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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.
[ First / Previous ]

... not as bleak as some people think it is. I mean, sure, he no longer has OFA, and we're not sure if he will even have a quirk in the future... however, I recently saw a video about how strong is Deku without OFA and, well...
Under normal human standards, he's freaking BUSTED.
First and foremost: Deku's last time as a Quirkless was to TRAIN HIS ASS OFF TO GET HIS QUIRK. Remember that scene of him lugging trash around the beach with Small Might on top? Yeah, that's something that's normally done by COMPETITION STRONGMEN, and even then they don't drag garbage on the sand, they drag vehicles on the solid ground, so it's even harder. Also, he had to carry Muscular All Might around and that's 562 pounds of people to carry around. As mentioned in the video, the record of a similar trip was of 1450 pounds... but that was DEAD weight, not LIVE weight, and the one that did that is a 6'5 tall, 230 pounds pure muscle strongman. Deku is a 5'5 tall, 143 pounds Cinnamon Roll that looks like you could take him down with a well-placed sneeze. He even pulled/pushed/lifted a FREAKING TRUCK on top of a PILE OF TRASH prior to get OFA. So... yeah, he's pretty strong.
(Extra mention: comments in the video state that the strongman I mentioned was WAY heavier than what I mentioned when he did his deadlift, which I honestly can see, some saying he might have had been 400 pounds when he lifted that 1450 punds dead weight, which makes Deku seem all the more impressive)
Secondly, and this is important: He barely used OFA until after the sports festival due to the fact he was still breaking bones with it... meaning he didn't use it on the first part, so he was doing this crap with a massive plate of metal WITHOUT HIS QUIRK. That involves using it like a sword to slice the same kind of robot that he had to punch during the entrance Exam (except smaller, but it was still a Zero Pointer from that exam) as well as carrying it around like if it was a freaking sled. And according to the first video link and a calculation made based on the size of that thing, that piece of metal weighted OVER 1900 POUNDS. Yeah, you heard me. And he swung it around like it was Cloud's Buster Sword (which is only 30 pounds) or even Guts' own Dragon-Slayer sword (which is only 440 pounds, according to its creator, or 660 pounds according to fan calculations).
((Some other comment lowballs the size of the plate to 1545 pounds, but that's still impressive))
I also want to mention his speed, because, according to some calculations made on how fast was Deku swinging his Plate Sword against the robot... 100 MPH. That swing is above the average of most pro batters in MLB, and, as far as I know, bats in MLB are not 2 ton heavy lugs of steel. And, again, he didn't even get a boost in power from OFA, as even when he was using it, the boost didn't even reach 5%. With the added calculation that the acceleration of that slash was of 960 m/s², the force he used to chop that robot was around 84.2 TONS OF FORCE, which means he can exert enough power to lift an M1 Abrams with power to spare ((even the lowball on the plate size gives us 68 tons of force, enough to lift at least an M1A1)). We also have his speed against Bakugo on their first fight. The video lowballs it (supposes Bakugo being half as powerful in his first battle with Deku against his second battle with Deku; could be even more so) by putting Deku around Mach 2 in combat speed. Again, the video is lowballing it by assuming Bakugo is half as strong as he is in his second fight, but we cannot be sure.
His reaction speed is something we need to fix here: The video puts it as actual speed (lowballing it at slightly over Mach 3), but luckily, we can help us with the fact this is Melee (Melee combat means the combatants are at most 1 meter away from each other, so we can use that). Mach 3 reaction speed puts reaction time at 0.98 MILLISECONDS. For context, average reaction speed of humans is 250 ms. And if you want to reach how fast is peak human reaction speed... well, current Top human speed is 12.42 m/s (Top speed of Usain Bolt), meaning the top reaction speed for a human sits at slightly over 80 milliseconds. So... yeah, he has super human speed AND reflexes before he even gets 5% OFA. Also, by that time, he was not using OFA beyond his arms and he had no brain processing feat, meaning this is all about his own body.
Then we have his analytic mind, which allowed him to win the race on the Sports Festival without using OFA whatsoever against the monsters of Katsuki and Shoto. Like... he was using no superpower and he was able to surpass them with his wits and his regular strength alone. So, he's smart, analytic and he's already able to lift a tank without any quirks. Then again Mirio is also very strong in the short time he's Quirkless himself, but he had to train A LOT to compensate for his quirk as well, so it may just be that people just don't train enough and if they were to train, they may be stronger than a lot of people.
We also need to add to all that came above was in the first few months and, at this point, Deku had to train for 2 years his body to withstand a power that literally broke his arm like putty the first time his used it, so he's likely EVEN STRONGER now after the time have passed (For starters, the video states Deku may be at least twice as fast at both combat speed and reaction, so that's an interesting thought).
Finally, few support items may make Deku strong enough to handle the whole business of being a super hero with the feats he has right now. Give him grappling cables, improve his gloves and boots (also, a suit that could keep his bones together, he will definitievely need that) and you have a good Spidey rip-off on your hands.
So.. yeah, even quirkless Deku is as powerful as a hero on the end of their grand journey could get.

Hello! Would love some recommendations for any manga with male Robot/Android/Mech x Human female romance relationships?
There's the usual (Chobits, DearS, Machine doll, etc) that generally appeal to the male audience, but aren't really what I'd like to see.
The closest I've gotten to the dynamic I'm looking for are examples like Appleseed and Brigadoon. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Two species, both alike in advancement,
Spanning the vast emptiness of black space;
Expanding borders create encroachment,
Interstellar ships brings foes face to face.
Whence from their cradles the worlds issue forth
A vast pair of exploratory fleets,
Whose collisions do readily transport
A balanced wave of death whence they shall meet.
Cultural ignorance breeds the great hate,
Foreign ideas permeate all the norms,
Whereas pastimes do, the soldiers lives abate,
These trinkets have the power to transform.
That which matters not to one may save all
For its meaning may be hard to recall
false significance plastered on the wall
May yet bring peace and prosperity all.
—-------------------
The klaxons shattered the silence of the station, blaring through all of the corridors and reverberating off the bulkheads. The cacophony of sounds, as the entire crew leapt from their bunks and quickly grabbed their most prized, or irreplaceable, possessions, grew in intensity as the red lights flared in an oscillating sequence.
The crew were halfway through packing before the klaxons were punctuated by instructions: “All hands, prepare to abandon station. M’quezniok Battle Cruiser is inbound. Repeat: M’quezniok Battle Cruiser inbound. Take only what you must and make your way to the nearest escape craft.”
The drills had been effective. All hands of the terraforming station were accounted for in the various slipstream escape craft within 7 minutes of the initial detection of the inbound warship.
All possessions were secured within another 3 minutes and the small fleet of vessels were free of the atmosphere 5 minutes later. In formation they slid silently through the blackness and away from the approaching insatiable appetite of conquest.
27 hours later, the twinkling effect began at the bow of each vessel as they pierced the veil of reality and speared their way into the void between the planck lengths of spacetime.
Earth Command received them a mere 49 hours, 29 minutes, and 37 seconds after the last of the escape craft abandoned the terraforming station.
The station became another dot on the map of conquest of the M’quezniok, a line that seems to be expanding in all directions away from their homeworld much faster than the humans can build up and sort of defensive perimeter.
The M’quezniok culture lacks subtlety and nuance; it lacks empathy. It only has room for measurable strength and their measure lies in whether or not property can be taken and held. If it can, it belongs to whomever can do so… and that someone, in their eyes, should always be them. They have no mercy and eradicate all citizens of colonies that they conquer. They raze every building that cannot be readily adapted to their purposes. They devour any animals that they cannot use for brute force. They are ruthless and their culture lies entirely in the glory of the expansion of their empire, in an unsustainable need for personal edification for each military commander.
—--
The ground forces commander entered the station ahead of her troops. There were no humans here. They fled like the cowards they were, well in advance of the arrival of her ship. There was no honorable conquest to be had at this location, just the claiming of an abandoned complex. As such, since there were no spoils of individual combat for any of her crew to claim, the entire base was hers for the first-taking. None of her crew dared touch anything in a way that might suggest an interest in it for, the appearance for claiming spoils out of turn could result in punishments far greater than any rewards to be found here.
The Commander walked through the terraforming station, going through bunk after bunk, finding nothing of value and even less of military value. There were no secrets here. There were no riches here. There were… clothes, little trinkets, manuals for the equipment, nasty human food. The commander was greatly disappointed in the raid but, in order for her crew to split the meager offerings that were present, she had to take SOMETHING. So she chose a box on the floor at her feet. This room, like all the others, was a no-frills crew bunk. Like the others there was nothing of apparent value in it. So, she took the box and declared that it was the entirety of her prize. The crew cheered and vanished into the station, each one searching for anything that they might deem of value for their own trophies.
The Commander took the box and returned to her quarters where she opened it to see what personal secrets it may have, what stories of the former crew member who fled the station like a coward at her approach. She found, much to her shock and utter amazement, a vast collection of tales of superior warriors. Brave individuals who, in the times of greatest need for the human civilization, had risen to the challenges within their own society to defeat the misguided evils that sought to undermine the human way of life as it existed then and as she knew it to exist now. These stories, laid out in a bizarre format that seemed to mix a form of graphic depictions alongside the human language as text, reminded the Commander of many struggles within her own empire’s history; times when it took massive competing armies to determine which philosophy should rule their future; times when the death tolls where high and the waste of resources on putting down rebellions was tremendous. The Commander reviewed these documents left behind by the unknown crew member of the human terraforming station and pondered where these great heroes of humanity were, if not already devastating the front lines of M’quezniok fleet.
That’s when it occurred to her. The humans were giving the M’quezniok a chance to prove themselve worthy of living. They were giving the M’quezniok an opportunity to stop their conquest against the humans on their own before they unleashed their most powerful military forces. The Commander, stunned by her realization, dropped the volume of deeds and turned to her communications terminal.
“We have made a grave mistake in violating human space” she began her message. “I have uncovered a volume of histories which outline the capacity that humans have when situations exceed their tolerance. I have uncovered this box, quite by accident, as an item of abandoned loot in my most recent raid. Please review the contents, as I have put them into the end of the this transmission. Consider that all we know of humans through direct contacts is corroborated in these volumes: they always try to allow those who have wronged them to change their ways and, only when those ways are not changed, does it appear that they will unleash tremendous force to utterly defeat and destroy their foes. Note, in sample 17, that the humans in the story, after being unable to reach a peaceful accord with their opponents, wiped and entire sentient race from the cosmos to end the conflict with them. Note in samples 3, 9, and 47, that they have the mind to develop weapons that can be silently deployed among their enemies and which will only affect their enemies, causing them to die of disease whether the battle reaches them or not. Note that, in samples 5, 9, and 62, that the humans have a history of boarding enemy vessels in small numbers and converting the vessels themselves into weapons to destroy huge components of the enemy fleet. Most importantly, in all of the above examples, note that humans will often sacrifice themselves without promise of lasting glory or honor or riches to merely inflict harm on their opponents. There is no methodology of these tales that makes sense in our culture and that, we should all agree, makes the humans infinitely more dangerous than we previously expected. More than all of the previous, note that the humans have the capacity, when needed, to reveal their strongest military assets; single individuals who carry the power of an entire legion of our finest soldiers. Single fighters who can destroy warships without any equipment or weaponry. Single individuals who, according to these volumes, have the ability to turn our very minds against us if we face them in battle. As you are all aware, it has appeared that the humans have given up all efforts to defend themselves against us and the war is, essentially, over. There is no more honor or glory to be found in fighting humans. We arrive, they retreat. We arrive, they abandon what they have built. We arrive, and they fall back, taking all of their observations of us with them. As you can see from volumes 1, 6, 19, 33, 42, 54, 68, 71, and 98, this is when their greatest warriors emerge. It is my tactical advice that the abandonment of this specific box of intelligence on human culture was left as a final warning to us; a warning that, should we continue our actions against them, we will pay the consequences as they unleash their greatest technology and soldiers against us. If you agree, order all Conquestors to halt their advancement and return to the edge of our space.
—----
Humanity Space Command received the transmission. The statement of complete cessation of M’quezniok incursions and a promise that the last 79 encounters, in which humans had abandoned the facilities before the M’quezniok could even arrive to start fighting, would be surrendered peacefully, and permanently, back to human control.
The message indicated that the worlds conquered by force would be the new, permanent, boundary between the two empires and that humanity need not fear for any future incursions. The message also outlined that, should humanity absolutely require it so as to not unleash their greatest warriors in retribution, a list of worlds could be presented as negotiable assets that could be returned.
Human Space Command was baffled. Astounded, pleased, elated, even… but more than anything else, baffled. The best humanity had been able to offer was defeated in every dispute against the M’quezniok. Their individuals were faster, stronger, and harder to kill than humans. Their weapons were more powerful. Their defensive technology vastly outclassed anything humanity could throw at them. Their declaration of cessation simply made no sense and their outlines that they wished to avoid humanity unleashing their greatest warriors and technology as retribution made even less sense. But the top brass of HSC was not about to continue a war in which humanity had no hope of winning when the opposition declared they were done.
The HSC’s final conference on the subject, prior to transmitting the acceptance of the M’quezniok’s declaration, ended with a compound question: “who is this Lois Lane and why do they want her to be the liaison should we have to open negotiations?”

Ok so sorta a throwaway here but I might keep it. I have an oddly specific fetish. I’m a (44m) straight cis manly man you’d never guess but I fantasize about being dickless and focusing my sexuality on getting a female partner off orally or I guess with toys but mostly orally.
I don’t want actually lose it, but hooboy it’s a strong fantasy and i think of a million ways to make it happen. I think most I like a romantic decision we make together to take things to a new and different level. I can orgasm by using a toy on the internal penis body and love having my balls stroked so I could enjoy sex after.
Mentioned it to a couple partners who entertained the play for a little but we’re like meh after a while. Just wanted to get back to vanilla or other kink play.
Curious if I’m doomed to enjoy this mostly alone in my own mind or if it appeals to others.
Thanks for reading!

(Me- 33F, partner-30M, Sam-34M)
Sorry for the long one:
Maybe I am the asshole. Monogamy provides a lot of security and clarity, I get it.
My partner of 6 years and I decided to enter the world of open relationships really early days. We were in a long distance situation so it made sense to us at the time. At that time I quite by accident fell in love with someone else but had no clue that was allowed or could be ok so I “made a choice” (I still think about this person and it’s been 6 years). When we made a plan to move to New Zealand (my partner’s home) together, we closed the relationship back down. Upon arrival to NZ I was quite smitten with a woman I worked with, and we ended up having a threesome with her. She and I were quite lovey dovey and enjoyed kissing each other in private but my partner expressed jealousy of not wanting us to do anything unless we all were present, so we respected that.
About a year passed and I ended up discovering that back when I thought we closed our relationship down, my partner hadn’t. He had continued seeing and sleeping with someone while he lived in the UK (and I was in the States). He continued this relationship to the point that after he visited me in the states for a month prior to our joint move to NZ, he actually flew out first and had a layover in the UK on his way to NZ and slept with her one final time then. So when I moved to his home, little did I know I wasn’t the last person he had been with.
This is a now 5 year old point of hurt in our relationship. Trust seemingly destroyed UNTIL… I came across a red table talk episode on polyamory. I realized how beautiful the set up seemed to me and that I could rewire my hurt to no longer view my partner as evil for wanting someone else, but just realizing it is hard in our society to express these human desires and so he immaturely took liberties. But, maybe polyamory was our way to BOTH get liberties, without the distrust, dishonesty and hurt. Or maybe I toxicly forgave him?
I presented the episode to him and he seemed curious too. We got bumble as a couple and had a few group sex experiences. We quickly learned though that we didn’t always enjoy the same things or same kinds of people. So we moved the goal posts to solo play with LOTS of rules. But that wasn’t sustainable either because the human beings involved were throwing pretty understandable curve balls at us that our rules didn’t fully accomodate. So we moved the posts again to 4 core rules around our home/bed, sexual health, etc.
From there, I feel like I REALLY came alive. I realized the autonomy and not having to carry every ounce of my partner’s insecurities with me into new interactions was incredibly fulfilling to be able to fully lean into a connection honestly. And it was then that I confirmed what had already taken place- I am capable of loving more than one person. While our core rules were meant to protect the fact that my partner was who I am doing life with, it didn’t seem right to me to force shallow connection with those on the periphery. I told my partner this realization though I didn’t have anyone I was in love with. I just wanted to make him aware I was capable of it and deep connection was what I got the most out of in polyamory, over purely sexual encounters. He was noticeably uncomfy but we kept the hard conversations going and kept finding a way forward in polyamory.
Now we flash to about 9 months ago. I met someone we’ll call Sam. Sam and I slept together after two meets and it was (and continues to this day to be) the best sex of my life. Not just compared to my partner, but to everyone who has ever touched me. He makes me feel like I haven’t ever really had sex (and I’ve been with probably 50-something people). On top of that, though he’s never been in a poly situation, he gives 110% to me. Consistently. He’s somehow so committed and mature and secure to just ride the wave as respectfully as possible. He’s always saying he’s rooting for me and my partner, but he’s also fully mine and I’m fully his somehow. My partner and Sam met and we all ended up sleeping together and it was a really weird experience for me to feel like Sam was “home” and my partner felt like he had a dark energy.
In the last two years or so I’ve been let into the fact that my partner was actually sexually abused by his older brother for many years growing up. He of course carries massive trauma from this and has really large fear of abandonment issues. Since meeting Sam it’s like he’s been squeezing the soap. He tells me I’m pulling away but I feel pushed away and exhausted by constantly reassuring him and his need to control outcomes for his comfort and security because he’s wanting to be top ranked in every area by me. We have had our issues in the past obviously and though I find him handsome and love him, I don’t have that wild animalistic raw attraction to his naked body. So at times our sex life goes dormant. He also had quite an intense NEED for sex through learning self worth in the act from a very young age and it’s a different energy than I’ve felt in other partners. It’s given me a lot of anxiety around our sex life do sometimes I shy from it or freeze in the act and cannot continue.
I love Sam. I can’t easily picture leaving my partner either.
We have a house we have renovated together and a dog we are both obsessed with and six years under our belt as best friends and partners.
I like polyamory. But now my partner only wants to try and work on things with me if we are exclusive, otherwise he has said we should probably end it. i have told sam and he has said it makes sense to work on the 6 year long relationship, though he doesn't like having to say it. I'm so sad about maybe having to risk ending a love that i haven't chosen to end so that my partner can feel secure in himself and idk what version of me he will get after i feel im left with no choice but to do that.
There have been plenty of toxic moments and emotional manipulation on both sides for me and my partner. Are we too far gone? is it fair for me to be asked to park my other relationship now i know poly suits me, even when im offering other ways to make my partner feel more poured into and focused on by me, and we havent tried that yet?
Really lost in limbo at the moment. We are living in the same house, crying and slinging shit every night and sleeping in separate beds but also really missing each other and wanting cuddles.
We got engaged over a year ago but we have pulled the pressure of all of that off the table. Idk if long term we are sustainable or if I’m as attracted to him as he needs me to be. But I can’t seem to pull the pin on it all. Nor can I take the leap and confidently dump Sam.
Would love any and all thoughts. And please ask questions.

I cant feel pain if i dont exist. I would much rather have never been born but beggars cant be choosers so i might as well make do with the next best alternative. I have existed for 21 years, i have no prospects, no close confidants aside from the one person whose heart i broke and in turn broke mine, and no sense of direction or motivation. I made a choice i thought would protect her from pain and disappointment, and ended up causing so much pain and disappointment she could no longer bear the idea of being with me. She could no longer see a future for us. We had spent so long discussing possible futures, destinations, careers, even fucking pets, and in one moment i ruined that reality, or possibly rather revealed its unreality. If she couldnt accept me at my worst, most shameful state, did she deserve to see me at my most proud? If there is a God he, she, or whatever fucking pronouns they use are a cruel manipulator on a cosmic scale. 1.5 years may be a blip in the eyes of some master creator but im barely 2 decades old and this shit has been a massive fucking chunk of my life so far. I know theres other people, i know the key to happiness is working on myself, but why should i even fucking bother when all i want is to devote my life to her? Some find solace in religion, praising and worshipping whatever deity some guy thousands of years ago pulled out of their fucking ass and maybe that brings them peace. I wish it did for me. I wish i was able to keep believing that some guy in the sky created an entire race of sentient beings out of fucking dirt and then somehow had a son with one of these dirt gremlins for the sole purpose of this son dying ‘for the sake of our sins’. I wish so badly this made sense to me. Maybe then i could direct all my energy to that and find purpose in it. But i dont. And i cant. It just makes no sense to me. Id rather put my energy and soul into someone i can perceive, after all perception is the only confirmation of our reality. I cant see some sky daddy up in the clouds, but i can see her. I worshipped her, i praised her. If there was a God it took shape in her. They say he made us in his image but the only proof of that i can see is corrupt, selfish, and altogether destructive to itself and the world he supposedly created for it to foster. If we are the image of God then he is a vile, ugly, sadistic being. I remember learning in school about tragedies, and their main defining trait is that they revolve around the downfall of the protagonist due to a flaw of their own they were unable or unwilling to overcome. Humanity is a fucking tragedy. The only animal cursed with the knowledge that we are slowly decaying. What kind of existence is that? Im supposed to find purpose knowing im just a sack of atoms with an unknown expiry date? How do i live knowing everything and everyone around me will not only cease to exist at a certain point, but if our mess of a species manages to make it into any sort of distant future, most of us arent even likely to be remembered? I hate sentience, i hate existence, and i hate pain. I hate the way my heart aches when i see her. I cant seem to escape this prison of affection she has me in. i hate that i let myself be so vulnerable and then hurt her so badly she can no longer be vulnerable with me. I worked so fucking hard to earn her trust. It was a fucking grueling experience. And i would do it all again if given the chance. The looks of mistrust turning to a deep reliance, as i slowly peeled away the layers to her soul. She used to describe her trust as eggs she was putting in my basket, and the day she said i had all her eggs might have been the most loved i ever felt in my life. 2 weeks ago she told me i broke one of her eggs, and she had to take them back now to protect them. I dont think ive ever felt so much pain and remorse as i did in that moment. Not only for hurting the person i cared about most, but because i have to live with the fact that that unreality we had built together would stay that way, and it was all on me. I hurt her, and i hurt myself. I know theres probably someone out there with more shared interests, with more quippy one-liners, possibly someone im even more attracted to physically. But i just dont fucking care. What point is there in chasing that when it could all get fucked like this? I cant do this again. I wont do this again. Its too much. I think i might be done. One of these days i might finally get the fucking balls to do it. ive been so scared for so long. The afterlife, my family and friends, her. But fuck it. My parents see me as the problem child, and they wouldnt even be fucking wrong. My siblings barely know me and i barely know them. Visiting home is like a hotel where im constantly reminded of how much of a failure i am and all the ways everyone around me is better. And im genuinely not even jealous. I could care less about any of my cousin’s lifestyles, or my sisters much better academic performance and artistic skill, or my brother’s athletic prowess. I really am happy for them, they all deserve it and more given the work theyve put in. The only thing i give a shit about is the fact that i get treated less because of these things. I just want to be able to live my life without being put down for choices that im happy with. I just want genuine fucking support, and when i fail to not have it shoved in my fucking face as if i dont already feel like enough of a shit sack. I dont need a 6 figure salary i need a fucking support system. A small but significant part of me holds a deep resentment for my parents for actively choosing to bring me existence. When i get the fucking chance i might just have to take that existence into my own hands and strangle it away, but for now im too much of a fucking pussy to try. I dont even know how id do it. I want it short and painless, almost instant if possible. I dont want any chance of survival in the form of life support, so maybe looking into a dnr would be useful but i dont even know where to start with that. Ive heard of a trick with the car exhaust, but i dont own a car and i dont want anyone finding my dead body in their vehicle. I just want an easy death, life has been hard enough. I feel like im tipping over the edge

Hi all, I'm moving soon, so cleaning out and trying to get together some money!
Shipping is not included in the prices, but I use PirateShip so I promise you're getting the best deal :)
Free sample for every $5 spent -- they are at the end so just take your pick.
Verification
Cleansing:
PanOxyl - 10% Benzoyl Peroxide Foaming Wash, 5.5 oz - BNIB - $4
Lancome - Miel-en-Mousse Cleansing Makeup Remover, 1.7 fl oz - BN - $10
Murad - Clarifying Cleanser, 1.5 fl oz - BN - $7
Cle de Peau - Softening Cleansing Foam, 20 mL - BN - $7
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The Creme Shop - Rosewater & Coconut Towelettes, 20 ct - BN - $3
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Welcome to the "Essay Help by Pros" community group! Writing a great essay can be challenging, but with the right approach, anyone can produce a high-quality piece. Here are some points to follow to write a great essay:

1. Understand the assignment: Before you start writing, make sure you understand the requirements of the essay. Read the instructions carefully, and take note of the topic, format, word count, and any specific guidelines that are provided.
2. Choose a topic: Select a topic that interests you (if this is an option given) and that you have some knowledge about. You'll be more motivated to write, and you'll be able to draw on your existing knowledge to develop your ideas.
3. Research your topic: Conduct thorough research on your topic, using a range of sources. Take notes on your findings and make sure you keep track of your sources so you can properly cite them later.
4. Develop a thesis statement: Your thesis statement is the central idea of your essay. It should be a clear and concise statement that summarizes the main point you want to make in your essay.
5. Create an outline: An outline is a roadmap that helps you organize your thoughts and ideas. It should include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion, and each section should have a clear focus.
6. Write your essay: Use your outline to guide your writing. Make sure each paragraph has a clear topic sentence, and that all your ideas are well-supported with evidence.
7. Edit and proofread: Once you've completed your essay, take the time to edit and proofread it. Check for spelling and grammar errors, and make sure your writing is clear and concise.

By following these points, you'll be well on your way to writing a great essay. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out to the community for help!

Look, I get that I should be proud of my ethnic features. But I'm actually tired of people making small talk with me just to see if their nagging suspicion of me being a dude is correct.
It's Definitely not my body tho, it's my face. I have small eyes, arched eyebrows (My eyebrows are thin, but you can see the outline), eyebags, and some scars. But I think the cherry on top was my haircut.
I use to wear buns daily, and it literally gave me a face lift, I didn't notice until now. I had cut my hair really short, but not on the verge of being a buzzcut. My forehead is now normal, not huge like my ponytails tricked me into thinking.
So based on all of this information, how do you think I can improve looking feminine without makeup or plastic surgery? BTW, I'm working on my wardrobe. I can't show my face because of stranger danger, you know?
[No compliments please. I need honest feedback]

Hi everyone I don't think what I'm experiencing is HSDD exactly because I do have (and enjoy) sexual fantasies and I still experience sexual attraction and psychological arousal.
What I'm experiencing would probably have once been called Female Sexual Arousal Disorder but that disorder doesn't exist anymore. It's basically that I don't get the genital arousal anymore - or very little of it anyway. I get sexual pleasure from thinking about sex (and sometimes lubricate), and I feel very excited when I am with a casual sexual partner who I can touch and watch getting aroused/orgasm. However, I have no sexual sensation in my clitoris, do not experience swelling in my labia or clitoris, and do not lubricate enough for sex. Even with external lubricants, penetrative sex is very uncomfortable and painful and I don't get the feeling in my vagina afterwards like when you've had sex and it's slowly returning to its resting state. It is always in its resting state and I think the reason penetrative sex is so weird and awful is because my body does not enter physical arousal at any point, so I'm trying to have sex with a body that is not at all prepared for it. Kind of like having a smear test.
I've given it a lot of thought and this is what I think happened to me:

• I took an antidepressant that extinguished most of my ability to experience physical arousal for five years and even though I have now been off this medication for over a year I think this experience has completely fucked up my relationship with my body. I was expecting that one day after discontinuing the medication I would just wake up aroused. Before taking the meds I was 31 and in a semi permanent state of arousal. I often woke up 'ready to go' in the morning, experienced random arousal during the day, and could (and sometimes did) masturbate whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted, and however many times I wanted. I remember when I was trying to quit smoking I took my mind off the cravings by having orgasms. I must have orgasmed 20 times that day and could probably have kept going. It was just very, very easy and felt natural. Because that's my baseline from before meds, I thought it would just return when I stopped them age 36 but that never happened.
  
• I'm grieving - I wanted children and I wanted a partner and I have been single and sexless for five years. I'm turning 38 in three months' time and I have lost hope. I feel like the life I wanted is over and I can't imagine what there is to enjoy about the one I'm facing. I initially told myself that if I can't have children I'll just have great sex, but.....alas..... so losing sex feels enormous. It's just another loss among all of the losses.
  
• I'm isolated - I think the pandemic really fucked me over a single person, and I also moved to the countryside during that time, got a dog, and settled into working from home indefinitely. I have tried very hard to make connections in my new town. I didn't just join clubs, I established them, but my peers are at home with their young children and babies and those I do meet are much older and have established lives of their own. It's been impossible to make the connections I need and I spend almost all my time completely alone.
  
• My sense of self has changed - I feel like an entirely different person. I was always pretty vain and enjoyed being viewed as sexual and attractive when I was younger. I liked the feeling (probably in my own head, lol) of feeling like I had a gravitational pull when I walked into a room. I was always shy and anxious in other ways, but sexually I felt very desirable and powerful. I'm now obsessed with my age and being 'over the hill'. I feel completely invisible and in a strangely physical way. When I walk into a room now I feel like I'm literally transparent, like I don't even exist at all.
  
• Fears of hormonal change/irreversible change I have seen a specialist gynaecologist to rule out physical causes and she gave me the all clear.... yet I still don't believe her... My vagina and vulva feel dry compared with last year, the discharge in my pants is so diminished as to barely be there. This sensation makes me feel like I have an 'old' vagina and I have become obsessed with oestrogen and fears that my body has given up. I had my fertility tested last year and was told everything was great and I would conceive naturally if I found a partner. I was also told there was no indication early menopause was on the cards for me. The gynaecologist I saw recently said there was no vaginal dryness on examination and that the regularity of my period rules out perimenopause. I still can't let it go. I fear that my vagina will never be what it once was and it makes me feel incredibly unsexy. I want the feeling of wetness and fullness back there. It feels so diminished and dessicated to me now.
  

I have been struggling with suicidal thoughts over the last few months. The sexual dysfunction was the final straw that pushed me to the edge. I'm completely desperate. I have nothing to live for now. I just don't know where to turn or what to do. Can anyone help me?

I’m fairly getting comfortable with being nice in public and I’ve explored a bit for my first time at red rock beach, I’ve heard of Marshall’s or north baker and would also be super excited to explore those locations. I’m 23 but my mindset is more different then those in my age group as I think differently and was raised differently, say more or so I’m a “old soul” but like to get more in touch with my self, my body, and be confident and happy for who I am as a being, and me being able to be free in my own skin helps… empowers my confidence and happiness the plus is I feel more mature. Im clean and kinda fit but small I’d say coming in at 150lb and being 5’9 and have been single for a while, and I treat this as my therapy and happy place and it can be a turn on with the EXTRA happy people around having fun lol overall we are human :) if you go often I’d love to join or be picked up to go explore etc if we align and build trust we can meet in person and go from there!

With the plastic Mechanicum announcement, I've been seeing a lot of confusion in the community as to why 30k Mechanicum is so (supposedly) incompatibly different from 40k Adeptus Mechanicus, as a military force. I thought I'd clear up the history at play here, which is ultimately rooted in changes that were roughly as fundamental as the shift from Legions to Chapters for Space Marines.
In the era of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, the Mechanicum empire was a separate protectorate of the Human Imperium, with Mars as its capital world and holiest site. It was, strictly speaking, an ally of the Imperium, rather than being directly part of it.
The Mechanicum's principal military forces comprise three separate bodies, in this period, known collectively as the Triad-magna. These are the Legiones Skitarii, the Collegia Titanica, and the Taghmata Omnissiah.

• The Collegia Titanica is a collective term for the many separate bodies of Titan-capable forces (known generally as Titan Orders or Titan Legions) throughout the galaxy. The seeds for these groups were sent out into the stars as part of Explorator fleets during the great Martian exodus in the Age of Strife, and grew along with their associated forge worlds. Knight Houses are wholly distinct from Titan Orders in nature, origin, and legal status, but are also often sworn to them or directly to the Mechanicum.
• The Legiones Skitarii are the standing armies of Mars, cyborg janissaries stationed throughout the galaxy, but created and commanded exclusively by the Red Planet. They are the enforcers of its will, and the core of its military advantage over any other forge world. They haven't been detailed beyond that in any 30k gamebooks yet.
• The Taghmata Omnissiah is the focus of the actual Mechanicum faction in WHH. They are a version of the Byzantine tagma/thema system; a temporary gathering of provincial forces, in response to a specific call to arms. The forge worlds call a muster, and the Taghmata forms from robot garrisons, itinerant destroyer-priests, local tech-thall militia, and so on. The Taghmata Omnissiah is not a standing professional army, in the vein of the Solar Auxilia or Legiones Astartes; it is a jumble of whatever is available or owed, from whoever is willing or obliged, led by whoever has the biggest hat.

So what happened?
By the end of the Horus Heresy, and particularly the Titandeath events, the Collegia Titanica has been absolutely wrecked. Its constituent Titan Orders simply don't have the numbers to represent a coherent force in their own right, and lack the resources they would need to truly rebuild. Titans shift away from being massed superheavy armies and toward being precious supporting assets deployed with great care, even as singular units accompanied by Knights rather than fellow Titans.
We don't have details on the Legiones Skitarii yet, but given the Fabricator-General of Mars turned traitor, the Red Planet was lost, and a Martian Parliament-in-Exile was set up on Terra, it seems inevitable that the Skitarii cohorts throughout the galaxy would have split down whatever lines made the most sense to each of them.
However, after the Heresy, the Mechanicum is no longer a separate empire even in name. Following compromises made by the aforementioned Parliament-in-Exile, it is now the Adeptus Mechanicus, a subset of the Imperium's own structure and systems (albeit a powerful and privileged one). It is understandable that it would not be afforded the right to rebuild its unified galaxy-scale standing army, something even the Imperium is avoiding, due to a fear of resurgent warlordism. Moreover, Mars itself has lost a great deal of pre-eminence within the Machine Cult, both as a result of turning traitor, and as a consequence of its own material and materiel losses compared to some of the other influential forge worlds.
Long before the 41st Millennium, the Legiones Skitarii have been reformed as regional forces, supplanting any existing local regiments of so-called "Tech Guard". They are now created and maintained by individual forge worlds as garrisons and footsoldiers. This likely required heavy adaption and alteration to the core Skitarii technologies and doctrines, both to suit their new role and the loss of a centralised supply chain for complex cybrid technologies... and because Mars would be more content to lock its most propietary toys away in a vault forever than it would be to let all the other kids play with (and reverse-engineer) them.
With the other two thirds of the Triad-magna effectively defunct, the Taghmata Omnissiah also ceases to be a relevant system. Many of the independent resources that once supplemented the Taghmata are much-diminished or outright defunct. The Ordo Reductor has lost many of its greatest engines and political advocates, the Explorator fleets have gone from regular Great Crusade assets to extraordinary undertakings, and the Legio Cybernetica has suffered mass destruction and reputational damage. The new, more conservative Adeptus Mechanicus leadership will proceed to excommunicate all of the more advanced automata designs, forcing it to decommission or mothball much of what remains, revisiting older variants like the Kastelan.
On a local level, the mass raising of Tech-thrall militia is censured, and falls out of practice in favour of the newly-available Skitarii garrisons, while military servitor technology such as Kataphrons gains renewed focus due to the reduced access to automata.
The overall feudal model of the Taghmata effectively becomes the entire military system of the Adeptus Mechanicus, which is far more regional, fragmented, and reactive than the Mechanicum, and lacks the undeniable rights (or centralised authority) of post-Treaty Mars. However, the actual resources available to assemble such a force are very, very different.
In some ways, these components are less powerful, thanks to a decline in resources and technology, as well as the Imperium's reduced tolerance for free-roaming independent military bodies. In other ways, they are far more efficient, because they are now a combination of deliberate, formal garrisons... rather than just being a mishmash of whatever shiny toys and spare chaff any given Tech-priest conclave could pull out of their pockets.

hey guys i am a female 22 yrs old. 126 lbs 5’2. i lift lift 3x a week and get around 8-10k steps daily
so far i’ve lost 30 lbs on 1550 cals. how do you think my body would react to 1650?
i want to up my cals a little just for a little more room to work with but im curious if ill still lose weight

hey guys i am a female 22 yrs old. i weight 126 lbs and my height is 5’2. im pretty active, i lift 3x a week and get around 8-10k steps daily.
so far i’ve lost 30 lbs eating 1550 cals. how do you think my body would react to 1650?
i want to up my cals a little just for a little more room to work with but im curious if ill still lose weight because i would like to lose around 5-6 pounds.

I know a lot of people use kings hunting for example. Here is what I found
This is what Valmiki Ramayan says:
तस्मिन्निति सूखे काले धनुष्मानिषुमान रथी व्यायामकृतसंकल्प: सरयूमन्वगान्नदीम
' व्यायामकृतसंकल्प: ' means with the aim of exercise.
He says that it was a good day,hence i went to the banks of Sarayu River to do some exercise.
So one thing is clear,he was there to exercise,and not to hunt or kill any animal.
Now lets see what follows:
अथान्धकारेत्वश्रौष जले कुम्भस्य पूर्यत: अचक्षुर्विषये घोष वारणस्येवनर्दत:
It was dark at that time,i was not able to see clearly. Then i heard a voice of an animal,i thought its an elephant.
Now where is Hunting and Deer written here? Nowhere…its just TV serials show.
Kings used to catch and capture elephants for their army. Dashrath also wanted to capture that elephant,and he shot an arrow which by mistake hit Shravan Kumar. He had poisoned arrows which could make the elephant lose his senses,but it hit a human,who could not bear its poison.
This is what Ayodhyakand,Valmiki Ramayan says:
ततोअहम शरमुध्दत्य दीप्तमाशीविषोपमम शब्द प्रति गजप्रेप्सुरभिलक्ष्यमपातयम
तत्र वागुषसि व्यक्ता प्रादुरासीव्दनौकस: हां हेति पततस्तोये वाणाद्व्यथितमर्मण:
Dashrath says-”Then to get the elephant i shot a poisoned arrow.I heard a crying voice of a human from the direction in which i shot the arrow.”
So please start to read Valmiki Ramayan,don't waste your lives in lies and TV serials.
Thanks.
Next many people say that hinduism doesent allow or disallow meat.
Yes.
The Sanatana Dharma Teaches First That We should not Kill Animals Or Eat Any Type of Meat.
References -
Quotes that disapprove, even denounce, meat-eating
Rig Veda:
“One who partakes of human flesh, the flesh of a horse or of another animal, and deprives others of milk by slaughtering cows, O King, if such a fiend does not desist by other means, then you should not hesitate to cut off his head.”
Rig-veda (10.87.16)
Do the Vedic literature allow meat-eating? Did Hinduism adopt vegetarianism from Buddhism? - The Spiritual Scientist
Manu-Samhita:
“Meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly bliss; let him therefore shun the use of meat. Having well considered the disgusting origin of flesh and the cruelty of fettering and slaying corporeal beings, let him entirely abstain from eating flesh.”
(Manu-samhita 5.48-49) “He who permits the slaughter of an animal, he who cuts it up, he who kills it, he who buys or sells meat, he who cooks it, he who serves it up, and he who eats it, must all be considered as the slayers of the animal. There is no greater sinner than that man who though not worshiping the gods or the ancestors, seeks to increase the bulk of his own flesh by the flesh of other beings.” (Manu-samhita 5.51-52)
“If he has a strong desire (for meat) he may make an animal of clarified butter or one of flour (and eat that); but let him never seek to destroy an animal without a (lawful) reason. As many hairs as the slain beast has, so often indeed will he who killed it without a (lawful) reason suffer a violent death in future births.” (Manu-samhita 5.37-38)
“He who injures harmless creatures from a wish to give himself pleasure, never finds happiness in this life or the next.” (Manu-samhita 5.45)
“By subsisting on pure fruits and roots, and by eating food fit for ascetics in the forest, one does not gain so great a reward as by entirely avoiding the use of flesh. Me he [mam sah] will devour in the next world, whose flesh I eat in this life; the wise declare this to be the real meaning of the word ‘flesh’ [mam sah].” (Manu-samhita 5.54-55)
“He who does not seek to cause the sufferings of bonds and death to living creatures, (but) desires the good of all (beings), obtains endless bliss. He who does not injure any (creature) attains without an effort what he thinks of, what he undertakes, and what he fixes his mind on.” (Manu-samhita 5.46-47)
“By not killing any living being, one becomes fit for salvation.” (Manu-samhita 6.60)
Do the Vedic literature allow meat-eating? Did Hinduism adopt vegetarianism from Buddhism? - The Spiritual Scientist
Mahabharata

1. “He who desires to augment his own flesh by eating the flesh of other creatures, lives in misery in whatever species he may take his [next] birth.” (Mahabharata, Anu. 115.47)
   
2. “The purchaser of flesh performs violence by his wealth; he who eats flesh does so by enjoying its taste; the killer does violence by actually tying and killing the animal. Thus, there are three forms of killing. He who brings flesh or sends for it, he who cuts off the limbs of an animal, and he who purchases, sells, or cooks flesh and eats it–all these are to be considered meat-eaters.” (Mahabharata, Anu. 115.40)
   
3. “The sins generated by violence curtail the life of the perpetrator. Therefore, even those who are anxious for their own welfare should abstain from meat-eating.” (Mahabharata, Anu. 115.33)
   
4. Bhishma started, “Numberless discourses took place between the Rishis on this subject, O scion of Kuru’s race. Listen, O Yudhisthira, what their opinion was. (Mahabharata, Anu. 115.7)
   
5. “The highly wise seven celestial Rishis, the Valakshillyas, and those Rishis who drink the rays of the sun, all speak highly of abstention from meat.
   
6. The self-created Manu has said that the man who does not eat meat, or who does not kill living creatures, or who does not cause them to be killed, is a friend of all creatures. Such a man is incapable of being oppressed by any creature. He enjoys the confidence of all living beings. He always enjoys the praise of the pious. The virtuous Narada has said that that man who wishes to multiply his own flesh by eating the flesh of other creatures meets with disaster. (Mahabharata, Anu. 115.9-12)
   
7. “That man, who having eaten meat, gives it up afterwards wins merit by such a deed that is so great that a study of all the Vedas or a performance, O Bharata, of all the sacrifices [Vedic rituals], cannot give its like. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.16)
   
8. “That learned person who gives to all living creatures the gift of complete assurance is forsooth regarded as the giver of lifebreaths in this world. (Mahabharata, Anu. 115.18)
   
9. “Men gifted with intelligence and purified souls should always treat others as they themselves wish to be treated. It is seen that even those men who are endued with learning and who seek to acquire the greatest good in the shape of liberation, are not free of the fear of death. (Mahabharata, Anu. 115.20)
   
10. “What necessity be said of those innocent and healthy creatures gifted with love of life, when they are sought to be killed by sinful wretches living by slaughter? Therefore, O King, know that the discarding of meat is the highest refuge of religion, of the celestial region, and of happiness. Abstention of injury [to others] is the highest religion. It is, again, the highest penance. It is also the highest truth from which all duty emanates. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.21-23)
    
11. “Flesh cannot be had from grass or wood or stone. Unless a living creature is killed it cannot be procured. Hence is the fault of eating flesh. The celestials who live upon Svaha, Svadha, and nectar, are given to truth and sincerity. Those persons, however, who are for satisfying the sensation of taste, should be known as Rakshasas [flesh-eating demons] pervaded by the quality of Darkness. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.24-25)
    
12. “If there were nobody who ate flesh, then there would be nobody to slay living creatures. The man who slays living creatures kills them for the sake of the person who eats flesh. If flesh were not considered as food, there would then be no destruction of living creatures. It is for the sake of the eater that the destruction of living entities is carried on in the world. Since, O you of great splendor, the period of life is shortened by persons who kill living creatures or cause them to be killed, it is clear that the person who seeks his own good should give up meat altogether. Those dreadful persons who are engaged in the destruction of living beings never find protectors when they are in need. Such persons should always be molested and punished even as beast of prey. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.29-32)
    
13. “That man who seeks to multiply his own flesh by (eating) the flesh of others has to live in this world in great anxiety, and after death has to take birth in indifferent races and families. High Rishis given to the observance of vows and self-control have said that abstention from meat is worthy of praise, productive of fame and Heaven, and a great satisfaction itself. This I heard formerly, O son of Kunti, from Markandeya when that Rishi discoursed on the sins of eating flesh. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.34-36)
    
14. “He who purchases flesh, kills living creatures through his money. He who eats flesh, kills living beings through his eating. He who binds or seizes and actually kills living creatures is the slaughterer. These are the three sorts of slaughter through each of these acts. He who does not himself eat flesh but approves of an act of slaughter, becomes stained with the sin of slaughter. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.38-39)
    
15. “That wretched man who kills living creatures for the sake of those who would eat them commits great sin. The eater’s sin is not as great. That wretched man who, following the path of religious rites and sacrifices as laid down in the Vedas, would kill a living creature from a desire to eats its flesh, will certainly go to hell. That man who having eaten flesh abstains from it afterwards acquires great merit on account of such abstention from sin. He who arranges for obtaining flesh, he who approves of those arrangements, he who kills, he who buys or sells, he who cooks, and he who eats it, [acquire the sin of those who] are all considered as eaters of flesh. [Therefore] that man who wishes to avoid disaster should abstain from the meat of every living creature. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.44-48)
    

16 . “Listen to me, O king of kings, as I tell you this, O sinless one, there is absolute happiness in abstaining from meat, O king. He who practices severe austerities for a century, and he who abstains from meat, are both equally meritorious. This is my opinion. (Mahabharata, Anu.115.52-53)

1. “Yudhisthira said: Alas, those cruel men who, not caring for various other sorts of food, want only flesh, are really like great Rakshasas [meat-eating demons]. (Mahabharata, Anu.116.1)
   
2. “Bhishma said: That man who wishes to increase his own flesh by the meat of another living creature is such that there is none meaner and more cruel than he. In this world there is nothing that is dearer to a creature than his life. Hence, one should show mercy to the lives of others as he does to his own life. Forsooth, O son, flesh has its origin in the vital seed. There is great sin attached to its eating, as, indeed, there is merit in abstaining from it. (Mahabharata, Anu.116.11-13)
   
3. “There is nothing, O delighter of the Kurus, that is equal in point of merit, either in this world or in the next, to the practice of mercy to all living creatures. (Mahabharata, Anu.116.19)
   
4. “Hence a person of purified soul should be merciful to all living creatures. That man, O king, who abstains from every kind of meat from his birth forsooth, acquires a large space in the celestial region. They who eat the flesh of animals who are desirous of life, are themselves [later] eaten by the animals they eat. This is my opinion. Since he has eaten me, I shall eat him in return. This, O Bharata, forms the character as Mamsah [meaning flesh] of Mamsah [me he, or “me he” will eat for having eaten him]. The destroyer is always slain. After him the eater meets with the same fate. (Mahabharata, Anu.116.32-35)
   
5. “He who acts with hostility towards another becomes victim of similar deeds done by that other. Whatever acts one does in whatever bodies, he has to suffer the consequences thereof in those bodies. (Mahabharata, Anu.116.36-37)
   
6. “Abstention from cruelty is the highest Religion. Abstention from cruelty is the greatest self-restraint. Abstention from cruelty is the highest gift. Abstention from cruelty is the highest penance. Abstention from cruelty is the highest sacrifice. Abstention from cruelty is the highest power. Abstention from cruelty is the greatest friend. Abstention from cruelty is the greatest happiness. (Mahabharata, Anu.116.38-39)
   
7. “Gifts made in all sacrifices [rituals], ablutions performed in all sacred water, and the merit which one acquires from making all kinds of gifts mentioned in the scriptures, all these do not equal in merit abstention from cruelty.” (Mahabharata, Anu.116.40)
   

Do the Vedic literature allow meat-eating? Did Hinduism adopt vegetarianism from Buddhism? - The Spiritual Scientist
Bhagavata Purana:
“Those who are ignorant of real dharma and, though wicked and haughty, account themselves virtuous, kill animals without any feeling of remorse or fear of punishment. Further, in their next lives, such sinful persons will be eaten by the same creatures they have killed in this world.” (Bhagavata Purana 11.5.14)
The real purpose of a sacrifice was not to replace a slaughterhouse but to test a Vedic mantra by giving an animal new life. Animals were used to test the power of Vedic mantras, not for meat. - Srimad Bhagavatam 4.4.6 purport
Do the Vedic literature allow meat-eating? Did Hinduism adopt vegetarianism from Buddhism? - The Spiritual Scientist
Cow Sacrifice ? Not At All :
Besides References,Here’s What Supreme Lord Saying About Sacrifice -
CC Ādi 17.158 — As a learned scholar, the Kazi challenged Caitanya Mahāprabhu, “In Your Vedic scriptures there is an injunction for killing a cow. On the strength of this injunction, great sages performed sacrifices involving cow-killing.”
CC Ādi 17.159 — Refuting the Kazi’s statement, the Lord immediately replied, “The Vedas clearly enjoin that cows should not be killed. Therefore every Hindu, whoever he may be, avoids indulging in cow-killing.
CC Ādi 17.160 — “In the Vedas and Purāṇas there are injunctions declaring that if one can revive a living being, one can kill it for experimental purposes.
CC Ādi 17.161 — “Therefore the great sages sometimes killed old cows, and by chanting Vedic hymns they brought them back to life for perfection.
CC Ādi 17.162 — “The killing and rejuvenation of such old and invalid cows was not truly killing but an act of great benefit.
CC Ādi 17.163 — “Formerly there were powerful brāhmaṇas who could make such experiments using Vedic hymns, but now, because of the Kali-yuga, brāhmaṇas are not so powerful. Therefore the killing of cows and bulls for rejuvenation is forbidden.
—Ādi 17: The Pastimes of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu in His Youth
Srila Prabhupada Says - So killing, killing is very bad, but killing for the sake of right cause of fighting, or killing in the sacrifice, they are not sinful. Sometimes in the Vedas killing is recommended, just like in the fight or in the sacrifice, but that is not sinful. Sometimes a brāhmaṇa is sacrificing, offering, performing great sacrifice, and the animal is put into the fire just to give him renovated, new life, not for killing, just to test how Vedic mantras are being properly pronounced. That will be test. When sacrifice is done, the fire is there, and old animal is put into the sacrifice, and he comes out with a new body. That means the Vedic mantras are being pronounced very properly, and it is being carried out. This is the experiment, not for killing. Although in the Vedas there are recommendation that paśu-vadha system... Just like in the modern age also, when some experiment is made, it is made on the life of the animal. But they are killed. But when there is recommendation of putting an animal in the fire, that is not for killing; that is to see that this animal has got a new body.
Lecture on BG 2.14 -- London, August 20, 1973
Pradyumna: Aśvamedha-yajñas or gomedha-yajñas, or the sacrifices in which a horse or a bull is sacrificed, were not, of course, for the purpose of killing the animals. Lord Caitanya said that such animalssacrificed on the altar of yajña were rejuvenated and a new life was given to them. It was just to prove the efficacy of the hymns of the Vedas. By recitation of the hymns of the Vedas in the proper way, certainly the performer gets relief from the reactions of sins. But in case of such sacrifices not properly done under expert management, certainly one has to become responsible for animal sacrifice."
Prabhupāda: This is a long subject matter. But the sacrifice in yajña, recommended, that is not for killing the animal, but it is a testing, how the Vedic mantras are being properly chanted. Because an oldanimal put into the fire, by Vedic mantras he would come out again with young life. That is sacrifice of animals in the yajña. Therefore in this age there is no such expert brāhmaṇa who can chant the mantras properly or he can behave because the life is very abominable. Therefore, because there is no expert brāhmaṇa, so these sacrifices are forbidden in this age. Kalau pañca vivarjayet aśvamedhaṁ gavālambhaṁ devareṇa sutotpattiṁ sannyāsam (CC Adi 17.164). These things are forbidden in this age, because there is no proper men to conduct.
Lecture on SB 1.8.52 -- Los Angeles, May 14, 1973
The purpose of the Vedas is to establish such principles under the order of the Supreme Lord, and the Lord directly orders, at the end of the Gītā, that the highest principle of religion is to surrender unto Him only, and nothing more. The Vedic principles push one towards complete surrender unto Him; and whenever such principles are disturbed by the demoniac, the Lord appears. From the Bhāgavatam we understand that Lord Buddha is the incarnation of Kṛṣṇa who appeared when materialism was rampant and materialists were using the pretext of the authority of the Vedas. Although there are certain restrictive rules and regulations regarding animal sacrifice for particular purposes in the Vedas, people of demonic tendency still took to animal sacrifice without reference to the Vedic principles. Lord Buddha appeared to stop this nonsense and to establish the Vedic principles of nonviolence.
BG 4.7, Purport
Lord Buddha, a powerful incarnation of the Personality of Godhead, appeared in the province of Gayā (Bihar) as the son of Añjanā, and he preached his own conception of nonviolence and deprecated even the animal sacrifices sanctioned in the Vedas. At the time when Lord Buddha appeared, the people in general were atheistic and preferred animal flesh to anything else. On the plea of Vedic sacrifice, every place was practically turned into a slaughterhouse, and animal-killing was indulged in unrestrictedly. Lord Buddha preached nonviolence, taking pity on the poor animals. He preached that he did not believe in the tenets of the Vedas and stressed the adverse psychological effects incurred by animal-killing. Less intelligent men of the age of Kali, who had no faith in God, followed his principle, and for the time being they were trained in moral discipline and nonviolence, the preliminary steps for proceeding further on the path of God realization. He deluded the atheists because such atheists who followed his principles did not believe in God, but they kept their absolute faith in Lord Buddha, who himself was the incarnation of God. Thus the faithless people were made to believe in God in the form of Lord Buddha. That was the mercy of Lord Buddha: he made the faithless faithful to him.
SB 1.3.24, Purport
The horse sacrifice yajña or cow sacrifice yajña performed by the Vedic regulations shouldn't be misunderstood as a process of killing animals. On the contrary, animals offered for the yajña were rejuvenated to a new span of life by the transcendental power of chanting the Vedic hymns, which, if properly chanted, are different from what is understood by the common layman. The Veda-mantras are all practical, and the proof is rejuvenation of the sacrificed animal.
SB 1.12.34, Purport
According to sacrificial rituals, animals are sometimes sacrificed in the yajña arena. Such animals are sacrificed not to kill them but to give them new life. Such action was an experiment to observe whether the Vedic mantras were being properly pronounced. Sometimes small animals are killed in a medical laboratory to investigate therapeutic effects. In a medical clinic, the animals are not revived, but in the yajña arena, when animals were sacrificed, they were again given life by the potency of Vedic mantras. The word śipi-viṣṭāya appears in this verse. Śipi means "the flames of the sacrifice." In the sacrificial fire if the oblations are offered into the flames, then Lord Viṣṇu is situated there in the form of the flames. Therefore Lord Viṣṇu is known as Śipiviṣṭa.
SB 4.13.35, Purport
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Do the Vedic literature allow meat-eating? Did Hinduism adopt vegetarianism from Buddhism? - The Spiritual Scientist
Thank you.