Los Angeles FC vs. Atlanta United FC
Game Day Poster - TBA
MLS Season 2023 - Match #13
Wednesday, June 7th 2023
Approximately 7:39 p.m. PT
Location: BMO Stadium, 3939 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90037
TV: MLS Season Pass on Apple TV
Radio: 710 AM ESPN, ESPN LA App, 980 AM La Mera Mera
Outdoor Weather: ☀️ 66 Degrees, 65% Humidity, 5 mph NE Wind, 0% Precipitation
BMO Stadium A-Z & Info
Ticketmaster Tickets
ATL Away Section - Section 217
Parking & Public Transportation
LAFC x LAFC.com Transportation Tips
Metro Service Alerts
Previews
Los Angeles FC Preview
Atlanta United FC Preview
Player Availability Report
^{Per MLS and LAFC Injury Report - June 6th}
Questionable
Kellyn Acosta (Lower Extremity) (LAFC)
Timothy Tillman (Lower Extremity) (LAFC)
Ozzie Alonso (ACL Recovery) (ATL)
Amar Sejdic (Calf) (ATL)
Out
Aaron Long (Head) (LAFC)
Sergi Palencia (Lower Extremity) (LAFC)
Maxime Crepeau (right leg fracture) (LAFC)
Erik Lopez (Ankle) (ATL)
Santiago Sosa (Calf) (ATL)
Referees
REF: Joe Dickerson
AR1: Logan Brown
AR2: Diego Blas
4TH: Ricardo Fierro
VAR: Geoff Gamble
AVAR: Emma Richards
Recent Results
LAFC D-W-L-L-L
Atlanta L-W-D-D-D

Xan is the world's most dangerous criminal mastermind. He’s also in hiding and completely broke. That’s fine. He’s between master plans. It’s normal to be at rock bottom between master plans. He also forgets stuff and may be trapped in a dream.
Because at night, Xan thinks he’s an old lady, trapped in a dingy apartment, by an angry fellow who wants to kill her. Not her idea of a good time, but she’s keeping an open mind. It is excitingly visceral. Could turn out awesome.
Hyperstitious is a sci-fi, progression, comedy. Guaranteed to cause more mental problems than it solves.

First Next
Dark City - Random Large Apartment Complex
I wake feeling… better? Is that what this is? I’ve got a bit of energy and maybe my joints hurt a little less. Could it be placebic? Fuck it, I’m on the mend. Go super science.
“Does the psycho sound farther away today?”
He is. Not checking your messages may have helped. Or there’s something different about today’s apartment complex. More doors, or less routers, or more routers, or something.
I shrug. “It’s progress anyway. We’ll deal with him today. Wake a cop. But give me a minute with this holodrone first.”
The holodrone is a football sized quadcopter in the shape of a four sided die. Each face has an oversized rotor on it, with blades long enough to mesh with the other rotors.
It’s a strange arrangement for flying, but the body of the drone will be completely obscured by spinning blades when it’s in motion. I’m guessing this will be relevant, judging by the strip of LEDs along the blades.
I fire it up for a test flight, and the spinning LEDs make a convincing hologram of a pufferfish. It swims casually through the apartment.
Cool.
“Yeah, that’s fun. Let’s get you loaded up.”
While I’m prepping the link, I take a look at Volt’s threat detector. Time to see how this bad boy works.
The documentation is sparse, but apparently it tries to predict when I will be in distress, and then intervenes so that doesn’t happen. Cool.
I can see what Volt considers distress (fear, pain, rage) and what data streams she monitors (audio, visual, brainwave). But not what she considers a distress trigger (???) or a timely intervention (???). One is labeled training data and readable code, the other incomprehensible bricks of self generated mathematics. So, I know what she’s trying to do, but not what she’s gonna do. Perfect. Let’s give her more grenades.
The data streams also suggest that Volt is monitoring my behavior. This implies that she will try to protect me from myself. Which explains a couple things.
It’s all a little strange, but pretty decent work considering I built it in my sleep. Two issues stick out - overtraining and visual identification.
Part of Volt’s training data are standard sets of images, sounds, and brainwaves. The Human Distress Database. The Human Speech Database. The Standard Visual Identification Database. Sounds and Their Causes. Etc. These databases are specific and comprehensive, but ultimately finite.
The rest of her training data - what she sees, hears, scans, and downloads - is incomplete and mostly irrelevant, but functionally infinite. Eventually, it will give better results than the labeled data, but not if Volt’s equations run out of parameters first. If that happens, she starts forgetting stuff. Maybe what color mauve is. Or that sarsaparilla is sweet. Or possibly, that screaming is bad and blood goes on the inside.
This is called overtraining and it sucks. It’s difficult to tell when you’ve overtrained your d-bot, even when paying close attention. I have not been paying close attention.
That said, I’m gonna keep her training because the Standard Visual Identification Database is over a hundred years old and it sucked back then. It’s the same database the Dark City d-bots train on and I can fool them with a trashbag.
Volt needs time to train her visual identification with a better field of view than my pocket. Hopefully the holodrone will help with that.
I link the phone to the drone. “There ya go. Try it out.”
The pufferfish bobs erratically around the room. Woo-hoo! This is awesome!
The hologram flickers and turns into Volt’s chrome head. “Hey! We’re back together! But don’t touch me! I’ll chop your dick right off.”
“Not going to be a problem, buddy.”
“Sorry, forgot we were penisless. That was insensitive.”
“It’s okay.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll find you some dick.”
“Great. Thanks. Are you gonna stay a floating head?”
“Is it weird?” Volt flickers. Becomes a chibi version of herself. “Is this better?”
“It’s still weird, but less like severed anatomy, so let’s roll with it.”
“Does that mean we’re leaving?”
“May as well. Let’s go wake up the chief of police.”
“Do we know where he is? Should I send a tracking pixel?”
“Do we know where the police chief lived a hundred years ago? Because, with Immortalis, it could be the same fucking guy.”
“Hmm. Good idea. I do have an address. Let’s check it out.”
We pack up. I consider leaving my phone behind. Volt’s got a new body and the psycho is probably tracking the phone. But do I want to lose the psycho? I’m risking the cops specifically to get him caught. What if I ditch the phone and he disappears? Leaving me in legal trouble with no extenuating circumstances? I better keep the phone and give it to the police chief.
Between my new energy, and his new confusion, evading the psycho is childsplay. We debate the wisdom of meeting the police chief in a stolen truck, but decide mobility is more important than plausible deniability. His address is a large apartment building. Looks nice.
We find room 713, and let ourselves in. There’s a huge old dude passed out on the bed. He’s twice the size of the old police chief. Still, could be him. His identifying biometrics are mostly obscured by fat and wrinkles, but he’s the right height and ethnicity. I’m gonna wake him up.
We yell, shake, and poke him. Slap him until it gets weird. Eventually, I peel off his brain scanning sticker. That gets a slow reaction - visibly agitated sleep. A waspish flick to his big toe finally wakes the beast.
“RAAH!!” He comes up swinging. I arthritically dodge and catch a heavy blow to the chest. Slump against the wall of the dingy ass apartment.
He squirms on the bed until he’s facing me on all fours, hackles raised, seething with rage. His massive body tenses like a spring. Staring hate straight into my soul.
Well shit.
He leaps, catching my throat in one stinky paw. Yells incoherently, snarling and slobbering, slamming me against the wall. Volt crashes into the side of his head, rotors binding in strips of greasy hair. He slaps the holodrone away, turns back to me, and gets jabbed in each eye with a spoon.
“AARH!!” He stumbles back holding his face. I scooch around the bed, making for the door. He screams and flails around with heavy swipes, the sounds of his tantrum covering my graceless steps. Until he goes dead silent and I stop.
It’s a small apartment. I’m halfway between him and the door. Almost free and almost caught. His eyes are watering and swelling, but intact. Need a sharper spoon. He obviously can’t see well, but he’s trying. Also trying to control his breathing. It gets quieter and quieter.
Across the room, Volt’s broken drone gives a little twitch. The beast roars and dives towards it. I slip out the door and scurry to the stairs. Stealth down one floor and into the nearest apartment. Slip into bed with a large sweaty guy and hide under the sheets. Give the big dude a reassuring pat, careful to not disturb scanning sticker.
Take deep slow breaths. Try to calm down so I can be quiet.
Soo… wonder what he was dreaming about?
“the fuck?” I whisper.
I don’t think that guy wanted to wake up.
“I guess not”
What now? Wake the Deputy Chief of Police?
“Jesus. I don’t know.”
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Next Chapter
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Holodrone

• 3D Hologram LED Fan Display

TL:DR Below...
Background:
43/M/OR
Married: 2009
Discarded: 2019
Divorced: 2021
Kids: 2
So, I checked all the boxes before I got into my narc relationship. Nice guy and CoDependent, she was everything I wanted and "prayed for"... I was easy prey. I earned all the NarcAbuse badges from my service in the cold war called "my marriage"--Gaslit, narc was a "victim", manipulated, flying monkeys, love bombs, false reality, narc rage, sex as a weapon (dead bedroom), kids together, discarded, smear campaign, trauma bonded, No Contact, DEEP, Gray Rocking...I might be missing a few. I've made bed sheets and curtains from all the ignored red flags I've found, and I still have enough for a flag-football team.
Because I didn't give her the divorce she wanted (divorce was a hard no for me), she abused me even more. I could have destroyed her in the courts, but because of my trauma bond...I didn't...plus my kids would be alienated more.
So, once my discard...I moved in with my mother. Since I was a stay-at-home dad before the discard...I didn't have a full-time job. Thanks to COVID, I didn't get a real job till Jan of ’21. I avoided a trial and took her lawyer’s deal. More time with the kids, alimony, and joint custody.
Current:
My relationship with the kids is OK. I don't trust my kids like I used to. The smear campaign did a number on them. They are afraid to show emotions around me or say anything around their reversed gaslite situation (N-ex with a new supply, lesbian relationship now). I’ve held my ground with the n-ex when she tries to manipulate me. I’ve even had a lawyer send her a few letters when she broke the plan or didn't pay me.
I now support both my mother and now, my brother (moved in Spring of ’22 after becoming handicap) (I pay the rent and utilities). I moved away from them for a reason when I was in my early 20’s and now I’m back with them.
I have a job that pays “enough” to get by… I’m burnt out from my job. Solo IT guy for a company that my hard work goes to the retirement of the owners grand-kids
I’ve been on the dating “market” for almost a year now. That was eye opening. It felt good to be appreciated and to receive affection. I miss being a "husband". I may have “gone wild” a bit, but I am realizing what I want, and I am trying to be OK with the potential of “forever alone”.
I think I have PTSD from this war. Every e-mail from her has the potential of being a bomb (the anxiety sucks). This is not what I wanted for my life. I did the real work in my 20’s to be a good guy who wanted an honest life only to watch everything I ever loved in my life to be thrown out like garbage. I hate seeing her and her monkeys. My kids don’t feel like my kids anymore. I hate that this abuse has become my identity. I lost my 30's completely.
Not giving an ef about what other's think about me is maddening. I used to be part of a big community, and the stigma about being divorced because the "guy did something" is a load of crap. Women can be narcs too...
I think (fantasize) I will just will myself to get over this. To put my life back together. Well, after spending 10 year chasing the love of someone who sold me on the notion that they loved me, has me feeling done.
Request (TL/DR):
I NEED HELP!!!
My waistline, liver, and mental capacity have taken the most of the damage.
Thank God for the Narc YouTubers who helped me to be aware and what to do. I've looked into some of their programs. Finding a therapist has been rough. Most are booked up or they don't take my insurance. I've done a few support groups...I think I need 1on1. Not really sure what to do.
I'm tired. I'm tired of carring this and supporting everyone.
Again, not sure what to do, but I know I need help.
I'm open to convos, recommendations, resources...I feel lost.
Thank for reading and sharing the pain.

When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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There are some deeds, some crimes and horrors even our Mother, the Universe itself, loathes beyond all. And when this is the case, neither time, nor space, nor reality itself can deny her vengeance.
Because time is a flat circle... and we all dance on its twisting disk. - kwong879, Pukan philosopher, Post Second Precursor War Reconstruction Era
For three days and three nights did the Lady Lord of Hell, the Detainee herself, in all of her fearsome matronly glory, tempt the First Biological Disciple, Daxin Freeborn, Enraged Phillip.
And for three days and three nights did he deny her.
And thus did he pass into memory and legend. - The Book of Telkan
And before I took the lives of the damned, He did appear before us and commanded my hand still.
His glowing blue form a radiant mercy. For us.
For them. - Glory, Failure, Temptation, & Redemption, Magnus Oathsworn
There is no doubt of the fact of malevolence. The very universe itself reaches out to crush what she has birthed in an eternal struggle of hatred. There are, however, some sins which even in the face of annihilation cannot be countenanced. Some acts which even this malevolent universe will not tolerate. Protect the infants at all cost, for they are survival, and to sacrifice survival for the sake of survival shall bring only suffering and doom. - Wisdom of the Traveler, Tribulations, Chapter 5 Verse 1.
In the Age of Paranoia, Humanity's leadership ordered terrible things done. Not because they knew they were necessary, but because they might become necessary. Never realizing that the existence of those terrible things would drive them to find a reason to use them. — Prof. Kuruka N'anga, University of the Sacred Bough, Terra Nuevo
While many things enrage the Lady of Hell, in fact most things seem to, certain crimes and sins earn her personal wrath. The many men who took everything from her. The idiotic creatures who thought themselves masters of everything. And those who commit cruelties upon the innocent. For she sees all of mankind's many many sins and knows very few are clean of them. Wise beings fear when cold gray eyes turn upon them.
We were desperate, and in our desperation we reached for things that will haunt me for all eternity. We could have stopped at anytime, we should have stopped before it was too late. We ignored the warnings, in our hubris we were assured that what we were doing was necessary. We were right, but it was still wrong and there is not enough time in the universe to pay for what we did. We ignored all the warnings and applauded ourselves on our success...only moments later the shouts of joy and celebration became screams of terror as the gray-eyed one illustrated why the warnings of these dark sciences should be heeded. --Words found in a blood-soaked journal at dark site research station, this was the only document recovered. Site glassed and all traces of the research were redacted.
It was misty, with a little bit of rain. The anomaly was hidden behind artificially generated cloud cover so that it looked more like an overcast sun than the strange globe of psuedo-reality it was. The starwalk station was empty, no bones, no shades, no scars from the furious fighting that had taken place after the Glassing had driven the SUDS personnel insane.
Holos flickered, some advertising restaurants or stores, others with directions, some with safety warnings, and still others with just public service holograms. The mist made the holograms flicker and fade in and out as the focused laser systems were scattered by the tiny water droplets suspended in the air.
There was a beep and the gate opened, allowing Surscee to step from the starwalk to the platform. She was wearing revealing leathers, a bustier, a short skirt with copper strips for reinforcement, tight weave fishnet stockings, and polished black leather boots with silver buckles. Around her shoulders was a gauzy sheer cape that shed the moisture even as it gleamed and sparkled.
She stopped to examine a few of the public service announcements. Some making her smile, others making her shake her head.
"You are a window to the world of my ancestors, nine thousand years gone," she said softly, touching the base of the holo. She moved to another and watched it. "We are not so different, you and I," she said, her voice full of wonder. She watched a PSA to remind everyone not to bring plants from Earth in case of seed contamination. "Your lives were full of danger that eventually became mundane," she said softly.
"That's humanity in a nut shell," the voice from behind her was low, rough, a woman's whiskey and cigarettes voice.
"Although ever changing, thus, we are," Surscee said, straightening up. She turned around and looked over the short matron in her dark charcoal gray skirt and blouse. "Greetings, fearsome one."
"Greetings to you, sorceress," the Lady Lord of Hell said. She looked Surscee up and down slowly. "Huh."
Surscee raised an eyebrow.
"Nice to see the Great Value Red Sonja look isn't just an act," the Lady Lord of Hell said, turning and walking into the mist. "Magic, science, mysticism, technology, all the same to the ignorant." Her voice faded as she walked away.
Surscee watched the short woman walk away, then turned and went back to following the path.
She was startled to discover that the vending machines were not VI driven, but just mechanical with a few holograms.
One of the vending machines that normally dispensed energy drinks and fizzybrews was ripped open, like someone had hacked on it with a blade. Surscee noted that most of the Liquid Hate was gone.
She got a lemon-lime fizzypop and followed the softly glowing holographic line of the ground until she finally came to a small park.
She stopped at the playground, leaning against a cement post, and stared at it.
The swings moved slightly back and forth at the almost unfelt breeze that stirred the mist. Droplets of water ran down the slide. The swinging rings just rocked slightly in the air current. The seesaw and the spring horses, the jungle gym and the wooden playhouse all sat quietly, damp from the mist.
Surscee closed her eyes, cocking her head slightly, listening for any echoes of happiness gone by.
"I would bring them here to play, once I had soothed their trauma to where they could interact with one another, to the point they could do more than run and scream and claw at themselves," the voice of the gray eyed matron sounded behind Surscee.
The sorceress turned, seeing the darkly clothed matron standing under a tree, barely visible in the fog, lighting a cigarette.
"I recreated it in Hell, just for them. To let them be children again, to remember," her voice said. She took a drag off her cigarette and Surscee saw the stern planes of the smaller woman's face illuminated for a moment. When she exhaled smoke, Surscee could still see her gun-metal gray eyes.
"I set fallen angels to watch over the park with sword of burning sin and tridents of icy treachery," she said, then turned and walked into the mist.
Surscee frowned as the matron vanished into the mist.
She waited a moment, but the other woman was gone.
Surscee moved on, making no sign of effort as she brought up her defenses. Her fingernails twinkled slightly as the microscopic piezoelectric systems came online. The targeting reticles and the HUD elements appeared in her vision. She brought up the passive acoustic mapping and changed the hardness of the heels of her boots so that her boots clicked with each step.
The fog muffled the acoustic map slightly, the water droplets absorbing and redirecting sound, making the map fuzzy here and there.
She passed by a vending machine and smelled cigarette smoke. The onboard systems broke it down for her, putting it up in the tiny window beyond her left hand peripheral vision. No manufacturer signature, no trace elements from other worlds. Her onboards told her that it was Old Earth brand, the tobacco lacking any genetic engineering and the cigarette containing nothing but an asbestos filter, paper, and tobacco. No flavors, no genetic smoothing, no flavor enhancements. No record in the database she always carried loaded.
She frowned slightly.
"You are unmoved by human suffering, making you suitable for this task," a tired sounding man said from just past a set of benches. He was leaning against a fountain. He had shaggy cut dark hair, a simple pair of pants and shirt without decoration, and dark circles under his eyes.
Two steps and the figure vanished.
The echolocation acoustic mapping told her that there was a solid bipedal humaniod form there for a split second but it vanished just when she got in range of it.
Surscee followed the arc of the path, curiosity filling her.
She knew if the being that had manifested as a five meter tall demon with bat wings and a whip of burning warsteel links woven with barbed wire, or the short matron with the nasty steel knife, wanted to kill her, the being simply would.
Surscee was curious what the purpose of this was.
"Enemies never rest. That's why they're called the Enemy, you blithering morons. I swear, dealing with the two of you is like dealing with particularly naive and ignorant children who are shocked, shocked I tell you, that they can't ziptie a plastic bag around their head and dance in the middle of the Interstate during rush hour," the matron's voice was cruel and full of disdain. "Of course millions are dying, that's what happens when you act like atomic weapons are no more dangerous than sparklers."
Surscee didn't bother to look around, her onboard bioware systems letting her know that the point of origin for the voice kept moving and shifting.
A trivial trick with nanites and one she had used often to confuse and harry foes.
"Your weakness disgusts me," the woman's voice hissed from between two food vending machines. "If you spent less time crying and more time fixing the system you'd be done by now, you pathetic puling weakling."
Surscee smiled slightly.
The voice reminded Surscee of her mother mocking her lessers.
There was a small basket with berries and small fruits sitting on a bench and Surscee's smile got wider. She moved over and sat down, picking up the basket and setting it on her lap.
If the being wanted her dead, she would be dead, simple as that.
The berries were blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries. Clean, sweet and tart.
After a moment the matron came walking out of the fog, opening a breast pocket to remove a pack of cigarettes and a flint-steel lighter. The woman sat down, crossing her legs at the knee and smoothing her skirt. She then lit the cigarette, the flare of the lighter lighting her face with the warmth of the flame without making the face seem any warmer.
Surscee slowly chewed a blackberry as the cigarette was lit, puffed on, and the lighter clinked shut. The pack and the lighter went back into the top pocket, the matron's fingers nimbly buttoning up the pocket.
They sat there for a long moment.
"All of that power, all your knowledge and mastery of exotic and esoteric disciplines, and here you sit eating freshly picked berries and fruit," the matron said.
"I am a simple woman who enjoys simple pleasures," Surscee said, smiling.
"I could use someone like you on my team," the matron said, exhaling smoke. "Power, the will to dominate, the means to achieve the goals I set out for you."
"An enticing offer," Surscee said carefully. She picked up strawberry and bit off the tip, chewing slowly.
"With your brother as one of my Hell Knights, you would make an excellent Hell Storm," the matron said.
This time when she exhaled the smoke was tinged with a slight tang hot freshly spilled blood and a taint of brimstone.
"Acting as the agent of the Lady Lord of Hell herself," Surscee said. She picked up a black cherry and looked over it. "Empowered, strengthened, by the Lady Lord of Hell, to punish the wicked for their sins."
The matron nodded slowly.
"With you as the judge, myself as the jury, and my brother as the executioner," Surscee said, still smiling.
"At times," the matron said. She exhaled smoke and glared at the mist that surrounded them. "Do you know what sin mankind has fallen into?"
Surscee shook her head. "Pride, perhaps? My mother often spoke of sloth and gluttony, perhaps that?"
The matron shook her head. "No. Far far worse."
"I would hear your words, fearsome one," Surscee said, making sure her voice was respectful.
"An anecdote," the matron said. She sighed. "Later, in my life, as more and more people became enamored with being ethical, more for status than to be truly ethical, philosophers and those who called themselves ethecists began posing questions, providing answers, each of the seeking to be recognized as the pinnacle of ethics and morals that would guide humanity into a Golden Age."
"That smack of wickedness," Surscee said. "Of pride and arrogance."
The matron nodded. "One question, posed by academics to students, always enraged me. Asked by academics who had never traveled beyond their ivory towers or guarded enclaves, asked to pampered students who had spent their lives dwelling in luxuries beyond imagination to the people of my youth."
The matron reached down into the mist that covered her feet, lifting up a bottle of beer and popping the cap with a talon that immediately returned to a manicured nail.
"The question, put forth, involves a situation. I will explain it thusly: You are at a village in a war torn nation. A warlord arrives with his men, intending on killing the village. The reasons do not matter. However, the warlord makes you an offer, handing you a gun with a single bullet. Shoot one person, of your choice, and he will spare you and the survivors. Kill him, and his men will kill you, and allow the village to survive. Kill none, and he will order his men to kill all the villagers, man, woman, and child, but leave you to live," the matron said.
Surscee frowned. "A terrible choice."
The matron snorted. "The academics and ethical philosophers then asked their students: What is the most moral choice?" the matron looked at Surscee. "Care to make a guess?"
Surscee thought for a long moment. "Shoot one of his men. He did not say you had to kill a villager."
The matron laughed. "A choice fitting for a Great Value Red Sonja," she laughed. She shook her head. "But, you would be wrong. You see, you make the unethical choice to take a human life."
"Then what?" Surscee asked.
"To stand aside. That you do not make a choice. The philosophical correct answer was to stand aside, that the warlord and his men make their own decisions and it is not your responsibility nor your moral failing whatever they choose to do," the matron looked out at the mist, taking a swig of her beer. "Do nothing, let the trolley kill five, because for you to decide who lives and dies is unethical."
Surscee snorted. "Choosing to make no choice is a choice in and of itself. You should always seek to do the least harm and the greatest good."
The matron nodded.
"The cowardice disgusts me," the matron said. She took another swig of her beer and then a drag from her cigarette. She exhaled smoke tinged with blood and brimstone. "I need those who will not back down, who are willing to get in the mud and the blood and the beer to get the job done."
The matron held up a red apple. "Take the apple, accept my offer. Be my Hell Storm to your brother's Hell Knight."
"Your offer humbles me," Surscee said. "It does not matter if my brother took your offer, I am Oathsworn to Lady Nakteti the Traveler. My duty is clear, it lies with my sworn liege."
"But what of your duty to your people?" the matron asked. "What of your duty to humanity?"
"I represent humanity wherever I go. Shall my actions, my decisions, lead the people's of the galaxy to believe that humanity are oath breakers? That our word, our bond, our oath, carries no meaning other than to further our own aims and goals? That we will abandon them, no matter what oaths we swear?"
The matron was silent.
"I am tempted by your offer, but I must, respectfully, refuse," Surscee said.
"Very well," the matron said. She blew on her fingertips and the apple dissolved. She stood up, taking a moment to smooth her skirt and tug the cuffs of her sleeves.
"You would have made an excellent Hell Storm," the matron said, exhaling smoke.
When it cleared, she was gone.
Surscee closed her eyes and heaved a great breath.
"I have passed the test, I hope," she said softly.
Only the dripping of water in the mist answered her.
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Hey everybody!
New to this subreddit, transplant from bipolar — I'm a recovering alcoholic and drug addict that also has Psychotic Bipolar Disorder and ADHD comorbidly. While I've been diagnosed with Bipolar 1 for a while now, I finally sought treatment for Alcohol and Cocaine Use Disorders, and I'm about to hit six months clean!
I partially wanted to make this post just to brag — I don't really have like, anybody in my life that's sober and/or neurodivergent to commiserate and celebrate with, so now that my social energy is returning, I'm coming back to Reddit to find some digital socialization. But, I also want to be here as a source of encouragement for those earlier in their journey. This was my first try quitting, and getting to this point has been absolute hell in some regards and at certain points. But, I'll say that on the other side and a half year later, life is so much sweeter.
—
It started in my very early adulthood. At least, started to get noticeable. I'd always been a moody kid, and I was in conflict with peers and family very often. I was a closeted gay kid, and in a conservative, religious, Midwest context, I absolutely did not fit in. But, one thing got me through: my intellect. Since childhood, I've been incredibly intelligent and eloquent. My first words were full sentences, and started at less than a year old, as my mother's story goes. I could read full books by first grade, and was composing novel creative writing by ten years old. I've been a poet all along, and my creativity and brains have gotten me very very far. Yes, Catholic school was hell, but I was valedictorian and eventually went to an Ivy League college.
We drank quite a bit in Catholic school. On weekends at football games and parties, most my classmates and I would partake from about age sixteen. It wasn't necessarily problematic at that point for my lack of regular access. I could only drink when I had it from someone else. But, from the very moment my lips touched any alcohol other than the Blood of Christ, my life was redirected. I was so obsessed with drinking, and would do it to the most extreme and most frequent as possible. It made me ecstatic, even to just think about.
—
Once I got to college, things got bad. I got a fake ID, started going to much larger and better-stocked social functions, and also had a much more progressive and diverse crowd to socialize with. By spring of my freshman year I was meeting the clinical conditions for Alcohol Use Disorder. Obviously most of it was in secret. At points, I was even fermenting my own grape juice in my closet to get drunk alone in my dorm room. I've also been a major nicotine fiend since about sixteen, and engaged in that constantly too.
The summer after that freshman year, I returned home to my family where I spent the break cashiering. I couldn't get a decent internship, and accepted an only part-time and unpaid one with a local nonprofit. I also continued to drink in excess, a considerable amount for the age and time of my life. Probably the equivalent of a pint a night. I was just eighteen, and my parents one night found me drunk and vaping. They took the vape from me and referred me to my primary care provider for a mental health assessment. At the time, they thought my primary issue was the underage nicotine addiction. That PA suggested I find a therapist, and prescribed me a moderate dose of Wellbutrin, thinking it'd help the vaping and "mild" depression.
And it worked! For a while. The remainder of the summer and following early fall went fine. I continued to drink, but less problematically and miserably. I returned to school that September and found a therapist and psychiatrist through my school's clinic. Eventually, the depression and over-drinking began to creep in again though, and I again found myself begging a prescriber for help. He dxd me with Major Depression, switched me to Zoloft (a mere 25mg), and sent me on my way. As I left, he gave a small warning... patients that have Bipolar Disorder sometimes have an averse reaction to antidepressants... if you start to feel manic, give us a call.
—
Things got very bad very fast. I was already experiencing sleeping problems, and the insomnia that was exacerbated was intense. I was going days and days without sleeping — my record was five nights in a row of only microsleeps of 5 minutes or less throughout the days. I went literally crazy, clinically manic and increasingly psychotic. Eventually, I lost lucidity and became fully delusional. I thought the government was chasing me, that everything was a simulation, that I was on the run. I went to Urgent Care and explained my situation to the nurse. She dismissed me, calling it mere anxiety and sending me home to "go meditate."
Out into the night I went. It was a cold Thanksgiving night, the streets empty, everybody home with their families. I was alone at school, unable to afford a fight home for the holiday. I received a message from beyond, and embarked upon my mission. In the streets, I was running around and screaming, searching for clues wherever I could find them. The world seemed a puzzle to me, and it was my job to solve it. Eventually, I encountered campus police. They detained me and took me to campus Urgent Care, who eventually ambulanced me to the local psychiatric ER, who the next day admitted me to the local psychiatric hospital, where I spent a week.
The issue is, I was incredible at masking. The staff had little idea my internal thoughts and processes; I considered it a part of my mission to remain silent about the simulation. And, I was stoned when they picked me up. They observed me for a week, and discharged me without a diagnosis. School put me on an involuntary leave and I went home to start winter break early. Back there during my first follow up with a new local doctor, I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 Disorder, obviously having reacted to the SSRI. While the hospital insisted the episode was cannabis induced, I'm fairly certain that was for liability purposes, that hospital attached to the same campus clinic that misdiagnosed me in the first place.
—
The following years were hell. I spent months severely overmedicated, at one point gaining ninety pounds in just three months. I continued to sustain episodes, albeit more mild, being forevermore on a heavy antipsychotic routine. I lost most all my friends. COVID happened. I got into debt. I continued to drink more and more. I picked up cocaine. I sent my life into a spiral, all in secret. Because, upon my return to school, they had me on probation. If I was known to be drinking or using, they would put me back on leave. But, I hate the Midwest and couldn't go back, so I couldn't seek treatment.
I lived a secret alcoholic and cokehead for years. I got myself into severe debt from spending and gambling, I continued to get and lose jobs, and struggled to even get to class. But, on the surface, I was doing fine. In fact, pretty good — I even graduated Cum Laude. But, I hated my life. I was a mess and knew that my life was unsustainable. So at the end of my last semester Fall 2022 (I took one semester off during COVID for non-health reasons), I made the decision to seek treatment. I finished my last exam, packed up my dorm with one carry-on packed for rehab. My parents drove from Midwest to New England to pick me up, bring me home, and drop me at the hospital, where I spent a week.
I will be honest: the last six months have been hell at times. Of course the chemical withdrawal from years of drinking a fifth-a-day and snorting a gram-a-day are going to leave you exhausted. I spent months doing absolutely nothing. I slept and cried all day and stayed up ruminating all night. I continued to try adjusting my meds, another new doctor having taken me off any stimulant ADHD treatment (another diagnosis I picked up along the way) and leaving me debilitated. I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't think. I couldn't write.
—
But... I think things are finally turning around. I tried AA but I didn't like it very much. My local chapter in the rural Midwest is, obviously, not a very friendly crowd to this flamboyant homosexual cokehead, so I didn't stay. But, I did keep one principle — a higher power. Mine is astrology. With the support of a finally-tolerable med routine and the commitment to something larger than myself, I'm finally starting to get over the initial sobriety hump, and it feels amazing.
I wake up every morning and feel truly grateful for once. I'm not hungover, I'm not throwing up and shitting my pants while I rush late to work or class. I'm getting up with the sunrise, before my alarm, and writing poetry again and slowly chipping away at my debt and repairing things with my parents and... staying sober. Next week I hit six months.
To anyone who wants to or has just started this journey, I'm holding space for you. Being neurodivergent is incredibly difficult at times. But, it can also be incredibly rewarding. You are worthy of good health, and I hope you're able to find and keep the support you deserve.
—
Idk why I wrote all this... Kinda manicky today, actually. Anyways, if you've made it this far, thanks for hearing my story. I hope it can be helpful or comforting in any way. If anyone has questions I'm happy to try and answer.
For anyone curious, my current med routine:

• Lamictal (Lamotrigine), 300mg/day
• Vraylar (Cariprazine), 3mg/day
• Naltrexone (Vivitrol) tablet, 50mg/day
• Jornay (Methylphenidate ER), 40mg/day
• Hydroxyzine (Atarax), 25-75mg PRN
• Trazodone (Desyrel), 50-100mg PRN

—
Thanks again for hearing my story. I wish you all well ~~

What’s with the unnecessary Carr hate from Marc? Jimmy G is the same as Carr?
Carr is 1000x better than Jimmy G. He improved in every statistical category every year in Jon Gruden’s offense. He regularly threw the ball deep before the Ruggs incident. Even last year when plays broke down he went deep to Adams multiple times.
Maybe it doesn’t come up because Gregg is a Patriots fan, but Josh McDaniels is the worst thing to happen to the Raiders since Al Davis traded away Gruden. There are multiple reports that JMD purposely did not allow Carr to make adjustments at the line of scrimmage. Plays were to be run exactly as they were called. Any football analyst or die hard fan should already know; good coaches fit their scheme to suit their players best attributes, bad coaches always try to force players to fit into their scheme like a square peg in a round hole.
Gruden/Bisaccia got the Raiders to the playoffs with Carr and a depressing roster. Only a few yards away from taking the AFC Champion Bengals to OT in the wild card round. The roster bought in and played harder than expected. JMD had more talent to work with than Gruden ever did and his team lost to Jeff Saturday.
I think Adams’ recent comments make it clear; no one has bought in on JMD, he will be gone this time next year and the Raiders will be starting a rebuild all over again.

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We had high hopes during those first few tentative hours, as we started downloading the initial batch of data gathered by the probes we’d sent to scout the planet before our hours-long conversation with the interloper on the moon.
It was clear however, that we had overestimated just how much relevant data that first round of reconnaissance missions would’ve been able to procure.
We should’ve expected as much though, as the first round of recon operations were conducted in order to gain an overview of the planet, rather than anything specific.
It was only after our interrogation of the interloper that we actually had something solid to work with, and a target that we had to work towards.
But whilst the first batch of data wasn’t entirely relevant to our newfound mission, it was still vital in ascertaining where exactly we would focus our limited resources on next. As the overall state of the planet had been more or less mapped to within a detailed enough degree for Vir to begin parsing and analyzing for the next phase of our mission.

10 Hours After the First Round of Interloper Interrogations. Bridge of the UNAFS Perseverance.
Lysara
“Right, what do we have to work with here, Vir?” I spoke with a renewed state of invigoration, having just arrived back on the bridge with a belly full of food and a brain buzzing with stimulants. The latter was only made possible courtesy of Vir’s glorious abilities in reconstituting what he called coffee beans into the desiccated berries all Vanarans were used to eating.
“Well, preliminary data more or less proves my initial hypothesis of the planet being a recently-collapsed technologically advanced civilization to be true. If we’re going by human categorization systems, at least as far as what I was aware of, we’d be looking at a J-4-actual class, by the close-in orbital-studies metric. Translated into layman's terms, we’re looking at a civilization that has well exceeded industrialization, has probably entered a period of planet-wide mass telecommunication, with early pre-intrasolar orbital capabilities exclusively reliant on surface-based homeworld-derived heavy industries.” Vir began jumping over to the planet’s orbital analyses, displaying what looked to be bits and pieces of metal that littered the planet’s orbit. “Not highlighting Kessler Syndrome here, but, just showing you that despite it being possibly centuries since their collapse, there’s still evidence of space junk in orbit. A clear indicator of orbital capabilities.” He then switched over to the moon, and the image of the moon base we’d just explored. “The reason why I classified this civilization as a J-4 actual, is because we preemptively discovered evidence of permanent settlements and extensive infrastructure projects beyond the species’ homeworld of origin. Thus, we have fulfilled the Erricson’s criterion before we even started on planet-based observations. Anyways, moving on…”
The image on the screen soon shifted towards what were clearly large swaths of built-up areas. Most of them were clearly the remains of urban settlements, cities, all of which were clearly in some degree of disrepair as what should be clearly demarcated edges of concrete and steel were instead haphazardly overgrown with greenery. “I’d hazard a guess of about half a millennium having elapsed following a singular instance of rapid-onset decline.” I spoke suddenly and without warning.
Vir looked at me with a look of surprise. “That’s actually really close to my own calculations. Give or take a century using the Peterson-Wang equation. How’d you come up with your number?”
“Well, back in Vanaran archeology, we studied certain patterns and features associated with the decay of ruins, and artifacts left over by a fallen civilization. This includes the features associated with the decay of urban environments, and using that the estimate the pattern, type, and time since collapse. There are always certain particularities to look for. Such as here.” I paused, using my finger to highlight certain aspects of the orbital picture of the ruined city on the screen. “We see poorly demarcated urban margins, and patterns indicative of artificial zoning, having lost their signature geometric features.” I shifted my attention to what was clearly an industrial area at one point, shaped into grids, that have since been taken over by the same overgrowth. “In addition, we also see a consistent pattern of overgrowth with no disruption, thus indicating that there was no attempt at reclaiming large urban areas or heavily built-up infrastructure. If this were a Class 1, 2, 3, or even a class 4 collapse, we’d see some governmental body, or post-collapse organization attempt to reclaim what is in effect an area that would be vital in jumpstarting civilization. If that were the case, we’d see interruptions to this overgrowth and decay. Some sort of sign that there was an attempt to reverse the overgrowth or some haphazard modification on the original zoning. Or something that would indicate tampering after the first collapse. However, none exist, and all we see here is indicative of an uncontrolled descent into decay without any intervention. When I combine all of these factors, the Civvings Principle would indicate that this civilization suffered a major rapid-onset catastrophic collapse, followed sharply by a rapid-onset decline. Five hundred years was a guestimate based on my experience with surveying these sorts of worlds”
Vir continued to stare at me with that same look of surprise, however, this time there was a certain element of fascination in his face that I couldn’t quite pin down. “You really do know your stuff, Lysara.” He spoke with a clear tone of admiration. “Human xenoarcheology has also postulated ideas similar to yours. We didn’t have much of a sample size to work with though, but this more or less matches up with what humanity was thinking when they started mapping out their approach to xenoarcheology.”
I could feel a small sense of pride welling within me now. A rare, almost alien sensation that I hadn’t experienced in what felt like years.
It was more powerful than what my time prior to this exodus into the deep-end as well, and it was something I was once more attributing to the removal of that Vuark.
“Thanks Vir.” I spoke with a sheepish smile as the AI more or less took the opportunity to get back on track.
“Almost every city looks to be in a similar state, at least, with the cities that weren’t bombed or targeted by high-yield weapons, because if you see here…” Vir switched the image on the screen to what was effectively a desolate wasteland. A series of large craters, filled in with water, to the extent that some could tentatively be called lakes in their own right. There was no life here, no trees, no plants, nothing. All that there was, were swaths of barren lifeless dirt, concrete, and irradiated water. A quick radiation scan superimposed across the image more or less confirmed my suspicions. “... this is the state of most of what were urban centers on the planet’s surface.” Vir soon switched to other images, and sure enough, it was more of the same. With the only difference being the local geography surrounding these bombed out cities, or the state at which nature was managing to restake its claim, as some actually looked reasonably overgrown compared to the first batch of images. “Out of the 743 urban areas I’ve been able to log, about 595 are in similar states of destruction. The rest are on a sliding scale of partial destruction and somewhat intact. However, one thing remains constant throughout all of them.”
Vir paused for effect, superimposing another image above the planet, this time showing the whole globe as a 3D hologram on the tactical table in front of us.
“This is a rough scan of all of the active signals coming from the planet.” Vir spoke, as the scan revealed… nothing, except for one lone signal deep within a forest twenty or so kilometers away from a ruined city. “None exist, save for this one signal originating deep from within this dense forest.” Vir paused once more, taking the time to superimpose the signal that had brought us here in the first place, and the signal originating from deep within this forest. “This is the same signal that we detected from afar. Which means-”
“We found the source of our mystery signal.” I interrupted, completing Vir’s sentence for him.
“Bingo.” Vir responded with an excitable nod.
“The signal’s location more or less matches the Interloper’s riddle as well. A. It’s a signal, probably belonging to a signal station, i.e. a place which symbolizes a desire to reach out. B. The signal’s been going on for centuries now, so this place must be fortified, fitting its fortress criteria. C. It’s hidden deep within a forest, fitting with the interloper’s mention of a verdant garden.” I paused, turning to Vir with a look of confident determination set across my face. “So how about it? Do you think this might just be the place where our mystery person of interest is currently sequestered?”
“There is a potential that the interloper’s riddle was more symbolic than it is literal. However… I cannot deny that there exists a possibility that your current hypothesis might be correct. Regardless, it’s in our best interests to delve into the source behind this signal anyways. Might as well kill two birds with one stone, am I right?” Vir spoke with cautious optimism.
“Yes, and besides, it’s only through experimentation and evidence-gathering that we can confirm or reject our hypotheses. So it's about time we head down to determine what all of this is about.” I responded promptly, as Vir began shuffling between continually scanning the data we had on hand, and prepping the available drones for its first planetary insertion. “I just have one more question before we commit to this.” I quickly added.
“Go on?”
“We’re talking as if we’re confirming that this is indeed a collapsed civilization. Now, I’m one for abiding by self-evident truths, as superficial observation more or less confirms this to be the case. However, I’m also a scientist, so evidence-based decision making is vital to me. Especially when considering the possibility that there may exist some organized alien presence on the planet. And considering their history with an outwardly manipulative and hostile alien force, i.e. the interloper, there is a risk that they may just intercept our drones the moment we breach their atmosphere.” I paused, letting out a small sigh. “I just want to confirm that we are indeed dealing with a fallen civilization.”
Vir quickly pulled up several more planetary scans the moment I’d finished my piece, as he overlapped every possible scan from the first batch of surveys. From the local frequency broadcasts, to light pollution, to evidence of atmospheric pollutants and a vast number of other datasets, not a single dataset pointed to the presence of an advanced civilization. At least not on a scale detectable by current scans. “I’m not saying that there may not be survivors other than our person of interest. But as I currently see it, I don’t see a chance of any other survivors interfering with our operations, if that’s what you’re worried about Lysara.”
I nodded tentatively in response. “That’s part of it, but I digress. This whole operation is just moving incredibly quickly compared to how things usually went back in my line of work. So I just wanted to be sure before we committed.”
With a single affirmative nod from Vir, and a batch of at least a hundred different survey drones highlighted on screen, with their corresponding cameras filling in several more around us, the mission was set.
“I’ve divided the survey teams into two groups. One to survey the area around the signal, and another to survey several points of interest which include the ruins of cities and other settlements. It’s about a fifty fifty split, but I wanted a large sample size for us to work with here.”
“That’s a good idea, make sure to have them set priority to locating any form of long-term information storage. Books, digital media, analog media, anything that might help us translate the local language. That would be vital in unlocking whatever was written on the moonbase.” I quickly added, as the issue of the mysterious carvings and writings on the base still lurked in the back of my mind.
“That’s a good idea, I’ve made that one of their priority targets.” Vir acknowledged as he placed a single hand above the enter key above his side of the tactical table’s console.
“Shall we begin?” He spoke with a grin.
“Let’s.”

2 Kilometers from Truval City, The Former Farming Co-Operative of the Truval Municipality, Greenhouse 2a.
Evina
The greenhouse’s electrical equipment was starting to waver.
I say waver because the word fail just didn’t sit right with me, especially since I was sure I’d already raided every single spot in town for every scrap of electrical equipment I could possibly modify for the maintenance of this greenhouse.
The rest of the gear I’d managed to scrounge up was put to storage within the bunker, for equipment way more vital than the sprinklers, lighting, heating, and security of this small little place that wasn’t explicitly important to our survival, but really, just nice to have.
Whilst I didn’t exactly mind losing it, it was Eslan who I was more worried about. As ever since I introduced him to wild berries and oranges not native to this part of the planet, he’d been hooked. He’d prepared over a hundred pre-collapse recipes now, most of which were jams and other non-perishables that were actually pretty good, and were close enough to pre-collapse flavors that it even triggered some deep-seeded nostalgia from my first instance.
Ever since then, the greenhouse had become a bit of a personal passion project that I’d forced myself to commit to.
I never was good at botany or plant stuff, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t put my all into finding small little ways of improving both of our lives here.
So here I was, picking out the last few fruits before winter hit, and I’d have to shudder the place until the thaw of spring.
Running the greenhouse over winter just wasn’t viable, not with the load it put on our limited equipment.
But as I continued the calming motions of plucking oranges and berries from their stems, I noticed Lera, my felinor watchcat, stare off blankly into the distance in a way I hadn’t seen her do in a long time.
She was staring into the sky, at literally nothing.
I didn’t think too much of it though.
If there were threats, she would meow and bark in short order.
So for now, I continued on my afternoon chores.
I’d check up on the broadcast equipment sometime later.
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(Author’s Note: I've been waiting for this moment for a long time, we're finally expanding the perspectives and character roster for the first time in a long while! I hope you guys enjoy! :D The next chapter is already out on Patreon as well if you want to check it out!)
[If you guys want to help support me and these stories, here's my ko-fi ! And my Patreon for early chapter releases (Chapter 50 of this story is already out on there!)]

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Fanfiction.
Chapter 28 cont;
Working at sea had made me buy a coat specifically designed for the more extreme types of weather, but with its age and my short stint in the Irish sea the efficacy of the wax coating had all but vanished, after only taking a few steps I felt the water beginning to seep through. Putting aside the chill that came with wearing wet clothes I made my way along the deck until I found the cruiser.
She wasn't particularly difficult to find. Her cherry blond hair and pure white cape made it easy to spot her against the greys of the ship and sky. Her head was tilted upward with her eyes closed. She held Montpelier’s cube in her arms letting the rain fall on it. She must have noticed me coming, for she opened her eyes and looked over to me as I approached.
“Hey.” She greeted, her tone completely neutral and with a distinctive lack of the boyish bravado I had heard before. Her hair and all of her clothes were absolutely drenched yet she didn't seem to care.
“Hey. How are you holding up?” I awkwardly replied.
“Fine, I guess.” Cleveland replied, looking down at the cube and affectionately rubbing it with her thumb. “I’ve had this body for half a year now. Yet this is the first time I've ever felt the rain.”
“And how are you finding it?”
“Cold and wet.” She lifted her head up once again, letting the rain splash against her face. “But it is kinda nice. The sound against the deck and sea is rather pleasant.”
“You should try listening to it near a forest or field, especially during spring. I used to listen to it all the time back home.” Memories of countless days back home sitting in the study with the window open reading book after book while it rained outside surfaced.
“Guess that stereotype holds true then, eh?” There was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips. “Monty always enjoyed the quiet time we had together.”
My eyes were drawn to the cube in her hands. “May I?”
There was a moment of reticence before she slowly offered the cube to me. “Please, be careful.”
“I will, I promise.” I carefully took the item from Cleveland, taking it into my hands as delicately as I could. The dull crystal felt cold to my touch, and it wasn’t only due to the rain. I slowly rotated it in my fingers, hoping for something, anything that would show a sign of activity within, yet my mind didn’t become awash with random thoughts or feelings; it felt like nothing more than mundane glass in my hands.
The guilt was piling up again. “I can't begin to express how sorry I am. We should have acted sooner.”
Cleveland looked at her hand while she flexed her fingers, but her eyes never left the cube. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You did all that you could, and even took a great risk for complete strangers. It's me who is to blame for not being there for her. For leaving her behind.”
“But I will not fail her again.” She continued, confidence returning to her voice and posture. “I know within my heart that we will be reunited one day.” She ran a hand along the silver streak in her hair.
“If you don't mind me asking, what happened when you touched your sister's ship? For a moment it looked like you had two riggings.” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
“I don't really know what or how I did it, I just couldn't let her ship fall apart like that. However, now it seems like I can have both my and her rigging.” She waved a hand out to sea where a Cruiser sailed alongside the battleship. And with a flash of light her rigging appeared. “It's uncomfortable having both at the same time to say the least, but like this it's not too bad.”
“Well you can keep her ship safe for her.” I carefully held out the cube for her to take back. “If there's one thing I've learned in the time I've spent around you girls is that anything is possible.”
“Thanks.” She took the cube back. “Not just for saying that, but for everything you and your crew have done. It's heartening to know there's at least one person out there looking out for us.” Cleveland rocked on her heels. “If it's alright with you, may I hang around with you guys for a bit? I don't really have anywhere else to go and being part of a fleet sounds nice.”
“There will always be a place for you in this fleet, Cleveland. For you and any other ship that wishes to join us.” I offered my hand. “No strings attached, if you don't wish to fight or follow orders then you can just wait out any fight onboard a ship”
Cleveland gave a toothy smile. “I won’t be no slacker. I'll earn my keep just as much as any other girl. You can depend on our six inch guns.” I paid attention to her eyes when she took my hand. Now there was the distinct blue glow for less than a second in her right eye, something that had happened before with other girls. Cleveland seemed to relax slightly after the exchange, but I could still see weariness in her.
She tilted her head up to the sky. “Man, it's really coming down now. We should head back inside.” Cleveland took one more pensive look at her ship before walking inside.
The water dripping from our clothes echoed inside the ship as we walked. We came upon a junction where we would go down different paths, and Cleveland paused to speak, rubbing the brooch on her cape once again. “James… About what you did. I know it probably isn't right to say, but thank you. If anyone deserved such a fate, it was him. So you ever need anything from me, no matter what it is I will do it.”
“Uh, thanks.” I replied, unable to think of something meaningful to say. The idea of being thanked for what I did was hard to comprehend, but the gratitude I saw in the cruiser's face helped ease the turmoil within.
That gratitude was also disturbing somehow.
–
I decided to return to my cabin with my drenched self and next to no desire to eat. I changed out of the wet raincoat and inner clothes and sat down on my bed, contemplating what to do. With how exhausted I felt sleep would probably come easily but I knew without a doubt it would be anything but peaceful.
There was the option of finishing off the bottle under my bed, but while it would help it’d only be pushing the problem aside temporarily, and I didn’t want Warspite or worse, Javelin or Z23 see me in that state. I continued mulling over my options until the daylight disappeared completely. Just as I was about to risk a night's sleep there and there came a gentle knocking at my door.
With a sigh, I got up and opened the door. I was greeted with the warm and dignified visage of Hood standing on the other side, with several books held under her arm and lips curled into a smile when our eyes met.
“Ah good,” her eyes moved to the empty tray still left at the side. “I see you enjoyed your lunch. May I come in?”
Hood had been the one to leave that try outside my door, even after how I had snapped at her, now I just felt even more guilty.
I stepped aside and waved her in. “Please.”
The battlecruiser walked into the small cabin with a familiar scent of lavender trailing behind her. She placed her books down on the small table while inquisitively looking around the room. I soon wished I had cleaned it.
I gulped when her eyes spotted the bottle under my bed. She didn’t say anything about it, but laid dead still, keeping an inscrutable smile. She lingered on it for a moment then returned her attention to me, taking off the glove of her right hand in the process. She gestured to come closer with one of her revealed fingers. “Come here.”
The very instant I closed the distance, I received a slap for the second time today, faster than I could react as well.
“I deserved that.” I sputtered gracelessly, rubbing my swollen cheek. She didn’t hit me as hard as Warspite had, but it had been the same side and reignited the sting from earlier.
“I will not tolerate being spoken to in such a manner, not from you nor anyone else. Not now, not ever.” Hood folded her arm and raised her nose curtly, her face a scowl of indignation. “No matter what you went through, to threaten one of us with an order of that kind goes against everything you stand for, and if you ever begin to stray again a slap will be the least of your problems, James.”
I looked down, misery once more coming afloat.
With her fury vented, Hood's posture relaxed and she looked at me more caringly. She put on her glove again. “James. I–we only desire to be of service to you in any way we can. You need not suffer alone. You don’t have to suffer alone, nothing good will come of it. Which is why I am here now.”
She carefully sat down on the small chair in the room, ensuring her large skirt didn’t get caught or creased.
“I don’t understand?”
She smiled with dignity. “My cabin is directly next to yours. And the walls are naught but a thin sheet of metal. I know you regularly awaken suddenly in the night from being disturbed in your sleep, so I'm here to ensure you get a proper night's rest.” She waved to the pile of books and the bed. “Don’t worry about me, I will keep myself occupied.”
I opened my mouth to protest but she quickly cut me off. “There will be no negotiation, you assisted me when I struggled to sleep and now I shall do the same. Now get yourself ready for bed, I will close my eyes.” She leaned back and shut her eyes.
Knowing there was no point in arguing, I removed both my shirt and trousers and laid myself down in bed. My face felt warm at the idea of Hood sitting by me while I slept, enough to overpower the last bits of lingering pain from the slap, but exhaustion hit me like a train the moment I laid down.
Hood reopened her eyes with the slightest bit of a blush of her own. “Good, now you just relax and I will be here if you need me.” Hood reached down and grabbed the bottle. “Honestly, I don’t understand your reasoning behind seeking comfort in this instead of getting it from a beautiful lady.” She opened the bottle and took a rather large swig.
“Don’t know where I could find the latter.” I mumbled.
“I am not ignorant of how I look, nor am I to your wandering gaze.” She quipped with a coy smile. “Now enough chitchat, it’s time for you to rest. That is unless you want me to read for you?”
“Fine, fine. Have it your way.” I said, resting my head down and shutting my eyes. It took a while to get over the nerves of having Hood sitting beside me, but the occasional flip of a page became a pleasant background noise that helped lull me to sleep.
—
Warspite sat in her captain’s chair, resting her head in her arm as she wracked her brain. She rocked her head back with a groan once more. “Why did you have to go and hit him, Warspite? You bloody stupid ship.”
She didn’t know why she had such a rush of emotions when he spoke and acted without thinking before bawling like an infant. Why is it now that just his presence is enough to throw her whits into a loop, yet she couldn’t wait until he was sitting in this chair with her at his side again?
“Things were easier when I wanted naught but to throw him overboard.” She sighed.
Another issue came to her mind, something she had brought back from the facility, not the notebook; that could remain safely locked away until she was sure her opinion of humans wouldn’t worsen even more. This was something else, something she wished she had never even touched and just left it where it lay, for what it meant made her sick.
Someone approached her bridge, Warspite quickly brushed aside her thoughts and tried to figure out who it was. She was unsuccessful at figuring out who it was but when the door had opened she quickly dropped to her knee.
“Good evening, your Majesty.”
Elizabeth smiled and walked onto the bridge. “There will never be a day where thou need to kneel upon thy own bridge. Stand, my dear Warspite.”
“Yes, your Majesty.” The battleship stood back up. “How was your rest? I hope the rain was not too distracting.” Warspite offered the captain's chair to Elizabeth for her to sit. But the tiny Queen remained standing.
After surveying the surrounding sea Elizabeth turned to her sister. “T’was most pleasant. How did things fare while I rested? Did you speak to our Commander about the book?”
“Ah, well.” Warspite scratched her head. “He gave me the same answer as you, your Majesty. I will wait until Cleveland is in a better condition and ask her permission to read it.”
Elizabeth brought a hand to her chin, noticing the small movements and fidgeting her sister was still doing. “Yet something troubles you still. Is it anything I could be of assistance with?”
Warspite sighed and dropped her shoulders. “May I ask for your assistance in something, not as my queen but as my sister?”
The Queen nodded with a soft smile. “I will always be your big sister before I am your Queen, Warspite. What is it you wish to confide in me with?”
“One second.” She replied before walking off into a small secondary inner communications room connected to the bridge, its purpose made redundant by her being able to control the ship completely no matter where she was. But inside a small cabinet was an inconspicuous rag that hid the source of her problems. She returned to the bridge with the item in hand.
“The notepad wasn't the only thing I grabbed before leaving.” She spoke as she walked over. “When James…” Warspite paused as she relived the memory. “When he shot that wretched man he dropped his gun.”
Peeling back the rag she showed Elizabeth the firearm. “There had been something about the sound it made when it fell that made me curious. I could tell you, but I think it's better for you to see for yourself.”
She offered the gun to her sister cautiously. Elizabeth took the firearm into her hand, instantly finding herself being able to handle it like she had trained with it for decades. Her brow furrowed as she noticed something was off about it.
“It can't be.” She pressed down on the magazine release to confirm her suspicion. “It's… empty?” Elizabeth was dumbfounded at the empty magazine. “Did you unload it?”
Warspite sighed and shook her head. “Unfortunately no. This is how it was, so technically…”
“James was never in any real danger.” Elizabeth finished, remembering what Warspite had told her of the exchange when they had returned.
“And that's the problem, I know James would want me to be honest to him. But what he did is tearing him apart inside, this would only make things worse.” She looked in the general direction of where his cabin would be. “I’m perplexed, Elizabeth. I’m sorry for dropping this on you, but what should I do?”
The Queen was silent for a while. Her gaze was distant as she thought over the problem until her smile returned and she returned the gun to her sister. “You should throw this in the ocean and forget about it. He put a gun against our James’ head. Loaded or not, James acted accordingly.”
Warspite looked at the gun and nodded. “I should have clocked it.”
An arm rested against her shoulder. “The past is filled with should haves and would haves, Warspite. If we were able to go back and change things then a lot of disasters could have been avoided.” Elizabeth felt the echoes of a memory come to mind, of a beach too steep to climb and an ocean filled with blood. “But we can't change them, so we must learn, grow stronger and soldier onward.”
The two sisters embraced one another in a hug for a long time until eventually breaking and retiring for the night. But not before the old warship went and threw the gun overboard, cursing the name of its deceased owner as she did, hoping the seas would swallow one more secret, never to resurface again.
(A/N) once again I ended up seeing this chapter getting longer and longer, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and look forward to the next, it should be coming soon as at the time of posting this the next chapter is already about halfway done.

• #50: Texas Is The Reason - A Jack With One Eye (1996)
• #49: Have Mercy - Let's Talk About Your Hair (2013)
• #48: Hotel Books - I Died With You (2015)
• #47: You and I - Saturday's Cab Ride Home (1997)
• #46: I Hate Myself - Caught In A Flood With The Captain Of The Cheerleading Squad (1997)
• #45: Say Anything - Plea (2007)
• #44: Cross My Heart - Tonight We'll Light Ourselves On Fire (2000)
• #43: American Football - Never Meant (1999)
• #42: The Hated - Someone (1989)
• #41: The Saddest Landscape - ...The Stars In January (2003)
• #40: Piebald - American Hearts (2001)
• #39: Still Life - A Song About Love (1993)
• #38: Planes Mistaken For Stars - Staggerswallowswell (1999)
• #37: Christie Front Drive - Saturday (1997)
• #36: Transit - Skipping Stone (2011)
• #35: As Friends Rust - The First Song On the Tape You Make Her (1999)
• #34: Orchid - Destination: Blood! (2000)
• #33: Rockets and Bluelights - Andee (2003)
• #32: Evergreen - A Couple Curled Up Pictures (1994)
• #31: Restorations - The Red Door (2018)
• #30: Raein - Tigersuit (2003)
• #29: Jimmy Eat World - What I Would Say To You Now (1997)
• #28: September - Cyrus the White Rabbit (1996)
• #27: The Get Up Kids - Michelle With One "L" (1997)
• #26: On the Might of Princes - For Meg (2001)
• #25: Penfold - Microchip (1999)
• #24: mewithoutYou - A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains (2006)
• #23: Braid - The New Nathan Detroits (1998)
• #22: Portrait - Constellations of a Stargazing Iris (1999)
• #21: Mineral - Unfinished (1998)
• #20: The Pine - In The Breeze (2002)
• #19: Cap'n Jazz - Little League (1995)
• #18: Funeral Diner - Yeah, You Remember That (2004)
• #17: Embrace - No More Pain (1987)
• #16: You and I - 143(jcm) (1999)
• #15: Saetia - Venus and Bacchus (1997)
• #14: Portraits of Past - Bang Yer Head (1996)
• #13: Christie Front Drive - Valentine (1996)
• #12: Moss Icon - Lyburnum Wit's End Liberation Fly (1993)
• #11: Taking Back Sunday - You Know How I Do (2002)
• #10: The Hotelier - Dendron (2014)
• #9: Thursday - Understanding in a Car Crash (2001)
• #8: Rainer Maria - The Awful Truth of Loving (2003)
• #7: The Appleseed Cast - Fishing the Sky (2000)
• #6: Rites of Spring - For Want Of (1985)
• #5: Jimmy Eat World - Just Watch the Fireworks (1998)
• #4: Jawbreaker - Accident Prone (1995)
• #3: Sunny Day Real Estate - Seven (1994)
• #2: Mineral - Take The Picture Now (1997)
• #1: Indian Summer - Woolworm (but you we call it Angry Son) (1993)

WE BACK!!!

What's good fam, back with another gigantic post. Got a metric shit ton of clothes to sell as I have a problem (as you can tell from this post).
Will be adding more clothes to this post in the week, stay tuned!
- I'm a vouched seller and have been around since 2015, so operating with Paypal gift
- Please hit me in PMs for questions.
- First come, first serve.
- Flakers get blocked.
Vouch History (since 2017)
- 2 year ago: https://www.reddit.com/RepVouch/comments/fucayf/traj250/
- 4 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/RepVouch/comments/7lk7ns/traj250/
- 5 year ago: https://www.reddit.com/RepVouch/comments/8t6ksq/traj250/
- 6 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/RepVouch/comments/60dx90/utraj250/
All my homies hate Imgur, Google Photos gang. Tag and timestamp in the first linked album.
CLOTHES: https://photos.app.goo.gl/R4qwWtCEFVYWhhjV7
SHOES: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hzXLXbFhpt7Qz6kZ7
ACCESSORIES: https://photos.app.goo.gl/9PYpQr8bwZ7yFDNN8

---

SHIRTS

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RETAIL Rare Bape Hong Kong HK Camo 3rd Year Anniversary
size L (Japanese sizing so tts M-L depending on desired fit)
90 + ship
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Undercover shirt
size 2 (fits S - M)
From my ex, need gone
20 + ship
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RETAIL "Be True" ACG Logo Shirt
size L (fits oversized so more like XL)
45 + ship
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RETAIL Babylon x Off White Shirt
size XL
150 + ship
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VL0NE I Heart ATL Shirt
size XL
40 + ship
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VL0NE Playboy Shirt (green)
size XL (fits L-XL)
30 + ship
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VLNTO Shirt
size XL
40 + ship
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RETAIL Tyler Outsidelands CMIYGL Shirt
size L
100 + ship
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H3LMUT [email protected] Logo Shirt
size XL
35 + ship
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[email protected] [email protected] Blurred Logo Shirt
size XL
35 + ship
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Bape x Chrome Hearts Shirt
size XL (fits L-XL)
brand new, never worn
45 + ship
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V3TMENTS Ferrari Red Shirt
size L (tts or oversized M)
fire collab, rare shirt featuring the classic ferrari motif on front and back
60 + ship
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V3TMENTS The Pirate Bay Shirt
size XL (fits XL - XXL)
Never worn. Phenomenal shirt. Korean/hq chinese batch so print, material, spelling, etc is on point. No rush to sell this, will wear if doesn't sell. (listed for what i paid)
80 + ship
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K!TH Flowers Gardens of the Mind Emboridery Shirt
size XL (fits L-XL)
Nice emboridery and details on this shirt.
35 + ship
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[email protected] DEPT Porsche Shirt
size XL (fits XL-XXL)
65 + ship
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Number N!n(e) 9 Mickey Mouse Shirt
size 2 (fits M to slim L)
45 + ship
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Baby Milo Bape Shirt
size XL (fits L)
Might be retail. Bought from a user who was unsure of authenticity. Don't see a lot of baby milo reps often, so something unique to drip.
40 + ship
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RETAIL Polo College Logo Chest Shirt
size XL (tts)
Great casual drip or a solid present to a friend.
45 + ship
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Nike Real Eyes Realize Shirt
size L (fits L-XL)
Great quality blank and print. New nike product has that a1 sauce that reps haven't gotten yet.
35 + ship
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ENF RCH DEPR (ERD) Blue Judgement Day Shirt
fits M-L
ERD is such a dope brand, but heavily overpriced. This shirt is super nice quality and feels amazing to the touch, it's the high-quality batch. Bought off a user from qReps. Don't sleep on the true drip.
100 + ship
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Palm Angels Mermaid Shirt
size XL (fits XL-XXL)
High quality blank and print. Feels like retail, dont sleep
75 + ship
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Palm Angels Butterfly Button Up
size XL (fits XL-XXL no problem)
This is basically retail. HQ palm angels reps have nailed the designs and material quality that retail uses. Fire piece for summer. Not cheap quality batch that has sizing/print wrong.
85 + ship
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Rhud3 Flamingos Floral Silk Shirt (Green)
size L (fits XL or oversized L)
another summer staple. Will confirm 1:1 gf 2-3 days friend. Was expensive because its a silk and viscose blend which feels phenomenal to touch and fits awesome
90 + ship---
Rhud3 Floral Silk Shirt (Black)
size L (fits XL or oversized L)
Brand new. same as prev quality
100 + ship---

PANTS

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YZY Season 6 Sweatpants
size XL
65 + ship
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SI Sweatpants
grey XL
65 + ship
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R!CK OWNS Berlin Pants
fits XL
Great pair of versatile pants that fit either for lounging around or for fits. Bought off a user who copped off the pink elephant seller or something from qReps. Haven't had a lot of wear on these, but tempted to keep them.
85 + ship
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Haider Perth Sweatpants (Brown)
fits 36-38 (maybe smaller depending on if an oversized fit is desired)
These are amazing. Love the details on the garment. Has a great feel to the touch.
70 + ship
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Cactus JOR Warm-Up Track Pants
size XL
Great pair of pants to wear on top of shorts to go hoop, or even dressed up. Love the attention to detail on this piece too, like the zippered pockets, the tags, as well as a Nike logo and adjustment facilities on the foot cuff.
70 + ship
---RETAIL Nike Tech Fleece Shorts
size XL
These are hella nice utility shorts. Some summer classics.
25 + ship
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[email protected] Colored Camo Shorts
- blue (XXL, fits 36-38)
- purple (XXL, fits 36-38)
Incredibly difficult to find Bape without shark prints, even if looking for just camo or colored camo--haven't seen these for sale ever. These are OG reps that are actually high quality, and that's communicated through details like the tags from the inside of the shorts to the front as well. Don't sleep, these are some of my favorites.
75 + ship each
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[email protected] Reversible Pink Shorts (swimming trunk)
size XL brand new
60 + ship
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RETAIL Bravest Studio LV Camo Shorts
size XXL (fit tts)
Would keep if they were an XL but just a lil too big on me. These are retail and are amazing quality for wearing out or flexing at the gym/while hooping
85 + ship each
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RETAIL Nike ACG Technical Cargo Shorts
- Orange
- Black
- dark grey (mesh pocket)
All size L (adjustable waist) brand new w/tags
Amazing quality shorts. Collect a lot of ACG and these are so good for spring/summer. Lots of pockets and selling for a steal
75 + ship each
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RETAIL Polo Boat Knots Boat Shorts
size L (tts)
40 + ship
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RETAIL Nike ACG Color Essential Shorts (Orange)
size XL brand new w/tags
45 + ship
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Rhud3 Green Shorts
size XL (fits L - XL depending on fit)
Heavy high quality details on this jawn
65 + ship
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Rhud3 Reflective Shorts (Green and Red)
- green
- maroon/red
size XL (fits L-XL)
60 + ship (each)
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GUCC! Lightweight Jersey Material Shorts
size XL
65 + ship
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GUCC! Cloth Stripes Shorts (Stripes on side)
size L
85 + ship
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HOODIE / LONGSLEEVES

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RETAIL Babylon x Off White Longlseeve
size XL
180 + ship
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SI Shadow Projects Crewneck
size XL (tts)
85 + ship
Great crewneck, basically brand new.
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RETAIL Supreme Nun Crewneck
size XL
A classic piece. Snag for a steal.
80 + ship
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Rare [email protected] Varsity Jacket
size L
Hard to find bape reps without the shark motif. But this jacket has it all, the details are phenomenal and the print is super unique.
150 + ship
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RETAIL Puma x Ader Anorak
fits XL
80 + ship
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RETAIL Nike ACG Vintage Pullover Anorak (new w/tags)
size XL
150 + ship
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SI Hooded Sweater
size XL (fits L-XL)
60 + ship
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BLCG Embroidery Black Hoodie
size L (fits XL)
100 + ship
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BLCG Maroon Logo Hoodie
size XL
27 in bust, 25 in shoulder and 30 in length
100 + ship
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BALENC!AGA Washed Hoodie
fits XL-XXL
Another amazing hoodie. Feels awesome and looks even better. Has an awesome fit, that layers well with jackets on top or can be worn by itself. I believe it's Amy batch iirc.
100 + ship
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K!TH x TOMMY H!LFIGER Reversible Jacket
size XL (tts)
150 + ship
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BURB3RRY Blue Anorak
size XL (tts)
150 + ship
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BLCG Elephant Windbreaker
fits XL - XXL
Nice color blocking with the grey, black and red highlights, this piece is of phenomenal quality. I believe the BTS user I bought off of said it was either reon or Amy batch, can't remember which, but it was one of the two as they were the one's making the high-quality reps of this. Haven't worn this at all, still brand new.
170 + ship
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SI 3M Hoodie
fits XL-XXL
Great hoodie, versatile and nice stone island detailing.
65 + ship
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BALENC!AGA ANORAK JACKET
size XL - XXL depending on desired fit
As worn by Travis Scott. Amazing older balenciaga piece, haven't seen around sub or anything for sale. Also very tempted to keep this.
200 + ship
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BALENC!AGA Padded Flannel
Size 52 (fits L-XL)
This is reon's 300$ batch, never worn by me. Just been posted in my closet. Details and feeling of materials are immaculate on this, the Koreans know what they are doing about reps fr.
300 + ship
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[email protected] G00SE Expedition Parka
size XXL (fits tts XL, or slimmer XXL depending on desired fit)
Amazing jacket. Get a lot of compliments on this piece. Tempted to keep it for this upcoming winter, but have too many jackets! Definitely a trooper of a jacket. Also, the attention to details on this replica parallels retail CG, from the fuzzy pockets to keep your hands warm when its cold as bricks
300 + ship
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GUCC! Tracksuit Jacket
size XL tts
80 + ship
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KAPITAL Sweater
size L (fits M-L)
Awesome knit pattern. Fits awesome
100 + ship
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Rhud3 Green Zip-up Hoodie
fits L
High quality zippers and quality of materials
85 + ship
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G!VENCHY Light Blue hoodie
size XL tts
100 + ship
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Human Mad3 x Lil Uzi Vert
size L (tts L - slim XL)
Brand new w/bag
75 + ship
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Arc'teryx Beta AR Jacket Maroon
size XL
85 + ship
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RETAIL Call me if You Get Lost Merch
- brown hoodie (100 + ship)
- brown workers jacket (150 + ship)
Brand new. Bought from Seattle tour
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Harley Davidson Zip Up Vintage hoodie
size L (fits L-XL)
65 + ship
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[email protected] Fleece Anorak
size L
75 + ship
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ACCESSORIES

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SUP x TNF Compass (new)
25 + ship
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SUP Dollar Chain (new, mainly trade)
75 + ship
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Chrom3 Hearts Wallet Chain
Brand new, never worn. Listed for what I paid.
200 + ship
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Chrom3 Hearts Bead Bracelet
Real silver in this jawn. Nice ass piece.
70 + ship
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GUCC! Ghost Thick Ring
size 9 or so iirc
Great quality silver ring. Feels very solid and features iconic Gucci ghost print.
50 + ship
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[email protected] x Jam Home Made Ring
RARE and super dope piece. Haven't seen this around in sooooo long, bought off taobao circa 2017. From the deep vaults of my personal collection
80 + ship
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CH Ring 1 (listed in order on google photos)
50 + ship
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CH Ring 2 (listed in order on google photos)
50 + ship
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CH Ring 3 (listed in order on google photos)
50 + ship
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CH Ring 4 (listed in order on google photos)
50 + ship
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CH Safety Pin
45 + ship
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GCCI Ghost Chain
Ah, a classic staple piece. In phenomenal condition and can go with any fit, whether dressing up or regularly wearing.
85 + ship
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LUIV x Virgil Silver Bracelet
Great bracelet, wore it to a few parties, defo gets attention, esp under proper lighting. Still got a lot of wear left in it.
45 + ship
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LUIV x SUP Belt (New Darcy batch)
size 38
150 + ship
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LUIV Bandana/Scarf
60 + ship
---HERM3S Blanket
Great quality piece. Never used, only kept in storage. Was planning to give it as a gift to my ex (lol). Rare piece, hard to find. The stitching is awesome, the material feels good, and no visible flaws in the pattern.
200 + ship
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SI 3M Reflective Tactical Vest (new)
150 + ship
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OW Backpack (new)
Brand new, never used. Details on this are phenomenal. Had retail off white backpack and the rep does an amazing job from the zippers to the pockets and different storage facilities in the bag.
200 + ship
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D!OR Backpack (new)
Brand new and never worn.
70 + ship
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AM!RI Bandana Silk Keychain
Super nice quality keychain. This thing feels amazing!!! Love the silk on this. Perfect to add to an outfit as an accessory or to a satchel or backpack.
60 + ship
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OW Rubber Belt
O/S
35 + ship
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D!OR Bookbag
O/S
85 + ship
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LV Mini Soft Trunk Monogram Eclipse Black
Brand new w/all accessories.
180 + ship
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RETAIL Bape Pink Side Bag
100 + ship
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LV Fragment Apollo backpack
200 + ship
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Arc'teryx Collab Maka Bag
brand new w/tags
Copped off grailed for a trip but it arrived too late.
100 + ship
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LV Keepall Duffle 55
250 + ship
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RETAIL OVO x Klean Kanteen
Brand new. Copped from vancouver store and never used. Super nice quality bottle, KK makes great bottles
40 + ship
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SHOES

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RETAIL AM97
size 13
120 + ship
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J0RDAN 1 Turbo Green
size 12
120 + ship
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[email protected] x NK LD Waffle (Grey)
size 13
130 + ship
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J0RDAN 6 Maroon
size 12
90 + ship
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[email protected] N!KE LD Waffle (Grey)
size 12
85 + ship
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N!KE Dunk Low - Medium Curry
size 12
Great pair of shoes, go with a lot of different outfits. Very versatile and dope pair of shoes.
75 + ship
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N!KE Blazer OW Wolf Grey Serena Queen
size 13
85 + ship
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FOG Oatmeal 1s
size 12
have accessories bag, basically new
170 + ship
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D!OR STUS B27 (white and black)
size 45 (fits 11-12)
80 + ship
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UB Creme 1.0
size 12
65 + ship
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HR Hindi Core White NMD
size 12
65 + ship
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OW AF1 Volt
size 12
65 + ship
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J1 Mocha
size 13
100 + ship
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D!OR B27 (red)
size 45 (fits 11-12)
120 + ship
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C0MM0N PROJECT Achilles Heel
size 46 (12-13)
80 + ship
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J0RDAN 4 Laser Black Gum
size 12
80 + ship
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Kanye West [email protected]
size 12
300 + ship
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N!keCraft Mars Yard Tom Sachs
size 12
150 + ship
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R!CK Owens Ramones
size 45 (fits 11-11.5)
120 + ship
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R!CK OWENS Dunks Daft Batch - Dust Colorway
size 47 (US 12 - 13 depending on the desired fit)
Daft's batch, enough said. Haven't worn these, have too many shoes. Bought for 400 + shipping fees off a user on BST.
350 + ship
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RETAIL New Balance 2002R
size 12
Brand new, grab for a steal
120 + ship
---

Hey Fantasy Football people,
I'm in 7 of these leagues. These Dynasty leagues are so much fun and are very challeging. We have a few open spots.
​

• 32 Speical Open Teams: Bears, Eagles, Cards, Broncos
• Alpha 32 Open Teams: Packers Cards, Bengals, Browns
• Beta 32 Open Teams: Packers, Saints, Steelers

​
Quick Details

• 32 owners! How could that be? - There is a copy of every althete in the league. So there two copies of J.Jeffereson. You can't own a copy of both players
• Mega pot year 5
• 21 offensive starters 53 man rosters
• Every owner claims an NFL team
• Strict, but organized rules with great commissioners
• Tons of trading
• New owners: you are immediately put into a dispersal draft (Rookie Owner Draft) before the Dynasty Rookie Draft which is waiting for you

Updated**
Links to available players: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uIA1SLL8BOVWv392JgsQTt6LvMKd6RgzBXzWwoPD_jE/edit?usp=sharing

Main hub thread with the full 131 rankings
THE MOUNTAINEERS HAVE JUST BEATEN THE MICHIGAN WOLVERINES!
Those words still echo in the mind of college football fans today, whether you like it or not. Since that game, App State has gone from little known FCS school to one of the premier Group of 5 programs in the country, going to 7 bowls and winning 4 conference titles in their first 9 years in the FBS. App State is so much more than their win over Michigan, they’re a 3x FCS national title winner with a 654-352-28 all time record.

Best Seasons and Highlights

1. 2019: 11. Appalachian State: 13-1 (33.774) 2. 2018: 16. Appalachian State: 11-2 (23.951) 3. 2015: 25. Appalachian State: 11-2 (19.956) 4. 2016: 23. Appalachian State: 10-3 (18.676) 5. 2021: 34. Appalachian State: 10-4 (11.872) 6. 2020: 27. Appalachian State: 9-3 (10.207) 7. 2017: 41. Appalachian State: 9-4 (5.885) 8. 2022: 72. Appalachian State: 6-6 (-11.144) 9. 2014: 73. Appalachian State: 7-5 (-12.051) Overall Score: 10445 (80th) 

• 86-30 record
• 4 conference titles
• 6-1 bowl record
• 0 consensus All-Americans
• 8 NFL players drafted

If you want the blueprint for a successful FCS → FBS transition, look no further than Appalachian State. App won right out the gate, winning 4 straight conference titles from 2016-19, winning their first 6 bowl games, and went 54-10 in their first 8 seasons in the Sun Belt. They’ve sent 2 head coaches to Power 5 programs in Scott Satterfield (Louisville) and Eli Drinkwitz (Missouri). While they’ve only finished in the AP Top 25 once, they’ve finished top 25 in my rankings 4 times, and I think they’ve generally been pretty underrated as a team year-to-year.

Top 5 Seasons

Worst Season: 2014 (7-5 overall, 6-2 Sun Belt)
Despite going 6-6 and 3-5 in the Sun Belt in 2022, the 2014 team was slightly worse according to my algorithm because of strength of schedule. The 2014 team played the 2nd easiest schedule in the NCAA, and when you look at some of the teams App State lost to/beat, it makes sense why they’re here. A 1-5 start included losses to 3-9 Southern Miss, rival Georgia Southern, and…FCS team Liberty. The Liberty loss is somewhat excusable, it was 48-55 in OT and App still had an FCS-level roster. A 6 game win streak to end the season could’ve gotten them out of this “worst” spot, but the wins were over 3-9 Troy, 1-11 Georgia State, 4-8 UL Monroe, 1-10 Idaho…with admittedly impressive wins over 7-6 Arkansas State and 9-4 UL Lafayette. The win over Lafayette actually caused them to miss out on a share of the Sun Belt title. App State finished 3rd themselves. RB Marcus Cox ran for 1400+ yards with 19 TD.
5. 2021 (10-4 overall, 7-1 Sun Belt)
App inherited former Clemson hero Chase Brice as a transfer QB. Brice helped lead a 10 point comeback against Syracuse in 2018 to keep #3 Clemson unbeaten. App State was expected to compete for the Sun Belt crown with Coastal Carolina and Louisiana, who went a combined 21-2 the previous season. After an opening win over East Carolina, App State travelled to Miami to play the Hurricanes who needed a late FG to escape with a 25-23 win. In a possible preview of the Sun Belt title game, 4-1 App State took on 4-1 UL Lafayette, but the Cajuns dominated from the opening whistle to easily take it 41-13. App would rebound with a huge 30-27 win over #14 Coastal Carolina, to take the lead in the East division. The Mountaineers won out, going 10-2, and by the time they entered the Sun Belt title game they were rolling, winning their last 5 games by an average score of 42-12. App State had a chance at their 5th title in 6 years as 2.5 point favorites in the rematch with #20 Louisiana, but again the Cajuns did enough for the 24-16 win. App would also lose the bowl game to a high-powered Bailey Zappe-led Western Kentucky offense.
The All-Sun Belt team was SSSTACKED with App State players, with 9 on offense and 7 on defense making 1st-3rd team. Even kicker Chandler Staton was 1st Team All-American, going 57/57 on XPs and 20/20 on FGs. Chase Brice earned 3rd Team All-Sun Belt, throwing for 3337 yards with 27 TD 11 INT. RBs Nate Noel and Camrun Peoples combined for 2054 rushing yards and 18 TD, both making 1st/2nd team. WRs Corey Sutton, Malik Williams, and Thomas Hennigan all had 800+ receiving yards, making 1st/2nd team. The LB core was one of the best in the country: D’Marco Jackson was the Sun Belt Defensive POTY with 119 tackles, 6 sacks, and 14 TFL. Nick Hampton was 2nd in the conference with 11 sacks. And Trey Cobb was 2nd team all-conference with 3 INTs, 4 PBUs, and 6 TFL. Both Jackson and Hampton were drafted into the NFL.
4. 2016 (10-3 overall, 7-1 Sun Belt)
In 2016 it was QB Taylor Lamb’s junior year and his 3rd year as a starter. App was in their 3rd year in the FBS and showed potential the previous 2 years going 7-5 and 11-2, but hadn’t made it to the top of the mountain quite yet. That was the expectation going into 2016, with the media picking them to win the Sun Belt. In an opening 13-20 loss in OT to #9 Tennessee, most people focused on the embarrassment for Butch Jones and Tennessee, ignoring the fact that this was a really good App State team, and not your usual FCS → FBS transition school. After going 2-2 in the non-conference slate, App went 7-1 in the Sun Belt, only losing to 10-3 Troy 24-28 while beating all other teams by 2+ touchdowns. In just their 3rd season in the FBS, App secured their first ever Sun Belt title, and beat 9-3 Toledo in the bowl for good measure. RB Jalin Moore won Sun Belt Offensive POTY, running for 1400+ yards with 10 TD. Backup Marcus Cox was arguably even better, running for 1000+ yards and 9 TD on 6.4 YPC in just 9 games. He probably would’ve won OPOTY had he not missed games due to injury. Lamb had his worst statistical year with just 15 TD passes to 8 INT, but did rush for 500+ yards with 9 TD. DBs Clifton Duck and Mondo Williams formed a buddy-cop show character name tag team in the secondary, both making 1st Team All-Sun Belt with 9 total INTs.
3. 2015 (11-2 overall, 7-1 Sun Belt)
People knew App State was a solid school after finishing 3rd in the Sun Belt the previous season, but how good? The media pegged them to finish 4th in 2015, so pretty good but not championship material. Taylor Lamb, Marcus Cox, and App State would quickly challenge that hypothesis. Not satisfied with an opening 49-0 win over Howard, App beat Old Dominion by the same score 2 weeks later. It wasn’t good enough, we needed more. 37-3 over Georgia State. 59-14 over UL Monroe. App ran like a well oiled machine with the Lamb-Cox backfield. All that winning set up their biggest game of their short FBS lives, at 7-1 (4-0 Sun Belt) taking on Arkansas State (5-3, 4-0), who’d won 3 of the last 4 conference titles. Experience won out this time, with the more polished Red Wolves taking it 40-27. Still with the possibility of sharing a title if Arkansas State lost another game, App won out to finish 10-2, but Arkansas State won the title with a perfect 8-0 record. In App State’s first ever bowl game, Zach “Auto” Matics hit a walk off 23 yard FG for the 31-29 win, starting a string of 6 straight bowl wins.
The Mountaineers had a top 25 offense and defense, averaging 36.7 PPG while giving up just 19.1. Lamb had his best year statistically, throwing for 2364 yards with 31 TD 9 INT, also running for 436 with 5 TD. Lamb would go on to finish his career from 2014-17 as the Sun Belt’s all-time TD leader with 113 (90 passing + 23 rushing). Marcus Cox had his 2nd of 3 1000+ yard rushing seasons, 3rd of 4 if you count his 2013 season in the FCS. He ran for a career high 1428 with 9 TD. DE Ronald Blair won Sun Belt Defensive POTY with 71 tackles, 7.5 sacks, 11.5 TFL, and 1 INT.
2. 2018 (11-2 overall, 7-1 Sun Belt)
After Lamb graduated, I don’t think App State fans thought they could get any better. After all, they’d won 2 straight Sun Belt titles, and while they were slight favorites to make it to the conference title game in 2018, this team exceeded all expectations over the next 2 seasons. They had #10 Penn State on the ropes in Happy Valley in week 1. New QB Zac Thomas was going drive-for-drive with Penn State veteran Trace McSorley, and App even had a 38-31 lead with 1 minute to go before losing 38-45 in OT. The game would be a good omen. After 5 straight wins, App was ranked for the first time in their history at #25. Unfortunately, Thomas went down with an injury against rival Georgia Southern, and the Eagles coasted to a 34-14 win. With just 4 conference games left to play, App State needed to win 2 more games than Georgia Southern to make the championship game, and it miraculously happened, with App going 4-0 and Southern losing to Troy and a weak UL Monroe team. App State had a favorable matchup with 7-5 Louisiana in the title game, winning 30-19 to 3-peat as Sun Belt champs. In typical App State fashion (and typical Middle Tennessee fashion), App dominated in the bowl 45-13, raining on coach/QB fatheson combo Rick/Brent Stockstill’s parade.
Zac Thomas turned out to be even better than Taylor Lamb, winning Sun Belt Offensive POTY with 2039 passing yards, 21 TD 6 INT, also notching 504 rushing yards and 10 TD. Scott Satterfield finally won his first Sun Belt Coach of the Year award after winning the Sun Belt title for the 3rd straight year. App State’s defense was one of the best in the country, ranking 4th in PPG allowed (15.5), 5th in passing YPG allowed (162.2), and 1st in pass TD allowed per game (0.6). The defense had over twice as many INTs as passing TDs allowed! DB Clifton Duck earned his 3rd straight 1st Team All-Sun Belt honors, and in total 7 offensive and 7 defensive players made 1st-3rd Team All-Sun Belt. All setting up for an even better 2019.
1. 2019 (13-1 overall, 7-1 Sun Belt)
Satterfield left for Louisville, and Eli Drinkwitz took over. There’s a reason he was hired by Missouri after just 1 year at App State. App State fans knew it was going to be a special season by week 3, when the Mountaineers beat Mack Brown and North Carolina, blocking a FG to hang on for the 34-31 victory. After narrowly missing out on upsetting Penn State the previous year, they got the job done this time over in-state rival UNC. From there, it was mostly smooth sailing. A 17-7 win over 4-1 Louisiana. UL Monroe and South Alabama by a combined 82-10. But still, for the 2nd straight year, even with a healthy Zac Thomas this time, App couldn’t beat Georgia Southern, losing 21-24 in a failed comeback attempt. Georgia Southern could have the rivalry trophy though—App had loftier goals for 2019. Not satisfied with the win over UNC, App State moved down the map to South Carolina, beating the Gamecocks 20-15 at Williams-Brice. After going 11-1 in the regular season, it was #21 App State in a rematch with 10-2 Louisiana. App took a 45-24 lead in the 4th, and held on for the 45-38 final, winning their 4th(!) straight Sun Belt title. A 31-17 win in the bowl over UAB capped off a 13-1 year, easily the best in school history. A #19 final ranking was also App’s first in school history.
Personally, I think they were underrated by the polls. They finished 11th for me, with wins over North Carolina, South Carolina, 11-3 Louisiana (twice), 9-5 UAB, and 6 wins by 20+ points. RB Darrynton Evans won Sun Belt Offensive POTY with 1678 yards and 23 TD from scrimmage. Evans can thank an offensive line which had 4 of 5 starters made 1st/2nd Team All-Sun Belt. LB Akeem Davis-Gaither won Sun Belt Defensive POTY, making an impact in all phases of the game with 101 tackles, 5 sacks, 9.5 TFL, 8 PBU, and 1 INT. 8 starters on offense and 7 on defense made 1st-3rd Team All-Sun Belt. 6 players have been drafted from this team into the NFL.
According to my algorithm, 2019 Appalachian State is the 22nd best Group of 5 team since 1983.

5th Quarter

Which game/play/player do you think of when you think of Appalachian State? Is their ranking of #80 fair despite only playing 9 seasons? Which was the best App State team on the list, if not 2019? Is 2016-19 App State the greatest Group of 5 dynasty of the 2010s? Who’s better between coach Satterfield and Drinkwitz? How would you rank the following QBs: Armanti Edwards, Taylor Lamb, Zac Thomas, Chase Brice? And now that we’re heading into the 70’s on this list…who’s next!?
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Some really easy to implement ideas.
Both elimination chambers.
Multiple costumes for the roster (Not just my faction mode).
Fuck my faction mode. Just give us good online.
Multiple theme choices for those that had them.
Stop removing options from entrance mode. Different color smoke shouldn't be one of basically two options. Where's the randy or even Christian dripping gold pyro? All the ramp pyro?
How about a generations story mode? One for the hogan era, one for the "new generation" era, one for the Attitude era, and one for ruthless aggression era. Play some key matches with the intercut cutscenes like showcase mode.
Branching paths in myrise mode. Maybe losing a key match gives you an alternate storyline?
Bring back oMg moments. Please.
Can we make tag team ability a stat so people like the USOs aren't statistically better than legends who have won world titles? Have it affect their amount of tag saves, distractions, and stuff like that in tag matches. That way if someone like new day or the USOs are 100 in that stat it doesn't mean they are 92 overall
Give us a couple different environments with stuff to do. The grocery store from the stone cold booker t match. Bray Wyatt's house. The graveyard from takers final match. The bridge where Austin the rock in the river.
More of the special entrances like Austin's 4x4. Rey popping up from the ground. Recreate some of the famous mania entrances and costumes.
Casket matches. Buried alive matches. Inferno matches.
And quarterly updates. I wouldn't even mind if it was a once a year fee if it kept updating game to keep it current. Dom is the hottest heel, and on the game is still Rey mysterio the third. Both belts are basically not in the game without customizing. I'm still trying to adjust my roster to the new draft.
And we don't need multiple character slots for basically a costume change. Why are there like three nash, three Scott hall and three hogans? When did anything change but how they dress? Sometimes not even that. What is different about hogan and hogan 92? I could see the ones where moves change up. Like Brock who started using the Kimora or something. There are like seven cenas and really you just need three. Cena in tights, thugnation cena, and modern cena. Modern cena alone could have like seven or eight different attires.
Also we could include the missing belts for fun. Bray belt, d bry earth belt. Miz and rated R variation belts.
Last one. Can we make it so stars don't have to be locked to one team. I feel like let's just put all the teams in there. If you wanna be rated Rko and I wanna be rkbro let's make it happen. If I team rey and dom and you team dom and Finn let's make it happen. They should have a team entrance. Maybe I wanna see which team is a better team.
Any other suggestions y'all have?

Gridiron Gang 2k24 is a mix of simulation style football league looking to emulate real football which achieving a high level of madden competition.
We currently have a core group of users that want to play and also build their teams. We are continuously looking for other users who are looking for a long-term & stable league. A lot of work went into building this & if you are looking for organization and consistency, this league is for you. If you can't take a L, this isn't the league for you.

• Next Gen Xbox League
• All-pro difficulty Comp setting
• 29/32 Spots Filled
• Year 1 Week 15
• 2023 Rookie Rosters (Rounds 1-3, w a few late round picks) & Offszn transactions
• Long-term franchise
• Advanced Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday @ 10AM EST
• 8 Min Quarters 20s Acc Clock
• Organized Discord/Rulebook
• NeonSportz integration
• GOTW Award boost
• Press conference award boost
• End of season award boost
• Active user dev boost for playing 10+ games
• Looking for mature, long-term & active users only
• Check out the discord & see if the league is a fit for you
• Open teams: > Falcons (4-9) Rams (0-11) Commanders (7-5-1) https://discord.gg/eHAqMA6ny4

This might be a bit lengthy, so I'll throw a TL;DR up at the top. Also, spoilers abounds. Lastly, this is a bit stream-of-consciousness and I kind of needed a place to dump it.
TL;DR - Ted doesn't practice what he preaches, and doesn't really know how to be close with people. Who he is at the end of the series is basically who he was in the beginning.
So, first scenes/episode of the show ... we see Ted traveling to England to be a football coach. He's leaving his wife (soon to be ex-wife), his son, his family, his friends, his would-be support network (more on that later) ... he's left everything he knows, to become the head coach of a team he's never heard of, in a country he's never been to, for a sport he doesn't understand. His only companion on this journey is Beard.
While in England, he joins a community and fosters positivity wherever he goes. His success with the team revitalizes his newfound community. He seeks mental health support when he starts having panic attacks - and in doing so, Dr. Fieldstone softens as well, becoming a fan of AFC Richmond. There's all of the character development for all of the other characters (Jamie, Roy, Keeley, etc) so I won't get into that in as much detail, but suffice it to say they are all, mostly, changed for the better - and helped to get through some emotional blocks they have. Throughout the show, we see Ted helping others, be it on purpose or by his presence and attitude and the sort of "world" that springs up around him. He has a profound effect on those around him.
Last scenes of the show, we see Ted traveling back to the United States to be with his son. Beard has stayed behind in England. Ted's now-ex-wife is still in his life, but no longer as his partner. His former marriage counselor is now potentially a continuing part of his life, but not professionally. He's coaching his son's soccer team, and he should be happy. And yet, he looks like this:
https://tvline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ted-lasso-ending-2.jpg
That is not the face of a happy man, nor of a man that is at peace. It reminds me of the last scene in The Graduate, where (spoilers for a 56-year-old movie) the central characters escape together - one from a marriage she doesn't want, and one from a life he doesn't want. They escape together, run onto a bus laughing and cheering ... and when the moment has passed, they look depressed. They look confused and uncertain. They got what they wanted, right? So why aren't they happy?
As I watched the series, I like many others saw Ted as this irrepressibly happy and positive force. And I think that's what he wants everyone to think, too - that he is happy, that he is optimistic, that he practices what he preaches. I think that Ted, too, thinks that if he keeps up that image that some day it'll be true. But it's not. He's got walls up all around him, and he doesn't let anyone in - not really. People reach out to help him, and he deflects - even after all of the counseling and help he's gotten, he continues to deflect help and minimize his pain. We can't expect immediate change in a person, nor can we expect change over a few years - but at the end of the series, he's still, in my opinion, mostly the same person he was in the beginning.
Hell, Ted doesn't even really make many decisions of his own. Michelle tells him they need separation, to be apart for a while. Rebecca offers him a job (one which she intends to have him fail) in a foreign country. Ted doesn't seek out the separation himself, nor does he seek out the job; he's offered these circumstances, and he goes with it. He's seemingly happy coaching at AFC Richmond, but when his mother comes to visit and tells him "your son misses you", he decides then - not before - that he needs to return home to be with his son. When Beard tells Ted that he's going to stay in England, Ted rolls with that too.
In the end, with Ted I think we see someone with severe abandonment issues (shocking, I know), who as a result of that doesn't let anyone really get close to him. Those who were (Michelle) or are (Beard) close to him, he doesn't let in any further. And in the end, he ends up leaving the team he built up from the bottom.
That final scene, with Ted watching the soccer game ... he's not happy, because he hasn't been happy for a very long time. He hasn't taken control of his life and his circumstances, and he's doing the best he can to do what he thinks is best - to do what he wishes someone had done for him when he was young. Heck, one could argue that Ted, as a character, exists solely to move other characters along their journeys - a catalyst for change, while remaining unchanging.

Football

2024 Football Commits (#16 by 247, #13 by Rivals)

Player	Position	Location	Composite Rating	Rating at Commit
Kavion Henderson	DL	Leeds, AL	****(.9267)	****(.9245)
Dion Stutts	DT	Memphis, TN	***(.8753)	***(.8759)
Noreel White	CB	Ocean Springs, MS	****(.9006)	****(.9002)
Julius Pope	LB	Batesville, MS	****(.8993)	****(.8993)
KJ Jackson	QB	Montgomery, AL	****(.8917)	****(.8917)
Jade Allen	CB	Aledo, TX	****(.8960)	****(.8985)
Courtney Crutchfield	WR	Pine Bluff, AR	****(.9145)	****(.8933)
Charleston Collins	DL	LItte Rock, AR	****(.9304)	****(.9202)
Tevis Metcalf	CB	Pinson, AL	***(.8550)	***(.8550)
Jadan Baugh	RB	Decatur, GA	***(.8867)	***(.8867)

247 Crystal Ball Prediction Link
Top Football Targets

Player	Location	Rating	Crystal Ball/Committed
OFFENSE
QB
RB
Braylen Russell	Benton, AR	****(.9069)	Arkansas (1) 100%
Nate Palmer	Decatur, TX	****(.8908)	NONE
Traevon Dunbar	Aiken, SC	***(.8769)	NONE
Kewan Lacy	Lancaster, TX	****(.8828)	Ole Miss (2) 100%
Taylor Tatum	Longview, TX	****(.9817)	Michigan (1) 100%
WR
CJ Brown	Bentonville, AR	***(.8750)	NONE
Josiah Martin	Denton, TX	***(.8786)	NONE
Dozie Ezukanma	Forth Worth, TX	***(.8759)	NONE
Bryant Wesco	Midlothian, TX	****(.9788)	Clemson (3) 85.7% - Oklahoma (1) 12.5%
Ryan Wingo	St Louis, MO	*****(.9884)	Georgia(1) 100%
Parker Livingstone	Lovejoy, TX	****(.9086)	Arkansas (1) 75% - Texas (1) 25%
Dae'von Hall	Bellevue, NE	****(.8955)	Nebraska (1) 100%
Jeremiah McClellan	St Louis, MO	****(.9310)	Ohio State (2) 100 State
Delon Miller	Silsbee, TX	****(.9647)	NONE
TE
Kylan Fox	Loganville, GA	****(.9204)	Florida State (1) 100%
Decker DeGraaf	Glendora, CA	***(.8750)	NONE
OL
Kobe Branham	Forth Smith, AR	***(.8650)	Arkansas (3) 100%
JacQawn McRoy	Pinson, AL	****(.9313)	NONE
Max Anderson	Frisco, TX	****(.9276)	Tennessee (2) 100%
Jonah Logan	Saint Louis, MO	NR	NONE
Daniel Akinkunmi	NFL Academy (London)	NR	NONE
Fletcher Westphal	Leesburg, VA	****(.9123)	NONE
Kai Greer	Waxhaw, NC	***(.8867)	NONE
Makai Saina	Arlington, TX	****(.8917)	NONE
Daniel Calhoun	Roswell, GA	****(.9561)	NONE
Barry Walker	Cordele, GA	***(.8828)	NONE
Web Davidson	Macon, GA	NR	NONE
Jason Zandamela	Clearwater, FL	****(.9412)	Florida State (2) 100%
Waltclaire Flynn Jr.	Loganville, GA	****(.9131)	NONE
DEFENSE
DE
TJ Lindsey	Bryant, AR	***(.8900)	Texas A&M (1) 100%
Solomon Williams	Tampa, FL	***(.8826)	NONE
Danny Okoye	Tulsa, OK	****(.9355)	NONE
Zina Umeozulu	Allen, TX	****(.9381)	NONE
Williams Nwaneri	Lees Summit, MO	*****(.9971)	Oklahoma (1) 100%
Collin Simmons	Duncanville, TX	*****(.9965)	LSU (1) 100%
DT
Marcus Downs	Greer, SC	***(.8826)	NONE
Nigel Smith II	Melissa, TX	****(.9591)	Oklahoma (1) 100%
Jayden Jackson	Bradenton, FL	***(.8750)	NONE
Alex January	Duncanville, TX	***(.8865)	NONE
Malik Blocton	Pike Road, AL	****(.8908)	NONE
Terrell Spruill	Rockledge, FL	***(.8478)	NONE
Landon Marshall	Andalusia, AL	***(.8550)	NONE
LB
Brian Huff	Jonesboro, AR	****(.9096)	Arkansas (2) 100%
Jordan Burns	Atlanta, GA	****(.8933)	NONE
D'Angelo Barber	Pinson, AL	***(.8867)	Auburn (1) 100%
Xavier Atkins	Humble, TX	****(.9163)	Committed to LSU
Justin Logan	Marietta, GA	***(.8900)	NONE
CB
Braylon Conley	Humble, TX	***(.8883)	NONE
Chris Johnson Jr	Aledo, TX	****(.8927)	NONE
Elijah Hall	Tuskegee, AL	***(.8550)	NONE
Josh Philostin	West Palm Beach, FL	****(.8924)	NONE
Selman Bridges	Temple, TX	****(.9709)	NONE
S
Ka'Davion Dotson	Duncanville, TX	****(.9159)	LSU (2) 100%
Tyler Singleton	Many, LA	****(.9422)	NONE
KJ Bolden	Buford, GA	*****(.9957)	Georgia (1) 100%
Tomauri Johnson	Miami, FL	***(.8685)	NONE
Marqavious Saboor	Marietta, GA	***(.8800)	NONE
Ashton Hampton	Tallahassee, FL	***(.8689)	NONE
Kenyan Kelly	Denison, TX	***(.8886)	NONE
Tyler Woodard (JUCO)	Memphis, TN	NR	NONE

Basketball

2023 Basketball Signees (#9 by 247, #18 by Rivals)

Player	Pos.	Location	Composite
Layden Blocker	PG	Maumell, AR	****(.9869)
Baye Fall	C	Denver, CO	****(.9890)

Transfer Portal contacts via NWAHutch