The global lithography metrology equipment market is projected to grow at a significant CAGR of approximately 7% from 2024 to 2030. This growth is driven by several key factors. As semiconductor technology progresses towards smaller nodes, the need for precise measurements intensifies, boosting the demand for advanced metrology tools. The complexity of modern semiconductor designs, including FinFETs and 3D transistors, necessitates accurate verification, thereby enhancing the importance of metrology equipment. Furthermore, achieving higher yield and maintaining product quality are critical objectives, with metrology playing a vital role in defect detection and process optimization.
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Market Trends:
Miniaturization of Semiconductor Nodes: As semiconductor manufacturing moves towards smaller nodes, the demand for highly precise and accurate metrology equipment is increasing. Advanced lithography techniques require sophisticated metrology tools to measure and verify features at nanometer scales, driving the adoption of state-of-the-art equipment.
Rise of Advanced Semiconductor Designs: The development of complex semiconductor designs, such as FinFETs and 3D transistors, necessitates advanced metrology solutions. These designs involve intricate geometries and layer structures that require precise measurement and verification, fueling the demand for cutting-edge metrology equipment.
Emphasis on Yield Enhancement: Improving yield is a critical focus in semiconductor manufacturing. Metrology equipment plays a crucial role in detecting defects early in the process, allowing manufacturers to address issues promptly and enhance overall yield. This trend is driving investments in advanced metrology technologies to ensure high-quality production.
Integration of AI and Machine Learning: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are increasingly being integrated into metrology equipment to enhance measurement accuracy and speed. These technologies enable predictive analytics, automated defect detection, and real-time process control, leading to more efficient semiconductor manufacturing processes.
Growth in 5G and IoT Applications: The proliferation of 5G technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) is expanding the demand for advanced semiconductors. This growth drives the need for precise metrology tools to ensure the performance and reliability of chips used in these applications, spurring market growth.
Market Opportunities:
The lithography metrology equipment market offers significant growth opportunities driven by advancements in semiconductor technology and increasing complexity in chip designs. As semiconductor nodes continue to shrink, the demand for precise and accurate metrology tools is rising, creating opportunities for manufacturers to develop cutting-edge equipment that can meet these stringent requirements. Additionally, the expansion of 5G technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) necessitates advanced semiconductors, further boosting the need for sophisticated metrology solutions. The integration of AI and machine learning into metrology equipment presents another opportunity to enhance measurement accuracy and efficiency, providing value-added solutions to semiconductor manufacturers. Furthermore, the growth of the semiconductor industry in emerging markets, particularly in Asia-Pacific, presents a lucrative opportunity for market expansion.
According to the recent report published by RC Market Analytics, the Global Lithography Metrology Equipment Market is expected to provide sustainable growth opportunities during the forecast period from 2024 to 2030. This latest industry research study analyzes the lithography metrology equipment market by various product segments, applications, regions and countries while assessing regional performances of numerous leading market participants. The report offers a holistic view of the lithography metrology equipment industry encompassing numerous stakeholders including raw material suppliers, providers, distributors, consumers and government agencies, among others. Furthermore, the report includes detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the global market considering market history, product development, regional dynamics, competitive landscape, and key success factors (KSFs) in the industry.
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Geographically, the lithography metrology equipment market report comprises dedicated sections centering on the regional market revenue and trends. The lithography metrology equipment market has been segmented on the basis of geographic regions into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Lithography metrology equipment market estimates have also been provided for the historical years 2020 to 2023 along with forecast for the period from 2024 - 2030.The report includes a deep-dive analysis of key countries including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, China, Japan, India, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, among others. Thereby, the report identifies unique growth opportunities across the world based on trends occurring in various developed and developing economies.
The Lithography Metrology Equipment Market Segmentation:

By Technology:

• Critical-Dimension Scanning Electron Microscope (CD-SEM)
• Optical Critical Dimension Metrology (OCD)
• Overlay Control
• Others

By Product:

• Chemical Control Equipment
• Gas Control Equipment
• Others

By Application:

• Quality Control and Inspection
• Reverse Engineering
• Virtual Simulation
• Others

By Region:

• North America
• Europe
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East & Africa

Key players in the global lithography metrology equipment market include ASML Holdings, Advantest, Applied Materials, Hitachi High-Technologies, and KLA-Tencor. These companies maintain a strong market presence through their extensive range of products and services. Their significant focus on research and development (R&D) enables them to remain ahead of the competition. The competitive landscape of the lithography metrology equipment market is anticipated to intensify in the coming years as new entrants join the market and existing players expand their product offerings.
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Key Questions Answered by Lithography Metrology Equipment Market Report:

• Product popularity and adoption based on various country-level dynamics
• Regional presence and product development for leading market participants
• Market forecasts and trend analysis based on ongoing investments and economic growth in key countries
• Competitive landscape based on revenue, product offerings, years of presence, number of employees and market concentration, among others
• Various industry models such as SWOT analysis, Pestle Analysis, Porter’s Five Force model, Value Chain Analysis pertaining to Lithography Metrology Equipment market
• Analysis of the key factors driving and restraining the growth of the global, regional and country-level markets from 2020-2030

About Us:RC Market Analytics is a global market research firm. Our insightful analysis is focused on developed and emerging markets. We identify trends and forecast markets with a view to aid businesses identify market opportunities to optimize strategies. Our expert’s team of analysts’ provides enterprises with strategic insights. RC Market Analytics works to help enterprises grow through strategic insights and actionable solutions. Feel free to contact us for any report customization at sales@researchcorridor.com.
Media Contact:
Company Name: RC Market Analytics Pvt. Ltd. Contact Person: Vijendra Singh Email: sales@researchcorridor.com Visit us: https://www.researchcorridor.com/

First I made directory mkdir ~/.ssh && choose ~/.ssh Generated ssh keys ssh-keygen -b 4097 Switched to root with su command Then entered ssh directory cd ~/.ssh And typed ssh-copy-id username@id The I got /usbin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: Source of key(s)to be installed "/root/.ssh/id_ed255.pub" and empty Space like I typed what ever and it did nothing. I stopped command with ctrl c and got this
AC/usbin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: attempting to log in with the new key(s), to filter out any that are already installed /usbin/ssh-copy-id: line 196: /root/.ssh/ssh-copy-id.DZXggP91aI/popids_tmp_id: No such file or directory /usbin/ssh-copy-id: line 202: /root/.ssh/ssh-copy-id. DZXggP91aI/popids_output: No such file or directory grep: /root/.ssh/ssh-copy-id.DZXggP91aI/popids_output: No such file or directory /usbin/ssh-copy-id: line 215: /root/.ssh/ssh-copy-id.DZXggP91aI/popids_output: No such file or directory cat: /root/.ssh/ssh-copy-id.DZXggP91aI/popids_tmp_id: No such file or directory /usbin/ssh-copy-id: WARNING: All keys were skipped because they already exist on the remote system. (if you think this is a mistake, you may want to use -f option) Then I typed ssh user@ip and I hot nothing like empty Space where you can type what ever I wanted to set up public key first. Don't know if I did right or, what I have to type after ssh-copy-id command?

Situation
You have a folder full of HTML (or config, or whatever) files that are all fairly similar, but also kind of not, because:

• They should be a lot more similar, but many different people have been editing them one at a time without coordinating between each other (or themselves),

and

• They really should be maintained as a template in some kind of actual templating language, and the implementation of whatever they're for should probably be something else entirely, but most of the people who edit these files are not programmers and the learning curve would be more trouble than it's worth.

You can see there are a lot of things that could be tidied up and made perfectly identical across all the files, but you can't be arsed to do it the "right way", and you don't fancy playing regular expression golf (trying to make sure you hit just the things you intend in mass search/replaces), and you really can't be arsed to remember how to do multi-line regexps.
Solution
Write a script that automatically splits a tmux session into however many panes you need, then launches a vim session in each one, one per file. Then all you have to do is turn on synchronize-panes, and away you go!
Here is the most minimal version of this I could come up with. A much nicer version follows, but this is more useful as a building block, because maybe you want to use it for similar-but-not-identical inappropriate purposes:

#!/bin/bash # usage: #  file1 file2 ... # or #  *.html # if you run into "no space for new pane", increase -y tmux new-session -d -s editors -y 80 # cycle through filenames given on command line for filename in "$@"; do tmux split-window -v -l 5 -t editors:0.0 tmux send-keys -t editors "vim '$filename'" Enter done # close the "origin pane" (which still has just a shell) tmux send-keys -t editors:0.0 "exit" Enter # attach to the terminal you ran this script from tmux attach -t editors # After tmux attaches, you'll probably want to do: # - Ctrl+B, E to resize the panes # - Ctrl+B, :, set synchronize-panes # To exit, just issue ":q" to all vims, then Ctrl+D to exit the shells. 

Important limitation: The above can only do a single session at a time, because the session name ("editors") is fixed. Interesting things happen if you try to run another copy simultaneously.
The full version is a bit long to put inline like this, so here it is gzipped and base64'd:

H4sIAAAAAAACA61W227cNhB9tr5iIjvdXWRlb1r4xUaApk6KFg16dVsDSWBQErViTJEySXktf33P UFK8XhtIH5IXYzO3M2fODLX/7ChX5igXvk4SL71X1lwa0chXB/PmKsimpaykLFBouttLWapg3eXF xcUiURW9f0/P2JwebEem9PHjKYVammRPFrWltBJKy5KCpcJJESRpW1xRqRxV1tEYm8L7VgV6mVQq SYbA17ntAsdp0ZmiJhFhTBFsYERcy0uqUMSfpGNomrROmVBR+iE89x9MCpTf3xuHv7/IPrfClVTD dTt2+HsOwLUwawAWPZD4JXUohHLkgzAlR4K9Upn1fTDRWXD6xQ9Leq3Di5f0iv6RLqhCaPKtVsE/ 7fgtHH+yTt1ZE77gegzXc2Z0F+9Z54NtPkOijIwlIwfqWwfWxjzgyvmwC/kvdgt2vdaSZr4H4c4a dSezVhjpZzRXpsU41lZ69hRaU7SQCGRNIRc7+f5gr08dJFTZohtiEMFkdFq4GEzz0LcDpaVC06IH 2mgwXZNLt3hiJiyTJYXOGZSlR0CXUXsU885OrmdLemuCdMsB1JvD3Yy/R2Kiz73URu+zCDq3jsmC dssk2ScoH2og1xmCbJABLPtWFDLK2chNbCBdQqcB6dyae2ukYc16aoTpQF2fRCnDO5vkzIvmHy1T dksH88DEF1b7BWX99FsrdLtIEq7K4md/IIpCP6XSJnv7EULXDpJlSbGCoQ0Mwjc8QA/aYo83VmEN xA0beVGF5iGFSfrJ3rB5nCPbQGB2Q9kNZZqO+TrsgD5ZHa64+ri2N6oBLl6ZkaNQKx8hHzFTU25p yuxK9v6JhJRyjtnB1OYsHQaWlBbxmEmh7biZKZZoDRbiDGi+qRUQ+KDQbC089OgDd19LrRfJFwtz J5Sy4qaK+8Q6iGmiTplBn8y9lrKl1eF3p9ON0rII2cAeZW+fyL2gbwD9K/8Dvli/iLdA3YkQVTc3 NoAFp4qge6iuABDh+gVzxxrxFtoBB/fHgyNk/EkZtAk9YdM5i5PXnXKSCl6QfDglCx4B//bjAfHb e1lSvBwD21PGM2gdlUcxZbZloI+3GYmF9nYIY90shxHmshB8jFWYDbDwo4ziEqaHH2QstZdbNf9/ wdjJdUyGVosrMOY3KhQx6+C008r1dL2yLTPzmq0fWrKAS0DHq9WKcEgMv4esW/5PbN3oun0APU+I xd/YG4kjEigqNT6cDzHhGEo+xSKm20JYT2KMabN3W6ZPD01vtkxXD01/b5n0Q9OfX1/EPPUQBDaX nyRsNTavUQYPY7y8wgwnxBdOtYEqZ5sB3hj0eNc4Iwv6ZLo9OPr8JDYC74jEgHHU45EcbzF8Ssm5 ZHlI//726/mPP19MmjtBrix627LE67cWfNzAe2FNpbFhPJLPiUrMTFUKj4twcjxEKBxCj5fUljEX N9U6m4scSDbWzFjf/I3hwnCsN7XFo5zHa2qr8YMHXyAjyHi0a9nEZOPztBEmfjqVTCBkERXDW86S s2YJDm6HOPRagFFURJyLQLRsDhPX8Ccarvwul/8B9fqaXzUKAAA= 

(To decode, run the following in a terminal, copy/paste, then press Enter, Ctrl+D:

base64 -d gunzip > tmux_multi_edit.sh # might as well check it as well: echo "ac5518e97721fe8486cae6a11ef651273aa526cc96b9a495a7fc3e0dcab7aed9 tmux_multi_edit.sh" sha256sum -c 

Then verify that the result contains only standard ASCII characters, read it, and understand what every line does before you chmod +x it, because we don't blindly run things from the Internet - especially things I post the same day I wrote them...)

Somebody know when F1 24 will be on istant gaming and sites lite that?

GOLDENBUNNYNKTH ITSBUNNYTIMEMYSG
MUSTPULLBUNNY
BOUNCYBUNNY

DevOps Practices Help with the Continuous Learning and Adaptation of AI Systems

In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming industries, ensuring that AI systems continuously learn and adapt is crucial. DevOps practices, known for enhancing software development and delivery, can play a significant role in this process. Let's explore how DevOps can facilitate the continuous learning and adaptation of AI systems, making them more robust, reliable, and efficient.

Introduction

AI systems are dynamic by nature. They require constant updates and refinements to stay relevant and effective. This is where DevOps, a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops), comes into play. By integrating DevOps practices, AI systems can achieve continuous learning and adaptation, leading to better performance and outcomes. But how exactly does this happen? Let's dive in.

Understanding DevOps and AI

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a collaborative approach that combines software development and IT operations to shorten the development lifecycle and deliver high-quality software continuously. Key practices include continuous integration (CI), continuous deployment (CD), automated testing, and monitoring.

What are AI Systems?

AI systems are technologies designed to mimic human intelligence, including machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. These systems require large amounts of data and iterative learning processes to improve over time.

Intersection of DevOps and AI

The intersection of DevOps and AI lies in the need for continuous updates and improvements. AI systems must be trained, validated, and deployed efficiently, which aligns perfectly with the DevOps philosophy of continuous improvement and delivery.

The Importance of Continuous Learning in AI

Why AI Needs Continuous Learning

AI systems need continuous learning to:

• Adapt to New Data: As new data becomes available, AI models need to be retrained to incorporate the latest information.
• Improve Accuracy: Continuous learning helps AI systems refine their predictions and decisions, enhancing accuracy over time.
• Respond to Changes: Whether it's changing user behavior or market trends, AI systems must adapt quickly to remain effective.

Challenges in AI Adaptation

Despite the need for continuous learning, several challenges exist:

• Data Quality: Ensuring high-quality data for training is a significant challenge.
• Resource Intensive: Continuous training and deployment require substantial computational resources.
• Integration Complexity: Integrating AI updates seamlessly into existing systems can be complex.

DevOps Practices for Continuous Learning in AI

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

CI/CD pipelines automate the integration and deployment of code changes, enabling faster updates and reducing the risk of errors. For AI, this means:

• Automated Model Training: Integrating new data and retraining models automatically.
• Seamless Deployment: Deploying updated models into production with minimal downtime.

Automated Testing and Validation

Automated testing ensures that AI models are validated against predefined criteria before deployment. This includes:

• Unit Tests for Models: Checking individual components of the AI system.
• Integration Tests: Ensuring the AI system works correctly within the larger application.

Implementing Feedback Loops

Monitoring and Logging

Effective monitoring and logging are critical for continuous learning. This involves:

• Tracking Model Performance: Continuously monitoring how well AI models perform in real-world scenarios.
• Identifying Issues: Logging errors and anomalies to identify areas for improvement.

Real-Time Data Integration

Integrating real-time data allows AI systems to learn and adapt continuously. This can be achieved by:

• Streaming Data Pipelines: Using tools like Apache Kafka to process data in real time.
• Adaptive Learning Algorithms: Employing algorithms that can update models incrementally as new data arrives.

Scalability and Flexibility

Containerization and Orchestration

Using containers (like Docker) and orchestration tools (like Kubernetes) helps in:

• Scalable Deployment: Deploying AI models across different environments seamlessly.
• Resource Management: Efficiently managing computational resources to handle large-scale AI operations.

Cloud-Native Architectures

Leveraging cloud-native architectures ensures that AI systems can scale and adapt dynamically. This includes:

• Elastic Scalability: Automatically scaling resources up or down based on demand.
• Managed Services: Utilizing managed AI services for faster development and deployment.

Security and Compliance in AI DevOps

Secure Development Practices

Incorporating security into the DevOps pipeline ensures that AI systems are protected against threats. This involves:

• Security Testing: Integrating security tests into the CI/CD pipeline.
• Secure Data Handling: Ensuring data used for training and inference is handled securely.

Compliance Automation

Automating compliance checks ensures that AI systems adhere to regulations and standards. This includes:

• Automated Audits: Regularly auditing AI systems for compliance with data protection regulations.
• Policy Enforcement: Implementing policies that enforce compliance throughout the development lifecycle.

Collaboration and Culture

Cross-Functional Teams

Building cross-functional teams that include data scientists, developers, and operations professionals fosters collaboration. This helps in:

• Shared Knowledge: Promoting knowledge sharing and better decision-making.
• Integrated Development: Ensuring that AI models are developed and deployed with operational considerations in mind.

Shared Responsibility and Ownership

Promoting a culture of shared responsibility ensures that everyone involved is accountable for the AI system's performance and ethical considerations. This involves:

• Collaborative Decision-Making: Involving all stakeholders in key decisions.
• Ownership of Outcomes: Ensuring that teams take ownership of the AI system's outcomes.

Case Studies and Real-World Applications

Continuous Learning in E-commerce

In the e-commerce sector, AI systems are used to personalize recommendations, optimize pricing, and manage inventory. Continuous learning helps:

• Personalize User Experience: Adapting recommendations based on real-time user behavior.
• Optimize Operations: Using real-time data to improve inventory management and pricing strategies.

Adaptive AI in Healthcare

In healthcare, adaptive AI systems are used for diagnostics, treatment recommendations, and patient monitoring. Continuous learning ensures:

• Improved Diagnostics: Updating models with new medical research and patient data.
• Responsive Treatment Plans: Adapting treatment recommendations based on real-time patient monitoring.

Conclusion

Integrating DevOps practices into AI development and deployment enables continuous learning and adaptation, making AI systems more robust, efficient, and effective. By leveraging CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, real-time data integration, and collaborative cultures, organizations can ensure that their AI systems remain relevant and deliver optimal performance. As AI continues to evolve, the synergy between DevOps and AI will be essential for driving innovation and maintaining ethical standards.
For more insights into AIM[L](mailto:contact@htree.plus) [a](mailto:contact@htree.plus)n[d](mailto:contact@htree.plus) [D](mailto:contact@htree.plus)a[t](mailto:contact@htree.plus)a Science Development, please write to us at: [contact@fxis.ai](mailto:contact@fxis.ai)[](mailto:contact@htree.plus) FxisAi

DevOps #AI #ContinuousLearning #Innovation #Tech

So I bought fallout 76 from a third party retailer, one that sells steam keys and stuff like that. I got it as a windows cd key, which I didn't know even existed anymore, because the game boots directly from windows, like no steam, no xbox pc app nothing. Anyway, my game was stuck on the signing in screen where it automatically signs you in, and I saw somewhere on this sub that if you tried delinking one of the linked accounts that maybe it would help. I exited out of steam, and my game booted right up! Hope this helps someone!

The Fightplan series is back, as 2024 has proved a standout year for Ukrainian boxing, as Oleksandr Usyk captured undisputed status at heavyweight and Denys Berinchyk turned a superb boxing display to beatdown Emanuel Navarrete in San Diego to become the 135lbs WBO world champion. But the pick of the performances came for a legend of the amateur game to lay a marker down half way through the year for the performance of 2024 to recapture his own crown at lightweight, that performance coming from the great...
'Hi-Tech' 'The Matrix' Vasyl 'LOMA' Lomachenko
Vasyl Anatolyevich Lomachenko was born 17 February 1988 in the port city of Bilhorod-Dnistrovsky in the Odesa Oblast of South Western Ukraine. He was born into a sports obsessed family, his mother Tetiana a former gymnast turned instructor and his father Anatoly, an obsessed sports fan determined to see his son represent Ukraine in elite sports no matter what the discipline. Initially wanting the young Vasyl to become an ice hockey player, it was when he was taken to the boxing gym that Anatoly spotted the star potential his son possessed. He started training in boxing when he was 5 years old, with his father teaching him to fight as a southpaw despite 'doing everything with his right hand' which he believed would give him an advantage, as well as taking him to traditional dance classes and gymnastics lessons to help improve his balance, core strength, co-ordination and timing. His first amateur success would come at 16 years old, when Vasyl won the 2004 European Cadet Championships gold medal at 101 lbs. He took 8 months out from competing at competitions due to a growth spurt, but returned to claim a silver medal at the 2007 world championship at 125lbs, as well as winning gold at a nationwide Klitschko brothers tournament and at the Senior European Championships a year later at the same weight. Between 2008 to 2011, Lomachenko won 4 consecutive gold medals at the National Championships, as well as the 2010 Presidents Cup, and of course most notably, his success capturing the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games where Lomachenko also won the Val Barker Trophy for 'The Most Outstanding Boxer' at the games, before capturing another Olympic Gold medal at the London Games in 2012.
Now having competed at 132lbs for the last 4 years as an amateur, Lomachenko finished his amateur career with a staggering 395-1 record, having lost by just one point to Russian Albert Selimov, who he'd go on to beat twice, as well as holding amateur victories over notable fighters such as Félix Verdejo, José Carlos Ramírez, Óscar Valdez and Robson Conceição.
After his success at the 2013 World Series of Boxing, Lomachenko turned over to the pro game with big ambitious, with the goal to win a world title on his professional debut, and would only accept a deal on those conditions. After exhausting all options, Top Rank signed him to a deal where he could box in his second pro fight for the vacant WBO featherweight title which victory of 25-3 over José Luis Ramírez who he beat on his debut over 4 round for the WBO International title, securing his world title shot. This would come against 55 fight veteran with 41 wins, Orlando Salido, in a highly controversial bout with Salido missing weight by over 3lbs and no less than 52 low blows and repeated headbutts throughout from the Mexican ,who had rehydrated to over 147lbs, without any warning from the referee. Salido would win by split decision, in controversial fashion having only outlanded Lomachenko in one of the twelve rounds, with the broadcast team adding insult to injury with a patronising 'Welcome to professional boxing!' message to Lomachenko. Defiantly, Lomachenko would go on to capture the same title in his next fight, outworking the highly skilled and blisteringly fast enigma of Gary Russell Jr., before defending in a shutout win over 51-1 Thai Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo, not dropping a round despite an injury forcing him to box in final 5 rounds with just his right hand. The next years would be frustrating for Lomachenko, failing to get unifications with the other champions not wanting to risk losing to the elite champion with such little pro experience, as Lomachenko became disillusioned at being offered 'not interesting' match ups. Despite this, he'd carry on defending his title twice more before his knockout of the year contender as he knocked out Roman 'Rocky' Martinez in the 5th round with a vicious left uppercut and right hook combo, where he won the WBO world title at Super Featherweight. This would spark the beginning of his most dominant run of performances, resulting in 4 straight retirement victories at over Nicolas Walters, Jason Sosa, Miguel Marriaga and his schooling over an unbeaten Guillermo Rigondeaux, giving birth to his 'No-Mas Chenko' moniker.
Lomachenko then moved to his third weight class where he'd face the 44-3 WBA world champion Jorge Linares, over coming slight adversity for the first time, after a his first and only ever knockdown in round 6, Lomachenko would rally back to overwhelm Linares with relentless pressure and non stop flurries of punching culminating in a round 10 stoppage, become a 3 weight world champion in a record time of just 12 pro fights. His next matchup would be his first unification bout against the WBO champion Jose Pedraza, winning a one sided decision and twice dropping the champion, he'd make two defences of his titles over former world champion Anthony Crolla, battering him and twice dropping him inside 4 rounds, and coming out on top with an impressive display over former Olympic Gold medalist Luke Campbell, where Lomachenko picked up vacant the WBC world title, before being controversially elevated to 'franchise champion' and not being recognised as the official belt holder amongst the other sanctioning bodies.
Despite this, Top Rank moved quick to make one of the few super fights during the global pandemic, with a much anticipated bout in what was essentially an undisputed bout against IBF champion Teofimo Lopez following his statement win over Richard Commey. Despite his lack of experience at world level, Lopez boxed disciplined throughout using his clear power and athletic advantage to keep Lomachenko backed up and tentative to throw shots, and while Lomachenko had success in the second half of the fight, he lost a clear decision, many questioning his desire and motivation to continue in the sport. Lomachenko responded by choosing to face 2 Lopez inspired opponents, Masayoshi Nakatani, who gave Lopez his toughest matchup, who he stopped in 9 rounds and his world title opponent Richard Commey to make a statement of one upmanship to Lopez. After a lacklustre performance in a bad style matchup against Jamaine Ortiz, he go on to officially fight for undisputed honours over young talent Devin Haney, who had controversially become WBC world champion after Lomachenko had been elevated to the now mothballed franchise status. The fight was a close one throughout with plenty of swing rounds, with their stylistic differences leading to many debated scores online, but in the end Devin Haney won a much debated decision working behind the jab and landing telling body shots to make the difference over Lomachenko's aggression and output. But with Lomachenko standing intact and possibly even enhanced with his performance over Haney he performed another masterful display of one upmanship on both Haney and Lopez's former opponent George Kambosos Jr. with a punch perfect display, allowing Kambosos to land just 11% of his punches before stopping him in the 11th round, capturing the IBO and the vacant IBF world titles now as a two time lightweight world champion, with a 18-3 record with 12 knockouts and 7 victories over current, former or future world champions.
The Matrix
A masterful technician, while he certainly is by no means a flawless fighter, his amateur and professional success can not be denied with elite performances of world level opponents in almost every fight he's taken. his record may be looked on with revisionist eyes in future years, but Lomachenko has not been afraid to step up against younger and much bigger opponents with a similar talent level, even for his supreme talent an undefeated record would be invariably hard to maintain. Nevertheless, some of his greatest wins alone show peak levels scaled by Lomachenko, scaling the summit of weight classes on numerous occasions and making elite fighters look levels apart in his prime. With his elite levels footwork, creating of angles, dynamic reflexes and supreme timing with his own unique tricks of the trade sprinkled in, it will be interesting to see the future trajectory of the 36 year old Hall of Fame shoo in.
Fightplan
Core tactic Preferred range Mid range Primary mentality Aggressive Crisis mentality Reactive Advantage mentality Aggressive
Operating often with a size disadvantage, and very regularly with a reach disadvantage, Loma is an aggressive high output, high movement based fighter that operates best at mid to close range. Like Chocolatito, his lead hand is his key weapon but crucially for Loma it's often his dominant right hand from the southpaw stance. This where he generates the vast majority of his offensive, but will frequently stance switch either to break distance or maintain distance to or from his opponent, in a similar, but much more refined way to that of Teofimo Lopez. He's happy to hold his feet, but only if he's confident he's in an advantageous position to landed more punches than his opponent, otherwise he will pivot out, retreat with a high guard or look to slip-counter while advancing forward to maintain pressure and offensive. His lead hand is crucial as it allows him to be busy while not loading up on big power shots that expend energy, and his constant movement and changing of pace and offensive make him a nightmare to read, to land on and more important to match his work rate when 'The Matrix' is in full flow. Possessing high footwork, reflexes, agility, dexterity and hand speed will be vital in trying to replicate Loma's combinations, movements and offensive output in Leather while utilising good head and upper body movement with the added bonus pf guarding to say defensively alert and able to counter whilst fight aggressively
Long range tactic Heavily favour lead hand Medium work rate Ultra High combinations Follow up Approach/Wait Countermeasures Cover up/ Retreat
Often on the edge of long to mid range, Lomachenko has an extremely active jab, mostly used to back up his opponent or manipulate their guard to find openings. Often being the shorter man means his double or triple jabs are crucial to breaking range while also keeping his opponent occupied, but he's also happy to wait if he he can get a read on his opponent and find an opening he can exploit or to time their rhythm as he darts inside. Defensively, Lomachenko is less active preferring to ride out attacks in a high guard before responding with a better combination, or changing angle or distance to find an advantageous position.
Mid range tactic Favour lead hand Low work rate Medium combinations Follow up Wait/Approach Countermeasures Retreat/Counterpunch
Mid range is where you often see a calculated thinking fighter approach as Lomachenko looks to get a read on his opponent. He will often hold his hands low to bait an opponent into throwing and looking to change distance or angle before almost instantaneously throwing back once he finds how to best exploit the opening. He uses his head and upper body movement as he looks to work off and slip his opponent's jab to catch his opponent whilst they are defensively vulnerable. He uses his 'Matrix shuffle' to step outside and uses lateral shifts to change direction and confused his opponent and his often frame with his lead hand to either knock his opponent off balance or blind their vision and he steps off at an angle, make his movements extremely difficult to read and hard to pick up where he is all while putting himself in a dominant offensive position.
Close range Heavily favour lead hand Medium work rate High combinations Follow up Retreat/Wait Countermeasures Counterpunch/Retreat
At close range, Lomachenko will sense he's in an advantageous position and look to put together his punches in bunches off his lead right hand. He has a wicked uppercut that when he finds the range can be a vicious weapon as he's demonstrated on many occasions, particularly against Crolla, and a very effective lead right hook he will often counter with which is a lethal weapon as his hook will often land first up close, before taking a half step back to follow up with a combination and make it harder for his opponent to land. While he can be hittable up close, his work rate makes sure he's able to outlandish his opponent and his use of movement makes him less of a stationary target to be caught with a shot, but mostly, Lomachenko will be pressing to find openings as he moves rounds to target for angles to attack and capitalise on his success.
Thanks for everyone taking the time to continue supporting this series, and for all the new readers, I hope you can find my writings useful in building fightplans in Leather boxing manager and keep out my previous pieces below. Enjoy boxing in this great period for the sport and all success in every you do. TEEKAY
Video credits
https://youtu.be/eg24htCdBeA?si=jEpoTSPTD1N8XSto https://youtu.be/-NevXzAtXNY?si=U07r-ijKh26VQbK2 https://youtu.be/-NevXzAtXNY?si=pgCpqNsih67Ik_2u https://youtu.be/ApvDF65n-e0?si=AdGuNqtxKz0ZVi7J https://youtu.be/_nuH0NLnYzs?si=rkrKnYJiaunx9JSH
The Fightplan series
The Thinking Fighter https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/mlmckn/the_thinking_fighter_gameplan/
The Thinking Fighter 2.0 https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/mmc9z3/the_thinking_fighter_20_tactical_inside_boxing/
Moves like Junior (Roy Jones Jr.) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/mpog3f/roy_jones_jr_gameplan/
The Kings of the Counters https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/mq9zvo/the_kings_of_the_counters_countering_with/
The Magical Manny (Manny Pacquiao Machine Gun) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/mx3kjh/the_magical_manny_aggressive_defence_intricate/
Sweet Little Chocolate (Chocolatito) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/n0n1jc/sweet_little_chocolate_effective_aggression/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Rigo's Rhythm (Rigondeaux)
https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/n3dvoq/rigos_rhythm_staying_elusive_countering_with/
Magnificent Marvelous Master (Hagler)
https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/n530c
Cinnamon Superstar (Canelo)
https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/n786r1/canelo_fightplan/
The Spoiler https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/neezv9/the_boxerspoiler_fightplan_shutting_down_offence/ The GOAT of Boxing (Sugar Ray Robinson) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/nfb6fx/sugar_ray_robinson_fightplan_the_goat_of_boxing/
Golden Oscar Winner (de la Hoya) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/npb9sn/golden_oscar_winner_expert_outboxing_cunning/
Body Hunting Monster (Naoya Inoue) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/o4eukc/body_hunting_monster_crippling_body_punches/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Xu Can https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/o8lqn4/what_xu_can_do_speed_and_work_rate_kills/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
The Kronk Style https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/oc01wa/kronk_it_up_the_art_of_technical_aggression/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Julio Cesar Martinez https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/p5pee2/julio_cesar_martinez_the_little_mexican_firebrand/
Floyd Mayweather
https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/q7ci77/flawless_floyd_the_genius_ogf_mayweather_behind/
Khaosai https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/qngzvk/the_real_life_jimmy_sisphar_the_secrets_behind/
Usyk https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/rtt5sd/countering_with_movement_effective_outboxing/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share with
Dmitry Dictates the Distance (Bivol) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/x94pjl/dmitry_dictates_the_distance_an_in_depth_look_at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Golden Global Great (GGG - Golovkin) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/yytuag/golden_global_great_the_boxing_skills_of_one_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Beterbiev https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/10mwljz/you_beterbelieve_in_artur_the_skills_behind_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Wilder Rangy Slugging https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/10s00f2/deontay_wilder_rangy_slugging_beware_of_the_right/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
(Shakur) Stevenson Steals The Show https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/11kl2vo/stevenson_steals_the_show_the_fluid_boxing_skills/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Teraji https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/11upcc7/comment/jcrp9v4/
Junto Nakatani https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/13l1hw8/junto_nakatani_young_japanese_phenom_the/
AJ (Joshua) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/1beqzts/comment/kww65s8/
Mini Monster (Ginjiro Shigeoka) https://www.reddit.com/LeatherTheGame/comments/1btyvbc/ginjiro_shigeoka_mini_monster_the_105lbs_ibf/?onetap_auto=true&one_tap=true

This probably has been asked tons of times. But havent found a thread of it.
So i have been playing the free trial using an square enix account.
I want to upgrade now that the discount is up. I currently have 2 options
Via steam(In region currency about 15usd) or square enix store(24 usd)
My question is about what would be the proper route to go for and in the case of using the steam purchase can i activate everything using the steam cd keys and not have the need to open steam to play the game. Like just link both account and play directly from launcher. Or i do i need to always have steam open?

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Hey guys, mostly looking for Paypal at this time but I’m also happy to trade for cards I’m missing in my Master Set Checklist spreadsheet below in LP or better condition; I’m also interested in WOTC-era promos not listed such as the ANA, CD and VHS promos. All holos and the Series 3 Topps stuff should have closeups, separated these into albums based on the pages in the Timestamps album. If you don't feel like going through the spreadsheet feel free to just post links to your post and I can look through your stuff.
Most of the remaining holos and the Southern Islands stuff is MP-HP but most of the non-holo WOTC and the Topps is LP-NM. Generally going by ~90% of TCGPlayer Verified Seller Lows for WOTC ENG via Paypal (100% of this for Trade Value) and Ebay recents for JPN/Topps, feel free to offer based on closeups or inquire about pricing/condition. In general add $1 PWE/$4 BMWT for shipping on sales.
Sold/traded: Jungle Vileplume, Dark Magneton, Rocket's Training Gym, Dark Arbok, Base Alakazam, Gio's Pinsir, Surge's Raichu, NH Fossil Zapdos, SI Ledyba, SI Butterfree, Topps Ditto, holo Topps Tangela, Nidoran (male), Raticate, Pidgeot, Rhydon and Exeggcute
New additions
Timestamps
Wants Checklist
Closeups Page 1
Closeups Page 2
Closeups Page 3
Closeups Page 4
Closeups Page 5
Closeups Page 6
Closeups Page 7
Closeups Page 8
Closeups Page 9
Closeups Page 10
Closeups Page 11
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Closeups Page 15

Pardon my tardiness, as Necrozma is already here! The first GOFest is underway, and players have already begun playing around with the new Fuse mechanic and getting themselves the new Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane forms of Necrozma, the Prism Pokémon. I won't insult your intelligence, dear readers... everybody already knows these things look great in GO, so I'm just here today to break down what exactly separates them from their unfused forms. How good ARE they for it? Let's begin with our customary Bottom Line Up Front and then see if we can answer your questions....

B.L.U.F.

• The key question: which Fusion is better? In general, I'm going to say Dawn Wings wins out, along with having the more desirable exclusive move. A good Ghost can go a LONG way in Master... all Dawn Wings really needs to avoid is Dark types and a couple Normal and Ghost types and it can mostly rake otherwise. If I had to pick one form and one special move to chase, that would be it.
  
• That said, Dusk Mane is no slouch either! It more consistently handles enemy Ghosts and stuff like Palkia and Mewtwo, thanks largely to its Steel subtyping. But its exclusive move does a bit less for it (Steel is a great defensive typings, but not so much offensive) and while still very good, it seems a little less dynamic and impactful as Dawn Wings.
  
• Base form Necrozma is just overall worse than both, and while this is not necessarily a death knell for Solgaleo (who remains unique), Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane are both clearly better overall than their base, pre-fused forms.
  

Alright, on to the details!

NECROZMA FUSIONS

DUSK MANE: Psychic/Steel Type
DAWN WINGS: Psychic/Ghost Type
ULTRA LEAGUE:
Attack: 179 (178 High Stat Product)
Defense: 149 (147 High Stat Product)
HP: 131 (134 High Stat Product)
(Highest Stat Product IVs {Best Friend Trade}: 7-15-14, 2500 CP, Level 22)
MASTER LEAGUE:
Attack: 245
Defense: 197
HP: 180
(Assuming 15-15-15 IVs; 4634 CP at Level 50)
The typing is, of course, different, with Dusk Mane tacking on Steel and Dawn Wings instead coming with Ghost. But both Fused forms have the exact same stats. This shouldn't be too surprising though, as the "base form" SOLGALEO and LUNALA have the the same stats as each other as well. What is more notable is that the Fused forms of Solgaleo (Dusk Mane) and Lunala (Dawn Wings) both have worse stats overall. Yes, the max CP is higher (though only by a mere 64 CP), but that's because the stat balance is pushed more into Attack, which rises by about 20 in Master League. Defense also rises by about 25, which is good, but all of that has to come from somewhere, and in this case that means HP/Stamina. The unfused forms top out at 234 HP, but the Fused forms only reach 180. That is a big drop, which drives the unfused forms reaching an overall stat product of 9190 (well within the Top 10 in all of Master League), and the Fused forms getting to only 8722 (still good, but now sitting at #20 overall).
In the end, though, that matters little, as the moves for the Fused forms are far more impactful overall....
Fast Moves

• Shadow Claw (Ghost, 3.0 DPT, 4.0 EPT, 1.0 CoolDown)
  
• Psycho Cut (Psychic, 1.5 DPT, 4.5 EPT, 1.0 CD)
  
• Metal Claw (Steel, 2.5 DPT, 3.0 EPT, 1.0 CD)
  

Yep, those both have the exact same fast moves. I was half-expecting Niantic to do something with that just before release but they let it be, so here we are.
Psycho Cut isn't a bad move, it really isn't. You like Mud Shot? Fairy Wind? Thunder Shock? Psycho Cut is an underused clone of those.
But I mean, when you have Shadow Claw, you run Shadow Claw. It generates nearly as much energy as Psycho Cut and literally DOUBLE the damage. It's also a better fit in PvP in general, and Master League especially where there are a number of prominent Steel and Psychic types that resist Psychic damage, but not Ghost, which is resisted only by Normal types and Dark (which also resists Psycho Cut anyway).
And uh... we don't talk about Bruno fast moves with DPT and EPT adding up to less than 6. That means you, Metal Claw.
ᴱ - Exclusive Move
Charge Moves

• Iron Head (Steel, 70 damage, 50 energy)
  
• Dark Pulse (Dark, 80 damage, 50 energy)
  
• Outrage (Dragon, 110 damage, 60 energy)
  
• Future Sight (Psychic, 120 damage, 65 energy)
  
• Dusk Mane: Sunsteel Strikeᴱ (Steel, 135 damage, 65 energy)
  
• Dawn Wings: Moongeist Beamᴱ (Ghost, 135 damage, 65 energy)
  

And again, other than the all-new exclusive moves, both Dusk Mane and Dawn Wings share the same charge moves as well. And at least in terms of pure win/loss numbers, they both seem to be at their peak without needing their exclusive moves at all, running well with Dark Pulse as its best 50-energy move, and STAB Future Sight as their best closer.
Dusk Mane can actually beat a few big names with Future Sight that it cannot with Sunsteel Strike, namely Kyogre, Reshiram, and Zekrom, and the reason is simple: they all resist Steel damage, but not Psychic damage. Conversely, Sunsteel Strike DOES overcome Rhyperior and Zarude, the former being weak to Steel but taking neutral from Psychic, and the latter resisting Psychic damage but taking neutral from Steel.
With Dawn Wings, we're in more of a sidegrade situation, with the new Moongeist Beam beating Origin Dialga, and Future Sight instead overcoming Ghost-resistant Ursaluna. No notable differences in 2v2 shielding, though there is a BIG jump for Moongeist with shields down, taking down Ho-Oh, Garchomp, Altered Giratina, and both forms of Dialga, while Ursaluna remaisn the only unique win for Future Sight.
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself! The main purpose of this analysis was not just to show that both Fusions are good (everybody already knows that!), but what makes them better than the base forms from which they originate. So let's back up a little and do that.

MASTER LEAGUE

Starting from the top down, because let's be honest... no matter how good Necrozma may or may not be in other Leagues, Master League is the one everybody has circled to try it out in.
Let's set our barometers by looking at the base forms. We of course have the base form of NECROZMA itself, which is basically just a worse form of both of its Fusions. Necrozma comes in with 16 more HP, but also over 20 less Attack and Defense, as well as now subtyping... it's a mono-Psychic type. In the end, it just doesn't do enough, losing to things its Fusion forms can handle like Dialga, Palkia, Zekrom, Garchomp, Dragonite, Kyogre, and several others. When it comes to PvP, Necrozma's primary purpose is just to fuse.
As we've discussed before, Lunala broke our hearts when we saw the moves Niantic chose to gave it... or more appropriately, NOT give it. Lunala's biggest issue is being stuck with Confusion as its best fast move, rather than the far more interesting Shadow Claw. Yes yes, maybe that seems a little overpowered... but then you consider the fused version of Lunala, Dawn Wings Necrozma, which DOES get Shadow Claw and does a lot with it! A theoretical Shadow Claw Lunala would give Dawn Wings a real run for its money, but as is, it's no contest. The only thing Confusion Lunala can beat that Dawn Wings Necrozma cannot is Ursaluna (when Dawn Wings has Moongeist Beam, at least, as mentioned earlier), whereas Dawn Wings is able to beat a ton of things that Lunala is incapable of keeping up with like (in order) Dialga, Dragonite, Excadrill, Garchomp, Groudon, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Landorus-T, Lugia, Mamoswine, Melmetal, Metagross, Palkia, Reshiram, Rhyperior, Zekrom and, as Niantic would say, "and more!" And that lopsided difference is just as extreme in 0v0 shielding and 2v2 shielding as well.
No contest here, folks: Dawn Wings Necrozma is (almost) strictly better than both Necrozma base form and Lunala.
Now with Solgaleo, while Dawn Wings is still clearly better (and with mulitple closing options, as discused earlier), there's a little more to discuss. Lunala and Dawn Wings Necrozma operate rather similarly overall, with similar coverage but just a massive disparity between quality of moves. In the case of Solgaleo vs Dusk Mane we have some fundamental differences. Solgaleo, of course, runs a Fire-type fast move, which gives it some wins that Dusk Mane cannot consistently replicate like Mamoswine, Excadrill, and Zarude. It also doesn't rely on long-drawn out charge moves, with Psychic Fangs and even Iron Head being as fast (or often faster) than anything Necrozma of any form can bring to bear. But of course, that's not considering the amazing Shadow Claw and its 4.0 EPT, so in the end, it's still a relative blowout for Dawn Wings, with its own unique wins like Palkia (both forms), Mewtwo, the Giratinas, and then Kyogre, Reshiram, and Zekrom (with Future Sight) or Rhyperior (with Sunsteel Strike), as well as beating Solgaleo in the head-to-head. Many of those carry over into the 0shield matchups as well, though if there's a bright spot for Solgaleo wearing things down with Psychic Fangs, it is found in 2v2 shielding, where Solgaleo turns the tables in putting Dusk Mane now to shame with special wins like Excadrill, Ursaluna, Snorlax, Yveltal, Dragonite, and Therian Landorus, whereas Dusk Mane can only manage Reshiram and Altered Giratina instead.
Overall, I think Solgaleo still has a place in Master League, but Dawn Mane Necrozma is clearly more powerful overall in a conclusion that surely surprises nobody. You're all smart already, dear readers!

ULTRA LEAGUE

Any reason to save a Necrozma for Ultra League and NOT level them up for Master? Well, put simply, no, not really. None of them exceed even a 25% winrate against the established meta. Here their made-for-Master-League stats betray them, and their comparative bulk now puts them in ScizoLuxray/Jolteon territory, which is a baaaaaaaad place to be. There's a reason that big Legendaries like Dialga and Reshiram (both of whom have overall bulk almost identical to the Necrozma Fusions) do so well in Master League but struggle mightily in Ultra, and the Necrozmas suffer the same fate. They're built for one thing and one thing only in PvP: Master League. Anything else is just trying to get too cute.

IN SUMMATION

Same conslusion that you likely came in with: both fused forms of Necrozma enter the game as top notch Master League options that leave little (if any) reason to hold onto your existing Solgaleos or especially Lunalas, and they're both superior to unfused Necrozma too. But now, hopefully it's a little clearer as to WHY.
The other interesting conclusion: you do NOT necessarily need the exclusive moves! If I had to pick one, I think Dawn Wings with Moongeist Beam has more going for it, but Steel moves are not that great in Master League, so there's ample room for Future Sight instead of Sunsteel Strike on Dusk Mane. If I had to pick one to get with its exclusive move, it's Dawn Wings as the clear winner for me.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, you can always find me on Twitter with regular Pokémon GO analysis nuggets, or Patreon, if you're feeling extra generous.
Happy raiding for those able to go after Necrozma during these initial GOFestivities! Stay safe out there, and catch you next time, Pokéfriends!

Pardon my tardiness, as Necrozma is already here! The first GOFest is underway, and players have already begun playing around with the new Fuse mechanic and getting themselves the new Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane forms of Necrozma, the Prism Pokémon. I won't insult your intelligence, dear readers... everybody already knows these things look great in GO, so I'm just here today to break down what exactly separates them from their unfused forms. How good ARE they for it? Let's begin with our customary Bottom Line Up Front and then see if we can answer your questions....

B.L.U.F.

• The key question: which Fusion is better? In general, I'm going to say Dawn Wings wins out, along with having the more desirable exclusive move. A good Ghost can go a LONG way in Master... all Dawn Wings really needs to avoid is Dark types and a couple Normal and Ghost types and it can mostly rake otherwise. If I had to pick one form and one special move to chase, that would be it.
  
• That said, Dusk Mane is no slouch either! It more consistently handles enemy Ghosts and stuff like Palkia and Mewtwo, thanks largely to its Steel subtyping. But its exclusive move does a bit less for it (Steel is a great defensive typings, but not so much offensive) and while still very good, it seems a little less dynamic and impactful as Dawn Wings.
  
• Base form Necrozma is just overall worse than both, and while this is not necessarily a death knell for Solgaleo (who remains unique), Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane are both clearly better overall than their base, pre-fused forms.
  

Alright, on to the details!

NECROZMA FUSIONS

DUSK MANE: Psychic/Steel Type
DAWN WINGS: Psychic/Ghost Type
ULTRA LEAGUE:
Attack: 179 (178 High Stat Product)
Defense: 149 (147 High Stat Product)
HP: 131 (134 High Stat Product)
(Highest Stat Product IVs {Best Friend Trade}: 7-15-14, 2500 CP, Level 22)
MASTER LEAGUE:
Attack: 245
Defense: 197
HP: 180
(Assuming 15-15-15 IVs; 4634 CP at Level 50)
The typing is, of course, different, with Dusk Mane tacking on Steel and Dawn Wings instead coming with Ghost. But both Fused forms have the exact same stats. This shouldn't be too surprising though, as the "base form" SOLGALEO and LUNALA have the the same stats as each other as well. What is more notable is that the Fused forms of Solgaleo (Dusk Mane) and Lunala (Dawn Wings) both have worse stats overall. Yes, the max CP is higher (though only by a mere 64 CP), but that's because the stat balance is pushed more into Attack, which rises by about 20 in Master League. Defense also rises by about 25, which is good, but all of that has to come from somewhere, and in this case that means HP/Stamina. The unfused forms top out at 234 HP, but the Fused forms only reach 180. That is a big drop, which drives the unfused forms reaching an overall stat product of 9190 (well within the Top 10 in all of Master League), and the Fused forms getting to only 8722 (still good, but now sitting at #20 overall).
In the end, though, that matters little, as the moves for the Fused forms are far more impactful overall....
Fast Moves

• Shadow Claw (Ghost, 3.0 DPT, 4.0 EPT, 1.0 CoolDown)
  
• Psycho Cut (Psychic, 1.5 DPT, 4.5 EPT, 1.0 CD)
  
• Metal Claw (Steel, 2.5 DPT, 3.0 EPT, 1.0 CD)
  

Yep, those both have the exact same fast moves. I was half-expecting Niantic to do something with that just before release but they let it be, so here we are.
Psycho Cut isn't a bad move, it really isn't. You like Mud Shot? Fairy Wind? Thunder Shock? Psycho Cut is an underused clone of those.
But I mean, when you have Shadow Claw, you run Shadow Claw. It generates nearly as much energy as Psycho Cut and literally DOUBLE the damage. It's also a better fit in PvP in general, and Master League especially where there are a number of prominent Steel and Psychic types that resist Psychic damage, but not Ghost, which is resisted only by Normal types and Dark (which also resists Psycho Cut anyway).
And uh... we don't talk about Bruno fast moves with DPT and EPT adding up to less than 6. That means you, Metal Claw.
ᴱ - Exclusive Move
Charge Moves

• Iron Head (Steel, 70 damage, 50 energy)
  
• Dark Pulse (Dark, 80 damage, 50 energy)
  
• Outrage (Dragon, 110 damage, 60 energy)
  
• Future Sight (Psychic, 120 damage, 65 energy)
  
• Dusk Mane: Sunsteel Strikeᴱ (Steel, 135 damage, 65 energy)
  
• Dawn Wings: Moongeist Beamᴱ (Ghost, 135 damage, 65 energy)
  

And again, other than the all-new exclusive moves, both Dusk Mane and Dawn Wings share the same charge moves as well. And at least in terms of pure win/loss numbers, they both seem to be at their peak without needing their exclusive moves at all, running well with Dark Pulse as its best 50-energy move, and STAB Future Sight as their best closer.
Dusk Mane can actually beat a few big names with Future Sight that it cannot with Sunsteel Strike, namely Kyogre, Reshiram, and Zekrom, and the reason is simple: they all resist Steel damage, but not Psychic damage. Conversely, Sunsteel Strike DOES overcome Rhyperior and Zarude, the former being weak to Steel but taking neutral from Psychic, and the latter resisting Psychic damage but taking neutral from Steel.
With Dawn Wings, we're in more of a sidegrade situation, with the new Moongeist Beam beating Origin Dialga, and Future Sight instead overcoming Ghost-resistant Ursaluna. No notable differences in 2v2 shielding, though there is a BIG jump for Moongeist with shields down, taking down Ho-Oh, Garchomp, Altered Giratina, and both forms of Dialga, while Ursaluna remaisn the only unique win for Future Sight.
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself! The main purpose of this analysis was not just to show that both Fusions are good (everybody already knows that!), but what makes them better than the base forms from which they originate. So let's back up a little and do that.

MASTER LEAGUE

Starting from the top down, because let's be honest... no matter how good Necrozma may or may not be in other Leagues, Master League is the one everybody has circled to try it out in.
Let's set our barometers by looking at the base forms. We of course have the base form of NECROZMA itself, which is basically just a worse form of both of its Fusions. Necrozma comes in with 16 more HP, but also over 20 less Attack and Defense, as well as now subtyping... it's a mono-Psychic type. In the end, it just doesn't do enough, losing to things its Fusion forms can handle like Dialga, Palkia, Zekrom, Garchomp, Dragonite, Kyogre, and several others. When it comes to PvP, Necrozma's primary purpose is just to fuse.
As we've discussed before, Lunala broke our hearts when we saw the moves Niantic chose to gave it... or more appropriately, NOT give it. Lunala's biggest issue is being stuck with Confusion as its best fast move, rather than the far more interesting Shadow Claw. Yes yes, maybe that seems a little overpowered... but then you consider the fused version of Lunala, Dawn Wings Necrozma, which DOES get Shadow Claw and does a lot with it! A theoretical Shadow Claw Lunala would give Dawn Wings a real run for its money, but as is, it's no contest. The only thing Confusion Lunala can beat that Dawn Wings Necrozma cannot is Ursaluna (when Dawn Wings has Moongeist Beam, at least, as mentioned earlier), whereas Dawn Wings is able to beat a ton of things that Lunala is incapable of keeping up with like (in order) Dialga, Dragonite, Excadrill, Garchomp, Groudon, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Landorus-T, Lugia, Mamoswine, Melmetal, Metagross, Palkia, Reshiram, Rhyperior, Zekrom and, as Niantic would say, "and more!" And that lopsided difference is just as extreme in 0v0 shielding and 2v2 shielding as well.
No contest here, folks: Dawn Wings Necrozma is (almost) strictly better than both Necrozma base form and Lunala.
Now with Solgaleo, while Dawn Wings is still clearly better (and with mulitple closing options, as discused earlier), there's a little more to discuss. Lunala and Dawn Wings Necrozma operate rather similarly overall, with similar coverage but just a massive disparity between quality of moves. In the case of Solgaleo vs Dusk Mane we have some fundamental differences. Solgaleo, of course, runs a Fire-type fast move, which gives it some wins that Dusk Mane cannot consistently replicate like Mamoswine, Excadrill, and Zarude. It also doesn't rely on long-drawn out charge moves, with Psychic Fangs and even Iron Head being as fast (or often faster) than anything Necrozma of any form can bring to bear. But of course, that's not considering the amazing Shadow Claw and its 4.0 EPT, so in the end, it's still a relative blowout for Dawn Wings, with its own unique wins like Palkia (both forms), Mewtwo, the Giratinas, and then Kyogre, Reshiram, and Zekrom (with Future Sight) or Rhyperior (with Sunsteel Strike), as well as beating Solgaleo in the head-to-head. Many of those carry over into the 0shield matchups as well, though if there's a bright spot for Solgaleo wearing things down with Psychic Fangs, it is found in 2v2 shielding, where Solgaleo turns the tables in putting Dusk Mane now to shame with special wins like Excadrill, Ursaluna, Snorlax, Yveltal, Dragonite, and Therian Landorus, whereas Dusk Mane can only manage Reshiram and Altered Giratina instead.
Overall, I think Solgaleo still has a place in Master League, but Dawn Mane Necrozma is clearly more powerful overall in a conclusion that surely surprises nobody. You're all smart already, dear readers!

ULTRA LEAGUE

Any reason to save a Necrozma for Ultra League and NOT level them up for Master? Well, put simply, no, not really. None of them exceed even a 25% winrate against the established meta. Here their made-for-Master-League stats betray them, and their comparative bulk now puts them in ScizoLuxray/Jolteon territory, which is a baaaaaaaad place to be. There's a reason that big Legendaries like Dialga and Reshiram (both of whom have overall bulk almost identical to the Necrozma Fusions) do so well in Master League but struggle mightily in Ultra, and the Necrozmas suffer the same fate. They're built for one thing and one thing only in PvP: Master League. Anything else is just trying to get too cute.

IN SUMMATION

Same conslusion that you likely came in with: both fused forms of Necrozma enter the game as top notch Master League options that leave little (if any) reason to hold onto your existing Solgaleos or especially Lunalas, and they're both superior to unfused Necrozma too. But now, hopefully it's a little clearer as to WHY.
The other interesting conclusion: you do NOT necessarily need the exclusive moves! If I had to pick one, I think Dawn Wings with Moongeist Beam has more going for it, but Steel moves are not that great in Master League, so there's ample room for Future Sight instead of Sunsteel Strike on Dusk Mane. If I had to pick one to get with its exclusive move, it's Dawn Wings as the clear winner for me.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, you can always find me on Twitter with regular Pokémon GO analysis nuggets, or Patreon, if you're feeling extra generous.
Happy raiding for those able to go after Necrozma during these initial GOFestivities! Stay safe out there, and catch you next time, Pokéfriends!

Pardon my tardiness, as Necrozma is already here! The first GOFest is underway, and players have already begun playing around with the new Fuse mechanic and getting themselves the new Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane forms of Necrozma, the Prism Pokémon. I won't insult your intelligence, dear readers... everybody already knows these things look great in GO, so I'm just here today to break down what exactly separates them from their unfused forms. How good ARE they for it? Let's begin with our customary Bottom Line Up Front and then see if we can answer your questions....

B.L.U.F.

• The key question: which Fusion is better? In general, I'm going to say Dawn Wings wins out, along with having the more desirable exclusive move. A good Ghost can go a LONG way in Master... all Dawn Wings really needs to avoid is Dark types and a couple Normal and Ghost types and it can mostly rake otherwise. If I had to pick one form and one special move to chase, that would be it.
  
• That said, Dusk Mane is no slouch either! It more consistently handles enemy Ghosts and stuff like Palkia and Mewtwo, thanks largely to its Steel subtyping. But its exclusive move does a bit less for it (Steel is a great defensive typings, but not so much offensive) and while still very good, it seems a little less dynamic and impactful as Dawn Wings.
  
• Base form Necrozma is just overall worse than both, and while this is not necessarily a death knell for Solgaleo (who remains unique), Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane are both clearly better overall than their base, pre-fused forms.
  

Alright, on to the details!

NECROZMA FUSIONS

DUSK MANE: Psychic/Steel Type
DAWN WINGS: Psychic/Ghost Type
ULTRA LEAGUE:
Attack: 179 (178 High Stat Product)
Defense: 149 (147 High Stat Product)
HP: 131 (134 High Stat Product)
(Highest Stat Product IVs {Best Friend Trade}: 7-15-14, 2500 CP, Level 22)
MASTER LEAGUE:
Attack: 245
Defense: 197
HP: 180
(Assuming 15-15-15 IVs; 4634 CP at Level 50)
The typing is, of course, different, with Dusk Mane tacking on Steel and Dawn Wings instead coming with Ghost. But both Fused forms have the exact same stats. This shouldn't be too surprising though, as the "base form" SOLGALEO and LUNALA have the the same stats as each other as well. What is more notable is that the Fused forms of Solgaleo (Dusk Mane) and Lunala (Dawn Wings) both have worse stats overall. Yes, the max CP is higher (though only by a mere 64 CP), but that's because the stat balance is pushed more into Attack, which rises by about 20 in Master League. Defense also rises by about 25, which is good, but all of that has to come from somewhere, and in this case that means HP/Stamina. The unfused forms top out at 234 HP, but the Fused forms only reach 180. That is a big drop, which drives the unfused forms reaching an overall stat product of 9190 (well within the Top 10 in all of Master League), and the Fused forms getting to only 8722 (still good, but now sitting at #20 overall).
In the end, though, that matters little, as the moves for the Fused forms are far more impactful overall....
Fast Moves

• Shadow Claw (Ghost, 3.0 DPT, 4.0 EPT, 1.0 CoolDown)
  
• Psycho Cut (Psychic, 1.5 DPT, 4.5 EPT, 1.0 CD)
  
• Metal Claw (Steel, 2.5 DPT, 3.0 EPT, 1.0 CD)
  

Yep, those both have the exact same fast moves. I was half-expecting Niantic to do something with that just before release but they let it be, so here we are.
Psycho Cut isn't a bad move, it really isn't. You like Mud Shot? Fairy Wind? Thunder Shock? Psycho Cut is an underused clone of those.
But I mean, when you have Shadow Claw, you run Shadow Claw. It generates nearly as much energy as Psycho Cut and literally DOUBLE the damage. It's also a better fit in PvP in general, and Master League especially where there are a number of prominent Steel and Psychic types that resist Psychic damage, but not Ghost, which is resisted only by Normal types and Dark (which also resists Psycho Cut anyway).
And uh... we don't talk about Bruno fast moves with DPT and EPT adding up to less than 6. That means you, Metal Claw.
ᴱ - Exclusive Move
Charge Moves

• Iron Head (Steel, 70 damage, 50 energy)
  
• Dark Pulse (Dark, 80 damage, 50 energy)
  
• Outrage (Dragon, 110 damage, 60 energy)
  
• Future Sight (Psychic, 120 damage, 65 energy)
  
• Dusk Mane: Sunsteel Strikeᴱ (Steel, 135 damage, 65 energy)
  
• Dawn Wings: Moongeist Beamᴱ (Ghost, 135 damage, 65 energy)
  

And again, other than the all-new exclusive moves, both Dusk Mane and Dawn Wings share the same charge moves as well. And at least in terms of pure win/loss numbers, they both seem to be at their peak without needing their exclusive moves at all, running well with Dark Pulse as its best 50-energy move, and STAB Future Sight as their best closer.
Dusk Mane can actually beat a few big names with Future Sight that it cannot with Sunsteel Strike, namely Kyogre, Reshiram, and Zekrom, and the reason is simple: they all resist Steel damage, but not Psychic damage. Conversely, Sunsteel Strike DOES overcome Rhyperior and Zarude, the former being weak to Steel but taking neutral from Psychic, and the latter resisting Psychic damage but taking neutral from Steel.
With Dawn Wings, we're in more of a sidegrade situation, with the new Moongeist Beam beating Origin Dialga, and Future Sight instead overcoming Ghost-resistant Ursaluna. No notable differences in 2v2 shielding, though there is a BIG jump for Moongeist with shields down, taking down Ho-Oh, Garchomp, Altered Giratina, and both forms of Dialga, while Ursaluna remaisn the only unique win for Future Sight.
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself! The main purpose of this analysis was not just to show that both Fusions are good (everybody already knows that!), but what makes them better than the base forms from which they originate. So let's back up a little and do that.

MASTER LEAGUE

Starting from the top down, because let's be honest... no matter how good Necrozma may or may not be in other Leagues, Master League is the one everybody has circled to try it out in.
Let's set our barometers by looking at the base forms. We of course have the base form of NECROZMA itself, which is basically just a worse form of both of its Fusions. Necrozma comes in with 16 more HP, but also over 20 less Attack and Defense, as well as now subtyping... it's a mono-Psychic type. In the end, it just doesn't do enough, losing to things its Fusion forms can handle like Dialga, Palkia, Zekrom, Garchomp, Dragonite, Kyogre, and several others. When it comes to PvP, Necrozma's primary purpose is just to fuse.
As we've discussed before, Lunala broke our hearts when we saw the moves Niantic chose to gave it... or more appropriately, NOT give it. Lunala's biggest issue is being stuck with Confusion as its best fast move, rather than the far more interesting Shadow Claw. Yes yes, maybe that seems a little overpowered... but then you consider the fused version of Lunala, Dawn Wings Necrozma, which DOES get Shadow Claw and does a lot with it! A theoretical Shadow Claw Lunala would give Dawn Wings a real run for its money, but as is, it's no contest. The only thing Confusion Lunala can beat that Dawn Wings Necrozma cannot is Ursaluna (when Dawn Wings has Moongeist Beam, at least, as mentioned earlier), whereas Dawn Wings is able to beat a ton of things that Lunala is incapable of keeping up with like (in order) Dialga, Dragonite, Excadrill, Garchomp, Groudon, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Landorus-T, Lugia, Mamoswine, Melmetal, Metagross, Palkia, Reshiram, Rhyperior, Zekrom and, as Niantic would say, "and more!" And that lopsided difference is just as extreme in 0v0 shielding and 2v2 shielding as well.
No contest here, folks: Dawn Wings Necrozma is (almost) strictly better than both Necrozma base form and Lunala.
Now with Solgaleo, while Dawn Wings is still clearly better (and with mulitple closing options, as discused earlier), there's a little more to discuss. Lunala and Dawn Wings Necrozma operate rather similarly overall, with similar coverage but just a massive disparity between quality of moves. In the case of Solgaleo vs Dusk Mane we have some fundamental differences. Solgaleo, of course, runs a Fire-type fast move, which gives it some wins that Dusk Mane cannot consistently replicate like Mamoswine, Excadrill, and Zarude. It also doesn't rely on long-drawn out charge moves, with Psychic Fangs and even Iron Head being as fast (or often faster) than anything Necrozma of any form can bring to bear. But of course, that's not considering the amazing Shadow Claw and its 4.0 EPT, so in the end, it's still a relative blowout for Dawn Wings, with its own unique wins like Palkia (both forms), Mewtwo, the Giratinas, and then Kyogre, Reshiram, and Zekrom (with Future Sight) or Rhyperior (with Sunsteel Strike), as well as beating Solgaleo in the head-to-head. Many of those carry over into the 0shield matchups as well, though if there's a bright spot for Solgaleo wearing things down with Psychic Fangs, it is found in 2v2 shielding, where Solgaleo turns the tables in putting Dusk Mane now to shame with special wins like Excadrill, Ursaluna, Snorlax, Yveltal, Dragonite, and Therian Landorus, whereas Dusk Mane can only manage Reshiram and Altered Giratina instead.
Overall, I think Solgaleo still has a place in Master League, but Dawn Mane Necrozma is clearly more powerful overall in a conclusion that surely surprises nobody. You're all smart already, dear readers!

ULTRA LEAGUE

Any reason to save a Necrozma for Ultra League and NOT level them up for Master? Well, put simply, no, not really. None of them exceed even a 25% winrate against the established meta. Here their made-for-Master-League stats betray them, and their comparative bulk now puts them in ScizoLuxray/Jolteon territory, which is a baaaaaaaad place to be. There's a reason that big Legendaries like Dialga and Reshiram (both of whom have overall bulk almost identical to the Necrozma Fusions) do so well in Master League but struggle mightily in Ultra, and the Necrozmas suffer the same fate. They're built for one thing and one thing only in PvP: Master League. Anything else is just trying to get too cute.

IN SUMMATION

Same conslusion that you likely came in with: both fused forms of Necrozma enter the game as top notch Master League options that leave little (if any) reason to hold onto your existing Solgaleos or especially Lunalas, and they're both superior to unfused Necrozma too. But now, hopefully it's a little clearer as to WHY.
The other interesting conclusion: you do NOT necessarily need the exclusive moves! If I had to pick one, I think Dawn Wings with Moongeist Beam has more going for it, but Steel moves are not that great in Master League, so there's ample room for Future Sight instead of Sunsteel Strike on Dusk Mane. If I had to pick one to get with its exclusive move, it's Dawn Wings as the clear winner for me.
Thanks for reading! Until next time, you can always find me on Twitter with regular Pokémon GO analysis nuggets, or Patreon, if you're feeling extra generous.
Happy raiding for those able to go after Necrozma during these initial GOFestivities! Stay safe out there, and catch you next time, Pokéfriends!

N.B.: I'm mainly looking for the games listed in the title and at the bottom of the thread. Feel free to post other offers, but if I haven't responded to your comment(s) by my next posting, I likely wasn't able to find a trade that interested me.
​
For sale (for Steam Gift Cards or gifted Steam Wallet balance):
​

• Dark Souls™: Prepare To Die™ Edition (removed from Steam Store; $350 $400 or best offer)
• Fall Guys (removed from Steam Store)
• Fall Guys - Dragon Hugger Pack (removed from Steam Store)
• Fall Guys - Icy Adventure Pack (removed from Steam Store)
• Marvel's Avengers - The Definitive Edition (removed from Steam Store)
• Spec Ops: The Line (removed from Steam Store)

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• Humble Hunie Sakura Bundle (can also trade for a full "charity" bundle (Australia Fire Relief Bundle or similar))
• Humble Sekai Project Bundle (can also trade for a full "charity" bundle (Stand with Ukraine Bundle or similar))

​
For trade:
*signifies that a game is tentatively up for trade, assuming I buy the bundle
​

• Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition
• Soulstice
• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin – Ultimate Edition

​

• A Little to the Left
• Black Book

​

• Superliminal
• Taiji
• The Witness

​

• Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed
• Life is Strange: True Colors
• Scorn
• There Is No Light: Enhanced Edition

​

• Hellpoint
• Remnant: From the Ashes
• Tails of Iron

​

• Hell Pie
• OTXO
• The Red Lantern
• Twin Mirror

​

• Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace
• Blood Rage: Digital Edition
• Gloomhaven - Solo Scenarios: Mercenary Challenges
• Small World
• Small World - A Spider's Web
• Small World - Be not Afraid...
• Small World - Cursed!
• Small World - Grand Dames
• Small World - Royal Bonus
• Splendor
• Splendor - The Cities
• Splendor - The Strongholds
• Splendor - The Trading Posts
• Terraforming Mars

​

• A Short Hike(?)
• A Story Beside(?)
• Aces & Adventures(?)
• Arcade Spirits(?)
• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock(?)
• Beyond Blue(?)
• Cat Quest(?)
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!(?)
• EARTHLOCK(?)
• Harmony's Odyssey(?)
• Homeworld Remastered Collection(?)
• Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure(?)
• Minecraft: Java Edition - MCC Island Jingle Jam Rewards Pack(?)
• Monster Prom(?)
• Sifu Deluxe Cosmetic Pack(?)
• Spirit of the Island(?)
• SUPERHOT(?)
• Tinytopia(?)
• Toodee and Topdee(?)
• Train Valley 2(?)
• Turbo Golf Racing(?)
• Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story(?)
• Xenonauts(?)

​

• Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs

​

• Dark Deity
• Edge Of Eternity
• Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising

​

• CRYPTARK
• Dead Estate
• Paint the Town Red

​

• Lost Castle
• My Time At Portia

​

• Toodee and Topdee

​

• WWE 2K23

​

• Chivalry 2
• Disco Elysium - The Final Cut
• The Forgotten City
• GRIME
• Spiritfarer®: Farewell Edition

​

• Back 4 Blood
• Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
• Batman: Arkham City - Game of the Year Edition
• Batman: Arkham Knight Premium Edition
• Batman™: Arkham Origins
• Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
• Mad Max
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate Add-On Bundle
• Mortal Kombat XL

​

• Alan Wake Collector's Edition
• Bendy and the Dark Revival
• Pathologic 2

​

• CODE VEIN
• .hack//G.U. Last Recode
• Katamari Damacy REROLL
• TEKKEN 7

​

• A Juggler's Tale
• Spirit of the Island

​

• Boomerang Fu
• PlateUp!
• ROUNDS
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Ultimate Chicken Horse

​

• Fae Tactics
• Flynn: Son of Crimson
• Ikenfell
• Ring of Pain
• Void Bastards

​

• After the Fall® - Deluxe Edition
• Zero Caliber VR

​

• Patch Quest

​

• Five Dates
• Late Shift

​

• Demon Turf
• Pumpkin Jack

​

• Trover Saves the Universe

​

• Coromon
• The Dungeon Of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos
• Jack Move

​

• Road 96
• SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator

​

• A Short Hike

​

• Cloudpunk
• Ghostrunner
• Severed Steel

​

• Eternal Threads
• Turbo Golf Racing

​

• Lethal League Blaze
• OlliOlli World
• WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS

​

• Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

​

• Celeste

​

• Blasphemous
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
• Hollow Knight

​

• Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery

​

• Bionic Commando: Rearmed
• Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
• Lost Planet 3 - Complete
• Mega Man Legacy Collection
• STRIDER™ / ストライダー飛竜®

​

• Aground
• Calico
• Evan's Remains
• StarCrossed
• Teacup

​

• Into the Radius VR

​

• Aliens: Fireteam Elite
• Founders' Fortune
• Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp

​

• Nomad Survival
• Scarlet Tower

​

• The Citadel
• Viscerafest
• WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

​

• The Blackout Club

​

• BIOMUTANT
• Edge Of Eternity
• Golden Light

​

• Call of the Sea
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

​

• 112 Operator
• 911 Operator
• The Amazing American Circus
• Armello
• Backbone
• Calico
• Euro Truck Simulator 2
• Farming Simulator 17
• Ghostrunner
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Lust from Beyond: M Edition
• Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine
• Orbital Racer
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
• PAYDAY 2
• Pilgrims
• Soulblight
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Starfinder Core Rulebook (Paizo key) and Starfinder Adventure: Junker's Delight (Paizo key)
• Strange Brigade
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• System Shock 2
• System Shock: Enhanced Edition
• Ticket to Ride
• XCOM® 2
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack

​

• Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
• Othercide
• Shady Part of Me

​

• The Last Campfire

​

• Sakura Swim Club

​

• Summer in Mara
• Townscaper

​

• The Long Dark: Survival Edition

​

• Stranded Sails - Explorers of the Cursed Islands

​

• Conan Chop Chop
• Grow: Song of the Evertree

​

• Styx: Shards of Darkness

​

• Hard West
• John Wick Hex
• Phantom Doctrine
• Red Solstice 2: Survivors

​

• Arizona Sunshine

​

• Backbone
• Blade Assault
• First Class Trouble
• Super Magbot

​

• Golf Gang
• Maid of Sker

​

• Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest

​

• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl

​

• Crown Trick

​

• Guts and Glory
• Hello Neighbor

​

• Day of the Tentacle Remastered
• Grim Fandango Remastered
• STAR WARS®: Knights of the Old Republic™ II

​

• Duke Nukem Forever
• PGA TOUR 2K21
• WWE 2K Battlegrounds

​

• In Sound Mind

​

• Little Big Workshop
• Not Tonight

​

• Brigador Deluxe Edition
• Verdun

​

• Resident Evil 0
• Resident Evil 6
• Resident Evil

​

• EVERSPACE™

​

• Cultist Simulator
• GWENT: The Witcher Card Game - Ultimate Starter Pack (GOG key)

​

• The LEGO® NINJAGO® Movie Video Game

​

• Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
• Legion TD 2 - Multiplayer Tower Defense

​

• STAR WARS™: Squadrons (Origin key)(?)

​

• Bionic Commando
• Street Fighter V

​

• As Far As The Eye
• Impulsion

​

• Orcs Must Die! 2 - Complete Pack

​

• Bartlow's Dread Machine

​

• Blaston

​

• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School

​

• The Walking Dead

​

• Total Tank Simulator

​

• Archangel: Hellfire - Fully Loaded

​

• XCOM® 2

​

• Black The Fall
• Goetia

​

• Among the Sleep - Enhanced Edition

​

• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• This War of Mine

​

• Tom Clancy's The Division™ (Uplay key)
• Tom Clancy's The Division™ - Survival (Uplay key)

​

• Highway Blossoms
• HunieCam Studio
• KARAKARA
• Sunrider Academy
• Sunrider: Liberation Day - Captain's Edition

​

• A Kiss For the Petals - Remembering How We Met

​

• Hacknet
• Satellite Reign

​

• The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut

​

• The Elder Scrolls: Legends: 2 Card Packs (Skyrim) 1 Event Ticket 100 Gold 100 Souls
• ESO Vanity Pet: Bristlegut Piglet and 15 Days of ESO Plus

​

• Ame no Marginal -Rain Marginal-
• KARAKARA
• Memory's Dogma CODE:01
• Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project
• Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project - Season Pass

​

• A Kiss For the Petals - Remembering How We Met
• Sakura Angels
• Beach Bounce
• Beach Bounce - Soundtrack
• Blue Rose

​

• Lionessy Story
• My Personal Angel
• Natural - Beyond Nature -
• Postmen Of Horizon (removed from Steam Store)

​

• The Reject Demon: Toko Chapter 0 — Prelude

​

• Koi-Koi Japan [Hanafuda playing cards]
• Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle
• Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle : School Girls Edition
• Poker Pretty Girls Battle: Texas Hold'em
• Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire

​

• Guns of Icarus Alliance
• Guns of Icarus Online
• Impossible Creatures Steam Edition
• Lethal League
• Tempest: Pirate Action RPG
• Tempest - Treasure Lands
• Tempest - Original Soundtrack
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf
• Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide

​

• Tenta Shooter
• Gun Gun Pixies
• DUSK
• For The King
• Book of Demons
• PlateUp!
• Kingdom Two Crowns
• White Day: A Labyrinth Named School
• Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War
• Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
• Steel Rats™
• Hue
• Sifu Deluxe Edition Upgrade Bundle (Epic key)
• Gal*Gun: Double Peace
• The Invisible Hours
• Synergia
• ROCKETRON
• Project Nimbus: Complete Edition
• Dead Age
• Spirit Hunter: NG
• Slain: Back from Hell(?)
• Cook, Serve, Delicious!
• Tower of Time
• Danger Scavenger
• Survive the Nights
• Valfaris
• Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition
• This War of Mine

​

• Knights of Pen and Paper +1 Edition
• Knights of Pen and Paper 2 - Here Be Dragons

​

• 112 Operator
• 911 Operator
• Book of Demons
• Broken Age
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
• Crying Suns
• Crying Suns
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• Liberated (GOG key)
• Moon Hunters
• Out of Reach: Treasure Royale
• Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG key)
• WARSAW
• X-Morph: Defense + European Assault, Survival of the Fittest, and Last Bastion DLC (I believe this redeems as the linked Complete Pack, minus the soundtrack)
• ΔV: Rings of Saturn(?)

​

• Arcade Paradise
• Calico
• Say No! More
• Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
• Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
• Phoenix Point: Year One Edition
• Deliver Us The Moon
• Morkredd
• Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
• Spirit Hunter: NG
• Survivalist: Invisible Strain
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• ENDLESS™ Space 2
• Surviving the Aftermath
• The Long Dark

​

• Duck Game
• SCP: Secret Files
• WWE 2K23
• The Jackbox Party Pack
• Outward (redeems as the base game only, not the linked Definitive Edition)
• Outward - The Soroboreans
• Outward Soundtrack
• Blade Assault
• Founders' Fortune
• Hokko Life
• Monster Crown
• Othercide
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition
• ScourgeBringer
• Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey
• HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED™
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
• Sonic CD (removed from Steam Store)
• LEGO® Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• LEGO® Harry Potter: Years 5-7
• STRIDER™ / ストライダー飛竜®
• Bionic Commando
• Full Metal Furies
• Ultra Street Fighter® IV
• Starbound
• Mafia III: Sign of the Times
• BioShock 2
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition
• Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter
• The Mean Greens - Plastic Warfare
• Crusaders of the Lost Idols Legendary Starter Pack
• Project CARS (removed from Steam Store)

​
WANT:
​

• 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
• art of rally
• Astebreed: Definitive Edition
• Avernum: Escape from the Pit
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
• Cornucopia
• CrossCode
• Dead Rising 4
• Dungreed
• Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2
• Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection
• Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition
• Myst (2021)
• NBA 2K23
• NECROPOLIS: BRUTAL EDITION
• Omensight: Definitive Edition
• OPUS: Echo of Starsong - Full Bloom Edition
• OPUS: Rocket of Whispers
• OPUS: The Day We Found Earth
• Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid
• RAGE
• Resident Evil Village
• The Jackbox Party Pack 5
• The Jackbox Party Pack 6
• The Jackbox Party Pack 7
• Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap
• Zombie Army 4: Dead War

​

• any extra copies of WWE 2K23

​
IGS Rep Page: https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/ti26nz/mizznos_igs_rep_page/

Part 1
Part 2
Content Warning: Child Abuse
***
Darkness gave way to dimness as I opened my eyes and saw slivers of gray light printed on the ceiling like lines on the page of a ruled notebook. In the distance, I heard the sound of pans clanking against the kitchen stove, and I became ever-aware of the scent of cinnamon and bacon sneaking in from under my closed bedroom door. For a moment, I was back in sixth grade. My dad was downstairs cooking up his famous from-scratch buttermilk pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. It was probably 7:00, maybe 7:05, and I had fifteen minutes to get up, shower, dress, eat, then it was off to Middle School with dad: for me to learn, him to work.
It was the day we were set to be assigned our Ancient Civilizations project. Unless something went terribly wrong, I would be choosing Ancient Rome. I didn't know much about it, other than it was some great empire, but even then I didn't really understand what an empire was. I was just happy that I would get to build something with my dad. I turned on my side and looked at the closed blinds, the source of the gray lines, then the cabinet with all my trophies, and finally the wobbly, firetruck-red chair pushed under my desk. I was home at last. The past fifteen years were nothing but a dream. There was no blinking. No malevolent demon chasing me. No inexplicable chaos…
It was a sweet fantasy. But one that became bitter the longer I tried to chew on it.
I swept my legs out from under the covers and sat, face-down, on the corner of my twin mattress. My feet were adult's feet. My room was my former room. And that was Trent downstairs cooking breakfast. Unless, of course, it was my dad, in which case I'd have bigger problems than merely waking up from a good dream.
After changing into a fresh shirt and pants, I went downstairs and saw that it was, in fact, Trent cooking breakfast. He was wearing a plain t-shirt through which I could see the ripples of his large back muscles as he whisked what I presumed was pancake batter. He must not have heard me, because he didn't turn around when I made it to the end of the hall. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, and watched him for a minute as he finished whisking the batter, then poured it onto a hot griddle (spilling a few dribbles on the counter in the process), watched it bubble, flipped it, then transferred the golden medallion onto a plate stacked five high. Next to the pancakes was a plate filled with bacon, and a small aluminum pan of scrambled eggs.
"Smells good," I said at last. "Find everything okay?"
I thought I might startle him with my abrupt appearance; instead, Trent looked over his shoulder, chewing on a piece of bacon. He swallowed and said, "Oh, it's you. Yeah, I hope you don't mind me using your kitchen. I thought I'd make us some breakfast."
It occurred to me then that Trent likely wasn't a guest in other people's homes very often. Lucky for him, I didn't mind him using a kitchen that hadn't been mine in many years. I was going to tell him as much when I saw an opened box of Bisquick sitting on the counter. I pointed to it and asked, "you found that in the pantry? My dad usually makes his pancakes from scratch."
He turned to look at the box, then back at me. "No, I went out and got that. And the bacon and eggs. I didn't want to dig into your supply without asking, and you were asleep, so..."
I felt my eyebrows furrow as I checked the time on the stove-clock. "It's 8:17 in the morning. Are you telling me you went out to the store, bought all these ingredients, then came back and cooked them? Just how early did you get up?"
"Around five," he answered as casually as if I had asked his dog's name. "I don't usually get much sleep. Around four, five hours is all I need. It's actually unusual for Antennas to need more than that amount. But I suppose you are unusual."
I opened my mouth in disbelief. Not only had he commandeered my kitchen, he was calling me unusual? At 8-fricken-17 in the morning?
"Sorry," Trent said, reading my expression, "I'm… well, let's just say I've not had many personal relationships. I'm used to being blunt. It's just easier that way." He took out a plate and transferred two pancakes, some eggs, and a few slices of bacon onto it. Then he held it up to me as a peace offering.
I sighed. "This better be good," I said with a wry smile and took the plate.
"Trent-certified, but no guarantees. Refunds not allowed." He replied, which made me giggle.
We sat across from one another at the dining room table. The meal was pretty good, but it was no dad's special: the pancakes were clearly box pancakes, the scrambled eggs lacked cheese and had a little too much pepper, and the bacon was… well it was bacon, no complaints there. Still, it was nice to settle down and have a somewhat normal morning.
After we ate, Trent unfurled the long arc of his life, which began as the second youngest brother of eight siblings in rural Oklahoma. Trent's 'pops' was in the logging business, first as a lumberjack, then as an owner of his own logging company. His dad acquired the business while Trent was still young, so school was never a high priority for him—at least not the way contributing to the household was. The rest of his childhood he summed up in two lessons: "Being 'close' has nothing to do with distance," and "don't touch strange plants in the woods."
I asked him if he kept in touch with any of his siblings, to which he responded, saying, "The only reason they haven't had a funeral for me is because it would be too much work." When I asked him to elaborate, he said he'd not had contact with anyone in his immediate family for over a decade. He kept tabs on them. For example, he knew his mother had dementia, and his dad was forced into retirement by his oldest brother (who had gone on to take over the logging company). His sisters were all married and moved to other parts of the country. He considered reaching out several times, but his situation required a degree of security that wasn't conducive of close family ties, not that there were particularly strong ties even before he broke contact. Trent admitted to being a bit of a black sheep.
"It all circles back to one of my jobs as a Home Inspector," he explained. "After I moved out, I tried college and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I entered the workforce and did a bunch of odd jobs. Construction, carpentry, plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for a while. But I ended up in Home Inspection. There was one job in particular which made me aware of…" Trent paused and gestured toward the space between us, "our situation. The blinks. You remember what I told you about origin points being like a station where other realms intersect with our world? Well, this house was like Union Station or JFK airport if you prefer a plane analogy. There was a pile of junk up to my knees in the basement of that house; all of it had been blinked in. I spent a couple days on the property, running tests, trying to identify the strange phenomenon, but on day three I rolled up to an army of what I thought at the time were Feds, parading around the property like ants on an anthill and sectioning it off with crime-scene tape." I saw disgust funnel into Trent's expression. "They're not Feds at all though. At least not anymore. I call them "the Organization," a group of people who lead in the formalized understanding of what you know as 'blinking'. And they're the reason I have to take precautions."
I considered this for a moment. Trent's story was certainly plausible, but I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. "Okay, so, what does this 'Organization' want? You make it seem like they're not good people. Have they tried attacking you?"
This caused Trent to laugh for a solid ten seconds. "Sorry, it's just… I mean if you knew what I knew, you might think it's funny, too."
"Then tell me"
Trent took a deep breath, then released. "It's a long story. The gist of it is this. The Organization has a certain device which I call 'the Receiver'. Think of it like a giant antenna—no, not us kind of Antennas, an actual antenna. It's like the machine equivalent of us, but with a billion times the bandwidth. Their goal is to use the Receiver to map our world in relation to other dimensions, then use that map to establish dominion over everyone and everything. In order to do this, they need muscle: both human muscle, and Antenna muscle. They're in the process of harvesting as many of us they can find. They're like a giant diamond company who is taking to the mines. When they find a stone, they take it back to their factory for cutting and refinement. In real terms, they run tests on us and attempt to augment our powers. The ultimate goal is to create a 'Strong Antenna', or an Antenna capable of causing phase shifts—blinks." Trent saw from my expression that he was starting to lose me, so he stood up and began rolling up his shirt.
"What are you doing?" I asked, turning away. Then I saw what he wanted to show me. There was a long scar beginning high up on his ribs and slashing all the way down to his left hip. There was also what appeared to be a patch of burn marks on his stomach.
"It was early on when I got these." Trent explained. "I was naive. I actually thought I'd be able to reason with these people. The only reason I escaped was because of dumb luck and a box of hand grenades. But that's a tale for another time. I learned two important lessons that day. First, the Organization isn't fucking around. And two, they aren't immortal. Most of them are regular, every-day humans, except for their obsession with power." Trent let his shirt fall, covering up the marks. "I ran into them again recently at their Headquarters. My team and I are working on a plan to…" he paused, seemingly weighing his words, then changed gears. "Well, I guess we can go over that another time."
I couldn't help but feel that Trent was holding something back. As much as I tried to resist thinking about yesterday, the old demon-man's words kept ringing in my head. You think he can help you? He's only here to help himself. Then I thought about what Trent said at the deli: "that's the thing that got me really interested in you. Somehow you seem to be able to control it without gear, just by praying." Did Trent think I was a Strong Antenna? Is that the only reason he's helping me? Because he wants to recruit me? And if that is the case, what if I said 'no'?
"Listen, Trent," I started, but I saw Trent was already nodding. Still, I pressed on. "I need you to tell me what I'm actually doing here. Why did you agree to help me? And what does helping me really mean? I want to know the truth."
"The truth is…" Trent started, then stopped and looked out the glass door that led onto the deck. I looked too and saw a sparrow had alighted on our old bird feeder. It tried pecking at some of its non-existent grains, then sang what I assumed was a song of displeasure before taking back off to the skies.
"The truth is: I do want to recruit you. I think you have the potential to be the strongest tool in my arsenal, but I won't require it. To date, I've helped 53 of our kind, but only seven have stayed on. Most decide to go on and live normal lives." Trent scooted his plate to the side. "In our case, this can essentially go one of two ways. In either instance, we pass through Chicago for two stops. First, I need to meet up with an associate who has something to drop off to me. Then I need to stop at a storage locker and trade out some gear that will allow me to open a phase portal. When we arrive at your origin point, I'll open the portal and you'll look inside. Based on everything you've told me, I'm guessing that childhood accident was when the demon appended itself to your life. By seeing how it entered your life, you should be able to figure out how to dispel it. At least that's the working theory. Returning to the origin point has always worked for the other Antennas, although I must admit your situation is different, but I can't imagine it's so different that this method won't work at all. After you return demon-free, you're free. You can walk out and never see me again and hopefully you'll live a happy and peaceful life. Or you can decide to throw your lot in with mine, and I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, so to speak." Trent looked into my eyes, and when I didn't respond for a few seconds, he said, "that's it. That's all I got."
I smiled and responded with one sentence.
"When do we leave?"
***
Memories have a strange architecture. In some ways, they are the great safety net of our experiences: collecting them like a bucket under a leaky roof. In other ways, they are an eternal reminder that nothing ever truly lasts. Perhaps a better way of thinking about memories is as the ghosts of our past lingering in the present. As I took one last stroll through my childhood house, feeling that it might be my last time for a long while, I felt the imprints of childhood memories press into my awareness: I could hear my father's voice reading to me at my bedside; I could see him holding one of my stuffed animals above my head as I wrestled him for it; I could recall the times when I'd sneak down the stairs late at night and quietly open the freezer, grab the ice cream carton, then head back upstairs to eat it.
I felt a yearning to return to those memories: to walk into the fictitious pictures my mind was painting on the canvas of my present. I knew I couldn't return, but I still wanted something to hold onto. I went back to my room and grabbed the cotton-stuffed tomato from off my closet cabinet. Then I walked through my dad's study and removed a volume I recalled him frequently reading, a hard-cover book with a green binding called, "A Collection of Great Works". I placed these items by my feet in the passenger seat of Trent's van, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered something else.
"My plant!" I blurted.
"Your what?"
"My plant—and my car. I left them it the deli. Do you think we could swing by and get it?"
Trent checked the time, then said, "Yeah, I guess we can. I just hope it isn't towed."
Luckily, it wasn't. I half-expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there wasn't one of those, either. I unlocked the door to my Jetta and got into what felt like an active oven. "Hot!" I said and rolled down all the windows, then cranked up the AC. I saw my plant resting in the cupholder that I'd left it in the previous day. I picked it up and touched its soil. It was dry and beginning to crack. Hang on little guy, I thought. Then I led the way back to my house.
When I arrived, I parked at the head of the driveway. I turned off the car, then ran inside with the young tomato plant, bringing it to the upstairs bathrooms sink and dousing it in water. I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to add, but I figured after the sauna experience it had yesterday, I could afford to go a little overboard. Once it was fed, I opened the small purple drapes and placed it on the windowsill which faced East, meaning it would hopefully get plenty of morning sunlight.
"Good, now?" Trent asked after I hopped back in the passenger seat of the van.
"Yeah," I said. "Good now."
"Then lets get a move on."
***
Road tripping with Trent was a much different experience than when we were driving for our lives. For one, Trent wasn't nearly as tense. He drove with the windows down and one hand on the steering wheel like out of a Mustang commercial, talking intermittently about his adventures: people he'd met, jobs he'd done, close calls. He was like a living radio. And when his personal station wasn't on, he was playing one of his CD's—classic rock, mainly. When he was in an 'off' period, I found myself looking out the window at the rolling wheat fields and cloudy blue sky. Journey was playing, and the lyrics to one of the songs crept into my head and reverberated there:
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow…
I've been trying to make it home,
Got to make it before too long…
Ooh I can't take it, very much longer…
In a strange way, I felt like I was leaving home. But in another way, I was going back. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have a home at all. Did I ever have one? These past couple days had called everything about my life into question, to the point where the past seemed as mysterious as the future, and both intersected at that one place in the woods. The place where it all began. The place we were headed.
We only stopped once at a gas station to refuel, get snacks, and use the bathroom. Otherwise it was smooth sailing, other than one heated discussion with Trent that began when he addressed his vehicle as "Car" for the fifth time.
"Okay, you need to come up with a better name than that."
"What do you mean?" Trent asked, seeming genuinely confused.
"You have a super-car and you named it 'Car'. That's actually embarrassing."
"But, it is a car."
I facepalmed. "First of all, it's a van."
"A van is a type of car."
"Second of all, would you name your kid, 'kid'?"
Trent thought it over for what I thought was much too long. At last he concluded, "No, I'd probably name him 'boy', or if it's a girl, 'girl'."
After five more minutes of his childish banter, we settled on the name "Ava"—my choice, after rejecting his runner-up name "Scar".
At around the seven hour mark, I dozed off, then woke up a couple hours later to the sensation of the van dipping, then bumping up into an elevated climb. The evening sunlight that was pressuring my eyelids to open, dissipated, and everything was suddenly dark. I opened my eyes and saw we had entered a parking garage. Trent pulled into an open spot on the second level.
"We're here," he said and gathered up his gun which he stashed in a driver's side underboard compartment that I'm guessing he had installed himself.
"I see that"
"You want to wait here, or—"
I opened the car door, which was answer enough for Trent. We both got out and started down Maple Avenue. I had been to several cities before, Chicago among them, but the size of the buildings always struck me with awe. As we walked alongside dozens of other pedestrians, I looked up and traced the closest tower to its peak, guessing how many stories it was in my head. Then I'd be pulled out of my game by the honking of some nearby vehicle.
We continued for two blocks until Trent made a path directly toward the nearest Starbucks. I didn't know what I was picturing for a meeting with his associate, but it definitely wasn't a meetup at a coffee shop. Still, I followed him in. Then when I saw that Trent was leading me to a corner table where a casually dressed Chinese girl who appeared even younger than me was sitting, I blurted in a hushed tone, "her? She's your associate?"
"Took you long enough," said the Chinese girl, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of homework assignment.
"And she's in school?" I asked, incredulous.
The associate looked to me, then to Trent (who nodded), then back to me. "It's just a cover. I'm glad to see it still works, though." She reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Allison. It's nice to meet you."
Trent gave me a smirk, then said, "looks can be deceiving."
I grunted an affirmation and shook Allison's hand. "I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you, too."
"You have it?" Trent asked, skipping right to business.
"Of course," Allison replied and removed a mailing package from her backpack, setting it on the table. "You want to go make sure it works?" She asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with her eyes.
Trent seemed to think it over for a second, then looked at me. But before he could say anything, Allison cut back in—
"—I'll stay with her. It's been a while since I've had any female company. Why don't you let us girls talk while you take care of that?" She said in a seductive yet authoritative tone which garnered her years that her appearance did not reflect.
Trent hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said. Then he hurried out the door in the direction we had come from.
"Come, sit with me." Allison invited. "Tell me about yourself."
I took a seat on the small wooden seat opposite Allison, then crossed my legs. "What do you want to know?" I asked, feeling discomfort rise in my stomach. Nothing about this situation, from the mysterious package, to Trent leaving me alone with this girl, to the girl herself, whose voice was as velvety smooth as the latte she was stirring with a black coffee straw, sat right with me.
"I'm curious about what you think of Trent."
"Trent?" I repeated. I realized this was the first time I was putting any of my thoughts about Trent or our relationship into words. "I guess... he's a pretty straightforward guy. He seems to know what he's doing."
Allison flashed me a small smile, then took a sip of her latte. I saw the sticker on her drink read "Chai". Then she set the cup down and sighed. "Yes, he's very straightforward. Definitely doesn't mince words." She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a rich black, like onyx pebbles, but there was something about the way the light refracted off them which simulated a kind of inward motion, as if they were tiny whirlpools. Her smile spread across her lips. "I'm curious. What did he tell you?"
"Tell me about what?"
"About what you're doing. About where you're off to. What's the plan?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, but it immediately occurred to me that maybe she didn't know. I never saw Trent with a cellphone. Just how did he communicate with his 'associates'? And what if he didn't want her to know what we were doing for a good reason? Should I tell her?
"No, Trent keeps his cards close to his chest. He always has."
"Don't you work together, though?"
Allison waved her left hand in the air. "Of course, but it's because of the nature of our work that most of our communication is done in person, so Trent doesn't tell me much outside of the current job. I was just curious, is all."
"That makes sense. I mean, I'm actually pretty curious about what you do, too."
"Oh?" Allison's voice went high, as if she suddenly sensed an opening. "Then, why don't we trade stories. You tell about your trip, and I'll tell you about mine."
I thought it over for a second. I really did want to hear what Allison had to say, and she was Trent's co-worker, it's not like I was spilling crucial secrets to an enemy. "We're currently on our way to Southern Illinois. Specifically, we're going back to my origin point so I can confront a demon that Trent thinks blinked into my life there."
Allison stopped stirring, but her eyes didn't break from mine. "A demon, huh?" She raised the cup and took a long sip, then placed it back on the table and continued stirring. "I met a demon once," she started, looking up at the walls as if her life was playing on a screen there. "It was back in China, where I was born." She dropped her attention back to me. "Do you mind if I reminisce a little? Maybe you can get something out of it."
I shook my head, but something in my gut started to stir again. Allison continued.
"I was born during the Era of the Once Child Policy. As a result, my mother decided to leave me in a shoebox on the side of the road. I was a girl, so that's just how it was... Like many other babies in my... 'condition', I ended up in foster care. However, for whatever reason, I wasn't adopted. Years passed, and when I turned six, the government decided I'd be of better use building our impoverished town's GDP in a factory that assembled electronic devices for Western countries. Mostly they had me cleaning, but when I turned eight, one of the employees asked for my help with one of the soldering machines. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for me. I sliced open the ring finger of my right hand. I remember specifically seeing the bone underneath the split flesh and thinking it looked so small and white. The employee claimed to have nothing to do with my accident, and the management declared my injury "minimally invasive" and bandaged it up. Two weeks later and who would have guessed that the wound would become infected, and, well..."
Allison dropped the straw into her cup and raised her right hand, spreading the fingers out for me to see. There were only four. Her ring finger was missing, and a small v-shaped scar had taken its place.
"I'm lucky that the surgeon was experienced enough to take out the whole digit, that way it healed in a way which makes it somewhat difficult to notice. You didn't notice, after all. But, then again, is that really luck?" She made a fist and brought it to her lips, stifling a laugh. "No... Now I remember. My luck was still yet to come." She continued stirring. "Because, you see, after that incident, they moved me to a clothing factory with a boss who had a penchant for getting drunk and roughing up his workers, and, well, one night I was walking back to foster care when I heard the outside door to the manager's office slam shut, and there he went, stumbling, slurring insults, curses, and here I was, perfectly in his path. We met eyes, and in them I saw absolutely nothing. A hollow shell of a man, and I can still remember what it looked like to see that shell fill with a demon."
Allison's eyes went wide with some strong emotion that I couldn't place. "He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out into the field, far away from civilization. I tried to fight at first, but every time I tried to lunge away, I was only ripping a hole in my own scalp. It felt like flames were spewing from my head, and my only respite was when the blood eventually cooled over the wound. By the time he had thrown me against the rock, I'd already all but given up. Then, when my head met the stone, I heard a pop and my grip on the world loosened. The man continued touching me, but it was as if I was disconnected now, floating somewhere above my own head, and gravity was beginning to reverse, causing me to float higher and higher, away from the horrible nightmare below."
Allison paused for a moment, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
"Then I saw the most bright light I'd ever seen. At the time I thought it was either the Sun or Heaven or something like that. It was just too bright for this world. But then after looking for a little longer, I noticed it was in the shape of a person. It reached out toward me, and I had never been so quick to respond. When I touched it, I felt all my pain immediately dissipate. And I felt warm and... peaceful. And I was no longer in the sky. I was back in the field. But when I looked around, the man was gone. Vanished, right out of existence. I didn't understand it at the time, but that was my first experience with the Shifts. All I knew then was that I was free, and I damn well wasn't going to waste that. I ran as far as I could, away from the factories, the foster home, the corrupt governments and corporations. I kept running until I arrived at a City that didn't know me. That didn't want to know me. And I liked it that way, because it's easier to live as a ghost than as a victim."
Allison perked up, and when I turned around to see what for, I saw Trent entering back through the door.
"But you know what's interesting?" Allison blurted out, her voice becoming quieter. "Trent never took me back to confront my demon." Her voice became a whisper. "In fact, I can't recall him ever taking any of us back."
For a moment the whole world became a still frame. Allison's clear, olive skin, and dark eyes, made darker with eyeliner; her narrow nose; her small lips now coiling into a smile. My entire body was a hair trigger hat only needed the slightest force to set it off. And when Trent placed his hand on my shoulder, I whirled around and narrowly missed a haymaker that swept just shy of Trent's face.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" he said and stepped back with his palms up. "It's just me. Is everything okay?"
I turned back to Allison, but she seemed different now. Her expression was benign; confused, even. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I—you"
"We were just talking about where you were off to next." Allison said without a hint of pretense.
"Okay, well, chat time is over. It's time to go." Trent said and started guiding me toward the door. I turned back and saw Allison mouth some words which I swear I heard, as if they had been directly transmitted into my brain.
"See you soon" she purred.
She was smiling.
***
The next leg of the trip passed mostly in silence. It was a little over an hour to the storage facility which was located just South of Chicago. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I pictured Allison's smile. I wanted to ask Trent if demons could possess Antennas, if somehow one of us could become compromised, but then I remembered Allison's words and stopped myself. Because I didn't know if I could really trust Trent. I tried to tell myself I could trust him—that it was Allison who was the liar. Her whole persona seemed fake at best, and possessed at worst. But, then... what if she was telling the truth? What if Trent was the enemy?
He sensed my quietness and tried striking up a couple conversations, but I only gave one-word answers. Somehow, our trust was so brittle that a single, well-placed sentence was enough to snap it. When he asked if everything was okay, I lied and said that I just had a headache and needed more rest. So I leaned my head against the stuffed tomato and tried to sleep, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to.
We arrived at the facility just as the sun was setting for the night. Trent pulled up to the self-service gate and scanned a card which caused the automatic doors to swing open. We looped down a couple rows of the outdoor units until we came to #48.
"We're here," Trent prompted, but this time I didn't budge. I felt his eyes on me after he turned off the ignition. "Hey," he called. "Are you awake?"
I was silent.
I heard Trent quietly click open his door, then close it the same way. I waited a few seconds then turned my head and watched him from the driver's side mirror. He opened the storage locker, then walked inside and turned on a light. It occurred to me then how dimly lit this outdoor storage facility was. There was a weak overhead lantern peeking over every fourth garage like an anglerfish's lure, leaving a large portion of the road not hit by the light bubbles completely dark.
I tried to plan my next move. I could leave Trent and run. But where would I go? Or I could stay and see Trent's plan through. There was a chance this was all an elaborate trap. Maybe Trent was working with the demon, or maybe he was the demon. But then why did he save me? Twice. Maybe he was actually a double agent for the Organization. But he could easily have captured me by now. Unless he needs me to go back to the origin point for a different reason... I considered everything I had learned up until this point: we live at the cross-section of different realms; these other realms interact with our world; Antennas, who are a very small minority of people, can see these interactions; the Organization wants to harness our power and create a 'Strong Antenna' to achieve some kind of universal hegemony; I'm the closest thing to a Strong Antenna to date; Trent knows this; He's taking me back to my origin point, despite not taking the others back to theirs; Trent claims to want to fight the Organization; the best way to fight the Organization would be with a Strong Antenna. What if Trent was trying to make me into a Strong Antenna?
I considered this chain of reasoning. It seemed very plausible, especially after Allison's cryptic messages. Was she trying to warn me of this? But that smile, and the "see you soon"... If she wasn't being possessed, why would she be seeing me soon?
Suddenly my thoughts gave way like a broken dam as I heard a ping come from Ava's radar. I jumped, thinking that all of the electronics turned off with the ignition, but when I looked at the circular sonar map, I saw a red dot had just emerged in the top-right corner. I looked out the window in the direction of the ping, but I couldn't see anything heading down the road.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Four more dots appeared behind the first, and they were approaching.
I jumped out the van and ran over to where Trent was hauling in a large cardboard crate into the back of the van. "Trent, there's pings on the radar. A bunch of them."
He dropped the box next to three others, and I realized I had never seen inside the back of the van. It was filled with what looked like pneumatic tubes wired into circuits, and in the center was a tri-pod which was holding a large halo-shaped ring.
"Pings?" Trent said, then his face widened with shock as he realized what I meant. "Shit, how many?"
"Five, maybe more now. And they're getting closer."
"Five?" He jumped out the back and ran into the storage locker. I thought he was going to close the door, but when I saw him hauling boxes back toward the van, I yelled at him. "What are you doing!?"
"I need to load this up for tomorrow. Here," He tossed me his keys. "Get it started."
"Fuck, seriously?"
Trent didn't respond, only kept shuffling boxes into the van.
I turned and ran to the door and hopped in the driver's seat. As I was turning on the ignition, I saw the row of bushes that was just outside of the facility begin to rattle. The next sweep revealed a whole sea of pings. I rolled down the window and shouted Trent's name.
"One more, that's all. Get in the passenger seat, I'll be there in a sec."
I scooted over the center console and waited, clutching at the bottom of my pants legs. Just as Trent slammed the rear door of the van shut, I saw the first figure emerge onto the road ahead of us. It looked like some kind of large coyote, though it was hard to tell because it was still fifty meters out.
"Now detecting 53 controlled agents." Ava said right as Trent jumped in and shut the driver's side door. "Net anomalies: 53."
"Ava, increase radius to five miles." Trent instructed as he backed up all the way to the end of the lane and spun us around toward the gate. Just as we left, I saw the pack of coyotes stalking toward us, slow at first, then in a dead sprint.
"Increasing radius." Ava responded. "Increased. Recalculating… Recalculating… Re—complete. Now detecting 451 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 451."
"What does 'controlled agent' mean?" I asked.
"Hold on," Trent said and accelerated into the gate, bursting through it. The whole van shook, and I heard my phone fall in the crack between the seat and door. Trent steadied the van, then said, "It means the things chasing us are being controlled by something that isn't detectable."
"The demon?"
"That'd be my guess."
"But why can't Ava detect it?"
Trent switched to the right lane, then merged onto the Interstate-South ramp. "Probably because it isn't trying to kill us."
"Then, what—" I looked back at the map and basically had my question answered. All 451 pings were coalesced in a semicircle on one side of the map. The side of the map that we had just come from. "Is it trying to force us toward the crash site?"
"It seems that way." Trent answered.
"Trent, pull over."
"Huh?"
"Pull over!" I yelled.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Then he did as I had instructed and pulled off in the middle of the ramp. The red dots slowly closed in on our position.
"Now detecting—"
"Shut up, Ava." I said. I could feel my blood boiling. "I'm not going one step further until you tell me the truth. Why are we going to my origin point? What is your real motive?"
"What do you mean? I already told you."
I unlocked the passenger side door.
"Wait," Trent said and reached out toward me. "Just, wait."
There was silence, except for the pings indicating that the beasts behind us had re-encroached on our position to about fifty meters.
"Okay, I didn't tell you everything. But we don't have time now—"
I opened the door.
"Okay, okay. I didn't tell you everything, it's true. I've never done this with anyone else, but the reason is because I never needed to. And if I told you what might happen, you would have refused it."
"Refused what?"
"This—me, my help. Lauren, I am trying to help you. But you have to understand—it's likely that neither of us are going to live past tomorrow. You're basically confronting a dark entity in a place where I can't protect you, and if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll be coming back to the fight of your life. Because I don't have the power to hide you from the Organization. They're going to show up and try to take you. I really don't know how you've lasted as long as you have. Whatever protection you had growing up, it's gone now. And now I'm all you have. And in some twist of fate, you're all I have."
Ava reactivated. "Now detecting 1,117 controlled agents. Proximity till contact: 20 meters. Net anomalies: 1,117."
I closed my door. "But what if I still don't want to go through with it?"
Trent pointed at the screen. "Then we die right here, right now, together. Because I am one-hundred percent certain that if we don't go to that crash site, we're dead anyway. All of us."
Another ping rolled through. I checked the side-view mirror and saw the swarming pack of dogs reach the van and bound around the rear wheels. I suddenly recalled the conversation I had with Father Martin and the conclusions I had drawn. Father, I've been… wrestling with something, and I think God wants me to confront it. I think I've been running away and hiding from it for so long that I'd convinced myself it disappeared...
"Go," I said just as I felt the collision of the coyotes slamming their bodies against the side doors.
Trent didn't waste any time stepping on the gas. I watched as the coyotes diminished in the distance and the pings receded into the back of the map, never disappearing fully, but covering the flank of our retreat—a reminder lingering on the edge of our awareness that there was no turning back now. That, one way or another, this was ending tomorrow.
And I'd either be dead, or something else entirely.

Part 1
Part 2
***
Darkness gave way to dimness as I opened my eyes and saw slivers of gray light printed on the ceiling like lines on the page of a ruled notebook. In the distance, I heard the sound of pans clanking against the kitchen stove, and I became ever-aware of the scent of cinnamon and bacon sneaking in from under my closed bedroom door. For a moment, I was back in sixth grade. My dad was downstairs cooking up his famous from-scratch buttermilk pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. It was probably 7:00, maybe 7:05, and I had fifteen minutes to get up, shower, dress, eat, then it was off to Middle School with dad: for me to learn, him to work.
It was the day we were set to be assigned our Ancient Civilizations project. Unless something went terribly wrong, I would be choosing Ancient Rome. I didn't know much about it, other than it was some great empire, but even then I didn't really understand what an empire was. I was just happy that I would get to build something with my dad. I turned on my side and looked at the closed blinds, the source of the gray lines, then the cabinet with all my trophies, and finally the wobbly, firetruck-red chair pushed under my desk. I was home at last. The past fifteen years were nothing but a dream. There was no blinking. No malevolent demon chasing me. No inexplicable chaos…
It was a sweet fantasy. But one that became bitter the longer I tried to chew on it.
I swept my legs out from under the covers and sat, face-down, on the corner of my twin mattress. My feet were adult's feet. My room was my former room. And that was Trent downstairs cooking breakfast. Unless, of course, it was my dad, in which case I'd have bigger problems than merely waking up from a good dream.
After changing into a fresh shirt and pants, I went downstairs and saw that it was, in fact, Trent cooking breakfast. He was wearing a plain t-shirt through which I could see the ripples of his large back muscles as he whisked what I presumed was pancake batter. He must not have heard me, because he didn't turn around when I made it to the end of the hall. I leaned against the wall, arms folded, and watched him for a minute as he finished whisking the batter, then poured it onto a hot griddle (spilling a few dribbles on the counter in the process), watched it bubble, flipped it, then transferred the golden medallion onto a plate stacked five high. Next to the pancakes was a plate filled with bacon, and a small aluminum pan of scrambled eggs.
"Smells good," I said at last. "Find everything okay?"
I thought I might startle him with my abrupt appearance; instead, Trent looked over his shoulder, chewing on a piece of bacon. He swallowed and said, "Oh, it's you. Yeah, I hope you don't mind me using your kitchen. I thought I'd make us some breakfast."
It occurred to me then that Trent likely wasn't a guest in other people's homes very often. Lucky for him, I didn't mind him using a kitchen that hadn't been mine in many years. I was going to tell him as much when I saw an opened box of Bisquick sitting on the counter. I pointed to it and asked, "you found that in the pantry? My dad usually makes his pancakes from scratch."
He turned to look at the box, then back at me. "No, I went out and got that. And the bacon and eggs. I didn't want to dig into your supply without asking, and you were asleep, so..."
I felt my eyebrows furrow as I checked the time on the stove-clock. "It's 8:17 in the morning. Are you telling me you went out to the store, bought all these ingredients, then came back and cooked them? Just how early did you get up?"
"Around five," he answered as casually as if I had asked his dog's name. "I don't usually get much sleep. Around four, five hours is all I need. It's actually unusual for Antennas to need more than that amount. But I suppose you are unusual."
I opened my mouth in disbelief. Not only had he commandeered my kitchen, he was calling me unusual? At 8-fricken-17 in the morning?
"Sorry," Trent said, reading my expression, "I'm… well, let's just say I've not had many personal relationships. I'm used to being blunt. It's just easier that way." He took out a plate and transferred two pancakes, some eggs, and a few slices of bacon onto it. Then he held it up to me as a peace offering.
I sighed. "This better be good," I said with a wry smile and took the plate.
"Trent-certified, but no guarantees. Refunds not allowed." He replied, which made me giggle.
We sat across from one another at the dining room table. The meal was pretty good, but it was no dad's special: the pancakes were clearly box pancakes, the scrambled eggs lacked cheese and had a little too much pepper, and the bacon was… well it was bacon, no complaints there. Still, it was nice to settle down and have a somewhat normal morning.
After we ate, Trent unfurled the long arc of his life, which began as the second youngest brother of eight siblings in rural Oklahoma. Trent's 'pops' was in the logging business, first as a lumberjack, then as an owner of his own logging company. His dad acquired the business while Trent was still young, so school was never a high priority for him—at least not the way contributing to the household was. The rest of his childhood he summed up in two lessons: "Being 'close' has nothing to do with distance," and "don't touch strange plants in the woods."
I asked him if he kept in touch with any of his siblings, to which he responded, saying, "The only reason they haven't had a funeral for me is because it would be too much work." When I asked him to elaborate, he said he'd not had contact with anyone in his immediate family for over a decade. He kept tabs on them. For example, he knew his mother had dementia, and his dad was forced into retirement by his oldest brother (who had gone on to take over the logging company). His sisters were all married and moved to other parts of the country. He considered reaching out several times, but his situation required a degree of security that wasn't conducive of close family ties, not that there were particularly strong ties even before he broke contact. Trent admitted to being a bit of a black sheep.
"It all circles back to one of my jobs as a Home Inspector," he explained. "After I moved out, I tried college and quickly realized it wasn't for me. So I entered the workforce and did a bunch of odd jobs. Construction, carpentry, plumbing. I even drove a garbage truck for a while. But I ended up in Home Inspection. There was one job in particular which made me aware of…" Trent paused and gestured toward the space between us, "our situation. The blinks. You remember what I told you about origin points being like a station where other realms intersect with our world? Well, this house was like Union Station or JFK airport if you prefer a plane analogy. There was a pile of junk up to my knees in the basement of that house; all of it had been blinked in. I spent a couple days on the property, running tests, trying to identify the strange phenomenon, but on day three I rolled up to an army of what I thought at the time were Feds, parading around the property like ants on an anthill and sectioning it off with crime-scene tape." I saw disgust funnel into Trent's expression. "They're not Feds at all though. At least not anymore. I call them "the Organization," a group of people who lead in the formalized understanding of what you know as 'blinking'. And they're the reason I have to take precautions."
I considered this for a moment. Trent's story was certainly plausible, but I was missing a key piece of the puzzle. "Okay, so, what does this 'Organization' want? You make it seem like they're not good people. Have they tried attacking you?"
This caused Trent to laugh for a solid ten seconds. "Sorry, it's just… I mean if you knew what I knew, you might think it's funny, too."
"Then tell me"
Trent took a deep breath, then released. "It's a long story. The gist of it is this. The Organization has a certain device which I call 'the Receiver'. Think of it like a giant antenna—no, not us kind of Antennas, an actual antenna. It's like the machine equivalent of us, but with a billion times the bandwidth. Their goal is to use the Receiver to map our world in relation to other dimensions, then use that map to establish dominion over everyone and everything. In order to do this, they need muscle: both human muscle, and Antenna muscle. They're in the process of harvesting as many of us they can find. They're like a giant diamond company who is taking to the mines. When they find a stone, they take it back to their factory for cutting and refinement. In real terms, they run tests on us and attempt to augment our powers. The ultimate goal is to create a 'Strong Antenna', or an Antenna capable of causing phase shifts—blinks." Trent saw from my expression that he was starting to lose me, so he stood up and began rolling up his shirt.
"What are you doing?" I asked, turning away. Then I saw what he wanted to show me. There was a long scar beginning high up on his ribs and slashing all the way down to his left hip. There was also what appeared to be a patch of burn marks on his stomach.
"It was early on when I got these." Trent explained. "I was naive. I actually thought I'd be able to reason with these people. The only reason I escaped was because of dumb luck and a box of hand grenades. But that's a tale for another time. I learned two important lessons that day. First, the Organization isn't fucking around. And two, they aren't immortal. Most of them are regular, every-day humans, except for their obsession with power." Trent let his shirt fall, covering up the marks. "I ran into them again recently at their Headquarters. My team and I are working on a plan to…" he paused, seemingly weighing his words, then changed gears. "Well, I guess we can go over that another time."
I couldn't help but feel that Trent was holding something back. As much as I tried to resist thinking about yesterday, the old demon-man's words kept ringing in my head. You think he can help you? He's only here to help himself. Then I thought about what Trent said at the deli: "that's the thing that got me really interested in you. Somehow you seem to be able to control it without gear, just by praying." Did Trent think I was a Strong Antenna? Is that the only reason he's helping me? Because he wants to recruit me? And if that is the case, what if I said 'no'?
"Listen, Trent," I started, but I saw Trent was already nodding. Still, I pressed on. "I need you to tell me what I'm actually doing here. Why did you agree to help me? And what does helping me really mean? I want to know the truth."
"The truth is…" Trent started, then stopped and looked out the glass door that led onto the deck. I looked too and saw a sparrow had alighted on our old bird feeder. It tried pecking at some of its non-existent grains, then sang what I assumed was a song of displeasure before taking back off to the skies.
"The truth is: I do want to recruit you. I think you have the potential to be the strongest tool in my arsenal, but I won't require it. To date, I've helped 53 of our kind, but only seven have stayed on. Most decide to go on and live normal lives." Trent scooted his plate to the side. "In our case, this can essentially go one of two ways. In either instance, we pass through Chicago for two stops. First, I need to meet up with an associate who has something to drop off to me. Then I need to stop at a storage locker and trade out some gear that will allow me to open a phase portal. When we arrive at your origin point, I'll open the portal and you'll look inside. Based on everything you've told me, I'm guessing that childhood accident was when the demon appended itself to your life. By seeing how it entered your life, you should be able to figure out how to dispel it. At least that's the working theory. Returning to the origin point has always worked for the other Antennas, although I must admit your situation is different, but I can't imagine it's so different that this method won't work at all. After you return demon-free, you're free. You can walk out and never see me again and hopefully you'll live a happy and peaceful life. Or you can decide to throw your lot in with mine, and I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes, so to speak." Trent looked into my eyes, and when I didn't respond for a few seconds, he said, "that's it. That's all I got."
I smiled and responded with one sentence.
"When do we leave?"
***
Memories have a strange architecture. In some ways, they are the great safety net of our experiences: collecting them like a bucket under a leaky roof. In other ways, they are an eternal reminder that nothing ever truly lasts. Perhaps a better way of thinking about memories is as the ghosts of our past lingering in the present. As I took one last stroll through my childhood house, feeling that it might be my last time for a long while, I felt the imprints of childhood memories press into my awareness: I could hear my father's voice reading to me at my bedside; I could see him holding one of my stuffed animals above my head as I wrestled him for it; I could recall the times when I'd sneak down the stairs late at night and quietly open the freezer, grab the ice cream carton, then head back upstairs to eat it.
I felt a yearning to return to those memories: to walk into the fictitious pictures my mind was painting on the canvas of my present. I knew I couldn't return, but I still wanted something to hold onto. I went back to my room and grabbed the cotton-stuffed tomato from off my closet cabinet. Then I walked through my dad's study and removed a volume I recalled him frequently reading, a hard-cover book with a green binding called, "A Collection of Great Works". I placed these items by my feet in the passenger seat of Trent's van, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered something else.
"My plant!" I blurted.
"Your what?"
"My plant—and my car. I left them it the deli. Do you think we could swing by and get it?"
Trent checked the time, then said, "Yeah, I guess we can. I just hope it isn't towed."
Luckily, it wasn't. I half-expected to find a ticket on the windshield, but there wasn't one of those, either. I unlocked the door to my Jetta and got into what felt like an active oven. "Hot!" I said and rolled down all the windows, then cranked up the AC. I saw my plant resting in the cupholder that I'd left it in the previous day. I picked it up and touched its soil. It was dry and beginning to crack. Hang on little guy, I thought. Then I led the way back to my house.
When I arrived, I parked at the head of the driveway. I turned off the car, then ran inside with the young tomato plant, bringing it to the upstairs bathrooms sink and dousing it in water. I wasn't sure how much I was supposed to add, but I figured after the sauna experience it had yesterday, I could afford to go a little overboard. Once it was fed, I opened the small purple drapes and placed it on the windowsill which faced East, meaning it would hopefully get plenty of morning sunlight.
"Good, now?" Trent asked after I hopped back in the passenger seat of the van.
"Yeah," I said. "Good now."
"Then lets get a move on."
***
Road tripping with Trent was a much different experience than when we were driving for our lives. For one, Trent wasn't nearly as tense. He drove with the windows down and one hand on the steering wheel like out of a Mustang commercial, talking intermittently about his adventures: people he'd met, jobs he'd done, close calls. He was like a living radio. And when his personal station wasn't on, he was playing one of his CD's—classic rock, mainly. When he was in an 'off' period, I found myself looking out the window at the rolling wheat fields and cloudy blue sky. Journey was playing, and the lyrics to one of the songs crept into my head and reverberated there:
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.
I don't know where I'll be tomorrow…
I've been trying to make it home,
Got to make it before too long…
Ooh I can't take it, very much longer…
In a strange way, I felt like I was leaving home. But in another way, I was going back. And then it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have a home at all. Did I ever have one? These past couple days had called everything about my life into question, to the point where the past seemed as mysterious as the future, and both intersected at that one place in the woods. The place where it all began. The place we were headed.
We only stopped once at a gas station to refuel, get snacks, and use the bathroom. Otherwise it was smooth sailing, other than one heated discussion with Trent that began when he addressed his vehicle as "Car" for the fifth time.
"Okay, you need to come up with a better name than that."
"What do you mean?" Trent asked, seeming genuinely confused.
"You have a super-car and you named it 'Car'. That's actually embarrassing."
"But, it is a car."
I facepalmed. "First of all, it's a van."
"A van is a type of car."
"Second of all, would you name your kid, 'kid'?"
Trent thought it over for what I thought was much too long. At last he concluded, "No, I'd probably name him 'boy', or if it's a girl, 'girl'."
After five more minutes of his childish banter, we settled on the name "Ava"—my choice, after rejecting his runner-up name "Scar".
At around the seven hour mark, I dozed off, then woke up a couple hours later to the sensation of the van dipping, then bumping up into an elevated climb. The evening sunlight that was pressuring my eyelids to open, dissipated, and everything was suddenly dark. I opened my eyes and saw we had entered a parking garage. Trent pulled into an open spot on the second level.
"We're here," he said and gathered up his gun which he stashed in a driver's side underboard compartment that I'm guessing he had installed himself.
"I see that"
"You want to wait here, or—"
I opened the car door, which was answer enough for Trent. We both got out and started down Maple Avenue. I had been to several cities before, Chicago among them, but the size of the buildings always struck me with awe. As we walked alongside dozens of other pedestrians, I looked up and traced the closest tower to its peak, guessing how many stories it was in my head. Then I'd be pulled out of my game by the honking of some nearby vehicle.
We continued for two blocks until Trent made a path directly toward the nearest Starbucks. I didn't know what I was picturing for a meeting with his associate, but it definitely wasn't a meetup at a coffee shop. Still, I followed him in. Then when I saw that Trent was leading me to a corner table where a casually dressed Chinese girl who appeared even younger than me was sitting, I blurted in a hushed tone, "her? She's your associate?"
"Took you long enough," said the Chinese girl, looking up from what appeared to be some kind of homework assignment.
"And she's in school?" I asked, incredulous.
The associate looked to me, then to Trent (who nodded), then back to me. "It's just a cover. I'm glad to see it still works, though." She reached out to shake my hand. "I'm Allison. It's nice to meet you."
Trent gave me a smirk, then said, "looks can be deceiving."
I grunted an affirmation and shook Allison's hand. "I'm Lauren. It's nice to meet you, too."
"You have it?" Trent asked, skipping right to business.
"Of course," Allison replied and removed a mailing package from her backpack, setting it on the table. "You want to go make sure it works?" She asked, gesturing up at the ceiling with her eyes.
Trent seemed to think it over for a second, then looked at me. But before he could say anything, Allison cut back in—
"—I'll stay with her. It's been a while since I've had any female company. Why don't you let us girls talk while you take care of that?" She said in a seductive yet authoritative tone which garnered her years that her appearance did not reflect.
Trent hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, I'll be right back," he said. Then he hurried out the door in the direction we had come from.
"Come, sit with me." Allison invited. "Tell me about yourself."
I took a seat on the small wooden seat opposite Allison, then crossed my legs. "What do you want to know?" I asked, feeling discomfort rise in my stomach. Nothing about this situation, from the mysterious package, to Trent leaving me alone with this girl, to the girl herself, whose voice was as velvety smooth as the latte she was stirring with a black coffee straw, sat right with me.
"I'm curious about what you think of Trent."
"Trent?" I repeated. I realized this was the first time I was putting any of my thoughts about Trent or our relationship into words. "I guess... he's a pretty straightforward guy. He seems to know what he's doing."
Allison flashed me a small smile, then took a sip of her latte. I saw the sticker on her drink read "Chai". Then she set the cup down and sighed. "Yes, he's very straightforward. Definitely doesn't mince words." She looked up into my eyes. Hers were a rich black, like onyx pebbles, but there was something about the way the light refracted off them which simulated a kind of inward motion, as if they were tiny whirlpools. Her smile spread across her lips. "I'm curious. What did he tell you?"
"Tell me about what?"
"About what you're doing. About where you're off to. What's the plan?"
"Don't you know?" I asked, but it immediately occurred to me that maybe she didn't know. I never saw Trent with a cellphone. Just how did he communicate with his 'associates'? And what if he didn't want her to know what we were doing for a good reason? Should I tell her?
"No, Trent keeps his cards close to his chest. He always has."
"Don't you work together, though?"
Allison waved her left hand in the air. "Of course, but it's because of the nature of our work that most of our communication is done in person, so Trent doesn't tell me much outside of the current job. I was just curious, is all."
"That makes sense. I mean, I'm actually pretty curious about what you do, too."
"Oh?" Allison's voice went high, as if she suddenly sensed an opening. "Then, why don't we trade stories. You tell about your trip, and I'll tell you about mine."
I thought it over for a second. I really did want to hear what Allison had to say, and she was Trent's co-worker, it's not like I was spilling crucial secrets to an enemy. "We're currently on our way to Southern Illinois. Specifically, we're going back to my origin point so I can confront a demon that Trent thinks blinked into my life there."
Allison stopped stirring, but her eyes didn't break from mine. "A demon, huh?" She raised the cup and took a long sip, then placed it back on the table and continued stirring. "I met a demon once," she started, looking up at the walls as if her life was playing on a screen there. "It was back in China, where I was born." She dropped her attention back to me. "Do you mind if I reminisce a little? Maybe you can get something out of it."
I shook my head, but something in my gut started to stir again. Allison continued.
"I was born during the Era of the Once Child Policy. As a result, my mother decided to leave me in a shoebox on the side of the road. I was a girl, so that's just how it was... Like many other babies in my... 'condition', I ended up in foster care. However, for whatever reason, I wasn't adopted. Years passed, and when I turned six, the government decided I'd be of better use building our impoverished town's GDP in a factory that assembled electronic devices for Western countries. Mostly they had me cleaning, but when I turned eight, one of the employees asked for my help with one of the soldering machines. That turned out to be the beginning of the end for me. I sliced open the ring finger of my right hand. I remember specifically seeing the bone underneath the split flesh and thinking it looked so small and white. The employee claimed to have nothing to do with my accident, and the management declared my injury "minimally invasive" and bandaged it up. Two weeks later and who would have guessed that the wound would become infected, and, well..."
Allison dropped the straw into her cup and raised her right hand, spreading the fingers out for me to see. There were only four. Her ring finger was missing, and a small v-shaped scar had taken its place.
"I'm lucky that the surgeon was experienced enough to take out the whole digit, that way it healed in a way which makes it somewhat difficult to notice. You didn't notice, after all. But, then again, is that really luck?" She made a fist and brought it to her lips, stifling a laugh. "No... Now I remember. My luck was still yet to come." She continued stirring. "Because, you see, after that incident, they moved me to a clothing factory with a boss who had a penchant for getting drunk and roughing up his workers, and, well, one night I was walking back to foster care when I heard the outside door to the manager's office slam shut, and there he went, stumbling, slurring insults, curses, and here I was, perfectly in his path. We met eyes, and in them I saw absolutely nothing. A hollow shell of a man, and I can still remember what it looked like to see that shell fill with a demon."
Allison's eyes went wide with some strong emotion that I couldn't place. "He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out into the field, far away from civilization. I tried to fight at first, but every time I tried to lunge away, I was only ripping a hole in my own scalp. It felt like flames were spewing from my head, and my only respite was when the blood eventually cooled over the wound. By the time he had thrown me against the rock, I'd already all but given up. Then, when my head met the stone, I heard a pop and my grip on the world loosened. The man continued touching me, but it was as if I was disconnected now, floating somewhere above my own head, and gravity was beginning to reverse, causing me to float higher and higher, away from the horrible nightmare below."
Allison paused for a moment, and I suddenly realized I was holding my breath.
"Then I saw the most bright light I'd ever seen. At the time I thought it was either the Sun or Heaven or something like that. It was just too bright for this world. But then after looking for a little longer, I noticed it was in the shape of a person. It reached out toward me, and I had never been so quick to respond. When I touched it, I felt all my pain immediately dissipate. And I felt warm and... peaceful. And I was no longer in the sky. I was back in the field. But when I looked around, the man was gone. Vanished, right out of existence. I didn't understand it at the time, but that was my first experience with the Shifts. All I knew then was that I was free, and I damn well wasn't going to waste that. I ran as far as I could, away from the factories, the foster home, the corrupt governments and corporations. I kept running until I arrived at a City that didn't know me. That didn't want to know me. And I liked it that way, because it's easier to live as a ghost than as a victim."
Allison perked up, and when I turned around to see what for, I saw Trent entering back through the door.
"But you know what's interesting?" Allison blurted out, her voice becoming quieter. "Trent never took me back to confront my demon." Her voice became a whisper. "In fact, I can't recall him ever taking any of us back."
For a moment the whole world became a still frame. Allison's clear, olive skin, and dark eyes, made darker with eyeliner; her narrow nose; her small lips now coiling into a smile. My entire body was a hair trigger hat only needed the slightest force to set it off. And when Trent placed his hand on my shoulder, I whirled around and narrowly missed a haymaker that swept just shy of Trent's face.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa" he said and stepped back with his palms up. "It's just me. Is everything okay?"
I turned back to Allison, but she seemed different now. Her expression was benign; confused, even. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I—you"
"We were just talking about where you were off to next." Allison said without a hint of pretense.
"Okay, well, chat time is over. It's time to go." Trent said and started guiding me toward the door. I turned back and saw Allison mouth some words which I swear I heard, as if they had been directly transmitted into my brain.
"See you soon" she purred.
She was smiling.
***
The next leg of the trip passed mostly in silence. It was a little over an hour to the storage facility which was located just South of Chicago. My heart was beating wildly in my chest as I pictured Allison's smile. I wanted to ask Trent if demons could possess Antennas, if somehow one of us could become compromised, but then I remembered Allison's words and stopped myself. Because I didn't know if I could really trust Trent. I tried to tell myself I could trust him—that it was Allison who was the liar. Her whole persona seemed fake at best, and possessed at worst. But, then... what if she was telling the truth? What if Trent was the enemy?
He sensed my quietness and tried striking up a couple conversations, but I only gave one-word answers. Somehow, our trust was so brittle that a single, well-placed sentence was enough to snap it. When he asked if everything was okay, I lied and said that I just had a headache and needed more rest. So I leaned my head against the stuffed tomato and tried to sleep, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to.
We arrived at the facility just as the sun was setting for the night. Trent pulled up to the self-service gate and scanned a card which caused the automatic doors to swing open. We looped down a couple rows of the outdoor units until we came to #48.
"We're here," Trent prompted, but this time I didn't budge. I felt his eyes on me after he turned off the ignition. "Hey," he called. "Are you awake?"
I was silent.
I heard Trent quietly click open his door, then close it the same way. I waited a few seconds then turned my head and watched him from the driver's side mirror. He opened the storage locker, then walked inside and turned on a light. It occurred to me then how dimly lit this outdoor storage facility was. There was a weak overhead lantern peeking over every fourth garage like an anglerfish's lure, leaving a large portion of the road not hit by the light bubbles completely dark.
I tried to plan my next move. I could leave Trent and run. But where would I go? Or I could stay and see Trent's plan through. There was a chance this was all an elaborate trap. Maybe Trent was working with the demon, or maybe he was the demon. But then why did he save me? Twice. Maybe he was actually a double agent for the Organization. But he could easily have captured me by now. Unless he needs me to go back to the origin point for a different reason... I considered everything I had learned up until this point: we live at the cross-section of different realms; these other realms interact with our world; Antennas, who are a very small minority of people, can see these interactions; the Organization wants to harness our power and create a 'Strong Antenna' to achieve some kind of universal hegemony; I'm the closest thing to a Strong Antenna to date; Trent knows this; He's taking me back to my origin point, despite not taking the others back to theirs; Trent claims to want to fight the Organization; the best way to fight the Organization would be with a Strong Antenna. What if Trent was trying to make me into a Strong Antenna?
I considered this chain of reasoning. It seemed very plausible, especially after Allison's cryptic messages. Was she trying to warn me of this? But that smile, and the "see you soon"... If she wasn't being possessed, why would she be seeing me soon?
Suddenly my thoughts gave way like a broken dam as I heard a ping come from Ava's radar. I jumped, thinking that all of the electronics turned off with the ignition, but when I looked at the circular sonar map, I saw a red dot had just emerged in the top-right corner. I looked out the window in the direction of the ping, but I couldn't see anything heading down the road.
Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping. Ping.
Four more dots appeared behind the first, and they were approaching.
I jumped out the van and ran over to where Trent was hauling in a large cardboard crate into the back of the van. "Trent, there's pings on the radar. A bunch of them."
He dropped the box next to three others, and I realized I had never seen inside the back of the van. It was filled with what looked like pneumatic tubes wired into circuits, and in the center was a tri-pod which was holding a large halo-shaped ring.
"Pings?" Trent said, then his face widened with shock as he realized what I meant. "Shit, how many?"
"Five, maybe more now. And they're getting closer."
"Five?" He jumped out the back and ran into the storage locker. I thought he was going to close the door, but when I saw him hauling boxes back toward the van, I yelled at him. "What are you doing!?"
"I need to load this up for tomorrow. Here," He tossed me his keys. "Get it started."
"Fuck, seriously?"
Trent didn't respond, only kept shuffling boxes into the van.
I turned and ran to the door and hopped in the driver's seat. As I was turning on the ignition, I saw the row of bushes that was just outside of the facility begin to rattle. The next sweep revealed a whole sea of pings. I rolled down the window and shouted Trent's name.
"One more, that's all. Get in the passenger seat, I'll be there in a sec."
I scooted over the center console and waited, clutching at the bottom of my pants legs. Just as Trent slammed the rear door of the van shut, I saw the first figure emerge onto the road ahead of us. It looked like some kind of large coyote, though it was hard to tell because it was still fifty meters out.
"Now detecting 53 controlled agents." Ava said right as Trent jumped in and shut the driver's side door. "Net anomalies: 53."
"Ava, increase radius to five miles." Trent instructed as he backed up all the way to the end of the lane and spun us around toward the gate. Just as we left, I saw the pack of coyotes stalking toward us, slow at first, then in a dead sprint.
"Increasing radius." Ava responded. "Increased. Recalculating… Recalculating… Re—complete. Now detecting 451 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 451."
"What does 'controlled agent' mean?" I asked.
"Hold on," Trent said and accelerated into the gate, bursting through it. The whole van shook, and I heard my phone fall in the crack between the seat and door. Trent steadied the van, then said, "It means the things chasing us are being controlled by something that isn't detectable."
"The demon?"
"That'd be my guess."
"But why can't Ava detect it?"
Trent switched to the right lane, then merged onto the Interstate-South ramp. "Probably because it isn't trying to kill us."
"Then, what—" I looked back at the map and basically had my question answered. All 451 pings were coalesced in a semicircle on one side of the map. The side of the map that we had just come from. "Is it trying to force us toward the crash site?"
"It seems that way." Trent answered.
"Trent, pull over."
"Huh?"
"Pull over!" I yelled.
He looked at me, eyes wide. Then he did as I had instructed and pulled off in the middle of the ramp. The red dots slowly closed in on our position.
"Now detecting—"
"Shut up, Ava." I said. I could feel my blood boiling. "I'm not going one step further until you tell me the truth. Why are we going to my origin point? What is your real motive?"
"What do you mean? I already told you."
I unlocked the passenger side door.
"Wait," Trent said and reached out toward me. "Just, wait."
There was silence, except for the pings indicating that the beasts behind us had re-encroached on our position to about fifty meters.
"Okay, I didn't tell you everything. But we don't have time now—"
I opened the door.
"Okay, okay. I didn't tell you everything, it's true. I've never done this with anyone else, but the reason is because I never needed to. And if I told you what might happen, you would have refused it."
"Refused what?"
"This—me, my help. Lauren, I am trying to help you. But you have to understand—it's likely that neither of us are going to live past tomorrow. You're basically confronting a dark entity in a place where I can't protect you, and if you somehow do manage to kill it, you'll be coming back to the fight of your life. Because I don't have the power to hide you from the Organization. They're going to show up and try to take you. I really don't know how you've lasted as long as you have. Whatever protection you had growing up, it's gone now. And now I'm all you have. And in some twist of fate, you're all I have."
Ava reactivated. "Now detecting 1,117 controlled agents. Proximity till contact: 20 meters. Net anomalies: 1,117."
I closed my door. "But what if I still don't want to go through with it?"
Trent pointed at the screen. "Then we die right here, right now, together. Because I am one-hundred percent certain that if we don't go to that crash site, we're dead anyway. All of us."
Another ping rolled through. I checked the side-view mirror and saw the swarming pack of dogs reach the van and bound around the rear wheels. I suddenly recalled the conversation I had with Father Martin and the conclusions I had drawn. Father, I've been… wrestling with something, and I think God wants me to confront it. I think I've been running away and hiding from it for so long that I'd convinced myself it disappeared...
"Go," I said just as I felt the collision of the coyotes slamming their bodies against the side doors.
Trent didn't waste any time stepping on the gas. I watched as the coyotes diminished in the distance and the pings receded into the back of the map, never disappearing fully, but covering the flank of our retreat—a reminder lingering on the edge of our awareness that there was no turning back now. That, one way or another, this was ending tomorrow.
And I'd either be dead, or something else entirely.