In the past we have had spiders, and now ants in the summer.
Generally with spiders we put them outside if we see them. And we will get rid of spider webs when cleaning. But this isn’t a very effective solution since they just come back in the house. Or in the Winter they will die if I put them outside so I feel conflicted about that.
For ants we have a returning infestation that comes back every summer. We try to keep up with releasing them outside but with ants it’s even harder because the colonies are so big they seem to be never ending. When I look up stuff it’s always ways to kill them (which I feel bad about) or how to prevent them from entering your home (but I can’t find where they enter from so I think they are already living somewhere in the walls).
I would appreciate advice for cruelty free methods. Or at least as cruelty free as possible while still being effective.

Why does every video say to make some stupid face mask with lemons and stuff, I tried it consistently for a week and it did not help. My hyperpigmentation is the only thing holding me back from looking good, it makes me look like I have a moustache when I don't. like what products actually help with hyperpigmentation around the mouth and how long does it take to get rid of if you do skincare consistently, and no I don't have melasma, I'm a 17 year old boy, also I've started a skincare routine with a Cerave Cleanser, Numbuzin No1 Toner, Good Molecules Discoloration Correcting Serum, Vanicream Moisturizing Cream and Elta MD SPF 44 sunscreen for AM skincare, I've been doing it for a week, I want to get rid of hyperpigmentation before my senior year of high school starts.

Yo am I the only 1 who peep what’s going on?
Knicks are gentrifying their team just like how NY is in the city…

• Brunson, Hart, Divincenzo, Hartenstein join (Lightskin mixed with a pinch of black but more relatable to WHITES)
  
• Quickley & RJ get traded (2 blacks)
  
• OG Annonuby joins (he symbolizes the foreign migrant blacks who work hard and are happy to be in America)
  
• rumors start about Knicks being better without Randle and how fans don’t like Randle (black)
  
• Mitch Robinson always hurt (black)
  

YALL DONT NOTICE THE KNICKS GETTING RID OF THE BLACKS and becoming a more lighter gentrified looking team? That ain’t by coincidence…
the city and the basketball team looking just alike 👀👀👀🤔🤔🤔

She doesn’t know that I know. But I have caught her numerous times and haven’t had the courage to tell her.
I also love her way too much to want to lose her.
I mentioned that I had suspicions and she denied it (obviously). We have always been really in love so idk how to keep pretending to be normal around her.
Lately she has caught be really depressed and even crying and she hasn’t comforted me like she always use to comfort me before.
Yes I know I should leave her. But I don’t have it in me to leave. She is literally my everything and I don’t think I can be okay without her.
I have been contemplating ending myself but that will just make it easier for her to get rid of me.
What should I do?

The first ship that arrived was pretty matter of fact about its fate. The pilot introduced himself as Eric, said he was part of the first sublight resupply attempt in modern history, then gave me and the ground control team his bad news.
“So,” he said. “Without real time telemetry, we weren’t even sure which half of your orbit you’d be in. That’s half a solar system’s worth of wiggle room. Decelerating enough to survive contact with your low orbit would take me two weeks, which, you know, it looks like we don’t have. That means that in order to get the second ship in before you lose orbital control to the Kresh, I’m gonna have to make a sacrificial flyby. Ten to the negative four torr is good enough for a lot of things, but at point-seven c it’s gonna be like sandblasting a soup cracker. Good news is that all the expensive toys are in the next ship, so this really ain’t costing you more than a ship and a pilot.”
“You knew,” I said. If they put the expensive toys in the second ship, they knew that the first was likely a sacrifice. No one smart enough to handle orbital physics would miss that.
“I did,” he said. “But someone had to go first.”
That was, of course, a lie. No one had to go first. No else had had, at least. When our connection to the FTL network was lost, we’d understand as the end of our reinforcements. Doing resupplies via sublight was just too risky. It was a testament to Earth that it had accepted the risk and continued anyway.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” I asked. This man had come here to die for us. I wasn’t sure how much I could give, but what I had was his.
“I do have a few requests,” he said. “First up, I need as much high-orbital data as you got. The whole lot.”
I began directing tightbeam resources to him immediately. It was an easy resource to exchange - it wasn’t like there was anyone else out to talk to anymore. When we lost FTL, we found ourselves very, very alone.
“Second,” he said. “Right, I know I’m gonna sound like a princess right now, but I have been stuck in this stupid tin-can for almost two-years now, and I seriously overestimated how much I like synth music. If you have anything that’s analog - I don’t care what kind of string or drum or brass you play, but I’d kill to hear something without a beep in it.”
I jumped my own queue in the tightbeam, and added a short playlist that I ripped from the local web. Human Music, it was labeled. 3 Terabytes. I prayed there was something on it that he’d like.
“And third,” he said. “Third. The uh, next pilot is pretty mad at me. Turns out this will just be one of those things left unfinished. That’s all death really is, I guess - a lot of unfinished things. Let him know that he was right: He is a better pilot than me. But tell him that wouldn’t have made a difference here. Bad luck beats skill, and this luck was shit.”
I promised, and he went silent after that. We could see what data he was analyzing, and the short answer was all of it - everything from atmospheric density to troop positions and his own ship’s blueprints. He knew he had one shot at this, and that if the price wasn’t paid here, it would be paid by whoever came next.
---
Ground control didn’t get a verbal warning that he’d entered atmosphere. Just a ping. A little here-I-am, whispered in the dark.
After that, we could keep track with visuals alone.
He hit the outskirts of the exoatmosphere in his first pass, burning bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. He caught the sparse particles like a kite, trying to shed enough speed to hit actual low orbit. Automatic telemetry updates gave us the grim news for the ship: Thermals were holding up decently, but the ablative was wearing out fast.
The entire descent brought us more than two hour’s reprieve. The Kresh hadn’t expected to see a resupply, but they knew what one meant: Get it now, get it fast, or deal with a stream of new troops. They could buy themselves ten days' time by shooting this one ship down now. That was an eternity during a siege.
The first loop lowered the speed by about a twentieth of light. The pilot responded by pulling the ship in tighter, burning trying to preserve more ablative plating by trading off with thermal. Seven fighters were close enough to fire off heat seekers. I don’t think the Kresh had ever anticipated shooting down a craft coming in that hot - the missile's decoy avoidance countermeasure actually made it steer around the thing, chasing down loose pieces of shrapnel. Cooled fragments, still hotter than an engine, should be at full blast. The simple mistakes bought it enough time to enter pre-orbit, and the fighters had to stop their pursuit. They weren’t willing to die to stop the ship.
Our man, on the other hand, was already committed to that course.
A third loop followed a fourth. Ablative coating went from 65% integrity, to 30%, to 5%. Telemetry scans were exceptionally detailed - the pilot was making the flyby count. The last message we got from him was simple:
Are you EMP shielded? he asked, not even bothering to encrypt the text stream. He didn’t have time to process more than that.
Yes, we replied. We knew what he was thinking, but it was still a shock to see it. The fusion torch flared hot, burning through the nozzle and feeding directly into the craft’s dueterium supply. The reaction went super critical, and the resulting neutron pulse set off everything in the ship with a z-count higher than iron. Three continuous seconds of EM interference screamed through the comms as the hulk burned through orbit.
The explosion itself wasn’t powerful enough to kill the Kresh ships still in high orbit, but it made enough broadband radiation to blind both sides LADAR. The man must have been a hell of a pilot - half the shrapnel went down and got burned up as it entered the standard atmosphere, traded as the cost of moving the other half past lagrange. Standard evasion would’ve made the pieces easy to dodge, but with LADAR down, all the Kresh could do was sit still and cower as the wrath of a dead man riddled them full of holes. Our best ace had managed to shoot down seven ships before this before getting shot down himself. The wreckage of the freighter took down six.
---
The second ship came in stealth. One second, we were holding attrition in high orbit, the next, something the size of a small station came ripping through the atmosphere.
It did the same trick as the former - swapping between ablative and thermal loads, coming down at a speed that the Kresh fighters didn’t even try to match. Armies could be built in years, but skills like this took decades.
Telemetry connection was established almost as an afterthought. The way the ship casually ate through ablative armoring made my eyes water, but the pilot himself seemed pretty non-plussed.
“You’re down to fifteen percent coverage. You need-
What I need,” he said, “is to see the previous ship’s telemetry. If there’s one thing you can trust, it’s that this bird is going to come down gentle.”
He cut off my chance to reply by flicking the channel off. We watched, and we wrang our hands, but sure enough he came in six minutes later with 4% of the ablative left.
I met him on the landing pad. Under normal circumstances, we’d have needed twenty-four hours for the craft to cool enough to even approach, but we’d had cryo ready just in case. Three tankers of nitrogen, and the loading area, at least, was cool enough to touch. Safety would have to take a backseat to speed here - we needed the supplies fast.
But those both would take a backseat to a promised conversation with the second pilot. He was out of the craft as soon as the air was cool enough to avoid scalding his lungs, picking through the workers to try and find who had the telemetry data.
I found him first. The drive went into his hands, but I needed to keep my promise with Eric before letting go.
“You’re better than the first pilot,” I said, and I wasn’t lying. If the previous flier had been a saint, this one was a god. “But you wouldn’t have been able to manage the landing either. There just wasn’t time.”
“Let me see,” he said, tugging on the drive. “Just let me see. I have to know I couldn’t do it either. I have to know that someone had to die.”
I let go of the drive and he stalked back into his ship. I didn’t follow. I figured I’d pushed things far enough as it was.
---
The second pilot left the ship six hours later. He looked bleary in a way that put me at ease. I’d been up the last six hours directing supplies from the ship. Everything from ground-to-orbit rails to AGI targeting systems was inside, and to say it was gamechanging would be an understatement. It was good work, but I was tired, and I didn’t want to have to pretend otherwise. Seeing the other man with bags under his eyes meant we could just be frank with each other.
“I couldn’t have managed it,” he said, half-ashamed, half-relieved.
“It just wasn’t possible,” I agreed.
We sat there a moment longer. I didn’t mind the break. This was time well spent.
“Did it hurt?” he asked finally.
“Ablative failed before heating,” I said, which was the technical way of saying no. “He overloaded the reactor before the ship actually broke up and did some kind of slingshot maneuver - hit the main body of the Kresh fleet with half a space station’s worth of shrapnel.”
“Good,” he said.
I knew the signs. The tremor in his cheek, the way his jaw clenched - it wasn’t professional, but I hugged him anyway. Let him have the dignity of choosing to weep instead of having it wrenched out of him.
It was a gift we’d all been given at some point in this war. At least now, there was the hope it could be over soon.

I'm 17 and I've been looking into improving my free test for a while now. I'm not looking to use exogenous means of improving my test(I don't plan on ruining my HPTA any time soon), but rather natural means. I've been doing what I can, given the limited control I have on certain aspects of my life(sleeping 8+ hours a night, making healthy choices with food[when I can], exercising more, etc.) and for context, my parents are divorced and they have separate housing. When I am at my dad's house, I have very little control over what I can and cannot do(though I try) due to a variety of reasons. For dinner, it's usually fast food or maybe a prepackaged frozen meal. I am not really allowed to go outside(though I try to sit by my window to get some sunlight). I use my school's gym so I still get exercise in, but my life at the house(especially on weekends) is very sedentary. I do have access to some supplements that I have been sneaking in my backpack(vitamin d3, zinc, magnesium), and I've been taking exclusively cold showers for a few months now(I know there is debate on how effective this is, but there's no harm in trying). Another thing I ought to mention is how my dad has reacted to my trying to be healthier. I haven't been too forward with him, as I don't want to anger him, so I've just been making the healthiest choices I can with fast food, and I've been refusing desserts(politely) without really telling him why. My dad has recently caught on to what I'm doing and is not taking it well. He started trying to verbally dissuade me, "what? Do you think some sugar is gonna kill you" "c'mon have some" "wow you really don't enjoy life" etc. This, I could stand, but now he has moved towards more confrontative actions. He has been entering my room and giving me candy bars, trying to pressure me into eating them and leaving them on my desk when I'm using the bathroom so I can't refuse them. He has been putting dessert out on my plate even after I refuse, and then tries to pressure me into eating it, since "I already put it out and I'm not putting it away." Overall, he has been getting angrier and angrier with me, leading to out-of-nowhere yelling and this has caused me to give in for the sake of peace. My dad has been struggling with obesity for a while, so this might have to do with why he's doing this, but I'm not going to try to psychoanalyze him. My life at my mom's house is much better, and there are few concerns for me. Here is my question: What can I do, especially with my time at my dad's house but also when I'm elsewhere(mom's house, school, etc.), to improve my general health, test, and HGH? Are there any clear things that I'm missing? Any general lifestyle tips or suggestions would also be appreciated. If you have any questions or need further details, feel free to ask.
Also no I'm not going to use SERMs like enclo, please don't suggest that

I’ve just started getting into jazz during the pandemic, and it was a bit of a struggle transitioning from classical to something less formal. I’ve learned so much, such as the common vernacular ie, comping, vamping, leading, rhythm, and other terms that I’m sure I haven’t mentioned that are used in jazz.
Today, I was tidying up my music folder and realized, “Wow! I’ve played a lot of tunes in a month.” This leads me to wonder: how do you fit a piece or a few into your repertoire that you REALLY want to memorize and perhaps turn into a sol but excited about jamming at a session with others which goes through so many songs? And at what point do tunes become recognizable by their chord progressions?
Mind you, I work on my 2-5-1 progressions daily with chords, scales, arpeggios, and chord inversions using the Circle of Fourths. When I took a jazz ensemble course at our local community college, our teacher said that we would eventually notice these patterns. Perhaps I’m a bit tardy and not seeing it right now.
Oh, and by the way, when I was in the college jazz ensemble, I was stressed every day! The music was fast-paced, and I was just getting used to four chord changes in each measure and in cut time. Ugh. I really struggled with it. But on the other hand, the community jazz jam rocks! I’m not a star in the group, but on a personal level, I’ve learned so much.
Thank you for reading. This has been an incredible journey for me.

With our tickets because I had to work (late call) I told her the day before they called me for work, and I put the money on the table ( and even more) and said I would love to go to the cinema with you please let’s go other day. Fast forward I’m at work. Message her how she is, and she said “good I just went to the cinema” with who ? “With the best company of the (accommodation)” to clarify we were all living in the same accommodation and they know each other for 4 weeks… I said to her I did not like it, and she was defensive. And saying she wouldn’t mind if I go to the cinema with other girl.( which I doubt she doesn’t even like when some girl touches me). After some time she ask me randomly in a date.. so which horoscope sing is “my friend”? Also making comment like “he looks way older with that hairstyle now” And at some point it was the three of us in a common area and she was asking him if he was going to get married, why, how, (arrange marriage)completely leaving me out in the conversation for 15 mins she did not look at me and her body language I perceived her as flirty. my gf was in the past with a guy like this that was going to leave her for an arrange marriage. I saw her glancing at him. touching him at other occasion. When I ask her if she likes him she said “you never asked me this before” and got defensive. Said that she did it to make me jealous and also to show me that she is not going to wait for me…. Also I said I saw that you are following him now on insta and she was instantly like “I don’t like you controlling that” but it was quite obvious because she does not follow many people and it was now on common followers.. it has been recurrently in my mind and I cannot get over the thought process she had and the defensiveness and gaslighting. On top of that she said to him that I did not like it behind my back… It is very uncomfortable the whole situation.

i have been forcing myself to drink liquid iv for around a year now but i cannot get over the taste and sweetness of it. no matter how much i water it down (which defeats the purpose of even drinking it), i still do not like it. i’m having a pretty bad flare up right now, and i think it would just make me more nauseous. does anyone know any alternatives or something i can mix it in to get rid of that sweetness? i’m sure there are plenty but liquid iv is the only one i’ve been recommended.

I see headlines regularly about the explosive inflation of fast food prices over the past few years. Today I saw an article from Walmart execs talking about how their grocery sales have grown more than their other departments, and they attribute it to their food now being cheaper to cook at home than the price of ordering fast food.
This is a good thing. Fast food is tasty poison and should be eaten rarely. Everyone knows that. People who are getting priced out of McDonald's and forced to cook at home might be learning to cook and be knowing what's actually in their food for the first time, and it will probably have health benefits in the long run.

My in laws repeatedly violate our boundaries with our child. I’m so sick of it. I just need to vent. We gave them a list of rules months before he was born and again before we came home from the hospital and immediately after we get home they text my husband bitching about the no photos on social media rule. Okay whatever, they were just excited. Then when he was about two months old, they gave him Covid, lied about being exposed to Covid, and tried to visit us again without telling us they were around a Covid positive person. Now today, my baby is six months old. My MIL has never held him, I have severe PPA and passing the baby is not my jam. They’re not even here for ten minutes and my mil asks to hold my fussy baby twice. My husband is outside with his dad. I say no both times, she says “well sometime…” in a snarky and demeaning tone. I said “I don’t appreciate being talked to like that” and she goes “I don’t appreciate him being six months old and never holding him”. I told if that’s how she felt, she could leave my home.
Husband walks in right when I tell her she leave, I go to the bedroom with baby and he lights into his mom. She eventually apologizes, i play nice and let her hold him since they drove two hours here.
Fast forward to tonight… we find out they were just having dinner with someone one Friday who got back from traveling around Africa not even two weeks ago and never told us. Hubby told them that was not okay and we should have been informed etc because we have a baby. They fail to see why they’re wrong.
Hubby is going to talk to his dad tomorrow but I’m so angry. I know it’s unlikely my baby will get sick from this but I’m freaked out and can’t understand why they can’t respect us or our boundaries ever.
There was so much of this before baby too. I’m at the end of my rope and so is hubby.

Hello, I'm running Ubuntu 22.04 Server, just terminal, no GUI. And I'd like be able to quickly search the contents of PDFs specifically using terminal. The reason for this, is I'd be using php's exec() command to execute shell commands to search the contents of the PDFs. There's over 200k files to search, and I've tried RGA (ripgrep all) which works but is extremely slow for searching this many files (as it's searching on the fly). I've tried Tracker and Recoll, but I can't seem to figure out how to get them to start via shell commands, as Recoll specifically seems to want to run through the GUI.
I feel like I'm chasing my tail as my Google searches aren't really leading me to any other solutions that specifically can be used running terminal only that will build a search index and will be fast after the index is built.
If anyone can point this noob to the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated.

This is a petty revenge I did years ago when I was in middle and high school. I hope you enjoy this Charlotte
When I was in 6th grade, I had a crush on a boy who was in 8th grade (small Christian school) and I've only shared this with a few friends. At the same time I had a bully in my class who did not fail to ask me everyday who my crush was. It was annoying to hear that but I managed to keep quiet about this information for a year. What got the beans to spill was one of her friends easily coaxed me to tell who it was. When I did the friend of the bully told the bully who soon spread it to the entire class.
I was constantly teased about my crush on him and the bully went to go sweep him off his feet.
Fast forward 2 years later the boy transferred out of school and the girl came back to ask who else I had a crush on. I wasn't interested in that anymore so I told her that. She kept prying about it as she didn't believe that I didn't have a crush on anyone in my school.
One day I came home upset because she wouldn't leave me alone and wondered how can I get her off my back about my love life. It was then I remembered a year prior that a young teacher overheard me complain about the bully trying to pry about my love life and suggested that I give her a fake name and she'll leave me alone. (yes, the bully is a female)
I didn't think much of it back then but it was at that moment I decided to take the teacher's advice and made a plan.
The next day, I went to school and put my plan to work by patiently waiting for the moment she came to ask about who my crush was.
When she asked I immediately told her that I was in love with Chad (not a real name). Chad was known as the school playboy because he didn't stick to one girl. Chad and I didn't like each other that way but I gave bully the name and pretended to act like I was giving him the heart eyes whenever he passed by in front of her.
She took the bait and went after him to sweep him off his feet. At first, she forced him to be in a relationship with her for a while, and when he finally did she got tired of him and broke up with him. Their relationship lasted 3 years of high school and then she went homeschooled in our senior year. It was the best years I've ever had with her when she finally stopped bugging me about my love life.

Snail: Dedede! King Dedede! The most greedy, tyrannical, and goofy penguin in all of dream land!
Bowser: Self made ruler of the land and by that I mean he kicked everyone’s butts and nobody could stop him! He took all the food in dream land! He’s starving a planet the fuck-
Snail: King Dedede would smash anyone who stepped in his way as massive ego boosts for the unrighteousness and undeserving king! All until a certain Star Warrior name Kirby came along!
“Hiiii!”
Bowser: Kirby kicked Dedede’s ass not once but TWICE! And in one game geez dude he didn’t even have copy abilities yet that’s sad!
Snail: But even still Kirby showed the king… kindness?
Bowser: This really changed Dedede’s view on things by the next game he tried saving dream land! I mean while looking like a dick because he sucks at asking for help but he’s trying!
Snail: While it would take time Dedede was on the path to redemption! But he’d have to be strong!
Bowser: While not as strong he fought with and alongside Kirby on multiple occasions! And even defeat Magolor and his ship! Magolor’s ship could cross another dimension a higher dimension that exists above time and space! And even destroy another dimension!
Snail: And while he had his trust hammer to clobber the bad guys and that there Kirby he wanted a bitttt more!
Bowser: Like the invincible Candy that can make King Dedede entirely invulnerable for a short period of time! Or his jet hammer that has missiles! And is a flame thrower!
Snail: Even with mask and hammer King Dedede is a king… SO HE HAS AN ARMY! Like his snail servant super cool right hand man! Escargon! He’s not much of a fighter… but he and Dedede have a car with a canon on it!
Bowser: What about the Waddle Dees! You got ones with spears, a guy with a bandanna, umbrellas, cars, they the waddle boys!
Snail: Of course they aren’t very strong or competent fighter with Bandanna Waddle Dee being the only notable exception but they are all extremely loyal to their king to the bitter end! No matter what! And Dedede loves all of them willing to put his life on the line to save them!
Bowser: In order to keep him say he learned a ton of powers! He can regenerate after being stabbed or come back as a ghost by absorbing life force! He can fly! And inhale his enemies and spit them out!
Snail: A lesser version of what Kirby can do! Because King Dedede always wants to one up Kirby!
Bowser: Why do that when the King has his own abilities and weapons that are just as cool! Like bombs! Every good game villain like us needs bombs!
Snail: His mask amplifies his own power greatly and he can shoot electricity out his hands to paralyze people!
Bowser: He can summon the monster of the week from Nightmare enterprises although don’t expect him to pay!
Snail: Lovely! Ya know too think all this cuz he was beefing with a baby.
Bowser: King Dedede’s intelligence may seem below average but it’s far from it, he is a master fighter with experience fighting aliens, robots, alien robots, gods and bug queens! And even drive giant mechs like the the Dedededestroyer Z! A giant mech with more missiles and a hammer arm! It’s huge!
Snail: What a self absorbed penguin! But he’s there for his friends thick and thin! While before he was unwilling to allow Kirby to help him, he went from that to be fine cowering behind Kirby and being happy to see his now friend.
Bowser: Maybe Dedede ain’t so bad! Like when he got double mind control in forgotten land! He became stronger than ever but didn’t care that he lost!
Snail: But when a giant bunch of animals attack our heroes and a Waddle fell behind Dedede tossed that Waddle to make sure he was safe with Kirby and was ready to put down his life and fight alone to protect his friends and subjects
Bowser: And hey he survived! What a legend! He may be kind of a jerk at times but he’s a caring jerk!
Snail: I think Dedede shows us all why we should be kind because one act of kindness can change the worst people for the better!

Bowser: In the world of Hazbin Hotel where angels purrge Hell once a year none can hold a candle in terms of crafty building as Sir Pentious!
Snail: While he may not be as smart as me he’s a very dangerous man! Sir Pentious is a sinner and they’re people who died and of course, went to hell!
Bowser: Very bad ones! While it's unknown how he died we know when! Back in 1888! He's a whole sas steampunk inventor so he had time to learn how to make hell weapons I guess!
Snail: Sir Pentious as a sinner has all the regular sinner powers you'd expect! He can regenerate missing arms and he's immortal as a never-aging demon, without death, as a possibility for him cuz he ya know died.
Bowser: He was a ruthless crime lord who survived the complete vaporization of his airship a feat that would have required him to tank 104 tons of TNT! And he's considered a physical wimp in hell! Oh yeah, he has an airship!
Snail: It comes equipped with lasers, giant thrusters, and more lasers! And even a holy laser!
Bowser: His minions are the Egg Boiz they are egg people who are fierce and loyal they also have electricity guns!
Snail: Sir Pentious wields a chain for combat as well as a spider like well… arm thing? I'm not sure what this is.
Bowser: He may not be the best in hand to hand but he still has the hands and even if he struggles he can use his many eyes over his body to shortly stun or hypnotize you! Combine that with a poisonous bite and he’s no push over! Well maybe he is but-
Snail: He should also be far superior to imps like Blitz! Who can fight robots who can dodge sniper shots at Mach 9! Making Sir Pent very very fast!
Bowser: He really just wanted to be an overlord a ruler of hell but instead he was manipulated by a group of overlords and force to spy on the Hazbin Hotel where sinners get redeemed!
Snail: But he got caught extremely fast and got told to Low Tier God himself by his boss! But god damn the Hotel was nice enough to let him get redeemed! He made friends, joined them in bondage, and crushed on the fire bomb! Cherry Bomb!
Bowser: But to save her and the rest of the hotel he gave his life to stop Adam and shoot a laser at him! The same Adam who could cut mountains! No, he got killed before he could hit but even Adam admits it could've gotten ugly if he was hit!
Snail: And hey for his good actions he went to heaven! I’d say this Hazbin turned his afterlife around pretty damn well!

Hello! Fiance and I recently (4 days ago) adopted a new kitten (10 weeks old) into our home with our adult cat (~6 years old) and it’s been going pretty well so far. We were worried initially that our cat would hide away or be aggressive towards her but so far that hasn’t happened. Both are females and spayed.
Our cat isn’t particularly affectionate but she’s definitely not aggressive. She likes to hang out with us, occasionally likes to be pet and play but she also enjoys her personal space, she is often found in the window watching what’s going on outside or sleeping on the couch or the bed and she does that mostly all day. She will often give us a very light warning “bite”/hiss if she’s done with being touched, but has never actually broken skin or drawn blood.
The kitten is, well, a kitten. Lots of energy, wants to play. She’s a very sweet girl.
During the day, we have both of them out and about the house and they don’t interact that much. We feed them in separate rooms to avoid any food aggression. We play with them together and separately, but as I said earlier- the older cat doesn’t like to play that much. Our older cat will mostly just watch her play from across the room and only hisses or swats at her if she gets too close or runs up on her too fast. They’ve honestly been very good together, we were both surprised and relieved. At night/if we’re both out, we have the kitten set up in a closed room that’s safe for her with all the necessities plus lots of toys.
The thing is, this is all so new. We’ve never gone through the process before. I don’t really trust them alone/unsupervised yet. It’s one thing to have them out together in the day when one or both of us are here and can supervise them, but it’s something else to leave them unattended all night/if neither of us are home.
When will I know I can trust them together? What kind of things or signs am I looking for? I truly don’t believe the older cat will hurt her but as with any animal, you never know. I’d like for the kitten to be a bit bigger before she’s able to roam around unsupervised because she’s so tiny I don’t want her to get stuck anywhere. Have you gone through this process? When/how did you know you could trust to leave them?
Thanks!

when i was in highschool i had an encounter while i was with my friend that was potentially demonic. to this day this story gives me chills. this might sound pretty far out, but i am genuinely looking for answers so i would appreciate it if someone with a little more knowledge could help me out :)
so for some backstory, me and my bestfriend lived in a old neighborhood, surrounded by a large forest with some overgrown trails. a ghost started living with my family at our house there. i lived there for years but by the time i got to highschool i had moved nearby. the ghost followed us to our next house and my mom had to call a paranormal investigator. so this ‘demonic’ experience was by no means my first paranormal encounter.
we were teenagers in a small town, so of course we all smoked weed lol. i was around 16/17 at the time of this story and had moved out of the neighborhood, but my friend still lived there. it was around 10 or 11 at night and we were walking through her neighborhood to go smoke. we were going to smoke on this bridge. on the side you approached it from there was a grassy clearing, and on the other side there was the forest. as we started to move towards the bridge, i began to get very uneasy. then it felt like i was being observed/stalked. we moved even closer. at this point, my adrenaline was through the roof. i felt 10x more alert and all of my senses were working overtime. i didn’t want my friend to think i was a bitch so i didn’t say anything but she was also silent. i don’t know how to explain it but i felt this prescense in the woods. it was like it was stalking us. and the closer we got, i felt like it was moving towards us. by the time we got to the bridge, i couldn’t ignore this feeling anymore. whatever i felt was pure fucking evil and wanted to hurt us. before i could even say anything to my friend, she just said “we need to leave”. without another word we RAN all the way back to her house. i haven’t felt anything like it to this day, i felt like i was about to meet death. getting out of there felt like some kind of miracle/divine intervention. once we got back to her house we both cried and talked about what happened. she pretty much had the exact same experience as me, she even felt it moving also. we both felt that the presence was demonic.
now this is where the story gets really weird. a month later, my friend was talking to another neighborhood girl about the pond (casually, she didn’t even bring up the events of that night). this girl (we will call her sarah) starts crying just at the mention of the pond. sarah started talking about how she felt a very heavy/scary presence there and won’t go back.
a lot of weird fucking shit was known to happen in this neighborhood. my friend was walking home one night and saw a distorted/mangled deer and she got a uncanny feeling from it.
onetime late at night we were driving fast through the neighborhood with our other friend (we will call him micheal). micheal is driving and i am in the front seat. all of a sudden micheal starts screaming. my bests friend started screaming too. i looked down at the road and there were 6 fucking raccoons that we were running over. we all saw them. but there was no bump when we hit them and we went back the next day and there were no raccoon carcasses there.
anyways what do y’all think is up with this? we want to get to the bottom of it when we are home from college so any suggestions/ideas would be appreciated. thanks for reading about my experience! :)

If someone could share their insight on this because I’m genuinely confused — kinda long, sorry in advance
I(30F) met this guy(30M) on tinder 3 months ago, we hit it off right away and had a date planned by the end of the week. Mind you his profile said that he was looking for long term and I had mine set to still figuring it out. Everything seemed to be going really really well. We started staying at each others houses by week 3/4 and 2 months in we both confirmed that we deleted tinder and were basically exclusive to each other. We had scheduled days on the weekend when we would see each other, I dropped him off at the airport for a work training, we talked every night, we would cook dinners for each other and together, he would take candid pictures of me and send them to me saying I was beautiful. All of his actions up until recently seemed like he would be ready to be long term with me and he even talked about it with me. I told him in the beginning that I usually like to wait 3 months to date someone and he had told me he usually would wait a month and when a month came around I said I knew I wanted to date him already but he insisted we waited the 3 months since that’s what I said. I said sure since I was the one who suggested it. All within the 3 months though he bought flights/stay for us to go to New York, I bought us tickets to a Yankees game, and he even bought a scrunchie(I have a thing to match them with my outfits) in my favorite color, put it in a box, and asked me to be his girlfriend Monday, the day we were leaving for New York. When he asked me to be his girlfriend he even said, “I bought the scrunchie 2 months ago but the box took long as hell to get here”. A few time before this we have talked about dating and I would tell him if we came back from New York and I wasn’t made his girlfriend that I would feel like going any longer without a relationship would be pointless after 3 months. So fast forward to this past Thursday when we got back, I leave his house to go home, he kisses me goodbye says to text him when I get home and that he’ll come over later so we can spend time at my house. Its now 8pm and he still hasn’t mentioned coming over but has been texting me so I ask if he was going to come over and he said that he was going to stay at his house and that he will see me tomorrow instead. Friday comes and I think things are kind of weird because he’s never not wanted to come over. We text as we normally do Friday and then around 640 he says, “I’ve been meaning to call and talk to you but I’ve been feeling weird lately, I don’t know what it is but it’s been since Monday” so I ask him, “Do you feel like you’re not ready to be in a relationship? ” and he hits me with “I think it might be that. It’s not like I was rushed at all but I knew I was running out of time”. I was floored and didn’t know what to say back so I just asked if he wanted to break up, he said he wanted to talk about it tomorrow. I tell him I feel stupid and he said that I shouldn’t, that he feels stupid and that he would call me in the morning(all this was over text too which pissed me off). On Saturday morning he ended up leaving me a voice message saying not much other than he was sorry it ended this way and that it came out of no where for him to and that it I needed anything I could reach out to him anddd that he didn’t get what talking on the phone would do but “yeah I’ll talk to you later”. So with all of this, I’m super confused because even after I called him anyways he didn’t clarify anymore on why he suddenly doesn’t want to date me all he kept saying was that it was hard to explain and that it could be that he’s not ready or could be that he’s been feeling this way subconsciously, everything was a maybe this or that but nothing for certain and he even said that it wasn’t easy for him and then just said he was done talking in circles and that he couldn’t explain it any differently, that I just wasn’t willing to accept it. quite literally that Sunday before we left to New York and before he asked me to be his girlfriend was the Yankees game and he kept saying how much fun he had and calling me his number one priority…
So does anyone have any insight on what could be going on here?
I’m really sorry for how long this is!

To start, I only recently became diagnosed with OCD, even though the signs have been there for a while.
However I believe the increase in its intensity is due to adopting two cats. I always harbored an immense amount of anxiety, but it has become unbearable now.
I have intense and violent intrusive thoughts related exclusively to my pets. I never have intrusive thoughts about me harming them (in general, my intrusive thoughts don’t typically involve me harming anything, just me or my loved ones being harmed violently). It is always me “failing” as a pet owner and something horrific happens to them. I get up MANY times during the day and at night from the intensity of the thoughts to check on their wellbeing until I am so exhausted I pass out before I can engage in the compulsion again. I live alone in the mountains, and with all the predators around, my OCD has been vicious - even though my cats are indoors. It doesn’t matter how much I KNOW I’ve secured the house and made sure they are happy and sleeping - within minutes I can have a meltdown and return to checking on them repeatedly. I have cameras all around the inside and outside of the home, and when I leave, I am obsessed with checking on their well-being. Sometimes even WHEN I’m home, I’ll check the cameras. As if I can’t trust my own eyes.
I am currently seeing a psychiatrist who mentioned that medication may be the only answer to this type of OCD, as talk therapy may only increase the intensity of the thoughts by giving them attention. Although, this is my first psychiatrist to treat OCD.
Does anyone have similar experiences having extremely violent, painful intrusive thoughts about harm coming to adored pets, or even loved ones? If so, has a certain type of treatment or behavior helped in reducing their severity?
(Note: my cats help IMMENSELY with my PTSD and depression, so I will never get rid of them just to ease my OCD. They’ve truly brought so much light into my life, but my love for them does trigger my OCD)

5 months post-break up. I’ve posted in detail about this many times but in summary, my ex (29M) and I (27F) were long distance for 2.5 years. I was at the stage of sorting visas/jobs to move to him when he said he wasn’t ready to commit or be in a relationship. Really devastated me and flipped my life upside down at a critical point of my life. He breadcrumbed me hard the first couple months. I blocked him for a while. April 3rd, we started talking again and we both said our feelings were still the same and were open to the idea of seeing where things go. All of a sudden he shut down again and we stopped talking April 13.
I messaged him on April 29 and he said he doesn’t feel the same way, doesn’t love me, miss me or feel sad etc. He wants a relationship with gender roles. A full 180 in a couple of weeks. He also said he hadn’t been with anyone new. A couple of days later, his family blocked/deleted me off social media which actually really upset me and seemed so out of the blue because they were liking my posts just a couple of weeks before and I had a good relationship with them. I was so confused. Obviously, one didn’t get the memo and I saw a video they posted of my ex with his new chick at a family dinner on May 10. I think that was the worst moment of this whole breakup because there was no warning and he lied and told me he hadn’t been with anyone less than 2 weeks before. I didn’t expect it at all.
I did some digging and this girl is 21/22, still in college. He started following her mid April, right when he shut down again with me. This guy has a fear of commitment and the mind of a little boy so someone that young and inexperienced who hasn’t figured out their life yet is PERFECT for him. He’s got about 5 years to figure his shit out before she starts asking to settle down. At first I was inconsolable that he moved on that fast and forced his family to block me so I wouldn’t see. It wasn’t to protect my feelings. It was to protect his guilt and reputation. I was plagued with the thoughts of “does he say the things he said to me? Does he call her my pet names? Has he taken her to our places?” But honestly now, I think this has really helped me move on. What a LOSER! It’s actually hilariously embarrassing 😂 All the tears and intrusive thoughts about this pathetic human who doesn’t give a damn about me. I’m sorry but your feelings cannot change that quickly. You can’t say after months you still feel the same way and want to maybe try again and then 10 days later, your feelings are dead. This man has so many issues that he has not worked on so I’m sure this relationship will fizzle out as he is incapable of having a healthy one. I really was struggling with no contact but I have no desire whatsoever anymore. I’m not sure if he knows I know. But why lie? That’s the part I don’t get? You can tell me how little I mean to you, so why not say you’re seeing someone new? What is wrong with him???
Anyone have a similar experience? Do you think he’s really gotten over me or is this a distraction? He’s severely avoidant. He literally told me “I’ve been pushing down feelings my whole life, this was just another I needed to overcome”. Part of me feels he’ll reach out one day and part of me wants him to so I can laugh in his face. Anyway, I’m off to disappear into the abyss. Good luck you POS. Thanks for nothing.

[ First / Previous ]
Memory Transcription Subject: Hileen, Krakotl Fugitive Recovery Agent
Date [standardized human time]: November 28th, 2136
It'd been a while since I sat in Marlig's office for a talk face-to-face. Given the agency's secluded location at the edge of the downtown region, it was a chore to drop by when it wasn't for business, but I'd deemed the matter at hand to be worth my time.
I passed by Nampi at her desk on my way to the door and she gave me a coy glare as I carried on. Trying to ignore her risible ear waggle, I turned the corner to the door with my boss’s name painted on the glass panel where I could hear the frantic crumpling of paper.
Quietly, I entered Marlig's office without prompt as I knew he hated to be spooked by knocking. My mentor was surprisingly spry for a bird at his age, sorting through papers with one wing and an eye while using his talons with the other to set away the papers he had splayed out.
“Hileen!” he chirped. “Glad you could make it in today. I was just finishing up my paperwork. Take a seat.”
It was always nice to hear him drop the professional motif for a more grandfatherly attitude when speaking in person. I did as he suggested and took a seat while he grumbled to himself over the sorting. My eye caught a few of the old contracts he was rifling through and saw that some dated back to his days as an agent.
Eventually, he left some sitting out as he sequestered the rest back into their files, sorted by a dichotomy that only he and Nampi could comprehend fully. He motioned with a wing for me to peruse and I turned the first one to face me to find it was my first contract, signed by me in a sloppy fashion. “This takes me back a couple of years.”
“Slick bastard thought he could get away on a forklift but you showed him! Certainly more exciting than my first day!”
“Mm-hmm. And it was when I nearly got impaled that you had the idea to commission all of us utility vests.”
He chuckled, “I really should’ve done so sooner. Cuts and scratches were already a risk, but a forklift was a new one!”
I flipped through the pages of each report, finding that Marlig's notes were filled with praises of my work. There were highs and lows, but I was flattered to find that the grizzled krakotl held my performance in such high regard.
“Flawless interception!” read one footnote about me catching a runner. “Couldn't have done it better myself!”
Marlig waited patiently as I browsed quickly through each page, realizing more and more how the notes also marked improvements in my work. How I found it easier to talk down a rowdy client, or apprehend them in the case that they were beyond helping on my part. Flowery language plastered most pages with him fawning over my work as a doting father would to his prodigal child.
The trend took a sharp turn as the notes became fewer and more critical the closer the dates reached to the present. I brushed the others aside with a wing to peruse the final paper. “And this…”
“Is Tac. Your latest contract. The most recent in a line of declining performance since the interview. This has become a pattern, Hileen, and its consequences are beginning to reach beyond yourself. Paji and Vesek resigned recently for personal reasons, which leaves us even less hands on deck than before. That's four people to cover the entire municipal region, and maybe even beyond, should needs arise. Three, if we include this little probation I have you on.”
“What was I supposed to do? Marlig, these ‘jobs’ you've got us working on overstep the contracts we were signed on with. Our job is to make sure people obey their court-mandated duties, not drag them off to the facilities ourselves!”
“... So the trip we took to the facilities did bother you.”
A sigh clicked in my throat as he reminded me. “Is that what happens to the people we take in, Marlig? Is that what would've happened to your wife?”
His feathers ruffled.
“That's what happens to those who are too dangerous to the general public to be left roaming free. Not everyone we deal with winds up there, but everyone can be subject to it. Miskela sued for her exoneration and proved in court that she was not diseased. I brought you there to show you how it helps the people, but I see now that it was a mistake. I understand why you were so perturbed, really, but it's how things have been for centuries. It's how we've protected ourselves from the dangers out there.”
“You were willing to let Barsul be interned there, too.”
Marlig flinched and sighed as he swept the papers towards himself once I'd signaled I was done. He turned one eye to me while he sorted them.
“There's no room for favoritism, girl. I negotiated for him to be allowed to walk free, and look where that got me. That boy - your neighbor - suffered the consequences of my nepotism. So too would the girl, had nobody intervened.”
“Like Richard.”
“The human, yes. Or you. Or the police. Where does this sudden obsession with humans come from, anyway? I get notifications of you talking about the acceptance of them all the time on forums.”
“Does it even need explaining?”
“Well, I guess not, no, but it's certainly an about-face from the way you used to talk about them with me beforehand.”
“People can change, for better or worse. Which one I fall under remains to be seen.”
Marlig stroked at the plumage on his neck as he finished his sorting. “I hope it's the former, for your sake. Was there any reason you came to talk, or were you just checking that I hadn't gone senile?”
“Well, I was hoping to borrow your secretary for the evening.”
He perked up while his eyes narrowed and he laced his fingers together with curiosity. “You… want to spend an evening with Nampi?”
“It's not what you're insinuating, but yes.”
“I was insinuating nothing,” he warbled coyly. “Go ahead and take her, and make sure to split the bill at dinner.”
“Pain-in-the-ass geezer. I'll keep in touch if your friend causes any more trouble.”
“Keep in touch regardless. Miskela and I get lonely in our old age,” he called back. “Take care.”
I stepped out into the hallway and turned toward the desk where I could hear the secretary's claws tapping furtively at her keyboard. Nampi sat silently with her ears and tail in a relaxed position that implied a bored demeanor. There was barely any response as I stood before her, waiting politely for her acknowledgment that never came.
Hesitantly, I cleared my throat.
An ear raised in acknowledgement, but her focus remained on the screen of her computer. “Mhm?”
“Do you…?”
Her ear rotated toward me, though she still maintained a passive attitude as she continued to glare mindlessly at the monitor.
“Are you free this evening?”
“Well, I'm quite booked, I believe. Why do you ask?”
I was surprised at her curt, dry tone. She hadn't spoken with me like this since we first got to know one another.
“Well,” I started. “I realized something. Every time we went out, whether it was clubbing, or dinner, or even walking around the parks, you always footed the bill. And so…”
Slowly, her other ear perked up and I saw her keystrokes slow down as she listened in.
“I wanted to return the favor?”
Her lips smacked as she opened her mouth, though paused before she spoke. “How could you possibly do that?”
“With a little gesture of friendship.”
Nampi's horizontal pupil turned up toward me and her tail twitched.
I continued, “So that belt you're wearing? It's the same belt you've worn since we first met. And I know you're the pragmatic type who'd never spend a credit more than she needs to, except for all the times you do"- her ears twitched in indignance -"I wanted to see about getting you a little something… extra?”
Her paws raised from the keyboard and she leaned in, resting her snout on her palms. “Go on.”
The bubbly venlil's tail sold out her collected facade as it twitched with anticipation. She was cornered and she didn't even know it yet.
“Well, I found just the place on the other side of town where we can start. It's a place almost as rich and indulgent as yourself.”
“The Platinum Paw? I mean3”
Her ears folded back in embarrassment as she cracked. She wasn't cut out for acting anyway.
“So that's what it's called! Jeez, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was called. Now what do you say? We go over there and find you something nice—”
I hadn’t even finished my thought before Nampi had grabbed her bag and was out the door, giving me a playful tail flick that said come and get me.

The place I suggested was in a shopping center on the opposite side of town, though easily accessible because of its proximity to the transport rails. Nampi had insisted on grabbing something to eat beforehand and so now gleefully bit into a bundle of stalks that had been “grilled” as explained from the food truck we'd stopped at.
Her tail flicked back and forth with her usual enthusiasm as we entered the massive complex of stores. The roofless plan allowed the natural, orange sun to flood the upper levels while artificial lighting illuminated the ground level wherever the light couldn't reach.
The place was built in the last decade by the previous City Magister in a bid for popularity, though ultimately for naught as he would lose the vote following a scandal involving an iftali priestess and a carved bar of soap. I had to say that despite being sick in the head, he sure had a great sense of decor.
Nampi snacked away, joining me in admiring the scenery as we continued to the place I’d planned out for us. Aimless chatter all melded together into a single, thrumming murmur as pedestrians navigated the many levels and stores offered in the place.
A troupe of children passed by us, held in a chain of tails and arms as they were escorted by a pair of venlil who I assumed were students and teachers on a school trip. I caught a whiff of a sweet, aromatic breeze and found it to come from a perfume shop on the same level as us; naturally, venlil were not to be found inside.
We passed a fountain where a couple sat on the edge, their tails twined together as they giggled and flirted. I turned and caught Nampi watching them as well, though she awkwardly returned to sucking the remains of her meal from her claws when we made eye contact. Her ears lifted when I raised a wing to signal to the store we were going to stop at first.
“Platinum Paw, The Greatest Fashion Emporium For Everyone!”
The title alone was painfully cliche, taken to the tenth power by the brightly lit store taking up three department slots. Despite the flashy exterior, though, it was the best place to shop for belts, brooches, and bracelets alike. Customers who looked like they earned my yearly salary in a week browsed the higher end brands while I brought my friend to the section I wanted to show her.
Her ears were held up as we stood together next to a shelf chock full of fashionable bags and bandoliers of every variety.
“Pick one,” I told her.
Nampi's ears shot to a straight pose in surprise, “Any?”
“Within reason. I've got a few extra credits to blow and I know nobody better to spend it on.”
With an inviting headtilt, I let Nampi peruse the shelves at her leisure. Her lips pursed together and her tail flicked with glee as she fingered at every piece that caught her eye. I chuckled at her outburst of enthusiasm while turning to find my own items to gloss over.
A breeze from outside nipped at my beak while I considered what I’d like to purchase. The place dripped with an atmosphere of faux hospitality, from the bright blue-stained floorboards to the radio prattling off advertisements in a sickeningly sweet tone to the faint, fruity aroma of scented cleaner. It was oppressive as only a fissan-owned company could be to the senses.
What I wouldn’t pay to see how a human would fare in such an environment.
I knew they were social creatures at least, but I had no doubt that the predatory senses of a human, so honed to hunting, would get overstimulated in this center of gaudy indulgence. Knowing I was something of a predator myself made me sympathize provided that even I had to squint to keep the pale lights inside from searing my eyes. I could only imagine how the arboreal eyes of a Terran would fare. I was so lost in thought imagining how lost the Terrans would be that I could almost ignore the obnoxious giggling and metallic rattling coming from behind me.
Risking a peek at the source, into my sight came a pair of venlil, one a male carrying a pair of bags as well as a couple more strapped to his belt. The bored expression in his eyes was not one of a man who was in high spirits. The other venlil was a woman who was the source of the noise.
Her mottled gray pelt was accented by a tasteful belt design, free of almost any practical functions but not flashy or excessive in garnishment either. At least, that’s what I would say, were it not for the braid of beads that dangled on the belt, jingling with each bounce of the lively woman’s stride. It was clear that such a gaudy accessory was intended to draw attention to her, though why was a mystery. Certainly, the shiny braids seemed designed as decoration first and practical second.
She turned about and I faced back to my browsing before she could catch me staring. Nampi was nowhere in sight, though I figured she was somewhere behind the shelf, sifting through every accessory on the section I'd suggested.
Clink.
Something pelted to my immediate right. I tilted my head to spot a tree nut shell clattering to the floor. Without being able to guess where it came from, I had to wonder what could've launched it over this way. Even with my keen eyesight, nobody in the crowd seemed to be a suspect.
Clink.
Another shell pelted my vicinity, ricocheting off of the floor and hitting the shelf I was standing next to. I ruffled my feathers in frustration - clearly, someone was trying to get my attention, though I couldn't make out who it was. Out of the corner of my vision, the woman from before eyed me curiously as I looked about, though I wasn't interested in engaging with her.
Thwack.
One more shell came flying and, unfortunately, the aim on this one was true, nailing me on the beak. Irritated, I stormed out of the store to find the source of the instigator. I scanned over the bodies to find anyone who could've been responsible for this indignity, eventually concluding that it came from the dining area across the walkway.
Whoever was responsible was in for an earful and I was already structuring which of the offender's family members would be acceptable as fodder for stray words. As I approached, I found the tables were mostly empty save for one, which made my heart begin to drop as I met eyes with the only occupant. Suddenly, I was much less inclined to hurl insults.
“Oh, hi there!” Qitel called out in a sickly sweet tone. “Come, take a seat! We have much to discuss!”
The Exterminator clutched a bag of tree nuts in his claws, a pile of discarded shells already gathered on the table next to him. He grabbed another as I approached, effortlessly prying the shell in half between two claws and tossed the contents into his mouth. “Good protein, these,” he commented as I sat down.
“Must be for that good arm you've got there,” I mumbled. I caught sight of a couple of bags beneath his chair, seemingly from one of the tech stores contained within the center.
“Bah, it's guesswork. So how are you? I haven't heard from you since we worked together!”
“I was just spending time with a friend, shopping and enjoying my time off.”
“Your time off? Oh, am I interrupting something?”
His snide tone irked me, though now wasn’t the time for interjections. “You are, Qitel,” I replied with no shortage of vitriol in my tone. “But I see no harm in chatting for a bit.”
“Good, because I have some merchandise”- he reached into his belt pocket and deposited a couple of items onto the table -“and you’re just the person to look into it, human sympathizer.”
I drew a terse breath in shock, but my worries were quelled when I considered that if Qitel had the power to do anything about it, he would’ve done so instead of approaching me so discreetly. A glance down at the item on the table showed that he was presenting what looked to be a tracker as well as a personal drive. “Found in the garbage,” he told me.
“The guild resorts to dumpster diving when they already have such a bloated budget now?”
“No, featherbrain, I have decided to keep this for myself. These items were found together, sealed in a plastic pouch, and placed in a garbage bin. The city has bans against electronics being placed into public bins, and so I was curious why this wound up in there. Managed to get my coworker, a techie, to crack it open and…”
Qitel reached into his belt again, glowering at me with the same condescending gaze he’d given me when I first saw his face. He seemed to revel in digging for the item as slowly as possible to waste my time. Finally, he found whatever he was looking for and revealed it as a printed piece of paper, folded into eighths. The snobby yotul threw the unfurled paper on the table and rolled it toward me.
I craned my neck to look at the parchment, though I was immediately perplexed by the text on it; it appeared to be some sort of form, going by the boxes with words on the inside, followed by blank lines. “Found on the drive, here,” Qitel told me, jabbing a claw to the storage. “Translator shows it as Terran writing.”
Drawing my holopad from my satchel, I held it over the paper with the translator to get an understanding. Surely enough, the language on it came up positive as a variant of Terran writing and I was affirmed in it being a form of some sort based on the wording of the text. The boxes seemed like an odd sort of job application, asking for the typical name, contacts, and prior work experiences, but quickly took a strange turn as it began asking for where their home on Earth was prior to arrival, what family they had on Venlil Prime if any, and where they worked, implying that they were seeking individuals who were already employed.
I knew little about human employment methods, but I didn’t imagine that sourcing individuals from other jobs was the most efficient way to gain a workforce. Terran service industries already dotted the planet while many humans also found work in local environments. So what was the angle that the creator of this application was going for?
Most concerningly was that the paper had no insignia, identifying marks, or noted address to return the form to. “And where did you find it again?”
“In the garbage, alongside this intact tracker that was activated at the time of recovery. Y’know, when I was dumpster diving. Text on the document showed it was addressed to one ‘Choctaw Nexus’.”
“A pseudonym of some sort?”
“Clearly. Short sorting through the archives shows the first name traces back to the group out east - perhaps you've heard about them. How the name and the items we have here are connected is beyond my understanding, but-”
“Well, this has been an absolutely riveting discussion about your collection of trash, Qitel,” I told him as I stood up to leave. “But this really sounds like an issue to be resolved by your fellow guildsmen.”
The sound of another shell splitting rang out as I turned away.
“I'm not through talking with you, predator.”
The sting as a piece nailed me in the back of the head prompted me to whirl back around, sticking my beak in the insolent yotul's snout. “Perhaps you've forgotten, little man,” I cooed in an equally bittersweet tone to the one he gave me before. “The krakotl never had a problem with settling issues the old-fashioned way before the interview. Try me and find out why I'm in the line of work I am.”
“Oh, we wouldn't want that in such a"- he waved his paw to a group of passersby who had stopped to gawk at my display -”public forum. Please, contain yourself.”
I had to force the feathers on my back to settle and I raised my head away from him. “What else is it you wanted, then?”
“Well, I'd appreciate if you took this merchandise off my paws,” he told me as he brushed the electronics and printout toward me.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you're closer to the humans than I'd ever care to be, and may be able to find out who this Choctaw Nexus is. Something about the package just feels… off. And I know when to trust my feelings. Besides, we both know that you know where Tac is, don't we?”
“I don't-”
“We have videographic evidence that you conspired with a human - of the aforementioned squatters, no less - and let the kid escape. You're not as sneaky as you think, and if we find this ‘Choctaw Nexus’ turns out to be a bad actor that can be traced back to them - and by extension, you - well, there’d be no talking down my boss from having you dealt with. By helping me find out who this is, you may yet be able to clear your name of any wrongdoing.”
I clenched my beak tightly to maintain a straight face. Qitel stood up with a flourish and discarded the bag he was carrying in a bin.
“See, the krakotl were never special for using threats and bullying to get results. It's because you were good at killing predators,” he jeered. “Now, if you don't mind, this primitive has appointments to attend to… old lady who got trampled courtesy of the humans and all. You stay out of trouble, Hileen, and stay in touch.”
The self-assured marsupial melded into the crowd in a matter of seconds, leaving me with a table containing dumpster trophies and a pile of shells. Reluctantly, I swept the shells into my wing and dumped them into the bin before gathering the other two items he'd left me and stuffing them into my bag. I'd been gone from Nampi long enough and she would notice my absence before long.
Crossing the walkway again, I could spot from where I stood that Nampi was indeed still in the Platinum Paw. I approached, and soon I found that while she didn't seem to have noticed me stepping away, she was definitely in a soured mood based on the sagging of her ears and tail. With my talons clacking on the floorboards, I hustled to her side and her mood chippered up ever so slightly as she heard me approach.
I chimed in, “Find anything?”
“Everything. I want everything, Red, and I can't decide on what I want. They all just look so great!”
From behind, a voice called out, “Nampi!”
We both jumped at the exclamation and turned about to spot the venlil lady I'd seen before spring from behind the shelf. The man poked his head from behind the shelf too, though less enthusiastically and with yet another bag in his clutches. My friend's eyes widened in surprise with her tail and ears perking up in kind. With a light in her eyes, she exclaimed, “Nalek!”
The two embraced with shrill squeals and laughter as Nalek's accompaniment and I traded awkward glances.
“It's been too long!”
“You never stayed in contact!”
The women exchanged giddy greetings and the pompous stranger turned to me, leering over me as though she was sizing me up.
“Who's your friend here?”
“Oh she's actually my-...”
Nampi paused for a moment, looking back to me.
“Yeah, she's a friend.”
“A friend,” Nalek repeated while her eyes flicked between Nampi and I. “Right.”
Somehow, I get the impression that that was judgemental.
“I'm Hileen, by the way,” I chirped, “if names are to be exchanged.”
“Hileen, that's a lovely name! And such plumage to match, it's a wonder you aren't swarmed by suitors!”
Internally, I groaned at the notion. The idea of being approached by someone to state their interest in me made me queasy, to say the least. Thankfully, I never had that issue growing up as most of the other drakes in school were too busy chasing girls who didn't have a lousy pigmentation mutation such as myself.
“I'm flattered,” I told Nalek before turning to the man whose name had yet to be introduced. “May we get your name?”
“Sask.”
His response was succinct and tonally flat, though there was a brief silence as I expected him to elaborate. Nalek's beads jingled as she lashed him on the calf with her tail.
“I'm Sask, Nalek's fiancée,” he added, throwing her a look to see if she was satisfied.
Nampi gasped with her paws over her snout. “Fiancée! Nalek, you're getting married and you never even told me!”
“Well, I felt a little guilty since it technically broke our pact we made when we were pups. You remember that?”
“Of course! Why wouldn’t I? ‘Let she who bonds through betrothal first be cast out unto the world for all to admonish her!’”
Sask and I both gave inquisitive expressions. “You two spoke like that as pups?” Sask asked.
“Well, I'm paraphrasing,” Nampi admitted with a playful ear waggle. “But you get the gist.”
“Indeed, they do, sweet Nampi. Now, may I ask what you're doing bringing your avian friend here into this store on this fine claw?”
“Oh, no no, she's the one treating me! Isn't that right, Red?”
I saw her tail twitch and was sure it took restraint not to tickle my neck with it as we stood before her old friend.
“She's been a good friend,” I explained. “So I wanted to reverse the roles for once and treat her to something myself.”
Nampi skipped over to me and wrapped her arm around me, glancing back to her old friend. “See? We'd all be so lucky to have a… friend like her.”
“So I've witnessed. But perhaps you're a bit stuck, as I've seen you prancing up and down these aisles for a while, no? Maybe you don't know what you want?”
“Nalek, you know I've never been good about making my mind up.”
“Some things never change, you ditz. Tell you what: you and Sask go find us a seat and we can catch up all we'd like when we're not taking up aisle space, yes? So shoo! I'll help Hileen here pick one out for you!”
With a bored grunt, Sask made off with the goods he had strapped to himself, followed by Nampi who gave me one more playful tail flick before dashing off into the crowd. I looked back to the mottled snout of Nalek who watched her friend wander off with a wistful glance.
“She was my first, you know.”
“Your what now.”
“Love. Way back when we were growing from pups into young adults back in private education, we explored much together. We saw each other through a lot, including the less savory parts of finding a mate. When Nampi realized it wasn't the boys she was into, she turned to me, and I offered my hand as her stalwart companion… to a point.”
“You weren't interested in her the same way?”
“I'd grown up seeing her as a sister of sorts, so ultimately, when we split it off, we stayed close as friends and she never seemed to be bothered by it. She struggled to find others in school who had the same interests as herself, but she never fussed about it.”
Nalek's claws browsed over a set of pouched bandoliers made with intricate embroidering. “Have you two… spent the night together? Alone?”
Spiritually, I reeled from the inquiry. The whiplash from that question was equitable to being smacked by a human. “Wha- why? How's that pertinent to the subject at hand?”
“That sounds like a ‘yes’ to me,” she purred with a smug glance my way.
I didn't need to begin to list the different ways such a question was violating to our privacy, and yet this woman was treating it like a game.
“Not really your concern, ma'am.”
Nalek chuckled as she picked out one of the bandoliers and inspected it with her claws. “I'd like to think that she and I still have that old connection, despite everything. And to that end, I know that she's no slag and doesn't trust easy. To see her be so vulnerable around you and to talk so highly of someone who's clearly below her income level as a predator…”
She stretched the bandolier out to appreciate the design in its entirety.
“Well, that's something special. Here"- she foisted the accessory into my wings as I stood gobsmacked -"this just screams her name.”
“This is, like, double my budget.”
“Love don't come cheap, darling. You wanna see good things happen, sometimes you've gotta step out of your comfort zone and grasp for it!”
“I'm being lectured by a rich woman on finances.”
“It's a philosophy that goes beyond money, ‘Red.’ The humans have a saying, in their horrendously predatory nomenclature, that contains a kernel of truth: ‘you miss every shot you don't take’.”
Yep, that's definitely a human phrase.
Nalek's steely braid rattled with every flick of the tail as we proceeded through the checkout.
“You want things to change between you and her?” she continued. “Don't just wait for it to happen.”
She let the conversation rest there as we finished the purchase, possibly to let me recuperate mentally from the damage done to my account. Outside, we found our respective partners sitting at a table with Sask looking up in boredom as Nampi chatted away, though she immediately shut up and turned to me with excited flicks of her tail as she saw what I was carrying.
I held it toward her and she happily shot to her feet, effortlessly removing the tags with her claws and clipping it to her belt. Nalek clapped and waggled her tail as the giddy lady did a whirl about to let us admire the accessory. While I'd have preferred one with pockets to give it a more practical use, I decided to let Nalek have the victory as our mutual friend clearly enjoyed it.
The rest of the paw was a blur as the two friends chatted without end until Sask eventually reminded his betrothed that they had a schedule to attend to. Though Nalek offered to call us a taxi home as a gesture of kindness, I saw through her ruse to determine that she was trying to pull a fast one on me - the clever ear flick she gave as we boarded the automated vehicle sold it for me.
We sat in the seats as the vehicle took the express ride home.
Nampi cleared her throat before she spoke, “Thank you for taking some time to spend with me, I know you've had a lot less free time as of late.”
“It's a prison of my own design, if I must be honest. A feedback loop of working a job that doesn't guarantee a paycheck to pay for rent that keeps going up, and thus needing to work more.”
The venlil giggled and chided me, “You really should've stayed in university.”
“There's a lotta 'should haves’ that've led me to this point. No use wondering what could have been.”
“There's always a use for wondering what could have been, Hileen.”
She wrapped an arm around my shoulder.
“Every decision I make, I always wonder what I could've done differently that it'd have turned out better,” she explained as she waved her free paw to the sky. “It's how you grow as a person, Red.”
Her silky pelt felt heavenly in contrast to the chilly air from outside, making it hard to let her words sink in.
“You rich types seem chock full of philosophy. I wonder if I'll become a brooding orator when I get some cash to my name.”
The cab filled with laughter as we veered around the final corner to my neighborhood, as it was the closest stop. The door popped open accompanied by a chime from the drone, signaling for me to depart.
But before my talons could even hit the pavement, I felt Nampi's scrawny arms wrap around my waist and she let out a pitiful mewl again.
“You don't need to get off here,” she told me with a pouty expression. “We can spend the rest of the paw at my place.”
“I'd love it, but I need to water my plants and get the month's bills sorted before they're due. Again.”
One claw at a time, I plucked her paws from around my waist and the childish venlil conceded, giving me another ear waggle as I departed. “I'll see you tomorrow?” I asked her.
“If you still have eyes by then, then you can bet your ass!”
“I still don't gamble.”
“You'll come around to it eventually.”
I shut the door to the taxi and watched as it carted away the one venlil who I ever truly felt on the same wavelength as. Fiddling with the lock felt like more of a chore than usual at this time as I felt a little voice tugging at the back of my head.
“You miss every shot you don't take.”
The lock felt jammed as I began to jiggle it more vigorously with the electric key. Either the RFID or NFC readers were messed up, as the lock refused to accept my key. I looked up and down the street, though Nampi was now long gone for me to rescind my earlier rejection.
“Every decision I make, I wonder what I could've done differently.”
The door rattled as I grew more and more infuriated with the lock. Qitel's smug expression as he threatened me so boldly in public played back in my head, and I wondered what would've happened had I decided to go through with insulting his mother. Better yet, I wondered what could've been had I not backed down in the face of his unflinching confidence.
Bzzt. The lock rejected my key again.
“Raagh! You fucking useless hunk of junk!”
I squawked in anger and kicked against the door, careless of the consequences of having Markol back down here to admonish another of his tenants for causing a ruckus. The walls were surprisingly sturdy for how ineffective the venlil architecture looked on the surface and I reeled back in pain as my leg throbbed.
Click.
I looked to my left to see that it wasn't my door that came open, but that of the twins. The door cracked open ever so slightly, no doubt nudged by the force of my tirade and I sighed. Nobody was expected to be home at this time, with Vili being away and Luka leaving early to get a head start.
Luka had been given a stern talking-to by the landlord for allowing one of those cats into his apartment through neglect, and I was disappointed that he seemed to have not learned his lesson this time. In fact, it seemed he hadn't even thought to lock the door this time.
I took it upon myself to shut the door for him before turning back to my own apartment door. Grasping the key with one talon, I turned it ever so gently, though the lock still refused to give in.
With a bit more force, the torsion applied to the key felt as though it should've snapped it by now. Markol sure didn't waste any expense for the security for this place, doubtlessly as a result of his history in electronic security, but I wished now that he had provided a way in that didn't rely on privately sourced locks.
Considering my options as I stood trapped outside, I realized that I had never gotten around to paying for a new lock for Tadi. I'd considered contacting her to inform her that Tac had made it out of town safely, but that'd involve also telling her that her son was now in the care of humans, as if that was a better outcome to her.
Stepping out front, I realized that there was one more option I hadn't considered: my window. I usually forgot to lock it after I was through letting air circulate and I was silently grateful to myself for this absentmindedness now more than ever. Sticking a foot on the threshold, I lifted myself in a way that'd allow me to have leverage to force the window open.
The window made me fight for every inch, but I felt a strange satisfaction as it slowly opened up into an entrance that I could squeeze my way through. I let out a sigh as my talons clicked against the cool floor and slid the window shut.
I laid my satchel on the couch and turned back to the door, ready to unleash my fury on the disobedient object. But as I reached for the lock to manually open the door, I noted that the lights on the RFID interface both flashed at once, blinking erratically. Red and green flickered without rhyme or reason, indicating that it was both active and inactive.
As pretty as the colors were, I now knew that Markol's locks were not as reliable as he had touted them about: typically, such would not occur unless the device was damaged deliberately, and yet nothing indicated that I'd had uninvited guests. One could pray that those cats didn't secretly know how to cobble together an ECM jammer, but my personal wager was on faulty equipment.
Settling in, I browsed my favorite soaps on the television. For what was intended to be a day of relaxation and show of affection for a friend, I found myself rather wound up over all the things that added up. Couples threw around flowery words and swooned over one another on screen as I felt the tension diffuse. My holopad rang and I turned it over to spot that Nampi was informing me that she'd arrived home safely.
>>> Feels empty here, all alone.
She made sure to drive the point home with a sticker of a venlil making a pouty expression.
Next time, I thought to myself, I'll get it right for you, Nampi.
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