"Great days and glorious victory! My name is Spifflemonk and welcome to Slime Rancher! I was given this game so I could 'relax' between bouts of suffering induced by Subnautica. So thank you... erm..."
Spiff looks at his notes.
"Thank you Blitz! Oh... another StarTuber? Hm... I seem to have a fanbase within a fanbase. Either that or people really do enjoy watching me suffer."
Spiff gives the camera his signature all consuming death stare and starts the game. He stares at the title screen for a bit as he tries to figure out what the hell he is looking at. Its Beatrix standing proud with her vacpack, while dozens of small slimes fall from the sky and bounce around, making cute noises and leaving stains on the ground and walls.
"What.... Am I looking at!? These things are 'slimes'? What am I supposed to do with them exactly? What's 'ranching' anyway? Well... I guess we find out."
Spiff starts a new game, chooses the icon for the Honey Slime as his save file, names it Spifflemonk and starts the game. He is too distracted trying to figure out what the hell's going on, he fails to read the story intro and simply appears in the ranch, ready to play.
"OH! Oh my! I'm in already... Okay. I guess I need to get going. Theresa tutorial? Okay then uhh... press that button to walk..."
He follows the tutorial and lets out an odd squeak as he cavs a slime into the first storage slot. He appears genuinely confused and spends a few minutes shooting a slime out, vaccing it up again, then shooting it back out. He watches the slimes leave slime puddles everywhere and tries to understand why.
"What... is this? Okay... food? Okay food. So take food, put slime in a pen, shoot food at slime. Simple enough."
He grabs a carrot nearby, shoots it at a pink slime and the slime poops out a Plort.
"WHAT!?"
Spiff grabs another slime, another carrots and produces another plort. He groans in frustration and facepalms.
"I have been in this scene for long enough to know that humans have this odd fixation with how funny their bodily functions are. Are you telling me THIS WHOLE GAME IS ONE BIG ADORABLE POOP JOKE!?"
Spiff collects another slime, feeding it a Hen-hen. The animal lets out a terrified cluck and produces a Plort in response. Spiff collects it and resumes playing.
"FINE. Let's keep going. At least the game is cute. The slimes are adorable. They make many booping noises. I like the booping."
Spiffle sighs in surrender and plays the game, very quickly figuring out how simple it really is. Find slime. Feed slime. Money. Rinse and repeat. He collects a few slims from the nearby nest, an oddly shaped hive-like structure and grabs some PogoFruit and Carrots for use later. He does this for a while longer and starts exploring options for plots.
"Let's see now. This thing is the Corral. Okay then. High walls... makes it harder for them to jump out. Oh I like that. Music box calms them down. Air Net makes them harder to bounce out. Solar shield is for... a special kind of slime. Okay. Plort collector and Auto-feeder. Oh... those two will be most useful!"
For now, Spiff hasn't got enough money and buys two new farm plots, one growing carrots, one growing Pogo-fruit. He then sets out to find new slimes and enter the rest of the games world. He moves around, eventually encountering the entrance to the Quarry and finds a Rock Slime.
"Oh, hello! What are you? Youre blue and spiky! Come here! Let me vac you up! Okay... Rock Slime? Oooh... these are kinda cute! They're all pointy. Will it hurt me if I-OW!"
Spiff shoots the slime out and walks towards it to try to get a closer look, only for it to hurt him. It's only a few points of damage but Spiff learns the lesson.
"Okay... so it's not THAT simple... Some slimes are cute, but deadly. Im just gonna vacuum this one up then..."
Spiff vacs up a few rock slimes and encounters a Tabby Slime in the process. He stops in his tracks as he hears the Tabby Slime meow like a cat.
"What... was that? Is it this thing? Wha- a... Tabby Slime? What's a Tabby?"
The slime bounces around, mewing and meowing, and grabs a Pogofruit nearby and plays with it. Spiffles eyes go wide, his cheeks change color and he pauses the game.
"Wh... what's going on!? Why are my cheeks warm!? Why is my heart rate so high? This isn't a scary game! I don't get like this! Whats going on!?"
Spiff is the first alien to experience the concept of "D'Aaaaawww!" On camera, and is blushing, his eyes are bulging to take in as much cuteness as possible and his heart is racing.
"Okay.. Okay I have no idea why, but apparently I really like this slime. So Let's go..."
Spiff vacs up a few Tabby Slimes and heads back to the ranch. He sells the plorts he has, gaining enough money to buy a plot and upgrade it with High Walls. He puts the Rock Slimes and Tabby Slimes in one spot owing to how the other plot he has is full of Pink Slimes. He tosses some Pogofruit in and waits to see what happens. Nothing.
"Hmm... Am I missing something? Is there a thing I can look at?"
Spiff pauses the game and notices the SlimePedia button in the pause menu and takes a look at it.
"OOOhhh... Okay... Rock Slimes only eat Veggies with a Heart Beet... whatever that is, being their favorite. The Tabby Slime only eats meat! Okay... Need to.. Oh here!"
Spiff finds a Carrot nearby and feeds it to one of the Rock Slimes. A Plort is produced and as he tries to grab it, a Tabby Slime chows down and turns into a RockTabby Largo. Spiff is taken by surprise and takes damage from the large creature as a result. The RockTabby is - as one would expect - a combination of a Rock Slime and a Tabby Slime, and looks as you would expect. Spiff responds with both fear and cuteness, the combination of a blue spiky slime making him Squee.
"Oh god look! What is that? Can I pick it up? I can! Okay... Largo... What's that? It's so cute! It's all... blue and spiky with fluffy ears! What is this game!? Can I carry you around? I can't. Damn. So what is a Largo?"
Spiff looks at the Slimepedia after playing with the Tabby Slimes for a while, figuring out more of the game's mechanics. Which were ridiculously simple.
"Is this another one of those 'so simple its silly' games? Find slime, feed slime, sell poop of slime and... that's it? Seriously? Welp...."
Spiff decides to just go with it and quickly figures out how to min-max the slimes he has, going through the motions of simply exploring what is available. In short order, he finds his first Gordo Slime - which is a massive immobile variant of a standard slime.
"Good GOD that thing is fat! My goodness!"
Spiff notices the giant pink slime on an island peninsula off the first area and heads towards it, noticing a path nearby. He ignores it for now and returns to the task at hand and approaches the giant puddle of wobbly jelly that is the Pink Gordo Slime.
"You sir. Are. FAT. Fat and wobbly. What do I do with you then... Uhhh... Slimepedia says feed until you explode. Okay then, it's a pinky boi, he eats anything. Okay, I shall be back!"
Spiff rumbles around collecting two full slots of food, Carrots and Pogofruit and shoots them at the gordo. After emptying both slots, the last two carrots bounce off and the gordo explodes, splitting into 8 pink slimes, three boxes and a floating key.
"Oh hello! A Key!? Okay then, imma collect THAT, then let's grab all of these slimes and put them somewhere. What's in these boxes? How do I open them..."
Spiff faffs about for a bit then learns how to open the boxes, receiving a few carrots, a Tabby Slime and one HeartBeet as a reward.
"A HeartBeet!? Don't my Rockies like those!? OOOOO I can feed that... No. Stop being stupid Spiff, we can put that in the farm plot then get more of them! To home!"
Spiff shakes his head and charges back home, deleting the carrots and planting the Heart Beets. He uses some extra carrots he has left over and feeds the rest, turning the last few Slimes into RockTabby Slimes.
"Alright... Gods I cannot fathom how... simple this game is! It looks complex on the outside but... SO simple! I wonder what would be the best combinations to use? Can I make it easy on myself and make it so there's only veggie or fruit slimes?"
Spiff learns pretty fast and catches on to the games mechanics with ease as he starts figuring out how to min/max the games plort mechanics, figuring out the best amount of Largo's to have in a corral at one time, in his case, 8. Spiff spends some time farming and gathers about 8000 coins over a few days, collecting random items and exploring, eventually finding the entrance to the Indigo Quarry.
"OOhhh okay then. Well, time to go in here I guess. I think this is where I will get to use my Key thing I found. So where do I- GAH!"
Spiff is attacked by three Feral Largos. Unable to do anything because he has no food on him, he runs around like a headless chicken trying to escape them. He gets cornered, taking a decent amount of damage before finally finding a way out.
"Oh my goodness! Silly creatures! Why were they so angry!? What did I do!?"
Spiff carries on through and unlocks the first Gate to the quarry, the first of many. The area around him is purple - his favorite color, and he is immediately giddy on entering the area. He is drawn immediately to the massive turquoise crystal formations poking out from walls and floors.
"Oh my! These crystals! Do these exist in real life!? Now, for all my non-human viewers, humans have this thing where most of their media is based on experiences or mythology. If something like this exists in a game, it's very likely that it exists in reality. I would LOVE to visit something like this!"
Spiff marvels at the dated but pretty graphics of the goofy game and stares at crystals for a bit. He quickly finds two of the most dangerous slimes, The Boom Slime and The Rad Slime in the quarry. He grabs two Rads, Six Booms and finds an Oca Oca among the veggies in the area.
"My! That's efficient! Slimepedia says these are exploding slimes and radioactive slimes... Well that's... Not nice. Still, it should be easy. These Oca Oca things are the favorite food of the radiation slimes so, there we go! Efficiency! Let's go see what's over here-WHAT."
Spiff wanders over to the pond nearby and has his first encounter with a Puddle Slime. It's a slime that squeaks like a toy and purrs like a cat underwater, in the shape of a little puddle, hence the name.
"My GOD that thing is cute! What is that? A... Puddle slime? It's a slime that lives in a puddle or pond. Okay then. MINE. The cuteness is all MINE!"
Spiff runs around and grabs three Puddle Slimes and rushes back home, unable to get past the bridge to the next location. He spends a decent amount of his money buying a new corral and farm plot for the new slimes and a Pond for his new favorite pets, The Puddles.
"Sooo cute! This game seems so... family friendly! Which is a big change from horrors such as Zomboid or Rimworld. But it can't be that simple though so... I need to see something before I go further."
Spiff keeps wandering about, once again towards the quarry carrying a load of Heart Beets for the Rock Slime Gordo he passed by earlier in a cave. After popping the Gordo he unlocks a teleporter pad.
"What's this swirly thing? What happens if I step on it?"
Spiff steps in and is instantly returned to a spot next to the market back home. By this time, the first day is ending and it's almost night time. This is where Spiff encounters his first enemy - the Tarr Slime.
"Oh look! It's a new slime! It... looks strange though. but these are like living slime creatures so I suppose that's not abnormal. What slime is-OW! It attacked! Get away!"
The Tarr attacks Spiff and bites him a few times before Spiff grabs it and shoots it away. Spiff looks on in horror as a Tarr nearby grabs a slime with strange slimy tentacle like appendages and then eats it.
"A slime that EATS other slimes!? GET AWAY FROM MY BOUNCIES!!!"
Spiff gets angry and grabs all the Tarrs in the area and flings them into the ocean nearby. He nearly died on account of taking so much damage from wrangling them to where he could throw them.
"Where does that come from? Wait a minute, Slimepedia... A Tarr slime? A slime that appears when a Largo of two different slimes eats a plort from a third different slime. Oh... So these things are a form of population control built into the game? That's an interesting mechanic. Hmmm... Alright. That's all for this one. I'm satisfied."
Spiffs outro plays with a smile.
TOP COMMENT: Slime Rancher eh? Fun game, very fun indie game! SR is one of the best 'relax and turn brain off' kinds of games. SR 2 might also be fun for you. Look forward to the next episode of Subnautica!
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The video starts and Spiffs Intro plays. The cameras open and its Spiff and one other Eridani in a split screen. The screen to the left is Spiff, the screen to the right is the other one, who is clearly a lot smaller in stature and demeanor.
"Great days!" Spiff says.
"And Glorious victory!" Comes the squeaky kid voice from the other.
"I am Spifflemonk, and after much deliberation and showing my wife the game, she has finally agreed to allow my lovely little daughter to play a human game! As a consequence, say hello to Mini-Monk!" He says with a strangely happy grin.
"Hiii!" The child squeaks happily and waves at the camera.
The camera zooms out to see the child, around a quarter of her fathers height, sitting in his lap on a pillow in Spiff's usual seat, the camera making sure both are fully visible. The child is adorable, has very light blue, almost cyan skin tone and big bright pink eyes, and in human terms is the age of about 8 years old. The games screen starts up, and Spiff goes for a New Game, this one modded with some Quality Of Life and Graphics mods.
"Yes yes, I have my own save game where I will be finishing the game vanilla. But this is necessary! I have been looking for MONTHS to find a game friendly enough for my daughter to play, both in terms of content and mechanics, and I finally found one! But, as per my Wife's request, she isn't allowed to play it without me here."
Spiff smiles at the camera and shows the child how to use the keyboard controls, teaching her what certain symbols of the standard English Alphabet are for on the keyboard. He mostly stays hands off, only really intervening when she's lost or presses the wrong key by accident.
"So I vacuum up these things and stuff? Does it hurt them?" She asks.
"Nope! Doesn't hurt them. Slimes dont hurt apparently."
"And... I feed them like this?" She asks as she puts a slime in the Corral and feeds it a carrot.
"Yup! Then you take its poop and sell it." Spiff replies with a smirk.
She looks up at him with a confused scowl. "Seriously? you're making me play a game about slime poop?"
"It's a bit more in depth than that sweetie but that's basically it. Get slime, feed food to slime, slime poops out these things called 'Plorts', then you sell the plorts. Plorts are slime poop." Spiff smiles down at her.
"Are there blue ones? I like blue."
"Oh there's lots of blue ones! Even a whole blue/purple place you can find!" He replies.
"Mine."
Spiff barely holds in a chuckle as she excitedly goes about the game. Spiff does most of the 'grind' elements or talks her around while she's in his lap, so she gets to enjoy the exploration aspect more. He shows her how to set up a farm of Pink Slimes and shows her the basics, before allowing her to move on to other spots. Eventually, she comes across the entrance to the Indigo Quarry cave in the second area, and finds a Rock Slime.
"It's blue! What is it?" She asks, then vacs it up.
Spiff, being the only one in the room that can read Human English, explains as they go. "That's a rock slime. It's a slime that has rocks and minerals in it and eats veggies."
"It... eats veggies? and it's a slime made of rock. Whaaa?"
"Don't question it, ginky, this game is about farming slime monster poop. Don't expect it to make sense, just enjoy playing it!" Spiff says with a laugh.
"Okay..." She shrugs and resumes playing.
She grabs a few more Rock Slimes and a few Hen-Hens from the local area and moves on, looking around her at various things to figure out what they are. Spiff stays mostly hands off, simply trying to let her explore and enjoy. Until she finds a Tabby Slime. The meowing and squeaking, as well as the playful behavior makes the child's face light up.
"Whats THAT its so cute!" She hastily gabbles as she vacs up a Tabby Slime nearby.
"That's a Tabby Slime! It's a slime inspired by a creature that lived on Earth once called the 'cat'." Spiff said.
"This actually exists!? Can we have one!?" She squeals and stares her father down with puppy eyes.
Spiff laughs heartily in a fatherly laugh. "Hell to the heck no we aren't. Cats are evil. Humans have told me cats are evil. I've seen cats. I don't let evil things near my children. Not even if they are cute. BUT... There are cat based games humans have made. You can have a virtual cat. We can try some of those in the future, if your mother allows it."
"Okay." The child sighs and resigns herself, both defeated at the failure to get a cat, and also happy at the prospect of other cats somewhere else.
She wrangles a few Tabby Slimes and returns to the Ranch to put them in their pens. The squeaking and meowing sounds coming from the Tabby Slimes makes the child go giddy and start an adorable giggle fit as she vacs one Tabby up, then throws him out again to listen to the adorable noises. This carries on for a bit longer than one would expect and Spiff looks into the camera with a knowing fatherly smirk and rolls his eyes with a smile.
The child's giggling is cut short when eventually, one of the Tabby Slimes eats a Rock Slimes Plort and becomes a Largo. The large blue cat/rock slime combo takes her by surprise.
"HEY! Wh-where’d my cat go? What's that? Why is it big?"
Spiff looks down at her with a smirk. "You'll figure it out. This game is a tiny bit more complicated than you think."
She looks back at the game and tries a few things. She flings a plort at the RockTabby, and nothing happens. Then she grabs a Hen-Hen and the Largo isn't hungry, so nothing happens. She then takes a Tabby Plort and flings it at the Largo. It bounces and hits a Rock Slime, that then eats it and turns into a RockTabby Largo.
"OOOOhhhh kay... So these things can be two in one? It can be a... RockCat Slime?" She asks.
"Yup. But be caref-"
"What happens if I do this though..." She says as she picks up a Pink Plort and yeets it at the Largo, creating a Tarr Slime.
The black mass of wobbly slime begins the mass consumption of the slimes in the pen and she squeals in terror and anger at the sight. Spiff pauses the game and gives her a cuddle to calm her down.
"He's eating my slimies!" She cried between sobs.
"Now now little bug, that's not how a Lady acts is it!? No 'Tis not! So, watch. They aren't scary at all." Spiff says and grabs a Tarr, then yeets it into the ocean behind the Ranch. He pauses the game again and looks down at her.
"Is it gone?" she asks.
"Nope. there's still more there. Now you and I both know that you're way too old to be cowering in my lap like this! Ladies don't behave like this. Are you a lady?" He says, smirking.
"I am!" She squeals.
"Prove it! Take those Tarrs and throw them into the ocean! Prove that, just like a lady, you can take care of your problems!" Spiff commands with a smirk.
She squeals in an adorable warrior's roar and grabs the Tarrs one by one, throwing them off the edge into the ocean. She cringes a bit in fear each time she grabs one but manages to hold her own and saves her slimes from further Tarr-ification. In the end, only a few are lost. She holds her tiny hands high and yells the Eridani word for 'Victory!' and carries on playing the game, eventually making it to the Moss Blanket Gate.
Spiff however, ends it there as she has now been playing for two hours.
"Okay then, well, that's all for now." He says, pausing and saving the game.
"AAAwwww nooo! I wanna play more!" She protests.
"No. Remember what happened that time I got hauled away by the funny police? That's what happens when you play human video games. You forget who you are sometimes. NO. Not happening to my little one. You get two hours a day, maximum. That's the rule. Now run along. Tomorrow your chair arrives, I had it made specially for you, so you don't have to sit in my lap all the time." He says, stern and direct.
"Okay... darn it..." She says with a sad frown and walks out the door.
Spiff looks at the camera and smiles broadly, then the channel outro plays.
TOP COMMENT: Thatta boy. That's how a dad do. She is ADORABLE! I was NOt expecting the cute. That was… refreshing :)
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"Great days and glorious victory! My name is Spifflemonk and welcome back to Slime Rancher! Back to a moment of rest after a... close encounter with a... certain very very large spider in a game called Grounded."
Spiffle visibly shudders in terrified disgust.
"In any case, we're going back to the ranch! Mods for my daughter's save are disabled so we can work in a base game as most people say I should during my first play, so here we go."
Spiff returns to the game and wastes no time going back to min-maxing, figuring out the Upgrade and jetpack system in short order, using it to acquire more slimes. He quickly went through and grabbed a few more slimes for a better payoff, getting a farm that was relatively self-sustaining.
"So, here is the best option that I have found. A maximum of eight slimes per corral with a fully upgraded farm plot to sustain them seems to be the best option so I can continue to explore the game without grinding too much. That's a decent pace I think. Let me take you on a tour!"
Spiff heads towards the ranch and shows off the stock. Eight Largos in each, with a farm plot feeding it, and four corrals on the main farm. All are fully upgraded as best as possible.
"This one has RockTabby's! They eat Heart Beets! This one has RadBooms, Rad slimes and Boom slimes. Dangerous but fed with Oca Oca for a good payday! AThis one has a new slime in it! The HoneyHunter! A Hunter slime which I found off camera yesterday, and another one called the Honey Slime, which eats these Mint Mango things. These are my favorites! Look! They go invisible! You can only see eyes!"
He shows off the honey flavored cat-like slimes going invisible and giggles inanely at the sight.
"So cute! And here, New slimes! I found these while exploring some caves near the Quarry. They are Crystal Slimes... which by itself is AWESOME! But while around at night, I found these ones, which were Phosphor Slimes. These guys were hard to figure out and then I understood the Solar Shield upgrade. That... hurt a bit. After losing three stocks of Phosphor Slimes."
Spiff scoffs and shows off the slimes. He moves away to a back area near the Plort Market and shows off several Hen-Hen coops, including a full Corral that's completely full to the top with squawking and squirming Hen-Hens.
"I'm going to toss a slime in there one day... see what happens!"
Spiff laughs in a rather disturbingly sadistic manner and resumes work, going to the dockyard further down.
"Both of these areas I had to unlock with cash. Wasn't easy but I got the farm going. Now I have a lot of cash I've no idea what to do with. In any case, here we go! The Puddle Ranch!"
The last four plots are made up of ponds, one of which has a dozen Puddle slimes in it at once.
"They are so cute! Yes I know you can't get anything out of them if there's more than four in a pond, but I keep finding more and they're so CUTE! Look at da little puddle! In any case I also have this. An incinerator. No idea what its for but I guess i'll find out."
Spiff fangirls around the Puddle Slimes for a while and leaves the Ranch, grabbing four individual Plorts and heads to the North. Here he finds the Slime Portal, surrounded by Slime statues, each one having a slot in it that contains a Plort.
"I am ashamed to say It took me a while to figure this out. But you take plorts corresponding to the slime statue and... poof. Now... what do it do?"
Spiff watches as the Portal opens, a cute song plays and the gate slides open to allow him access to the rest of the map. He enters and finds The Ancient Ruins - a puzzle maze of shifting gates and twisting passages. Thankfully he has one Slime Key left, so he can essentially skip the puzzle this place offers and go straight to the Glass Desert. Well that is until he encounters a Quantum Slime.
"What... Is this yellow slime? Is it a gold slime or-QUANTUM SLIME!? WHAT!?"
He stares at the camera in his signature 'you know too much' glare and watches what the slime does. It phases out of existence and teleports itself to another spot nearby.
"A teleporting slime!? How does that make any sense!? HOW???"
Spiff stares at the slime for a bit and just says 'fuck it' and starts exploring the area, grabbing a few Slimes. He finds a Phase Lemon and struggles for a while, eventually giving up and consulting the wiki to figure out how to get one and then resumes exploring. The entire time he grumbles about how annoying this whole thing is, and arrives at the gate. He puts in the key and uses the slimes he has on him plus a few Pogofruit to get Quantum Plorts and finishes the puzzle, entering the Glass Desert.
"Well... This is... very empty, barren and dead compared to where I came from. Hmm..."
Spiff isnt wasting time, heads straight to the wiki and figures out what to do. He seems to be impatient for some reason and is rushing through it, grabbing slimes and securing resources he thinks he might need, following the breadcrumb trail left by all the strange floating holographic H signs left everywhere. Eventually, he scrambles through the huge maze of stuff everywhere, unlocks a few gates and reads the last sign he can find left by the mysterious 'H'.
"OOOhhhh so that's how that works! Okay so the story i-WHAT THE FU-"
Spiff is grabbed by four sets of tiny Eridani hands and dragged out of his chair. Four Eridani children, including his daughter Mini-Monk, scramble into his seat, exit, save the game and start a new game in his place. Each child is around the same age.
"CUTE SLIMIES!!!" The children excitedly chirp as Spiff just sighs in annoyance.
"Uggghhh... kids."
Spiffles outro plays, along with a short, but adorable slideshow of him showing pictures of each of the kids taking turns playing the game, enjoying themselves, figuring out how everything works and trying to handle a swarm of Tarr slimes due to a Plort accident at the Ranch.
TOP COMMENT: I think I've died and gone to cute. Your kids are adorable! Ready to go back to Subnautica yet Spiff? I WANT TO SEE YOU FACE THE LEVIATHAN.
Spiffs response: FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR GIANT SCARY DEEPWATER CURSED FISH. And no those aren't my kids, it's just my daughter and a few friends. Only one is mine.
Response: Oh god I'm gonna LOVE watching you play Phasmophobia! That might kill you! LOL
Spiffs response: EVIL. HUMANS ARE EVIL.
((Authors note: BEFORE YOU ASK no i don't have kids and i'm not expecting any. This was just something funny I wanted to write. So here you go.))

Gold seems to be an issue this season, or rather, the lack thereof. Before I get swarmed by the fanboy mafia, let me just say that I've enjoyed D4 quite a bit since launch and more than ever now with season 4. They've done a great job overall with this season/core game re-work.
That said, now that I have something like 5 season 4 classes all level 100 and grinding the pit and uber bosses etc. I've noticed that I've just sort of hit a wall with gold. Now there are other issues, such as royal gems/rubies in particular, which I still can't slot into all my gear. There's the lack of stygian stone drops, meaning I have to mostly still run non-tormented bosses still, despite being able to solo the tormented versions. These are issues as well, but they have workarounds for the most part (you can group up, use lesser gems, etc.). I've pushed to around tier 100 pit on a few of my characters, so I'm not like top 1% god gamer, but I'm also not super casual, so it's not like I've just 'not gotten there yet.'
GOLD however... Well, you got 4 sparks to craft that shako? That'll be 50 million gold. Wanna max out that one awesome two hander to masterwork 12? Well that'll be another 12 million or so. Oh wait, it crit all the wrong stats and you need to reset? Another 5 million. Re-rolling stats? If you're unlucky that can be several million per roll.
The point I'm getting at is that late game crafting for that BIS chase gets expensive and there's not really any great way to consistently farm lots of gold. Sure you can run whispers all day until your eyes bleed, but on average you're only getting a few million gold there, it's not particularly fun/engaging or challenging and ultimately detracts from the stuff you want to be doing, such as pushing the pit or uber bosses etc. Let's say you do just cave in and run back to back whisper caches for several hours (super fun). Well you can still fairly easily burn through all of that work in 10 minutes of crafting/masterworking gear or crafting one uber unique.
In my opinion we need better gold farm options. Make higher tier pits and uber bosses and hell tide events etc. all drop copious amounts of gold which scale with the difficulty. Buff whisper gold further. Make it so you can just sell obols for gold if you need gold more than items. Make boss mats sell for more gold. Give me options that synchronize with my end game gameplay loop and don't force me back into running the same whispers from launch and back to picking up junk items I won't use just so I can individually click on each one at the vendor to sell my whole inventory of legendaries just to end up with like 1 million gold.
Gripe aside (and it's a gripe - gold is likely to be what makes me stop playing season 4 before anything else) - how are people farming gold? I guess there's trading, but even that you have to go to a 3rd party website and post your thing and then add the person and find em and trade... It's just a hassle unless you have some really valuable gear you wanna sell, that's not an uber unique and that you haven't tried to temper.
People who have ample gold: Are you just running whispers constantly? Are you just trading items and that gets the job done?
I think gold should be valuable, but I just also think that you should be able to sustain it through playing the game. I play a lot and am generally fairly efficient with my play style at this point, but even I am struggling to have enough gold to engage with the end game crafting mechanics. I don't think forcing folks into engaging with a wonky trading system should be the only way to participate in the intentional end game crafting gameplay loop that's now in the game.

I had to mail a very small packaged that couldn't fit in a mail slot. I must have checked over ten mailboxes on my commute, and they all only had a slot. I ended up at a post office, but it was busy and I didn't think to ask the staff. Are there any pull-open mailboxes left in the city?

In 2019, during the Before Times, I started getting more into the development side of the MLB, and decided to do some deep dives on top Twins prospects. Mostly, I just wanted to get a feel for each player, so I read varying amounts of scouting reports on each player and took a look at their performance/progression in the minors, based almost entirely in stats. Box score scouting is not exactly foolproof (though better in baseball than football), so my own investigation wasn't necessarily valuable insight, but it helped to write things out so I figured I might as well post my findings. I enjoyed it enough to check out some players from outside the top 30 who I thought had a shot, as well as the 2019 draft class.
With that class at the five year mark, and the 2024 draft coming up next month, I figured it was time to go back and see how our top prospects from that time did and if I nailed any picks (or, more likely, when I was horribly wrong). Of course, I still don't know what I'm talking about, so this is all just for fun! I don't really expect anyone to read every word, it's mostly for me. Here is a hub post with links to each writeup I did and a table for where each player appears. For the top 30 players, I had both an initial deep dive and a later update; sleepers have only the initial analysis. I'll link the initial analysis for each section, and baseball-reference page for each player.
This took entirely too long, and so there's a lot of context/detail missing, particularly for the guys whose careers flamed out post-COVID - I just kind of assumed most of those guys were affected by the gap year, but I'm sure there are other circumstances I missed. At any rate, scrolling through baseball-reference is a nice zen thing for me, so maybe I'll try doing this again with our current top 30...

Top 30

This is the top 30 as of my first post - 5 years ago today as I write this (plus a day by the time I post).

#1-5

1. Royce Lewis, SS
I don't think I had any particular take on Royce (or most of the very top prospects), but he's gone through the most in this period, I think, so let's look at that instead.
When I first checked in on Royce, he was struggling a bit with the transition to A+ due to strikeout rate, but he improved a lot in the next couple months and had just earned a promotion to AA when I went back for an update. I wasn't yet aware that the FSL was a particularly pitcher friendly league, nor was I thinking about age relative to level, so I was a little confused about the situation.
At the time, Royce's ETA was 2020 and he was just 20, so it seemed he had a lot of work to do if he was going to get there in a year. Unfortunately, COVID killed any chance of that, and then he missed 2021 with an ACL tear. Despite all that, he got his debut in May 2022 - after just a month in AAA - due to an injury to Carlos Correa, but tore his ACL again after just a month.
It was a nightmare scenario, but Royce returned in 2023 and quickly cemented himself as a local legend and fan favorite. Despite having just 282 PAs in his MLB career, I think everyone is pretty confident about him as a player heading forward. It's just a question of staying healthy.
2. Alex Kirilloff, RF
In 2019, I thought Kirilloff seemed like a very consistent player, which really hasn't been true in the bigs thus far. He's certainly been starter level in the MLB, and had a 116 OPS+ last year, but has been prone to extended cold stretches. He was terrible in the playoffs last year, and had a bad May this year - though April was good enough that he's still about a league average hitter on the year. AK seems to have a lot of nagging injuries, particularly the wrist last year, which certainly contribrute. The book is by no means closed on him, but he's not yet the player fans hoped he'd be, and certainly hasn't been the consistent producer I pegged him as.
3. Brusdar Graterol, RHP
Brusdar was dominating AA in 2019, but I wrote at the end of July that we should "expect to see him in at least AAA [if not AA] for the majority of 2020." He made his MLB debut barely a month later, and pitched in 23 games in 2020 (for LAD). In my defense, he only spent 12 games at AA. He also made the transition to relief right around that time, so I was fully expecting him to be starting. We only got a handful of appearances in a Twins uniform, as Brusdar was part of the trade for Maeda. He took some time to acclimate to the MLB, but was elite in 2023 with a 1.20 ERA. Unfortunately, he was injured in spring training and has yet to play this year.
4. Wander Javier, SS
Javier was just returning from a torn labrum in mid 2019, and despite a few hot streaks, his numbers gave us a lot of reason to be concerned. After 2020, he spent two years struggling at A+, with decent slugging but a bad average and abysmal strikeout rates. They gave him the last three weeks of 2022 to try his hand at AAA, and he didn't look like he belonged, going 2-20 with a homer and a .100/.240/.250 slashline. He elected FA and was signed to the Padres organization, but retired prior to the 2023 season.
5. Trevor Larnach, LF
Larnach was our first round pick in 2018, the first year I paid attention to the MLB draft, and that's probably a factor in me being one of very few people to own a Trevor Larnach jersey. He raked pretty much immediately, and continued to at pretty much every minor league level, so I don't think I was wrong to be high on him right away. Before long in the majors, though, it became clear that he was a fastball hitter, and really struggled when opposing pitchers just spammed breaking balls. Though he hovered around 100 OPS+ in his major league time in 2022 and 2023, he lost his spot to Matt Wallner, and I really felt like he wasn't getting a fair shake - part just due to competition at the position, but also from the fans. That's not to say he didn't need to improve, of course. But with his opportunity so far this year, he has - he's currently got career bests in every slashline category, home run rate, and strikeout rate. Of course, he's almost exclusively facing lefties, but we can't really analyze that.

#6-10

6. Brent Rooker, LF
I think Rooker always kind of felt like the odd man out among our corner outfielder prospects. He raked in AAA in 2019, but never really broke the Twins lineup and was eventually included with Rogers for Paddack/Pagan in 2022. He had a weird path from there, getting traded to KC for peanuts before being waived in the offseason picked up by Oakland. It was a great opportunity for playing time, and almost inexplicably, he's an all-star who's on track to be even better this year. That's baseball, baby.
7. Jhoan Duran, RHP
Duran, you may forget, was part of the return for Eduardo Escobar. I don't think I knew he was such a flamethrower, but I liked what I saw:

I've obviously gone from knowing very little about this guy to gushing about him over the course of a few paragraphs, so I'll stop to allow myself to finish today in case I get enamored with one of the other guys and do this again.

I think we can say, with emphasis, that Duran has worked out.
8. Lewis Thorpe, LHP
A rare Aussie prospect, my analysis of Thorpe boiled down to that he had a decent baseline, but his stats were marred by a few bad games instead of being improved by some great games. He very briefly looked good in the MLB (timed well enough to fool me in my update post), but couldn't sustain any success. The absence of a minor league in 2020 probably hurt him, but he left the org in 2021 and had a rough year in KC AA in 2022, and is now playing in the Australian and Mexican leagues.
9. Blayne Enlow, RHP
Enlow was a high school pitching prospect drafted in the third round, and was just 20 in 2019, which gave us some reason to cut him some slack as he struggled at A+. He came out of the gate hot after COVID, but just didn't progress fast enough - he finally reached AAA last June, a full six years after being drafted, and posted an ERA just below 8 in 45.1 innings. He's now in the Giants system, where he put up an 8.22 ERA in 7.2 innings before suffering a season-ending injury.
10. Nick Gordon, SS
Even at the time, Gordon felt like a legacy inclusion in the top 10 Twins prospects. Despite a bit of a bounce back, he wasn't producing particularly well in the minors. Nonetheless, he had some good moments in his time at the major leagues, and provided some value as a utility guy. When he was traded for Steven Okert, I doubt many Twins fans were too broken up about it, but I think he earned a friendly farewell despite his certified bust status.

#11-15

11. Stephen Gonsalves, LHP
Gonsalves had already had an uninspiring 2018 debut, and spent most of 2019 injured, pitching only 13.0 innings. He already seemed like he was on a downward turn, so I wasn't optimistic about him, but between the injury and COVID, his time in the org was up after 2020. He's pitched a mere 4.1 innings in the MLB since, all in 2021 with Boston, and is currently in the Rockies organization during his 12th minor league season.
12. Akil Baddoo, CF
Baddoo had gotten off to a slow start in 2019 at A+, and it was ended prematurely due to injury. The Twins chose not to add him to the 40-man roster after 2020, and he was picked in the Rule 5 draft by the Tigers. He was outstanding as a rookie, leading to a lot of gnashing of teeth on this subreddit, but has dropped off a lot since - maybe a decent player, but not someone we need to be too sad about losing.
13. Yunior Severino, 2B
When I first investigated Severino, he was a 19 year old former IFA who'd barely played outside rookie ball and was injured, so there wasn't much to discuss. He's now the #22 prospect in the organization, and has had a steady rise through the minors, culminating in a 35 home run season in 2023 (about a third of the year at AAA, the rest in AA). The numbers are down so far this year, but have been getting better in the last few weeks. He's a high strikeout guy, but a little refinement can go a long way, and the Twins must have some faith as he was added to the 40-man ahead of last year's Rule 5 draft. This year might prove to be a crossroads for him - if his numbers keep climbing in AAA, he could be playing in the majors regularly next year, whether that's for the Twins or a trade spot. Here's a recent Twins Daily scouting report with some more info.
14. Jose Miranda, 3B
Miranda was showing signs of progress in 2019, but by late in the season I still felt like his long term spot was more likely a second option infielder than a bonafide starter. After a rough 2023, I think we might be able to say he's back now - he's had one fewer PA at the MLB level than last year, and aside from a low walk rate, his numbers are up from his stellar rookie season. At any rate, he's blown past my expectations.
15. Gilberto Celestino, CF
Part of the Ryan Pressly trade, Celestino had a sudden and absurd improvement in his hitting numbers between my original research and the update, but was always more of a defensive prospect than a bat. He debuted in 2021 and played a lot in 2022, but found himself stuck in AAA last year and is now on Pittsburgh's AAA team. I liked him in his time here, but I think we just didn't need him with the number of guys already fighting for outfield spots. Kind of wish we had him instead of Margot, though.

#16-20

16. Ryan Jeffers, C

Overall, Jeffers doesn't project to be an offensive or defensive superstar, but a guy that gives you decent offensive production at a position that often lacks it.

I may have been wrong about this.

Depending on how his catching skills come along, that could mean anything from career backup to everyday starter.

You could build an entire Triwizard Tournament event with all this hedge.
17. Luis Arraez, 2B
Arraez had already broken out by the time I wrote this, but this seems prescient:

Now, to be fair, his BABIP is .431, which is a titch high, but the way he pokes the ball through holes, it almost seems sustainable.

18. Jorge Alcala, RHP
Alcala had an up-and-down 2019, and was moved to the bullpen late. I was somewhat down on him but hoped he could condense the bright spots as a starter into quality relief pitching. He surprised me by actually debuting in 2019 (1.2 scoreless) and has mostly been good since; though his return from injury last year was disappointing, he's been good when healthy this year.
19. Jordan Balazovic, RHP
We had a nice streak of success stories, but this may be the end of them. Balazovic shot up to the #4 Twins prospect over the course of the 2019 season, and deservedly so, but cooled off post-COVID and has been plain bad in AAA, with a 6.43 ERA in 140 IP over 3 seasons. He was only mediocre in relief during his time at MLB last year - 4.44 ERA in 24.1 IP - but he's still struggling in St. Paul. He's still got a 12.9 K/9, but that won't matter if he can't keep baserunners down - currently a 1.775 WHIP. We'll see if he can ascend again, but it seems like a lot of Twins fans are kind of over him.
20. Misael Urbina, CF
The #3 international prospect in 2018, Urbina was in his first season in 2019, so I wasn't trying to project anything for a 17 year old in the DSL. He's still only 22, but he's had a slow rise through the minors and is in his second year at A+. The numbers are much better than last year, but that's primarily because last year they were bad. According to Twins Daily, he's still got great tools but - clearly - the production needs to catch up. Again, the COVID year was not helpful.

#21-25

21. Zack Littell, RHP
Littell pitched 57.1 MLB innings from 2018 and 2019, and was pretty good in the latter year, though he wasn't getting much high leverage work. I expected he'd done enough to get a bullpen spot in 2020, which he did, but he got blown up in his first appearance (4 R, 3 HR) and after just 6 appearances, he went to the IL for elbow inflammation and never pitched for the Twins again (remember, COVID season). Since then, he's had one good year in SF and has been decent-ish for the Rays for the last year or so.
22. LaMonte Wade, CF
When I got to Wade, he had found his way to the IL just a few PAs into his MLB career after he Buxton'd himself. Based on his numbers, I figured he was a high contact guy who'd play solid defense, but would need to find power to improve of odds of starting, and probably find a situation with more opportunity in the outfield. And hey - I was bang on! He was traded to the Giants for a reliever (we don't need to talk about it) and found himself in a big role. He had 381 PAs and hit 18 homers in 2021, and aside from a sophomore slump, has been a very good player. He's already accumulated 2.0 bWAR this year, probably because he has a whopping .470 OBP - which leads the league by .049 - thanks to a .050 walk rate. Much like Rooker, he's inexplicably found great success that he probably never would have had the opportunity for here.
23. Griffin Jax, RHP
I was pretty impressed by Jax's consistency in the minors, and thought he'd be good even with a likely move to the bullpen. I'm happy to declare that one a hit.
24. Ben Rortvedt, C
I thought Rortvedt was interesting, mostly because I have no idea how to tell if a catcher is good defensively and offense from the position is exciting. Also, this:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73236768/IMG_0302.0.jpg). He ended up as the smallest part of the Josh Donaldson trade, but was injured and wound up not playing much. The Rays acquired him in a 3-way trade of nobodies this offseason, and he was inexplicably excellent in April before going back to his usual ~.150 average in May. Surely that wouldn't have been an improvement over any Twins catchers.
25. Gabriel Maciel, CF
Maciel seemed like an interesting prospect: plus fielding, plus speed, contact, and physical power that was untapped as of yet. Sadly, he never found that power, and stalled out in the Twins' organization after his numbers dropped post-COVID.

#26-30

26. Luke Raley, RF
In 2019, Raley was dealing with a serious injury, and I figured that meant that instead of being trade bait, he'd be our insurance against whoever we traded away (which turned out to be Lewin Diaz). He ended up getting traded before the 2020 season anyway as part of the Maeda trade in a return to the Dodgers (they'd drafted him and traded him away as part of the Dozier trade). He first found opportunity as a Ray in 2023, and is now a Mariner. He's been a plus offensively but not much of a defensive contributor.
27. Dashawn Keirsey, CF
Unlike Byron Buxton, LaMonte Wade, and (long after my original scouting reports) Royce Lewis, the Twins found a guy who already knew how to injure himself by running into an outfield wall. Despite a good start to his professional career, Keirsey was struggling with injuries in 2019, and there wasn't much to go on when I first checked him out. He ultimately slashed just .137/.245/.161 in 2019, and turned 24 early in the 2021 season, during which he hit .199 at A+. For most of the guys who were in that situation, that was the beginning of the end. For Keirsey, it was the beginning of a new beginning. (No, that didn't sound any better in my head.) His contact took a huge leap in 2022, slashing .271/.329/.395 in AA. He remained in AA for the majority of 2023, but his production took a leap again, and he found power, hitting .305 with 13 homers before his promotion to AAA. This year, he's slashing .302/.390/.539. Now, the caveat is that he's 27, which is why he's the last guy on the top 30 list, and wasn't taken in the Rule 5 draft. But it's been a journey, and it would be awesome to see him get a shot to continue the ascent in the majors.
28. Travis Blankenhorn, 3B
When I looked into Blankenhorn, he was on a potentially career-saving resurgence in AA after a couple of uninspiring years in lower levels, and it seemed too sustained to be a fluke. Then COVID happened. He did get his cup of coffee in 2020, going 1 of 3 for a double and HBP (what is with it with Twins getting HBP in their debuts?). But in 2021, he pinch ran for Donaldson in extras, scored the go-ahead run on a Buxton homer, and then committed an error in the bottom of the inning, which would lead to a loss. He was DFA'd two weeks later - with no other appearances for the Twins - and is now in the Nationals system. He's a big-time minors slugger, but seems unable to translate that to the big leagues.
29. Michael Helman, 2B
In 2019, Helman seemed like a no-true-outcomes defensive utility guy. It seems he's since figured out how to do a little of each - he's been average to above average in each category during his time in AAA across 2022-24, has hit around .260, and continues to play almost everywhere defensively. The rub, of course, is that he's now, 28. He provides great organizational depth, but he'll need an opportunity to show he can perform at the next level before we can slot him into any future plans.
30. Luis Rijo, RHP
Rijo had an incredible 2019 in A ball at age 20, and I was extremely bullish on him. But it seems he had a UCL injury in 2021, and sadly never returned to form. He's now playing back home in Venezuela, where it seems he had a decent winter.

Sleepers

These are guys I (and sometimes commenters) noticed while trawling through minor league stats, researching oddities or gaining context. There's also a couple guys who cracked the top 30 during the season, either via performance or acquisition, and some other acquisitions and debuts that were unranked but interesting.

Sleepers #1

Cole Sands, RHP (#26 in July 2019)
Sands was a 5th round pick in 2018, but had tendinitis and didn't play professional ball until 2019. He ascended quickly, starting in A ball and getting promoted to AA in time to make his last start of the year. Surprisingly, he was actually better than he'd been in college, and I liked him a lot at the time He continued to pitch well in AA in 2021, but struggled more in AAA and the majors in 2022, quickly earning the ire of fans. He was better in 2023 - solid in the majors, and dominant in AA - but his ERA is hurting again this year. The rate stats are actually better, though - walks were an issue and are way down, strikeouts are up, and his WHIP is down from 1.523 to 1.029. Without looking (it's late), that says to me he's allowing his baserunners in bunches. His FIP is 3.36, far better than previous seasons. 26 is still young, though; he's shown promise and the Twins seem fairly committed to him, and he's on pace to contribute more innings than he ever has before. Don't sleep on him.
Chris Vallimont, RHP (#30 in July 2019)
Vallimont was acquired at the deadline along with Sergio Romo for Lewin Diaz. Diaz was pretty well regarded for a non-top 30 guy, but he didn't work out in the majors, so this trade was a win pretty easily...but only because of Romo. Vallimont had a very good year in A and A+ in 2019, but struggled post-COVID and was DFA'd in 2022. He's had a couple bright spots since, including a cup of coffee with Baltimore last year, but I regret writing 4-5 paragraphs about him 5 years ago.

Sleepers #2

Devin Smeltzer, LHP
Smeltzer was not in the best place statistically when he was acquired in the Dozier trade, but he turned things around very quickly with great minors performances followed by a call-up when Michael Pineda was injured. Smeltzer was a childhood cancer survivor, which made him easy to root for. Lack of velo and an effective fourth pitch were the main questions with him at the time. In terms of ERA, good MLB seasons in 2019 and 2022 bookended negligible to bad contributions in 2020 and 2021, but the rate stats were never great - and worst in 2022 - and he was ultimately outrighted before electing FA. He's now in the Marlins system, currently AAA. His time here was a bit rocky, but it was better than the rest of Dozier's career.
Cody Stashak, RHP
Stashak steadily worked his way up through the minors, and was dominating AAA in 2019 before getting the call up. He was solid in 2019 and 2020, and it seemed like he might be a long-term guy for our pen, but his workload dropped in 2021 when he struggled, and a bounce back 2022 was cut short by a labrum tear. After being outrighted at the end of the season, Stashak elected FA, though he wouldn't sign until after his recovery. He struggled initially with the Giants in AAA last year, but his numbers have improved this year and hopefully he'll get back to the big leagues eventually.
Randy Dobnak, RHP
I don't think I need to tell anyone the ballad of Randy Dobnak, but I'm proud of myself for discovering him before he got his call. I was a little off here, though:

The big question: do we see him this year? Personally, I don't think so.

He started a playoff game...things have gone in the wrong direction for Dobnak since, but I think everyone would love to see him earn a call back up.
Edwar Colina, RHP
When I found him, Colina was three starts into a promotion at AAA and was a dominant flamethrower. I thought this guy was the next coming, and guessed he'd debut in 2020. He did, in fact, debut for the Twins late in the 2020 season, trying to hold a 9th-inning deficit at 2. Here are his career MLB numbers, to date: 0.1 IP 81.00 ERA 18.000 WHIP -0.2 WAR
Wander Valdez, 3B
Valdez was 19, in his third year in the organization, and was raking enough in rookie ball that I thought he was interesting, despite the impossibility of box scouting a guy playing at that level. I wasn't super optimistic, just tagging him as a person of interest - wait, what's this note?

if you want to be a top MLB prospect, being an infielder named Wander is a good start

uh yeah he didn't work out

Sleepers #3

Charlie Barnes, RHP
Barnes was a 4th round pick in 2017, but wasn't showing enough promise early in his career to crack the top 30. Despite a rough start in A+ in 2019, he pitched very well in AA. I liked him as a dark horse, future journeyman 4-5 spot guy, and he did start 8 games for the Twins in 2021 (one other appearance). He only had two or three good outings, but that's gratification enough for me. What's more, it looks like he's been the cornerstone of the Lotte Giants' rotation (KBO) since 2022!
Bailey Ober, RHP
A commenter who is no longer active suggested I check out Ober, who'd had some injury struggles early in his pro career as well as in college, and as a former 12th round pick, wasn't on the radar for 2019. If I didn't notice him, I should have. Ober was absurdly good in 2019. He's obviously been a hit; while the stats aren't there this year, we've seen him when he's on.

Sleepers #4

Ernie De La Trinidad, LF
The final part of the Escobar trade (after Duran and Maciel), E de la T was hot in 2018, but struggled in 2019. I stuck him on my list to watch in case he found his bat again, and because he had a good walk rate, but the lost 2020 year meant he was 25 in 2021, and he didn't do enough to stick in the organization.
Josh Winder, RHP
Winder seemed to me like a guy who could be consistently decent, if unspectacular. That's kind of been the case in his ~100 MLB innings, but he needs to improve his baseline a little, and right now he's in AAA working on returning from a shoulder injury. I just want him to work out so I can continue my to the Winders! to the Wallners! til the sweat drips off my ballners! joke.
Adam Bray, RHP
Bray was an older pitching prospect and MN native who had been very good in A+ in 2018, then again in AA and AAA in 2019. I thought he'd end up being one of those AAAA roster manipulation pitchers for a while, but it seems he had some kind of injury that led to the end of his pro career. Looks like he's now a pitching instructor at a local baseball camp.
Trey Cabbage, RF
Cabbage was a guy who'd struggled to impress in the low levels of the minors, but broke out to a degree in 2019 (his AAA numbers looked a lot better before August) with boosted power and better contact alongside defensive versatilty. His production did continue to improve after COVID - he hit 27 homers between A+ and AA - but at 24, it was the end of his time in the organization. He elected FA and chose the Angels organization, where he'd be left in AA all of 2022 despite an 1.098 OPS. In 2023, at age 26, he finally reached AAA and needed just 107 games to hit 30 home runs. It was enough to earn his first callup midsummer, which involved hitting an absolute nuke. He's now in the Astros organization. The MLB numbers aren't pretty in 70 PAs, but the minor league numbers alone make this a win for me.
Derek Molina, RHP
Primarily an infielder in his one year college, Molina was drafted to be a reliever by the Twins. For a 19 year old making a position change, he was surprisingly effective right away. He earned a call up to A+ at age 21 in 2019, and was dominating there up until one bad outing (after which he went on the IL, perhaps a factor) reduced his statline from "incredible" to "pretty good." Unfortunately, his play dropped off post-COVID - seemingly loss of command - and he never got out of A+.

Sleepers #5

Dakota Chalmers, RHP
A third round pick out of high school, Chalmers missed most of 2017 and 2018, which cost him the advantage of youth and led to the A's sending him to the Twins as part of a deal for Fernando Rodney. The surface level numbers were never great, but Chalmers was an elite strikeout guy who intermittently struggled with command. In 2019, he had a 12.5 K/9 but 6.0 BB/9. Sadly, he's another guy whose performance took a hit, and he was waived after a rough start to the year. After apparently being out of baseball in 2023, he's now in the Diamondbacks system.
Andrew Bechtold, 3B
Bechtold is another guy in the "older prospect with defensive versatility whose bat seems to be coming around" mold. In some categories, he was a post-COVID success story - for example, the power jumped up - but he struck out a lot and hit for a low average, not reaching AAA until age 26. He's now in the Blue Jays organization...apparently as a relief pitcher.

I worked at Origin Systems around the time System Shock was released and I had to do both tech support and hints for it. I was asked in another thread if I had any stories about this time.
Yes, I do. It's a doozy.
This didn't personally happen to me, but I witnessed it.
One of the most annoying quests in System Shock (and its remake) is Ejecting the Beta Grove. To do that, you must go into all the groves and flip a switch to allow ejection. Then you press the eject button next to the door on the Beta Grove, only for it to break and force you down to Maintenance to fix it. Then you can come back up, press the button, and FINALLY eject the grove.
So we had a customer who kept calling in telling us that he couldn't finish the game because he'd come back up to the Beta Grove only to discover that the button to eject it was missing. Not on or off, completely gone. There was nothing on that wall.
Now, this was back in the mid-90's, so the internet has only just gotten started. So he couldn't send us a screenshot through email or anything like that.
Now, having dealt with many, many, MANY people who had trouble seeing the button on the wall at some point in this quest, we told him "It's there, it can be hard to make out, just try clicking on the wall." Only for him to call back and say, "The button isn't there."
So, we finally had him copy his save file to a floppy disk and mail it to us. When it arrived, we all crowded around the computer to see what happened.
We loaded the save.
The damn button wasn't on the wall.
The tech who was handling this case (Chuck Lupher, one of our best, he also tested the Mac version of System Shock) did some analysis of the save file.
Now, in the save file, it saves whether the Beta Grove button is on or off. But somehow this data had gotten deleted from the save file while still leaving the save data in a loadable state. So the code, not knowing whether to draw the on or off version of the button, didn't draw the button at all.
Chuck was actually able to fix the error in the save game and mail it back to the customer, who finally, finally was able to eject the Beta Grove and get on with the game.

visual aid lol
Currently the dailies are very good at keeping me engaged and wanting to play this game every day. As a non-sweat rank 76, they are nearly impossible for me to do all the tier IVs, but that's not the problem because I can just work on improving.
What I wanted where some more interesting/fun challenges that could appear just as commonly as the regular ones. I know these might be a bit too hard to program, but I'm just throwing ideas in the dark to see what sticks. Obviously these challenges could be scaled up for higher tiers, but these are hopefully balanced around tier I:

• Land 5 kills in mid air
• Collect 10 tags from your own kills
• Get 30 kills with X gun and no attachments
• Get a grenade triple kill
• Stay on the hill for 30 seconds
• Get 50 kills with a free randomized weapon (you don't get to keep it)
• Get 75 kills with other people's guns
• Get your least kill gun to 100 kills
• Collect 1000 rounds of ammo
• Predict [Console]'s next advice
• Get 10 kills on each starter weapon
• Get 10 kills on your highest rank weapon in every category
• Purchase any thing over 500 credits
• Get 100 kills with a WWI or WWII weapon
• Get 100 kills with an Austrian weapon
• Get 100 kills with a German weapon
• Get 100 kills with an AR-15 variant
• Get 20 kills from every gun in a family (AUG variants, AK variants, M16 variants, etc.)
• Make a ragdoll fly at 900 studs/s
• Get a kill with 4 or more bonuses (wall bang, double collateral, headshot, etc.)
• Get a kill with every unlocked grenade

And finally, an additional 4th challenge slot that everyone in the world has at the same time. Resets at 12:00am UTC, and is either tier III or tier IV. Completing this grants a bonus 50 credits on top of the tier award, and a daily leaderboard of the top 10 people who went beyond the challenge requirements. (Ex. if the challenge is "Get 40 double kills" the leaderboard would display the top 10 double killers for the day). If you are in the top ten at the end of the day, you are awarded with 200*placement credits. (Ex. 10th place would get 200 credits, 5th place would get 1000, and 1st place would get 2000)

Wade walked in front of his teammates as they all walked down the short hallway, checking for any hiding hostiles as they slowly scouted the next area of the laboratory. At his side, Tina held her pistol low as she kept her guard up, bracing for an imminent attack while walking alongside Wade. Aiming her rifle, Vasquez looked across the hall, not lowering it even when she saw no hostiles ahead. Duncan kept a grenade in one hand and a kinetic pistol in the other, preparing to throw the former in order to scare out potential ambushers.
The entrance outside the tower was, surprisingly, not as heavily guarded as presumed, only being protected by several human and drone defenders, along with only two sentinels.. After clearing the entrance bay, the group came across three elevators at the other end of the large room. Despite asking J for help, she stated that the facility was highly secretive with it's layout, only allowing those stationed at the tower to know where was where around the place.
Taking a gamble, as well as being extremely eager to end Halloway's life sooner than later, Wade and F's team chose the middle one, which brought them up close to the top of the tower. Disembarking the elevator, the group hoped to find important information related to the Solver Project within the rooms on this floor, but first they had to ensure the area was secure before beginning their data raid.
As Wade and F kept their weapons trained ahead of themselves, Kelly walked right behind the two drones, holding her fancy-looking toolkit at her side with one hand and a kinetic pistol in the other. Looking to the doors at the sides of the hall, Wade saw that the hall branched into a few smaller paths on each side, leading to a door at the end of each one.
Raising a hand to stop the groups advance, Wade commented on the side doors. "Guys? You think we should check these rooms? Maybe there could be something here for us to snag."
F nodded in agreement before pointing at the door to her right. "You check that one. Be wary of our team, you and I are their main lifeline here."
"Don't worry F, we'll do just fine. Go see what these eggheads are hiding." Kurtis replied to the warrior drone, F glancing to him before nodding in understanding.
The two disassembly drones walked to the two doors between the assault team, Wade keeping his shotgun at the ready as he glanced at the door. It looked to be a simple slide door, having no control panel to enter a code on. Assuming it was probably minor items and the like, Wade sighed as the door opened, revealing an even less interesting sight. Against the wall was a large, box shaped device of some sort, cyan blue LED lines wrapping the sides of it. Noticing the electrical box at the wall to his right, Wade deduced it was some kind of power generator.
Shutting the door, Wade brought his dissatisfied gaze to his friends. "Seems to be just some kind of power generator, nothing special."
"Same here." F replied as she shut her own door, having found a similar object within the room as she continued speaking. "I'm thinking we just stumbled upon some sort of energy complex, we should probably head back and continue upward."
"Yes, maybe we should..." Alvaro replied in partial Spanish, moving forward past the team as he spotted something sticking out slightly down at one of the door halls ahead. Getting close, he saw it appeared to be the foot of a worker drone, certainly hiding from the approaching raid team. Quietly, the soldier snuck up on the drone before swiping around the corner wall, grabbing onto the cowering drone by their arm as they began to panic. Holding his gun to the drone's head, Alvaro shushed the terrified bot as they began to beg for mercy.
"Please! Don't hurt me, I'm just a maintenance drone!" The male drone pleaded in hushed fear as Alvaro replied to him.
"Oh, don't worry, I ain't gonna bop ya." Pulling the drone over to the team, Wade and F walked back to the group as they witnessed the hiding servant of the Administrator.
The drone gasped in terror upon seeing Wade's form. "Agh! D-Disassembly drones?! Two of 'em?!"
Tina scoffed at the drone's fear as she conferred with the drone. "Oh please, don't judge by his looks. My dear Wade's a sweetie bear, you'll be fine."
Wade nodded as he grew a comforting smile, which changed to a stern face as he spoke to the cowering drone. "Yeah, I'm not gonna hurt you... IF you tell us what this place is."
"We're here looking for data on the Solver Project before heading to the Administrator's Lab to detain her and her overseers. Can you tell us where to go?" F explained as the drone seemed to take a calming breath, eased by the mostly friendly lot he was facing.
"Okay, okay uh, yeah. There's an archive past this door over here." The drone stated as he led the team to the door at the end of the hall, Wade and F keeping watch for potential sneak attacks as the drone glanced at the control panel. "I think it's one of the higher level ones, unless you got a really good hacker or an acceptable ID, we're not getting in."
Kelly chuckled in amusement as she replied to the slave drone's challenge. "Well, must be our lucky day. I've taken a hand at picks like these." Getting down on one knee, Kelly opened her toolbox as she began to start her hacking attempt. "Just keep my behind from getting scorched."
"No problem, Kelly." Wade acknowledged with a nod as he held his shotgun up, F doing the same with her weapon as the two kept watch for hostiles.
After what couldn't have been more than a minute of pulling screws, screen tapping, and beeps of affirmation, the control panel finally yielded to the assault team's request to enter.
Once she re-attached the panel to its slot, Kelly held her hand over it while looking to her teammates. "Alright, I got the locks off. Gimme the word and I'll open her right up."
"Good to hear that, Kelly. On my mark." Wade replied before holding his shotgun at the ready, F holding her own laser cannon steady after him as she glanced to her team. Motioning her head back, F signaled her team to stand clear.
While they did so, Tina walked behind Wade with a sly smirk. "Wade, mind if I mount up?"
Wade returned the expression as he nodded, Tina climbing onto his back before pulling out her own pistol in preparation for combat. Looking to Kelly, he nodded to her, the technician pressing her hand against the panel before the doors opened.
Flying into the room ahead of F, Wade made a brief sweep of the room as he fired at the closest target. The large room consisted of several tall metal shelves, reaching up to the ceiling. Against the shelves were heightened walkways, which could be accessed by sloped sections of the floor between the doors. The height of the wall paths went up only by a few feet, the ceiling being, by Wade's guess, perhaps over almost two dozen feet. Finally, a large glass window occupied the wall opposite to the hallway, the light outside shining into the huge room.
As for enemies, Wade took a shot at one of several worker drone guards, who took aim at him as he gunned down their comrade in a visceral pool of oil. Along with the slave drones, Wade saw a single sentinel in the middle of the room, the robo-saur screeching at them as it began to sprint at the two killer drones. Tina covered Wade's flank with several shots of hot blue energy, hitting three of the hostile workers as they fell to the floor, visors glowing with red caution symbols before flickering out. Swapping out for a sub-machine gun, Wade gunned down the remaining four workers as F held off the sentinel, her laser slicing off the beast's tail as it tried to boot-loop her.
Seeing the light fail to work on the disassembly drone, the dino-bot roared again, only to scramble wildly as Wade mounted it, trying to pull off the same move he did at the factory. Readying a chainsaw, Wade cut at the sentinel's neck, sparks and oil spraying everywhere before the head snapped off from the attack. Flapping his wings, Wade hovered in the air once more as the corpse of the sentinel collapsed to the floor, more oil spilling out as the body lay still.
"Splendid kill, I'd say!" Duncan stated in admiration as he and the other troops walked in, each scanning the room as Wade and F flew back down to Kelly.
Walking alongside the technician, Wade swapped for a sword as he spoke to Kelly. "Okay, where do you think we should start?"
"Good question. Hey, worker buddy, ya know where we can get our intel?" Kelly asked the slave drone as he looked to her attentively.
"Uh, I think there should be two control stations we can access over here. Follow me!" The drone answered, pointing ahead to the middle of the room before beginning to jog over there. Flying ahead of the drone, Wade and F hovered above the center area while they looked around, holding their guns down as they spotted no hostile forces nearby. Once the group approached them, the two guardian drones set down on the opposite end of one of the large consoles while the maintenance drone examined it.
The consoles were of a circular shape, four built-in computers docked on rectangular arms sticking out around the machine. looking at it, Wade glanced to Kelly as he asked the servant drone. "You think Kelly here will have to crack these open?"
The drone nodded in affirmation as the woman in question came over, kneeling while setting down her toolkit. "Just like before, give me some cover and we'll be outta here in a pinch."
Raising a hand, Nathan spoke up on their efforts. "You think we should spread out? Maybe take positions behind those big wall shelves?"
Wade looked to the archive's entrance, debating on the idea before coming to a decision. "Sure, some of us can take position there. I'd like at least a few around Kel, though. We can't lose her."
"Gotcha, Wade. I'll help with close cover." Nathan replied as he held his gun firm at the entrance, Tina hopping off of Wade's back before walking up to the table. Kurtis, Gerard, and a few other troopers began moving towards the wall slopes leading up to the walkways at the sides of the room.
"Um, Kelly? Do you think we can look through this computer while you're working?" Tina asked her human friend as she gave a nod of approval.
"Sure, just lemme crack the locks off first. Just a bit longer now..." Standing together, Wade and Tina watched as Kelly did her work, the table's monitors flickering out for a few moments before coming back on. Glancing to the drone couple, Kelly spoke to them further. "Alright, dig in all you'd like. I'm gonna get this download started."
Nodding to the technician, Wade observed the screen with Tina, the former putting his hands onto the keyboard section as he pondered where to start their curious browsing trip. Scanning through countless folders, Wade saw the names of a select few relating to the Solver Project. "INSTALLATION 0XLV426, Plat-Binary System; INSTALLATION RSCH012, Copper System (Defunct); INSTALLATION 01NU26I, Proxima System"
Tina put a hand close to her mouth as she looked at the files Wade was hovering the mouse over. "Proxima, Plat-Binary... They have MORE installations in other systems!"
Wade sighed in frustration as he examined the names carefully. "Great, so she's probably gonna run for these hideouts later on."
Kelly raised a finger to counter Wade's worrisome assumption. "I don't think so, our ships outside should be jamming whatever signals they try to send out. So unless they scrambled some kind of fancy thingamajig in these labs, that Admin-gal ain't got a place to hide but here."
"I hope so." Wade replied as he continued looking over the data folders for a moment longer, Tina putting a hand on his own before she spoke to him.
"That one says 'defunct', open that one." Wade fulfilled his lover's request as he clicked on the desired file, several more appearing in place of the hundreds of folders previously onscreen not a second ago. Looking through the titles of each file, Wade clicked on the first one, intent on discovering more about what Halloway and his people were doing on that ill-fated colony.
Several lines of text filled the screen, the two lover drones reading through it as Nathan turned to join in their search. "STATUS REPORT 120547; Date: Sept. 27, 3044; INSTALLATION No: RSCH012; Planet: Copper 9, Copper System; The research team lead by Dr. Ridley on the 9th exoplanet of the Copper system has successfully commenced operations on the new facility there. They are charged with working to understand the 'virus' as they call it, curious of its capabilities and how to keep it under their control. Due to the... sensitivity of the Solver, and its danger to those that dare challenge it, I shall begin monitoring this team closely to ensure they do not antagonize it."
Exiting out of the file, Wade selected another. "STATUS REPORT 129402; Date: Jan. 04, 3046; INSTALLATION No: RSCH012; Planet: Copper 9, Copper System; Recent reports from the team at the laboratory, now christened 'Cabin Fever' by the very... quirky scientists there, have proven my long presumed suspicions correct: They are attempting to find a way to tame the Solver. The lab has several worker drones used in their experiments, corrupted with the Solver string that inhabits my own being. I will bring forth my concerns with the 'virus', and convince Dr. Ridley to take immense care in her duties whilst developing her 'cure'."
Wade gasped silently as he read through the report, Tina wrapping her arm around Wade's as he exited the second file. Scrolling down a little, Wade clicked one more file before reading it, his and Tina's faces reeling in quiet horror as they read Cyn's commentary.
"STATUS REPORT 133017; Date: Mar. 12, 3047; INSTALLATION No: RSCH012; Planet: Copper 9, Copper System; The worst has befallen the colony of Copper 9. Due to the inept care demonstrated by Dr. Ridley, the recent-and final-experiment of the Cabin Fever facility has resulted in the partial collapse of the exoplanet's core. Such destruction has completely purged the colony of all organic life, while surprisingly leaving most artificial life, such as the worker drones, intact. Due to the immense danger the experimental drones present to not just Copper 9, but all other worlds, they cannot be allowed to persist. I shall prepare a... materials team for transport to the colony to begin recovery efforts."
Staring at the report, Wade and Tina took in this horrific truth Cyn had hidden all these years with mournful expressions, Nathan looking over the screen further as he broke the silence. "So, the Copper 9 incident, the core collapse... It was their fault?"
"It would seem so." Vasquez said aloud as she joined the three drones, already observing the report about the colony's core implosion as she continued. "Official reports from just about every news source claimed that it was due to improper mining precautions, but, from all the craziest mining accidents I've seen... Copper 9 is quite the outlier for how extreme it was."
Tina took a deep breath as she steadied her mind over the files she and Wade had just read. "And yet, this 'Solver' thing.... they still kept it in service? After the loss of an entire colony?!" Glaring at the computer, Tina finished her furious spew. "This is ludicrous. Even if things have stayed calm up to this point, how do we know such a fuse won't spark again? Earth, Proxima, Plat-Binary... There's so many people that could be threatened by whatever this virus is!"
Wade nodded as he shared Tina's sentiment. "I've got a really bad feeling about this whole thing, we should get our data and then haul our asses to that lab upstairs!"
"Agreed. Fixer drone, you know the way there?" F asked the slave drone below her, who had been hearing in on the discussion about the lost colony as he answered the friendly murder drone.
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think I did some work up there. You should be able to reach it at the top floor back at th-"
"Hostiles!" F stated, alerting both her targets and teammates as Wade, Tina and Nathan turned to see the arriving foes. The maintenance drone cowered next to Kelly as his vision was locked on the defense squad: In front of five disassembly drones was a single human male, holding what looked like an assault rifle in his arms, as well as bearing a small sidearm at his right hip. Wade growled in low fury as he saw Hawk and his cohorts, the disassembly squad he was awoken with back at the factory: E, D, H, L and an... uncomfortably familiar face, particularly to Wade and Tina.
"So, that's the evil double you were telling me about?" W asked his superior, Darren nodding lightly as he and the drone squad stared down at the intruding assault team.
"You!" Wade growled as he readied a shotgun, the five corporate guards holding their own weapons at the ready as Darren gave a confident smirk of triumph at him.
"Yes, Mr. Carter. Good to see you made it out of that place, if only you weren't still in league with those terrorists next to you." The team coordinator replied to Wade's angry face, Tina seeming to cower behind his back as she took care to dig into her pocket without being caught.
"I don't think so, they're not the ones who got people killed with all this kerfuffle in the past few days." F retorted with a lighter glare at Hawk as he sighed in understanding.
In the midst of the chatter, Tina slid out her smartcomm, tapping a button to lower the volume of the device's speakers before tapping the screen a few times, trying to call her sister. It was a crazy idea, but with how desperate she and her friends now were, there wasn't much else they could do.
After almost nearing the end of the call duration, the vibrating ceased as the call went through. "Jasmine? Are you there?" Tina whispered behind Wade's wings.
"Yeah sis, is everything alright in there?" Jasmine replied, taking notice of her sister's quiet demeanor.
"Was, we're in a really bad pickle at the moment. In the higher area of the tower, back side, near one of the external windows. Is there anyway you can get us some help in here?" Then, glancing in the direction of the new arrivals, Tina whispered further. "We've got DDs!"
Jasmine was silent for a second, but quickly gave her reassurance as she seemed to think of an idea. "Hang in there, Tina. I'll have them brought to you quick. Jasmine out." With that, the call ended, prompting Tina to return her device to its pocket.
Raising his arm accusingly at Hawk, Wade spoke to his trapper. "AND it's because of you and your boss that Tina and I are in this mess! You and your pet G got my brother killed!"
Shaking his head, Darren responded to the former worker drone. "Well, Mr. Carter, I must admit one thing: Your 'brother' was a very caring man. Clearly with how devoted he was to you." Then, with a sigh, Hawk returned his words to the matter before him. "But, again, his loss won't be in vain. Not for us. Now, I'm only gonna ask this one last time: Stand down, come back with us... Or you can deal with your former squad-mates until they cut you down."
In stubborn defiance, Wade slowly shook his head to the team leader. "I'd rather die as who I am than help you and that Cyn bitch hide the truth in this place."
Raising an eyebrow in slight surprise, Darren acknowledged Wade's answer. "So, you looked into the Administrator's files?" Shaking his head again, Hawk spoke once more. "...Then you really can't be allowed to leave here."
Taking Hawk's motioning head to his sight, W took aim at Wade with a missile launcher, firing a single rocket at the former worker drone before it was stopped by F, who grabbed it with her claws before swinging it back at Darren's team with immense force. Seeing the speeding projectile of death approaching rapidly, E got in front of Darren, taking the hit with her wings and a grunt. The room quickly fell into disarray as several hails of bullets and energy bolts came from the sides of the room, D and L shielding themselves from the attacks as Darren gave his orders to them.
"D, L, clear out the room, the rest of you, deal with the traitors first!" The killer drones complied without words as the two began to sweep the upper walkways, firing their own sub-machine guns down the long walkway as several human and drone troopers cried out from fatal strikes. E and H flew at F, the hardened soldier roaring furiously as she clashed her newly formed blades with her opponents', keeping them away from Kelly as she continued tinkering with the computer during its download.
As for W, he came after Wade, Tina pulling out her pistol while Wade held his fresh swords against his clone's. Wade grit his teeth as he pushed back W, the two clashing swords for a long moment in constant attempts to cut each other down. As he clashed one sword with both of W's, Wade readied his shotgun with his free hand, W trying to copy the same attack before Tina shot at his face with her pistol. As W shut his eyes from the shocking strike at his form, Wade shot at W, blasting a chunk of the disassembly drone's side off before he fired again, this time shooting the chest where the core was.
As W fell to the ground, seemingly dead, Wade looked to F, who was struggling to hold off her two opponents as they began to overpower her. Flying over, Wade shot at H with his weapon, blasting the murder drone right in the head as he fell to the floor. With only one enemy to worry about, F focused her efforts onto E. "Wade, help the troopers! I've got the others here!"
Wade obeyed somewhat reluctantly as he flew over to his left, heading to where L was occupied before taking aim at the murder drone. L was just finishing off one of three pairs of troopers hiding behind the large shelfs against the walkways when he was struck by a hot beam of energy, grunting as he looked up to see Wade aiming at him with his laser cannon. Deciding to deal with the bigger threat first, L flew at Wade, who swiftly readied a pair of swords before blocking L's claw hands in a deadlock. Intent on buying her boyfriend another chance to strike easily, Tina took aim with her pistol, firing at L's face again as he backed off, keeping a distance from Wade as he tried to avoid another quick death.
Gerard positioned himself into a crouch as he held his weapon at D, who had just cut down the troops at the second pair of shelves on the right end of the room. As she flew at him and his drone ally, Gerard shot at D with his rifle, the drone blocking most of the bullets with her sword as she cut down the worker drone ahead of Gerard. Falling back, D pounced on him, stabbing the ground with her sword arm before swinging her tail down on the man. Dodging the nanite tank by just inches, Gerard spat at D, spraying her face with his mouth fluids.
"EEK!" D cried out in grossed out shock as she got off of Gerard, who grabbed his assault rifle to continue striking at D. The disassembly drone made a quick recovery, however, blocking the shots with her wing before she yelled at him in frustration. "You're nasty! I'm gonna get you!"
Pursuing their opponent, Wade flew back into the center area after L, trying to continue their fight before spotting D preparing to attack Gerard. Leaving L to flee away from him, Wade shot at D with his laser gun, the beam scorching her right on her behind as she cried out again. The disassembly drone seemed to grow tired of the assault as she broke off, trying to hide herself under her wings while moving back slowly.
Wade swapped his laser gun out for a sword, intent on putting D down for good before his attention was drawn away by Tina. "Wade, watch out!"
He was too late as he was slashed at by W, who had recovered from Wade's vicious attack before continuing to fight him. Wade cried out in pain as his arm was sliced off, then felt the cool air in his robo-lungs leave him as he was kicked back against the wall where he came after L at. Not a second after hitting the wall, W flew at him, impaling both Wade and Tina against the wall as they both gasped from the pain, the latter coughing up oil from the quick stab into her chest.
W laughed sinisterly as he looked to the couple with a toothy grin. "Well, the boss was right. You are a rough blemish to scratch off." Stabbing Wade's other arm with his nanite tail, W's wide smile shrunk as he continued speaking to the two drones. "Well, that's a real shame. You and your friend there would've made quite the drones for the Division."
Coughing up more black drone blood from her mouth, Tina croaked out to her and Wade's opponent. "I-If, If you're going to kill us... At least take us both out together. It's h-how we, prefer it."
W seemed to give a sympathetic nod as he responded to the pilot drone. "Ah, yeah. I should. You've both at least earned that much." He laughed lightly as he thought on the idea, then stopped as he eyed Tina, recognizing something he shouldn't have. "Come to think of it, you sound familiar, Miss."
The three drones' gaze was snatched by the loud sound of glass breaking, Wade, Tina and W seeing the large window at the end of the archive broken into many shards. From outside, three more new arrivals flew into the room: a trio of female disassembly drones, all with blades and guns deployed as the middle one spoke out amongst her team. "K, M, let's give these people a hand!"
"Okay!" Said one of the drones, the other not saying a word as they all moved to the sides of the room.
Looking back to the distracted W, Wade struck his face with his tail, the clone's visor cracking from the attack as he yelped in agony. Without any hesitation, Wade readied a claw hand before grabbing W, pulling him close before biting into his neck. Seeing her partner's clone trying to perform a similar attack, Tina grabbed onto the approaching nanite tank, keeping it from hitting her darling's head as he fed off his evil double.
Once he was finished, Wade threw the weakened W to the floor, the injured drone crawling back as Wade's damaged arm regenerated. As Wade readied a shotgun, W gazed at him and Tina, gazing at the latter as he seemed to remember one of his locked memories of this girl. "...Wait, aren't you... do I know yo-"
"You are NOT my boyfriend!" Tina answered angrily, W looking on in shock as Wade took aim. Wade's clone was put down with a few blasts of buckshot, ripping the body and core of W into scrap.
As W met his demise, F, now having put Nathan to her back, was busy holding off E and H, the latter having recovered from his injury as the three clashed blades. Hovering over the two data consoles in another locking of swords, F glanced between the two as one of the new arrivals from outside flew at H, trying to strike him down with her own swords. The attack took one of H's arms off, the murder drone backing off of F as he tried to defend himself against the newcomer. Now only having to deal with E, F kept her guarding sword up against her rival, readying a sub-machine gun with her other hand as she prepared to shoot.
E grinned mischievously as she taunted her enemy. "Heh, you're serving under the army, I see? They're pathetic compared to us, traitor."
Nathan growled as he held out one of his pistols, shooting at the arrogant drone as she backed off of his crush. Smirking at her partner as well as at her decision to follow Wade's example, F fired her sub-machine gun at the exposed E as she replied to her fellow murder drone. "Let me and Mr. Nathan here show you who's the pathetic one, scraphead!"
Before she could continue her fight with E, a flurry of bullets flew at F, the warrior drone blocking it with her wings before seeing who shot at her. Taking notice of Darren's position, F continued shielding herself while preparing a rocket launcher. In a tense blur, F shot at Hawk, the man just barely avoiding death as he was knocked back against the wall, seemingly unconscious. With Darren taken out of the fight, F continued striking her blades with E's, intent on snuffing out this troublemaker out for good.
With the tide of the battle turned, Wade took a moment to take some of his mouth saliva, holding it out to Tina. "Tina, here." The drone girl took the silver goop without a word before putting it onto her wounded chest, her damaged body and clothing repairing quickly thanks to the liquid nanites. Picking up his severed arm, Wade held it up for Tina as well. "Oil?"
"Thanks, hun." Tina replied as she drank up the dripping oil from the limb. Once it was empty, Wade tossed the arm before looking to the damaged window, L and one of the friendly disassembly drones fighting one another.
Flying at L, Wade readied a pair of claw hands as he slashed at L's tail, cutting the nanite tank off as it fell to the floor. Grabbing onto L, Wade punched through his chest, the partially connected bio-mechanical core in his claws before he crushed it with violent ease.
"N-Not agai-" Was all L could utter as he was finally slain by his rival from the factory not a day before.
Hearing a cry of pain from near the lab computers, Wade and Tina looked to see E, F, Nathan, H, and another disassembly drone going at each other in a blur of slashes and stabs. Seeing Wade flying over to her, E broke off from F, attempting to strike Wade's two claws with her one active sword arm, the other having been severed by F during their duel. E's efforts to terminate Wade were immediately in vain as she was quickly stabbed in the chest by Wade, choking from the pain as she prepared for her end.
Having recovered from her shameful stumbling with the human trooper behind the shelves, D prepared to attack once more, but stopped as she saw her comrade being struck down by one of the traitors, the one with the drone rider at his back. "E! Hold on, I'll save you!" She declared before preparing a pair of scythes, trying to imitate her leader as she spun at Wade and his prey.
"D, you imbeci-" E cursed aloud as she was thrown at D by Wade, her body being cut up into several pieces before her team-killing comrade ceased spinning.
Taking notice of her careless attack, D gasped in horror, putting a fresh hand to her mouth as Wade pounced on her. The poor drone squealed in terror as Wade quickly ripped her core out, D's eyes flickering out as her killer tossed her body to the floor.
Looking to D's core, Wade almost debated sparing it of his wrath before deciding against it. Crushing the core, Wade spoke to Tina at his flank. "Man, that one didn't feel so good to kill."
"I see." Tina sympathized, but stopped as she and Wade spotted H flying at them, one of the new ally drones pursuing after him as Wade readied a pair of blades.
Striking H's swords, Wade spoke to his allies. "Keep watch on Kelly there, I've got this one!" The chasing drone and the others heeded Wade's order as they backed off, Wade and H clashing blades in a fierce duel.
In their fighting, the two neared the large window space at the end of the lab as Wade gained the advantage. Once Wade entered another deadlock, Tina fired at H's head, distracting him just long enough for Wade to bite into the drone. H howled in pain as Wade drained him of most of his oil, the feeding lasting several seconds before Wade finally felt satisfied. Feeling H's body beginning to heat up, Wade tossed H's smoking body out the window, part of the still unshattered glass breaking off from the impact as the drone fell. H screamed in perilous agony as he fell down the building, his overheating problem climaxing as he exploded in a ball of fire.
Stepping over the damaged ledge, Wade and Tina watched as they saw the fate of their foe, the former smirking in satisfaction as he glanced to one of the nearby drone allies. "You all okay?"
"Yes sir." The drone replied, Kurtis giving a thumbs-up next to him as the two confirmed their status to Wade.
Observing the assisting disassembly drones, Wade glanced to Tina. "How did they find us so fast?"
"I called Jasmine, love. To be honest, I didn't think they'd get here in time." Tina answered her boyfriend as he looked to her with a grateful smile.
Looking back to F, Wade flew over to his ally, Nathan dismounting her as Tina raised an eyebrow at the military duo. "F? Nathan? Did you two-"
"Yeah. Yeah, we did." F said with a blushing smile, glancing to the smiling Nathan as she continued. "We uh, thought we'd take some notes from you both."
Looking down to Kelly, who was thankfully unharmed, Wade spoke to her as well. "Kel? You good?"
"Oh, I'm fine, Wade. F and Nate here made a great lil' duo." The technician answered as she and her friends laughed at the relief of victory.
In the quieting aura of peace, Darren woke up lazily as he tried to regain his composure. As his vision cleared, he spotted Wade and his team talking to Kelly, not at all noticing him having awoken. Taking hold of his sidearm, Hawk shot at Kelly, only for his attempt on her life to fail as Wade quickly blocked the shot with his wing.
Glaring at the team coordinator, Wade spoke aloud. "Leave him be, he's mine!" Walking towards him, Wade blocked all the shots Darren took at him with his wing, keeping his guard up until he reached the man. Readying a sword, Wade sliced off Hawk's armed hand before picking him up by the neck with his free one, then impaling the corporate agent with his nanite tail while growling at him in contained fury.
Darren grunted in frustrated pain as he looked into Wade's angry eyes with a similar expression. "I'll... be damned, Mr. Carter, I didn't think fortune would favor you and your lot here."
"Well, it sure as hell won't favor you today!" Wade retorted, swapping his sword for a hand as Darren coughed up a bit of blood from his injury.
"You really learned to be so much like us from him, haven't you? Sure seems like it. Even with lights for eyes, I ca-an still see pain in them. Tired, hateful agony. Is that what you feel?"
Wade lowered his gaze for only a short moment, taking in the slightly derogatory comments from Hawk before responding to the man. "...Yeah, I am in pain. So much pain." Then, as he raised his arm he continued in his growing rage. "Why don't I show you a bit of how much pain I'm in?!" At that instance, Wade roared at Darren as he dug his hand into the man's face, gouging his eyes out as he joined Wade in the screaming. The former worker drone kept at Hawk's head as he gripped onto it, his yelling growing in intensity as he tore off the squad leader's head in a bloody mess, part of his spine still latched on to the limb.
F, Nathan, Kelly and the other soldiers watched on with looks of shock, fear, and bewilderment as Wade took his bloody vengeance, Tina putting a hand to her mouth as she watched her love throw Hawk's head while letting go of his body. As Hawk's body fell to the floor, Wade took in heavy breaths from the immense effort he exhausted upon his nemesis before looking to Tina, embarrassment and shame swiftly overcoming him as he realized he was being watched by her. Looking down, Wade spoke to his love apologetically. "I'm... so sorry you had to see that."
Tina shook her head in an odd attempt to comfort Wade on his feelings over what he just did. "Oh no, no. It's fine." Turning her gaze to the grotesque sight of Darren's head, she regained her sympathy over Wade. "Besides, after what you told me about him... I'd say he deserves it for what you endured."
"Yeah. Besides, something tells me if it were Ron in your position... he would've done something similar." Despite the gruesome air she stood in, F let out a morbid chuckle as she continued. "I can believe it too, he tried choking J when he woke up back at your place."
Wade seemed to join in on F's laughter, Gerard giving a more hearty one as he spoke up on the matter. "Can't say I disagree. Call me twisted, but I think it's only... human of you, Wade."
"Thanks, Gerard." Wade said with a small smile, which slowly shifted into a stern frown as he spoke to his team. "I may have been a bit rash with Hawk here, but Halloway better be counting his stars in that office of his. He'll be lucky if he doesn't get worse for what he did."
"Indeed." Tina added before looking to Kelly, the technician taking a small data card out of the hacked console before putting it into one of the slots in her toolkit. "Kelly? Are we good to go, or is there still more to do?"
Holding onto her supplies, Kelly stood up as she helped the formerly scared maintenance drone up as well. "I'd say so, I've got the data chip right in here." Looking around, the technician spoke to her allies standing with her. "I might need some escort there."
"Don't mention it, Kelly. Wade, can you take a chunk of the team here with you? Nathan and I will bring this intel back to the ship outside." F asked as Wade nodded in affirmation.
"Sure thing. Tina and I will be back before you know it." F returned the nod as she looked to the soldiers, all of them having come out of their hiding areas as they listened in on the next step of their plan.
"Alright, Kurtis, Gerard, Duncan, Carlos, I want you two to stick with us. And you," F stopped as she looked to the repair drone, who returned the gaze as he listened to the disassembly drone attentively. "You may wanna come with us, it's gonna be a nasty night if you stay here."
The drone nodded in eager agreement, smiling at the friendly murder drone as he gave his feelings on the idea. "S-Sure thing, you guys could use a repair drone, right?"
F nodded in agreement as she and some of the other soldiers made way for the door, Nathan and Kelly walking alongside her as she spoke once more to Wade. "See you back at the ship Wade, and one more thing: Give Halloway the Carter treatment for us, okay?"
"Will do, F." Wade replied with a salute and a smirk, Tina doing the same behind her boyfriend as their allies departed.
Then, hearing a beep from her pocket, Tina pulled out her smartcomm, answering her sister's call. "Yes?"
"Looks like things have calmed down now, you alright, Tina?" Jasmine asked as Tina replied warmly.
"Oh, yes. Our friends here made this intel job much easier." Glancing to the friendly murder drones, Tina nodded in silent appreciation as they returned the gesture, turning to fly back outside as the pilot drone listened to the small device.
"Glad to hear it, I've got some wounded onboard that I'm taking to the base. I'll see you there after this whole rodeo is over."
Tina chuckled pleasantly as she replied once more to her sister. "I see, well, I wish you the safety of the stars over you and your team on the way back. See you tonight, love."
"You too, say hi to Wade for me. Jasmine out." With that, the Fowleys' call ceased again, leaving Tina, Wade and their remaining team members to themselves as they contemplated their next move.
Walking over to the drone couple, Vasquez spoke to the two while holding her rifle firm. "Well, looks like you're in charge now, Mr. Carter. Where do we go?"
Glancing back to the entrance leading to the elevator, then up to the ceiling, Wade nodded lightly as he made his decision.
"We go to Halloway."

This is a follow up post to my previous one: https://www.reddit.com/Divorce/s/l5ZK88VYK2
Since posting, she and I have spoken more… but not really. She admitted that she was like an addict when it came to her affair partner. I asked if we could have a phone call — and not long after, we did. And the next day I saw her in person.
I gave her an angry text to get the admission. She surprised me with some of her words like saying she hadn’t intended to leave, and so on. On the call, I thought she was starting to thaw with me. I got very emotional and told her all the changes I’d made. Everything I was doing to pave the way home. She didn’t go so far as to say anything positive, but there was a lack of negativity. I had the wherewithal to offer her to see our dog again before I moved to Texas, and offered to not be there because I’d cried most of the phone call and I didn’t want to subject her to that in person. At the end of the call, I asked her to look for her love for me one more time. I was surprised to hear her say she would.
Well, the next day came and I offered to leave — she said I didn’t have to. I was surprised, but I stayed. We talked for two hours. I knew I looked like shit, I hadn’t slept in months. The anti-depressants had caused me to gain weight, our dog was shaggy because I hadn’t groomed her. The place was in boxes. We talked for two hours or so, and I sobbed on the floor, leaning against her side telling her how much I missed her. She had brought a stuffed bear we bought together at the zoo last summer, giving it to me because I’m “the first one to leave California.” I straight up told her I wanted her to come with me, and she teared up — though in a hurt way, not a happy way. I’d ordered us pizza, and we shared a slice together. She looked me in the eye randomly and said “I miss my friend.” — Maybe I should have accepted that, but therapy and boundaries being what they are — I had to say “I can’t be just friends.” I told her we can rebuild, but I can’t just do that. Not after 15 years. After a lot of talking she said this was the most “sincere” she’d seen me be.
I noticed she was using the gifts I’d gotten her for Christmas (she got them all in March, when she moved out.) The visit culminated with her taking a clipping a piece of tail hair off our dog for her to keep, and me saying she needs her mom (we’re dog parents.) I ended up telling her I still saw a future with her and making a heart shape with my hands as she drove off.
Then the walls went right back up. She took a glass what was meant for a friend of ours here in Texas, and I offered to pick it up on my way out of the state. She backed out saying it was “hard” to see me, and she could just mail it to me. I cried for hours after that. I also made it to Texas finally, and moved in.
To say I’m confused is an understatement, because we had some “normal” texts where we talked about Hazbin Hotel, or stuff in our industry. It felt… almost warm. She’s still laconic compared to normal, but we were communicating. She shared what was going on with her health, too. I said I wanted to be the one who wheels her around if she ever became wheelchair bound — she responded by saying “about that, my new medication does…” — it almost seemed like she considered it for a moment. I asked about the job she abandoned me over after projecting a threat onto me. She said if they don’t give her what she wants, she’ll find a new one.
That was a bit of a slap in the face. She made a huge spectacle of running away in December over this, and now six months later she’s thinking of quitting. I didn’t react in text.
I asked if we could talk again, and she went silent. She texted me the next morning to tell me her mom was in the hospital. I offered to drop everything to go help, but was told not to. I offered to fly her out, to bring her dad food just to be with him, and so on. She would like and heart each text. I stopped pushing for the phone call for a few days. I texted her parents to offer my help — they ignored me. She even told me not to send flowers. Another slap in the face; I’m permitted to care, but not if it means showing it in any meaningful way.
I told her, as the dust was settling that we needed to talk, and the first, thing she said was “is the dog okay?” And then asked what we needed to talk about. She’d ignored another email since then, and I didn’t want to answer her because she has a habit of selectively ignoring questions. A few days pass, and I asked again. She made it roundabout clear that she wouldn’t take the call. So I wrote in text.
Once again, I poured my heart out to her, outlining a lot of the above. She said it was an attempt at closure. I disagreed, feeling like it was the reverse of that. She admitted that she was “reflecting” throughout, and she shouldn’t have agreed to me directly about rethinking her emotions. I asked her if she thinks I can or have changed from her view of me. She gave some pithy half yes answer.
I ended it after she stopped responding in resonable time by giving her some tough love — I told her how every accusation about trust, emotional distance, all that was really also an admission on her part. It was firm, but not cruel in my opinion (I also read it to my therapist who agreed.)
The next morning I just asked her if anything I’ve said has made a difference. All I got was “I think I understand you a little better. I would have told you if anything had changed.”
Another slap in the face.
I asked her why it was on me to give her understanding, and said how hard it is to do that when she never asks questions. No response.
That was enough. I gave her what she wanted, I think. She’d made comments that she was trying to prove she doesn’t despise me — but this made it pretty clear. She doesn’t care about me. It feels like she dealing with guilt over her behavior but no remorse over what damage she’s done to me. She just doesn’t care. That seems to be her approach — she just wants to be happy, and isn’t doing it out of hate — so clearly it’s okay what she’s done. There’s no malice, so it must be okay. How she doesn’t see that’s even more hurtful, I don’t know. I made sure to tell her how her mom’s visit to the hospital was a clear sign to me at least that I’ve changed a lot since then. I made no jokes, I just offered to help and be supportive. I’m not done becoming better, but the reason she called the last straw? I’ve laser focused on fixing that.
I didn’t say it, but I felt finally as though I knew for sure that I could and have fixed myself for her. I actually CAN be better for her. But she’s chosen this path and refuses to see that I’ve taken this all seriously. I’m beginning to feel she’s not doing the same to improve herself — for me or for her next relationship as things are tracking.
I ended it by sending her a photo of us in beekeeper suits, where we were happy together. I told her I loved her more than she knows, and that this is what she’s throwing away.
I did not hear back from her. My therapist was proud of me. I really want to hear back from her though. It was a big dose of tough love that I fear she may dismiss as me being angry.
I see it as me finally standing up for myself. The difference is I still love her. This is all a pain that I wish I could even have a break from. It’s constant and haunting. The only reason I’m still here is my dog.

When I log into VA.gov, my claim status says the claim was closed on May 3rd and a decision letter is ready for download and one was being sent in the mail and should arrive in 10 days. It's been a month and there's no decision letter ready for download and nothing in the mail. What would cause this? I called the 800 number 3 times and no help. I've also contacted VERA and it seemed like I was talking to a wall when I questioned what was happening.

Hi! I recived the e-mail with the date for the online interview for an asisstent job for the government.
Apparentlly, the interview itself is going to be only 10minutes? (I’ve been given my time slot) . But they said that they’d “like to have a test session” in the morning ( a few hours before the interview) that will be 1 hour long .
Anyone knows what that means? Will it like be a session with all candiates? Competitive against each other? How can they test you through skype? Time limit? Write down the answers in chat? Choose the right answer?
Sorry, this is my first interview so i have no idea what could this entail.
Help please!

Hi all
I'm looking for storage solutions my clubbells (8, 12, 15, 20 kg) ant would like to get them of the floor, ideally dome sort of wall rack that handle the weight.
There are lots of barbell storage racks but the slots seem to be too narrow on all the ones I have found.
I'm trying to build something my self but I'm not much of a carpenter so I'm interested in seeing if anyone else has found a off the shelf storage solutions for heavy clubbells

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Hello everyone,
for work I had to stay 3 months in Helsinki and decided to stay at Forenom (I am from other country within the EU). I quickly realized that the windows didn't have any place where I could put a handle to open them. After writing to the company's customer service mail, they said that some of the rooms have windows that cannot be opened. How can this be possible?
There is a small device in a wall that I guess is a mechanical ventilation device. In principle, it should provide air renovation, but I feel that the air in the room is stagnated and I often feel asphyxiated. Could the device not be working correctly/ lack strength? I asked for a room change but they say they are fully booked. The room otherwise is good, but honestly feel so trapped inside that I would prefer a much worse (and cheaper) accommodation rather than to constantly feel that I am going to have a panic attack.
What can I do?
This is a throw-away account, I don't want to dox myself.

Hey everyone. I've recently been playing Big Chad Guys Plus with my brothers and some friends. Today my brother tried to sleep in the nether like an idiot, using the Traveler's Backpack's sleeping bag function. Upon doing this, the world completely crashed, and I can't open it any longer. I was hosting with the e4mc mod. I had no backups, and I'm worried the world is corrupted. Any help would be greatly appreciated, crash report is below. Exit Code is just "-1"
---- Minecraft Crash Report ----
// I let you down. Sorry :(
Time: 2024-06-04 02:20:56
Description: Exception in server tick loop
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: arraycopy: length -1 is negative

at java.base/java.io.PushbackInputStream.unread(PushbackInputStream.java:232) at net.minecraft.class\_26.method\_17921(class\_26.java:114) at net.minecraft.class\_26.method\_17923(class\_26.java:90) at wraith.fwaystones.util.WaystoneStorage.loadOrSaveWaystones(WaystoneStorage.java:159) at wraith.fwaystones.util.WaystoneStorage.(WaystoneStorage.java:62) at wraith.fwaystones.util.WaystonesEventManager.lambda$registerEvents$0(WaystonesEventManager.java:22) at net.fabricmc.fabric.api.event.lifecycle.v1.ServerLifecycleEvents.lambda$static$2(ServerLifecycleEvents.java:49) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.handler$dnk000$fabric-lifecycle-events-v1$afterSetupServer(MinecraftServer.java:5842) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.method\_29741(MinecraftServer.java:650) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.method\_29739(MinecraftServer.java:265) at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:833) 

A detailed walkthrough of the error, its code path and all known details is as follows:
-- Cobblemon --
Details:

Version: 1.5.0 Is Snapshot: false Git Commit: 347e10d (https://gitlab.com/cable-mc/cobblemon/-/commit/347e10d7e474a7741f2d31c439a6696093a6ee23) Branch: HEAD Timestamp: 05/11/2024 10:26:01 UTC 

-- System Details --
Details:

Minecraft Version: 1.20.1 Minecraft Version ID: 1.20.1 Operating System: Windows 10 (amd64) version 10.0 Java Version: 17.0.8, Microsoft Java VM Version: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (mixed mode), Microsoft Memory: 1555833352 bytes (1483 MiB) / 6383730688 bytes (6088 MiB) up to 12817793024 bytes (12224 MiB) CPUs: 12 Processor Vendor: AuthenticAMD Processor Name: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor Identifier: AuthenticAMD Family 25 Model 33 Stepping 2 Microarchitecture: Zen 3 Frequency (GHz): 3.70 Number of physical packages: 1 Number of physical CPUs: 6 Number of logical CPUs: 12 Graphics card #0 name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Graphics card #0 vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de) Graphics card #0 VRAM (MB): 4095.00 Graphics card #0 deviceId: 0x2786 Graphics card #0 versionInfo: DriverVersion=31.0.15.4633 Memory slot #0 capacity (MB): 8192.00 Memory slot #0 clockSpeed (GHz): 2.13 Memory slot #0 type: DDR4 Memory slot #1 capacity (MB): 8192.00 Memory slot #1 clockSpeed (GHz): 2.13 Memory slot #1 type: DDR4 Memory slot #2 capacity (MB): 8192.00 Memory slot #2 clockSpeed (GHz): 2.13 Memory slot #2 type: DDR4 Memory slot #3 capacity (MB): 8192.00 Memory slot #3 clockSpeed (GHz): 2.13 Memory slot #3 type: DDR4 Virtual memory max (MB): 60222.23 Virtual memory used (MB): 21613.25 Swap memory total (MB): 27530.04 Swap memory used (MB): 97.91 JVM Flags: 4 total; -XX:HeapDumpPath=MojangTricksIntelDriversForPerformance\_javaw.exe\_minecraft.exe.heapdump -Xss1M -Xmx12224m -Xms256m Fabric Mods: a\_man\_with\_plushies: A Man With Plushies 3.0.2 alloy\_forgery: Alloy Forgery 2.1.2+1.20 almostunified: AlmostUnified 1.20.1-0.9.3 alternate-current: Alternate Current 1.7.0 amendments: Amendments 1.20-1.1.31 mixinsquared: MixinSquared 0.1.1 another\_furniture: Another Furniture 1.20.1-3.0.1 appleskin: AppleSkin 2.5.1+mc1.20 architectury: Architectury 9.2.14 artifacts: Artifacts 9.5.5 cardinal-components-base: Cardinal Components API (base) 5.2.2 cardinal-components-entity: Cardinal Components API (entities) 5.2.2 expandability: ExpandAbility 9.0.4 step-height-entity-attribute: Step Height Entity Attribute 1.2.0 asynclocator: Async Locator 1.3.0 athena: Athena 3.1.2 attributefix: AttributeFix 21.0.4 automobility: Automobility 0.4.2+1.20.1-fabric jsonem: JsonEM 0.2.1+1.20 axolotlitemfix: Axolotl Item Fix 1.1.7 bakery: \[Let's Do\] Bakery 1.1.10 balm-fabric: Balm 7.2.2 barteringstation: Bartering Station 8.0.0 bcg\_smp: BCG\_SMP 1.0.1 bcgutil: BCG Util 1.0.5 bclib: BCLib 3.0.14 wunderlib: WunderLib 1.1.5 beautify: Beautify 1.1.0+1.20 bedbenefits: BedBenefits 13.0.3 beekeeperhut: Friends&Foes - Beekeeper Hut 2.0.0 better\_climbing: Better Climbing 3 betteradvancements: Better Advancements [0.3.2.161](http://0.3.2.161) betterbeds: Better Beds 1.3.0 betterchunkloading: Better chunk loading mod 1.20.1-4.2 bettercombat: Better Combat 1.8.5+1.20.1 betterdungeons: YUNG's Better Dungeons 1.20-Fabric-4.0.4 org\_reflections\_reflections: reflections 0.10.2 betterend: Better End 4.0.11 betterendisland: YUNG's Better End Island 1.20-Fabric-2.0.6 bettermineshafts: YUNG's Better Mineshafts 1.20-Fabric-4.0.4 betteroceanmonuments: YUNG's Better Ocean Monuments 1.20-Fabric-3.0.4 betterstrongholds: YUNG's Better Strongholds 1.20-Fabric-4.0.3 betterthirdperson: Better Third Person 1.9.0 bhmenu: BHMenu-Fabric 2.4.1 bitsandchisels: BitsAndChisels 2.7.3 boatbreakfix: Boat Break Fix 1.0.2 bobby: Bobby 5.0.1 com\_typesafe\_config: config 1.4.2 io\_leangen\_geantyref\_geantyref: geantyref 1.3.13 org\_spongepowered\_configurate-core: configurate-core 4.1.2 org\_spongepowered\_configurate-hocon: configurate-hocon 4.1.2 bookshelf: Bookshelf 20.1.10 brewery: \[Let's Do\] Brewery 1.1.8 bwncr: Bad Wither No Cookie Reloaded 3.17.0 candlelight: \[Let's Do\] Candlelight 1.2.12 carrier: Carrier 1.12.0 advanced\_runtime\_resource\_pack: Runtime Resource Pack 0.6.7 catalogue: Catalogue 1.8.0 charmofundying: Charm of Undying 6.5.0+1.20.1 spectrelib: SpectreLib 0.13.15+1.20.1 chat\_heads: Chat Heads 0.12.2 chefsdelight: Chefs Delight 1.0.3-fabric-1.20.1 chimes: Chimes 2.0.1 chipped: Chipped 3.0.6 chunky: Chunky 1.3.146 clickadv: Clickable Advancements Mod 1.20.1-3.8 cloth-config: Cloth Config v11 11.1.118 cloth-basic-math: cloth-basic-math 0.6.1 clumps: Clumps [12.0.0.4](http://12.0.0.4) cobblemon: Cobblemon 1.5.0+1.20.1 cobblemon\_capturexp: Cobblemon Capture EXP 1.5-fabric-1.0.1 cobblemon\_quests: Cobblemon Quests 1.1.9 cobblemon\_spawn\_notification: Cobblemon Spawn Notification 1.4-fabric-1.3.0 cobblemounts: CobbleMounts 1.3.0 com\_moandjiezana\_toml\_toml4j: toml4j 0.7.2 cobblepedia: Cobblepedia 0.5.3 collective: Collective 7.57 comforts: Comforts 6.3.5+1.20.1 commonnetworking: Common Network 1.0.3-1.20.1 compact\_storage: CompactStorage [6.0.1.64](http://6.0.1.64) connectivity: Connectivity Mod 1.20.1-5.5 controlling: Controlling For Fabric 12.0.2 convenientdecor: Convenient Decor 0.4.1 omega-config: OmegaConfig 1.4.0+1.20.1 coroutil: CoroUtil 1.20.1-1.3.7 crawl: Crawl 0.12.0 mm: Manningham Mills 2.3 create: Create 0.5.1-f-build.1417+mc1.20.1 com\_google\_code\_findbugs\_jsr305: jsr305 3.0.2 flywheel: Flywheel 0.6.10-2 milk: Milk Lib 1.2.60 

dripstone_fluid_lib: Dripstone Fluid Lib 3.0.2

 porting\_lib\_brewing: Porting Lib Brewing 2.3.2+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_models: Porting Lib Models 2.3.2+1.20.1 

porting_lib_model_loader: Porting Lib Model Loader 2.3.2+1.20.1

 porting\_lib\_obj\_loader: Porting Lib Obj Loader 2.3.2+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_tags: Porting Lib Tags 3.0 reach-entity-attributes: Reach Entity Attributes 2.4.0 registrate-fabric: Registrate for Fabric 1.3.62-MC1.20.1 

porting_lib_data: Porting Lib Data 2.1.1090+1.20
porting_lib_model_generators: Porting Lib Model Generators 2.1.1090+1.20
porting_lib_gametest: Porting Lib GameTest 2.1.1090+1.20
porting_lib_model_materials: Porting Lib Model Materials 2.1.1090+1.20

 create\_cobblemon: Create: Cobblemon Industrialized 0.3 create\_enchantment\_industry: Create Enchantment Industry 1.2.16 create\_dragon\_lib: Create Dragon Lib 1.4.2 createaddition: Create Crafts & Additions 1.2.3 createdeco: Create Deco 2.0.2-1.20.1-fabric createreibugfix: CreateFabric&REIBugFix 0.1.0-create0.5.1-mc1.20.x creeperoverhaul: Creeper Overhaul 3.0.2 cupboard: cupboard 1.20.1-2.6 customcursorcomm: CustomCursorComm 1.2.0 dailyshop: Daily Shop 1.0.2 darkpaintings: DarkPaintings 17.0.4 darkutils: DarkUtilities 17.0.3 deathlog: DeathLog 0.3.2+1.20 debugify: Debugify 1.20.1+2.0 deuf\_refabricated: DEUF Refabricated 1.1.0 diagonalfences: Diagonal Fences 8.1.4 diagonalblocks: Diagonal Blocks 8.0.5 diagonalwalls: Diagonal Walls 8.0.3 diagonalwindows: Diagonal Windows 8.1.4 dimensionalsyncfixes: DimensionalSyncFixes 1.20.1-0.0.2 doapi: \[Let's Do\] API 1.2.12 terraform-wood-api-v1: Terraform Wood API (v1) 7.0.1 dragonfight: Dragonfight Mod 1.20.1-4.5 drippyloadingscreen: Drippy Loading Screen 3.0.2 e4mc\_minecraft: e4mc 4.0.1 easyanvils: Easy Anvils 8.0.2 easymagic: Easy Magic 8.0.1 elytraslot: Elytra Slot 6.3.0+1.20.1 endermanoverhaul: Enderman Overhaul 1.0.4 endrem: End Remastered 5.2.4 entity\_model\_features: Entity Model Features 2.0.2 entity\_texture\_features: Entity Texture Features 6.0.1 org\_apache\_httpcomponents\_httpmime: httpmime 4.5.10 entityculling: EntityCulling-Fabric 1.6.2-mc1.20.1 epherolib: EpheroLib 1.2.0 everycomp: Every Compat 1.20-2.6.55 expandeddelight: Expanded Delight 0.3.1 explorerscompass: Explorer's Compass 1.20.1-2.2.3-fabric exposure: Exposure 1.6.0 extendedgears: Extended Cogwheels 2.1.1-1.20.1-0.5.1.f-fabric fabric-api: Fabric API 0.92.1+1.20.1 fabric-api-base: Fabric API Base 0.4.31+1802ada577 fabric-api-lookup-api-v1: Fabric API Lookup API (v1) 1.6.36+1802ada577 fabric-biome-api-v1: Fabric Biome API (v1) 13.0.13+1802ada577 fabric-block-api-v1: Fabric Block API (v1) 1.0.11+1802ada577 fabric-block-view-api-v2: Fabric BlockView API (v2) 1.0.1+1802ada577 fabric-blockrenderlayer-v1: Fabric BlockRenderLayer Registration (v1) 1.1.41+1802ada577 fabric-client-tags-api-v1: Fabric Client Tags 1.1.2+1802ada577 fabric-command-api-v1: Fabric Command API (v1) 1.2.34+f71b366f77 fabric-command-api-v2: Fabric Command API (v2) 2.2.13+1802ada577 fabric-commands-v0: Fabric Commands (v0) 0.2.51+df3654b377 fabric-containers-v0: Fabric Containers (v0) 0.1.64+df3654b377 fabric-content-registries-v0: Fabric Content Registries (v0) 4.0.11+1802ada577 fabric-convention-tags-v1: Fabric Convention Tags 1.5.5+1802ada577 fabric-crash-report-info-v1: Fabric Crash Report Info (v1) 0.2.19+1802ada577 fabric-data-attachment-api-v1: Fabric Data Attachment API (v1) 1.0.0+de0fd6d177 fabric-data-generation-api-v1: Fabric Data Generation API (v1) 12.3.4+1802ada577 fabric-dimensions-v1: Fabric Dimensions API (v1) 2.1.54+1802ada577 fabric-entity-events-v1: Fabric Entity Events (v1) 1.6.0+1c78457f77 fabric-events-interaction-v0: Fabric Events Interaction (v0) 0.6.2+1802ada577 fabric-events-lifecycle-v0: Fabric Events Lifecycle (v0) 0.2.63+df3654b377 fabric-game-rule-api-v1: Fabric Game Rule API (v1) 1.0.40+1802ada577 fabric-item-api-v1: Fabric Item API (v1) 2.1.28+1802ada577 fabric-item-group-api-v1: Fabric Item Group API (v1) 4.0.12+1802ada577 fabric-key-binding-api-v1: Fabric Key Binding API (v1) 1.0.37+1802ada577 fabric-keybindings-v0: Fabric Key Bindings (v0) 0.2.35+df3654b377 fabric-lifecycle-events-v1: Fabric Lifecycle Events (v1) 2.2.22+1802ada577 fabric-loot-api-v2: Fabric Loot API (v2) 1.2.1+1802ada577 fabric-loot-tables-v1: Fabric Loot Tables (v1) 1.1.45+9e7660c677 fabric-message-api-v1: Fabric Message API (v1) 5.1.9+1802ada577 fabric-mining-level-api-v1: Fabric Mining Level API (v1) 2.1.50+1802ada577 fabric-model-loading-api-v1: Fabric Model Loading API (v1) 1.0.3+1802ada577 fabric-models-v0: Fabric Models (v0) 0.4.2+9386d8a777 fabric-networking-api-v1: Fabric Networking API (v1) 1.3.11+1802ada577 fabric-networking-v0: Fabric Networking (v0) 0.3.51+df3654b377 fabric-object-builder-api-v1: Fabric Object Builder API (v1) 11.1.3+1802ada577 fabric-particles-v1: Fabric Particles (v1) 1.1.2+1802ada577 fabric-recipe-api-v1: Fabric Recipe API (v1) 1.0.21+1802ada577 fabric-registry-sync-v0: Fabric Registry Sync (v0) 2.3.3+1802ada577 fabric-renderer-api-v1: Fabric Renderer API (v1) 3.2.1+1802ada577 fabric-renderer-indigo: Fabric Renderer - Indigo 1.5.1+1802ada577 fabric-renderer-registries-v1: Fabric Renderer Registries (v1) 3.2.46+df3654b377 fabric-rendering-data-attachment-v1: Fabric Rendering Data Attachment (v1) 0.3.37+92a0d36777 fabric-rendering-fluids-v1: Fabric Rendering Fluids (v1) 3.0.28+1802ada577 fabric-rendering-v0: Fabric Rendering (v0) 1.1.49+df3654b377 fabric-rendering-v1: Fabric Rendering (v1) 3.0.8+1802ada577 fabric-resource-conditions-api-v1: Fabric Resource Conditions API (v1) 2.3.8+1802ada577 fabric-resource-loader-v0: Fabric Resource Loader (v0) 0.11.10+1802ada577 fabric-screen-api-v1: Fabric Screen API (v1) 2.0.8+1802ada577 fabric-screen-handler-api-v1: Fabric Screen Handler API (v1) 1.3.30+1802ada577 fabric-sound-api-v1: Fabric Sound API (v1) 1.0.13+1802ada577 fabric-transfer-api-v1: Fabric Transfer API (v1) 3.3.5+8dd72ea377 fabric-transitive-access-wideners-v1: Fabric Transitive Access Wideners (v1) 4.3.1+1802ada577 fabric-language-kotlin: Fabric Language Kotlin 1.10.20+kotlin.1.9.24 org\_jetbrains\_kotlin\_kotlin-reflect: kotlin-reflect 1.9.24 org\_jetbrains\_kotlin\_kotlin-stdlib: kotlin-stdlib 1.9.24 org\_jetbrains\_kotlin\_kotlin-stdlib-jdk7: kotlin-stdlib-jdk7 1.9.24 org\_jetbrains\_kotlin\_kotlin-stdlib-jdk8: kotlin-stdlib-jdk8 1.9.24 org\_jetbrains\_kotlinx\_atomicfu-jvm: atomicfu-jvm 0.24.0 org\_jetbrains\_kotlinx\_kotlinx-coroutines-core-jvm: kotlinx-coroutines-core-jvm 1.8.0 org\_jetbrains\_kotlinx\_kotlinx-coroutines-jdk8: kotlinx-coroutines-jdk8 1.8.0 org\_jetbrains\_kotlinx\_kotlinx-datetime-jvm: kotlinx-datetime-jvm 0.5.0 org\_jetbrains\_kotlinx\_kotlinx-serialization-cbor-jvm: kotlinx-serialization-cbor-jvm 1.6.3 org\_jetbrains\_kotlinx\_kotlinx-serialization-core-jvm: kotlinx-serialization-core-jvm 1.6.3 org\_jetbrains\_kotlinx\_kotlinx-serialization-json-jvm: kotlinx-serialization-json-jvm 1.6.3 fabricloader: Fabric Loader 0.15.11 mixinextras: MixinExtras 0.3.5 fancymenu: FancyMenu 3.2.3 com\_github\_keksuccino\_japng: japng 0.5.3 com\_github\_rtyley\_animated-gif-lib-for-java: animated-gif-lib-for-java animated-gif-lib-1.7 farmersdelight: Farmer's Delight 1.20.1-2.1.1+refabricated porting\_lib\_accessors: Porting Lib Accessors 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_base: Porting Lib Base 2.3.4+1.20.1 

porting_lib_entity: Porting Lib Entity 2.3.4+1.20.1
porting_lib_fluids: Porting Lib Fluids 2.3.4+1.20.1
porting_lib_mixin_extensions: Porting Lib Mixin Extensions 2.3.4+1.20.1
porting_lib_transfer: Porting Lib Transfer 2.3.4+1.20.1
porting_lib_utility: Porting Lib Utility 2.3.4+1.20.1

 porting\_lib\_client\_events: Porting Lib Client Events 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_config: Porting Lib Config 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_extensions: Porting Lib Extensions 2.3.4+1.20.1 

porting_lib_attributes: Porting Lib Attributes 2.3.4+1.20.1
porting_lib_common: Porting Lib Common 2.3.4+1.20.1
porting_lib_core: Porting Lib Core 2.3.4+1.20.1

 porting\_lib\_lazy\_registration: Porting Lib Lazy Register 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_loot: Porting Lib Loot 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_networking: Porting Lib Networking 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_recipe\_book\_categories: Porting Lib Recipe Book Categories 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_registries: Porting Lib Registries 2.3.4+1.20.1 porting\_lib\_tool\_actions: Porting Lib Tool Actions 2.3.4+1.20.1 fastipping: Fast IP Ping 1.0.1 fastpaintings: Fast Paintings 1.20-1.2.7 ferritecore: FerriteCore 6.0.1 fightorflight: Cobblemon Fight or Flight Fabric 0.5.0 flowerymooblooms: Friends&Foes - Flowery Mooblooms 2.0.1 forgeconfigapiport: Forge Config API Port 8.0.0 framework: Framework 0.6.16 org\_javassist\_javassist: javassist 3.29.2-GA friendsandfoes: Friends&Foes 2.0.10 ftbchunks: FTB Chunks 2001.2.7 ftbessentials: FTB Essentials 2001.2.2 ftblibrary: FTB Library 2001.1.5 ftbquests: FTB Quests 2001.3.5 team\_reborn\_energy: Energy 3.0.0 ftbteams: FTB Teams 2001.2.0 ftbultimine: FTB Ultimine 2001.1.4 ftbxmodcompat: FTB XMod Compat 2.1.1 fwaystones: Fabric Waystones 3.1.3+mc1.20 fzzy\_config: Fzzy Config 0.3.3+1.20.1 blue\_endless\_jankson: jankson 1.2.3 net\_peanuuutz\_tomlkt\_tomlkt-jvm: tomlkt-jvm 0.3.7 geckolib: GeckoLib 4 4.4.4 com\_eliotlash\_mclib\_mclib: mclib 20 getittogetherdrops: Get It Together, Drops! fabric-1.20-1.3.1 globalpacks: Global Data- & Resourcepacks 1.16.1\_fabric go-fish: Go Fish 1.6.3+1.20.1 gpumemleakfix: Gpu memory leak fix mod 1.20.1-1.8 grindenchantments: Grind Enchantments 3.1.2+1.20 codec-config-api: Codec Config API 1.0.2+1.19.3 guardvillagers: GuardVillagers 2.0.9-1.20.1 midnightlib: MidnightLib 1.4.1 gymbadges: GymBadges 1.0 hamsters: Hamsters fabric-1.0.3-1.20.1 handcrafted: Handcrafted 3.0.6 healingcampfire: Healing Campfire 5.3 herbalbrews: \[Let's Do\] HerbalBrews 1.0.7 herdspanic: Herds Panic 1.1.0 highlighter: Highlighter 1.1.9 horseexpert: Horse Expert 8.1.1 icarus: Icarus 2.9.0 iceberg: Iceberg 1.1.18 idwtialsimmoedm: idwtialsimmoedm 0.3.0+1.20 illagerinvasion: Illager Invasion 8.0.5 extensibleenums: Extensible Enums 7.0.1 immediatelyfast: ImmediatelyFast 1.2.15+1.20.4 net\_lenni0451\_reflect: Reflect 1.3.3 immersive\_aircraft: Immersive Aircraft 1.0.1+1.20.1 org\_mariuszgromada\_math\_mathparser\_org-mxparser: MathParser.org-mXparser 5.2.1 incantationem: Incantationem 1.2.1+1.20 incendium: Incendium 5.3.5 indium: Indium 1.0.30+mc1.20.4 inventoryprofilesnext: Inventory Profiles Next 1.10.10 iris: Iris 1.7.0+mc1.20.1 io\_github\_douira\_glsl-transformer: glsl-transformer 2.0.0-pre13 org\_anarres\_jcpp: jcpp 1.4.14 org\_antlr\_antlr4-runtime: antlr4-runtime 4.11.1 irisflw: Iris Flywheel Compat 0.2.5 item\_obliterator: Item Obliterator 2.1.0 itemcollectors: Item Collectors 1.1.10 itemfilters: Item Filters 2001.1.0-build.59 jade: Jade 11.8.0 java: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 17 jmi: JourneyMapIntegration 1.20.1-0.14-45 journeymap: Journeymap 5.9.21 journeymap-api-fabric: JourneyMap API 1.20-1.9-fabric-SNAPSHOT jumpoverfences: Jump Over Fences 1.3.1 konkrete: Konkrete 1.8.1 krypton: Krypton 0.2.3 com\_velocitypowered\_velocity-native: velocity-native 3.2.0-SNAPSHOT labels: labels 1.20-1.20.2 languagereload: Language Reload 1.6.1+1.20.1 leavemybarsalone: Leave My Bars Alone 8.0.0 leavesbegone: Leaves Be Gone 8.0.0 letmedespawn: Let Me Despawn 1.2.0 letsdoaddon-compat: \[Let's Do Addon\] Compat 1.4.1 libipn: libIPN 4.0.2 lithium: Lithium 0.11.2 lmft: Load My F\*\*\*ing Tags 1.0.2+1.20 loadmyresources: Load My Resources 1.0.4 logbegone: Log Begone 1.0.8 lootintegrations: Loot integration Mod 1.20.1-3.7 lootr: Lootr [0.7.33.81](http://0.7.33.81) luphieclutteredmod: Cluttered 2.1.0+1.20.1 magnumtorch: Magnum Torch 8.0.2 mavapi: More Axolotl Variants API 1.1.4 mavm: More Axolotl Variants Mod 1.2.6 mcwbridges: Macaw's Bridges 3.0.0 mcwdoors: Macaw's Doors 1.1.0 mcwfences: Macaw's Fences and Walls 1.1.1 mcwfurnitures: Macaw's Furniture 3.2.2 mcwlights: Macaw's Lights and Lamps 1.0.6 mcwpaths: Macaw's Paths and Pavings 1.0.5 mcwroofs: Macaw's Roofs 2.3.0 mcwtrpdoors: Macaw's Trapdoors 1.1.3 mcwwindows: Macaw's Windows 2.2.1 melody: Melody 1.0.3 memoryleakfix: Memory Leak Fix 1.1.2 menulogue: Menulogue 1.20.1-1.0.4 mighty\_mail: Mighty Mail 1.0.14 mine-spawners: mine-spawners 1.0 minecraft: Minecraft 1.20.1 mixintrace: MixinTrace 1.1.1+1.17 modernfix: ModernFix 5.17.0+mc1.20.1 moonlight: Moonlight 1.20-2.11.28 more-axolotl: More Axolotl 2.0.1 mousetweaks: Mouse Tweaks 2.26 mr\_remove\_terralithintromessage: Remove Terralith Intro Message 1.0 mvs: Moog's Voyager Structures 4.1.2-1.20-fabric mythicmetals: Mythic Metals 0.19.7+1.20.1 additionalentityattributes: Additional Entity Attributes 1.4.0+1.20.0 naturalist: Naturalist 4.0.3 naturescompass: Nature's Compass 1.20.1-2.2.3-fabric necronomicon: Necronomicon 1.4.2 neruina: Neruina 2.0.0-beta.9 com\_fasterxml\_jackson\_core\_jackson-annotations: jackson-annotations 2.17.0 com\_fasterxml\_jackson\_core\_jackson-core: jackson-core 2.17.0 com\_fasterxml\_jackson\_core\_jackson-databind: jackson-databind 2.17.0 org\_apache\_maven\_maven-artifact: maven-artifact 3.8.1 org\_kohsuke\_github-api: github-api 1.318 netherportalfix: NetherPortalFix 13.0.1 nightlights: Night Lights 1.1 nochatreports: No Chat Reports 1.20.1-v2.2.2 notenoughanimations: NotEnoughAnimations 1.7.3 oceansdelight: Ocean's Delight fdrf-fabric-1.0.2-1.20 overflowingbars: Overflowing Bars 8.0.0 owo: oωo 0.11.2+1.20 packetfixer: Packet Fixer 1.3.2 particle\_core: Particle Core 0.2.3+1.20.1 conditional-mixin: conditional mixin 0.5.1 patchouli: Patchouli 1.20.1-84-FABRIC fiber: fiber 0.23.0-2 permanentsponges: Permanent Sponges 8.1.2 pigpen: PigPen 15.0.2 ping-wheel: Ping Wheel 1.8.0 player-animator: Player Animator 1.0.2-rc1+1.20 plushies: Plushie Mod 1.4.0 polymorph: Polymorph 0.49.3+1.20.1 cardinal-components-block: Cardinal Components API (blocks) 5.2.1 cardinal-components-item: Cardinal Components API (items) 5.2.1 puzzleslib: Puzzles Lib 8.1.19 puzzlesaccessapi: Puzzles Access Api 8.0.7 railways: Create: Steam 'n' Rails 1.6.4+fabric-mc1.20.1 raised: Raised 3.1.3 reacharound: Reacharound 1.1.2 rebind\_narrator: Rebind Narrator 2.0.2 recipeessentials: recipeessentials Mod 1.20.1-3.4 redirector: Redirector 1.20.1-4.4.0 reeses-sodium-options: Reese's Sodium Options 1.7.2+mc1.20.1-build.101 reputation: Your Reputation 0.2.4+jade.1.20 resolutioncontrol: ResolutionControl+ 1.20-3.0.0 resourcefulconfig: Resourcefulconfig 2.1.2 resourcefullib: Resourceful Lib 2.1.25 com\_teamresourceful\_bytecodecs: bytecodecs 1.0.2 com\_teamresourceful\_yabn: yabn 1.0.3 resourcepackoverrides: Resource Pack Overrides 8.0.3 roughlyenoughitems: Roughly Enough Items 12.1.725 error\_notifier: Error Notifier 1.0.9 runelic: Runelic 18.0.2 sdrp: Simple Discord Rich Presence 4.0.3-build.40+mc1.20.1 com\_github\_jagrosh\_discordipc: DiscordIPC a8d6631cc9 com\_kohlschutter\_junixsocket\_junixsocket-common: junixsocket-common 2.6.2 com\_kohlschutter\_junixsocket\_junixsocket-native-common: junixsocket-native-common 2.6.2 org\_json\_json: json 20210307 searchables: Searchables 1.0.3 seasonhud: SeasonHUD 1.7.17 seasons: Fabric Seasons 2.3+1.20 seasonsdelightcompat: Fabric Seasons: Delight Compat 1.0-1.3.9 seasonsterralithcompat: Fabric Seasons: Terralith Compat 1.0-2.3.7 selling-bin: Selling Bin [1.2.9.1](http://1.2.9.1) servercore: ServerCore 1.5.1+1.20.1 fabric-permissions-api-v0: fabric-permissions-api 0.3.1 org\_yaml\_snakeyaml: snakeyaml 2.2 space\_arim\_dazzleconf\_dazzleconf-core: dazzleconf-core 1.3.0-M2 space\_arim\_dazzleconf\_dazzleconf-ext-snakeyaml: dazzleconf-ext-snakeyaml 1.3.0-M2 serverredirect: Server Redirect 1.4.5 shadertoggle: Shader Toggle 1.0 simplehats: SimpleHats 1.20.1-0.3.0 simplyswords: Simply Swords 1.55.0-1.20.1 spruceui: SpruceUI 5.0.0+1.20 sliceanddice: Create Slice & Dice 3.2.1 smallships: Small Ships 2.0.0-b1.2 smarterfarmers: Smarter Farmers 1.20-1.8.2 smoothchunk: Smooth chunk save Mod 1.20.1-3.6 snowyspirit: Snowy Spirit 1.20-3.0.6 sodium: Sodium 0.5.8+mc1.20.1 sodium-extra: Sodium Extra 0.5.4+mc1.20.1-build.115 caffeineconfig: CaffeineConfig 1.3.0+1.17 crowdin-translate: CrowdinTranslate 1.4+1.19.3 soulfired: Soul fire'd [3.2.1.0](http://3.2.1.0) spark: spark 1.10.53 spiceoffabric: Spice of Fabric 1.6.2+mc1.20.1 capsaicin: Capsaicin 1.3.3+mc1.20.1 coat: Coat 1.0.0-beta.20+mc1.20-pre1 tweed4\_annotated: tweed4\_annotated 1.3.1+mc1.20-pre1 tweed4\_base: tweed4\_base 1.7.1+mc1.20-pre1 tweed4\_data: tweed4\_data 1.2.1+mc1.20-pre1 tweed4\_data\_hjson: tweed4\_data\_hjson 1.1.1+mc1.20-pre1 tweed4\_tailor\_coat: tweed4\_tailor\_coat 1.1.3+mc1.20-pre1 tweed4\_tailor\_lang\_json\_descriptions: tweed4\_tailor\_lang\_json\_descriptions 1.1.0+mc1.20-pre1 tweed4\_tailor\_screen: tweed4\_tailor\_screen 1.1.4+mc1.20-pre1 stacc: Stacc 1.7.0 starterkit: Starter Kit 6.7 structory: Structory 1.3.3 structory\_towers: Structory: Towers 1.0.5 structureessentials: Structure Essentials Mod 1.20.1-3.3 stylisheffects: Stylish Effects 8.0.2 supermartijn642configlib: SuperMartijn642's Config Lib 1.1.8+a supermartijn642corelib: SuperMartijn642's Core Lib 1.1.17 supplementaries: Supplementaries 1.20-2.8.11 suppsquared: Supplementaries Squared 1.20-1.1.14 terrablender: TerraBlender [3.0.1.6](http://3.0.1.6) com\_electronwill\_night-config\_core: core 3.6.7 com\_electronwill\_night-config\_toml: toml 3.6.7 terralith: Terralith 2.5.1 thiccpackets: Extra Thicc Packets 1.17-1.19+ things: Things 0.3.3+1.20 lavender: Lavender 0.1.0-pre.18+1.20 

lavender-md: lavender-md 0.1.0-pre.3+1.20
lavender-md-owo-ui: lavender-md-owo-ui 0.1.0-pre.3+1.20

 toms\_storage: Tom's Simple Storage Mod 1.6.6 toolstats: ToolStats 16.0.8 trade\_cycling: Trade Cycling 1.20.1-1.0.7 tradingpost: Trading Post 8.0.2 trashcans: Trash Cans 1.0.18 travelersbackpack: Traveler's Backpack 1.20.1-9.1.9 trinkets: Trinkets 3.7.2 ubesdelight: Ube's Delight 1.20.1-0.1.5.4 universal-graves: Universal Graves 3.0.1+1.20.1 common-protection-api: Common Protection API 1.0.0 placeholder-api: Placeholder API 2.1.3+1.20.1 polymer-core: Polymer (Core) 0.5.19+1.20.1 

polymer-networking: Polymer (Networking) 0.5.19+1.20.1
polymer-registry-sync-manipulator: Polymer (Registry Sync Manipulator) 0.5.19+1.20.1

 polymer-resource-pack: Polymer (Resource Pack) 0.5.19+1.20.1 polymer-virtual-entity: Polymer (Virtual Entity) 0.5.19+1.20.1 

polymer-common: Polymer (Common) 0.5.19+1.20.1

 predicate-api: Predicate API 0.2.1+1.20.1 server\_translations\_api: Server Translations API 2.0.0+1.20 

packet_tweaker: Packet Tweaker 0.4.0+1.19.4

 sgui: sgui 1.2.2+1.20 universal\_shops: Universal Shops 1.3.2+1.20.1 common-economy-api: Common Economy API 1.1.1 vanityslots: Vanity Slots 1.2.9 villagernames: Villager Names 7.3 vinery: \[Let's Do\] Vinery 1.4.19 voicechat: Simple Voice Chat 1.20.1-2.5.15 wands: Building Wands 2.6.9-release xercamusic: Music Maker Mod fabric-1.20.1-1.0.1 xercapaint: Joy of Painting fabric-1.20.1-1.0.0 yeetusexperimentus: Yeetus Experimentus 2.3.1-build.6+mc1.20.1 yet\_another\_config\_lib\_v3: YetAnotherConfigLib 3.4.2+1.20.1-fabric com\_twelvemonkeys\_common\_common-image: common-image 3.10.0 com\_twelvemonkeys\_common\_common-io: common-io 3.10.0 com\_twelvemonkeys\_common\_common-lang: common-lang 3.10.0 com\_twelvemonkeys\_imageio\_imageio-core: imageio-core 3.10.0 com\_twelvemonkeys\_imageio\_imageio-metadata: imageio-metadata 3.10.0 com\_twelvemonkeys\_imageio\_imageio-webp: imageio-webp 3.10.0 org\_quiltmc\_parsers\_gson: gson 0.2.1 org\_quiltmc\_parsers\_json: json 0.2.1 yosbr: YOSBR 0.1.2 ysns: You Shall Not Spawn! 1.0.5 yungsapi: YUNG's API 1.20-Fabric-4.0.5 yungsextras: YUNG's Extras 1.20-Fabric-4.0.3 zoomify: Zoomify 2.13.4+1.20.1 com\_akuleshov7\_ktoml-core-jvm: ktoml-core-jvm 0.5.1 dev\_isxander\_settxi\_settxi-core: settxi-core 2.10.6 dev\_isxander\_settxi\_settxi-kotlinx-serialization: settxi-kotlinx-serialization 2.10.6 Loaded Shaderpack: (off) Flywheel Backend: GL33 Instanced Arrays Server Running: true Player Count: 0 / 8; \[\] Data Packs: vanilla, fabric, $polymer-resources, BCG+ [Datapack.zip](http://Datapack.zip), Everycomp Generated Pack, MissingMon\_v2.6.1 \[The Final Mask\] \[1.5 Update Compatible\].zip, Moonlight Mods Dynamic Assets, Moremons\_-\_v0.5.3\_-\_BCG\_Patched.zip (incompatible), MysticMons\_v2.0.zip, Snowyspirit Generated Pack, Supplementaries Generated Pack, Suppsquared Generated Pack, loadmyresources.hiddenpack (incompatible) Enabled Feature Flags: minecraft:vanilla World Generation: Stable Type: Integrated Server (map\_client.txt) Is Modded: Definitely; Client brand changed to 'fabric'; Server brand changed to 'fabric' Launched Version: fabric-loader-0.15.11-1.20.1 

I decided to share something I did! Rewrote most of the scenes I liked in Rescue Team DX during a playthrough once, as well as made the player(Meowth in my playthrough) and the partner(Pikachu in my playthrough) more lively, instead of just talking like npcs! Many other Pokemon are more fleshed out like Absol and Rayquaza too! Please read!~

(For those who can't click the link, I'll paste the thing here!)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l3GFbnQKp3iIjmF-CrSKIBZkUDetopYsYphanVV6HCE/edit?usp=sharing

{{Meowth}}: ****Where am I…? Am I dreamin’ dis? … I feel… A breeze… I hear a voice…*** Ngh… *Meowth’s eyes open to a small slit* … ***I wondah…***
{{Pikachu}}: y… ey… … Hey!
{{Meowth}]: ***Eh? Who’s dat…?***
{{Pikachu}}: Wake up… Come on–wake up!
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth groans quietly as he fully opens his eyes, slowly. He almost immediately closed them again though as he’s nearly blinded by the beaming sun* Ungh! Yeesh, dat’s bright! … H-hah?
{{Pikachu}}: *Meowth could see a Pikachu leaning over him; A TALKING Pikachu at that!* Y-you’re finally awake!
{{Meowth}}: ***Guh… Where da hell am I anyways?*** Mreoow, my head’s killin’ me… *Meowth slowly opened both eyes as he blinked a few times. He looks around left to right slowly, seeing that he was in some sort of forested area with bright, lush grass and large trees all around*
{{Pikachu}}: You fell out of the sky all of a sudden and passed out here! Oh Arceus, I was getting worried… *Pikachu smiled widely* I’m glad you’re okay though! At least I think… That was a pretty nasty fall…
{{Meowth}}: ***I guess I ain't imaginin’ anyting! Dat Pikachu IS talkin’!!***
{{Pikachu}}: *He steps closer to Meowth* What’s with the look on your face… You look like you’ve seen a talking Pokemon or something! Hehe~ Who’re you? *He tilts his head with a curious look on his face*
{{Meowth}}: GAAAH!! *Meowth jumps up in a panic, taking a defensive stance* Get da hell away from me, ya talkin’ freak!
{{Pikachu}}: Pi! *Pikachu squealed, stumbling back a bit as he was shocked at the violent reaction from Meowth!* B–but… *He points at Meowth* You’re a Meowth and YOU’RE talking!
{{Meowth}}: In yer dreams, rat! I’m a human trough and trough! Ya can’t fool me! *Meowth turns away, folding his arms as he says that*
{{Pikachu}}: No, really! You look just like a Meowth in every way! From ear to toe! *He had a shocked face*
{{Meowth}}: Wha? *Meowth looks around him, then looks down at his paws, flexing them then looking down at his pheet, wiggling his toes a little. He goes and looks into a nearby pond and gasps, his maw open a bit* MEOOOOOW?! ***It’s true! I HAVE turned into a Meowth! Is dat why I’m talkin’ like dis?!***
{{Pikachu}}: ***Is it that much of a shock…? He’s kind of a weird guy, but I can’t just leave him here!*** Um… Hey, I know! How about I lead you to town~? It’s really close to here actually!
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth thinks for a bit then slowly nods* I gots nowhere else ta go, so why not~
{{Narrator}}: *A cry for help rang through the forest as a panicked Butterfree can be seen*
{{Butterfree}}: Help meee! Somebody!! *A Butterfree suddenly comes flying towards Pikachu and Meowth*
{{Meowth}}: Woah! Hey, what’s da panic?? Ya look like ya lost yer kid in a fissure or someting! *Meowth was looking at Butterfree with widened eyes*
{{Butterfree}}: *She looks around, worried, then looks at Meowth again, heart beating quick as fast as her wings are fluttering!* I–I did! My poor little Caterpie got swallowed up by a fissure that opened up under us when we were attacked by angry Pokemon!
{{Meowth}}: Meow?! Yous guys was attacked?! *Meowth looked at Butterfree in surprise*
{{Butterfree}}: Y-yes… I tried to rescue my Caterpie myself, but I was nearly swiped at! Ooh… He’s not old enough to climb out by himself, and I’m worried he’ll be hurt!
{{Meowth}}: Oh boy… Pikachu…?
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu folds his arms, closing his eyes* Hmm… *He grins, opening one eye* We’ll find your kid and bring him back to you~! Right, Meowth?
{{Meowth}}: We will? *Meowth looks at Pikachu puzzled, then after a while, nods, looking at Butterfree and giving her a thumbs up, also giving her a grin* Y-yea! We will! Don’t sweat it, nyahaha~!
{{Pikachu}}: Meowth! Let’s go! *Pikachu, with a determined look on his face, begins to run off, with both his arms behind him*
{{Meowth}}: Right behind ya, squirt! *Meowth takes off after Pikachu in a similar manner; arms behind him!*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *After a while of running, the two Pokemon came to a stop in what seemed like a wooded area covered in foliage with high walls, almost like a maze…*
{{Pikachu}}: This place… Could it be…? *Pikachu looks around slowly, slowly spinning then gasps* It is! It’s a Mystery Dungeon~!
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth looks at Pikachu confused* A Mystery Dungeon? What in da world’s dat?
{{Pikachu}}: Well~ *Pikachu puts his arms behind his head* A Mystery Dungeon’s a real strange place… I hear, the layout of one and the items you can find inside one can change every time you enter!
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth huffs, folding his arms and looking around* Dat sure doesn’t sound gimmicky as hell…
{{Pikachu}}: Haha~ It shouldn’t be too bad! Now if only we can find the Stairs…
{{Meowth}}: Eh? *Meowth turns to Pikachu, arms still folded*
{{Pikachu}}: The Stairs let us get through places like this, but we have to find ‘em! *He looks at Meowth, nodding* and if push comes to shove, we’ll have to fight other Pokemon too. C’mon!~ *Pikachu begins to run ahead with his arms behind him, his tail flicking from left to right with the pace of his steps*
{{Meowth}}: ***Meow… Dis is gonna be a trip an’ a half, I know it…*** Hold on, wait fah me, squirt!! *Meowth begins to run after Pikachu again, arms behind him*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *After Pikachu and Meowth made their way to the final basement floor of the woods-like dungeon, 4BF, they arrived at a clearing. And in the middle of said clearing, was a scared looking Caterpie*
{{Caterpie}}: *Caterpie sniffles softly, tears in his eyes* W-waaah…! M-mommyyy? *Caterpie looks around worriedly, seeing no signs of his Butterfree mother*
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu and Meowth run towards Caterpie as Pikachu puts a paw around Caterpie*
{{Pikachu}}: Hey, you’re hurt, are you?! Don’t worry, your mom sent us to come get you out… Hup! *Pikachu gently hoists Caterpie up onto his back*
{{Caterpie}}: Uwa! U-um… Huh…?
{{Pikachu}}: Your mom’s waiting! Hang tight, lil’ bug~ *Pikachu begins to walk towards the stairs again and to the exit*
{{Caterpie}}: O-okay!
{{Meowth}}: ***”Lil’ bug”? Since when did he start talkin’ like me?*** Hopefully she’s okay… *Meowth walked beside Pikachu*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Upon seeing Pikachu and Meowth exiting Tiny Woods with Caterpie in tow, the once anxious Butterfree breathes a sigh of relief, flying closer to them both*
{{Butterfree}}: My little Caterpie is alright, thank goodness…! *Butterfree slowly takes Caterpie from Pikachu* How can I ever repay you~?
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu shakes his head* No, no, it’s okay! And with the recent quakes and fissures stirring so much trouble… It was the least we could do~! Glad your boy’s safe!
{{Butterfree}}: *Butterfree gives Pikachu a stern look, then smiles* I can’t allow that, please… Take this as a gift~ *She gives Pikachu a small brown sack*
{{Narrator}}: *Curious, Pikachu opens the sack and gasp, as Meowth was even shocked too*{{Pikachu}}: W-wah?! 500 Poke Gold?!
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth turns to see Caterpie staring at him with sparkling eyes, then Meowth tilts his head, confused* Nya? … ***Dis lil’ guy’s starin’ at me all adorable like…***
{{Caterpie}}: T-thank you! Both of you!
{{Butterfree}}: Good-bye… Take care, you two! *Butterfree smiles as she flies away with Caterpie*
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu and Meowth both wave the two Bug-type Pokemon off and Pikachu turns to Meowth*
{{Pikachu}}: Hey, thanks for the help! You’re actually kinda strong for a Meowth~!
{{Meowth}}: Eh? *Meowth turns and smiles slightly at his Electric Rodent friend* Whyy thank ya! You ain’t too shabby yerself, squirt~
{{Pikachu}}: Listen… If you really don’t have anywhere to go, I can show you around the village nearby! Follow me! *Pikachu starts to run past Meowth, stepping on Meowth’s tail by mistake in the process*
{{Meowth}}: Nyeowch! HEY! ***Gah, dat dumb rat…***
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth runs with his arms behind him to catch up with his partner*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu leads Meowth to a large hut just on the edge of Pokemon Square*
{{Pikachu}}: This is the plaaace~! My home! *Pikachu goes to the small wooden mailbox near the hut* Damn… *His ears lower* No mail huh…
{{Meowth}}: Dis place looks comfy, squirt! *Meowth whistled a bit then looks at Pikachu* Were ya expectin’ someting?
{{Pikachu}}: Well, yeah! But um… I’ve been thinking about something earlier… See, there’s been other things than just quakes… Fires, Tsunamis, y-you name it! I dunno what’s goin’ on… I wanna keep others safe! And help them if they need it. Meowth. *Pikachu looks at the ground, down at his pheet, then looks at Meowth* I could really use more of your help! How about it~? Wanna… Wanna form a rescue team with me? *He extends his paw outwards towards Meowth*
{{Meowth}}: ***A rescue team? Wit DIS twoip?! He does seem pretty sweet…*** Alright, I’ll take ya up on that offer! *Meowth closes one eye, smiling toothily as he puts his paw in Pikachu’s paw in a handshake~*
{{Pikachu}}: Piiika… *Happy tears start welling up in his eyes* ALRIIIIIGHT!!~ *Pikachu’s eyes close in a bright smile as he pumps a fist into the air in excitement while he shouts happily*
{{Meowth}}: Heh, yer pretty cute now dat I look at’cha… *Meowth folds his arms*
{{Pikachu}}: Well… We’re a team now… So that means we need a team name! Any ideas~?
{{Meowth}}: Haah… ***Dammit, mouse, why d’ya have ta put me on da spot like dis…*** Uhm… How ‘bout… TundaSwipe!
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu had started to pick up that Meowth seemed to always talk “funny” to him, but he was a bit confused as he tilts his head*
{{Pikachu}}: “Tunda”Swipe? Chuu, pi?
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth’s cheeks heat up as his blushes a bit from embarrassment* Daah… I-I mean…
{{Pikachu}}: Hmm… Are you trying to say… ThunderSwipe~?
{{Meowth}}: Yea… *Meowth looks away*
{{Pikachu}}: Hehehehaha~ *Pikachu giggles and step closer to Meowth, hugging him and looking up at him* It’s okay that you talk different than me! I know what you mean now~ … ThunderSwipe sounds perfect!
{{Meowth}}: M-mreow… *Meowth looks down at Pikachu, giving him a faint smile* Mmm.. Tanks, squirt~ *He puts a paw on Pikachu’s head right between Pikachu’s ears and rubs Pikachu’s head* On second tought… How ‘bout BoltSwipe instead~?
{{Pikachu}}: Oh! That sounds good tooo~! *Pikachu blushes and smiles cutely* Hey, I picked these up in Tiny Woods as well! *He holds out a red scarf and a green scarf* They’re scarves, to signify our newfound rescue team~!
{{Meowth}}: Heh, tank ya, squirt! But… Why is yers green and mine’s red? *Meowth slowly takes the red scarf from Pikachu and slowly puts it on, the tails of the scarf were behind his head like a typical mystery dungeon style scarf!*
{{Pikachu}}: Um… I-I only found one red one… Piika~ *He smiles sheepishly, putting on his green scarf in the same fashion as Meowth* But hey, these look great huh~! Sure… We don’t look like we’re on the same team with the different colored scarves, but… We’re friends now! Starting tomorrow, we’ll do our BEST~!
{{Narrator}}: ## **And thus… Pikachu and Meowth’s journey began… The journey to the Tower in the Sky!**
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *The next morning, Meowth wakes up before Pikachu, to see that he was in fact, still a Meowth as he looks over himself*{{Meowth}}: ***Nya…? I’m still da same as I was yesterday… Haah, guess I’m stuck like dis den.***
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu yawns softly as he starts to wake up* Mmm~! … Piiika. Good-morning, buddy~ *Pikachu looks up at Meowth* How’d ya sleep huh?!
{{Meowth}}: Heh, mornin’ squirt. Hey, I checked the mailbox earliah and it turns out dere was a Rescue Team Starter Set ready for us~! *Meowth grins, pointing to the Toolbox on the desk nearby* Aand~ *He flashes two Rescue Team badges, and tosses one to Pikachu*
{{Pikachu}}: Sweet~! *Pikachu catches the badge and attaches it to his scarf* Today’s the day we officially start doing rescue missions… I’m kinda excited and nervous at the same time! We- *Pikachu stops as he hears flapping, then looks up, seeing a Pelipper flying down to the mailbox, putting an envelope inside it with his beak, then flying off again*
{{Meowth}}: Mail? *Meowth goes and checks the mailbox, taking the envelope and looking at it*
{{Narrator}}: *The envelope was a Rescue Request from a Magnemite. Which read: “BZZT BZZT… Hey! I heard from Caterpie that you saved him yesterday! Um… I’m sort of in a pickle myself and need help! Please come!! BZZT BZZT… – Magnemite”
{{Pikachu}}: OUR FIRST RESCUE, YAAAY~!! *Pikachu was overjoyed as he jumps up and down*
{{Meowth}}: *Sweatdrop* Gee, runt, y’sure are excited… Well, let’s go help ‘em out!
{{Pikachu}}: Yep! Off to Thunderwave Cave!
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu and Meowth quickly set off together to Thunderwave Cave, where their Magnemite client needed rescuing!*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Upon arriving at the entrance to Thunderwave Cave, there stood a Teddiura with a worried look*
{{Teddiursa}}: O-oh, yes! You too came! I’m guessing that the letter Magy sent went through… Please, bring him back safely!
{{Meowth}}: On it!
{{Pikachu}}: Leave it to us!
{{Narrator}}: *Both Meowth and Pikachu nod at each other before taking off into the cave. After quite a bit, the two Pokemon emerge from the exit with Magnemite in tow as Teddiursa squeals and hugs Magnemite, nuzzling his cheek against him, giggling and thanking team BoltSwipe and rewarding them*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth was following Pikachu into Pokemon Square as he was being shown around*
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu leads Meowth over to a Persian behind a counter* This is Felicity Bank! Pokemon can store their money they get from completing rescue missions here~
{{Persian}}: Mwrraa~♡ *Persian waves a paw and smiles* I’ll always be here if you ever feel afraid to lose anything~
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu whispers to Meowth* I heard, Persian gives other cat Pokemon like you extra…. “Benefits” Hehee~
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth blushes, seeing Persian wink at him while purring. He knew what those “benefits” were~* I… I’ll take yer word for it…
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu leads Meowth over to a Kangaskhan behind a counter nearby Felicity Bank* This is the Storage~ Kangaskhan can keep any items you don’t wanna lose in her safe here!
{{Kangaskhan}}: I don’t just store things either, honey, if you need ANYTHING at all, please, don’t be scared to come to me~ *Kangaskhan smiles sweetly as her belly was heard gurgling deeply~*
{{Meowth}}: Boy, shee sounds hungry… *Meowth rubs the back of his head as he looks at Pikachu* I’m guessin’ she has a big appetite huh?
{{Pikachu}}: Haha~! Who doesn’t… Over there is the Kecleon Shop where you can buy all sorts of useful items and TMs! *Pikachu points to a purple tent with a Kecleon looking at them both from a distance behind a counter* Just uum… Don’t steal. Trust me, I’ve tried and i-it doesn’t end well…
{{Meowth}}: Luckily, yer friends with a mastah teif doh! *Meowth smiles proudly*
{{Pikachu}}: Whatever you saay, Master Thief~ That’s about all! There’s a dojo here owned by Makuhita, but it isn’t open right now… *Pikachu looks at Meowth*
{{Meowth}}: I have a feelin’ I’ll have a lot more fun in dis world dan I tought…~
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Upon hearing about the story of the Ninetales Curse from Whiscash, Pikachu appeared dejected while he and Meowth walked back towards their shared hut*
{{Pikachu}}: Meowth…
{{Meowth}}: Mow? *Meowth turns to Pikachu* What’s up, squirt?
{{Pikachu}}: L-let’s call it a day… I’m not feeling good…. *Pikachu leaves with his head down, continuing to walk*
{{Meowth}}: ***What’s up wit him today….? He ain’t normally dis glum!*** H-hey, wait up! *Meowth runs after Pikachu*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Days passed, and when night time came around one day, Pikachu and Meowth were sitting on a hill, looking up at the moon. Pikachu was still rather glum*
{{Pikachu}}: … Chuuu…
{{Meowth}}: Alright, fess up! *Meowth stands over Pikachu*
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu looks up at Meowth* What…?
{{Meowth}}: What’s da hell’s da mattah wit you! Seein’ ya like dis breaks my little cat heart! Where’s da happy-go-lucky Pikachu I was hangin’ wit a few days ago!? Where’s dat determination! Dat spark in yer eye!
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu sighs and looks down again* He’s gone… Probably with that bad human…
{{Narrator}}: *A loud slap sound echoes throughout the air as Meowth had just slapped Pikachu across the face, paw twitching*
{{Meowth}}: “Wit dat bad human” huh? Pikachu… You’re really gonna let that dumb old fish shake yous up DAT MUCH?!?
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu’s ears twitch as he feels something like tears drop into paws and he looks up to see that Meowth was… Crying*
{{Meowth}}: I get it… Y-yer tinkin’ I’M dat bad human…!!
{{Pikachu}}: I… *Pkachu bites his lip* I don’t…
{{Meowth}}: *Saying nothing, Meowth unties his scarf, taking it off and dropping it onto Pikachu’s lap* If dat’s what you tink of me, den… I’m gone.
{{Pikachu}}: YOU’RE NOT!! … *Pikachu pulls Meowth into a hug after shouting* You’re not that bad human, I’m sure of it…
{{Meowth}}: *Meowth pauses for a moment, then closed his eyes, hugging Pikachu in return, rubbing Pikachu’s back as the Electric-type cried*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *The next day, Pikachu and Meowth were walking into Pokemon Square, only to find the usual counters uninhabited!*
{{Meowth}}: Yeesh… Where is everybody? Oh!
{{Pikachu}}: Over there?
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu and Meowth go closer to where all of the residents were gather*
{{Meowth}}: What’s happinin’ now??
{{Bellsprout}}: The rumors! They were true!
{{Pikachu}}: Rumors?
{{Bellsprout}}: The legend! The Ninetales Legend!
{{Caterpie}}: Pikachu! Meowth! *Caterpie went over to them*
{{Meowth}}: Heh, heya, lil bug~
{{Snubbull}}: Shh shh! Quit yappin’, you! That guy’s telling us the deal.
{{Narrator}}: *Snubbull points to Gengar ahead at which Meowth gasps*
{{Meowth}}: DAT bastard?!
{{Pikachu}}: Ge-Gengar?!
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Gengar was standing in the center of Pokemon Square as everyone was surrounding him, listening to him*
{{Gengar}}: I went up to the Hill of the Ancients in the Great Canyon a few days ago! Dat’s where I saw it! Shocking stuff, I tell ya!
{{Lombre}}: Shocking stuff?
{{Gengar}}: There was this certain Pokemon… Heheh, getting advice from Xatu! That Pokemon… He may look ordinary, but get this! He was… *He paused for dramatic effect* … A HUMAN!!
{{Narrator}}: *Everyone besides Meowth and Pikachu gasp in shock*
{{Bellsprout}}: What?!
{{Snubbull}}: It really did exist… A human turned Pokemon… *He huffs in amazement*
{{Gengar}}: But wait, there’s more! *Gengar smiles devious, even more than he was already* Xatu told the human, that the human was the cause of all of the natural disasters!
{{Lombre}}: He was??
{{Gengar}}: If the world’s balance isn’t restored… The world will be destroyed! Dat’s what the psychic bird said! Kahaahaha!
{{Persian}}: Oh dear…!
{{Pikachu}}: Grr… *He turns to Meowth* That damn ghost… He’s gettin’ everyone riled up!!
{{Gengar}}: Hey, hey! Calm dooown~ There’s something easy we can do!
{{Kangaskhan}}: Like what? *She crosses her arms, curious*
{{Gengar}}: Well, if the world’s imbalance is the cause due to the human… Then if he’s gone, everything should be back to normal! Right~? That human is the rotten bastard who ditched his partner Pokemon, Celebi… So if we get rid of the human, then…
{{Snubbull}}: Let’s do it!
{{Kangaskhan}}: It’s… The only way… *She lowers her head*
{{Gengar}}: *He chuckles darkly, looking at Meowth* Hear that… The human’s gonna be no more~ *He cackles and points at Meowth* ISN’T THAT RIGHT, HUMAN?!
{{Meowth}}: Mowh!! *Meowth steps back* N-now wait a sec! I ain’t–
{{Persian}}: I was beginning to like you too… Shame…
{{Meowth}}: P-Persian…?
{{Caterpie}}: H-how c-could you… *He starts tearing up* I-I thought you were a hero…
{{Butterfree}}: Pity…
{{Meowth}}: H-hey, not you too…!
{{Snubbull}}: You! Bastard of a cat! Is this true?!
{{Pikachu}} Wait, wait!! Meowth isn’t a human! You must be–
{{Kangaskhan}}: *Kangaskhan glares down at Pikachu* Silence. *She looks at Meowth* Cat…
{{Narrator}}: *Backed into a corner, Meowth takes a step back, shuddering, unable to talk, a scared look on his face*
{{Pikachu}}: M-Meowth… ***I’ve never seen him this scared before…***
{{Gengar}}: Hah! What’s the matter, Meowth got’cha tongue~? Ironic, considerin’ you ARE one… Or ARE YOU! Haaahahahaha!!
{{Narrator}}: *The group of Pokemon start to close in on Pikachu and Meowth as the two back away slowly*
{{Pikachu}}: R-run for it!! *Pikachu starts to take off running*
{{Meowth}}: Gaah! *Meowth takes off after Pikachu*
{{Gengar}}: Heh… *He watches Pikachu and Meowth run in fear* Serves them right…
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu and Meowth had retreated back to their base, panting*{{Pikachu}}: I… I think we lost them… *He turns to Meowth, then growls* You dumbass! You didn’t even TRY to defend yourself! You just stood there like a pussy!! And NOT because you’re a cat Pokemon!
{{Meowth}}: P-Pikachu… I’m… Tired of dis…
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu drops his angry expression, having it replaced with concern*{{Meowth}}: I’m not fit ta be yer partner anymore… I only slow ya down an’ get us inta trouble… Maybe I am dat bad human Gengar was talkin’ about… Maybe I am betta off dead, betta off–
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth was cut off but receiving a hard slap to the face by Pikachu, who was growling at him*
{{Pikachu}}: Don’t… Ever… SAY THAT!! Meowth, I wouldn’t be as strong as I am now if it weren't for you! I wouldn’t have a friend! I wouldn’t have a team…
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth stood there in shock, his cheek stained with the red paw print of a Pikachu paw on it. But soon they were approached by Alakazam Charizard and Tyranitar, the gold rank team; ACT*
{{Alakazam}}: Back in Pokemon Square. There was a meeting.
{{Charizard}}: I’m sorry to say, but…
{{Tyranitar}}: We have to get rid of you, by brute force!
{{Meowth}}: Mreeooow… N-not you guys too…
{{Charizard}}: It hurts me to have t’kill a cute lil guy like you, but… I go by Alakazam’s orders!
{{Alakazam}}: No. We will give you by tonight. And you will be gone by tomorrow morning, is that understood?
{{Meowth}}: … I… *Meowth hangs his head* Yea…
{{Tyranitar}}: Run… Against all odds, you have to run! Run…
{{Charizard}}: And survive…
{{Alakazam}}: You must uncover the truth… Do NOT stop running until you do.
{{Meowth}}: N-nya… *He starts to tear up* Charizard… And Alakazam…
{{Narrator}}: *Charizard gives Pikachu a smirk*{{Charizard}}: But if I see ya back here too soon, you’ll just end up being my lunch. Heh! There won’t be mercy next time, not from me, or the others… Now get outta here! Go and clear your name, kitty! *Charizard winks*
{{Meowth}}: … Yea! Tanks… *He gives a slight, weak smile*
{{Narrator}}: During the night time, Pikachu and Meowth got all prepped to and when the early morning, Pikachu and Meowth too one last look at Pokemon Square, and their home, before silently leaving, unsure of what awaited them…
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Traversing the fiery Mt. Blaze, and the sheer cold that was Frosty Forest and Mt. Freeze, Pikachu and Meowth had finally arrived at the very peak of Mt. Freeze, where the fabled Ninetales awaited them, accompanying them, was their new friend, Absol, but…*
{{Meowth}}: F… Finally… I-it’s fr-freezin’…
{{Absol}}: But… Where is she? *Absol looks around confused, but then…* Huh?!
{{Charizard}}: *Cracking his neck a bit and pounding his fists together* Caught yaa~ Heheheeheee…
{{Pikachu}}: Gck… *Pikachu steps back* Ch-Charizard!!
{{Absol}}: Hm! *He quickly gets in front of Pikachu and Meowth to guard them, while glaring at Charizard* Where’s the other two?
{{Charizard}}: The blizzard was too harsh for them, ‘specially T-tar. But why’s that matter? I’m here to put these little runts six feet under! *Charizard stomps forward with a wide smirk on his face*
{{Ninetales}}: There will be no need for such violence… *She slowly steps out into view*
{{Charizard}}: N-Ninetales?!
{{Absol}}: Woah…
{{Meowth}}: It’s… Really her…
{{Ninetales}}: I should have welcomed you three sooner, forgive me.
{{Meowth}}: C-can ya tell us?! Who was da human dat was in da legend!
{{Charizard}}: Is it even REAL?
{{Narrator}}: *Clearly, everyone was shocked at Ninetales appearance… But Ninetales simply looks at them all*
{{Ninetales}}: I care not whether it is considered a legend or true. Though… It did happen. It was decades ago where I tried to lay a curse on a human. However, the human’s partner, a Celebi rushed in. It was selfless enough to take the full brunt of the curse. Instead of aiding, the human chose to flee. It disgusted me. Said human, became a Pokemon themselves as punishment. The human still lives to this very day, as a Pokemon.
{{Absol}}: *He steps up* But… Who IS the human?
{{Ninetales}}: *She slowly looks over at Meowth* No one nearby.
{{Meowth}}: !!
{{Charizard}}: Huh!
{{Pikachu}}: Um… You said… J-just now…
{{Ninetales}}: The Pokemon standing before you–Meowth, is not the human in the legend.
{{Pikachu}}: … W-wha… ***I feel fuzzy… N-no! Relieved…*** Meowth…
{{Meowth}}: U-uh. Squirt? You–
{{Pikachu}}: MEOOOWTH!!!~ *Pikachu suddenly leaps at Meowth and hugs him, nuzzling into him while tearing up and crying tears of joy*
{{Meowth}}: Waaaa-uaah! *He stumbled a bit, but caught Pikachu, smiling gently* I’m here, squirt…! G-gosh, yer heavy..
{{Pikachu}}: I-I knew it all along!~ I just knew you weren’t that bad human in the legend!!
{{Charizard}}: *He smiles sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head* I guess I owe ya an apology then, heh…~ Sorry, then.
{{Ninetales}}: And… The world’s calamities. They are not related to the human whatsoever. The source… Exists elsewhere.
{{Meowth}}: D-dat’s a relief for me I guess… But that ain’t good at all!
{{Charizard}}: You said it…
{{Absol}}: Pikachu, Meowth… I– … I want to continue following you. I have to!
{{Pikachu}}: Sure you can… Buddy~!{{Absol}}: … Mmp– *Absol blushes faintly, but quickly shakes it off*{{Narrator}}: *With the troubling rumor debunked, Pikachu, Meowth, Absol and Charizard all began to leave, slowly, but surely, making their way back to Pokemon Square*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *In Pokemon Square…*
{{Gengar}}: Heh… Look who came running back… What, ya didn’t get buried huh?
{{Meowth}}: You… Rotten… EVERYTHING YA TOLD DEES GUYS WAS A LIE!!
{{Pikachu}}: Piii-ka! Yeah!! Meowth had nothing to do with it, ya ghostly bastard!
{{Absol}}: He was INNOCENT.
{{Gengar}}: Gen–?! *Gengar flinched a bit*
{{Lombre}}: What…? He was?!
{{Shiftry}}: Gengaar, you…
{{Gengar}}: H-hey, hey! They’re lyin’! They don’t know anything!
{{Snubbull}}: … Yeah, show us some proof then!
{{Meowth}}: Uh.. Proof… Um..
{{Gengar}}: Well?? Where’s the evidence, hahaah! C’mon, show us!
{{Absol}}: *Absol steps up, smirking* You called~? Your proof’s right here.
{{Gengar}}: Who the hell– Hey! Get rid of these guys!
{{Bellsprout}}: Not likely… Meowth would launch me into space…
{{Snubbull}}: I don’t wanna be shocked!
{{Caterpie}}: You’re just a big liar!! Meowth was my hero and I always believed in him!
{{Gengar}}: Shoot… *He starts to back away* I’m outta here!!
{{Narrator}}: *Gengar dashes away with an angry mob of the other Pokemon chasing after him*
{{Absol}}: Hah, buh-bye, ghost boy~ *He laughs as he watches Gengar flee, then turns to Meowth and Pikachu* Now… Do you have anymore gummies?
{{Meowth}}: Nyahahahaa, somebody’s hooked! C’mon back ta base with us!
{{Absol}}: … R-right.
{{Narrator}}: *Absol once again blushes, then huffs as he begins to follow behind the two smaller Pokemon. Meowth was glad his name had been cleared and all was well. Or so it seemed…*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Upon celebrating the defeat of Groudon in Magma Cavern and the rescue of team A.C.T, Meowth and Pikachu were touted as heroes of sorts, being recognized by the higher ranked teams for their bravery! But suddenly, Xatu began to communicate with them all telepathically…*
{{Xatu}}: ***Am I coming in clear?***
{{Meowth}}: Xatu?!
{{Alakazam}}: This is a surprise! Is something the matter?{{Xatu}}: ***I may have terrible news! Something… From the sky…falls a star.***
{{Charizard}}: A star?
{{Raichu}}: I think… I think he means…
{{Xatu}}: ***A meteorite. A large one… One the size of the planet itself!***
{{Persian}}: Nya–?! Y-you have to be joking!
{{Kangaskhan}}: I don’t think he is…
{{Xatu}}: ***The meteor. It’s the cause of the natural disasters recently… If something isn’t done to stop it from hitting earth… This world would be destroyed. The star falls ever-closer…***
{{Charizard}}: Xatu… Can it be stopped?!
{{Xatu}} … ***There is a way. One must seek out the Dragon of Legend himself. Only then, will there be a possibility.***
{{Aipom}}: RAYQUAZA!?
{{Blastoise}}: That’s askin’ for a death wish! No way! No way in hell is anyone doing that!
{{Octillery}}: No rescue team has ever gone up to Sky tower before!
{{Narrator}}: *Various gasps and sounds of disagreement sound throughout Pokemon square*
{{Pikachu}}: Oh no… So this is what Ninetales meant by the world’s balance is upset… We have to stop it, Meowth!!
{{Narrator}}: *Everyone’s attention turned to Meowth and Pikachu*
{{Meowth}}: *He turns to Pikachu* WHA– Squirt, are you NUTS or someting?! Did ya eat a bad gummy?
{{Wigglytuff}}: Meowth is right… Going up to the sky could be suicide…
{{Absol}}: *Absol growls and steps up* If we don’t stop it, WHO WILL?! Listen to me. Do you want to die? Do you want to live your last few days in fear because you bothered not to do anything about the threat of danger?? I sensed that something was coming… And I want to stop it!
{{Tyranitar}}: Absol…?
{{Pikachu}}: Absol…
{{Meowth}}: *He nods and runs in front of everyone* The snow boy’s right! We can’t let dis be da end! Someone’s gotta do sometin’ about dat meteor… And dat someone.. IS US!!
{{Absol}}: Xatu. Tell us how to get to Sky Tower!
{{Xatu}}: ***Alakazam.***{{Alakazam}}: … Yes.
{{Narrator}}: ***Alakazam closes his eyes then starts to focus. A green glow began to emit from him and then, in front of him. A green beam shoots up into the air with smaller swirls of green, the sound of wind blowing rang out as the beam slowly fades, and in front of them, was a light blue emerald!***
{{Pikachu}}: Wooah…
{{Meowth}}: What is dat…?
{{Xatu}}: ***Amplifying our teleporting abilities together, Alakazam and I are able to create the Teleport Gem. This gem allows Pokemon who hold it to be transported to the sky…***{{Pikachu}}: Well then… T-this is it… One final Mystery Dungeon…
{{Raichu}}: Please be careful…!!
{{Kangaskhan}}: You’re our only hope, Meowth… Pikachu…
{{Kecleon}}: You have to stop it… For the sake of the world!
{{Persian}}: Hm~ My little Meowth’s grown to be a hero… I wish you three the best of luck…
{{Everyone}}: GO, TEAM BOLTSWIPE!!
{{Meowth}}: Mrrew… *Meowth wipes away some tears, then nods, looking at Pikachu and Absol*{{Absol}}: You can always depend on me… Buddy~
{{Pikachu}}: We’ll stop that meteor and save this world~!
{{Narrator}}: *With another nod, Meowth, together with Pikachu and Absol, step forward towards the Teleport Gem. And upon touching the gem, green energy starts to swirl around them slowly, then rapidly as winds whip up, blowing their scarves a bit. Light green winds whip around the three and soon disperse as they disappear, along with the Teleport Gem!*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Green energy swirls about then disperse, to reveal the three members of team BoltSwipe at the bottom of Sky Tower, right in front of the entrance. Pikachu looks up in shock*
{{Pikachu}}: Wooah… *He looks around*
{{Narrator}}: *The three of them were on top of a sea of clouds! It was quite a sight*
{{Pikachu}}: *Pikachu looks up slowly* PIIKA! H-hey, guys, look!
{{Meowth}}: *He slowly looked up* Whew… It's a giant towah of clouds!!
{{Absol}}: It… Oddly looks like a bunch of white and blue cotton candy… *Absol’s belly grumbles softly after that and he blushed*
{{Pikachu}}: *Giggling* Boy, you DO have a sweet tooth~!
{{Meowth}}: First, ya eat all da gummies, now yer tinkin’ about cotton candy… Nyehehe!
{{Absol}}: *Blushing more* I– W-whatever, shut up! This is the final dungeon…
{{Pikachu}}: Yeah… *Pikachu stares into the exit as he nods*
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth takes the lead as he nods, running into the entrance, ready to face their last test…*
END_OF_DIALOG
{{Narrator}}: *Upon reaching the peak of Sky Tower and a hard fought battle against Rayquaza, the fighting was interrupted by a sudden rumble in the clouds!*
{{Pikachu}}: W-whuaauaah!! *Pikachu almost loses balance* A-any earthquake?! Here?!
{{Meowth}}: N-no, dis is different…
{{Rayquaza}}: These are shockwaves! Tremendous ones at that…
{{Absol}}: We didn’t come here to fight! There’s a meteor on it’s way to earth, and if we don’t destroy it, everything will be gone!!
{{Rayquaza}}: Hmph, how is that MY problem.
{{Meowth}}: If ya don’t do someting, YOUR domain here’s gonna be toast too!
{{Rayquaza}}: … Fine.
{{Narrator}}: *Rayquaza looks up slowly to see the giant meteor, then closes his eyes, inhaling deeply as purple energy starts to form in his maw. Then his eyes snap open as he roars and fires off a majestic purple Hyper Beam at the meteor. It slowly started to crack the meteor but Rayquaza started losing power. Pikachu nods at Meowth and Absol*
{{Pikachu}}: Guys!
{{Meowth & Absol}}: Right!!
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth charges up a powerful Dark Pulse in his paws then fires it off at the meteor as Absol charges and fires a powerful Ice Beam from his maw. Pikachu’s cheeks spark as he fires a Thunderbolt alongside them, with the three beams alongside Rayquaza’s Hyper Beam, much to Rayquaza’s surprise!*
{{Meowth}}: Grrf… C’mon… More…. *Meowth continued to strain himself* I know ya have more powah in ya, Dragon… SO HURRY UP AND USE IT ALREADY!!!!
{{Narrator}}: *Rayquaza’s heart gave off a resounding pulse sound as his eyes shot open*
{{Rayquaza mind}}: ***Why are you holding back? Don’t you care about your home? Don’t you care about them; team BoltSwipe? That Meowth has a point. You have power deep inside you. RELEASE IT.***
{{Narrator}}: *With a reverberating roar, energy swirls around Rayquaza as he mega evolves! He amps up the power of his Hyper Beam which was enough to shatter the meteor entirely as multicolor particles start to rain down onto Sky Tower*
END_OF_DIALOG
{[Narrator}}: *Days passed and life returned to normal in Pokemon Square, everyone was up on the Hill of the Ancients, but then… Meowth started to glow and slowly turn translucent*
{{Pikachu}}: … M-Meowth!! *Pikachu runs over to Meowth* What’s happening!? Are you okay?!
{{Absol}}: You’re glowing!
{{Meowth}}: Meow… *He gives a faint smile* Pikachu…. Everyone… I-I guess my time’s up.
{{Charizard}}: W-wha…
{{Caterpie}}: W-what does that mean!?
{{Meowth}}: I won’t be here much longah
{{Pikachu}}: *Shaking head* Stop… Don’t say stuff like that!~ We’re gonna go on lots and lots of adventures forever! Right~?
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth simply just stands there, the glow and translucency intensifying*
{{Pikachu}}: … R-right? Meowth…?
{{Meowth}}: I was sent here ta fulfill my role I guess~ And It’s been filled! Tanks for everyting…
{{Pikachu}}: Your role? C’mon, stop bein’ silly already ya dummy~
{{Absol}}: Pikachu…
{{Alakazam}}: It really is that time…
{{Meowth}}: Sorry… Squirt…~
{{Pikachu}}: W-why?? Why do you have to leave?! *Pikachu starts to tear up* W-we were supposed to be… F-friends forever…!
{{Meowth}}: Hey… Tink of it dis way! Dere’s always more Meowth you can befriend~
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth’s body began to glow more*{{Meowth}}: Even if I’m not here, we’ll always be pals!
{{Pikachu}}: *Slowly, he goes closer* D– *He could barely talk as he was fighting back tears* D-don’t leave…! I don’t wanna be alone… P-please!!
{{Meowth}}: I’m… *His scarf fell off as his body got more translucent and the glow got bigger as his body sparkled* I’m real lucky I met’cha, squirt… Nya~...
{{Narrator}}: *Others, notably Charizard and Absol were also struggling to fight back tears*{{Pikachu}}: J-just a little longer, please!!! What’ll BoltSwipe be without you!! *Pikachu goes to pick up Meowth’s scarf as tears stream down his face* M-Meowth!!
{{Narrator}}: *Meowth’s body fades into a bright yellow orb as he gave one final smile towards Pikachu*
{{Meowth telepathy}}: ***I really had fun with ya… I’m sorry I have ta leave ya hangin’ like dis… But dere’s notin’ I can do… Everyone… Tank you…~ See ya, squirt~***
{{Narrator}}: *The orb of light starts to slowly rise over the cliff edge as Pikachu followed it running right to the edge of the cliff, watching it rise higher and and higher*
{{Pikachu}}: MEOOOOOOWTH!!!!
{{Narrator}}: *Pikachu’s voice echoed through the air as he yells out to Meowth with tears streaming down his face heavily as the yell orb slowly fades. Perhaps in another time, the two will meet again!*
END_OF_DIALOG

She was round, heavy, soft, naked, and lay in a single size bed; the glow of the monitor was the only thing that lit the dark room—there were no windows and a single overhead vent circulated fresh air through the little bedroom. The young woman lifted her arms, so they stood out from her shoulders like two sticks directly towards the ceiling vent; she squinched her face as she extended her arms out and a singular loud pop resonated from her left elbow. Though she lingered in bed and yawned and tossed the yellowy sheets around, so they twisted around her legs ropelike, she’d not just awoken; Pixie remained conscious the entire night. Her stringy unwashed hair—shoulder length—clumped around her head in tangles. Pixie reached out for the metallic nightstand and in reaching blindly while she yawned again, her fingers traced the flat surface of the wall. She angled up and the sheets fell from around her bare midsection.
Hairs knottily protested, snagging as the brush passed over her head. Pixie returned to her back with a flop, continued to hold the brush handle in her left fist, stared absently at the ceiling vent; a light breeze passed through the room, a draft created by the vent and the miniscule space at the base of the door on the wall by the foot of the bed. Her eyes traced the outline of the closed door; the whole place was ghostly with only the light of the monitor as it flickered muted cartoons—the screen was mounted to the high corner adjacent the door and its colored lights occasionally illuminated far peripheries of the space.
Poor paper was tacked around open spaces of the walls with poorer imitations of manga stylings. Bulbously oblong-eyed characters stared down at her from all angles. Spaces not filled by those doodles were pictures, paintings, still images of Japanese iconography: bonsai, samurai, Shinto temples, yokai, so on, so on.
Pixie chewed her bottom lip, nibbled the skin she’d torn from there. The monitor’s screen displayed deep, colorful anime.
“Kohai, Noise on,” she said.
The monitor beeped once in response then its small speaker filled the room with jazz-funk-blues.
“Three, two, one,” Pixie whispered in unison with the words which spilled from the speaker.
Being twenty years old, she was limber enough to contort her upper half from the bed, hang from its edge so the edge held at her lower back; she wobbled up and down until she heard a series of cracks resonate. Pixie groaned in satisfaction and returned properly onto the bed.
The monitor, in its low left corner showed: 6:47. Pixie sighed.
As if by sudden possession, she launched from the mattress onto the little space afforded to the open floor and stood there and untangled herself from where the sheets had coiled around her legs. She then squatted by the bed, rear pressed against the nightstand, and withdrew a drawer from under her bed. Stowed there were a series of clothing items and she dressed herself in eccentric blue, flowy pants with an inner cord belt. For her top, she donned a worn and thinly translucent stained white t-shirt. By the door, beneath the monitor on the floor were a pair of slide-on leather shoes and she stepped into them.
Pixie whipped open the door and slammed her cheek to the threshold’s frame to speak to the monitor. “Kohai, off.”
The room went totally dark as she gently shut and locked the door.
She stood in a narrow, white-painted brick hallway with electric sconces lining the walls, each of those urine-yellow lights coated the white walls in their glow; Pixie’s own personal pallor took on the lights’ hue.
With her thumbs hooked onto the pockets of her pants, she moseyed without hurry down the hall towards a zippering staircase; there were floors above and floors below and she took the series leading down until she met the place where there were no more stairs to take.
The lobby of the structure was not so much that, but more of a thoroughfare with an entryway both to the left and the right; green leaves overhung terracotta dirt beds pressed along the walls. Pixie’s feet carried her faster while she angled her right shoulder out.
Natural warmth splintered into the lobby’s scene as she slammed into the rightward exit and began onto the lightly metropolitan street, bricked, worn, crumbling. Wet hot air sent the looser hairs spidering outward from her crown while lorries thrummed by on the parallel roadway; the sidewalk Pixie stomped along carried few other passersby and when she passed a well-postured man going the opposite way on her side of the street, he stopped, twisted, and called after, “Nice wagon.”
There was no response at all from Pixie, not a single eye blink that might have determined whether she heard what he’d said at all. The man let go of a quick, “Pfft,” before pivoting to go in the direction he’d initially set out for.
Tall Tucson congestion was all around her, Valencia Street’s food vendors resurrected for the day and butters or lards struck grill flats or pans and were shortly followed by batters and eggs and pig cuts—chorizo spice filled the air. Aromatics filled the southernmost line of the street where there were long open plots of earth—this was where a series of stalls gathered haphazardly. The box roofs of the stalls stood in the foreground of the entryway signs which directed towards the municipal superstructure. The noise swelled too—there were shouts, homeless dogs that cruised between the ramshackle stalls; a tabby languished in the sun atop a griddle hut and the dogs barked after it and the tabby paid no mind as it stretched its belly out for the sky. Morning commuters, walkers, gathered to their places and stood in queues or sat among the red earth or took to stools if they were offered by the vendors. Those that took food dispersed with haste, checking tablets or watches or they simply glanced at the sky for answers.
Sun shafts played between the heavy morning clouds that passed over, gray and drab, and there were moments of great heat then great relief then mugginess; it signaled likely rain.
At an intersection where old corroded chain-link fencing ran the length of the southern route with signs warning of trespass, she took Plumer Avenue north and kept her eyes averted to the hewn brick ground beneath her feet. Pixie lifted her nose, sniffed, stuffed her fists into her pockets then continued looking at her own moving feet.
Among the rows of crowded apartments which lined either side of Plumer, there were alleyway vendors—brisk rude people which called out to those that passed in hopes of trade; many of the goods offered were needless hand-made ornaments and the like. Strand bead bracelets dangled from fingers in display and were insistently shown off while artisans cried out prices while children’s tops spun in shoebox sized arenas while corn-husk cigarettes were sold by the pack. It was all noise everywhere.
A few vendors yelled after Pixie, but she ignored them and kept going; the salespeople then shifted their attention to whoever their eyes fell on next—someone with a better response. Plumer Avenue was packed tighter as more commuters gathered to the avenues and ran across the center road at seemingly random intervals—those that drove lorries and battery wagons protested those street crossers with wild abandon; the traffic that existed crept through the narrow route. People ran like water around the tall black light box posts or the narrow and government tended mesquite trunks.
It sprinkled rain; Pixie crossed her arms across her chest and continued walking. The rain caused a mild haze across the scene—Pixie scrunched her nose and quickened her pace.
She came to where she intended, and the crowd continued with its rush, but she froze there in front of a grimy windowed storefront—the welded sign overhead read: Odds N’ Ends. Standing beside the storefront’s door was a towering fellow. The pink and dew-eyed man danced and smiled and there was no music; his shoeless calloused heels ground and twisted into the bricks like he intended to create depressions in the ground there. Rainwater beaded and was cradled in his mess of hair. He offered a flash of jazz hands then continued his twisty groove. Though the man hushed words to himself, they were swallowed by the ruckus of the commuters around him.
Pixie pressed into the door, caught the man’s eyes, and he grinned broader, Hello! he called.
She responded with an apologetic nod and stretched a flat smile without teeth.
Standing on the interior mat, the door slammed behind her, and she traced the large, high-ceiling interior.
To the right, towering shelves of outdated preserves and books and smokes and incenses and dead crystals created thin pathways; to the left was a counter, a register, and an old, wrinkled woman with a fat gray bun coiled atop her head—she kept a thin yarn shawl over her shoulders. The old woman sat in a high-backed stool behind the register, examined a hardback paper book splayed adjacent the register; she traced her fingers along the sentences while she whispered to herself. Upon finally noticing Pixie standing by the door, the woman came hurriedly from around the backside of the counter, arms up in a fury, “You’re late, Joan,” said the old woman; her eyes darted to the analog dial which hung by the storefront, “Not by much, but still.” Standing alongside one another, the old woman seemed rather short. “You’re soaked—look at you, dripping all over the floor.”
Pixie nodded but refrained from looking the woman in the eye.
“Oh,” the old woman flapped her flattened hand across her own face while coughing, “When did you last wash?” She grabbed onto Pixie’s shoulders, angled the younger woman back so that she could stare into her face. “Look at your eyes—you haven’t been sleeping at all, Joan. What will we do with you? What am I going to do with you?” Then the old woman froze. “Pixie,” she nodded, clawed a single index finger, and tapped the crooked appendage to her temple, “I forget.”
“It’s alright,” whispered Pixie.
The old woman’s nature softened for a moment, her shoulders slanted away from her throat, and she shuffled to return to her post behind the counter. “Anyway, the deliveryman from the res came by and dropped off that shipment, just like I told you he would. They’re in the back. Could you bring them out and help me put them up? I tried a few of them, but the boxes are quite heavy, and it’s worn my back out already.” The old woman offered a meager grin, exposing her missing front teeth. She turned her attention to the book on the counter, lifted it up so it was more like a miniscule cubicle screen—the title read: Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them.
Pixie set to the task; the stockroom was overflowing even more so with trinkets—a barrel of mannequin arms overhung from a shelf by the ceiling, covered in dust—dull hanging solitary light bulbs dotted the stockroom’s ceiling and kept the place dark and moldy, save those spotlights. The fresh boxes sat along the rear of the building, where little light was. Twelve in total, the boxes sat and said nothing, and Pixie said nothing to the boxes. The woman took a pocketknife to the metal stitches which kept them closed. Though the proprietor of Odds N’ Ends said she’d tried her hand at the boxes already, there was no sign of her interference.
The first box contained dead multi-colored hair and the stuff stood plumelike from the mouth of the container; Pixie gave it a shake and watched the strands shift around. This unsettled but was not entirely unpleasant; the unpleasantness followed when she grabbed a fistful of hair only to realize she’d brought up a series of dried scalps which clicked together—hard leather on hard leather. Pixie gagged, dropped the scalps where they’d come from, shook her hands wildly, then placed that box to the ground and shifted it away with her foot.
The next contained a full layer of straw and she hesitantly brushed her hand across the top to uncover glass jars—dark browned liquids. Falsely claimed tinctures.
Curiously, she tilted her head at the next box, it was of a different color and shape than the rest. Green and Rectangular. And further aged too. Pixie sucked in a gulp of air, picked at the stitching of the box with her knife then peered inside. Like the previous box, it was full of straw and with more confidence, she pawed it away. She stumbled backwards from the box, hissing, and brought her finger up to her face. A thin trail of blood trickled by the index fingernail of her right hand; she jammed the finger in her mouth and moved to the box again. Carefully, she removed the object by one end. In the dim light, she held a long-handled, well curved tachi sword; the shine of the blade remained pristine. It was ancient and deceiving.
“Oh,” said Pixie around the index finger in her mouth, “It’s a katana.”
She moved underneath one of the spotlights of the stockroom, held it vertically over herself in the glare, traced her eyes along the beautifully corded black handle. As she twisted the blade in the air, it caught the light and she seemed stricken dumb. She withdrew her finger from her mouth, held the thing out in front of her chest with both hands, put her eyes along the water-wave edge. Her tongue tip squeezed from the corner of her mouth while she was frozen with the sword.
In a dash, she held the thing casually and returned to the box. She rummaged within and came up with the scabbard. The weapon easily clicked safely inside. “Pretty cool,” she said.
The other boxes held nothing quite so inspiring as a sword nor anything as morbid as dead scalps. There were decapitated shaved baby-doll heads lining the interior slots of plastic egg cartons, and more fake tonics, and tarot cards, and cigarettes, and a few unmarked media cartridges—both assortments of videos and music were represented in their designs. Pixie spent no time whatsoever ogling any of the other objects; her attention remained with the sword which she kept in her hand as she sallied through the boxes. Between opening every new box, she took a long break to unsheathe the sword and play-fight the air without poise—even so the tachi was alive spoke windily.
“Quit lollygagging,” said the old woman; she stood in the doorway to the stockroom, shook her head, “Is this what you’ve been doing all morning? How are we supposed to get the new merchandise on the shelves—including that sword—if you won’t stop playing around?”
Pixie’s voice cracked, “How much is it?”
The old woman balked, “The sword?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a display piece. We put it in the window to draw in potential customers, of course. It’s too expensive to keep them in stock. I don’t even know where a person could find a continuous stock of them, but if we can put it in the window, perhaps clientele will come in, ask about it, then shop a bit—it’s not something you can sell; it’s an investment.” The old woman, slow as she was, steadied across the stockroom and met Pixie there by the boxes, placed her hand on the open containers, briefly glanced into the nearest one, and smiled. “It’d take you a lifetime to pay back if you wanted a sword like that anyway. Now,” The old woman placed a hand on Pixie’s shoulder, “Put it away. There’s a strange man outside and I need your help shooing him away. He’s likely scared away potential customers already.”
The two of them, tachi returned to its place, went to the front of the store; it was ghostly quiet save their footfalls—the customers that did stop into the store hardly ever stopped in more than the once; it was a place of oddities, strangeness, novelty. The things they sold most of were the packaged cigarettes from the res. No one cared enough for magic or fortune telling. Still, the old woman carried on, like she did often, about the principals for running a business. Pixie carried no principals—none could be found—so the young woman nodded along with anything the old woman said while staring off.
On the approach to the storefront, the man from before could be seen and his dance had not slowed—if anything his movements had only become further enamored with dance. His elbows swung wildly, he spun like a ballerina, he kicked his feet against the brick sideway and did not flinch at the pain of it.
“There he is,” said the old woman, “He’s acting crazy as hell. Look at him go.” He went. “If I wasn’t certain he was as crazy as a deck with five suits, I’d ask if he wanted to bark for me—you know, draw in a crowd.” She shook her head. “Don’t know why people like him can’t just go to the airport. There are handouts there. Anyway, I need to get back to it myself. As do you,” she directed this at Pixie; although Pixie towered over the woman in terms of physicality, the older woman rose on her tiptoes, pinched the younger woman’s soft bicep hard, whispered, “Get that bastard off my stoop, understand?”
Again, the old woman’s face softened, and she left Pixie standing there on the front door’s interior mat. The crone returned to her place behind the counter, nestled onto the stool like a bird finding comfort, then craned her neck far down so her nose nearly touched the book page; her eyes followed her finger across the lines.
Pixie’s chest swelled and then went small as the sigh escaped her; her shoulders hung in front of her, and she briskly pushed outside.
The rain had gone, but the smell remained; across the street, where the morning’s foot congestion decreased, a series of blue-coated builders could be spied hoisting materials—metal framing and brick—via scaffolding with a series of pulleys. For a moment, Pixie stared across the street and watched the men work and shout at one another; a lorry passed by, broke her eyeline and she was suddenly confronted by the dancing man who pivoted several times in a semicircle around where she stood. Far, far off, birds called. Fuel fog stunk the air.
Move, said the dancing man. Initially it seemed a rude command, but upon catching his rain-wetted face, it was obvious that his will was not one of malice, but of love and peace and cosmic splendor. It does not matter how you move, but you must move! It was an offer. Not a command. Or so it seemed.
The man rolled his neck and flicked his head around and the jewels which beaded there glowed around him for a blink as they were cast off.
You’ve been sent to send me away, yeah? asked the man.
“That’s right,” said Pixie.
But it’s not because you wish it?
“I couldn’t care if you stood out here all day.” Pixie bit her lip, chewed enough that a trickle of blood touched her tongue; her eyes swept across the street again and focused on the builders. “The fewer customers we have, the less I need to speak.”
The man froze in his dance then suddenly his stature slumped. He nodded. I’ll go. As you must. You must too, yeah?
“Go? Go where?”
You know.
She did.
The man left and Pixie remained on the street by herself; the rabble which passed her by were few and she stared at her own two feet, at the space between them, at the cracks, and she sighed. She jerked her head back, saw the sky was still deep ocean blue—more rain but nothing so sinister as a storm.
“Go?” she asked the sky.
She reentered the store.
After stocking the newest shipment, the rest of the day was as mundane as the others which Pixie spent within Odds N’ Ends; few patrons stopped in—mostly to ogle—it was a place of spectacle more than a place of business. Whenever folks came, the old woman would call for Pixie without looking up from her book; normally the younger woman dusted or rearranged the things on the shelves as the old woman liked them and was often away from the counter. Pixie tried to answer questions about the shaved doll heads, the crystals arranged upon velvet mats, the tinctures, the stuffed bear head high on the wall. After some terrible conversation, they went to the counter and bought cigarettes or nothing at all and the old woman would complain at Pixie about her poor salesmanship after the patrons were gone.
The tachi was put there on a broad table, directly in front of the storefront window and Pixie froze often in her work, longingly examined the thing from afar, and snapped from her maladaptation; frequently she chastised herself in barely audible mutters. The old woman had Pixie scrub the pane of the window in front of where the sword sat, and the young woman traced her hand across the handle and delicately thumbed the length of the plain scabbard.
It was a job; this was a thing which people did so they may go on living. Come the middle of the shift—Pixie yawned, it was not due to overexertion, it was more due to her poor sleeping habits. This day was no different in this regard.
“I wish you’d keep it to yourself,” the old woman said, and then she cupped a hand over her own mouth and her eyes went teary, “God, now look at me and see what you’ve done!” The old woman shook the tiredness away. “Bah! There’s still some daylight left!”
“We haven’t had anyone in for the past hour,” said Pixie, staring up at the analog dial on the wall.
The old woman’s scowl was fierce. “Mhm, I’m sure you’re waiting for the death call.” She too looked at the clock on the wall and sighed loudly. “Alright. Pack it up! Better the death call of the store than my own.” She fanned her face with a flat palm and yawned again.
Pixie left the place; the old woman locked the storefront from within. It began to rain again; it seemed the weather understood it was quitting time.
The young woman cupped her elbows and walked home in the rain. Other commuters passed with umbrellas and others, like Pixie, ran through the puddles gathered on the ground. Rain was infrequent but this was not so in the summer and Pixie never protested it. It cooled the ground, thickened the air, and darkened the sky. A car passed on the street, but it was mostly lorries or battery wagons. Personal vehicles were as rare as the rain and Pixie watched after the car; it was a short, rounded thing—its metal cosmetics were warped, and it couldn’t have carried more than two people within.
No vendors were there on the way, no men to call after her—no other people either. The sky grew darker yet and though it was still relatively early, it seemed to grow as black as nighttime without stars.
Pixie’s apartment was there, dark, solitary, same. She shut her door, locked it with her inside, undressed completely and dropped her clothes to the little floor there was and huffed as she planked across the mattress; the bedframe protested. “It smells bad in here,” she spoke into the pillow. The words were nothing. In the blackness of the room, she was nothing. It was a void, a capsule, a tomb. She was still wet and smelled like a dog.
The monitor in the corner came alive at her salutation and she snored sporadically in the electric glow of the screen.
Upon waking in the black hours of the morning, Pixie rubbed her eyes, cupped her forearms to her stomach; her midsection growled, and she tentatively reached to the bedside table and removed a bag of dried cactus pears. She nibbled at the end of one and in arching was cut blue and archaically shaped in the stilled light of the monitor’s idle screen. Pixie popped the entire rest of the cactus pear into her mouth, chewed noisily and vaguely stared into the empty corner of the room beneath the monitor.
After silent deliberation, Pixie crept through the night clothed in dark layers and went the back way through Odds N’ Ends. She absconded with the tachi, taking only a moment with the sword by the white windowlight where she carefully examined the thing again. The young woman was beguiled and went from the place the same way she came.
The brick streets resounded with her footfalls as her excited gait carried her home.
She packed light, slung the sword to her hip with a cloth braid—once it was there in its place, she used the thumb of her left hand to nudge the meager guard, so the blade came free from its sheath before she casually clicked it back to where it went. Pixie chuckled, shook with a frightening spasm dance then froze before patting the tachi lightly.

***

Two men stood along a shallow desert ridge; each of them was Apache descended.
Peridot Mesa was covered in poppies, curled horrendous things; once they’d been as precious as the peridot gems themselves, but as the two men stood there, overlooking the ridge, the poppies were browned, sickly, and as twisted as hog phalluses. Among the dying field were chicory and dead fallen-over cacti. The super blossoms were long over and had been for generations.
One man spat in the dirt, tilted his straw hat across his eyes to avert the heavy setting sun; he hoisted his jeans, asked, “You sure?”
The other man, older, lightly bearded, nodded and kept his own head covered with a yellow bucket hat and cradled his bolt-action rifle with the comfortability of an ex-soldier. “Yeah, c’mon Tweep.” He staggered over the edge of the ridge and slid across the dry earth while tilting backwards so his boots went like skis. With some assistance from his partner, he was able to reach flat ground without going over and the two men searched the ground while they continued walking. “Need to find her fast.”
Tweep, the younger man, spat again.
“Nasty habit.”
“Leave it, Taz.”
Taz shrugged and absently tugged on the string which looped the bucket hat loosely around his collar.
“How long?” asked Tweep.
“Serena said she blew through town only three days ago. Said she was coming this way.”
“She came looking for Chupacabra demons?”
“Huh?” asked Taz.
“That’s what that silly girl came out here for, yeah?”
“I guess. Let’s find her before dark, alright?”
“Sure,” said Tweep, “I just don’t know why she’d go looking for them.”
“Who knows? I don’t care enough to know. Not really.” The older man shook his head. “City people come out here, poke the wildlife—they make jokes about the mystics. I know you’ve seen it. Serena said the girl had the doe-eyed look of someone fresh out of Pheonix maybe. Who knows what she’s come here for?” There was a pause and only their footfalls sounded across the loose dry soil. “Dammit!” said the older man, “You’ve got me rambling. Let’s find the body already. Preferably before it gets much darker.”
“You think she’s dead then?”
Taz grimaced and then he spat. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, sir, why don’t you tell me what to think? I’m starting to think you only dragged me out here to help you carry anything you find valuable.”
Taz shook his head, shrugged. “Smart mouth.” They continued across the mesa, kicking poppies, shifting earth that hadn’t been touched by humans since the first deluge; it wouldn’t be touched by humans for another thousand after the second deluge—that was some time away yet.
“I see her.” Tweep rushed ahead.
Among a rockier set of alcoves, a white, stained blouse hung on a tumbleweed caught among groupings of stones.
“It’s her shirt,” said Tweep, going swiftly ahead.
The younger man leapt atop the stones and looked down a circular nest where the dirt was dug craterlike; destroyed tumbleweeds and splintered bone-corpses littered the nest.
Taz caught his comrade, readied the rifle at the nest.
Strewn across the ground were no less than three full grown Chupacabras, slain; one lay unmoving and decapitated while another’s intestines steamed in the heat. The third clung to life and kicked its rear legs helplessly. Pixie stood among the gore, shirtless; the tachi gleamed in her glowing fists.
“Holy shit!” said Taz; he lowered the rifle and followed Tweep into the nest. The two men kicked the rubbish from their way and approached the young woman with timidness. “You alright?”
Pixie ran the flat of the blade across her pantleg to remove the sparkling blood, inspected the thing and wiped it again before returning the sword to where it went. Leaking bite wounds covered the length of her forearms, and her eyes went far and tired.
Tweep watched the woman, chewed his lip. “You’re possessed! You can’t just kill them like that! Nobody could kill Chupacabra so easily. With your hands?” He tipped his straw hat back, so it fell to his shoulders and hung by the string on his throat.
Pixie shook her head. “It wasn’t with my hands.”
The woman wavered past the men, climbed the short perch where her blouse had gone; she held the shirt to the sky—the material floated out from her fingers as torn rags. She let go of the blouse and it carried on the wind.
Taz approached the only Chupacabra of the nest that remained alive. The creature groaned; the wound which immobilized it had partially severed its spine and the creature’s movements may have been from expelled death energy rather than any conscious effort—the upturned eye of it while it lay on its side seemed to show fear. Its body was mangy, and just as well as naked dark skin shone, so too did fur grow long and sporadic across its torso; short whiskers jutted out from its snout. Chitin shining scales covered the creature’s rear haunches while its tail remained rat naked. Taz shot the thing in the head, and it stopped moving.
The woman fell onto the rocks where the men had come over the den. She sat and examined the wounds on her arms then she turned her attention to the men which had gathered by her. “Do either of you have a spare shirt?”
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Hi. I'm a forever DM. I play FAR too much D&D and I've run a fair few liches in my time, including the whispered one himself. One thing I just couldn't get over when playing Vecna was how much he just FEELS like running a powerful lich, and how much playing against a good vecna feels like fighting a lich. Allow me to explain
For those of you who don't play much D&D, liches are undead wizards. This means that despite their considerable spellcasting, a strong wind could basically knock one over. If your party faces a lich head on on their terms, chances are they'll come out with a few injuries, MAYBE a dead party member, but they're generally gonna nuke your big bad in the first two rounds of combat. That said, until you get rid of a lich's phylactery, they'll just keep coming back no matter how many times you murder them, and wizards memorize spells from a book, making them EXTREMELY smart. TL;DR, a lich will lose an all out fight, but on its terms with minions, spell glyphs, magic items, etc, it should be nigh unbearable, ESPECIALLY if it's had prep time
But what does this have to do with dead by daylight?
Well, I think vecna encapsulates that perfectly. One of the side effects of a lich being such an engaged threat is that there's generally like 20 things to manage in any lich encounter from the DM's perspective. Any one of them is mediocre, but put together they make your lich a force to be reckoned with. Vecna has a lot of fairly mediocre powers, but they have crazy potential when used together. For example, flight of the damned can absolutely be a free hit, but it's far more likely to function when you fly into it or shoot it through a wall after revealing a survivor with your dispelling sphere. Vecna doesn't win chases by just reacting to the survivors. You have to treat it like a lich encounter. Force the survivors to meet you on your level. Liches have powerful spells, but you're not gonna get much mileage out of one if it just spams disintegrate or fireball.
Then for prep time. I've found vecna to be the most effective when I'm planning one chase ahead. Thinking about where remaining gens are, where hooked survivors are, and what power is the best to have in rotation for my current situation. My default is flight of the damned, as it's not hard to get ambush hits and start a chase with the survivor injured, and you approaching without a weapon cooldown. That said, if I have someone hooked in an open area, I'll have fly in my ready slot so that I can get back easily. If I'm on an indoor or vertical map like midwich or forgotten ruins my ready slot absolutely belongs to dispelling sphere, as I don't have to go between floors to check where I think survivors might be. Same with mage hand and maps like Gideon and Garden of Joy that have a lot of pallets to drop. As long as you're planning ahead, vecna is far more effective. Exactly how an archlich should play
Finally, the survivoPC end of things. When facing down a well made lich encounter in D&D, you should have no idea what's going to happen next. Surprise is a lich's best friend. Similarly, in the bit of survivor I played, I tried to keep a VERY wide berth from vecna, as his chase felt really strong when played well. I wasn't a huge fan at first, and then I realized that's how it should be. I wasn't winning chase because vecna's toolkit is large enough that I don't know what he's going to do. He's hard to read, but rewarding if you do, much like an actual lich.
So that's my Ted talk. I really like this killer, I think he's designed perfectly, and everything about him screams "the devs know how to D&D". Thanks for reading

My pup (BoxeLab) is now 1 year 4 months old and seems to have hit a wall with potty training.
She’s so much better than when we got here at 2 months old, but she’s still having frequent accidents.
I let her out 4 times a day; usually 7am, 12pm, 5pm, 9pm.
She’s great some days and has no issues, but she’ll have a week where every day she’s making several mistakes. Especially when she’s not supervised. The moment I take the trash out, go to my building’s laundry room, check the mail, etc, she’ll poop or pee inside. Even if she’s been out recently.
She’s a very smart dog and knows she’s not supposed to. I can usually tell she peed somewhere before physically finding it because she acts afraid like she’s in trouble.
She also doesn’t seem to fully go when we’re outside, it never ever comes to a dribble and ends. She pees for 10 seconds and then stops midstreams and walks on.
We’ve played this game where I’ll keep walking her hoping she’ll finish, after 20 minutes come inside and she goes.
I’ve tried rewarding her for going outside, but no matter the treat, even cooked chicken, she’s not interested when outside.
It just feels like she made a lot of progress and now she’s content with being halfway potty trained. Obviously all dogs are different, but my last pup picked it up within a year and got good enough where we could go on a longer walk twice a day and be good. She can’t even with 4+ walks a day, and with work I can’t take her out every 1-2 hours.
Any tips to finish up potty training?