
But William didn't stop. He kept running--running straight for the mirror. Reflected in its fragmented pieces he saw two uniformed police officers behind him, heard their boots pounding on the wooden floor. Just ten feet separated him from the mirror. At full speed he took two strides then dove. He stretched his arms out overhead and tucked his chin into his chest as his feet left the floor.
He felt one hand hit wall and the other strike broken glass. Then his head hit. More glass cracked, more skin split.
Darkness.
* * *
William's eyes popped open. He was staring at the ceiling. Rough voices, even rougher hands. They rolled him over onto his stomach and jerked his arms behind his back. He felt cold steel on his wrists and heard the metallic ratcheting as the handcuffs tightened and bit into his skin.
He tilted his head up and rested his chin against the floor. Blood poured down the side of his face; he watched it pool on the floor then seep between the wooden planks. By rolling his eyes up he could just see the empty spot on the wall where the mirror had hung. Lying on the floor, three feet from his head, was the broken frame and the rest of the glass.
The two cops grabbed his arms and yanked him to his feet, sending waves of pain through his shoulders and wrists. As they spun him toward the door, one of the officers said, "You're under arrest."
"Why?" William asked.
The officer pressed his face into William's. "Murdering your family for starters."
"My...my family." William felt his stomach cinch and his bowels turn to ice. A thought he'd had earlier in the night echoed inside his head. If he was here, who was there--at his home.
As the cops dragged him across the floor, William glanced up and saw the rusted metal sign nailed above the door.
OUT.
He was home.
THE END

Hey Hey Hey buds. We are back at it again with the Alien ER. how was your week? I hope it was good. This week we have our first glimpses of what Martinez's combat experiences were like, i do mean a literal glimpse. I have a couple of chapters to really drive home the day's events in detail later on. We also have shiksie breaking out of her shell a bit today, and get some more insight into how she treats people.
anyways let's get this bread.
---------
Regrettably for Martinez, walking Lysa back to her home would be the last part of his night he would describe as enjoyable in any way. By the time he made it back home, it was well past two in the morning; the few hours of sleep he did manage to get were restless and filled with memories he would rather forget. The events of the night had whipped him back years in his life.
Usually, Martinez would not get night terrors anymore, but they still on occasion reared their ghoulish head. Thankfully Martinez was not able to vividly recall the nightmares from today, but he knows he had them because he woke up in a cold sweat. Whenever they are vivid he feels like garbage for days afterward; He becomes little more than a writhing mass of anxiety and regret wishing if anything he could go back and change what happened. The faces of his brothers contorting and twisting in agony were seared into his mind and soul, the vivid dreams were him going through those events over and over again, as if the grim reaper was showing him a horror movie of his past.
He had been to therapy for years trying to eventually move past the memories of what happened on Verilon. The therapy did help for a while, but eventually, he stagnated and stopped going; he could not accept that he was the only one left, He could not move forward; so he just did his best to keep going on living with the memories, his brother's deaths held tightly on his soul, like a ball and chain.
He still hated that the lowest moment of his life was what the Navy decided was what he should be rewarded for. That bright gold cross on his dress blues was nothing he was proud of, it was just a bitter reminder of his failures; He thought it might as well be a cruel joke life had for him.
The last time he had thought about Verilon was a few months before he arrived here on Draun; He had heard through the grapevine that his old unit was getting ready to start building up to redeploy there. He was glad he was reassigned so he did not have to return to that hell-blasted desert world. He had his turn in the sandbox, it was someone else's chase to spend a year there.
After having woken up three separate times throughout the night, Martinez had given up on getting any sleep at all. He only had two hours left until he had to go to work anyways, the few hours of sleep would not make a difference to his well-being anyways.
He took to answering some of the questions Shiksie had given him, but focusing on the intricate details of alien anatomy while completely lacking sleep was not easy by any means, the words on the datapad were twisting and blurring into one another. Before he knew where the time went, the shrill beeping of his alarm clock had already started to fill the apartment.
As he idly went and got ready for the day, he was glad he did not try to get Lysa to stay the night. He would have hated her to see him like this, he would rather no one see him like this at all. The fact he felt this made him feel broken, and to him, a woman he had only been on one date with would certainly think the same. Sometimes life has a funny way of working out, he supposed.
Halfway stumbling into work with a yawn Martinez could not wait for the day to be over, he was planning on just going through the motions and doing his best to keep Shiksie off his back. He set himself up in his usual corner and started to read from the datapad; In all of Martinez’s experience if you looked busy, or at least looked like you were doing what those over you wanted, they would likely leave you alone.
Surprisingly the one who threw a wrench into that plan was Therin. The small avian alien had spotted Martinez as soon as he entered and scooted his chair nearby. Therin tapped Martinez on the thigh.
“So how was your night?” Therin chirped. Hoping his little ploy from the previous night worked out well. They were busy at the shop last night and he was about to leave when the police called, but the cop mentioned Martinez and his Aviex girlfriend were on a date; He just could not help himself to mess with the new guy and maybe push him towards spending some more time with someone other than Shiksie, or Ivorn.
You would know how it went you little shit, Marinez thought as he tucked the datapad back into his scrubs pocket and then turned towards his co-worker
Therin looked at Martinez, his feathers slightly puffed up. He stood on the chair and got slightly closer to Martinez Intently looking Martinez over. Therin took particular interest in the small circle of healing puncture wounds on his Human compatriot's shoulder. “What did your lady friend do to you?” He asked jokingly.
“Therin you already know what happened, I got into a fight” Martinez grumbled. Not wanting to have the prodding bird ask further into the rest of the evening. He already knew that Aveix, where hated and did not doubt Therin knowing about him and Lysa’s more intimate time, would be trouble.
“Oh come on new guy, I'm asking about after I was on the phone with the cops” Therin replied, “Did you have a nice evening?”
Martinez stepped slightly away from Therin. “Look man, I had a long night. Nothing happened after the fight” Martinez groaned
Therin shook his head and tapped his wing claw on Martinez’s shoulder. “Those little marks I can see tell me otherwise” he chirped
Dammit, I was hoping those were not visible, Martinez thought. Martinez had always worn slightly larger scrubs than he needed to out of comfort, he did not make much effort to hide the bite mark on his trap, but it's not like it's anyone else's business who he goes on a date with anyways.
“I mean it, nothing else happened,” Martinez growled. Hoping Therin would get the hint and drop the subject.
“Oh yeah, whatever you say new guy” Therin chuckled “So when is the wedding?”
“Fuck off Therin,” Martinez said jokingly, pushing Therins chair away from him with his boot “Don’t you have something better to be doing?”
Therin chuckled a little, before scooting his chair back towards the center desks of the room “Wow you really are Shiksies trainee, you are already acting just like her'' He said before tapping his wing claw on his datapad. Therin wondered what else he might be able to do to mess with Martinez about the events of last night, when he opened the list of current patients he saw his answer.
The bird has more jokes than I thought he would Martinez thought, while pulling back out his data pad. At least Therin was a good sport about who he went out with, unlike those two Urintal did. The fact Therin was giving him a little bit of shit wasn’t surprising, It was in a way customary for the old salts to poke fun at the new guy's love life. At this point, Therin was the only one who knew he had gone on a date at all, and he hoped it stayed that way at least with Skiksie; If Ivorn figured it out, Martinez doubted he would care much; Martinez had already met Ivorns chipper girlfriend at his point.
I should get back to studying before Shiksie shows up, Martinez thought as he buttoned his top up a bit higher than he preferred. Martinez did not want the others to see the hickey or dig any more into his private life than he was comfortable with.
—
Shiksie arrived at work excited, she was eager to see what Martinez had managed to study during his time away from work; She had given him what she saw as a small number of questions and things he should have been studying over the weekend. She had always done her best learning when she had a nice calm place to read, at least the new Human hopefully had that allotted to him at his own home.
If he did a good job answering what she had given him, she would hopefully be able to increase the rate of his training; She had no idea how long he was going to be here but she wanted to get Martinez certified as a basic Interspecies technician as soon as possible; Getting Martinez that certification would be a great boon for the shop, she and the others could then allow him to assess class green patients without their oversight.
When she entered, something was off in the shop. She could hear Therin and Ivorn chatting happily about their weekends, but the place smelled horrible. A rancid combination of stem cells, iron, pine, the same strange scent Martinez gave off when she knew he was agitated. She initially assumed Martinez just had forgotten to wear his scent suppressors, but when she rounded the corner and saw the massive gash and pink hemostatic gel on the human's face she knew something was definitely off.
Getting closer to Martinez, Shiksie was still nervous about being around him; She felt slight twinges of fear of him striking at her, or her overstepping and boundaries she had yet to learn. While they had managed to build a shaky but cordial relationship at best, she would rather not jeopardize what they do have.
The Human smelled like he had when they had their meeting, along with his heart pounding extremely quickly.
Is he nervous about something? Shiksie thought as she made it next to him, once again without him noticing. She wondered if she should stop sneaking around him, but she would rather not bother the Human whenever she could. Assuming her mere presence was more often than not a bother to the man.
She peered over his shoulder to catch a glance at what he was currently studying. It surprised her, he had quite a few tabs open on the datapad, but the current one was her list of questions. Most of them had not been answered, but he was flicking back and forth between the list and the other tabs searching for answers.
Shicksie could not help but feel her tail sway a bit faster, the fact that he was doing what she asked was certainly progress in repairing their abysmal start to working together. She walked past him, and headed towards her desk; With the human still not having noticed her entrance.
Shiksie decided to not dig into whatever had Martinez on edge, even if she was worried that it has him so unsettled. She assumed if Martinez wanted to talk to her about it, he would do so; most species did that after all, and humans were supposed to be rather social; even if Martinez seemed a bit more… reserved, he was still Human at the end of the day.
Later in the Morning Dr. Harnsis arrived and the crew had their pass down from the night shift regarding any patients that were already in rooms. They only had a Urintal in one of the rooms. He had a broken jaw and dozens of other fractures across the rest of his body. From the briefing, Shiksie knew the Urintal was caught up in some fight the previous night, but with no injuries that were directly life-threatening, He would be perfect practice for Martinez. The Urintal had surgery on his jaw and was still asleep from the heavy painkillers that night shift had pumped into the Lizard-like Alien.
“I will take over the treatment of the Urintal,” Shiksie said, jumping on the chance to treat the patient that was already here. The Urintal were a green species that had been in the Galactic Union for thousands of years. It would be a perfect chance to have Martinez assess a patient and go through the discharge process.
“Very well Shiksie, you, Therin, and Martinez handle that first. The patient should be ready to leave within the hour” Harnsis Chittered as he pointed at the two of them with his larger forelimbs.
Shiksies' ears twitched when Martinez groaned and muttered under his breath. It was rare she mishears someone, but she did not understand why Martinez was muttering he would rather not. She glanced over and saw that therein was patting Martinez on the shoulder reassuring him of something.
What the hell happened? Shiksie thought as she walked toward the two of them.
“Martinez, pull up the patient's charts and their species data; You will be giving myself and Therin a briefing on the species before we go into the room. Do you understand?” Shiksie asked.
Martinez pulled out his datapad, and lazily saluted “I will get it ready” he groaned, before tapping on the screen.
Shifting her attention towards Therin. The bird looked up at her and tilted his head slightly. “What's up Shiksie? Do you need something from me?” Therein chirped.
Shiksie was not sure about what happened but she had to know what she was about to step into. “Yes I do, follow me,” She said flatly before turning around and walking away. Therein following quickly behind.
Once the two of them were well out and away from the center of the shop, far enough that Shiksie was certain Martinez would not hear them. She turned around and knelt in front of Therin. The bird looked at ease like he normally did. Shiksie had never seen anything disturb Therin over the last few years; Therein always just shrugged most issues off, or would on occasion try to pull pranks at others' expense, much to her chagrin. She wanted to make sure the situation was the former and not the latter.
“Therin, does Martinez’s injury have anything to do with that Urintal?” She asked as she leaned her hands on her knees.
Therin fluttered his wings and puffed out his plumage; faking offense to the question. He did not want Shiksie to ruin his chance to see the drug-hazed Urintal being treated by the person who put them in the hospital. He was hoping that Urintal would freak out and try to run away.
“I have no idea, Martinez did not tell me anything at all about what happened,” Therin lied.
Shiksie gave Therin an ice-cold glare that was as sharp as any scalpel. She did not believe the bird at all, he was far too obvious when faking anything. “Therin, I know you are lying. I can hear your heart rate increasing, and I know you aren't afraid of me like Martinez is” Shiksie sighed.
Therin only increased his bolstering refusing to let Shiksie stop his only good joke on the new guy stop before it even started “I mean It, I don't know anything that happened, Why do you assume I know more?”
“Because your pranks are seldom if ever funny, it's clear enough you know more” Shiksie said, tapping her finger on her knee. She looked up behind Therin towards Martinez who was still diligently reading from his datapad, she did not want Martinez to be freaked out and leave. She had caused that with a new trainee once, and Therin once as well. “If anything bad happens to Martinez out of this, I'm holding you accountable, Got it?” She hissed.
Therin backed up and swallowed his spit. He would rather not piss Shiksie off but with the video of Martinez throttling the Urintal he had seen before work. He had no doubt nothing bad would happen to the Human.
“Don't worry Shiksie nothing bad will happen” Therin said.
Shiksie stood towering over Therin, She shook her head. Therin was too stubborn and she knew it, If he wanted a prank to happen it would. No matter how twisted she might think it is. She also wasn’t so stupid as to not pick up on the implied admittance she managed to get out of Therin. “Come on, you are going to be doing this assessment with him after all,” Shiksie said, gesturing towards Martinez.
Shiksie and Therin returned to Martinez as he was finishing his initial reading of the needed information. He initially hoped it was just a coincidence that another Urintal would be here, but once he saw the scans of the patient's bones, he had no doubt his next patient was going to be the man he and Lysa kicked the crap out of the previous night.
He could recall each hit he had seen on the Urintal and was able to point out what ones were his and what ones had to be Lysa’s. The amount of damage was surprising, and the number of fractures was unreal; nearly every rib, and limb had at least one fracture if not more.
Hopefully, this asshole is way too dusted to recognize me, Martinez thought as he looked up at Shiksie and prepared to give the summary of the patient and the Urintal species as a whole.
Shiksie paid close attention to every word Martinez said, Holding tightly onto them. The majority of his summary on the Urintal was accurate; A few mistakes here and there, but he did not have the summary of all the green species memorized as she had. She offered a few corrections but the errors would not affect anything.
Then the summary of the patient's wounds and needed treatment came up, Martinez gripped the datapad tightly and had to periodically pause to take a deep breath. His heart rate would suddenly accelerate. She leaned in closer and got a good view of the Humans dark bark-colored eyes, whenever he paused she saw the vibrant brown was far smaller than normal; He had that same look in his eye from when he took a fighting stance in the storage room with her.
She looked over at Therin, the bird either did not notice how uncomfortable Martinez was or simply did not care. What the hell are you trying, She thought as she started to boil. She was not about to let whatever was going on happen, at first it might have been him trying a prank, but Therins short-sightedness might get the Human or the Urintal hurt.
“Stop,” Shiksie said as she carefully reached her hand out and rested it on Martinez’s shoulder. Martinez recoiled when she touched him, being pulled back from whatever trance he was in. She gently patted his shoulder “Martinez come with me” She said flatly.
Martinez looked up at her sweat rolling off his brow. “Uhh, are you sure? We haven't even seen the patient yet?” he meekly said in protest.
Shiksie had worked with soldiers and police officers enough to know Martinez had some kind of Trauma, and these events were obviously triggering something. The patient can be handled by Therin, while she figures this out. His training be damned, his health came first; even if he likely did not want her to intervene.
“Yes I am sure,” Shiksie purred. She pulled the datapad out of his hands “I need you to come with me now”
She passed the data pad to Therin and glared at the small bird, Therin looked like he was trying to hold back laughter about the state Martinez was in.
I will pluck out your feather you little bird, Shiksie thought. She always thought Therin was a reliable nurse, and a decent friend to have small talk with; but not much else.
“Therin, go ensure the patient gets out of here,” Shiksie said.
Therin looked like he was about to protest the interruption to his idea of a joke, but even Therin did not want to mess with Harnsis’ right hand. Her icy glare had him skittering off toward the patient's room.
“Come with me Martinez, '' Shiksie said softly, doing her best to seem unopposing to him.
Martinez grumbled slightly, he did not want to have to spend more time alone with Shiksie. At least today she seemed to be slightly less forceful with him. The two of them walked out of the office, Martinez saw Shikise pull out her datapad and send a message off to someone, he assumed it to likely be Harnsis. He hoped whatever Shiksie had sent wasn’t going to reflect badly on him. He had knuckled down through his PTSD and episodes to treat patients before, he has never really had the choice not to do so, at this point it has just become a habit.
Once the two of them were out of the building Shiksie led Martinez towards one of the small gardens that was nearby to the building. It was just a simple fountain that had some benches nearby. A ring of well-kept flower beds surrounds it, this time of year they were in full bloom; dozens of vibrant colors swaying like waves as the wind gently pushed on them. Shiksie had always liked it out here, it was not uncommon for her to eat lunch or take a break out here after a particularly nasty patient or situation.
“Would you like to take a seat?” Shiksie asked Martinez while gesturing towards the nearest bench.
Martinez did not say a word, but at least for the moment his heart rate had gone down slightly and he seemed more calm. She was overjoyed that she seemed to be right on the money and that it had something to do with that Urintal that was setting him off.
“Would it be alright If I have a seat as well?” Shiksie asked, still treading carefully around Martinez and his need for boundaries.
The look Martinez gave her was a surprise, it was a strange mixture of shock and confusion. Like he was amazed, Shiksie was asking for permission to do anything.
“Yeah go ahead,” Martinez said, scooting to the far side of the bench as Shiksie sat down nearby.
“So would you want to tell me what happened with the Urintal?” Shiksie asked.
Martinez groaned, he should have figured the moment the icy cat had stopped him she knew something was wrong. He was in no way going to tell her every vivid detail of his previous night, nor did he want her of all people to know the details of what happened in his past. The fact those two events were stacked on each other was just a lot for the sailor to tackle at once.
“I would really rather not, but I assume based on my injuries you probably already know something,” Martinez said
Shiksie sighed, leaned forward, and rested her elbows on her knees. She looked away and at the fountains flowing water, already well aware that just looking at Martinez had upset him before. She wanted him to feel safe and able to talk if he wanted.
“I have my assumptions, but nothing concrete,” Shiksie replied. “I would like it if you trusted me enough to talk about anything bothering you”
Martinez wondered if she truly meant that, She had done a lot to try and help him be welcome; That does not mean she should be fully trusted though.
“Shiksie I just want to get back to work,” Martinez said with a deep sullen tone. Shiksie could still easily smell the sheer amount of adrenaline oozing out of him.
“Listen I'm not going to force you to tell me about it, I just know you want to. You would not have followed me if not” Shiksie replied, “let's just sit here for a while, you can just tell me anything you feel comfortable with, alright?”
Martinez shifted awkwardly and looked towards Shiksie. The fact she looked almost as bad as he did was something he was not used to seeing from her. She was looking off at the far side of the fountain, her tail and ears were more still than he had ever seen them.
Maybe she is not as cold as I made her out to be, Martinez thought.
The two of them sat there in silence for a while, neither certain how long it was but eventually Martinez resumed talking. Shiksies' ears twitched to listen in on what had happened. Martinez walked her through the events of the previous night, but he left out what his dreams had been about. He just told her that the whiplash of going from a nice relaxing date to being in a fight for his life had brought up bad memories from when he was in the Navy.
Shiksie was surprised by the story she heard. She did not expect Martinez to have started to date so quickly, She felt that thorn in her side remembering how badly she messed up with meeting him; Not that she wanted to date Martinez, but the fact he was so easy to get along with just showed her how badly she failed. The most shocking part was how he hospitalized two Urintal, one completely on his own. She just had a few more things about the previous night she wanted to ask.
“Why did you jump into the fight so willingly?” Shiksie asked.
Martinez sighed slightly unsure of the answer himself. He immediately thought it might have been “because it was the right thing to do” but even he knew that wasn’t the whole answer. He felt guilty about not being able to help in the past, and he would be damned if he could stop something bad before it happened.
“I'm not sure” Martinez lied, he just did not want to tell Shiksie about his previous fights with the Human Navy.
“That's alright, we don't always do,” Shiksie said. She thought back to her own parents, how she was still to this day unsure why they sacrificed themselves, or even why the accident caused that sacrifice to happen.
Shiksie looked back at Martinez for the first time since they sat down. Her usually sharp predatory features seemed far softer than before. She did not even hear Martinez’s heart run away when they made eye contact.
Martinez smiled softly back at her, his usually fiery glower a much duller blaze. It wasn't the usual inferno she saw in him, more akin to a tired dwindling flame.
Before she had a chance to say anything else she felt her datapad ringing indicating a call. Looking at the screen, her own heart sank. Why is the director calling me?
​
​
-----------
So what did you think? lemme here it I love to talk to you all. updoot if you liked.
side note: I am planning out my next project to be a offshoot set on Verilon, in the current day of the story.
​
your bud
-pirate
----------
Next:
Previous :
https://www.reddit.com/humansarespaceorcs/comments/13t55y6/human_trauma_section_eleven_blood_and_bandages/
First
https://www.reddit.com/humansarespaceorcs/comments/121mgy1/human_trauma/

Our steel chairs are designed to provide both durability and aesthetic appeal for any space. Made with high-quality steel, these chairs are built to withstand daily use and last for years to come.

Loved the gloomrot patch, it was truly impressive I can't wait what stunlock will add in the future!
Here is a fan made patch list with stuff I would love to see someday if I were a designer at stunlock
Let me know what you guys would like to see too in the comments
Patch name: Throne of Blood
Patch theme: Focus on end game, servants and the control of Vardoran by the vampire factions, alongside the mighty Dracula himself!
New end game Dracula boss: - Castle in center of map location - Requires blood key to enter - Boss uses player vampire spellbook and fights like a player - Dracula uses all weapon types, and 3 random spells from a given spell school - Each 30 seconds he switches spell schools at random, with new 3 spells - When he switched he says a voice-line to announce spell school (for example he yells "I am unholy" for the unholy school) - Defeating Dracula unlocks a new vampire power: the spell loadout wheel, that allows you to switch your spells even in combat (cooldown 60 seconds) - Dracula will spawn blood clones of him depending on number of players fighting, so it will always be a 1v1, or 2v2, or 3v3 etc - Dracula AI is coded to be a strong vampire dueler similar to a real pvp player - Good for practicing dueling, even on pve servers - To start the Dracula boss you must raid his castle like you would a real player, and he will have servant NPCs and undeads defending his castle - Dracula has a center throne room arena where you may fight him
New World events system: - New npc caravan events for each of the zones - New summoning rituals that summon undead world bosses - New werewolf city attacks at night, with king's guard defending city - Events announced in chat
New Castle Grandeur system: - Each decoration gives grandeur score - Castle Grandeur buff gives movespeed while in your castle alongside with reduced blood drain rate - Wallpapers also give grandeur score - This would make decoration books be functional and useful
New dueling system: - You can now duel other players and at 0HP you don't die but play a kneel animation - Works on pve servers
New Servant companion system: - You can take servants with you in battle, but it takes up 1 spell slot each - Max 2 servants (replacing each of your 2 spell slots) - Each servant has a Command spell instead of your regular spell - Depending on what you mouse over, the command spell does different things - Actions like follow, attack, stay, defend - Blood mend now heals your servants too at the cost of more blood drained - Killing owner vampire makes servants be feared, allowing them to be easily killed
Servant balancing: - Servants now use a little durability while on missions or fighting with you, and broken gear no longer gives them gearscore - Servants can be sent on missions to enemy vampires to map layout of castle or to steal technology
New turbo official servers: - Both merciless, pvp and pve - 2x gather rates than vanilla - 1 week and 2 week wipe schedule variants - Wipes not in sync so each day you find a freshly wiped server
Raiding overhaul: - Walls now have double hp than doors - A door pathway to your castle heart is now a requirement - Each room gets a room size wall buff to HP to lessen the need for honeycomb - Stairs are now destructible and you can walk up on red destroyed stairs - Servants and mobs no longer hit by explosives through walls - Destroying palisades only starts breach timer for wooden walls, not stones
Balance changes: - Fishing gives more fish instead of ingots - Human form now hides vampire name, is immune to sun, and can fish. Blood drain increased greatly while in human form. - Doubled castle decay rate for pvp servers - Mutant blood and creature blood give claw damage buff (based on gearscore) and specific claw movesets (two for creature, two for mutant)
UI and interface: - New Compulsively take button - Legendary weapons have a glow based on infusion - New server filter sorting option: sort by recently wiped - Shift+E to compulsively count in chest at your mouse cursor (no need to open it, but it plays the chest open animation) - See clan name on territory on map - Small red x is shown on an item if not teleportable
Misc changes: - You can now sit on chairs and benches - You can now place decorations on tables - Wallpaper textures now cover entire wall - Empty and filled bottles now stack to 50 instead of 10 - You can now fill bottles 10 at a time
I wish one day I would work as a designer for a great game like vrising instead of working on boring enterprise software
Hope you enjoyed the read. If you have more, post your ideas below.

Ok guys, haven’t done anything here for like two years, and, just for fun, decided to look back on the game and in here.
I do get half-well the current meta and everything, but I decided to revive a post where I made suggestions for two Brawlers. That post was like late 2020-early 2021, so I dug it out and remastered it with the use of ChatGPT technology to enhance some new ideas, as well as part of my own knowledge in the current game and meta. So here are ideas for two Brawlers, let me know what you think, and how do you think that they’ll affect the current meta. Thanks!
Brawler Ideas
Golon
Rarity: Epic
Class: Support
Health: 4800 (lvl 1) - 7200 (lvl 11)
Movement speed: Slow
Attack
Damage: 600 (lvl 1) - 900 (lvl 11)
Range: 6.67 (Normal)
Reload speed: 1s (Very Fast)
Super charge per hit: 16.67%
Super
Turret health: 2800 (lvl 1) - 4200 (lvl 11)
Resistance boost: 50%
"Golon is an golem made of iron who is barely able to tickle but at the same time barely able to get tickled. All defense no offense indeed!"
Trait
"This Brawler takes 15% less damage from all sources."
Attack: Tickly
"Golon shoots a beam from his defense device, umm... tickling the enemy hit."
Super: Force Field
"Golon deploys a turret that increases his and teammates' resistance who stay in its area of effect."
1st Gadget: Metal Screech
"Golon's turret emits an ear-splitting screech that causes nearby enemies to take 40% more damage for 3 seconds!"
2nd Gadget: Out of Field
"Teammates outside the turret's area of effect are still boosted for 2 seconds."
1st Star Power: Steel Defense
"Whenever Golon or his teammates hit enemies within the turret's area of effect, they all get a 5% extra resistance boost per hit. Each boost stacks and lasts for 1.5 seconds."
2nd Star Power: Mr. Softener
"Turret now also causes enemies standing within it to take 30% more damage when hit. Ouch!"
Ray
Rarity: Mythic
Class: Marksman
Health: 2200 (lvl 1) - 3300 (lvl 11)
Movement speed: Fast
Attack
Damage: 1320 (lvl 1) - 1980 (lvl 11)
Gas damage per second: 330 (lvl 1) - 500 (lvl 11)
Range: 9 (Long)
Reload speed: 2.2s (Very Slow)
Super charge per hit: 33%, 2.7% (Gas)
Super
Damage per tick: 220 (lvl 1) - 330 (lvl 11)
Damage per second: 2200 (lvl 1) - 3300 (lvl 11)
Range: 10 (Very Long)
Duration: 4s
Super charge per hit: 4.55%
"Ray is a bounty hunter from the future who traveled back in time to unleash destructive energy from his, well... raygun. He might be really frail, but above all he's really consistent!"
Attack: Raydiation
"Ray emits a single but ionizingly powerful long-range beam from his raygun. Upon hitting enemies, the beam splits in three and quickly keeps traveling before leaving behind three gas clouds that last for 2 seconds, causing further disruption!"
Super: Hyper Beam
"Ray aims with a lethal, longer-ranged beam for 4 seconds, destroying cover and deep-frying anyone unfortunate enough to be found in reach!"
1st Gadget: Gamma Rays
"Ray releases a double-sided blast from his raygun at any nearby enemy. This shot deals 1250 damage, knocks enemies back, and, upon hitting enemies, leaves a gas cloud behind on each side that deals up to 1500 damage over 3 seconds."
2nd Gadget: Aggro Rayload
"For 6 seconds, Ray reloads 20% faster and gains another 20% boost each time he hits a target with his main attack."
1st Star Power: Quick Smug
"Ray quickly shows his smug whenever he defeats an enemy, gaining a 15% speed boost for 4 seconds."
2nd Star Power: Hyper Drain
"Ray's Super now also heals him for 110 per tick. Only works on living, breathing beings, capiche?"

Last Updated List: 03/06/2023
 
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.

• To trade you must respond to this thread first, I will not respond or accept anyone outside of this thread, only exception are unless we've traded more than once before.
• Only interested in trading for games on Steam.
• I don't do Humble gifts whether receiving or giving, all my keys are in unrevealed form right after purchase.
• No interest in any keys from an unofficial retailesource (aka grey market), curatoreviewer keys (aka beta/reviewebeta-testing/etc.), abandonware, keys for games that are already free on Steam itself, Steam profile-limited keys, and only slight interest in VR-titles and/or de-listed games.
• Anything marked as wishlist/paypal, it's self-explanatory and I won't look through lists.
• All my keys are EU keys, if you are outside of EU, make sure you double check for any region locks for your country. For quite a few which I was aware of I already listed the region lock, however this is not my responsibility as I did specify the key's region.
• When buying, I only accept payments in Euro's. Minimum purchase of €1,00. Fees are on buyer.

If you're either trading or buying please state the game(s) you are interested in and your offer (game(s)/list/price).
 
Info:

• Region (and keys region): Europe
  
• IGS Rep Page
  
• SteamTrades
  
• SteamRep
  

 
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
 
NEWLY ADDED:

• Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Rain World

 
List of games:

• 16bit Trader
• 4089: Ghost Within
• 911 Operator
• Afterparty
• Alien Breed 2: Assault
• Amnesia: Rebirth
• Ampersat
• An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
• Anomaly II
• Anomaly: Warzone Earth
• Apparition
• Arcade Spirits
• As Far As The Eye
• Ashina: The Red Witch
• Autonauts vs PirateBots
• AVICII Invector
• Back 4 Blood (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Backstage Pass
• Banners of Ruin
• BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
• Beholder 2
• Bendy and the Dark Revival
• Bighead Runner
• Bionic Commando
• Biped
• bit Dungeon
• bit Dungeon II
• bit Dungeon III
• Blackguards
• Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
• Blind Fate: Edo no Yami
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
• Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
• Carton
• CastleStorm
• Caveblazers
• Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
• Chronicon (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Close to the Sun
• Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues
• Colortone
• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
• Company of Heroes 2
• Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault
• Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West
• Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
• Cook, Serve, Delicious!
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
• Cosmic Star Heroine
• Crash Drive 2
• Crazy Machines 3
• Curse: The Eye of Isis
• Cybercube
• Danger Scavenger
• Dead Island Definitive Edition
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• Death Squared
• Devil's Hunt
• Dicey Dungeons
• Dishonored
• DOOM II
• Double Kick Heroes
• Drawful 2
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• Dungeons
• Dungeons 2
• Dungeons 3
• Eldest Souls
• Endorlight
• Eternal Edge +
• Eternal Threads (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Euro Truck Simulator 2
• Evoland Legendary Edition
• Fallout 1: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Feel-A-Maze
• Fight'N Rage
• First Class Trouble
• Frederic: Evil Strikes Back
• Fury Unleashed
• Garfield Kart
• Garfield Kart - Furious Racing
• Generation Zero
• Gloria Victis
• Going Under
• Golf Club Wasteland
• Good Night, Knight
• Gotham Knights (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Gray Dawn (wishlist or Paypal only)
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Guts and Glory
• Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
• Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Hamilton's Great Adventure
• Heads Will Roll
• Hellbound
• Hero's Hour
• Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
• Home Sweet Home
• Homeworld Remastered Collection
• Horizon Chase Turbo
• Hue
• Iron Fisticle
• ITORAH (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Jack Move (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Jagged Alliance: Rage!
• JUMANJI: The Video Game
• Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
• Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition
• King Arthur Collection (Sub ID 25825)
• King of Dragon Pass
• Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition
• Kingdom Wars 4
• Kyle is Famous: Complete Edition
• Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
• Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
• Lila’s Sky Ark
• Linked
• Little Orpheus
• Lord of the Dark Castle
• Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack
• Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Lucius III
• Mafia III: Definitive Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mago
• Main Assembly
• MARSUPILAMI - HOOBADVENTURE (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Medieval Kingdom Wars
• Mega Man Legacy Collection
• Men of War
• Metamorphosis
• MirrorMoon EP
• Monaco
• Moon Hunters
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
• Music Racer
• Mystery of Unicorn Castle: The Beastmaster
• Necronator: Dead Wrong
• NecroWorm
• Neighbours back From Hell
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
• Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix
• Nihilumbra
• Nomad Survival
• NUTS
• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
• Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
• Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• One Finger Death Punch 2
• Operation Tango
• Orbital Racer
• Out of Space
• Papo & Yo
• Party Hard 2
• PAYDAY 2
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID)
• Pizza Connection 3
• Planes, Bullets and Vodka
• Police Stories
• POSTAL 2
• QUAKE II
• RAD
• Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
• Radio Commander
• Railway Empire
• Rain World
• Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
• Red Faction: Armageddon
• Red Solstice 2: Survivors
• Regions Of Ruin
• Remnants of Naezith
• Resident Evil 4 (2005)
• Retrowave
• Reventure
• River City Ransom: Underground
• Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
• Röki
• Rustler
• S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
• Salt and Sanctuary
• Sands of Aura
• Scarlet Tower
• Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story
• Serious Sam Double D XXL
• Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
• Shadows: Awakening
• Shape of the World
• She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
• Shift Happens
• Shing!
• Shut Up And Dig
• Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
• Sine Mora EX
• Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
• Sinking Island
• Skeletal Avenger
• Skydrift Infinity
• Small World + 1 DLC
• Sneak Thief
• SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
• Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (DLC)
• Sorry, James
• Soul Grabber
• Soulblight
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Sparkle 2 Evo
• Spirit of the Island (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
• Stacking
• Starblast
• Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords
• STASIS
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Steel Rats
• Strange Brigade
• Streets of Fury EX
• Strider
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Suite 776
• Sunlight
• Super Indie Karts
• Super Magbot
• Super Meat Boy
• Supraland
• Surfingers
• Swag and Sorcery
• Switchball HD
• Syberia
• Synergia
• System Crash
• Tacoma
• Tainted Grail: Conquest (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Tesla Force
• The Anacrusis
• The Amazing American Circus
• The Citadel
• The Dark Eye: Memoria
• The Darkest Tales
• The Divine Invasion
• The Dream Machine: Chapter 1 & 2
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
• The eXceed Collection: Aural Brutality Edition
• The Falconeer
• THE GAME OF LIFE
• The Initiate
• The Initiate 2: The First Interviews
• The Inner World
• The Invisible Hours
• The Moment of Silence
• The Quarry – Horror History Visual Filter Pack (DLC)
• The Sexy Brutale
• The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
• The Town of Light
• This War of Mine
• Those Who Remain
• Ticket to Ride
• Timberman
• Time Lock VR
• Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
• Totally Reliable Delivery Service
• Tower of Time
• Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
• Train Simulator Classic + 2 DLCs
• Tropico 3 Gold Edition
• Tropico 4 Collector's Bundle
• Unity of Command Trilogy
• Unshaded
• Verdun
• Violett Remastered
• VirtuaVerse
• Wargroove
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
• Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Weable
• Weaving Tides
• Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
• Windosill
• Within Skerry
• Within the blade
• Worms Rumble
• Yoku's Island Express
• XCOM 2
• XEL
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
• Youtubers Life
• Zombie Army Trilogy
• Zombie Driver HD

Last Updated List: 03/06/2023
 
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.

• To trade you must respond to this thread first, I will not respond or accept anyone outside of this thread, only exception are unless we've traded more than once before.
• Only interested in trading for games on Steam.
• I don't do Humble gifts whether receiving or giving, all my keys are in unrevealed form right after purchase.
• No interest in any keys from an unofficial retailesource (aka grey market), curatoreviewer keys (aka beta/reviewebeta-testing/etc.), abandonware, keys for games that are already free on Steam itself, Steam profile-limited keys, and only slight interest in VR-titles and/or de-listed games.
• Anything marked as wishlist/paypal, it's self-explanatory and I won't look through lists.
• All my keys are EU keys, if you are outside of EU, make sure you double check for any region locks for your country. For quite a few which I was aware of I already listed the region lock, however this is not my responsibility as I did specify the key's region.
• When buying, I only accept payments in Euro's. Minimum purchase of €1,00. Fees are on buyer.

If you're either trading or buying please state the game(s) you are interested in and your offer (game(s)/list/price).
 
Info:

• Region (and keys region): Europe
  
• IGS Rep Page
  
• SteamTrades
  
• SteamRep
  

 
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
 
NEWLY ADDED:

• Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Rain World

 
List of games:

• 16bit Trader
• 4089: Ghost Within
• 911 Operator
• Afterparty
• Alien Breed 2: Assault
• Amnesia: Rebirth
• Ampersat
• An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
• Anomaly II
• Anomaly: Warzone Earth
• Apparition
• Arcade Spirits
• As Far As The Eye
• Ashina: The Red Witch
• Autonauts vs PirateBots
• AVICII Invector
• Back 4 Blood (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Backstage Pass
• Banners of Ruin
• BEAUTIFUL DESOLATION
• Beholder 2
• Bendy and the Dark Revival
• Bighead Runner
• Bionic Commando
• Biped
• bit Dungeon
• bit Dungeon II
• bit Dungeon III
• Blackguards
• Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
• Blind Fate: Edo no Yami
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
• Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
• Carton
• CastleStorm
• Caveblazers
• Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
• Chronicon (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Close to the Sun
• Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues
• Colortone
• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
• Company of Heroes 2
• Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault
• Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West
• Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
• Cook, Serve, Delicious!
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
• Cosmic Star Heroine
• Crash Drive 2
• Crazy Machines 3
• Curse: The Eye of Isis
• Cybercube
• Danger Scavenger
• Dead Island Definitive Edition
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• Death Squared
• Devil's Hunt
• Dicey Dungeons
• Dishonored
• DOOM II
• Double Kick Heroes
• Drawful 2
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• Dungeons
• Dungeons 2
• Dungeons 3
• Eldest Souls
• Endorlight
• Eternal Edge +
• Eternal Threads (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Euro Truck Simulator 2
• Evoland Legendary Edition
• Fallout 1: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Feel-A-Maze
• Fight'N Rage
• First Class Trouble
• Frederic: Evil Strikes Back
• Fury Unleashed
• Garfield Kart
• Garfield Kart - Furious Racing
• Generation Zero
• Gloria Victis
• Going Under
• Golf Club Wasteland
• Good Night, Knight
• Gotham Knights (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Gray Dawn (wishlist or Paypal only)
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Guts and Glory
• Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
• Haiku, the Robot (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Hamilton's Great Adventure
• Heads Will Roll
• Hellbound
• Hero's Hour
• Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
• Home Sweet Home
• Homeworld Remastered Collection
• Horizon Chase Turbo
• Hue
• Iron Fisticle
• ITORAH (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Jack Move (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Jagged Alliance: Rage!
• JUMANJI: The Video Game
• Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
• Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition
• King Arthur Collection (Sub ID 25825)
• King of Dragon Pass
• Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition
• Kingdom Wars 4
• Kyle is Famous: Complete Edition
• Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
• Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
• Lila’s Sky Ark
• Linked
• Little Orpheus
• Lord of the Dark Castle
• Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack
• Lost Ruins (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Lucius III
• Mafia III: Definitive Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mago
• Main Assembly
• MARSUPILAMI - HOOBADVENTURE (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Medieval Kingdom Wars
• Mega Man Legacy Collection
• Men of War
• Metamorphosis
• MirrorMoon EP
• Monaco
• Moon Hunters
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
• Music Racer
• Mystery of Unicorn Castle: The Beastmaster
• Necronator: Dead Wrong
• NecroWorm
• Neighbours back From Hell
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
• Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix
• Nihilumbra
• Nomad Survival
• NUTS
• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
• Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
• Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• One Finger Death Punch 2
• Operation Tango
• Orbital Racer
• Out of Space
• Papo & Yo
• Party Hard 2
• PAYDAY 2
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID)
• Pizza Connection 3
• Planes, Bullets and Vodka
• Police Stories
• POSTAL 2
• QUAKE II
• RAD
• Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
• Radio Commander
• Railway Empire
• Rain World
• Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
• Red Faction: Armageddon
• Red Solstice 2: Survivors
• Regions Of Ruin
• Remnants of Naezith
• Resident Evil 4 (2005)
• Retrowave
• Reventure
• River City Ransom: Underground
• Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
• Röki
• Rustler
• S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
• Salt and Sanctuary
• Sands of Aura
• Scarlet Tower
• Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story
• Serious Sam Double D XXL
• Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
• Shadows: Awakening
• Shape of the World
• She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
• Shift Happens
• Shing!
• Shut Up And Dig
• Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
• Sine Mora EX
• Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
• Sinking Island
• Skeletal Avenger
• Skydrift Infinity
• Small World + 1 DLC
• Sneak Thief
• SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
• Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (DLC)
• Sorry, James
• Soul Grabber
• Soulblight
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Sparkle 2 Evo
• Spirit of the Island (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
• Stacking
• Starblast
• Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords
• STASIS
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Steel Rats
• Strange Brigade
• Streets of Fury EX
• Strider
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Suite 776
• Sunlight
• Super Indie Karts
• Super Magbot
• Super Meat Boy
• Supraland
• Surfingers
• Swag and Sorcery
• Switchball HD
• Syberia
• Synergia
• System Crash
• Tacoma
• Tainted Grail: Conquest (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Tesla Force
• The Anacrusis
• The Amazing American Circus
• The Citadel
• The Dark Eye: Memoria
• The Darkest Tales
• The Divine Invasion
• The Dream Machine: Chapter 1 & 2
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
• The eXceed Collection: Aural Brutality Edition
• The Falconeer
• THE GAME OF LIFE
• The Initiate
• The Initiate 2: The First Interviews
• The Inner World
• The Invisible Hours
• The Moment of Silence
• The Quarry – Horror History Visual Filter Pack (DLC)
• The Sexy Brutale
• The Smurfs - Mission Vileaf
• The Town of Light
• This War of Mine
• Those Who Remain
• Ticket to Ride
• Timberman
• Time Lock VR
• Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
• Totally Reliable Delivery Service
• Tower of Time
• Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
• Train Simulator Classic + 2 DLCs
• Tropico 3 Gold Edition
• Tropico 4 Collector's Bundle
• Unity of Command Trilogy
• Unshaded
• Verdun
• Violett Remastered
• VirtuaVerse
• Wargroove
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
• Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Weable
• Weaving Tides
• Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
• Windosill
• Within Skerry
• Within the blade
• Worms Rumble
• Yoku's Island Express
• XCOM 2
• XEL
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
• Youtubers Life
• Zombie Army Trilogy
• Zombie Driver HD

Hi Guys,
I've spent hours researching online and I'm out of ideas.
My PC is about 3 years old, and in the last year or so I started getting random BSOD and status_access_violation and STATUS_STACK_BUFFER_OVERRUN error in chrome,vivaldi and edge (basically every browser)
I ran both memtest and windows memory diagnostics, showing no issues.
I have 2x8GB RAM, when I use only one stick there is no issues, I think only a few times I got status access violation error. When using 2 sticks pc crashes every few hours, and for some reason only when using the browser, when playing games It never crashes as far as I remember.
I did a fresh windows install, tested each stick individually, changed slot, updated all the drivers, enabled/disabled XMP etc..
Im not sure if this is a RAM, CPU, motherboard or PSU issue.
PC specs:
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600
RAM: 2x8GB Ripjaws 5 3200mhz CL16
MB: asrock B450m Steel Legend
PSU: gigabyte p650b
STORAGE: Kingstone A2000 1TB
Thanks.

(ALSO NOTE that i think ship 25 will static fire AFTER steel plate installation to avoid Foreign object debris damage to a uncomplte steel plate/OLM. )
Optimistic: Steel plate installation complete end of june, steel plate deluge test mid july followed by ship 25 static fire also mid july, early August booster less than 33 static fire with steel plate also being tested with the static fire, Mid August 33 static with steel plate deluge, few days later full stack Wet dress rehearsal (still mid august), Launch early late August
Realistic: Steel plate installed late July, ship 25 static fire early august, early august Steel plate Deluge tested, Late august less than 33 static fire with deluge, Mid September 33 static with deluge, Early October Full stack Wet dress rehearsal, Late october Launch.
Pessamistic: Steel plate installed mid august, tested end of august, very end of august ship 25 static fire, less than 33 static with deluge end of September, 33 static fire with deluge Mid October, Wet dress rehearsal early Novemeber, Launch late novembeearly december.
​
AGAIN, this is IMO, not facts.
Thoughts? Y'all?

I'm from EU,so GAMES SHOULD work pretty much anywhere
NOT BUYING GAMES,ONLY TRADES - games for games or selling for paypal
No interest in TF2 keys,CSGO cases or ANY other virtual currency
BUYER covers the FEES (if outside EU,EU F&F only)
My Steam account so you don't offer me something I own
My Wishlist
My SGSRep
My IGSRep
​
​
Only looking for Steam games - so don't offer origin,uplay,rockstar,bnet or ANY other launcher
100% of my games keys are bought by me from official stores & I expect the same in return,so don't offer me keyshop games or game keys you got in a trade as I will decline
I retain the right to ask for proof of ownership for ANY game I want - just like YOU have the right to ask me the same
​
​
List of games I have:
Also have the Earthquake Relief bundle but reddit wont let me write all the games cause my topic would be too big - just ask
7 Billion Humans
8Doors Arum's Afterlife Adventure
10 Second Ninja X
60 Seconds!
112 Operator
140
198X
911 Operator
A Case Of Distrust
A Year Of Rain
Absolver
Aeolis Tournament
Age Of Wonders III
Ageless
Airport CEO
AI War 2
Alien Spidy
Aliens Vs Predator Collection
All You Can Eat
Almost There The Platformer
American Fugitive
Amnesia A Machine For Pigs + The Dark Descent (1 key for both games)
Amnesia Fortnight 2012
Amnesia Fortnight 2014
Amnesia Fortnight 2017
Amnesia Rebirth (X2)
Among Us (X2)
Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey (EU & Africa lock)
Aragami (X2)
Archamon
Army Men RTS
Attack Of The Earthlings
Automobilista
Aven Colony
Avernum 3 Ruined World
Azkend 2 The World Beneath
Back 4 Blood (EU region lock)
Backbone
Band Of Defenders
Banished
Baseball Riot
Batora Lost Haven
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
Behind The Frame Finest Scenery NEW
Beholder 2
Bendy And The Dark Revival (X2)
Bendy And The Ink Machine
Betrayer (delisted)
Between The Stars (X2)
Beyond Eyes
Beyond The Wire
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando Rearmed
Bird Of Light
Black Paradox
Blasphemous
Bohemian Killing
Book Of Demons
Bomber Crew Deluxe
Borderlands 3 + Director's Cut (ask about region locks)
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition NEW (ask about region locks)
Boreal Blade
Broken Age (X2)
Brothers A Tale Of Two Sons (X2)
Builder Simulator NEW
Butcher
Call Of Juarez
Call Of The Sea (X2)
Call To Arms Basic Edition
Call To Arms Gates Of Hell Ostfront
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
Chenso Club
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
Cities In Motion 2
CivCity Rome
Clone Drone In The Danger Zone
Clouds & Sheep 2
Coffin Dodgers
Cook Serve Delicious 3
Company Of Heroes Complete Edition
Control Ultimate Edition
Corridor Z
Cosmic Osmo And The World Beyond The Mackerel
Crash Drive 3
Creatures Inc
Crookz The Big Heist
Crossbow Bloodnight
Crusader Kings Complete
Crying Suns
Dagon The Eldritch Box
Danger Scavenger
Day Of Infamy
Dead Age
Dead In Vinland
Deadly Premonition Director's Cut
Deadbeat Heroes (X2)
Dear Ester Landmark Edition
Death Stranding Director's Cut
Death Squared
Deep Dungeons Of Doom
Deep Sky Derelicts
Demon Turf
Deployment
Desert Child
Destiny 2 Beyond Light NEW
Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor
Dicey Dungeons (X2)
Dimension Drifter
Distraint 2 + Soundtrack
Divekick
Dog Sled Saga
Double Fine Adventures Complete Series Deluxe
Downwell
Drawful 2
Draw Slasher
Dreadlands
Dread X Collection
Driftland The Magic Revival
Dry Downing
Duke Nukem Forever Collection
Dungeon Marathon
Dungeon Of The Endless
Dungeons 2
Dungeons 2 Complete
Dungeons 3
Dusk
Dwarfs!?
Eador Imperium
EarthX
Eastside Hockey Manager
ECHO
Edge Of Eternity
Effie
Elderborn
Eldest Souls
Elden Path Of The Forgotten
Embr
Emily Is Away
Empyrion Galactic Survival
Epic Manager
E.T. Armies Deluxe Edition
Etherborn (X2)
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Europa Universalis IV
Evergarden
Expeditions Viking
F1 2018 (delisted)
Family Man
Fantasy Blacksmith
Fantasy Versus
Farmer's Dynasty
Farming Simulator 17
FIA European Truck Racing
Figment (X2)
Finding Paradise
Fire Ungh's Quest
First Class Trouble
Five Dates
Fling To The Finish
Fluffy Horde
Fobia St. Dinfna Hotel
Forgive Me Father
Framed Collection (X2)
Friday the 13th: The Game
Fun With Ragdolls The Game
Fury Unleashed (X2)
Gang Beasts
Garage Bad Trip (X2)
Gas Guzzlers Extreme
Gas Station Simulator
Gauge
Generation Zero NEW
Ghostrunner
Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams + Rise Of The Owlverlord
Gloria Victis NEW
GNOG
Go Home Dinosaurs!
Goat Of Duty
Goetia (X2)
Going Under (X2)
Golden Light
Golf Gang
GoNNER
Grand Ages Medieval
Grand Pigeon's Duty
Greak Memories Of Azur
Gremlins Inc.
Grip Combat Racing + Cygon + Nyvoss + Terra + Vintek DLC (X2)
Guts And Glory (X2)
Hack'n'Slash
Haiku The Robot (X3)
Hamilton's Great Adventure
Hammerfight
Headlander
Heal
Hedon Bloodrite
Hell Let Loose
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice
Hello Neighbor
Hellbound
Hero Defense
Hero's Hour (EU region lock)
Hexologic
Hidden & Dangerous Action Pack
Hidden & Dangerous 2 Courage Under Fire
Hive Jump (X2)
Hiveswap Act 2
Hiveswap Friend Sim (X2)
Hollow Knight
Homeworld Deserts Of Kharak
Hotshot Racing
Hot Tin Roof The Cat That Wore A Fedora
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Hover (X2)
Human Resource Machine
Hurtworld
I Am Bread
I Am Not A Monster First Contact
Ice Lakes
If Found...
Ikenfell
Impact Winter (delisted)
In Between
Industria
Inexistence Rebirth
Infinite Air With Mark McMorris (delisted)
Influent
Inmost
Interplanetary Enhanced Edition
Intruder
Ion Fury
Iron Danger
Iron Harvest
Jack Axe
Jalopy
Jet Set Knights
Juanito Arcade Mayhem
Jump Stars
Jurassic World Evolution
Just Die Already
KartKraft
Kathy Rain Directors Cut
Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes (X2)
Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe NEW
Kill To Collect
Kingdom Classic (X2)
Kingdom New Lands
Kingdoms Of Amalur Re-Reckoning Fate Edition
King Oddball
Labyrinthine
Last Oasis
Last Tide
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Lead And Gold Gangs Of Wild West (X2)
Legacy Of Dorn Herald Of Oblivion (delisted)
Legend Of Keepers Career Of A Dungeon Master
Leisure Suit Larry Retro Bundle (1 to 7)
Lethal League Blaze
Liberated (GOG key)
Lifeless Planet Premium Edition
Light Fall
Little Big Workshop
Lone Fungus
Lost Planet Complete Pack
Lost Ruins
Lust For Darkness
Lust From Beyond M Edition
Magicka
Magrunner Dark Pulse
Maid Of Sker
Main Assembly (X2)
Mars Horizon
Masquerade The Baubles Of Doom
Max Payne 3 (Rockstar Launcher)
Mega Man Legacy Collection
Midnight Ghost Hunt NEW
Midnight Protocol
Mind Scanners
Mini Metro
Miscreated (X2)
Monster Crown
Moon Hunters
Morbid The Seven Acolytes
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Motorsport Manager
Mount And Blade Warband
My Lovely Daughter
Naruto To Boruto Shinobi Striker
Nascar Heat 5 Ultimate
Nebuchadnezzar
NecroVisioN Lost Company
NecroWorn
Neighbours Back From Hell
Neo Cab
Neon Abyss
NeuroVoider
Neverout
Nickelodeon All Star Brawl (X2)
Ninjin Clash Of Carrots
No Time To Relax
Northgard NEW
Not Tonight
Obduction
Observation
Octahedron
Odyssey The Story Of Science
Of Orcs And Men
Old School Musical
OlliOlli World Rad Edition
On Rusty Trails
One Finger Death Punch 2
Onikira Demon Killer
Operation Tango NEW
Orbital Racer
Orcs Must Die 2 Complete
Original War
Orwell Ignorance Is Strength
Out Of Reach Treasure Royal
Overlord II
Overpass
Override Mech City Brawl
Oxenfree
Pacer
Paint The Town Red
Paper Fire Rookie
Paradise Lost
Path Of Giants
Paw Paw Paw
Payday 2 + Big Mike mask
Peaky Blinders Mastermind (delisted)
Penarium
People Playground (X2)
Perfect Heist 2
PGA Tour 2K21 (X2)
Phoenix Point Year One Edition
Pikuniku
Pine
Pinstripe
Pixplode
Plane Mechanic Simulator
Poöf
Popup Dungeon
Post Void
Pound Of Ground (X2)
PowerSlave Exhumed
Prehistoric Kingdom
Primal Carnage Extinction (X2)
Project Cars GOTY (delisted)
Project Hospital
Project Warlock
Propnight
Pulsar The Lost Colony NEW
Pumped BMX+
Punch Club
Purrfect Date
Quest Of Dungeons
RAD (X2)
Radio Commander
Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
Railroad Tycoon 2
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railway Empire
Rain World
Raji An Ancient Epic
Rebel Cops
Rec Center Tycoon
Red Faction Armageddon
Red Solstice 2 Survivors
Redeemer Enhanced Edition
Redout Enhanced Edition
Re-Legion
Remothered Broken Porcelain
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Revelations (X2)
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition
Retimed
Retrowave
Reventure
Revita
Ring Of Pain
Rings Of Saturn
Riot Civil Unrest
Rise Of Industry
Rise Of Insanity
Riven The Sequel To MYST
Roarr! The Adventures Of Rampage Rex
Roboquest
Rogue Heroes Ruins Of Tasos
Rogue Lords
Rogue Stormers
Rover Mechanic Simulator
RPG Maker VX
Rustler
Sable
Salt And Sanctuary
Satellite Reign
Satisfactory
Saturday Morning RPG
Say No! More
SCP 5K
SCUM (X2)
ScourgeBringer
Serious Sam 2
Serious Sam BFE (X2)
Serious Sam Classics Revolution
Serious Sam Double D XXL
Serious Sam HD The First & Second Encounter (1 key for both)
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Legend Of The Beast
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Serious 8
Serious Sam Kamikaze Attack
Serious Sam The Random Encounter
Serious Sam Bogus Detour
Shadow Tactics Aiko's Choice
Shady Part Of Me
She Remembered Caterpillars
She Will Punish Them
Shing!
Shock Troopers
Shogun's Empire Hex Commander
Shuyan Saga
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Sid Meier's Railroads
Simulacra Collection
Skeletal Avenger
Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Skully
Slime Rancher
Slinger VR
Smoke And Sacrifice (X2)
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered
Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe + Season Pass
SOMA
Song Of Iron
Soulblight
Spacebase DF-9
Space Hulk Ascension (delisted)
Sparkle 2
Sparkle Unleashed
Spellcaster University
Spelunx And The Caves Of Mr. Seudo
Spiritfarer Farewell Edition NEW
Stacking
Starsand (X2)
Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy
Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic
Stasis
State Of Decay 2 Juggernaut Edition
State Of Mind
Steel Rats
Stick Fight The Game (X3)
Stories Untold
Streets Of Fury EX
Strider (X2)
Struggling
Stubbs The Zombie
Styx Shards Of Darkness
Submerged Hidden Depths
Suchart Genius Artist Simulator
Super Indie Carts
Super Magbot
Supraland
SurrounDead (X2)
Surviving The Aftermath
Suzerain
Swag And Sorcery
Sword Legacy Omen
Swords And Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
Swords And Souls Neverseen (X2)
Syberia II
Syberia 3 Deluxe Edition
Syberia The World Before
Syndrome
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Table Manners The Physics-Based Dating Game
Tabletop Playground
Tacoma
Take On Helicopters
Tales From Candlekeep Tomb Of Annihilation (delisted)
Tales Of Monkey Island Complete
Talisman Digital Edition + City,Frostmarch,Sacred Pool (trading only as a bundle)
Talisman Origins
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Telefrag VR
Teleglitch Die More Edition
Tennis In The Face
Tennis World Tour (X2)
Tesla Force
Tesla Vs Lovecraft
Tharsis (X2)
The Amazing American Circus
The Ambassador Fractured Timelines
The Adventure Pals
The Battle Of Polytopia Moonrise Deluxe
The Blackout Club
The Citadel
The Count Lucador
The Free Ones (delisted)
The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour
theHunter Call Of The Wild (X3)
The Invisible Hand NEW
The Journey Down Chapter Three
The King Of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match
The Last Blade
The Life And Suffering Of Sir Brante
The Long Dark Survival Edition (X2)
The Manhole Masterpiece Edition
The Mims Beginning
The Mortuary Assistant
The Night Of The Rabbit
The Serpent Rogue
The Signifier Director's Cut
The Textorcist The Story of Ray Bibbia (X2)
The Uncertain Last Quiet Day (X2)
The USB Stick Found In The Grass
The Walking Dead Season 1 + 400 Days
The Wild Eight (X2)
They Bleed Pixels
Think Of The Children
This War Of Mine
Thronebreaker The Witcher Tales
THOTH
Through The Darkest Of Times
Timeshift
Time Recoil
Titan Quest Anniversary
Toejam & Earl Back In The Groove
TOEM
Tohu
Tools Up
Tooth And Tail (X2)
Torchlight (X2)
Total Tank Simulator
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Toto Temple Deluxe
Tower Of Time (X2)
Tower Unite
Townscaper (X2)
Townsmen A Kingdom Rebuilt
Toybox Turbos
Tracks The Train Set Game
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator (X2)
Tropico 4
True Fear Forsaken Souls Part 1
Tyranny Deluxe Edition
Unexplored
Unloved
Unmetal
Unshaded
Vambrace Cold Soul
Vane
Velocibox
Verdun
Vikings Wolves Of Midgard
Visage
Volcanoids (X2)
V Rally 4
Wanderlust Travel Stories (GOG key)
Warhammer 40K Chaos Gate Daemonhunters NEW
Warhammer End Times Vermintide
Warhammer Vermintide 2 NEW
Warlock Master Of The Arcane
Warpips
Warsaw
Wasteland 2 Director's Cut
We Are The Dwarves
We Should Talk
Western Press
We Were Here Together
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
While True: Learn() Chief Technology Officer Edition
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
Windjammers 2 NEW
Wooden Sen'SeY
Worms Rumble + Legends DLC
Wrath Aeon Of Ruin (X2)
XCOM Complete Pack
Xenoraid The First Space War
X Morph Defense + European Assault + Last Bastion + Survival Of The Fittest (1 key for all)
XIII Classic
Xuan-Yuan Sword The Gate Of Firmament
Yet Another Zombie Defense HD
Ylands Exploration Pack
Yoku's Island Express
Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair
Zack 2 Celestine's Map
ZIC Zombies In City
Zombie Army Trilogy

I'm from EU,so GAMES SHOULD work pretty much anywhere
NOT BUYING GAMES,ONLY TRADES - games for games or selling for paypal
No interest in TF2 keys,CSGO cases or ANY other virtual currency
BUYER covers the FEES (if outside EU,EU F&F only)
My Steam account so you don't offer me something I own
My Wishlist
My SGSRep
My IGSRep
​
​
Only looking for Steam games - so don't offer origin,uplay,rockstar,bnet or ANY other launcher
100% of my games keys are bought by me from official stores & I expect the same in return,so don't offer me keyshop games or game keys you got in a trade as I will decline
I retain the right to ask for proof of ownership for ANY game I want - just like YOU have the right to ask me the same
​
​
List of games I have:
Also have the Earthquake Relief bundle but reddit wont let me write all the games cause my topic would be too big - just ask
7 Billion Humans
8Doors Arum's Afterlife Adventure
10 Second Ninja X
60 Seconds!
112 Operator
140
198X
911 Operator
A Case Of Distrust
A Year Of Rain
Absolver
Aeolis Tournament
Age Of Wonders III
Ageless
Airport CEO
AI War 2
Alien Spidy
Aliens Vs Predator Collection
All You Can Eat
Almost There The Platformer
American Fugitive
Amnesia A Machine For Pigs + The Dark Descent (1 key for both games)
Amnesia Fortnight 2012
Amnesia Fortnight 2014
Amnesia Fortnight 2017
Amnesia Rebirth (X2)
Among Us (X2)
Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey (EU & Africa lock)
Aragami (X2)
Archamon
Army Men RTS
Attack Of The Earthlings
Automobilista
Aven Colony
Avernum 3 Ruined World
Azkend 2 The World Beneath
Back 4 Blood (EU region lock)
Backbone
Band Of Defenders
Banished
Baseball Riot
Batora Lost Haven
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
Behind The Frame Finest Scenery NEW
Beholder 2
Bendy And The Dark Revival (X2)
Bendy And The Ink Machine
Betrayer (delisted)
Between The Stars (X2)
Beyond Eyes
Beyond The Wire
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando Rearmed
Bird Of Light
Black Paradox
Blasphemous
Bohemian Killing
Book Of Demons
Bomber Crew Deluxe
Borderlands 3 + Director's Cut (ask about region locks)
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition NEW (ask about region locks)
Boreal Blade
Broken Age (X2)
Brothers A Tale Of Two Sons (X2)
Builder Simulator NEW
Butcher
Call Of Juarez
Call Of The Sea (X2)
Call To Arms Basic Edition
Call To Arms Gates Of Hell Ostfront
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
Chenso Club
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
Cities In Motion 2
CivCity Rome
Clone Drone In The Danger Zone
Clouds & Sheep 2
Coffin Dodgers
Cook Serve Delicious 3
Company Of Heroes Complete Edition
Control Ultimate Edition
Corridor Z
Cosmic Osmo And The World Beyond The Mackerel
Crash Drive 3
Creatures Inc
Crookz The Big Heist
Crossbow Bloodnight
Crusader Kings Complete
Crying Suns
Dagon The Eldritch Box
Danger Scavenger
Day Of Infamy
Dead Age
Dead In Vinland
Deadly Premonition Director's Cut
Deadbeat Heroes (X2)
Dear Ester Landmark Edition
Death Stranding Director's Cut
Death Squared
Deep Dungeons Of Doom
Deep Sky Derelicts
Demon Turf
Deployment
Desert Child
Destiny 2 Beyond Light NEW
Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor
Dicey Dungeons (X2)
Dimension Drifter
Distraint 2 + Soundtrack
Divekick
Dog Sled Saga
Double Fine Adventures Complete Series Deluxe
Downwell
Drawful 2
Draw Slasher
Dreadlands
Dread X Collection
Driftland The Magic Revival
Dry Downing
Duke Nukem Forever Collection
Dungeon Marathon
Dungeon Of The Endless
Dungeons 2
Dungeons 2 Complete
Dungeons 3
Dusk
Dwarfs!?
Eador Imperium
EarthX
Eastside Hockey Manager
ECHO
Edge Of Eternity
Effie
Elderborn
Eldest Souls
Elden Path Of The Forgotten
Embr
Emily Is Away
Empyrion Galactic Survival
Epic Manager
E.T. Armies Deluxe Edition
Etherborn (X2)
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Europa Universalis IV
Evergarden
Expeditions Viking
F1 2018 (delisted)
Family Man
Fantasy Blacksmith
Fantasy Versus
Farmer's Dynasty
Farming Simulator 17
FIA European Truck Racing
Figment (X2)
Finding Paradise
Fire Ungh's Quest
First Class Trouble
Five Dates
Fling To The Finish
Fluffy Horde
Fobia St. Dinfna Hotel
Forgive Me Father
Framed Collection (X2)
Friday the 13th: The Game
Fun With Ragdolls The Game
Fury Unleashed (X2)
Gang Beasts
Garage Bad Trip (X2)
Gas Guzzlers Extreme
Gas Station Simulator
Gauge
Generation Zero NEW
Ghostrunner
Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams + Rise Of The Owlverlord
Gloria Victis NEW
GNOG
Go Home Dinosaurs!
Goat Of Duty
Goetia (X2)
Going Under (X2)
Golden Light
Golf Gang
GoNNER
Grand Ages Medieval
Grand Pigeon's Duty
Greak Memories Of Azur
Gremlins Inc.
Grip Combat Racing + Cygon + Nyvoss + Terra + Vintek DLC (X2)
Guts And Glory (X2)
Hack'n'Slash
Haiku The Robot (X3)
Hamilton's Great Adventure
Hammerfight
Headlander
Heal
Hedon Bloodrite
Hell Let Loose
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice
Hello Neighbor
Hellbound
Hero Defense
Hero's Hour (EU region lock)
Hexologic
Hidden & Dangerous Action Pack
Hidden & Dangerous 2 Courage Under Fire
Hive Jump (X2)
Hiveswap Act 2
Hiveswap Friend Sim (X2)
Hollow Knight
Homeworld Deserts Of Kharak
Hotshot Racing
Hot Tin Roof The Cat That Wore A Fedora
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Hover (X2)
Human Resource Machine
Hurtworld
I Am Bread
I Am Not A Monster First Contact
Ice Lakes
If Found...
Ikenfell
Impact Winter (delisted)
In Between
Industria
Inexistence Rebirth
Infinite Air With Mark McMorris (delisted)
Influent
Inmost
Interplanetary Enhanced Edition
Intruder
Ion Fury
Iron Danger
Iron Harvest
Jack Axe
Jalopy
Jet Set Knights
Juanito Arcade Mayhem
Jump Stars
Jurassic World Evolution
Just Die Already
KartKraft
Kathy Rain Directors Cut
Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes (X2)
Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe NEW
Kill To Collect
Kingdom Classic (X2)
Kingdom New Lands
Kingdoms Of Amalur Re-Reckoning Fate Edition
King Oddball
Labyrinthine
Last Oasis
Last Tide
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Lead And Gold Gangs Of Wild West (X2)
Legacy Of Dorn Herald Of Oblivion (delisted)
Legend Of Keepers Career Of A Dungeon Master
Leisure Suit Larry Retro Bundle (1 to 7)
Lethal League Blaze
Liberated (GOG key)
Lifeless Planet Premium Edition
Light Fall
Little Big Workshop
Lone Fungus
Lost Planet Complete Pack
Lost Ruins
Lust For Darkness
Lust From Beyond M Edition
Magicka
Magrunner Dark Pulse
Maid Of Sker
Main Assembly (X2)
Mars Horizon
Masquerade The Baubles Of Doom
Max Payne 3 (Rockstar Launcher)
Mega Man Legacy Collection
Midnight Ghost Hunt NEW
Midnight Protocol
Mind Scanners
Mini Metro
Miscreated (X2)
Monster Crown
Moon Hunters
Morbid The Seven Acolytes
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Motorsport Manager
Mount And Blade Warband
My Lovely Daughter
Naruto To Boruto Shinobi Striker
Nascar Heat 5 Ultimate
Nebuchadnezzar
NecroVisioN Lost Company
NecroWorn
Neighbours Back From Hell
Neo Cab
Neon Abyss
NeuroVoider
Neverout
Nickelodeon All Star Brawl (X2)
Ninjin Clash Of Carrots
No Time To Relax
Northgard NEW
Not Tonight
Obduction
Observation
Octahedron
Odyssey The Story Of Science
Of Orcs And Men
Old School Musical
OlliOlli World Rad Edition
On Rusty Trails
One Finger Death Punch 2
Onikira Demon Killer
Operation Tango NEW
Orbital Racer
Orcs Must Die 2 Complete
Original War
Orwell Ignorance Is Strength
Out Of Reach Treasure Royal
Overlord II
Overpass
Override Mech City Brawl
Oxenfree
Pacer
Paint The Town Red
Paper Fire Rookie
Paradise Lost
Path Of Giants
Paw Paw Paw
Payday 2 + Big Mike mask
Peaky Blinders Mastermind (delisted)
Penarium
People Playground (X2)
Perfect Heist 2
PGA Tour 2K21 (X2)
Phoenix Point Year One Edition
Pikuniku
Pine
Pinstripe
Pixplode
Plane Mechanic Simulator
Poöf
Popup Dungeon
Post Void
Pound Of Ground (X2)
PowerSlave Exhumed
Prehistoric Kingdom
Primal Carnage Extinction (X2)
Project Cars GOTY (delisted)
Project Hospital
Project Warlock
Propnight
Pulsar The Lost Colony NEW
Pumped BMX+
Punch Club
Purrfect Date
Quest Of Dungeons
RAD (X2)
Radio Commander
Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
Railroad Tycoon 2
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railway Empire
Rain World
Raji An Ancient Epic
Rebel Cops
Rec Center Tycoon
Red Faction Armageddon
Red Solstice 2 Survivors
Redeemer Enhanced Edition
Redout Enhanced Edition
Re-Legion
Remothered Broken Porcelain
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Revelations (X2)
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition
Retimed
Retrowave
Reventure
Revita
Ring Of Pain
Rings Of Saturn
Riot Civil Unrest
Rise Of Industry
Rise Of Insanity
Riven The Sequel To MYST
Roarr! The Adventures Of Rampage Rex
Roboquest
Rogue Heroes Ruins Of Tasos
Rogue Lords
Rogue Stormers
Rover Mechanic Simulator
RPG Maker VX
Rustler
Sable
Salt And Sanctuary
Satellite Reign
Satisfactory
Saturday Morning RPG
Say No! More
SCP 5K
SCUM (X2)
ScourgeBringer
Serious Sam 2
Serious Sam BFE (X2)
Serious Sam Classics Revolution
Serious Sam Double D XXL
Serious Sam HD The First & Second Encounter (1 key for both)
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Legend Of The Beast
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Serious 8
Serious Sam Kamikaze Attack
Serious Sam The Random Encounter
Serious Sam Bogus Detour
Shadow Tactics Aiko's Choice
Shady Part Of Me
She Remembered Caterpillars
She Will Punish Them
Shing!
Shock Troopers
Shogun's Empire Hex Commander
Shuyan Saga
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Sid Meier's Railroads
Simulacra Collection
Skeletal Avenger
Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Skully
Slime Rancher
Slinger VR
Smoke And Sacrifice (X2)
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered
Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe + Season Pass
SOMA
Song Of Iron
Soulblight
Spacebase DF-9
Space Hulk Ascension (delisted)
Sparkle 2
Sparkle Unleashed
Spellcaster University
Spelunx And The Caves Of Mr. Seudo
Spiritfarer Farewell Edition NEW
Stacking
Starsand (X2)
Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy
Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic
Stasis
State Of Decay 2 Juggernaut Edition
State Of Mind
Steel Rats
Stick Fight The Game (X3)
Stories Untold
Streets Of Fury EX
Strider (X2)
Struggling
Stubbs The Zombie
Styx Shards Of Darkness
Submerged Hidden Depths
Suchart Genius Artist Simulator
Super Indie Carts
Super Magbot
Supraland
SurrounDead (X2)
Surviving The Aftermath
Suzerain
Swag And Sorcery
Sword Legacy Omen
Swords And Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
Swords And Souls Neverseen (X2)
Syberia II
Syberia 3 Deluxe Edition
Syberia The World Before
Syndrome
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Table Manners The Physics-Based Dating Game
Tabletop Playground
Tacoma
Take On Helicopters
Tales From Candlekeep Tomb Of Annihilation (delisted)
Tales Of Monkey Island Complete
Talisman Digital Edition + City,Frostmarch,Sacred Pool (trading only as a bundle)
Talisman Origins
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Telefrag VR
Teleglitch Die More Edition
Tennis In The Face
Tennis World Tour (X2)
Tesla Force
Tesla Vs Lovecraft
Tharsis (X2)
The Amazing American Circus
The Ambassador Fractured Timelines
The Adventure Pals
The Battle Of Polytopia Moonrise Deluxe
The Blackout Club
The Citadel
The Count Lucador
The Free Ones (delisted)
The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour
theHunter Call Of The Wild (X3)
The Invisible Hand NEW
The Journey Down Chapter Three
The King Of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match
The Last Blade
The Life And Suffering Of Sir Brante
The Long Dark Survival Edition (X2)
The Manhole Masterpiece Edition
The Mims Beginning
The Mortuary Assistant
The Night Of The Rabbit
The Serpent Rogue
The Signifier Director's Cut
The Textorcist The Story of Ray Bibbia (X2)
The Uncertain Last Quiet Day (X2)
The USB Stick Found In The Grass
The Walking Dead Season 1 + 400 Days
The Wild Eight (X2)
They Bleed Pixels
Think Of The Children
This War Of Mine
Thronebreaker The Witcher Tales
THOTH
Through The Darkest Of Times
Timeshift
Time Recoil
Titan Quest Anniversary
Toejam & Earl Back In The Groove
TOEM
Tohu
Tools Up
Tooth And Tail (X2)
Torchlight (X2)
Total Tank Simulator
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Toto Temple Deluxe
Tower Of Time (X2)
Tower Unite
Townscaper (X2)
Townsmen A Kingdom Rebuilt
Toybox Turbos
Tracks The Train Set Game
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator (X2)
Tropico 4
True Fear Forsaken Souls Part 1
Tyranny Deluxe Edition
Unexplored
Unloved
Unmetal
Unshaded
Vambrace Cold Soul
Vane
Velocibox
Verdun
Vikings Wolves Of Midgard
Visage
Volcanoids (X2)
V Rally 4
Wanderlust Travel Stories (GOG key)
Warhammer 40K Chaos Gate Daemonhunters NEW
Warhammer End Times Vermintide
Warhammer Vermintide 2 NEW
Warlock Master Of The Arcane
Warpips
Warsaw
Wasteland 2 Director's Cut
We Are The Dwarves
We Should Talk
Western Press
We Were Here Together
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
While True: Learn() Chief Technology Officer Edition
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
Windjammers 2 NEW
Wooden Sen'SeY
Worms Rumble + Legends DLC
Wrath Aeon Of Ruin (X2)
XCOM Complete Pack
Xenoraid The First Space War
X Morph Defense + European Assault + Last Bastion + Survival Of The Fittest (1 key for all)
XIII Classic
Xuan-Yuan Sword The Gate Of Firmament
Yet Another Zombie Defense HD
Ylands Exploration Pack
Yoku's Island Express
Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair
Zack 2 Celestine's Map
ZIC Zombies In City
Zombie Army Trilogy

I'm from EU,so GAMES SHOULD work pretty much anywhere
NOT BUYING GAMES,ONLY TRADES - games for games or selling for paypal
No interest in TF2 keys,CSGO cases or ANY other virtual currency
BUYER covers the FEES (if outside EU,EU F&F only)
My Steam account so you don't offer me something I own
My Wishlist
My SGSRep
My IGSRep
​
​
Only looking for Steam games - so don't offer origin,uplay,rockstar,bnet or ANY other launcher
100% of my games keys are bought by me from official stores & I expect the same in return,so don't offer me keyshop games or game keys you got in a trade as I will decline
I retain the right to ask for proof of ownership for ANY game I want - just like YOU have the right to ask me the same
​
​
List of games I have:
Also have the Earthquake Relief bundle but reddit wont let me write all the games cause my topic would be too big - just ask
7 Billion Humans
8Doors Arum's Afterlife Adventure
10 Second Ninja X
60 Seconds!
112 Operator
140
198X
911 Operator
A Case Of Distrust
A Year Of Rain
Absolver
Aeolis Tournament
Age Of Wonders III
Ageless
Airport CEO
AI War 2
Alien Spidy
Aliens Vs Predator Collection
All You Can Eat
Almost There The Platformer
American Fugitive
Amnesia A Machine For Pigs + The Dark Descent (1 key for both games)
Amnesia Fortnight 2012
Amnesia Fortnight 2014
Amnesia Fortnight 2017
Amnesia Rebirth (X2)
Among Us (X2)
Ancestors The Humankind Odyssey (EU & Africa lock)
Aragami (X2)
Archamon
Army Men RTS
Attack Of The Earthlings
Automobilista
Aven Colony
Avernum 3 Ruined World
Azkend 2 The World Beneath
Back 4 Blood (EU region lock)
Backbone
Band Of Defenders
Banished
Baseball Riot
Batora Lost Haven
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
Behind The Frame Finest Scenery NEW
Beholder 2
Bendy And The Dark Revival (X2)
Bendy And The Ink Machine
Betrayer (delisted)
Between The Stars (X2)
Beyond Eyes
Beyond The Wire
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando Rearmed
Bird Of Light
Black Paradox
Blasphemous
Bohemian Killing
Book Of Demons
Bomber Crew Deluxe
Borderlands 3 + Director's Cut (ask about region locks)
Borderlands 3 Super Deluxe Edition NEW (ask about region locks)
Boreal Blade
Broken Age (X2)
Brothers A Tale Of Two Sons (X2)
Builder Simulator NEW
Butcher
Call Of Juarez
Call Of The Sea (X2)
Call To Arms Basic Edition
Call To Arms Gates Of Hell Ostfront
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
Chenso Club
Chernobylite Enhanced Edition
Cities In Motion 2
CivCity Rome
Clone Drone In The Danger Zone
Clouds & Sheep 2
Coffin Dodgers
Cook Serve Delicious 3
Company Of Heroes Complete Edition
Control Ultimate Edition
Corridor Z
Cosmic Osmo And The World Beyond The Mackerel
Crash Drive 3
Creatures Inc
Crookz The Big Heist
Crossbow Bloodnight
Crusader Kings Complete
Crying Suns
Dagon The Eldritch Box
Danger Scavenger
Day Of Infamy
Dead Age
Dead In Vinland
Deadly Premonition Director's Cut
Deadbeat Heroes (X2)
Dear Ester Landmark Edition
Death Stranding Director's Cut
Death Squared
Deep Dungeons Of Doom
Deep Sky Derelicts
Demon Turf
Deployment
Desert Child
Destiny 2 Beyond Light NEW
Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor
Dicey Dungeons (X2)
Dimension Drifter
Distraint 2 + Soundtrack
Divekick
Dog Sled Saga
Double Fine Adventures Complete Series Deluxe
Downwell
Drawful 2
Draw Slasher
Dreadlands
Dread X Collection
Driftland The Magic Revival
Dry Downing
Duke Nukem Forever Collection
Dungeon Marathon
Dungeon Of The Endless
Dungeons 2
Dungeons 2 Complete
Dungeons 3
Dusk
Dwarfs!?
Eador Imperium
EarthX
Eastside Hockey Manager
ECHO
Edge Of Eternity
Effie
Elderborn
Eldest Souls
Elden Path Of The Forgotten
Embr
Emily Is Away
Empyrion Galactic Survival
Epic Manager
E.T. Armies Deluxe Edition
Etherborn (X2)
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Europa Universalis IV
Evergarden
Expeditions Viking
F1 2018 (delisted)
Family Man
Fantasy Blacksmith
Fantasy Versus
Farmer's Dynasty
Farming Simulator 17
FIA European Truck Racing
Figment (X2)
Finding Paradise
Fire Ungh's Quest
First Class Trouble
Five Dates
Fling To The Finish
Fluffy Horde
Fobia St. Dinfna Hotel
Forgive Me Father
Framed Collection (X2)
Friday the 13th: The Game
Fun With Ragdolls The Game
Fury Unleashed (X2)
Gang Beasts
Garage Bad Trip (X2)
Gas Guzzlers Extreme
Gas Station Simulator
Gauge
Generation Zero NEW
Ghostrunner
Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams + Rise Of The Owlverlord
Gloria Victis NEW
GNOG
Go Home Dinosaurs!
Goat Of Duty
Goetia (X2)
Going Under (X2)
Golden Light
Golf Gang
GoNNER
Grand Ages Medieval
Grand Pigeon's Duty
Greak Memories Of Azur
Gremlins Inc.
Grip Combat Racing + Cygon + Nyvoss + Terra + Vintek DLC (X2)
Guts And Glory (X2)
Hack'n'Slash
Haiku The Robot (X3)
Hamilton's Great Adventure
Hammerfight
Headlander
Heal
Hedon Bloodrite
Hell Let Loose
Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice
Hello Neighbor
Hellbound
Hero Defense
Hero's Hour (EU region lock)
Hexologic
Hidden & Dangerous Action Pack
Hidden & Dangerous 2 Courage Under Fire
Hive Jump (X2)
Hiveswap Act 2
Hiveswap Friend Sim (X2)
Hollow Knight
Homeworld Deserts Of Kharak
Hotshot Racing
Hot Tin Roof The Cat That Wore A Fedora
Hot Wheels Unleashed
Hover (X2)
Human Resource Machine
Hurtworld
I Am Bread
I Am Not A Monster First Contact
Ice Lakes
If Found...
Ikenfell
Impact Winter (delisted)
In Between
Industria
Inexistence Rebirth
Infinite Air With Mark McMorris (delisted)
Influent
Inmost
Interplanetary Enhanced Edition
Intruder
Ion Fury
Iron Danger
Iron Harvest
Jack Axe
Jalopy
Jet Set Knights
Juanito Arcade Mayhem
Jump Stars
Jurassic World Evolution
Just Die Already
KartKraft
Kathy Rain Directors Cut
Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes (X2)
Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe NEW
Kill To Collect
Kingdom Classic (X2)
Kingdom New Lands
Kingdoms Of Amalur Re-Reckoning Fate Edition
King Oddball
Labyrinthine
Last Oasis
Last Tide
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Lead And Gold Gangs Of Wild West (X2)
Legacy Of Dorn Herald Of Oblivion (delisted)
Legend Of Keepers Career Of A Dungeon Master
Leisure Suit Larry Retro Bundle (1 to 7)
Lethal League Blaze
Liberated (GOG key)
Lifeless Planet Premium Edition
Light Fall
Little Big Workshop
Lone Fungus
Lost Planet Complete Pack
Lost Ruins
Lust For Darkness
Lust From Beyond M Edition
Magicka
Magrunner Dark Pulse
Maid Of Sker
Main Assembly (X2)
Mars Horizon
Masquerade The Baubles Of Doom
Max Payne 3 (Rockstar Launcher)
Mega Man Legacy Collection
Midnight Ghost Hunt NEW
Midnight Protocol
Mind Scanners
Mini Metro
Miscreated (X2)
Monster Crown
Moon Hunters
Morbid The Seven Acolytes
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator 2021
Motorsport Manager
Mount And Blade Warband
My Lovely Daughter
Naruto To Boruto Shinobi Striker
Nascar Heat 5 Ultimate
Nebuchadnezzar
NecroVisioN Lost Company
NecroWorn
Neighbours Back From Hell
Neo Cab
Neon Abyss
NeuroVoider
Neverout
Nickelodeon All Star Brawl (X2)
Ninjin Clash Of Carrots
No Time To Relax
Northgard NEW
Not Tonight
Obduction
Observation
Octahedron
Odyssey The Story Of Science
Of Orcs And Men
Old School Musical
OlliOlli World Rad Edition
On Rusty Trails
One Finger Death Punch 2
Onikira Demon Killer
Operation Tango NEW
Orbital Racer
Orcs Must Die 2 Complete
Original War
Orwell Ignorance Is Strength
Out Of Reach Treasure Royal
Overlord II
Overpass
Override Mech City Brawl
Oxenfree
Pacer
Paint The Town Red
Paper Fire Rookie
Paradise Lost
Path Of Giants
Paw Paw Paw
Payday 2 + Big Mike mask
Peaky Blinders Mastermind (delisted)
Penarium
People Playground (X2)
Perfect Heist 2
PGA Tour 2K21 (X2)
Phoenix Point Year One Edition
Pikuniku
Pine
Pinstripe
Pixplode
Plane Mechanic Simulator
Poöf
Popup Dungeon
Post Void
Pound Of Ground (X2)
PowerSlave Exhumed
Prehistoric Kingdom
Primal Carnage Extinction (X2)
Project Cars GOTY (delisted)
Project Hospital
Project Warlock
Propnight
Pulsar The Lost Colony NEW
Pumped BMX+
Punch Club
Purrfect Date
Quest Of Dungeons
RAD (X2)
Radio Commander
Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
Railroad Tycoon 2
Railroad Tycoon 3
Railway Empire
Rain World
Raji An Ancient Epic
Rebel Cops
Rec Center Tycoon
Red Faction Armageddon
Red Solstice 2 Survivors
Redeemer Enhanced Edition
Redout Enhanced Edition
Re-Legion
Remothered Broken Porcelain
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Revelations (X2)
Resident Evil Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition
Retimed
Retrowave
Reventure
Revita
Ring Of Pain
Rings Of Saturn
Riot Civil Unrest
Rise Of Industry
Rise Of Insanity
Riven The Sequel To MYST
Roarr! The Adventures Of Rampage Rex
Roboquest
Rogue Heroes Ruins Of Tasos
Rogue Lords
Rogue Stormers
Rover Mechanic Simulator
RPG Maker VX
Rustler
Sable
Salt And Sanctuary
Satellite Reign
Satisfactory
Saturday Morning RPG
Say No! More
SCP 5K
SCUM (X2)
ScourgeBringer
Serious Sam 2
Serious Sam BFE (X2)
Serious Sam Classics Revolution
Serious Sam Double D XXL
Serious Sam HD The First & Second Encounter (1 key for both)
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Legend Of The Beast
Serious Sam HD The Second Encounter Serious 8
Serious Sam Kamikaze Attack
Serious Sam The Random Encounter
Serious Sam Bogus Detour
Shadow Tactics Aiko's Choice
Shady Part Of Me
She Remembered Caterpillars
She Will Punish Them
Shing!
Shock Troopers
Shogun's Empire Hex Commander
Shuyan Saga
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
Sid Meier's Railroads
Simulacra Collection
Skeletal Avenger
Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Skully
Slime Rancher
Slinger VR
Smoke And Sacrifice (X2)
Sniper Elite V2 Remastered
Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe + Season Pass
SOMA
Song Of Iron
Soulblight
Spacebase DF-9
Space Hulk Ascension (delisted)
Sparkle 2
Sparkle Unleashed
Spellcaster University
Spelunx And The Caves Of Mr. Seudo
Spiritfarer Farewell Edition NEW
Stacking
Starsand (X2)
Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy
Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic
Stasis
State Of Decay 2 Juggernaut Edition
State Of Mind
Steel Rats
Stick Fight The Game (X3)
Stories Untold
Streets Of Fury EX
Strider (X2)
Struggling
Stubbs The Zombie
Styx Shards Of Darkness
Submerged Hidden Depths
Suchart Genius Artist Simulator
Super Indie Carts
Super Magbot
Supraland
SurrounDead (X2)
Surviving The Aftermath
Suzerain
Swag And Sorcery
Sword Legacy Omen
Swords And Soldiers 2 Shawarmageddon
Swords And Souls Neverseen (X2)
Syberia II
Syberia 3 Deluxe Edition
Syberia The World Before
Syndrome
System Shock Enhanced Edition
Table Manners The Physics-Based Dating Game
Tabletop Playground
Tacoma
Take On Helicopters
Tales From Candlekeep Tomb Of Annihilation (delisted)
Tales Of Monkey Island Complete
Talisman Digital Edition + City,Frostmarch,Sacred Pool (trading only as a bundle)
Talisman Origins
Tank Mechanic Simulator
Telefrag VR
Teleglitch Die More Edition
Tennis In The Face
Tennis World Tour (X2)
Tesla Force
Tesla Vs Lovecraft
Tharsis (X2)
The Amazing American Circus
The Ambassador Fractured Timelines
The Adventure Pals
The Battle Of Polytopia Moonrise Deluxe
The Blackout Club
The Citadel
The Count Lucador
The Free Ones (delisted)
The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour
theHunter Call Of The Wild (X3)
The Invisible Hand NEW
The Journey Down Chapter Three
The King Of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match
The Last Blade
The Life And Suffering Of Sir Brante
The Long Dark Survival Edition (X2)
The Manhole Masterpiece Edition
The Mims Beginning
The Mortuary Assistant
The Night Of The Rabbit
The Serpent Rogue
The Signifier Director's Cut
The Textorcist The Story of Ray Bibbia (X2)
The Uncertain Last Quiet Day (X2)
The USB Stick Found In The Grass
The Walking Dead Season 1 + 400 Days
The Wild Eight (X2)
They Bleed Pixels
Think Of The Children
This War Of Mine
Thronebreaker The Witcher Tales
THOTH
Through The Darkest Of Times
Timeshift
Time Recoil
Titan Quest Anniversary
Toejam & Earl Back In The Groove
TOEM
Tohu
Tools Up
Tooth And Tail (X2)
Torchlight (X2)
Total Tank Simulator
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Toto Temple Deluxe
Tower Of Time (X2)
Tower Unite
Townscaper (X2)
Townsmen A Kingdom Rebuilt
Toybox Turbos
Tracks The Train Set Game
Train Station Renovation
Treasure Hunter Simulator (X2)
Tropico 4
True Fear Forsaken Souls Part 1
Tyranny Deluxe Edition
Unexplored
Unloved
Unmetal
Unshaded
Vambrace Cold Soul
Vane
Velocibox
Verdun
Vikings Wolves Of Midgard
Visage
Volcanoids (X2)
V Rally 4
Wanderlust Travel Stories (GOG key)
Warhammer 40K Chaos Gate Daemonhunters NEW
Warhammer End Times Vermintide
Warhammer Vermintide 2 NEW
Warlock Master Of The Arcane
Warpips
Warsaw
Wasteland 2 Director's Cut
We Are The Dwarves
We Should Talk
Western Press
We Were Here Together
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
While True: Learn() Chief Technology Officer Edition
White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
Windjammers 2 NEW
Wooden Sen'SeY
Worms Rumble + Legends DLC
Wrath Aeon Of Ruin (X2)
XCOM Complete Pack
Xenoraid The First Space War
X Morph Defense + European Assault + Last Bastion + Survival Of The Fittest (1 key for all)
XIII Classic
Xuan-Yuan Sword The Gate Of Firmament
Yet Another Zombie Defense HD
Ylands Exploration Pack
Yoku's Island Express
Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair
Zack 2 Celestine's Map
ZIC Zombies In City
Zombie Army Trilogy

At Royal Rumble 2023, Asuka returned after a brief hiatus, sporting a deranged look reminiscent of her days as Kana. And since that point, the Empress of Tomorrow has solidified her powerful aura, winning the Elimination Chamber match and avenging her disappointing loss to Bianca at WrestleMania 39 by dethroning the EST at Night Of Champions. And while Asuka has been Raw Women’s Champion before, this time feels…different…
Monday Night Raw (5/29/23):
Following Night of Champions with the crowning of Asuka, it would appear the landscape of the women’s division has changed. While some individuals are surely eager to go after singles gold, this isn’t initially the case for the Way. In a backstage interview with Byron Saxton, Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell express their desire to go after the Women’s Tag Team Titles, only to be interrupted by the lunatic duo of Chelsea Green and Sonya Deville. Deville tries to get under the skin of the pairing, particularly LeRae, mocking her struggles to get victories as of late. However, Candice retorts that Sonya and Chelsea haven’t done anything either, their only actual success as a duo being making Adam Pearce question his own sanity. After a few more moments of bickering, Green tries to slap LeRae, but Hartwell blocks it for her, shoving Chelsea to the ground. Sonya shoves Indi back, and Candice in-turn attacks Deville, forcing several officials to have to separate things.
This results in a singles match later in the evening between Deville and LeRae, with Sonya trying to make an example out of the “Poison Pixie”. It’s a fairly back-and-forth encounter, with LeRae starting the match off hot, but Sonya is able to adapt, using her MMA background to her advantage with increasingly strong shots. However, as Sonya gains control, her emotions also start to fluctuate a bit. Rather than just go for the win at points, she decides to inflict further damage, regularly targeting the right arm in particular with a combination of stomps and armbars. However, the turning point of the match comes when Deville kneels down, once again looking to apply some type of submission hold…only for LeRae to transition it into the Garga-No Escape! While Sonya doesn’t submit, it gives her enough breathing room to mount a comeback, eventually hitting her signature springboard moonsault to finish things.
Candice LeRae def. Sonya Deville via pinfall
After the match, Candice and Indi take a moment to celebrate the win…BUT HERE COMES ASUKA! The Raw Women’s Champion is in the building, and she looks as maniacal as ever. She makes her way towards LeRae…and offers a handshake? Candice is definitely hesitant to accept, and for good reason, as when she starts moving her hand out…ASUKA HITS HER WITH A ROUNDHOUSE KICK! Indi tries to avenge her downed partner, but Asuka takes her out with a spinning backfist. The Empress moves back towards LeRae, staring at the injured right arm…AND SHE APPLIES A VICIOUS ARMBAR, SNAPPING IT IN THE PROCESS! Asuka eventually lets go, with Johnny Gargano and a medical official coming out to tend to LeRae while Adam Pearce wants to know what’s wrong with Asuka…to which she merely replies with a sinister smile…
Monday Night Raw (6/5/23):
About half-way through the show, Johnny Gargano comes to the ring, ready to give an update on his wife Candice LeRae. He says that while LeRae is unable to compete, it’s only for a short period of time, and the fracture to her arm was small enough as to where she won’t require surgery. However, Gargano also says that LeRae wanted him to pass along a message…which is why he’s calling out Asuka to the ring! On cue, the Empress comes out, looking at Johnny Wrestling with a curious look. Gargano says that once upon a time, he and his wife both had respect for Asuka’s accomplishments, especially her record-setting run in NXT. However, with the actions of last week, they no longer have those sentiments, and when LeRae returns from this set-back, she’s challenging you for that Raw Women’s Title! As Gargano says this, Asuka just begins giving a deranged laugh. No one in the arena knows what to make of this…until Asuka picks up a mic…to simply say…bye bye…
As Asuka makes her way to the ring apron, Gargano is left staring in confusion at what transpired…but suddenly, the lights go out! When they turn back on…a trio of masked men are destroying Johnny Wrestling! He tries to fight back, but he’s just overpowered, and left to be stomped on as Asuka just watches on from ringside, enjoying the carnage. The biggest of the three hits Gargano with a top rope splash, before what appears to be the leader hits…a wheelbarrow neckbreaker. As the individual hits this, Asuka comes back into the ring, standing alongside the figures. She whispers something to them, and they move their hand to the top of the masks, pulling them off to reveal…IT’S SAnitY! Eric Young, Alexander Wolfe, and Killian Dain are all back in WWE, and it appears they’ve aligned themselves with the Empress of Tomorrow. But the question left to be answered… Where is Nikki Cross in all of this?
Monday Night Raw (6/12/23):
In a backstage segment early in the show, the camera shows Nikki Cross backstage, alone and looking down, drowning in her own crazed thoughts…until Eric Young enters the shot. Cross raises her head, looking expressionless while a smile slowly creeps across the face of Young. He asks her…
“Won’t you join us?”
However, before Nikki can answer…HERE COMES JOHNNY GARGANO! He dives at Eric, looking to get revenge on one of the men who decimated him the week prior. He’s successful initially, but soon enough, Wolfe and Dain rush in, prying Johnny off Young and starting to beat him down. Luckily for Gargano, he came prepared, as he too has backup in the form of Dexter Lumis! SAnitY backs off as Dexter comes in with a steel chair, but not before Young mouths the words…This isn’t over…
Monday Night Raw (6/19/23): Johnny Gargano and Dexter Lumis vs. Eric Young and Killian Dain
With the tensions continuing to rise between the Way and SAnitY, it was inevitable they’d have to square off at some point, and Adam Pearce decides to see if a tag match can resolve this. The match starts off with Gargano and Young, Johnny Wrestling anxious to annihilate him while Young is more amused than scared. Johnny is able to get the upper hand initially, a superkick giving him the brief opportunity to then apply a Garga-No Escape. However, Killian Dain breaks up the hold by just hitting a Senton on Gargano’s back, a tactical maneuver to give Young the chance to gain control. However, Lumis enters the ring as well, grabbing Dain and trying to set him up for a side slam. However, Killian avoids it, and the pair move to the outside of the ring to brawl. By the end of the match, Gargano is weakened, but he’s still got the power of adrenaline on his side. He’s able to tag in for Lumis, getting in a flurry of offense against the big man Dain, including a pair of superkicks to knock him off his feet. However, as he goes for the One Final Beat, Young grabs his foot by the ring apron, preventing him from springboarding into the ring. Gargano’s able to kick him away, but when Johnny does go for the maneuver, Dain catches him, planting him in the center of the ring. He follows up on it with a splash from the top rope, with Young tagging in as he does so. And with Killian shoving Lumis off the apron, Young is able to hit the Wheelbarrow Neckbreaker to finish the match.
SAnitY def. Johnny Gargano and Dexter Lumis
After the match, Asuka makes her way to the ring, standing alongside SAnitY once again. She looks at the downed Gargano, now with a disgusted look on her face rather than an evil grin. She turns to Young, who nods and motions for Dain and Wolfe to pick Johnny up. But right before Asuka can seemingly hit him with the Mist…Here comes Nikki Cross! She rushes to the ring, sliding in and looking right at Asuka as she does so. Young walks up to her, asking her the question…
“Are you with us, Nikki?”
Cross stares at Young for a moment…then to Wolfe…then to Dain…then to Asuka. It’s to the Raw Women’s Champion that she gives the longest stare, Nikki’s eyes slowly growing wider and her expression becoming more intense. And with that, she mutters just a few words…
“You hurt my friends…she hurt my best friend… now she will pay.”
And with that, Cross dives onto Asuka, unleashing a flurry of strikes and catching everyone in the ring by surprise. However, Young pries Nikki off of the Empress, to which Cross responds by starting to attack him! However, it’s short lived, as Asuka runs up behind Nikki and drops her with a roundhouse kick. She quickly gets her locked in a crossface chickenwing as well, Nikki unable to escape and ultimately passing out. Before she fades, she’s left to only see the disappointed looks on the face of the SAnitY members…”You made the wrong choice Nikki”. But the attention soon shifts back to Gargano and Lumis now. They’ve slowly risen to their feet, and Gargano, looking directly at Young, demands another fight! Young sighs, seemingly bored at the prospect of SAnitY having to dismantle those two again…but it shall be done. However, before they can move in for the kill, we suddenly hear crashes echo throughout the arena. They happen for a few seconds, before the lights dim slightly. An unfamiliar melodic theme starts playing, sounding slightly reminiscent of that of a final boss, but as the lights turn back on, it changes back into the more recognizable song…
…NO ONE WILL SURVIVE! IT’S TOMMASO CIAMPA! After being on the shelf for months, he’s finally back, and as he gets into the ring, he looks at Johnny Gargano…there’s no shortage of history here. And while there’s a momentary tension as to what he’s gonna do, he sides with his former DIY partner, making it a more fair fight! Unfortunately, he doesn’t get the chance to lay into any of SAnitY, as they decide to make their exit, already having made a statement with the victory and assault on Asuka, nothing more needed to be done…tonight, at least.
Monday Night Raw (6/26/23): Indi Hartwell vs. Asuka - Non-Title Match
In her first match since beating Bianca at Night of Champions, Asuka looks to prove why she’s the champion. She starts off the match well, not letting Indi get any momentum by just rocking her with a series of kicks to the chest. After dragging Hartwell to the outside, Asuka begins going after the arm, slamming it several times into the ring post before deciding to inflict some pain to the skull with a tiger suplex. This momentarily causes the ref to check on her, potentially looking to end the match…but Asuka isn’t willing to let that happen. She gets Indi back in the ring, lining her up for a running hip attack…BUT HARTWELL TRANSITIONS IT INTO A GERMAN SUPLEX! Despite having just been on the ropes, Indi managed to use what she had left in the tank to take down Asuka, and as she gets to her feet, she feels the crowd surging behind her. She starts taking it to the Empress, getting her backed into the corner and landing a few solid chops. However, she gets a bit overzealous, trying to get Asuka on the top rope for a potential suplex attempt, only for the former Kana to kick her away and land a knee directly to the back of Indi’s neck. And with that, Asuka remains in the power position, eventually locking on the same Armbar that injured Candice LeRae and forcing Hartwell to tap or get snapped.
Asuka def. Indi Hartwell via submission
But before Asuka really has a chance to even get up…HERE COMES NIKKI CROSS! She runs out with a kendo stick, furious as to what transpired the week prior, and gets in a few shots on Asuka before Alexander Wolfe attempts to pry the weapon away. In response, Nikki shoves it into his gut, before hitting him with a swinging neckbreaker and sending a message to Asuka that she’s just as much of a force to be reckoned with. And it’s later announced that this match has been declared official for Money In the Bank: let’s see if these two dangerous competitors can live up to their classic from NXT…
Money In The Bank (7/1/23): Nikki Cross vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Despite not having a stipulation like their Last Woman Standing Match in 2017, the match is still intense from start-to-finish. Cross runs at Asuka immediately, getting in some shots with the elbow to the side of the face. Asuka is forced to a sitting position, allowing Nikki to gather some steam from running along the ropes before landing a kick to Asuka’s jaw! Unfortunately for Cross, her frenzied nature ends up backfiring, as when the action shifts to the outside, Asuka dodges a running attack and sends Nikki nearly head first into the barricade! With Nikki instinctively grabbing her head after the missed maneuver, Asuka sees what to target, dragging Cross to the ring apron and repeatedly crushing her skull into the ring post. And as the action shifts back into the ring, it’s just more of the same, Asuka being momentarily hit by mini-bursts of offense, but the damage inflicted on the skull clearly affecting her. This is evidenced when Cross has Asuka lined up for the swinging neckbreaker, potentially able to get her the win…only to collapse before she can properly hit it. With that, Asuka is able to apply the Asuka Lock, and as happened a couple of weeks ago, Cross passes out in the hold.
Asuka def. Nikki Cross via submission pass-out to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
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On the Raw after Money in the Bank, Candice LeRae would make her return from injury, calling out Asuka for a match…only to learn she isn’t in the building. But she decides to still issue a challenge, saying that while she wanted the Raw Women’s Title initially…now it’s about more than that. Asuka took out Candice’s friends and family, and left her away from the ring for too long…now, she wants to beat Asuka for vengeance first, gold later. And later on, it’s confirmed that the match will be taking place when Asuka returns…except it’ll be for the title as well! Pearce claims that the decision is due to Asuka’s recent actions, as after all, letting someone try to break someone’s limb after a match with no repercussions is a pretty bad look. But while this choice of action would normally upset some superstars…it might just put a smile on Asuka’s face…
Monday Night Raw (7/10/23): Candice LeRae vs. Asuka
Before making her entrance, Candice LeRae gets herself prepared with the rest of the Way, with Nikki Cross sitting in a corner nearby as well. Indi tells her to be cautious…Asuka’s a very dangerous competitor. LeRae of course knows this, but she’s caught off-guard by some words of wisdom from Nikki several feet away:
“Destroy her.”
Candice looks at Nikki, who’s staring back at her with something in her eyes…A look of needing something… wanting Candice to kill the Empress. LeRae nods, and she heads out to the ring, more confident than ever…And she truly gives it her all. LeRae’s strategy is simple: prevent Asuka from using her signature kicks. And for most of the match, she executes on her plan, moving herself back whenever she senses a roundhouse coming and catching Asuka off-balance. However, this was never going to last, and once Asuka lands a kick to the gut, she’s able to gather steam. And while this doesn’t finish LeRae, the “Poison Pixie” even managing to hit a springboard moonsault AND lock in a Garga-No Escape at various points, Asuka eventually locks in an Armbar on the previously-injured limb that Candice can’t overcome.
Asuka def. Candice LeRae via submission to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
After the match, the rest of the Way comes out, helping Candice to her feet. As they do so, Asuka stares at them, and then begins…counting them? The Way and the commentary team are confused, but as Asuka only counts four people…a maniacal expression overtakes her. She starts walking quickly to the back, and a few moments later, it becomes clear what her intentions were…
As the Way walks backstage, they’re horrified to discover a brutalized Nikki Cross! They rush over to her, asking who did this…and to no one’s surprise, she says it was Asuka. However, it soon becomes clear to Gargano…Ciampa might be next! While Indi and Candice stay with Nikki, Johnny (and Dexter to a lesser extent) start rushing through the halls, trying to get to the right locker room…but it’s too late, as SAnitY and Asuka are seen moving away from it! While Lumis stands guard, Gargano rushes inside, and finds Ciampa not just taken out…but also sprayed by Asuka’s mist! Johnny rushes over, giving Tommaso a towel, but as Tommaso wipes the mist off his face…there appears to be a dark look in his eyes, something not seen in him since when he destroyed DIY…
Remaining Build To SummerSlam:
While Ciampa, Gargano, and Lumis keep their attention towards SAnitY for a bit, Asuka shifts away from LeRae, Hartwell, and Cross, having beaten all three after all. With an open mic, she begins giving one of her standard energetic promos, seemingly wanting to know who her next challenger is gonna be…even though no one is ready for Asuka. It’s not long before someone interrupts though…and it’s someone who Asuka has grown familiar with in 2023…It’s Bianca Belair! The EST remained off television for several weeks following Night of Champions, but now, she’s back and angrier than ever. Bianca grabs the mic straight out of Asuka’s hand, and cuts a quick promo:
“Asuka… you say no one’s ready for you. But you’re wrong… because I’ve ALWAYS been ready for you. I proved that at WrestleMania 39, when I beat you clean in the center of this ring. And what did you do? You had to use that mist, that cursed, blinding mist. And you know what? Congratulations, it got you the title, but not for long. Because I say we have ONE MORE MATCH. But I think it’s time to have a match where no excuses can be made, and there are no rules to be broken. Asuka… At SummerSlam…I challenge you to HELL… IN A CELL!”
The crowd are clearly in favor of this stipulation…And it appears Asuka is too! She starts nodding repeatedly, and Bianca just stares on with a prepared look, perhaps fazed in the past by Asuka’s personality traits but now just ready to finally vanquish her and get the Raw Women’s Title back in her possession. In the remaining weeks, Bianca competes multiple times, getting the ring rust off with multiple victories, while Asuka is content with sitting at ringside for both contests…studying her competition…
SummerSlam (8/5/23): Bianca Belair vs. Asuka (c) - Hell in a Cell Match for the Raw Women’s Championship
We’ve finally made it to the Biggest Party of the Summer, and what better of a place to host it than in Detroit at Ford Field (definitely no bias as a Lions fan)! Once both Asuka and Belair are locked in the cage, the match starts at a feverish place, Bianca hitting a strong shoulder tackle only for Asuka to respond with a spinning backfist a few moments later! As the dust settles on the first fifteen seconds, the competitors look at each other, giving a momentary smirk and scoff apiece before continuing with the action. Bianca showcases her power, getting the Empress lifted in the Gorilla Press position and just hurling her at the cell wall! The several-foot fall to the floor certainly adds to the blow, and Bianca continues the assault outside the ring, slamming Asuka’s head repeatedly into the cage! However, she decides to look under the ring for a weapon, a table quickly catching her eye. She pushes it into the ring, but makes the mistake of turning her back to Asuka while doing so, the former Kana grabbing her from behind and hitting a Tiger Suplex onto the floor!
With Asuka now the lone woman standing, she follows up Bianca’s decision to look under the ring, pulling out a kendo stick. She feels it around in her grasp, getting a good feel for the damage she’s about to inflict. Once Bianca groggily gets to her feet, Asuka just decimates her back, hitting the stick ten times in immediate succession! However, Bianca’s able to dodge an eleventh shot targeted towards the throat, pulling the kendo stick to her and snapping it in half! Asuka looks briefly stunned, but not before she gives a condescending set of claps. In response, Belair grabs her, picking her up for a powerbomb and sending Asuka’s back to connect with the ring apron! Bianca then drags Asuka into the ring, proceeding to set up a table and initially primed to hit a K.O.D. through it. However, Asuka grabs Bianca’s hair, weakening her grip momentarily and presenting an opportunity to escape. Upon doing so, Asuka roundhouse kicks Belair, before getting her positioned on the table, climbing to the top rope…AND HITS A SPLASH ON BIANCA RIGHT THROUGH IT! 1-2-KICKOUT!
Despite the table spot being unable to put away Bianca, Asuka appears unfazed. She exits the ring, bringing a pair of steel steps back into the squared circle. Asuka picks Belair up, seemingly trying to hit a brainbuster on it…But Belair dodges, landing backwards on the steps before turning around and hitting a mini-elevated Spear! This leaves both women down for a few moments, but Bianca rises to her feet first. She gets in some of her signature offense, including a spinebuster on the steel steps! However, her attempt at a K.O.D. on the steps doesn’t work in her favor, with Asuka once again avoiding it. And unfortunately for Belair, Asuka is able to hit her with a suplex on the steps, this being the key factor for the rest of the match-up. With Bianca’s power lessened a bit AND Asuka’s submission hold targeting the back, she faces a tall task, and is ultimately unable to overcome it, the Asuka Lock resulting in a pass-out.
Asuka def. Bianca Belair via submission pass-out to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
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After an impressive victory at SummerSlam, Asuka has definitely proven that she’s going to be difficult to beat. But soon enough, she finds herself confronted by a potentially harmful numbers game…
Monday Night Raw (8/7/23): Damage CTRL Promo
Despite recent events not going so well for Damage CTRL, with Dakota Kai tearing her ACL and neither Iyo Sky nor Bayley able to capture the Money in the Bank briefcase, they’re still determined to get momentum back on their side. Bayley makes the bold decision to call out Asuka, saying that if she were actually a fighting champion, she’d consider accepting a match for the title. Asuka comes out, grinning at Bayley trying to goad her into a title opportunity. Asuka looks at Bayley as just another poor soul to be destroyed, but Iyo…Iyo has potential. Asuka even tells Sky…”Bayley isn’t your friend…but I am…”
This seems to get in Iyo’s head, as she begins looking questioningly at Bayley, who attempts to diffuse the situation by just pointing out Asuka being a freak who gets in people’s heads. In response, Asuka kicks Bayley square in the gut, and when Iyo instinctively goes to fight, Asuka shakes her head…I don’t want to fight you… You don’t need to be part of this…
Remaining Build To Extreme Rules:
Over the coming weeks, Bayley becomes a little more sympathetic, her intentions appearing less out of pure arrogance and more about striving to win championship gold back and improve her honor. She goes on a winning streak, but when confronting Adam Pearce about getting a confirmed title shot, he says there’s one more person she has to beat…Iyo Sky.
At this same time, Iyo looks perturbed whenever she’s on television, still at Bayley’s side but signs pointing to her being less convinced than when Damage CTRL began. And after Bayley does defeat Iyo to earn the #1 Contendership, Sky is just left sitting in the ring, staring down at the mat whilst utterly disappointed. Bayley offers her a handshake, but Asuka stands at ringside, motioning her to come roll out of the ring and stand tall with her. In response, Iyo moves in neither woman’s direction, rolling out to the entrance ramp and walking away alone, uncertain of what her future holds.
But with Extreme Rules approaching, there must also be a stipulation, and after a set of assaults from Asuka leave Bayley staring at the lights, Bayley decides it’s in both of their best interest to settle on…A Last Woman Standing Match! Asuka can try to keep putting her down, but she’s gotten back up each time, and come the PPV…The reign of the Empress will be history.
Extreme Rules: Bayley vs. Asuka (c) - Last Woman Standing Match for the Raw Women’s Championship
In a rematch of their TakeOver: Dallas encounter, the feel of the match is similar to what it was several years ago. Bayley, despite having been around in WWE longer, is the underdog, looking to prove herself against a terrorizing monster who we’re unsure can truly be beaten. The action quickly spills out of the ring, with Bayley even managing to hit a quick Bayley-To-Belly Suplex. Unfortunately, Asuka gets up before even a count of 5, disturbing Bayley. The action spills into the crowd for a while, with Asuka suplexing Bayley on the staircase and the former “Hugger” sent tumbling down for a solid five seconds. But eventually, Bayley recaptures the momentum, finding a trash can with weapons and using a kendo stick to start wailing on Asuka. And as the action approaches a set-up table, Bayley is able to not just prop her up on it, but successfully hit an Elbow Drop from a ledge through it as well! Bayley gets up at a count of three, and while Asuka is left stunned by the move, she recovers at a count of 8, continuing the match-up.
From there, the match spills back closer to the ring, with Bayley putting Asuka in the ring before grabbing a table. She sets it up, but Asuka manages to recover in time to avoid a Bayley-To-Belly through it, instead tossing Bayley to the side momentarily before going at her with a running hip attack. Asuka keeps control for a bit, but as she looks to put Bayley through the table…Here comes Iyo Sky! She slowly walks to the ring, not attacking Asuka initially, but giving Bayley enough time to send Asuka off the top rope and to the floor. However, with the action back on the outside, Asuka looks to be a bit desperate, using her signature Mist to blind Bayley! After this happens, Iyo rushes over to Bayley to try and help…But Bayley shoves her down hard to the floor, thinking it was Asuka! Meanwhile, the real Asuka appears behind Bayley, dragging her back into the ring. Asuka decides to lock on the crossface chickenwing, attempting to pass out Bayley, but this seems to only increase the fire in her spirit, Bayley able to back her into a corner to break the hold. Bayley rubs her eyes, improving her vision, and she drags Asuka to the table, seemingly able to hit the Bayley-To-Belly through the table this time…
…BUT IYO HITS BAYLEY IN THE BACK WITH A STEEL CHAIR FROM OUT OF NOWHERE! Bayley falls to her knees, slowly turning around with a look of heartbreak and pain on her face. Iyo returns the look with an icy cold stare, before Asuka pops-up behind Bayley, applying the Asuka Lock to pass the former “Role Model” out. But given this requires a ten count for Bayley to be down, and Asuka wanting to see what Iyo can do…she motions to the table. Iyo nods, getting Bayley set-up, climbing to the top rope, and hitting a Moonsault, crushing Bayley’s ribs, her friendship, and her hopes of winning the match in one fell swoop.
Asuka def. Bayley via KO to retain the Raw Women’s Championship
After the match, Sky raises Asuka’s hand, signifying the start of an absolutely lethal new duo in WWE…
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With Iyo Sky now having made her allegiance clear, Asuka would appear set-up to remain dominating moving forward. However, the enemies she’s made over the past several months aren’t so quick to forget what transpired, which could potentially create problems…
Build To Survivor Series:
Despite having already made an impact to this point, Asuka and Iyo Sky aren’t just going to put away challengers…it’s time to take out everyone. After a singles win on Raw, Becky Lynch would be blindsided by Iyo, being laid out with several shots of the Steel Chair before a Moonsault to cap things off. The following week, Bayley expresses her dismay at being left alone, to which Asuka and Iyo interrupt, immediately kickstarting a brawl that would seem to favor them once again…Until out comes Becky Lynch! Despite having been bitter rivals earlier in the year, Becky makes the save for Bayley, the pair nodding at each other afterwards to signify a slight respect…We don’t have to like each other… but there’s a bigger threat to be stopped…
But soon enough, this action spills past just being a two-on-two situation. Zoey Stark, the former tag team partner of Iyo Sky in NXT, decides that Becky didn’t suffer enough during their rivalry after helping Trish at Night of Champions, and that it’s worth it for these veterans like her and Bayley to be ousted. Along with that, Asuka’s power and general craziness draws the interest of the Unholy Union known as Alba Fyre and Isla Dawn, the pair pledging loyalty to The Empress and perfectly willing to destroy Becky and Bayley. However, there are several other competitors backstage sick of seeing Asuka gaining an army, with Bianca Belair and the Way coming to the save to help even the odds. And of course, after a brawl featuring all of these competitors, William Regal comes out briefly to make his patented announcement:
“WAR GAMES!”
To determine which team gets the advantage leading into Survivor Series, we get ourselves a strong match in Iyo Sky vs. Becky Lynch, really the catalyst of what’s led into a two-on-one situation into an upcoming 5v5 match inside a destructive steel structure. Becky more than holds their own, but Iyo Sky shines even brighter, a cheap shot by Stark eventually allowing Iyo to hit the Moonsault and give the “heels” the advantage.
Survivor Series: Bianca Belair, Bayley, Becky Lynch, Nikki Cross, and Candice LeRae vs. Asuka, Iyo Sky, Zoey Stark, Alba Fyre, and Isla Dawn - War Games Match
Kicking off the match is Zoey Stark and Becky Lynch, with Becky initially successful in getting Zoey downed, but Isla Dawn coming in presents a problem. She’s initially able to hold her off, but a chop block by Zoey Stark and a subsequent attack of the leg leaves Becky in a rough spot. She’s able to get some assistance, with Nikki Cross coming in with a trash can lid and just whacking Zoey and Isla around with ease. However, Alba Fyre is next to come out, and upon seeing Cross staring her down from inside the cage, she grabs a kendo stick, ready to defend herself. While Nikki initially gets the advantage, Stark and Dawn are able to pull Nikki back, sending her into the steel cage repeatedly. Bianca coming in next is a game changer however, the EST taking control of the match-up and getting a slight breather while awaiting the fourth competitor…which is Asuka!
But as the rest of the field comes in, with Asuka being the last entrant for her team and Bayley for the opposite side, the action starts to get more and more intense. With all of the competitors brawling in one ring, Iyo sees the chance to hit a Moonsault from the top of the cage, wiping out everybody (including herself)! However, a table being brought into the mix benefits the bayfaces, Bayley hitting Fyre with a Bayley-To-Belly through it (she finally got to hit it… just not on Asuka). However, the ending sequence comes down to Asuka and Iyo on their feet against Bayley and Becky, back where it essentially first started…AND IT ENDS WITH IO HITTING A MOONSAULT ON BAYLEY! 1-2-3!
Team Asuka def. Team Becky via pinfall
Just like that, Iyo Sky has once again proved her worth, defeating her former stablemate to win the match for her team and cementing herself as a force to be moving forward. And though a fairly small shot, we can see Asuka glance over at Iyo, a slight frown on her face for a moment before moving back to stand with the rest of her team. What could that mean…
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Build To Royal Rumble:
Despite the result of the War Games Match, Becky Lynch isn’t through with either Asuka nor Iyo by a long shot. She fights off both of them over the coming weeks, along with picking up several singles victory, establishing herself as the next #1 Contender. And as Lynch points out, she and Asuka have history at Royal Rumble. Asuka beat her in singles action in 2019…before Lynch went on to win the Royal Rumble and headline Mania. But this isn’t about the Rumble match now…it’s time to put away the Empress.
As for Iyo, she also has a run of singles success, carrying a lot of momentum heading into the Royal Rumble Match. And soon, we learn that she requested training from one of the most respected female competitors in the locker room, a former NXT UK Champion…Meiko Satomura! While Satomura doesn’t intend to compete right away, she’s more than willing to help Iyo, with vignettes being shown of them together and Satomura even being at ringside for her matches. However, as this keeps happening, Asuka’s looks towards Iyo become more and more strained. Sky is abandoning me… after all I did for her… something’s going to change soon enough…
Royal Rumble: Becky Lynch vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Earlier in the night, Iyo Sky does indeed win the Royal Rumble match, punching her ticket to WrestleMania. This doesn’t seem to affect Asuka’s thoughts however, the Empress looking as ruthless and as calculated as ever en route to using an Armbar to submit Becky after a pretty back-and-forth encounter. And while Asuka proved herself the master of the Armbar between the pairing, Iyo Sky coming out with Meiko Satomura to acknowledge the title win seems to aggravate something in Asuka. Her grin has become a definite frown, and she stares an icy dagger through the pairing. Something isn’t right here…
Asuka def. Becky Lynch via submission to retain the Raw Women’s Title
Build To WrestleMania:
In a conversation between Meiko Satomura and Iyo Sky on an episode of Raw, Satomura asks if Sky would be willing to use her Rumble Victory position to challenge Asuka. Sky doesn’t look too convinced about doing that, which Satomura says is fine, but it’s advisable to weigh all her options. However, in the background, Asuka can be seen, carefully listening to the conversation.
A week later, Satomura addresses the WWE Universe. She’s made the announcement that she wants to have one last run before she retires, and wants to face some of the best names this women’s division has to offer…which is why she’s challenging Asuka for Elimination Chamber! Asuka comes out, her face paint being more red than usual…but while it looks like she’s having to contain herself, she shakes Satomura’s hand, seemingly paying respect to a legend.
Elimination Chamber: Meiko Satomura vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Unfortunately for Satomura, this retirement run of sorts looked to hit the ground before it could even get going. While she catches the Empress off guard at the beginning of the encounter, as time moves on, Asuka appears to be getting more and more angry. This comes to a boiling point when after one Tiger Suplex, Asuka hits another…then another…then another…then another! The ref pleads for Asuka to quit the assault, which she does…only to pull a Bryan Danielson and just start repeatedly kicking Satomura in the face! This goes on for disturbingly long, and when it’s become clear that Satomura is passed out, the ref calls for the bell, him having made the discretion for the match to end.
Asuka def. Meiko Satomura via ref stoppage
After the match, Iyo Sky rushes to the ring, checking on the woman who’s helped her out tremendously over the past couple of months. Asuka looks down at Iyo, a look of disgust on her face, before demanding to know who Sky is facing at WrestleMania. And it better be a specific answer…
Iyo Sky: “I… CHALLENGE… YOU!”
The crowd roar in approval, Asuka somehow shocked initially…until a smile comes across her face. I’m not surprised you made that choice…but unfortunately, it’s the wrong one...it’s a shame this has to happen Iyo…so much potential…
WrestleMania 40: Iyo Sky vs. Asuka (c) - Raw Women’s Championship
Despite that inner monologue running through Asuka’s head at Elimination Chamber, Sky proves why she’s not to be taken lightly. On the Grandest Stage of them All, Iyo just looks…better. Having been around Asuka for several months, she knows the mechanics of her offense, doing a good job at avoiding those signature kicks while also having the speed advantage. And at the end of the match, Sky proves herself superior over The Empress of Tomorrow, hitting the second Moonsault of the match to pin Asuka, and end a spectacular title run while opening a new chapter for another one.
Iyo Sky def. Asuka via pinfall to win the Raw Women’s Championship

Oh my. This is my first Reddit post ever! Sorry this is pretty lengthy, trying to be thorough! I got so much help from reading through this sub that I felt compelled to share. I got tickets to see LCD Soundsystem over Memorial Day. It was my first visit to Red Rocks. I was very excited but pretty nervous. I adore live music but am also a highly anxious person. Unknown situations can really overwhelm me. I need to feel prepared when I visit new places. I am a fat person and a flatlander who is out of shape so I was extremely worried about how hard it would be to navigate the venue. I did many deep dives on this sub and others and am happy to report I had the perfect visit. Just wanted to share some info for those nervous Nellies like me.
My sister and I stayed at a Holiday Inn in Lakewood. This is far from the Denver Airport but a 15 minute drive to Red Rocks. It is a suburb - there were plenty of chain restaurants, coffee shops, and a Trader Joe's. While not overly exciting or interesting, it was very convenient and met our needs. Also! I highly recommended A Taste of Denmark, an absolutely devine Danish bakery.
We rented a car via Turo and decided to park at the venue. We went at 5 pm (doors at 6 show at 7)and parked in the Upper South Lot. Parking was easy and quick, the staff were friendly and helpful. There was a line of 50-100 people waiting by the fence for when the doors opened. We scoped things out around the parking lot. People had little screen tents, bean bag boards, and camp chairs set up. Since we weren't local/flew in we didn't have camp chairs, but if we had it would've been totally fine to set up by our car and chill until the doors opened or even wander around and talk to people. A crazy swirling dust storm whipped up for a few minutes so we just chilled in the car until the doors opened.
The entrance to the amphitheater from the Upper South lot is via a walk up a ramp that is STEEP but doable. Even my sister, who is in good shape, got a little winded. There was plenty of space and time to step to the side and catch our breath. Nobody was pushy or annoyed. We waited in line on the ramp for maybe 15 minutes and then were able to move through security. There were steps up to the security screening that were fine to navigate and not too difficult. Time to walk from car (front/middle of Upper South Lot) to security check point was less than 10 minutes total (not including wait time on the ramp).
I brought a draw string backpack (like the ones they give away at business conferences 😂). I had most of my things in a bunch of smaller bags and satchels-security didn't ask to go through any of the smaller bags. They had me open the top of my bag, kind of felt around, and asked if my water bottle was sealed. Easy peasy. There was a merch table to the left immediately upon entering. They were busy when we got in @ 6 (an hour before the show) but didn't have crazy long lines.
There are really nice bathrooms to your left as you walk towards the venue from this entrance. They are all gender bathrooms with big tall wooden doors/no gaps. It's like your own personal bathroom. These are the only bathrooms I used at the venue, before and during the show. I never waited more than 5-10 minutes in line.
The seating was broken up into GA sections and Reserved Seating sections. It was all clearly marked with ropes. We were in row 29, so not front row but not at the tippy top. The stairs are challenging, but again, we had plenty of space and time to stop and catch our breath. There are some hand railings on the left side but they do not go all the way up the amphitheater. So be aware that you may have to traverse stairs without the assistance of a railing.
My sister brought a picnic blanket that folds up with a handle. We unfolded it on our seats which was great to have this set out for once the shows got going and we wanted to sit and rest. We went right to our seats upon arriving. We really just took in the venue-the views and the vibes. The people watching is great. Each of us had time to check out merch, grab a drink, etc. I was not bored at all and was glad we went as early as we did. It made for a long day but it was worth it.
We only purchased 1 alcoholic seltzer and a bottle of water which were obviously expensive. I brought in 1 bottle of water (they have to be sealed) and wished I had brought 2. Everything is cashless-cards only. We did not try any of the food, although I saw a couple people go by with some tasty looking tacos and other fair style food. It would also be totally legit to throw a granola bar or sandwich into your bag if you think you'll need food (would definitely recommend if you are drinking). We ate right before we went to the venue and hit up a fast food drive thru at the end of the night and that was fine for us.
We had a group of people next to us-it was clear some of the friends had purchased Reserved tickets and their friends had GA tickets but were just going chill with their friends @ their Reserved seats - stacking each other 2-3 people deep per seat. They were nice and respectful. And during the openers I honestly didn't care. But before LCD started I did ask who all had tickets as the group was kinda jamming us up (they were obviously getting more and more intoxicated and dancing wider and wider into our seats). The guy who had the Reserved seat TOTALLY got it. I shared that we had come from out of state, paid for the reserved seats and this show was very important to me. He and his friends immediately apologized and had everyone on their best behavior, nobody was stepping in front of us during the show. We even kinda made friends with the dude and chatted a bit. His friends said something along the lines of 'oh we've only EVER been to GA shows so this assigned seating thing is hard.' 🙄 We had several people who were too drunk/high or trying to scam folks by being lost and unable to find their seats. They apparently decided to look for their seats 15 minutes into the LCD set. At that point in the game you are just out of luck. The seat numbers are on teeny tiny plaques that are not lit up. Figure out where your seats are before the chaos starts. We had to shoo them along because they were interrupting the show and weren't super aware of their behavior or surroundings.
I've read multiple articles and subs that have said marijuana is illegal to use in public! You can totally be arrested! This is definitely not the case. Everyone, everywhere was freely using drugs. It smelled of marijuana the whole show. Just a heads up if that bothers you. It is constant and potent. You can't get away from it, even in an outdoor venue! I had no problem with this but some people might care.
The show was at the end of May. I wore mid weight long pants, a t-shirt, and medium weight sweatshirt. This was the perfect outfit. No sweating and no shivering. We had a light comfortable breeze all night. It was a dream! I had packed a light jacket and rain poncho in my pack but didn't need either. This was easily stowed underneath our seats. I wore comfy running shoes. They aren't the most stylish but there is lots of uneven ground to traverse and you spend hours standing on cement which can be hard on the body and joints. Forget the cute heels for Red Rocks.
We stayed until the very end. MANY people left before the last song, I'm guessing to beat the traffic. Exiting the venue was slightly chaotic but uneventful. It took us 10-15 minutes to get back to the car. The ramp on the way back down is steep. I chose to use the hand railing just to be safe.
And then we zipped out of the Upper South Lot and down into Morrison in not even 5 minutes. We barely had to wait. I was expecting to sit for hours to exit per all the info I've read about parking at Red Rocks. It was a great surprise and a perk of going early!
I know this is a lot. Thanks if you read it all. Hoping by sharing I can inspire others to go. I was second guessing myself and my abilities prior to going and I'm so glad I didn't cancel! It was truly a once in a life time experience. Thanks to the info I found on reddit I felt pretty prepared and comfortable!

Candorick woke to the sounds of shells blasting above the underground barracks. The sounds had sent shutters throughout the massive room, knocking over anything that wasn’t bolted to the cold steel floor, from lasguns to prayer books, and even a few soldiers who slept too far on the edge of the bed. He stared across the room to the clock that now hung slightly crooked. It was about time to wake up anyways. He swung his legs around planting them on the floor. He then reached his arm around to the bed above him.
“Merok” he said, tapping his bunkmate's shoulder, “Time to wake up”.
“Five more minutes…” Merok groaned.
“Well I’m looking at the clock and you don’t have time to get your ‘five more minutes’ and not make the commissar angry” Candorick replied, now lightly shoving him to wake up.
“Fine, fine. I’ll get up, because apparently getting some karking sleep on this planet is illegal'' Merok replied begrudgingly.
Candorick threw Merok’s boots up top, their weight requiring both hands to lift them up, then promptly putting his clothes on and fully getting out of bed, meanwhile Merok was still fumbling around, trying to get his shirt on.
The entire barracks was awake by now, and the regular hustle and bustle of the base hummed to life.
As he walked along his route to exit the base for his post on the inner walls, he heard an announcement from the shoddy intercom system, “Will Corporal Candorick Lyels please report to Commander Lorals office immediately?”.
As soon as that information came on the intercom, a sense of immense fear ran through his spine. Candorick had heard stories of soldiers sent to a higher ups office only to come out in a body bag, and he did not want to be one of them. Even then, it was to go to his office or not go to his office and be executed on the spot, and maybe being killed by a commander would net him more fame in death.
So he walked towards the Commander's office, fear engulfing his body. As he saw the door, Merok sprinted towards him.
“CANDORICK! CANDORICK!” he shouted. “I ran here as soon as I heard the announcement!” “Are you sure you want to go in there? You know that people like us rarely come out of there alive right?”
“You and I both know I have no choice. So I’ll take my chances…” Candorick said as he opened the door to the commander's office.
Inside the well lit room, three people stood, one was of course, commander Lorals, behind him stood his faithful commissar. But another man who he had never seen before was also there. He wore gilded clothes, and was full of cybernetic implants, not enough to look like a Mechanicus upon close inspection, but from a distance it could appear so. Looking at them it appeared that most of these implants were there mainly to extend his lifespan. He clearly had wealth and lavished in the luxuries he had been given.
The rich man, looking at Candorick with a face of disgust, said, pompously, “Is this really my escort? He looks like he couldn’t even kill a single heretic.”
Commander Lorals replied in a calm tone, “He is actually one of our best soldiers. Before being assigned to defend this base, he racked up a kill count in the hundreds''.
“Well, he certainly doesn’t look the part, '' the rich man whispered under his breath.
The commander then turned to Candorick. “We have a new mission for you. This is Sir Retir Kurople and he wants to get off this planet. He is quite an old fellow and fears he might be in danger for assassination on his trip off Cadia, so he requested help from the guard, and since he is a frequent donator and owns the manufacturing company that produced the gun slung around your shoulder right now, we felt obliged to fulfill his request. You have been assigned his caretaker, and I trust that you will take care of him on his journey off Cadia.”
“Wait, does that mean I’m coming with him off planet?” Candorick replied in a panicked state.
“Yes, yes it does” the rich man says in a superior tone.
“Quite down! I am the one giving the orders!” The commander said as he pushed the rich man aside.
“You can’t be doing this to me! We’ve been holding off the heretics for four approaching five years now, and I have diligently been serving every step of the way. And now you want to send me off just as we…” Candorick trails off as he sees the commissar grip his hand across his laspistol.
“I am doing this to you, and you will do it, whether you like it or not.” the commander replies, “Let’s not keep the man waiting for us to be overrun, he requested we leave as soon as we could, and you can leave right now, right?”.
“Yes, sir” Candorick replies begrudgingly as he salutes the commander.
He walks out the door, and sees Merok still waiting outside his door, he is clearly on the verge of tears on the bench beside the office.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at your post?” Candorick says.
“You're alive!” Merok replies, relieved, he runs up to hug him.
“They’re sending me off-world to escort a noble to a new home” Candorick says, depressingly.
“I’ll take that my friend, I’ll take that” Merok says, tightening his hug on Candorick.
“At least I don’t have to mourn you.” Merok responds, still acting relieved of his friend's continual existence.
“I might never be able to see you again. And to think after all these years, I was JUST starting to stand you” Candorick says, chuckling. They share a laugh, and one final goodbye, as they part ways in the poorly lit hallway Merok yells out.
“You think I’ll ever see you again Candorick?”
“Hopefully, my friend. Hopefully”
The rich man then promptly exits the office, clapping his hands, then saying “let’s move brute.”
“I am not a brute” Candorick says back, angrily.
“You are as long as you choose to follow your orders. And surely you’ll follow orders…” the rich man turns his head towards Candorick, inquisitively. “Now let’s move.”
Candorick slings his lasgun across his shoulder as he speedwalks to catch up to the man, who clearly is in a rush to get out of this place.
The trip was rather uneventful. Obviously, the evacuation ships were a reasonable distance from the frontline, as to minimize civilian casualties from heretic bombardment. But a fair distance from any frontline was pretty hard to find since the beginning of the siege, and even once the ship came into sight, the screams of guardsmen and heretics could still be heard all around him.
To Candorick, the screams were nothing, it was nothing extremely special, the sounds of war had been tuned out in his mind. Those who let the sounds dig under their skin were normally the ones to go first. However, the rich man seemed more affected by it, he looked almost sick.
A line as long as the eye could see sat at the entrance to the ship. The line consisted mostly of the elderly and the young children, all looking malnourished and wearing ragged clothes. Everyone else had been drafted into the fighting. The sounds of babies crying and even some of the elderly crying echoed throughout the docking bay, and it was clear a sad aroma wafted itself throughout the dark metal building.
“Final call for epsilon class passengers. All epsilon class passengers please report to the gate for priority entry onto passenger ship 9-8-B Alpha.” A PA system echoed throughout the room.
“Oh that’s me! Candorick, will you please escort me through these peasants blocking my way?” The rich man said, ushering Candorick in front of him.
“Understood.” Candorick said begrudgingly, shoving his way through the crowd as the rich man waddled behind him.
As Candorick shoves the massive crowd, he hears an argument happening ahead. An older couple stood at the gate, arguing with the soldier checking the passengers' information.
“You can’t do this!” The old man says. “My family has served the imperium for a thousand years and now you reward us with this! You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“I’m sorry, but you don’t have clearance to get on this ship. Next passenger please!” The soldier at the gate said.
“No you don’t!” The older man says, trying to grapple the guard behind the table.
“Stop Gerald! You’re scaring the grandchildren!” The older woman says, moving her hand to hide a group of 5 or 6 small children behind her. “I already lost my daughter, I can’t lose you.”
The older man looks back at what appears to be his wife. Stopping his attempt at grappling the guard. “I’m sorry my darling I…” He stops as Candorick shoves him to the side.
“I’ve got an Epsilon class passenger ready to board the ship,” Candorick says, the rich man waddling in front of him.
“Credentials?” The gate guard says.
“Oh yes, I’ve got it right here.” The rich man says as he fumbles through his pockets, pulling out a small chip, and handing it to the guard.
“Sir Retir the Third of House Kurople and one soldier escort, check. Ok, you are clear to go.” The guard says, pressing a button on the massive panel in front of him, causing the small door letting them into the ship's entryway to open. “Your quarters are on deck A subsection C, have a nice trip.”
Candorick begins to step onto the ship closely followed by the rich man. As the door begins to close, the guard at the gate yells out to the crowd. “Ok that’s it for today, everybody clear out…” the voice stops as the door clamps shut.
Candorick looks back around for the rich man. He spots him already climbing up the stairs to the upper decks. Candorick sprints to catch up with him.
“No, no, no you’re not coming up here with me. It’s meant for your betters, not you, you brute! Stay on this level, make yourself useful.” The old man says as he closes the door to the stairwell.
Candorick looks around. He looks at a map of the ship. “Deck C subsection A” he sees on the metal sign plastered above the hallway. He heads down the closest hallway, the eerie silence of the ship, allowing for him to hear the creaks of the waning ship.
As he approaches the end of the hallway, he begins to hear the sounds of talking again. Above the end of the hallway reads a sign saying “Lower-Class Common Area”.
The room is a large rectangular area, filled with round, metal tables and chairs. Around each chair sits various groups of people, from what appears to be gangsters to poor families, all happy they got on the ship at all. Along the left side of the room rests several glass panels that would show space, if they were off the ground, but for now all they show is the cold, steel walls of the side of the hangar. Pipes run throughout the room, and while not cramped for space, the sheer amount of people in here clearly show this room was not meant to be filled to this capacity.
Candorick spots an empty spot on the wall and pushes through the crowd to sit along the wall, sitting down and leaning on one of the large pipes sticking out of the wall.
“Karking upper-spiremen, always think they’re better than everyone else, sent me down here even though he could clearly let me up there…”
After a long day of walking to the hangar and being worried about his imminent doom, fatigue had gripped Candorick, and he fell asleep lying on the uncomfortable, hard pipe.
He woke up to the sounds of screams of terror. He opened his eyes groggily, and saw that everyone was crowding around the glass to the outside. He used his strength to shove through the crowd, and got a clear view of what was going on.
In front of him lay Cadia, but something was wrong. Besides the massive battles that even from this distance could be seen, a massive structure was falling from orbit. It had been the massive fortress that the heretic forces had placed in orbit at the beginning of the siege. It was rapidly hurdling itself towards the surface, and was crashing itself down like a massive artificial meteor onto the planet's surface.
He watched as the fortress collided with the Cadian soil.
It was as if the world was a piece of paper, that had been lit aflame. The entire world turned orange as the fortress disappeared and instead became the source of a massive wave of fire that had soon engulfed the planet. Entire chunks of the planet tore themselves from the core. He could see the rays of light from the constant torrent of lasgun fire on the planet stop one by one, as the planet was turned into debris.
Merok, his family, his heritage, his homeland. All destroyed in the blink of an eye. Before he could process what had just happened, a voice sounded from behind him.
“This is all your fault.”
Candorick looked around, seeing a small child with an ear to ear smile, staring at him, blankly.
“You should have died with them,” another voice said from his side, coming from a man staring at him with the same look as the girl.
“It was your duty to serve with your fellow soldiers until the end, and you didn’t.” An elderly woman says in a monotone voice, staring at him as well with that same, creepy smile.
“What? What’s happening?” Candorick says as he looks around him.
Soon the entire crowd is staring at him. “You ran away…” they say in unison, as they all slowly walk towards Candorick, arms outstretched.
“No! No! Stay away! All of you!” Candorick says as they begin to grapple him, him trying to frantically push them off.
They surround him and pin him to the ground. “STOP IT GET OFF!” He screams as they begin to tear into his flesh. He lets out a primal scream as he wakes up, launching his head forward into the steel bed frame of the bunk above him. It makes a loud clanging sound as Candorick crumples back into his bed, rubbing his forehead, now in serious pain.
He looks around the massive bunk room in the Mourningstar. Everyone is fast asleep, resting up for their next assignment. The dark, damp room is mostly silent, except for the distant snores of the Ogryns (which have their own barracks apart from the baseline humans due to their bigger frame).
“Something troubles you, associate” the voice from above the top bunk says. “You’ve been tossing and turning all night.”
“None of your business, Keating.” Candorick replies.
“No need to worry, I already know what you were dreaming about.” Keating says.
“You were reading my karking mind again, witch! How many times have I told you to keep your freakish powers to yourself!” Candorick says, angrily.
“I don’t really have a choice in the matter. Your dreams are so strong that I can barely get any sleep around you.” Keating replies.
“Makes me wonder why they placed a witch above me! Maybe it would do both of us better if you slept somewhere else!” Candorick once again responds.
“You know we don’t have a choice, roughneck. We are assigned beds and you don’t move until you die, simple as that.” Keating states. “You know, if you ever need help, you can always ask. Might even be doing myself a…”
“I don’t need your help witch! I’m perfectly fine on my own. I don’t need you messing with my head to fix something that isn’t there.” Candorick says angrily at Keating.
“I beg to differ…” Keating says
“Be quiet witch! I need to be ready for tomorrow's assignment.” Candorick says.
“Have it your way.” Keating replies as both of them drift off, once again, into sleep.

It's the last DIY I need! I can trade with bells, NMTs, fruit, resources or DIYs!
​
Regular DIY

• Bamboo stopblock
• Bamboo wall decoration
• Basement flooring
• Cabin wall
• Cardboard chair
• Cherry umbrella
• Cherry wall
• Cutting board
• Dharma
• Doghouse
• Festival-lantern set
• Festive wrapping paper
• Flower stand
• Forbidden altar
• Frozen fence
• Fruit basket
• Fruit wreath
• Giant ornament
• Glowing-moss headband
• Gold bars
• Gold-nugget mining car
• Golden dung beetle
• Golden garden bunny
• Golden seat
• Golden vase
• Golden wristwatch
• Honeycomb wall
• Iceberg flooring
• Iron doorplate
• Iron hanger stand
• Ironwood bed
• Ironwood cart
• Ironwood clock
• Ironwood dresser
• Juicy-apple tv
• Knitted-grass backpack
• Light bamboo rug
• Log bed
• Log wall-mounted clock
• Lucky gold cat
• Magazine rack
• Medium wood partition
• Mini golden dharma
• Modern wood wall
• Natural garden table
• Orange rug
• Orange umbrella
• Ornament wreath
• Pan flute
• Pansy table
• Peach dress
• Peach hat
• Peach umbrella
• Peach wall
• Pear hat
• Pear rug
• Pond stone
• Pretty tulip wreath
• Purple pansy crown
• Rustic-stone wall
• Sandy-beach flooring
• Shell wreath
• Ski-slope flooring
• Stacked bottle crates
• Stacked-wood wall
• Steel flooring
• Steel-frame wall
• Tall garden rock
• Tea table
• Tiki torch
• Timber doorplate
• Wild log bench
• Wooden chair
• Wooden simple bed
• Wooden toolbox

​

• Food DIY
• Apple pie
• Cherry pie
• Fruit salad
• Jarred mushrooms
• Mixed-fruits crepe
• Mushroom pizza
• Mushroom salad
• Orange pie
• Orange tart
• Pickled veggies
• Pizza margherita
• Potato curry
• Potato galette
• Pumpkin soup
• Seafood salad
• Tomates al ajillo
• Veggie cupcakes

****WARNING****
***
Body Horror, bugs, death, gore. Attempted horror.
By my own standards, this is fairly tame, your mileage may vary, content advisory.
***
Captain Van’tu, the Garaboosian commander of the Alliance of Free Stars light scout cruiser Mandrake, frowned, in the way of his species, and gestured with a lower lefthand at his human science officer to continue.
The woman turned back to her console, to peer into the hood of her ‘scope and minutely adjust a control.
“The ship is an old Terran Alliance Explorer class, the TAN Nebula Star. She was reported overdue for resupply a little over a hundred years ago, exact details are spotty as the station she was supposed to report to was destroyed in the Terran civil war. By modern standards she was little more than a heavy cruiser with an oversized jumpcore, and limited weaponry. The Terran Alliance Navy was very much focused on exploration and first contact, and several of their vessels vanished without trace only to show up decades later in pirate hands. However, this does not seem to be the case with the Nebula Star…”
The image on the holotable was mute testimony to this information. The old starship, much more massive than the Mandrake, but significantly less well equipped, looked derelict. Several holes gaped in her once-pristene white hull, the smooth lines marred and crooked, and the jumpcore bulb near the stern showed a terrible, blasted crater, black with soot and melted steel.
Captain Van’tu scrolled the smooth wheel of the holo controls, swivelling the image and zooming into the damage.
“What do we think of this, Sasha, that looks like an internal explosion, not battle damage.”
“Yes Captain.” Sasha, the science officer, agreed. She manipulated a pad on her side of the console. Several sidebars lit up. “Here, here and here. Chemical signatures we’ve picked up in the dustcloud around the wreck, and the blast pattern, indicates a high yield chemical explosive was utilised, we would need to get a scan from inside the wreckage to be certain, but I think I can confidently say this was caused by a c4 package commonly kept as part of ship inventories of that era. We carry a similar type of explosive even now, it has uses in a number of emergency protocols.”
The captain nodded. “I’m familiar with Human paranoia, ‘better to have and not need than need and not have’, which is why I learned to carry a backpack heavier than myself at the academy.” He smiled at the woman, who grinned back in that wolfish human fashion.
Commanding a Terran vessel as part of the Alliance Navy was a high honour for a non-Terran, and he’d earned it the hard way, he’d actually completed his officer training on Earth itself, heavy gravity, lethal flora, fauna, and practical jokes be damned, he’d always dreamed of command, and he had never planned to settle for anything less than the best ships of the fleet.
Somehow his determination to ‘make it’ had actually impressed his trainers and teachers, and earned him the interest of a senior Admiral, which explained his current command. And he was no ticket-puncher, his crew was, in his opinion, the best in the fleet, and if his ship was small, he was so proud of her, some days he could almost burst his hearts from it. She was his first, and with luck, not his last, and while scouting duty following pre-war exploration routes was far from glamorous, it was essential work for the Alliance, following up first contacts, reopening lost trade routes, and, now and then, coming across relics, and giving closure to the descendants of those vanished vessels.
“Alright. She looks cold, and her reactor is dead, but we don’t know what happened to her, she could have run afoul of pirates, or been captured and misused for decades, or been left boobytrapped, so pack up a SAR shuttle, and give them a leader drone, they don’t enter unless the drone clears the way in.”
“Aye aye Captain, I’ll get them on their way. Sidearms?”
“Yyy…esss. Yes. And overarmour. If someone’s left any surprises, it will help.”
Sasha turned and walked off, already tapping her communicator to summon the personnel she’d be sending.
He frowned again, looking into the depths of the hologram. Something was bothering him, the same sensation he’d felt while visiting a zoo on Earth. Humans around him grinning, nodding to one another, and the confirmation of his worry came as a boom of hundreds of pounds of apex feline carnivore crashing against the high density crystal he’d been standing with his back to…
Something was creeping up on them, he could feel it.
***
The shuttle launched from the brightly lit boatbay of the Mandrake, arcing smoothly through the glittering blackness towards the cruelly murdered starship. In front of it zipped the mote of the drone, its scanners and sensors slaved to the shuttle, giving the drone specialist on board an instant feed to all his senses, feeling, experiencing everything the drone saw.
It zipped around the gaping hole where the jumpdrive had once been housed, then around in a helical pattern, scanning every micron of the lost ships hull, mapping it in complete three dimensional perfection, then tracking towards the boatbay. Inside, two, much older, versions of the Mandrakes shuttle rested, crooked against their davits, the bay airlock doors lying open.
The drone slowly crept inside the dark corridor as the shuttle followed it in, nestling into an empty davit. Power hookups, identical after a century thanks to long ago agreed standardisation, marry up, pogo pins compressed and energized, drawing trickle power from the shuttle to latch securely.
The crew debark, except the probe operator who remained strapped in his jumpseat, guiding the drone deeper into the derelict.
Suited figures follow its path, jumping from the shuttle hatch to the airlock. They don’t bother trying to seal it, it had been lying open for a century, there was no air left within to preserve. The drone met a cross passage, and moved right, headed towards the bridge, following schematics downloaded from Mandrake’s computer. The scout crew followed, alert, and making note of damage to bulkheads, the carpets that once covered the floors looking torn, dark stains telling a worrying story.
The probe entered the bridge of the Nebula Star and paused. The LIDAR scanner illuminated the space in a slow pass of green laser light, left to right and back again. The chamber was empty, save the various consoles and chairs the crew would have used, and the lone figure of the Captain, in his central command chair.
To Captain Van’tu, observing the time delayed remote feed on his own bridge, it was remarkable just how similar the darkened derelict wreck was to his own vessel, down to the arrangement of bridge consoles and type of carpeting used. He’d read, in one of his intro to ship design classes, that Terran bridge layout owed much to speculative fiction of pre-spaceflight eras, and a lot of experimental wet-navy designs.
He'd brought it up once with his chief of engineering, who had responded with a ridiculous approximation of a Scottish accent, “Aye laddie, we Terrans owe an awfy lot tae an auld lass called the Enterprise!” and laughed, continuing his explanation in his more natural German accented standardised Terran. Van’tu had spent several informative evenings with his console, soaking up ancient Terran entertainment as a result.
The drone circled the bridge, slowly, keeping its thruster exhaust well clear of the mummified body in the central chair, making its way to the science console. A small arm popped out and slotted into the consoles data port.
Several lights flickered on the antique panel, the probe powering up the cold circuits to read the datalogs, then around the room, dim red lights came to life, as more of the bridge woke up. Through the hull itself, a faint whine transmitted, the probes oversized fusion battery providing enough current to trigger the startup of a backup generator below the bridge.
The scouting party stepped in, peering around. One, her grey skinsuit marked with a red stripe down the arms, moves across to the captain, a medical scanner in her hand.
“I’m reading significant trauma throughout the corpse, but remarkable preservation as well. Life support must have been glitching badly for a long time after… Wait…” She smacked the side of the scanner, then passed it back across the corpse. “Scanner keeps picking up my own heartbeat, trying to tell me this guys still alive, fucking thing.” She put it away in the side pocket of her suit and pulled out a smaller device. “I kept my old one, should be good enough to… Fuck me sideways…”
“Maybe later Carol, what’s the script?” A green stripe on the party leader’s arm. He was looking around, feeling… itchy, between his shoulder blades. Something wasn’t right, and not just the dead ship. He’d been lead on two other derelict searches, and they never went like this. Accidents happened, people died, usually horribly, and you always found, well, bodies. Whole or otherwise. Yet, aside from the clearly traumatic bloodstains on the floors, soaked long before the artificial gravity had failed, this ship hadn’t shown them a single body, nothing, not even fragments.
Not only that but he could swear he’d seen movements. No-one else had, but he also knew that his reflexes tested significantly higher than average, he was seeing something the others were simply not noticing.
Carol stepped away from the corpse.
“My old scanner says this guy’s alive Mark. Heartbeat, brain activity, oxygenated blood. He’s not breathing and he’s a fucking corpse, but both my scanners say he’s gooey in the middle. And I’ll be honest I don’t want to be here, send probes back across on AI control and let them explore, this is too freaky. I know you’ve been seeing shit, well, I’ve been picking up weirdness all along, and this is too much. We should leave!”
Mark bit back a curse. He agreed, but he was also supposed to be a professional, and as the leader of the scout team who first boarded the derelict, he’d have been slated for command of the ‘prize crew’ to bring her home. At the same time, he was holding back a growing uneasiness, his other two team members were shuffling nervously, and Carol was on the edge of panic.
“Alright, we head back to the shuttle and leave the probe to grab the logs. Something’s weird here, might be the atmosphere on this thing, I admit it’s spooky, but we all know I see weird bugs and things other folk miss, and Carol, you’ve had that personal scanner since high school, if it’s saying something weird, something weird is going on. If Captain… Morrison, is still alive after a century in vacuum, he can keep a few more hours until the AI probes can collect him. We’re not equipped for medical evac anyway.”
They stepped back through the hatchway, leaving the probe to its work. Emergency lighting flickered into life, adding a lurid red glare to the tableaux, Mark, last to leave, sharply snapping his head back around as something… He was reminded of a time as a child, he’d turned over a log in his parents’ yard, and hundreds of inch-long centipedes had scurried in panicked circles to escape the sudden glare of sunlight.
Nothing moved, aside from the slow pulsing of rebooting computers.
He followed his people towards the shuttle.
One by one, they made the leap back to the shuttle davit, and boarded, cycling back aboard, and taking their seats. The drone pilot barely moved to acknowledge them, clearly lost in the datefeed from the old computers, and aside from a quick glance across readouts to ensure the data was flowing cleanly to the Mandrake, Mark didn’t disturb the man.
He hit the switch to release the davit clamps, and the popped free. The shuttle turned, and smoothly glided out, aligning with the mothership and headed home. He blinked and shook his head. That motion again, out the corner of his eye. He glanced over, seeing the drone pilot’s faceplate swarming with legs for a fraction of a second.
“Uhh, Josh, you alright there?” He hated breaking into drone pilot concentration, but this wasn’t right, and Carol was gesturing desperately at him from her chair. He reached across, and nudged Josh’s shoulder, the skinsuit collapsing under his fingers and the skull clacking loosely against the faceplate.
***
Captain Van’tu listened to the soft report coming from Sasha, the scout crew had found the captain of the derelict but were returning early due to some unsettling information they’d found. He didn’t like it, but he also respected human instincts. If skilled officers felt there was a reason to withdraw before mission completion, he knew better than to override the human-on-the-spot.
He’d have a word with Mark later, in private, if necessary, but the man had never been wrong before.
Across the communicator, there was a sudden eruption of yelling, the shuttle on the holo spiralling wildly. Sasha was demanding a clear response from the screaming communicator.
Mark came over the channel. “Abort mission, contamination, alien threat…” His words ended in a gurgling scream, the kind that began high and ended, eventually, in a growling snarl of mortal agony. The line remained open, however, and the entire bridge crew turned to stare, mouths agape, as into the silence the faint sounds of gnawing began to echo.
Sasha shut off the feed with a shaky finger. “Captain, I…”
“I know. Arm several probes, get them to the shuttle, find out what happened and…”
Once more, attention fell to the holo display, as on it, the icon of the shuttle winked red. Sasha motioned, and the focus zoomed in. Where the shuttle had been, a spreading scatter of debris remained.
She pulled up the sidebars again.
“Right before Mark, uh, died, his authorisation codes were used to trigger an overload on the shuttle reactor. We didn’t pick up the feed in real time, they were returning after all, but all of them suffered catastrophic biological distress immediately before their lifesigns cut out. Mark was the last one alive, and severely injured when he triggered the reactor.”
Captain Van’tu shook out his lower hands with a stress-shedding gesture. “The shuttle reactor is in a sealed compartment. He had to get from his chair to the access panel and enter his code, while suffering life threatening injuries which had already killed the rest of his crew?”
“Yes, Captain. I’m sorry, I missed it, my team is still processing the data, but it looks as if the drone pilot ceased responding several minutes before the shuttle departed the wreck. At five minutes into the flight, the three junior officers began exhibiting distress, but gave no verbal alerts. Mark seems to have reacted to something that triggered a fight or flight response, but within a few seconds was exhibiting the same injury markers as the others. At the six-minute mark, he sent his warning, while moving. It appears as if the cessation of his vocalisations was not the end of his life, almost thirty seconds later his code was entered into the shuttle reactor, and it detonated.”
Captain Van’tu moved to his command chair, and sat down, lower hands grasping the armrests, upper hands folding under his chin. “Helm, chart course back to the nearest Alliance outpost, and warm up the jumpcore. Tactical, bring shields to standby and start charging the grasers, I don’t like what’s happening, and I do not want to be caught with our backs turned.”
His crew moved into action, tactical alerts bringing various stations to readiness.
“Sir! We’re receiving a communications request, uh, from the Nebula Star.”
He stared at his communications officer, who looked equally shocked.
“Please, Jen, put them through to the main holo.”
The hovering image of the wreckage that had once been a shuttle vanished, replaced by the familiastrange image of the old bridge, and its captain.
The man was a corpse, there was no debate. The papery skin had pulled back from his eyes and teeth, his nose collapsed inwards, decades of icy coldness and baking heat as the derelict tumbled slowly from shade to sunlight had freeze dried the body, yet, it moved. The jaw flapped open, and the sticklike arms gestured against the command chair arms, clawed fingertips clicking uselessly.
“Gree. Tings. Un. Known. Vess. Sell. I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace.”
The corpse in the holo quivered and twitched in some horrible mockery of life, the bared grey teeth clicking as the jaw spasmed open and closed, not, Van’tu noted, in time with the words being spoken. Inside the jaws, he also noticed, something black and shiny and segmented.
“I highly doubt you come with any sort of peace in mind, what are you really, and what did you do to the crew of the shuttle who boarded the ship you are on.”
The body twitched, a trickle of black ooze popping free from the corner of the sunken eye socket. Under the dried up eyelid, something squirmed around, curling with segmented motion, a few pointed claws poking briefly free before vanishing once more.
“I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace. We. Rek. Wire. Ass. Iss. Tan. Sse. Let. Uss. Board.”
An alert flashed from Sashas direction. A gesture diminished Captain Morrison to a corner of the holo and expanded the view of the derelict. Two shuttles of archaic design had just launched from it and begun making their way towards the Mandrake. He muted his pickup and turned to his tactical officer.
“Jeff? They do not get close enough to board.”
“Aye aye sir, tracking has them locked and my grazers are charged.”
“Very good.”
He returned to the holo and reopened the grisly view of the dead man being puppeted on his display.
“You will not be permitted to board my ship. I demand to know who you are, what you represent, and why you are trying to impersonate Captain Morrison.”
“You. Are. Food. You. Have. Use. Full. Tech. Nol. Ogy. We. Will. Take. It. We. Will. Use. You. We. Will. Mul. Tip. Lie. This. Vess. Hell. Came. To. Us. In. Peace. We. Took. It. We. Came. For. Ter. Rah. We. Became. Trapped. We Became. Lethargic. We have waited. Now you have brought us. A new vessel to carry us. To Terra.”
Captain Van’tu shook his head. If these things were familiar with humans, they’d recognise the gesture. For the sake of understanding he’d long ago learned to at least emulate some human body language.
“You will not be allowed to go any further. I have a duty to safeguard the people under my command, and to the people of… Terra.” Whatever this species was, it was not something he wanted anywhere near a colony or, worse, defenceless homeworld, of any of the Allied or friendly species he knew lay between here and Terra herself. Best for all they only had Terra in mind.
“Sir! The incoming shuttles are not going for docking, they’re on a ramming approach! Firing solution lost on bogey one!” The Mandrakes grazers were firing, gunnery crews managing their weapons as they tracked automatically and fired, spearing one of the wildly corkscrewing shuttles with lances of gravitationally focused gamma radiation. The second shuttle however spun, and fell downwards, smashing into the still warming shields, and through, impacting the Mandrakes hull with tremendous speed.
The scouting vessel shuddered. The shuttle had breached through the outer hull and spilled into a mess area.
Thanks to the alert condition, all crew had been in skinsuits, not that this helped the two cooks who had been finishing off the lockdown of the mess kitchen.
Fresh alerts sounded, the sound of which sent crewpeople to arms lockers. Mandrake had been boarded.
Captain Van’tu pointed to his tactical officer. “Destroy that wreck! vaporise it!”
“Sir! Weapons are offline, on-mount crews are reporting power losses.”
Across the bridge, the communications officer looked up. “Reports coming in, boarders are breaking out of mess two!”
The captain snarled. Ancient Garaboosians had warded off predators with that sound, and his teeth bared in an animalistic threat display. He slammed a finger into the appropriate button on his armrest.
“All hands, all hands, defence stations, repel boarders!”
His head snapped around. “Sasha, do we still have telemetry from the drone on the Nebula? If so, I want it to shut that shitheap down, or overload its reactors!”
His science officer acknowledged with an “Aye captain!” and turned to her console.
He returned to his holo. Removed the mute. “You have attacked an Alliance of Free Stars vessel, while using a Terran Alliance vessel reported lost to causes unknown. I am hereby declaring you to be pirates, and you will be treated accordingly. Surrender now and you will be returned to your government or homeworld after serving a prison term to be determined by Admiralty courts.”
He did not expect the thing pretending to be Captain Morrison to surrender.
“There will be no surrender. We will take all you have and all you are. You will be ours to consume and use.”
His tactical alert flashed, somehow, the older ship was charging its weapons systems. He flicked a gesture, and the old vessels appeared, with sidebars. The weapons were underpowered, and normally not really a threat to a modern vessel, but the Mandrake had just been rammed by a shuttle, cutting power to her own weapons, and disrupting her shields, it would take several more minutes to regenerate them.
He glared at the grinning visage of the corpse which was still mimicking life. The left arm was still quivering against the rest, fingertips drumming against a keypad almost identical to his own. From the bottom of the sunken belly of the dead man, a slowly undulating shape crawled, a thick-pincered head, followed by a segmented body flowing with sharp-tipped clawlike legs. It moved upwards and climbed back in through Morrisons throat.
“Captain, boarders have been destroyed. Sir, they were humans, but they were dead. Like mummies. They had some kinds of bugs inside, we had to go in with plasma to clear them out.”
“I see. Ensure all the bulkhead seals around the messhall compartment are still green, and pull everyone back, full medical scans on exit. Once everyone is clear, blow the compartment.”
“Uh, yes, sir, understood. Engineering teams are saying they’ll have full weapons restored in eight minutes.”
“Good. We can’t allow any of these things to get back to inhabited space. I want that wreck vaporised. Mess compartment too.”
He continued to watch the dead mans fingers rattle against the old command chair. And nodded.
“Captain Morrison, it has been an honour. Captain Van’Tu, out.”
In the holo, the corpse finally went still. The creatures which had inhabited him began to swarm, black blood and ichor bursting from his skull as the mother of the monsters which had ridden his body and his ship since they had tricked their way aboard a century before, burst free from her manipulating, feeding grasp in his skull.
“Captain, the drone has fully copied the Nebula Stars database, but is unable to access any critical systems. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay Sasha. When we have weapons available, we’ll finish whatever is left.”
“Sir? I don’t understand what…”
The holo tank cut her off. The Nebula Star had fired its engines, angling towards an intercept with the Mandrake, it needed to be much closer to engage with its much more primitive weapons. As the engines flared to life, fire blossomed across the aft hull. Multiple explosions rippled through it, billowing outwards from within, as the reawakened fusion reactors, initially stirred to life by the probes batteries, then by crawling undead crew hidden in the ships dead spaces, all overloaded, and detonated in a final orgy of self-annihilation.
There was a shudder again, as the Mandrakes crew activated the emergency charges that blew an entire section of the ship into space, carrying with it the bodies of dozens of the Nebula Stars crew, hundreds of incinerated and still crawling parasitic alien monsters, and the corpses of two unfortunate cooks.
“Begin sweeping everything in range with fire, maximum power and aperture, everything must burn. I want medical and bio survey teams going around the clock scanning for any trace of those things that might have breached containment. For the record, I will be recommending the Mandrake be scuttled once all crew are cleared and disembarked. Needless to say, we will not be making any landfall or station docks before then.”
He sat down in his command chair. He couldn’t remember standing up. He stared down at his armrest, and the keypad on it. With the fingers of his bottom left hand, he began typing, sending the results to the main holo where Sasha watched, curious.
ENMY HMWRLD r41429.135 i334451 b-1.791 KILL BURN QURTN
The rest of the sequence was the override code that would trigger the Nebula Star to overload its powerplants and blow itself to pieces before it could be used against its creators.
“Captain? How did you get that message? The log entries are still being processed, but it doesn’t look like anything coherent survived, there’s no co-ordinates in them.” Sasha was confused, and Captain Van’Tu smiled.
“Humans, you’re all the same when it comes down to the wire. Mark blew his shuttle rather than let it dock with those things on board. Even while they ate him alive, he crawled through his command, to do his duty to his species, and to the galaxy. Captain Morrison held off death, kept those things guessing, somehow, as they tried to use him, his ship, to reach Earth, made them keep him in some sort of horrific half-life, until they were distracted enough that he could get back control of his hand. His chair Sasha, same as mine. Probably came out of the same factory, a century apart, and he was typing, while they tried to speak to us, while they tried to board us, shoot us, while we distracted them, he set them up to give us the knowledge he knew we would need to ensure they would never threaten anyone again.”
Fire was still blossoming across the larger area of the holo display, graser weapons detonating fragments of hull with nuclear fire.
“Once we’ve cleared the skies here, we head to an outpost, and start warning the Admiralty. Jobs not over until these things are completely contained.”
***
103 Years, 4 months, 5 days before.
Jack staggered, his leg still bleeding from where a crewman had slashed at him with fingers broken into sharp bone claws. He’d stamped the mans head until the skull popped, rupturing the centipede thing curled inside. He was close. The familiar, once comforting hallways of the Nebula Star had become nightmarish, red lighting and blotches of gore, streaks of blood on the pristine walls, he was living in a horror game, but he had a job to finish.
He pushed off the wall he’d leant against. Behind him, he could hear screaming, and begging. He didn’t stop. It was a trick. They found the noises amusing, and mimicked them, discovering that it could draw in ‘helpers’ they could ambush.
Aft section, frame fourteen, jumpcore bay. He slapped the button, and fell through the door as it slid open. Inside, the bay was immaculate, no-one had been in here since this had started. How they had gotten aboard, he didn’t know.
Inside the skull of a landing team member, he could guess.
He knelt beside the humming machinery. His vision was going grey around the edges, he could feel dripping around his knees, he was kneeling in a pool of his own blood after only a few seconds, he didn’t have long.
He pushed his burden against the drive casing, the chem-catalyst agent on the back bonding it to the drive with a molecular weld.
He pressed the keypad of the emergency c4 cannister, the detonator arming with a beep, and a green telltale.
He typed in a code, short, sweet, he’d forgotten it by the time he reached the end, it didn’t matter. The disarm code was only for when you wanted to be able to stop the countdown. Ten seconds.
They reached him, before it finished counting. Inside his brain, they couldn’t find the code to stop the bomb.
The Nebula Star would not reach Terra, he made sure of that.
As the jumpcore failed, blowing a ragged hole out of the sleek hull, a single shuttle spun away from the boatbay, damaged, lifeless, cold and drifting outwards into the depths of space, the mutilated human corpse within stirring once with scurrying life, then going still.