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Part 1: Journal of a Psychopath: High School
I am a retired Private Investigator turned Real Crime Blogger. I have been receiving anonymous manuscripts in the mail detailing heinous acts of appalling psychopathy.
For reasons concerning my work and this situation, I don’t want to give you my true Identity. You can refer to me as Mr. S. I started in my early years as a detective. Not to toot my own horn, but I was highly effective at my job, and before too long I started taking much higher paying jobs as a freelance Private Investigator. Over the years, I have solved several high profile cold murder cases.
Unfortunately, in a work-related attack, I was seriously injured and retired from my job as a Private Investigator 5 years ago. Since then, I have started a well known Real Crime blog and podcast.
Recently, I started to receive the handwritten manuscripts from an anonymous source in the mail detailing heinous acts of dark psychopathy. No return address. On the outside of the second envelope there was the following note:
“My work is an art that has gone unnoticed for far too long. Although few would understand, it is time that my art is presented to the world.”
Below is the second manuscript I received. This manuscript was titled, “University.”
If you have not yet read the first manuscript, you can read that first here.
Be warned, I believe that what you are about to read is the Journal of a Psychopath.
************\*
University
I was in my Sophomore year at the university. The past two years had gone exactly as planned. My status as a Foster Child ensured that my tuition would be covered. Dean and Sarah had followed through with their offer of adoption and accepted me as their Son. As such, they provided me with a modest allowance ensuring that my pantry remained filled, and my needs were met. I had a nice computer, a new cell phone, and all of the school supplies I would need. I also always had a place to stay during the summer or holidays. Although I preferred to spend my time alone, I provided Dean and Sarah with just enough interaction and gratification to keep them bending over backward for me. Life was good, until Dustin, that is.
In my Previous year, I had the fortune of being assigned a roommate that rarely spoke. He minded his own business, we never even had a real conversation. As a matter of fact, I don’t even remember the kid’s name. It was perfect.
This year, I had been assigned a very different roommate, Dustin. Dustin was a special kind of fool who felt the need to be the center of attention. My apartment was alway crammed with similar idiots, who can’t quite seem to manage 5 seconds without speaking. They were always talking, shouting, and blaring pathetic pop music written by “musicians” who had the vocabulary skill of dirty-minded first graders. Dustin and his group of retards replicated the essence of their favorite songs by getting sloppy drunk and bragging about, “Baggin Hoes,” and such. I was disgusted that my generation could succumb to such ludicrous culture.
At first, I thought that they were just drinking. I shut myself in my room or the library as much as possible, ignoring the idiots. It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that they were consuming a little more than just booze. Every time Dustin walked near, a waft of burnt marijuana would insult my nose, and soon my apartment reeked of it every evening.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, one Saturday morning I woke up to find the remnants of their Friday night festivities. People I did not recognize lay on the couch and even on the floors, snoring like hibernating pests. Their mess of crunched aluminum beer cans and burnt joints, along with the aroma of stale cigarettes, gave the appearance as if a herd of homeless addicts had spent the night in my apartment. On the coffee table were smears of fine white powder, fingerprints whooshing about. a small white straw from a fast-food establishment lay on the ground. It wasn’t hard to determine that these snoring idiots had done plenty of cocaine.
Now, I don’t care if you smoke weed or do cocaine, as long as it poses no threat to my well being. Naturally, If Dustin were to get caught with drugs, It could come down on me as well. Guilty by association, as they say. Obviously, I couldn’t accept such a risk to my life, to my goals. I would need to confront Dustin about this.
I walked into his room, kicking away beer cans that clanged across the floor. In the midst of his room, which resembled a landfill, was his bed. The scattered bed sheets and comforter gave way to a cluster of tangled limbs, I pulled the sheets off to find Dustin in his underwear, his girlfriend beside him nearly naked. Ripping off his smelly sheets did nothing to stir the kid from his drug-induced hibernation, so gave him a nudge. Nothing.
“Dustin, wake up and clean this shit up,” I said, but Dustin barely stirred. My patience was already thin, but each and every second that I had to exist inside this pigsty made me more agitated. I grabbed him by his foot and ripped him out of his bed.
The first thing to hit the floor was his face, which practically bounced off of the cheap grey carpet.
“What the hell?” Said Dustin, finally somewhat conscious. His hands clutched his head, in obvious pain from the hangover, only made worse from the hit to the head. His palms worked their way to his eyes, as he rubbed them and tried opening his eyelids.
“Get up, Dustin. Get these idiots out of my apartment and clean up your pigsty. If I wanted to live in a trailer park filled with trashy idiots, I would.”
“Get the hell out of here, asshole. Quit being a little bitch.” He told me, looking up with squinty eyes as if someone was shining a flashlight directly at his face. I could see the headache in his eyes, showing clear signs of a huge hangover. I knew how to handle a guy with a huge hangover.
I headed to the kitchen. With a squeak, I opened one of the faded brown kitchen cabinets and grabbed the old, discolored pot and its matching frying pan. Holding them by their black plastic handles, I headed back into Dustin’s room, where he was already back to snoring in his bed.
I flipped the light on and strolled across the room taking care to step on the dirty laundry. As I pulled the frayed white cord of the crooked blinds, the sunshine penetrated the dark room. Both Dustin and his girlfriend reactively pulled blankets over their faces to shield their eyes from the penetrating rays. Two major symptoms characterize a heavy hangover: Severe headache and extreme sensitivity to bright lights and loud sounds.
I walked over to Dustin’s side of the bed, holding the pot and pan over his head, and started banging them together as loud as I could. Dustin reacted to the obnoxious clangs as if he were a vampire being attacked by the sun, showing that the sound caused him pain. I found myself enjoying his reactions as he grabbed his head with both hands, as if that would do anything to subside the pain now pounding in his dehydrated and intoxicated brain. He rolled around like an epileptic animal, shouting curse words that were barely audible over my continuous clangs of the pot and pan.
Finally, the sound and pain became too much. Dustinl threw off the covers and jumped to his feet. He made one small stumble with his back foot, demonstrating that he was still drunk. He behaved like a wounded animal, with one goal: To make the pain stop.
The inevitable physical violence now came from Dustin, as he threw a joke of a punch at me. I smacked his hand away with the pan. Dustin swore in pain as his knuckles collided with metal resulting in a dull clang. He didn’t learn his lesson the first time, so he threw a second punch at me with the same result. This time he lost his balance and fell over his drunk self, his face landing on his bleeding knuckles.
I once again started clanging the pot and the pan over his head, only angering him further. As he tried to scramble back to his feet, I kicked him with a push-kick, knocking him backwards into his cheap black nightstand. Now, I knew Dustin was a wannabe gangster, but even with that I did not expect what he did next.
Dustin quickly rose back to his feet and opened the sliding drawer of his nightstand, from which he pulled out a compact size pistol and pointed it directly at my head. Needless to say, I stopped clanging the pot and pan immediately. Dustin stood there, his face bright red from anger and pain, holding the gun in his shaky hand with his finger on the trigger. There was no doubt in my mind that a kid as irresponsible as Dustin would keep a gun chambered, so I knew that a trigger pull would mean a bullet in my head.
We stood there in silence for a moment, as I stared at the silver circle of the barrel, surrounded by the matte black slide. Dustin’s expression softened some, as he realized the gravity of the situation. A fool like him wouldn’t be able to pull off a clean murder, I could see in his eyes that he understood that pulling the trigger would mean a life in prison. By now, everyone in the apartment was awake and aware of the situation. They stood awkwardly outside the bedroom door not sure what to do now that the ringleader of their circus had pulled out a gun.
Every part of me wanted to rip the gun from his hands and kill him right then and there. It’s actually a fairly simple maneuver if you know what you’re doing. I may have even been within my legal rights to do so, but I didn’t need my name on that police record nor time spent in court. The last thing I wanted to do was bring any unnecessary attention to myself, particularly not with law enforcement. So I chose a more tactful way out.
“I’m not okay with you bringing these drugs into my apartment,” I told him, calmly but assertive, as to not stir an irrational reaction from the idiot with a gun, “I don’t care what you do with your own life, but It’s not okay for you to risk my future.”
“What are you gonna do, go snitchin to the police?” He spat at me, still pointing the gun at my forehead.
The answer was yes, I would go to the police if I needed to, but right now I needed to de-escalate the situation, not give him a reason to shoot me.
“No,” I told him, remaining calm, “As long as you keep the drugs out of my apartment, I’ll never speak of this again.”
“Well guess what, you don’t get to tell me what to do, Bitch. If you go snitch me out, I’ll make sure to tell them that you’re a part of this operation,” Dustin said, gesturing with his gun hand. I couldn’t help but notice the way that he had to act tough in front of his friends. It was almost comical, to see that happening. “Matter of fact, I already have drugs hidden somewhere in your stuff to make sure that If I go down, you do too.”
I really didn't believe that Dustin had the intelligence, nor the foresight, to hide drugs away just in case, but I couldn’t be certain. In the meantime, I had to let Dustin believe that he won.
“Alright, Dustin,” I said, making sure to look scared. That’s what he wants, to think that people fear him. “I promise, I won’t say a word. You win, Dustin.”
“Good,” he said, finally removing his finger from the trigger. Instead of lowering the gun, however, he hit me with it. I felt the cold hard metal of the gun slide slam into my face, just to the side of my left eye. I fell to the ground, allowing Dustin to feel superior in the moment. It took everything I had to hide my anger, and keep my scared expression on, but I managed.
“Next time, I’ll kill you,” Dustin said, before telling me to get out.
I retreated to my room, locking the door behind me. As I held a paper towel to my bleeding face, I couldn’t help but smile in excitement. It had been far too long since I had a legitimate reason, an excuse if you will, to feel that rush and enjoyment from two long years ago. Little did Dustin understand the war he had just started. I would never allow a simple-minded fool to risk my future with his drugs. He most definitely didn’t understand that he could not win. I always win.
I kept to myself, mostly in my room, for the remainder of the weekend. It seemed that the events of Saturday morning had at least put the clowns off enough that they took their Saturday night substance-circus elsewhere. Meanwhile, I thought back to that brief conversation with Dustin, and there was one particular statement that he had made that stood out.
“I’ll make sure to tell them that you’re a part of this operation,” Is what he had told me.
Operation was the one word that gave it all away. This told me that he wasn’t just an idiot on drugs. No, he was the dealer. While I admire entrepreneurship, no matter how stupid, I couldn’t let his “operation” tarnish my future. I knew what I had to do.
Monday morning, I left my apartment for class at the normal time. Instead of going to class, however, I waited for Dustin to leave from a stone park bench across the road. We had class at the same time, but he was almost always late getting out of bed and undoubtedly showed up to class late. Finally, about 15 minutes after class should have begun, I watched his greasy brown head walk away from our apartment building. This meant that I had several hours before he would be home.
I reentered my apartment, where I went to my bathroom and retrieved my pair of teal latex cleaning gloves, the very same ones I wore when I killed Brian. I put those on carefully, ensuring that I didn’t touch the hands nor the fingers of the gloves. After wiggling my fingers into their respective positions, I was ready to investigate.
I slowly entered Dustin’s room, careful not to accidentally move anything out of place. Not that it would have been noticed, Dustin was a pigsty. Stepping over a heap of dirty laundry, I made my way to his nightstand first. As I softly pulled on the faded gold knob, the squeaky drawer slid out revealing the gun. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to take it to classes with him, but I’d make him regret it nonetheless. He had one extra magazine in the drawer, along with a black spring-loaded knife. Also in the drawer was a picture of him and his girlfriend. I guess even wannabe gangsters have a soft spot. I think I’m one of the few lucky people who don’t have soft spots. Soft spots are weak spots.
Next, I made my way around his unkempt bed to the closet, which had one of the sliding doors already opened revealing haphazardly hung clothing. I could see in the corner, a stack of shoeboxes lay covered by a few jackets and hoodies in a feeble attempt to appear discreet. I knew that those boxes probably had what I was looking for. I carefully moved the smelly jackets out of the way, taking note of the exact order in which the jackets were placed.
Inside the top orange shoebox was just some papers, nothing important to me. In the second box, I found a multicolor glass pipe atop three large bags of Marijuana, quite a bit if you ask me, but I’m no expert. I set the marijuana box aside and opened up the third box. Jackpot.
In this box, I found a large bag of white powder. The bag was marked with a B, undoubtedly referring to “blow,” the street name for Cocaine. This seemed like an awful lot of cocaine. It wouldn’t take an expert to realize that the bag had to be worth thousands alone. Next to the large white bag were a dozen or so pocket-sized zip bags sitting on top of a small scale, filled with carefully pre-portioned doses of the drug.
This confirmed the suspicion I had ever since Dustin had accidentally used the word, “Operation.” Dustin was certainly selling. By the looks of it, Dustin was dealing quite a bit of marijuana and coccaine. This was something I definitely couldn’t be okay with in my apartment. I moved the large bag to the side to find what else might be lurking.
Underneath the cocaine was a transparent zip-up bag of small white tablet-shaped pills, probably 40-50 in count, labeled. The bag was labeled, “CPT CODY,” with a sharpie. The tablets had the letter M on one side, and the number 30 embedded on the other side. I didn’t know what those were, as I’ve never been savvy with drugs, but I would definitely do research to figure it out. For now, I had everything that I needed to make a tentative plan. After putting everything back precisely how I had found it, I left.
I went to the library and searched through dozens of thick hardcover textbooks, sifting through pages still stained with highlighter and crusty coffee spills from previous students. Sure, a simple internet search would have been easier, but I couldn’t risk any chance of being traced. After hours of straining my eyes on the tiny print from textbook indices, I found what I was looking for.
I knew that Dustin was getting involved with some serious drugs when I found the cocaine, but this information showed an even darker truth. M30 pills are prescription Oxycodone opiates, but the name Captain Cody reveals that the pills are something else entirely. Thanks to a Criminal Justice and Drug Enforcement textbook, I found that the small unidentified tablets that I had found were likely not Oxycodone, but Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid over 50 times stronger than Morphine. According to this textbook, it’s common for dealers to mask them as Oxycodone, for one reason or another. The lethal dose of Fentanyl is only 2-3mg.
A smile crept across my face from my quiet corner in the huge library. It was time to try something new. I had a plan.
I spent the next week going about business as usual, quietly staying out of Dustin’s way but watching intently. Every day after classes, Dustin would come to the apartment and disappear into his room for only a few short minutes before reemerging with his dirty forest-green backpack. He would return anywhere between 90 minutes to 2 hours later, and disappear into his room again. It wasn’t hard to tell that this time frame was when Dustin was doing his deliveries.
His weird girlfriend would now show up while he was gone, apparently he gave her a key. I wondered, though, If Dustin knew that she was sneaking into his stash. As soon as she got to the apartment, she would duck inside his room for a few minutes and come back out to get a soda. Almost every time I noted a smear of white underneath her left nostril. Although she was coke-head, at least she was smart enough to use Dustin to get what she wanted.
Wednesday night would be the night, the night to finally put my problems behind me. Again, I skipped out on my morning class. The class was Humanities, the single most drab class one could take. Spend hours reading worthless poetry then listen to some idiots try to sound sophisticated about it? I hated it, but I only needed a C to get credit. Instead, I waited for Dustin to leave.
As soon as he had left for the day, I entered his room and went for the drug box. I was surprised to find just how much business the kid had been doing. The drug shoeboxes had been drained quite a bit but the cash box was definitely more full. His operation was going successfully, but he was sloppy and would most definitely get caught if he were allowed to continue. I wasn’t willing to be caught up in that.
Sarah had given me a Mortar and Pestle before I moved out, and this was the first time that I would be using it. After covering my nose and mouth with a thick cloth, I dropped several of the little pills into the thick granite bowl and used the sturdy stone pestle to crush them. The grinding sound wasn’t pleasant, it reminded me of nails on a chalkboard only less high pitched. Still, I continued to crush and grind, adding a few pills at a time as the contents of the bowl slowly turned into a chalky powder.
After about 20 minutes of consistent grinding, I felt as though I had the right amount. With gloved hands, I compared the consistency of the chalky fentanyl with that of the cocaine. The fentanyl was a bit thicker, and more of an off-white comparatively, but I knew that if I mixed them well enough it would go unnoticed.
I removed the small, portioned bags of cocaine from the box. Carefully, I emptied the contents into a small cup where I mixed the cocaine with fentanyl, calculating about the correct amount of Fentanyl for one lethal dose. After I was satisfied with the mix, I put the now laced cocaine back into each baggy. After mixing more fentanyl with the remaining large bag of cocaine, keeping to the same ratio, everything was ready to go. I put everything back into Dustin’s closet and sanitized my gloves and equipment with bleach and dish soap. Now, all I had to do was wait.
Dustin arrived back to the apartment on schedule, quickly ducking into his room and leaving 5 minutes later with his ugly backpack to go sell his drugs. Soon after, his girlfriend came in, as planned, and went into Dustin’s room. I watched from the crack in my door as she emerged a few minutes later to retrieve a soda. She was smiling awkwardly and did a weird sort of twirl toward the sofa before plopping herself onto a plump cushion.
I watched her head would drop slightly, and whip back upward as she tried to keep herself awake. The nods became more pronounced, and finally she lay her head back and closed her eyes, giving in to the deep relaxation effect of the powerful opiate. I emerged from my room to analyze her condition. Her head lay back with her mouth open and arms sprawled toward the side as if she had merged with the sofa. She was completely out. I poked at her a few times to make sure that she would not easily wake before positioning her in such a way to keep her airway open. I needed her to stay alive, unfortunately.
I got the rest of my preparations ready quickly, but carefully, as I waited for Dustin’s arrival. I paced the room while lightly snapping my fingers in a mixture of excitement and nervousness. I couldn’t wait to execute the remainder of my plan, but I started to feel anxious about it. I felt as though I didn’t know enough about drugs, they could be unpredictable. I had an easy backup plan for if the girl died, but it would be messy if she woke up too early.
Finally, I heard the jingle of keys outside of the apartment, and the subsequent click of the deadbolt sliding into the unlocked position. After the front door was closed, Dustin turned on the lights and froze at the sight in front of him. I had his gun pointed at him from behind his couch, just behind his unconcious girlfriend. In my other hand, I held Dustin’s knife to her neck.
“I wouldn’t advise doing anything stupid, Dustin,” I told him calmly.
His eyes widened as he grasped the situation, and worry tainted his usually smug face exposing one of his greatest weaknesses; Love. He most definitely loved this girl.
“What did you do to her?” Dustin asked through clenched jaws, frightened and slowly putting his hands up as if I was arresting him.
“I knocked her out, after she threatened to frame me the same way you threatened me,” I lied, gesturing with the gun. “I’m not going to hurt either of you, as long as we can both agree to part ways peacefully and neither of us will go to the police. I think it’s clear that if either of us gets turned in, we’ll rat each other out. Now please, take a seat.” I pointed with the gun to the chair on the opposite side of the coffee table to his girlfriend and myself.
Per my request, he walked over and sat down begrudgingly. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you,” Dustin said with a clenched jaw.
“Don’t worry, I fully intend for her to be unharmed,” I told Dustin, being honest for the first time since his arrival. “Now, help yourself to a line, I want you to be relaxed.” Keeping the knife at the girl's throat, I pointed to the three lines of tainted cocaine that I had prepared for him.
“Why the hell would I take the line at a time like this?” Dustin spat.
“Just to make sure that if you call the police, you have to tell them that you were on drugs. I’m trying to draw a truce, Dustin, so nobody gets screwed.”
Dustin grabbed the rolled-up bill that I had prepared, leaned over the first line, and with his nose over his free nostril he snorted. The white powder sucked through the dollar bill straw like a vacuum sucking up flower. He took a deep breath looking more relaxed and looked back up at me.
“I’m going to need you to tell me what drugs you hid in my room and where,” I told him.
Dustin comprehended the demand, revealing that he had indeed hidden drugs somewhere in my stuff. I was impressed that he was smart enough to actually have done that. “I taped weed in your floor vent,” Dustin admitted, deciding to tell me the truth.
“Excellent, thank you for telling me that,” I told Dustin with a gentle smile, “Now please, take another line so we can talk about what’s going to happen.”
I smiled as Dustin bent over to snort the second line. The first line had only a small amount of fentanyl, but the second line was half cocaine and half fentanyl. There was just over a lethal dose, by my calculations. Dustin closed his eyes and shook his head after snorting the second line. I’m not sure how much resistance he had to the drug, but it seemed to hit him hard.
“Now here’s the plan,” I said, keeping Dustin’s mind distracted from the drug. As he looked up to me, I could see the black pupils narrowing within his brown eyes, signaling that the drug taking rapid effect, “I’m going to move out, and you are going to take over the full lease willingly. I won’t say anything about the drugs, and you won’t say anything about this little, well, incident. Sound good?”
“Whatever man, just take the knife off of her,” Dustin said as he rubbed his eyes. I could see that he was already fighting the urge to let his head drop.
“Perfect, take that last line and we’ll shake on it.”
“I don’t want to man, something feels weird with this blow,” Dustin said, as he started to sway ever so slightly.
“Take the line, Dustin, so I can let her go,” I demanded, sternly.
Shaking his head, Dustin bent down and snorted the final line. This line was pure fentanyl, probably enough to kill two people. Dustin put one hand to his head and grabbed the table with the other hand in an attempt to steady himself. His chest moved angrily as his breathing quickly became labored and loud.
I removed the knife from the girl's neck and stood up fully to watch Dustin be completely taken over by his own drugs. He leaned on the table as his diaphragm now contracted heavily and violently as each breath now rasped like a snoring bulldog. He made an effort to look up at me, but his arm gave out under his weight and his face slammed into the table with a thud.
His butt still sat on the chair, but his face now rested on the coffee table. I felt a surge of euphoria come over me as I watched Dustin struggle a few more times to pick his head up. He only made it a few inches each time before his head thudded back onto the table. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud as I thought back to when he had told me, “Next time, I’ll kill you.” If only he knew just what type of person he had said that to. The fool thought himself a superior man who could stomp all over me, but I proved him to be not but a pawn in my way.
Bubbly white foam now appeared from his open mouth, slowly drifting onto the table. The raspy breath had now turned to inconsistent choking and gurgling sounds, signaling respiratory failure. I took a seat and watched eagerly as Dustin’s body made involuntary seizure-like jerks. I wasn’t sure if he had any consciousness remaining, but I sure hoped that it hurt, and that he could feel the pain.
Finally, his breathing and seizing stopped altogether, and Dustin was completely motionless. His head was on the table, as was his left arm, but his right arm dangled down with his fingers touching the grey carpet. I checked his pulse to verify that he was dead. There was nothing.
I looked over at the girl, having completely forgotten about her in the moment. Her breathing had steadied, which was good. If she had died I would have had to be the one to discover the bodies. I retrieved the marijuana that Dustin had placed in my floor vent and checked the rest of the vents just to be sure. After replacing the gun and knife in Dustin’s former nightstand, I took off my latex cleaning gloves and sanitized them one more time, to make sure that there would be no drug residue left. Finally, I crashed onto my bed and quickly fell asleep. Murder is hard work.
I awoke to loud screaming coming from the living room, Dustin’s girlfriend had finally woke up. I checked the clock to see that it was 12:23 AM, which meant Dustin had been dead for hours now. I took one deep breath before bursting out of the room to appear as if I were panicked.
I saw Dustin’s girlfriend leaning over him, trying to shake him awake, begging him through her obnoxious sobbing.
“Oh my god! What happened?” I said loudly, acting shocked and scared.
“I- I don’t know,” She said sobbing desperately, “I think- he took too much.” She said sobbing. I’m sure at this point she knew deep down that he was long dead, but perhaps in denial, I couldn’t imagine that his body was still warm.
“Did you call 911?” I asked her, trying my best to remain panic stricken. She shook her head as tears streamed down her face. I realized she was in no state to call, so I figured I would have to.
“911 what’s your emergency.”
“Please, help! I think my roommate overdosed or something, he’s not moving!” I half yelled over the phone, acting as though I was terrified and surprised.
I gave the operator the address. After ensuring that help was on the way, she asked me to check for vitals. I went along with the situation, in character of a scared young man, and looked for a pulse pretending like I was hoping to find one. Dustin was cold and obviously dead. The stiff muscles in his neck told me that rigor mortis had already started.
Dustin’s girlfriend now sat on his side, clutching his cold dead hand trying to grasp that her lover was dead. I couldn’t understand why she was so shaken up. What did she expect, a happily ever after with 3 cute kids and a white picket fence? Nonetheless, I gently pulled her away from the body as first responders arrived. The girl who I had never even talked to pulled me into an unexpected embrace, burying her face into my shoulder. I hated every disgusting second of her crying on me, but I fought off my impulse to push her away. I needed to act like a normal person who had just found a dead body.
The paramedics hadn’t even tried to revive him, he was far too dead for that. I gave my statement to the police making sure to appear as if I had been badly shaken up by the event. I admitted that I had witnessed drugs being used by Dustin and his girlfriend, and told the story of how when I confronted Dustin about it he had pointed a loaded gun on me. I even let fake tears escape as I told the police how I was scared Dustin might have killed me if I had reported it.
In distress, Dustin’s girlfriend (Ironically her name was Sarah) completely backed my story as she was there when the gun was pulled. She was obviously unconscious while I forced Dustin to overdose, so she thought he did it to himself. She spilled the beans about the drug use and the as well as the drug dealing. She admitted to everything, completely incriminating herself and her friends.
The investigation didn’t last long, but over the next few days 5 more students had fentanyl overdoses after buying some of Dustin’s cocaine, but unfortunately only 2 of them were fatal. The blame for the deaths went straight to Dustin. It was determined that he had been the one to lace the cocaine with the fentanyl, in order to have the best product on campus.
In some deep reflection to my previous murder, I made some notes. Killing Dustin with the drugs was ultimately much cleaner, with far fewer forensics issues to worry about. All the blood from the stabbing was messy, you don’t realize how much blood a person has until you’ve stabbed them several times. That being said, stabbing Bryan just felt so much more satisfying. Something about looking into his eyes as I pushed the knife into his heart has left me with an itch that I just can’t quite scratch
The only negative consequence for me is that the university sent me to trauma counseling, which meant that I had to keep up the charade of having been traumatized for a while. As expected, Dean and Sarah gave me massive amounts of sympathy over the ordeal, offering to pay for expensive counseling to which I politely refused. Instead, they quickly purchased me a lease for a different, one-bedroom apartment where I would no longer need to have roommates. This was perfect, as I hated roommates, and couldn’t risk killing them all. Sarah and Dean were too easy to manipulate.
Once again, I always win.
************\*
This was the end of the second manuscript I received from the alleged serial killer, Rich. If true, at the end of this story Rich would officially be classified as a serial killer. According to the first and second manuscript, Rich had murdered 5 people by the end of his Sophomore year of college.
Once again, I have found archived real news coverage of the events of a series of Fentanyl overdoses at a University. One student, Dustin Anderson, was found to be responsible for laced drugs after being the first fatality in the string of overdoses. This university is only 35 miles from the high school where Bryan Jones was stabbed to death.
Although my initial suspicions were that these were fake, I can’t help but note the detail from the first-person perspective.
Let’s assume that these manuscripts are real. Most Serial Killers collect some type of trophy. I believe these manuscripts could be trophies for this serial killer.
What do you think?
Mr. S.

https://imgur.com/a/9DHmub0

A break down of the bull case for Ethereum and how it relates to Bitcoin

There is a general understanding among ETH investors that the enhancements from ETH 2.0, EIP-1559 and L2 solutions will result in a sustainable monetary policy with near 0% issuance and the potential for Ether to become a deflationary asset. What is even more interesting is that the net return of ETH as a SoV becomes superior to BTC the moment that issuance is lower than the staking yield. In other words, even if BTC had already ceased issuance, it offers no mechanism to provide yield to long term holders with a negligible risk exposure as ETH does. There is an execution risk that Ethereum will not deliver on what is currently planned, but if it does then what I have explained will become a reality.
You cannot separate BTC/ETH's payment rails from their respective monetary policies. As you are probably aware, issuance is just a subsidy, and without it the network will need to operate as a profitable business with a cash-flow that is entirely dependent on network fees. We are observing a situation that is causing a degradation of the utility of the Bitcoin network. What I mean by that is that the incentive for users to transact directly on the network is being diminished because of the tokenization into ETH and by the introduction of custodians (like Paypal) and traditional banking services who will soon be entering this space. If these trends continue, I suspect that the only activity that will end-up happening on-chain will be done by whales sporadically transacting to hodle and the occasional settlement from institutions. Bitcoin seems fast and frictionless, but that is because you are comparing it to something in the physical world. In digital terms Bitcoin emulates the friction of operation that is found with gold: it is difficult and expensive to move it, securing it yourself is not trivial, and it does not make for a great medium of exchange. I don't think this will be a good dynamic to generate enough transaction fees. That is of course my subjective interpretation of it, but regarding this particular situation it is nearly impossible to make objective assertions at this point. It is possible to assert that, in the digital world, the expectation of frictionless money would entail near instant transactions with negligible cost and without the relative risk/paranoia of dealing with nuclear waste and having a hacker watching your every move waiting for you to make a mistake to snatch it away. Digital money would also need to interact with other digital assets, preferably defined and operated within the same ecosystem. Ethereum is steaming ahead on all ends.
Ethereum is fostering a digital economy (this is a very important part of understanding the value of Ethereum, but I will not be exploring it in this post) with DeFi at its center. It is currently generating about three times as much trx fee revenue as Bitcoin. L2 solutions are going live as we speak, and it appears that they will be much more practical and provide better UX when compared to the Lightning Network. This will help to amplify L1 block space value and push revenue even higher. That will be followed by EIP-1559, which will burn transaction fees. Mining is currently excessively profitable and the hash rate cannot keep up. This means the financial incentive can be reduced and by burning trx fees we achieve the equivalent of an issuance reduction, while stabilizing mining revenue. Eventually the transition to PoS will dramatically cut the operational cost of the network. That means that Ethereum as a business will become more profitable and less reliant on the issuance subsidy. Finally, we will see the introduction of sharding which will scale L1 by up to 1,000 times, compounding the effect of L2 solutions and making it feasible for the network to operate as a platform for new use cases. A solution to the hackenuclear waste security situation is being explored via social recovery wallets. It is still in the early stages of research and design, but it is important to realize that the Ethereum community recognizes it as a problem and is working on a solution.
There is a lot more that can be said about the BTC vs ETH debate and I am working on a full write up that explores each individual element in more detail. Regardless, it is important to pay attention to this trend: the smartest people in this space are shifting their point of view and realizing Ethereum's potential. Raoul Pal is a seasoned investor, extremely bright and open minded. He started with Bitcoin, but it did not take him long to understand the value proposition of Ethereum. Lyn Alden is a brilliant investor and mental powerhouse who initially did not think investing in Ethereum could be justified, but she is also starting to shift her view and now understands that it has a justifiable risk/reward ratio to be included in a portfolio (although she is not personally invested in Ethereum). She has plenty of negative things to say about it, however it appears that she recognizes this is not a black and white situation. I have a feeling she will be revising her analysis on Ethereum again in the future with a more optimist view, but maybe that is just wishful thinking.
The crypto space has a few analogies that have been used to describe technical/economic mechanisms that are somewhat tricky to understand: mining, Ethereum's gas, and the analogy between ether and oil. Crypto "mining" is not like real world mining. It's purpose is not to extract resources, but it is rather a decentralized mechanism to process transactions. Newly minted BTC tokens are not "mined", they are minted by the protocol and awarded to operators. Furthermore, it is impossible to change the total mining output of the network... adding/removing miners does not affect the mining output. If you are new to crypto, you can read a more detailed explanation of mining here. ETH's "gas" is not like fuel (it cannot even be stored). It is just a computational metric that is more akin to the distance a car must travel, but not what actually makes it move. The fuel is electricity and it must be paid for with ether. When you transact you are also paying for the "car" which is the use of all active mining hardware/validators for a fraction of a second. And ether is just money.
If you put too much weight on these simplified analogies, you will not understand the economic actuality behind them. This is a source confusion in the crypto space, and it is used to support false narratives. From an economic perspective, ether is money. Once you understand this, you will know that the narrative that BTC and ETH are not competing because they are different things is analogous to saying fax machines do not compete with the internet.
The beautiful thing about ether is that it is actually not "just money". It is a mixture of a scarce monetized commodity, money, bond and tech stock.

Monetized Commodity: Ether is becoming more scarce and will continue to do so with the transition to proof-of-stake and EIP-1559. Ethereum does not have a supply cap, but it does have a roadmap for a sustainable security model and if it achieves a positive cashflow then it will not only eliminate issuance, it can become deflationary. An argument can be made about potential issues with Bitcoin's sustainability in the long run.
Currency: Ether is used as a unit of account and medium of exchange to pay for every activity in Ethereum. It is also used in the same way for venture capital related to ICOs, and Ether is also used as collateral in the DEFI space and new monetary uses will continue to emerge. It is an immature form of money, just like Bitcoin is an immature form of gold. Some people prefer to say that Ether is just a utility token. However, a utility token is just a narrowly scoped form of money. Not only is Ether's scope within its digital economy growing, by next year users will be able to pay millions of merchants with Ether through Paypal. We have never seen the adoption of a new form of money grow organically. New forms of money have always been imposed by authorities. What would the organic growth of money look like? It would look like Ether.
Ethereum's digital economy: Ethereum has limitless use cases and it is already generating economic activity with real world usefulness. Ether's value will benefit from acting as the native monetary asset for Ethereum. As Ethereum's economic activity grows, the velocity and/or value of ether must also increase.
Bond: With proof-of-stake you need to lock up Ether to receive a yield in return. It is similar to how bonds work.
Tech Stock: Ethereum provides a service. That service is paid with ether. The network is controlled by holding ether that is staked. The more valuable the service provided by Ethereum becomes, the more users will be willing to pay for transactions and the more valuable the protocol and the Ether token become. Cloud based services is the entire business model of many companies. The network will be entirely operated by stakers who happen to be the recipients of transaction fees. It is not exactly the same as holding a stock, but there are a lot of parallels.
Full reserve banking model: This is a bit of a stretch, but it is a potential end-game for Ethereum. It can serve as the base infrastructure and reserve asset for a full reserve banking system. In a nutshell: a consortium of banking companies can be formed to standardize a framework to hold and stake Ether under custody in exchange for wrapped Ether. Customers deposit Ether, banks exchange it for wETH and stake the original ETH. Resting balances of wEther on customer accounts can receive a cut of the staking rewards. Banks get their profit model, customers get to spend wrapped Ether with traditional banking services and potentially receive a share of the staking yield. Customers could also have access to a yield curve based on variable reserve requirements. This would allow banks to create money (which is actually good for the economy when it is done with moderation), but for the first time ever customers would have the choice of how much risk exposure they are comfortable with. This dynamic could help to establish a form of democratic check and balances system that discourages moral hazard. Ether could become a godsend to banks in the land of negative yields. It's a pipe dream, but not entirely impossible. Don't forget that the US OCC has essentially given banks the green light to take the first steps in this direction (US banks have been approved to use the Ethereum blockchain for their operations AND they can become validators... yup this happened).

EDIT 1: Adding an analogy to explain why ether is money:
Let’s say I have a car with a 14-gallon fuel tank and I want to take it on a road trip. The car is not aware of the price of gasoline, and it would not travel any farther if the price of gas would double the next day. That’s because the intrinsic utility of oil has nothing to do with its monetary value. The car needs gas because of its particular physical properties and how the ICE is designed to utilize it. If I want to drive from point A to point B and it takes a full tank to get there, it will take that full tank no matter what happens to the monetary properties of gas/oil. This is fundamentally different from how Ethereum uses ether.
Ethereum (the network) is not trying to be money, but it utilizes ether exclusively for its monetary properties and not because it can be magically burned by an imaginary engine of sorts. It costs money to participate in the network as a miner, and their engagement is financially incentivized with ether. Block space is a scarce resource, therefore participants who wish to transact use ether to bid for it. These interactions are utilizing ether as a monetary medium of exchange. In the long run, as the price of ether goes up, the ether denomination of gas prices goes down. That happens because no one is using ether as gas/oil, and it is actually being used as money. In the short run you may see the opposite occurring because of the dynamic between the portion of block space demand that is inelastic and the demand for ether.
EDIT 2: Revisiting key concepts to explain how they will become price catalysts.

Wide adoption of L2 solutions: these will amplify the base layer block space value while encouraging further network adoption by a significant reduction of fees. A successful integration with DeFi protocols will dismiss the "Ethereum killers" theory and consolidate market confidence.
EIP-1559: reduce excessive financial incentives to miners by burning transaction fees. This will also discourage miners from attempting to artificially raise fees via spam.
Sharding: scale L1 bandwidth, compounding the effect of L2 solutions, further consolidating Ethereum's dominance in the DeFi space, making it feasible to introduce new use cases and eventually increase trx fee revenue.
The switch from PoW to PoS: discontinuing PoW will eliminate the operating costs related to mining and will allow for a reduction of issuance. Money that was previously allocated to buying mining equipment will be redirected to the acquisition of Ether. Staking Ether will remove it from circulation for extended periods of time. Operating cost will be negligible, allowing validators to withhold most of the Ether revenue. This will be the greatest bull market catalyst in the history of cryptocurrencies and it will eclipse the effect of BTC halvenings.

Bitcoin maximalists will be nay-saying all the way through and past a market cap flip. Do not get caught up in their narrative. If you are not sure, then it is better to rebalance your portfolio proportionally to market caps. If none of these things happen and Ethereum turns out to be a failure, then you would only have reduced your gains by 20%. Otherwise, ETH will be making you mountains of money.
EDIT 3: Ethereum killers
Ethereum killers remind me a lot of Tesla killers, but a lot worse. People need to understand that cryptocurrency platforms targeting financial Dapps are fighting the equivalent force of a black-hole when it comes to Ethereum’s network effect and user retention in this space.
Bigger players, with bigger money, are entering this market and they will not settle for anything other than the top dog. This pattern reinforces Ethereum's position as the premium financial system, which ends up attracting even bigger players and resulting in the black-hole effect. To make matters even more complicated, financial apps are more valuable when they are surrounded by a rich and diverse variety of digital assets and other natively defined Dapps. There is not much you can do with your money in a ghost town.
It is VERY difficult to build this type of environment up because the platform and dapps must also have established full trust from their user base. This is not to say there is no space for other networks to grow, but just don’t get your hopes high that they will be taking Ethereum’s stronghold as a financial system. There are other use cases that do not require the amount of decentralization and security offered by Ethereum, and the networks that can focus on these are the ones who will be able to coexist with in the long-run. Gaming, ERP interoperability and supply chain are good examples of such use cases. Remember that alternatives with cheap transactions have existed for a while and they have barely touched ETH's dominance (EOS, NEO, VET, QTUM, IOTA, LSK, STRAT, ARK and dare I say... TRON).
EDIT 4: Refuting critiques about dynamic monetary policy
If an argument can be made that the financial incentives to operators (miners/stakers) are excessive or insufficient then an argument can be for the implementation and execution of a dynamic monetary policy.
I don't think an arbitrarily picked issuance schedule determined during the genesis of a new highly complex system is likely to be efficient through its lifecycle. Bitcoin's monetary policy provides the certainty of stability and protection from abuse, but it sacrifices the possibility of efficiency and jeopardizes longevity. It would be like if a captain of a ship would point it in the direction of its final destination, set the throttle, then fall back to his cabin for a nice bottle of chianti and hope that the ship would arrive safely. There would be no one at the helm to navigate the seas, no one to make sure it stayed on route, no one to avoid the storms or to take advantage of currents. In my opinion it is a pretty bad approach to something as critical as monetary policy.
With respect to Ethereum's dynamic monetary policy: I don't see any evidence to suggest developers have been enriching their pockets by keeping issuance at the levels they are. Developers are stakeholders and the Ethereum fund holds a lot of ether - debasing ether is against their self interest. There is a great misunderstanding that the one's who are adjusting issuance are the recipients of the new tokens. Is there any documented case of this happening?
EDIT 5: Addressing Bitcoin's immutable monetary policy
The idea that Bitcoin's monetary policy cannot be changed is a myth. It is a false narrative that takes for granted that the issuance subsidy will no longer be necessary at some point, but there is no way to objectively assert this. There is no divine power preventing the monetary policy from being changed. If the security model for Bitcoin was jeopardized because of insufficient cash flow to miners, then Bitcoin's monetary policy would be the first thing on the chop board to go in order to remedy the situation.
EDIT 6: Five years ago naysayers were screaming about how everything that is being done TODAY in the Ethereum network would never work. Now they are calling Ethereum a scam, or that is is a platform for degenerate gamblers, or that the fees are too high and therefore it is useless, or that it can't scale, or that something else better is just around the corner to take its place.... you know... basically all the things that traditional bankers have to say about Bitcoin, maxis are saying about Ethereum.
EDIT 7: The greater the impact a new technology can have on society, the more difficult it is to comprehend its potential. Ethereum has the potential to have a dramatic impact on human civilization. It could take decades for it to be fully realized, but it would change the world in ways that we cannot possibly imagine today. If it happens, the moon will be just a pit-stop.
EDIT 8: Thank you so much for all the awards! Ethereans understand this stuff, and I could feel the frustration in the air every time someone said that Ethereum is not money, or that ETH and BTC are completely different things, or all the other bs attacks that are in great part founded on a lack of understanding of how BTC and ETH actually work. I would love to hear what guys like Raoul Pal, Pomp, Michael Saylor and Fernando Ulrich (for my Brazilian friends) would have to say about some of the things that have been written here. If you know a way to get their attention, then please do it.
EDIT 9: Clarification about Lyn Alden's opinion of Ethereum
EDIT 10: I am still working on a much more ambitious write up. It is focused on economic aspects of money, monetary systems and global asset markets. I still have not incorporated any of the information written here, but I eventually will merge it together. One of the main new ideas that I am exploring is challenging the notion that money has no intrinsic value and that scarcity is the most important attribute of money. I think I make a compelling argument to demonstrate that facilitating economic activity is more important, and how Ethereum has a big edge over Bitcoin in this regard. Here is the link to the WIP doc.
TLDR: Ethereum is not stopping at the moon... it is not stopping on Mars... it is going straight out of the Milky Way galaxy in search for alien life... but you should own some BTC just in case the spaceship malfunctions during launch.

POOP POST ALERT! I'm having a bit of fun turning FIGHT CLUB into FART CLUB

My Cervelo S5 Review

I think a lot of cycling reviews really let the reader down. They describe a lot of technical details (often taken at face value from the manufacturer without any independent verification) and rarely offer a concrete insight on whether the bike is really worth a buy or not. Likewise I find a lot of first impressions on forums to be a little too broad/shallow in their description, or they fixate on very nuanced or specific topics that would not be relevant to the average buyer. So I am writing this in hopes that it will help at least be a more useful resource for folks considering this particular bike.
Background: I am by no means a “fast” cyclist. I am 29 years old, 6 feet, about 160lbs and have an FTP of 260W on a good day. I’ve been cycling since I was 17, dabbled in triathlon when I was in college, and now am cycling recreationally with the hope of being able to do some-kind of fondo, or epic bike ride within the next year or so (whenever COVID calms down).
I bought my Cervelo S5 simply because the carbon fiber roadbike I bought in high-school is getting a little long in the tooth. I really love the bike and have the fit 100% dialed in. But it’s beginning to creek and rattle quite a bit, I’ve moved to a hilly area and feel like disc brakes would be a better safety feature to investigate, and I’ve always had the goal of getting a really nice bike for myself so I figured now’s the time to do so!
Other Bikes Considered:
When I began this search a huge range of bikes were considered. I had a roughly $6K pricepoint, but didn’t mine splurging if I found the right bike. Cable integration and electronic shifting were a must. I also wanted to buy something that would ultimately put a smile on my face for a long time.
Knowing that this bike will likely need to last me another 10+ years I was very much looking into more traditional roadbikes and endurance bikes from a longterm comfort and accessibility perspective.
The Fezzarri Empire SL was actually at the top of this list with wireless shifting, integrated cabling, and a pretty clever frame design really calling to me for about $4K all in. But when COVID hit they had a 6-month lead time on bikes and that just didn’t work for me.
Canyon’s Endurace and Ultimate were pretty compelling but they felt long in the tooth with their exposed cabling.
I also considered BMC’s line of roadbikes but couldn’t find one that really “spoke” to me.
I looked through a lot of other brands: Cannondale, Trek, Cube, Ribble, Orbea, Giant, Argon, Look, Ridley, Scott, Focus, and a half dozen other boutique brands that I can’t quite recall. All had some options, but nothing that really hit the nail on the head.
I then decided to focus more exclusively on aerobikes. Primarly because I think aerobikes look really cool! The main contenders were the S5, 2021 Canyon Aeroad, BMC Time Machine Road, Specialized Venge, Quintana Roo SRFive and Specialized Tarmac SL-7 (which I know technically isn’t a pure Aerobike!).
The Aeroad was quickly ruled out due to availability, and I honestly wanted a wide flat aerobar.
The BMC Time Machine Road had availability issues, and while the integration it has is really cool, I wasn’t going gaga for the way it looked. Reviewers also said it was perhaps the least “Aero” feeling Aero bike in the sense that it was “fast” but not in a way that was super obvious.
The Venge was tempting since it’s one of the “Ultimate” bikes you can get. But I had a hard time tracking one down at a price and color combo that felt right. For how impressive the Venge is I do see a lot of them around me…so it felt perhaps a bit less “special” in some ways.
The Quintana Roo SRFive was high on the list due to the fact that it came with great wheelset options, customizable colors, and Quintana Roo is pretty flexible with adding specific componentry for you. However, something about the proportions felt a little off to me, and their aero claims felt a little less substantiated to me. They
To be honest the Tarmac SL-7 felt like the perfect bike for me. Roadbike in design, but very aero design cues. However, it’s a pricey bike, availability was nonexistent, and honestly the color combos available at the more “affordable” pricepoints felt pretty garbage. It’s a nice bike! But not worth spending exuberant amounts of money over.
I happened across a really well maintained S5 on an old triathlon forum I used to frequent that was priced really fairly (around $6200) and I jumped on the opportunity!
The Specs: The bike I purchased came with the following: -2019 S5 Disc black/gray -Size 56CM -Ultrega Di2 -62MM DT Swiss Arc 1450 Wheels -Garmin Vector 2 Pedals You can check it out here: https://postimg.cc/gallery/PfxQhtH
Design & Build Quality: I absolutely love the way this bike looks. The handlebar looks so aggressive & unique, while the frame profiles feel sleek. It honestly reminds me of being the “Lamborghini” of bikes…it’s just such a departure from what we’re used to seeing, and feels so abundantly functional, yet “loud” at the same time. I seriously sneak a look at the bike every time I go into the garage…having a bike that makes me want to do that is almost worth the price of admission alone.
I also think black is the perfect color for this bike. It feels so classically Cervelo and almost gives the bike a “stealth fighter” feel. Perhaps a small downside of the black paint job is that it tends to show small scratches and imperfections more readily, but the overall package feels so bold that you don’t necessarily mind it. Also in a lot of circumstances a quick wipe down will help to hide or correct whatever imperfections you may see.
What I will say is the current colors for the mid-range S5 models are pretty garbage. There’s a gray+black combo and a chameleon blue. The gray+black feels too plain for this bike while chameleon blue only works if you want something really bold. I really wish manufacturers would just always offer a classy “base” color while giving you a couple of different options each model year. Right now the current trend is pretty much polarizing/crappy colors at the lower levels and super nice color schemes at the higher levels, which is rather annoying to me.
While I haven’t had the bike for a long time it feels really well built. I remember touching and feeling a Trek Madone not too long ago and everything felt very hollow, cheap, and flimsy to me. The handle bar on this bike feels very “solid” and “stiff” to touch, and the frame as a whole just feels nice to hold in hand.
Aside from the cool handlebar and sleek aero profiles there’s not tons to call-out on this bike design-wise, no special storage integration, extra fancy seatpost/suspension system, etc. It’s kind of a no frills bike in that regard but it honestly feels so well built and just “cool” to look at that you don’t really feel like you’re missing out by not having these things.
The only thing that would have been cool would have been some kind of clever solution to hide your flat kit+tools. But that’s only because the lines are so clean on this bike that it feels like a sin to put a saddlebag on it.
There is the fork-steerer tube design flaw that was called out YouTube. For a lot of people this is a big miss and a big issue. While I haven’t had tons of saddle time on this bike, I’m not immensely worried about it at the moment.
Performance: Does this bike feel fast to ride? Yes! Here are the differences I noticed compared to a fairly standard road frame from 10 years ago & compared to an old Cervelo P2SL triathlon bike I used to ride.
First off this bike feels really stiff. Not stiff in a jarring, you can’t be comfortable way, but stiff in the sense that you really feel like your pedal strokes are putting power to the ground. This makes the bike feel really dialed in, almost aggressive in nature. You’re not “dancing on the pedals” when you’re on this bike you’re more of a heat-seeking missile. Compared to the other bikes I’ve ridden…I don’t think I’ve actually felt a lack of stiffness that I could properly call out, so I find descriptions of stiffness to be a little hard to quantify. I’d best sum it up as with this bike every ounce of energy pushes you forward, and you don’t quite realize that your current bike isn’t doing that for you until you ride something that is stiffer.
I was very curious about the aero properties of this bike. I used to ride a Cervelo P2SL when I did triathlons…which though dated is still a fairly fast frame. I remember consistently being a few miles per hour faster on that bike. For instance 20mph would feel like a decent amount of effort on my old road bike, whereas I could hold 22mph on the P2SL no problem.
What’s really noticeable with this bike is as you are accelerating you just don’t feel the wind drag hit you as hard as you would normally expect. For instance I typically start to notice drag really hit around 20mph and it becomes fairly substantial at 25mph+. On this bike when you hit 20mph it doesn’t feel like anything is wanting to slow it down, it’s kind of interesting! From a purely “feel perspective” it basically feels as fast as the P2SL I used to ride just without the aerobar position helping me get more aero.
I also feel like the handling on this bike is very responsive. I really don’t have a good benchmark for this (aside from my old roadbike) but I’d say as you lean or steer to change direction you feel the bike immediately start to grab that line. With my old roadbike it would change directions well but would feel maybe a little “floaty” in comparison. There’s just a noticeable increase in precision on this bike.
My first ride out with this bike was on a local 25 mile loop with about 1200’ of climbing. I usually average 16-16.5mph on this loop and on the S5 I was averaging 18.5mph with plenty left in the tank if I wanted to push it more. The next day I took the bike on another local loop as a recovery ride basically trying to keep the heart rate around 140mph, and I apparently set a PR on the loop despite not really pushing myself in any particular way. So the speed gains are pretty apparent to me. It’s not going to make you a hero…but I think if you’re coming from something old and non-aero 1.5-2mph is what you can count on and you will notice it.
I am not sure if it’s the bottom bracket, the components, the geometry of the bike, or what exactly but I find it very easy to achieve a smooth pedal stroke and a high cadence on this bike even in higher gears. On my old roadbike, if I was in the big chain-ring I’d have to be in easier gears in the back to keep my cadence high, and I’d often just be in the smaller ring to make it easier to accelerate off of stoplights, etc. On this bike it is almost no problem being in the big chainring the whole time even when going uphill on sections that I’d typical use the small chain-ring on.
Now what I will say is for all of the positives I just listed above, this bike will not make you fast. Yes I definitely notice the differences and advantages that this frame offers, but I also don’t think if I was out of shape that I’d find this bike to be a huge step up over a normal roadbike. If anything, this bike is so focused on making you go fast that you might prematurely “blow-up” a little bit if riding it out of shape. You’d think you could hold 20mph until all of the sudden you couldn’t. Whereas on a normal roadbike you would find it easier to put around at a pace more in line with your current fitness.
Likewise towards the end of a 40 mile ride I was starting to run out of gas, putting around at 14mph and I felt no faster or no better than I would on my old roadbike in such a situation. So when you’re feeling good and pushing hard, you’re going to feel this bike help you, but when you’re having an off day or not quite putting the power down anymore this bike isn’t going to do much to rescue you. So I’d say this bike is best enjoyed when you’re somewhat fit or in shape.
Geometry+Ride Comfort:
I was actually really worried about the geometry of this bike. I remember seeing one on the trail one-day and noticing that the rider was riding really long and low on the frame. However I also cross-referenced its frame geometry with a bunch of other bikes and it was only a few mm off in stack+reach and other measurements. So in other words, perhaps not as dramatic of a departure as I thought.
The head-tube feels really long on this bike and it barely angles up. Compared to my 56cm roadbike the Cervelo S5 is noticeably longer and significantly lower. Crucially however, despite how aggressive this position looks once you’re in the saddle and reaching for the handlebar you realize that it’s not an unobtainable position to be in.
Yes you’re reaching a bit more, yes you are lower, but you also feel like you are in a more powerful position and that you have more control over the bike because you have a lower center of gravity. Sometimes being in a tight sportscar is more comfortable than being in a loose sedan and I’d say that feels to be the case here.
The handlebars are very comfortable to touch and interact with. The flat aero tops are awesome to put your hands on and wrap your fingers around, while the hoods and drops feel very natural to get to.
My bike is equipped with 28mm tubeless tires and everything feels very “smooth” when riding. I am sure this is mostly the wheel+tire combo, but between that and the frame I have no complaints on road harshness by any means. You’re definitely not floating around on a cloud, but it’s not like I’m saying to myself “man I wish this bike was less harsh”
In general if you’re worried about comfort on this bike from a geometry perspective or road-harshness perspective I’m confident you’ll be able to make this bike work unless you have some very specific needs.
Weight: While I don’t have a scale for this bike, most reports peg this as being in the high 16.9ish-17.6ish lb range depending on size and components. I’d say that feels about right.
The bike certainly does not feel like a featherweight, but it’s by no means overly dense or a complete tank to ride. What I’ve noticed with disc brake bikes is the weight feels very heavily concentrated towards the wheels/bottom of the bike. This can make the bike feel heavier than it is because the balance can be a little odd. Likewise, when lifting the S5 you have to almost hold the top tube 80% back for it to feel balanced in your hand, and the point of balance is a very a short range to find. I don’t think this actually matters in any serious capacity, just something interesting to note comparing the other bikes I’ve interacted with. The fact that it’s kind of hard to balance the bike in hand can make it feel like it weighs more than it does, but when you do bike it up balanced you go “hmm it’s actually lighter than I remember”
I took this bike up some of my local hills and felt no noticeable weight consequence. If anything, the stiffness and aero properties on this bike are so prevalent, even going uphill, that I would take them any day of the week versus this bike losing a couple of extra lbs.
Di2: When I first started looking for bikes I was 100% for a SRAM Force AXS groupset. My current roadbike has a SRAM Rival groupset, which I love, and to me the extra gear range and the wireless technology behind SRAM Force AXS made a lot of sense to me. However, with SRAM Force AXS being pretty new my bike options were somewhat limited in availability, whereas Ultrega Di2 was much more ubiquitous to come across. Obviously…stumbling across this bike with as good of a deal as I was getting I figured it wasn’t worth holding out for SRAM Force any longer than I had to.
Here’s what got me to go with Ultrega Di2: -The hood buttons being able to switch pages on a head-unit seemed really cool. -The fact that you could change shifting profiles with the PC app and USB cable in case you didn’t spring for the wireless d-fly module. -The fact that I could basically set it up to shift like SRAM Force AXS would (with the exception of the L+R simultaneous press to change from big ring to small) if I really wanted to.
My first ride with Ultrega Di2 was actually pretty disappointing. When I got my bike the battery was completely dead. I plugged it in and it immediately came to life, and I decided to let the bike charge overnight.
After getting a full charge on the battery I unplugged the bike for a few days, as the battery is supposed to last several months depending on shift style. Upon finally deciding to take the bike on its first “proper” ride at 6:00am in the morning, I clip in, go down the driveway, turn onto the main street and my shifters are completely dead. I do a quick 1.3 mile loop around the block, of course stuck in a pretty hard gear, and decided to hop on Zwift instead while the battery charged.
So the fact that the battery can completely die with no real way to save it or resurrect things mid-ride is a bit of a bummer. But I also would say that it was a bit of operator error on my end, as I must have done something to let the battery drain over night.
Now for my first actual ride, Di2 is pretty amazing. I tend to keep my mechanical derailleurs pretty well sorted, but shifting can be a bit of a hassle. If you’re on a climb or not really in the right cadence (for whatever reason) you just hear and feel the derailleurs forcing themselves into gear and it feels very abrupt. Likewise, on longer distance rides, it’s honestly not uncommon for your fingers and hands to get a little tired which just adds to some of the mental anguish you may be feeling 80 miles into your ride!
Di2 is just a quick click and you’re in the gear you selected. No drama, no fuss. You want to switch between chain-rings, no problem! Everything about using it is easier and better and I honestly feel like it makes you a safer rider. When coming to a stop-light I’d sometimes not always be able to downshift as much as I’d like, which would make starting up again a slightly hairy process. That’s just not an issue at all anymore with Di2. You can jump down 5 gears in a few seconds and with minimal abruptness or huge shocks to the driveline so to speak.
Likewise I’d often find myself mentally staying in gear at less ideal cadences just because mechanical shifting could be a little abrupt or require some effort that could take my focus away from the road. Now I find myself just naturally honing in at a good geacadence for myself because it takes no effort to do so.
The front derailleur also makes a pretty badass sound when you use it. It’s an electronic servo whine, but it mentally feels like a turbo-blow off valve going off or hearing a sick supercharger whine on your car. The shift buttons also have a very satisfying range of travel and “click” to them. All in all, though you do lose some of the clanks and sensations that make mechanical shifting feel so tactile, you have other ways to engage the sense with Di2 which makes for a pretty fun and gratifying experience using the shifters.
What I probably like about Di2 the most is it feels like the derailleurs work in tandem to minimize friction. This leads to just a silky smooth shifting and pedaling experience that feels really sublime to interact with.
I’d say the build quality on Ultrega Di2 is very high. All of the contact points feel very “solid” and you generally get the impression that you’re interacting with a very well built, very precise piece of hardware.
I was personally worried about the shifting controls being a little annoying. I’m a SRAM guy and I actually don’t like the way Shimano’s mechanical groupsets shift, but within 5 minutes I got used to Shimano’s dual button layout and I don’t find it to be a problem to interact with at all.
Now for the negatives, I do think it’s kind of BS that you need to spend $100-$150 for a wireless module to talk to your cycling computer or phone. All of these electronic groupsets are expensive and they should just come with these built into the shifters.
I bought the module and installed it and I also find the phone app to be pretty bad to use and the head-unit control is pretty laggy. Like ½ second after a press laggy to the point where you’d almost be better off taking your hand off the hood to just press the head-unit button as you’d be able to do that whole process faster than you’d be able to using the integrated shifter buttons. Likewise, there is the same amount of lag when your head-unit updates its gear selection…which is less offensive but Di2 shifts so quickly that you can get substantially far down or up the cassette before your head-unit displays your first shift.
The junction box where you plugin your charger and check your battery life/shift modes could be designed a tad better to me. The button itself is actually a little hard to press, and when pressed it actually doesn’t come on unless you hold it down for a few moments. This can be a little tricky for new riders, but once you figure it out it’s not the end of the world.
In short I’d say that Ultrega Di2 is definitely worth the upgrade over mechanical shifting and I also don’t feel like I’m missing out on tons compared to the SRAM AXS groupsets. It’s pretty clear that Shimano came up with a pretty bullet-proof design at the expense of some UI goodies. You can certainly enjoy riding your bike with a good ole mechanical groupset, but if you’ve done your years on mechanical you’ll be in heaven with the shifting experience that Di2 offers.
Disc Brakes:
One of my big reasons for buying this bike is because I recently moved to a hillier area and found myself really needing to rely on my brakes on larger descents. To be honest I felt like this was a big safety thing that I really wanted to invest in.
In normal braking circumstances, you really can’t feel much of a difference between rim brakes and disc brakes. The two feel so similar that I was almost disappointed in the disc brakes.
However disc brakes do feel a lot easier to modulate. On long descents I’d often find myself white knuckling my brakes, whereas on my disc brakes it’s much less of an ordeal. I will also say that in more of an emergency braking situation, I think the disc brakes will ultimately stop quickefaster…it’s just not quite the night and day difference I thought it was going to be.
I will say that the brakes on my S5 feel like they are setup quite well. There’s no detectable rub and no hugely problematic squeals or howls. So that’s been a bit of a plus at least.
I do actually really like thru-axles though. With rim brakes I always found it a little annoying trying to center the wheel up on the fork and between the brakes. Thru axles just remove that process entirely. The S5 comes with a pretty nifty quick release thru axle system as well…not that if I have a flat I’m going to be worried about precious seconds ticking away, but it’s cool to see new clever designs and systems in place here.
I came from a “rim brakes are better” mindset for a very long time. If you have that mindset switching to disc really isn’t going to feel all that different day to day (for better or worse) but in more extreme situations discs are likely going to have a little more to offer in keeping you safe. So I’d say disc brakes aren’t the only reason why should upgrade your bike, and at the same time if you’re on a rim bike that you love you likely aren’t missing tons by not jumping to disc aside from maybe the ability to run some of the newer wheelsets.
Wheelset:
The bike came with DT Swiss Arc Dicut 1450’s, which are the OEM version of the 1400 series. The wheels are 62mm thick and have a more traditional rim width/profile of 17mm
For such a deep section wheel they are actually incredibly light to hold. I have a set of aluminum 28mm wheels that have a claimed weight around 1580 grams and the 1450’s feel lighter even with discs installed.
I personally really wanted a loud freehub to help let people know that I am nearby and sadly the freehub is pretty quiet. The good news is that you can pretty easily upgrade the ratchet for around $150, which I’ll probably do at some point.
I was a little worried that these would blow around a bit in the wind with how deep they are and how thin the rim width is. However they’ve been fine for me so far on the bike. I’m about 160lbs and 6’ tall so not particularly dense by any means. I think what helps is the bike puts you in a position where you feel like you have a relatively low center of gravity.
In terms of speed, they’re a little hard to pick a part as the whole bike generally just feels “fast” to me, but I feel like they’re doing their job, and don’t have any major complaints thus far. I also feel like they are quite comfortable on the road and that fastemore modern wheelsets are definitely out there, but that you’d be paying for gains you may not fully notice.
Garmin Vector 2’s:
My bike came with some Garmin Vector 2 pedals, which was a bit of a plus for me because I didn’t want to buy a bike and then spend $650ish on a new power meter after the fact.
These are a last gen power meter and do have some less than ideal characteristics (like the external pods which could get damaged in a crash). Likewise from what I’ve heard there’s a bit more of a process when changing them between bikes thanks to the pods. But since they’re already on the bike and ready to go I figure they’ll be just fine for me.
So far power numbers seem pretty much in line with what I output on my Saris H3 trainer. If they differed slightly, I honestly wouldn’t care all that much. They do provide quite a few cool parameters to look at. Pedaling smoothness, left right balance, torque, and loads more that feel like they are more pedal power meter specific.
I was primarily interested in a dual sided power meter to try to detect any left-right leg imbalances that I may have. So far I’ve been pretty much sitting at a 51/49 split most of the time. So if you’re on the fence about getting a dual sided power meter and really want to save a few hundred bucks you’re probably okay doing so!
A small plus to me is the fact that these run on coin cell batteries. There’s obviously some advantages of having rechargeable batteries built into things nowadays but it’s almost to the point where I feel like I have to plug in 3-4 things after each ride. So just being able to keep a few coincells in the saddle bag and being able to swap batteries when necessary actually feels much nicer to me than having to plug these in.
I was actually pretty hesitant to pickup a pedal based power meter because I’ve been using Shimano pedals and cleats for so long. However I actually like the feel of the Garmin pedals much better. They lock your feet in more securely, even if you have a fairly loose tension, and they seem like they stay balanced a lot better than my Shimano pedals (less trying to chase a spinning pedal when you clip in). The only thing that I don’t like is it feels like the front of the cleat doesn’t quite disengage cleanly on my right foot, which is the one that I use most often when stopping, but my left cleat unclips just fine. There’s likely something I’m doing wrong, and it hasn’t been a huge issue, but I do worry that when unclipping my right foot might get stuck and I’ll tip over.
This is actually my first time riding outside with power and I really think the cycling community overhypes how much data you need. As long as you have a watt number to look at, you’re probably good. If you can achieve that with a $300 crank based meter, great! You definitely don’t need to go out and buy some $1000 power meter with all sorts of metrics.
What’s also interesting is since most of my actual training is done on Zwift I find power to be a less useful metric outdoors than it is indoors. When I’m outdoors I’m basically going “hmm this feels like 250 watts to me” and then I look down and go “yep that’s 250 watts” and I do find it interesting to see what certain wattages feel like at certain speeds and up certain hills but it feels less important outdoors than it does in Zwift. For instance if I’m riding on a segment of road…yes I can go 400 watts if I really want to, but I’m already going 25mph and going faster may be a little unsafe in a given situation. If you already have a trainer at home, that’s a far better tool to crank out the watts because you can push yourself to whatever wattage you want without having to worry about traffic, road obstacles, etc.
All in all I’m pretty happy with these pedals and glad I didn’t have to buy a power meter separately when purchasing this bike.
Final Thoughts:
When I pulled the trigger on this bike I experienced quite a bit of guilt. I’m not that fast of a cyclist, $6200 is quite a bit of money, what if the geometry is too aggressive? and my old bike is honestly working just fine. However after riding it I am really happy with my purchase.
To me, the S5 is really one of the coolest looking bikes released. It’s so nice to look at everyday and when I’m on it I really like I’m riding a Lamborghini. There’s just a real sense of occasion to the bike that is totally worth the cost of admission. Now what I will say is that I really think $6Kish is the absolute most you need to pay for a bike nowadays. $6K should generally get you a high-end frame, decent wheelset, electronic shifting and maybe a power meter, which should be all of the high-end goodies you really need. To me there’s no way in hell a $12K bike is going to be anywhere near twice as good as a $6K bike so you really don’t need to spring for a super high-end build with Dura-Ace or SRAM Red.
I’d also argue that the S5 is basically one of the most advanced framesets available today and compared to my 10-year-old roadbike, it’s a substantial leap forward but not a complete game changer in terms of riding my bike. I’d say it adds about 30% more enjoyment compared to what I’m used to experiencing. So if you’re already on a somewhat new bike (say from the last 5 years) you probably aren’t going to notice as much of an improvement in the experience as I did.
This bike really feels like a TT bike and a roadbike had a baby. This shouldn’t be a shock to anyone, because that’s the whole aerobike concept. But it honestly feels as aero as my TT bike, just without the ability to get into the TT position, and it’s not like I’m missing tons of the traditional “roadbike” experience. It handles well, is comfortable, and is generally a pretty responsive bike to be on.
So if you’re torn between an aerobike or more standard roadbike, both are probably going to work just fine, but I’d postulate that the aerobike is likely going to be the faster option without significantly compromising your riding experience in any meaningful way.
I’m a bit of a lone wolf and I think this bike is perfect for us solo riders. You can cover quite a bit of ground with the extra efficiency this bike provides, but it’s obviously much more versatile than a TT bike as you can use it to hop in a group ride if you need to, and it will feel more comfortable riding it up hills, down descents, etc.
Perhaps a con of this bike is that I do feel like I have a bit of a target on my back, and so I subconsciously feel the need to ride fast just so I’m not “that guy” who has the nice bike but sucks at riding. Likewise this bike just really likes to and wants to go fast, so it actually may not be the best tool for noodling around and exploring. I don’t want to say that it’s uncomfortable or anything like that…it’s just very focused on speed so when you’re on it you just want to go fast.
All in all, I’m happy with the bike and think it’ll put a smile on my face for a very long time and I’d be happy to answer more specific questions about it if it would help anyone!

Hunter or Huntress Chapter 80: Drawing Up Plans

It's another round number, boys and girls. hopefully, nothing terrible happens. Minus the Bastards that burned down Hylsdal of course may all the terribleness happen to them.
The editing duo reports the following chapter fit for reading with only a mild chance of mental distress. Hopefully, this report is accurate. So let's get on with it.
ko-fi For having a pretty picture commissioned.
Sapphire
Wiki
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Chapter 80: Drawing Up Plans
Well, they hadn’t blown anything up yet, admittedly because they hadn’t managed to make anything even close to ready for testing. So they had packed up the three things that were sort of ready to show off. Dakota wasn’t entirely pleased that Tink hadn’t waited until they had proper prototypes ready. Not to mention they weren’t here to play at being inventors. It wasn’t hard to argue it was good for their schedule though. They hadn’t expected to have this meeting for days or possibly weeks.
It hadn’t been much more than 24 hours, yet they now found themselves standing outside a very impressive looking building. It was very tall, and had all kinds of strange things cluttering its exterior. There were windmills of different kinds, weather vanes, cranes, hoists, and a fair few things Sapphire had no clue what were.
Sapphire had left her bow at Tink’s workshop as it might provoke some questions around here.
It also begged the question: if this was where the engineering guild was located, why did Tink seem to live in his own workshop, a fair distance away?
“Oh this is going to be marvelous. Come along now,” the clearly excited Tink went as he approached the door guards. “Hello my fine fellow, I’m here for an appointment with Craftmaster Jakolev.”
“My my, got another brilliant idea have you?” One of the guards responded slightly sarcastically. It didn’t seem to faze Tink though, that was for sure.
“No, three,” He replied triumphantly. “And he is gonna love them.”
“Well, go on in. I’ll escort you since you're bringing friends today.” The guard turned to look at the trio, clearly slightly surprised as he gave them each a once over. Eyes lingering in certain places. “Where did you find those beauties?” He asked as he turned to open the door.
“They found me in fact,” Tink replied, completely unfazed by the guard's attitude as he slipped in the door. The inside was decently decorated and definitely well kept. It was a rather stark contrast to Tink’s cluttered up workshop, with its nice corridors and clean floors. Sapphire peeked in the few open doors they passed, which seemed to lead to offices or something of the like. There were certainly both parchment and tables in there.
“So how’s it going lately, Junior?” The guard questioned. the two of them bringing up the rear.
“Oh, you know, the usual… until those three showed up.”
“Am I allowed to know what it is our new huntress friends have come up with?”
“Oh, they aren't the designers they are messengers, and unfortunately no… not yet at least”
“Darn it, I’m guessing it’s quite something to get old Tink to stop chasing his own crazy ideas.”
‘Oh I’m sure you would like to know, also “sorry Tom” we definitely found a crazy one,’ Sapphire thought to herself, sending the mental apology to Tom.
They had arrived at a set of nice double doors. Two guards stood here as well. 'Well, whoever this guy is, he’s important, that’s for sure,’ Sapphire thought as the guards swung open the doors following them inside.
Inside was a very nice room with large glass windows on the far wall, looking around there was shelving all around, most of it filled with models of different kinds. There were model buildings, wagons, siege engines, and many other odd things that Sapphire had no clue what were. In front of them at a very large desk, a male dragonette of around Nunuk’s age was sitting. ‘He has spectacles!’ Sapphire thought to herself. She knew those cost a small fortune, and she hadn’t ever seen someone use them before. Usually, you would get a healer to fix any kind of eye problems.
“So Tink, what did you come up with this time?”
“Ohh, greetings crafts master. First off, on the insistence of my companions, I must have you sign this before we continue. Your guards too if they are to stay.” The old dragonette, who Sapphire assumed must be Craftmaster Jakolev, tilted his head downwards a little to peer over the top of his spectacles, sighing slightly.
“Bring it here. And yes, they are staying. You may go Werner.” Tink handed over a copy of the non-disclosure agreement, the guard who had escorted them leaving the way they came. The two other guards moved up to the desk.
“I see, quite unlike you to not want the world to know what you have been working on,” Jakolev replied, signing the document, the two guards doing the same. “So what you got?”
Tink gestured for them to bring forth the things, first presenting the drawings Tink had copied down and then the prototypes. It took a bit to explain what it all did, Jakolev didn’t say anything other than ask questions here and there.
“So it will not make your hand dirty when using it?”
“Oh gods no. This is just the core. I wrapped it up in a bit of leather for the time being, but it should just be wood. It would revolutionize design work, not to mention save a lot of parchment in the drawing departments. It’s cheap too, and can be carried wherever you go. Excellent for note-taking or possibly map work. Imagine not having to carry ink with you or relying on charcoal and chalk.”
“I’ll grant you it’s rather brilliant. But can you make it?”
“Certainly, it shouldn't be hard to do. It's just clay, that ghastly grey stuff, and cheap wood.”
“Very well, what of this self-lighting lamp. Why not just carry a flint and steel?”
“Oh we want to make it smaller, so it can fit in your pocket. And you can carry it at all times, it would become your flint and steel. Isn't it brilliant?!” Tink was clearly barely restraining himself. Jakolev though was a lot more calm and thoughtful.
“Agreed, but what of prices. This looks to be a rather complicated piece of kit.”
“We talked about perhaps making the first ones more like jewelry. You know, a status symbol for the rich.”
“That could work, I certainly want one if you can make it nice and clean, it would make lighting a pipe so much easier. The lamp might be easier to make for general use.”
“Excellent, so would you agree to produce these under license?” Dakota went, cutting to the bone of why they were here.
“If Tink here can come up with some proper designs for a finalized product I don't see why not. Except for the fact, the most complicated little things we make are locks. We will need some more jewelers too. I’ll see what I can do about that. What sort of licensing are we talking about?"
“Quarter of sales price,” Dakota answered calmly. Sapphire had been working that out. If a golden lighter ended up costing say 20 gold they would be getting five. That meant that if most of the people in the council bought one they would make hundreds of gold… from a drawing.
‘I can see why Tom was so damn well paid back home and that’s just the lighter,’ Sapphire thought.
“One-fifth.” Jakolev retorted leaning back in his chair.
“Uhh-uh, not happening, quarter on everything. Those are our terms as per the contract we brought. Remember, we’re just the messengers.”
“Then I want exclusive rights for no less than five years. With a clause for renegotiating the contract once it expires at my discretion,” That sounded like rights forever to Sapphire.
“With a twenty-five year maximum, only extendable upon agreement of both parties,” Dakota replied, seemingly very pleased. “Oh and before you consider breaking our agreement. Should this venture prove profitable for both sides, which I'm sure it will be, these will not be the last inventions you can expect from us.” Jakolev looked at Dakota quizzically at that, seemingly trying to figure out what exactly he was dealing with here.
“Done. Tink, get yourself in gear. I want those things ready yesterday. We need to know if they could do any harm before we send them for approval.”
“Sir, yes, sir” Tink replied beaming with pride.
“Approval?” Sapphire questioned, that was a new one to her.
“Yes, of course, any such radical invention must be approved. We can’t have some craftsman who knows nothing of how to handle arcane inscriptions trying to sell them to the wider public. That would be disastrous. I can only imagine the harm done to our reputation if we started selling items that turn your hand black or grey.”
“How long would that take?” Dakota questioned.
“Normally that would take weeks, perhaps even months. Luckily I might be able to help speed that process up a bit. Not to mention, there is hardly anything dangerous here. There isn’t even a hint of magic in fact. It should be no problem.”
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“Now, now, don’t worry. You're safe here, I promise,” Lothal went as he rocked his little sister back and forth gently. The baby still hadn't stopped crying yet. Unkai had checked her over finding nothing wrong, incredibly. Tom guessed what had just happened wasn’t a pleasant experience in the least.
They had moved the 4-year-old girl over to try with her. Kalestine requested a minute before they continued, this was clearly not easy on her. Lothal moved away with the baby, going over to the other kids to stay clear of what was about to happen. Tom repeated the cut, drawing fresh blood in the same manner as before.
As with little baby Jinaro, when the blood hit Vibexa’s mouth it seemed to burn through, Kalestine’s breathing growing laboured as she strained greatly. The bright white light pouring forth from the young girl as she too let out an ear-piercing scream. Tom stood back this time as she thrashed around on the ground. It looked horrible. Just like with Jinaro, the light began to fade and eventually cut out. Then there was silence.
Jackalope leaned down to jostle the kid, to no effect. Jinaro had been screaming and crying right off the bat.
“Tom, she’s not breathing,” Jackalope went, looking at him with a horrified expression. Tom turned to look at Kalestine who was face down in the grass.
He quickly moved her head so he could hold a hand in front of a nostril.
“Well, she’s still breathing. Unkai get over here!” He replied, slightly relieved. He could guess at what the punishment was for killing a unicorn after all. “I think she fainted?” He went as Unkai arrived, sprinting over.
“Does that mean...” Jackalope trailed off, looking down at the girl, the spark of hope in her eyes fading.
Tom didn’t want to say it, but he knew. She was dead, very dead by now in fact. He didn’t know how long it had been, at least an hour though that was for sure. Short of some miracle magic, there was nothing to be done now.
He had believed this was all going to be fine… Why wasn’t it fine! He didn’t even know what god to curse for this. The old man from back home could hardly be held responsible. But why? Why give them hope. Twice even! Just to snatch it away like that. Most of All Tom just wanted to chuck his helmet for distance right now or go punch a tree. This wasn't fair, It was the excatch goddamn opposite of fair!
“Unkai do you think she could… you know later?” Jacky tried looking to Unkai.
“I know jack shit about unicorns other than ‘do as they say,’ and ‘be polite.’ ” His tone was hard, though there was clearly hurt in there. He would have expected it to work too, Tom guessed. Why wouldn't he have?
“Right,” Tom replied somberly, not quite sure what else to say right now. “I’ll... grab a blanket,” he continued, getting up.
Jackalope held out an arm to stop him for a second. “Tom, you're sure you can’t... You know?” she tried, clearly putting on a forced hopeful smile.
“We couldn’t save her now even if she was in a hospital bed in my home’s capital… I’m sorry,” Tom replied, looking down. “And I’m not even a doctor, healer, whatever… I can’t help her.” Jackalope’s smile faded as she looked back to the girl. Tom for one couldn’t stand to look at the girl anymore right now, so he walked away.
Jarix had laid down and curled up into a half-moon shape, with Zarko and the rest of the kids within the half-moon. Tom made his way over towards Zarko who was sitting with the twins. He almost felt sorry for Zarko as she was trying her best to comfort them. They weren't stupid; they knew they had just lost a sister, for the second time today.
The twins were damn near shaking with fear as they looked around despite Zarko’s efforts. Lothal was sitting with the crying Jinaro, Revo was lying on his back, head turned to stare at his dead sister.
Tom couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like down there. Not knowing how long it had been. He hadn’t seen any food either, they might have eaten it of course, but there was a good chance they were starving too. Tom sat down between Revo and Zarko. Gesturing for Lothal to come over.
He took his backpack off to get some rations out. Sugar probably wasn’t the right thing right now, but he did have a rather large bag of trail mix of the local variety, and they could use all the distractions they could get right now. “You hungry?” he tried, holding out a handful for the twins.
It took a bit before one of them reached out a hand to gingerly take some of it not saying a word. “No need to be shy, it’s yours. Would you mind Zarko?”
“Of course,” she replied, holding out her hand. Tom giving her the handful of trail mix to let her feed the two of them.
“How’s he doing?” Tom said, looking to Revo who was lying on his back.
“Unkai said his lungs are dirty, but he’ll be fine.”
“Somebody was brave protecting your little sister, hey?” Tom tried, in his most encouraging voice. The boy turned to look at him, giving a meek smile, which quickly vanished as he looked back to where Jackalope was sitting. Tom could hear her sobbing from here. “Lothal, do me a favor and hand this out, would you? Take as much as you want.” Tom went, giving the young man the bag and getting back up again.
“She’s not coming back is she?” Revo questioned, clearly on the verge of another breakdown.
“I’m sorry, but no I don’t think so.” Tom could feel the air vibrate with the growl that came from Jarix. The kids ducking for cover on instinct. “Welcome to war, Jarix. I hope you like it,” Tom went as he walked over to him to retrieve a blanket from his pack. The growl almost turned out a whimper at that. Maybe that was too rough, Jarix had done extremely well thus far. He needed to learn though, and he would hopefully never get a better lesson than this.
“But she’s dead, Tom. Why didn't she make it!?” Jarix protested. Clearly very distraught. Yeah okay, that was too rough, this wasn't his fault after all.
“Shs shs shhh, big guy. You did all you could. And we would never have found them without you. Hell, we wouldn’t even have made it here without you. And we didn’t lose a kid, okay?” Tom went, waiting until Jarix finally looked at him. “We saved five. You. Helped save, five kids. And you should be damn proud.”
“But I wanted to save six.”
“We all did, but that's another fact of war, Jarix. You don’t always win.” Tom grabbed a blanket from one of the bags low slung on Jarix’s harness, giving him a pat on the side. “And there is a big difference between losing a fight and losing a war.”
It would seem Jarix got what Tom was talking about, his head swiveling around to look at Tom. “We were told that if we find the enemy we are to return to the keep.”
“We haven't found them yet,” Tom replied in as hard a tone as he could muster right now. He mostly just wanted to scream for vengeance. That wouldn’t do though, not right now at least.
Tom moved over to the sobbing Jackalope, wrapping the kid up in the blanket before sitting down with her and giving her as much of a hug as he could manage. “They die for this!” she finally sneered out.
“What do you say we see about making that happen. Come over here, we have something to discuss,” he went, releasing her. She didn’t need to be told twice, shooting to her feet and turning to flank Tom as they walked over.
“Zarko, it was four hours to Deriva, right?”
“Yes, but it will be night by then… and what about the kids?”
“We leave them here with Unkai and Kalestine, we will give her some time to wake up. I don't want to get there before nightfall anyway. Are we sure we are dealing with Darklings here?”
“We shouldn't be talking about this here... We will be right back. Jarix, watch them. He is big and friendly so don’t be scared. No one hurts you while we are here. ” Tom had to agree with that assessment. Probably better to leave them be alone for a bit, rather than rub their noses in this. The three of them walked by the water's edge for a bit, until they were confident in being out of earshot. Well except for jarix.
“They took the bodies Tom, there must be darklings among them,” Zarko started. “That door was no darkling though.”
“Do they need to sleep?`”
“Yes, just like we do. They are essentially us… you know.” She sounded ashamed of that, it was just what Tom wanted to hear though.
“Excellent, can they see in the dark better than you can?” That took her a second to respond to.
“Don’t think so. I think I would have heard of that if they could.”
“Very good. I say we go to Deriva, you drop me off then you get some rest. I have some fun with them in the night.”
“You want to go in there alone?!” Jackalope questioned, clearly not happy with that idea.
“You people can’t hide at night, you're white and there will be moonlight. I can.”
“Tom, that is a stupid idea,” Zarko agreed. “And we would lose the element of surprise. If you insist on us trying to help them, then I say we dive in, take some shots at them and climb out. With luck, some of them will follow us and we can draw them off.”
Tom had to think on that for a second. “Can you hit them in the dark though?”
“Whatever broke down that door and did in Kalestine cannot be a small target. If we can handle that, the keep might have a chance. Or at least hold out for long enough to get help.”
“Think Jarix can outrun whatever it is they have?”
“He might be brash, but he’s fast. It’s not without reason he flies without a combat crew.”
“What if we do both?” Tom then asked, looking at the two women. “At night they won’t see you until you're right on top of them. Then when I start blowing shit up, you dive on the bastards. Then I slip away in the confusion.”
“Tom, Deriva lies on the edge of a canyon. There is not much to hide behind and you can only come from one side,” Jackalope protested. That would be a problem, with his cloak though he should be fine so long as he could maintain a decent range.
“Do they have sniffer dogs? Or anything like that?” The two of them just looked at him confusedly, clearly not having a clue what he was talking about. “Something that can find me using smell.”
“A vargulf can do that I’m fairly sure,” Jackalope replied, clearly thoughtful on the subject. Tom guessed it made sense if you hunted from the air that you wouldn't use smell much. From his understanding, though the Vargulfs were more like hyenas, they wouldn’t pass up a carcass. So it made sense they could find it.
“Zarko, will they be organized enough to search for me, or do I just have to not be seen?”
“Depends on who’s giving them orders. With beasts like whatever broke down the door present, I say there is a very good chance they have someone telling them what to do.”
“So it’s just one dude telling them what to do?”
“Maybe. There is no saying if there is more than one. Not to mention, they took the bodies from Hylsdal; they must have something with them which can corrupt. A regular darkling can't do that.”
“Another dark knight then?”
“Quite possibly.”
“Then I say this just turned into an assassination mission.”
__________________________________________________________________________________
So then you win some you lose some, unacceptable as it sometimes is. What did you think, too rough to kill another kid? I know some of you were even rooting for a dead baby. If you think I'm an arsehole for my transgressions, then do let me know down below. I'm sure you can come up with some very colorful language.
Until next time have an awesome day. Hopefully more awesome than Tom and company at least.
ko-fi For having a pretty picture commissioned.
Sapphire
Wiki
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I'm rewriting FIGHT CLUB as FART CLUB. Am I a cool guy?

Colin gets me a job as a janitor. Shortly after that, he's shoving a suppository up my rear-end and saying that the first step towards ripping an everlasting fart is to completely cleanse one's colon. For a long time, Colin Prolaps was my best friend. People never asked, and I assume that they didn't want to know, but Colin was always egging me on to push just a little bit harder when farting even though indulging his wishes usually ended up ruining a pair of drawers. This was quickly shaping up to be one of those times.
A turtle head began pressing upon my clean, white undies- my LAST pair of clean, white undies. "You really won't shit yourself." Colin insisted.
I could feel the castor oil begin to squish out from between my buttcheeks. If you want to truly fart hard without crapping your pants, you have to administer castor oil to both ends for at least 24 hours prior to letting it truly rip. Try to fart any sooner than that, and you're guaranteed to launch a big shiny turd like a high-explosive howitzer shell straight through your drawers and down your pant leg.
"You're thinking of ghost turds. This isn't a ghost turd, Colin."
The mattress we're lying on won't be salvageable in a few minutes. You take 98% pure castor oil and add three-times the amount of refried beans by volume, then wash it all down with a case of PBR and you've got gas that'll melt lacquer from half a mile away.
I know this because Colin knows this.
Add a pot of strong coffee and you've got a nice clip of wet ones that'll choke a pig, but will melt holes in even the thickest pair of drawers. Some folks swear that loading-up on metamucil keeps the farts cleaner for longer, but that's never worked for me or Colin.
So Colin and I are spooning atop a brand-new luxury mattress as the unspeakable contents of my bowels go from asking permission to insisting upon joining the party. Even on a bed this comfy, the sense of what is to come makes it almost impossible to relax. I use the term 'almost' because the one part of my body that IS willing to relax is the one heroically keeping a pandora's box of the unspeakable at bay. I feel like I have to fart. A little voice inside of me- or is it just Colin whispering to me? I can't tell the difference anymore. The voice is telling me that it's just a fart- that I can let just a little bit out.
I begin to relax.
It feels dry.
Push a little bit.
The feeling of relief gives way to one of wet, warm filth. The fleeting warmth and feelings of relief give way to shame and panic as the expensive sheets are surely about to be ruined. The half-dissolved suppository seems to slip out, causing a discomforting sensation like you just tried to stick a chicken wing slathered in hot sauce and blue cheese up your ass, but the dressing does nothing to ease the burn, instead helping the hot sauce get into places you didn't even know existed.
Somewhere in the building, the self-proclaimed Toilet Bowel Cleaners, aka members of Project Plunger, are helping themselves to each and every roll of TP.
There's an old saying, "never trust a fart." Well, maybe this fart shouldn't have trusted ME.
With all sorts of things having been shoved up your ass, you can only guess at what's going on back there. Even the world's toughest bouncer can only do so much when asked to single-handedly keep a world of literal shit at bay.
Ask me how to make stink bombs from garlic and vinegar. These are the things you won't find online or in cookbooks. You can really ruin someone's day by adding a bit of honey to the mix to make it smell rather pleasant until the concoction gets a minute or two of air-time. Add salt and yeast to a batch in a sealed container and you've got a slow fuse that'll eventually blow when least expected.
Fake turds? I'll show you how to make ones that look AND smell like the real thing.
These drawers won't hold up much longer.
Sure, it'll take a while for the devil's hot cocoa to soak through to the mattress, but there's no stopping it. I wonder if my pants are still salvageable.
In just a few minutes, this toxic sludge will begin to soak into my jeans, then the sheets, the comforter, the mattress cover, then finally, the memory foam.
Colin snuggles closer to me and I feel a warm wetness squish against my butt cheeks. Just a few moments outside of the colon manages to let the mess drop just slightly below body temperature. The uncanny valley that exists between body temp and warm pool water sends chills down my spine. I thought of her- I thought of Anita.
Anita Whypmoore and Colin Prolaps seemed to be pulling me in two different directions- jockeying for my attention ever since this all began. Either one on their own is about as big a pain in the ass as I could have ever imagined. Dealing with both of them simultaneously is, well, a problem that I haven't the luxury of fixing at my own leisure.
Having Anita Whypmoore AND this Colin Prolaps in my life at the same time was a problem that had been coming to a head for weeks, but hindsight is about as useful as looking at your own asshole in the mirror. Yes, it's a mess back there, but what exactly do you propose to do about it? Sometimes it's best to leave that mystery unsolved- that's why I prefer black or brown drawers, and why Colin only ever wears white ones. Anita preferred red panties, but she had her own issues.
There's no turning back now. This mattress will be ruined in no time. Why oh why didn't I got for the brown set of sheets? Why didn't I opt for the protective cover? Why did I always let Colin call the shots?
I let go of my bowels as Colin squeezes me even tighter. Colin always told me to let it out even if it would surely ruin my pants. Well, Colin, here's to both of our pants being ruined.
Crapter 2
Hugh Jass' buttcrack peeked out from above the waistband of his off-white drawers. I can only assume that those drawers were originally bright white, but Hugh was the sort of guy to run things into the ground. The small patch of hair atop Hugh's crack reminded me of Wilson from Home Improvement. The more you got to see the very top of what was likely a big, fat, hairy ass, the more you wanted to yank down his pants to have a proper look at it.
"Could you hand me that drain snake? There's something gnarly down here."
I broke eye-contact with Hugh's coin-slot and rifled through the tool bag for the snake. Random metal washers at the bottom of the bag jingled around like loose change and i was once again fantasizing about dropping a shiny new quarter down the crack of Hugh's ass to see if a stale gumball or cheap keychain would roll out his pant leg.
"Quit staring at my ass, Seymour."
Hugh had taken to calling me Seymour. Seymour Butts was my given moniker since no one really needed or wanted to know my government name. I was a plumber's apprentice who spent most of the workday staring at my mentor's ass. If I simply logged enough hours at the precipice of the human grand canyon, I was told I'd make journeyman some day.
I still miss Hugh and his ass. I still can't watch re-runs of Home Improvement without crying like a bitch. Speaking of bitch-crying, that's how I met Anita.
Hugh and i worked for a plumbing company that was contracted to work at this haughty-taughty country club where old fucks paid way too much money to walk around naked in the locker rooms, fart in the saunas, and hang out with other old fucks who hated their spouses.
Hugh was once a private contractor- his own boss. When printed ads and phonebook listings gave way to online directories, scathing tales of his butt crack and beer breath put him at the bottom of the list when searching for plumbers.
Too many Yelp reviews, and you have to work under someone else's company.
It's easy to think of yourself as a piece of shit when you spend your days fixing toilets for people who are just as likely to poop in the shower and use their feet to push it down the drain.
Hugh looks after me because he thinks that my buttcrack and beer breath derailed me from loftier goals, too.
Around us in the ladies' locker room one day, we were about to extract the treasure of the Sierra Madrid from one of the shower drains. Most women yelled at us for doing this sort of work during daylight hours, insisting that their rapidly thinning hair and copious amounts of shit tickets wait until after hours to completely clog the drains and toilets.
The sound of flip-flops echoed through the locker room, terminating at the bathroom stalls. Sounds of straining and grunting were followed by what can only be described as explosive diarrhea. The click of a Bic lighter soon followed as the smells of Virginia Slims and liquid death hit my nose at the exact moment that the sounds of contented relief echoed throughout the tile-clad facility.
"You guys are gonna need more TP!" she announced.
Neither the sound of the toilet flushing nor that of running water from the sink were heard. Instead, the sounds of zippers being pulled and a heap of clothing hitting the tile floor preceded what was soon to become the all-too-familiar sound of flip-flops on tile.
Anita casually strode past Hugh and I in full birthday attire to the shower stall adjacent to the one in which we were working. Hugh whistled audibly and Anita flicked her half-spent cigarette in his direction. By some miracle, the still smoldering butt ricocheted off the wall and landed directly in the crack of Hugh's exposed ass.
Many things changed for me in that moment. For one, Hugh walked off the job making me the de-facto lead plumber on site. Second, I knew true love for perhaps the first time in many, many years. As a mass of hair and turds emerged from the drain that I was working on, Anita let out a grunt and a wet fart. As she stomped the bits of doodoo down the drain and began to lather up be biggest bush I'd ever seen, it occurred to me that she was the reason why the shower drains were always getting clogged.
After cleaning up the additional hair and bits of corn and peas, reality did what reality does and reminded me, via an abrupt kick in the nuts, that I haven't got the luxury to live entirely in my own head- at least not during work hours.
Cleaning up after Anita became part of my daily routine. I figured that it'd be easier to just sweep as much of the shit and hair off of the floor before it went down the drain than to wait for it to build up. Her toilet habits were a completely different and altogether horrifying menace. I know from my time in this business that some women are hesitant to put their bare asses on toilets that, god-forbid, someone else may have touched.
Did I mention something about love with regards to Anita? Let me clear something up- for me, love and the urge to cut a person up into as many pieces as possible are the same. What's more intimate than carefully carving a person into pieces small enough to fit down, let's say, a 2-inch drain? Boy, am I going to miss that woman.
Anita seemed to take standing on the toilet seat to competitive levels. It was as if she tried to simultaneously spread her cheeks AND stand as far above the commode as humanly possible. Imagine giving a sawn-off shotgun to a blind kid, coaching him up a 12' ladder, then having him aim the weapon straight down before pulling the trigger repeatedly and as quickly as possible. Now, imagine that each shotgun shell is filled with the runny shit of a vegan alcoholic woman in her 40s. If you aren't suddenly craving vegetable samosas and Whiteclaws, then metaphors might not be your particular bag. This woman crapped as if every speck of rancid diarrhea that landed OUTSIDE the bowl earned her points towards more booze, cigarettes, and Trader Joe's TV dinners.
I had to admire her, though, as she seemed to harbor just as much if not more hatred towards other women at the club than I did. I went from following her into the shithouse in order to clean up immediately after her, to letting the disaster area sit and stew until someone else saw it and screamed. Anita tended to hang around longer once adopting that policy.
In the following year or so, my contract was expanded to cover a few other facilities in the area. Each gym had it's own all-star in terms of locker room performance artists.
Harry was an older dude who had balls like Pierce Paris. If you're not obsessed with weird shit , you might not know what I'm talking about. All I should have to say is that these were the sort of balls that could so easily fit into one's own asshole, that even the most god-fearing homophobe would be jealous of such a lucky roll of the genetic dice.
When was the last time you tried to shove your own balls up your ass?
Flo had menstrual cycles that precluded any need for me to keep a calendar. I actually got to know Flo a bit. She had grown up in south africa or argentina or new zealand- I couldn't be asked to remember. All of my mental hard drive space was at capacity with the CSI Miami crime scenes that she'd leave for me once per month.
Don't you want to save that tampon? How does it smell?
Mr. Mierdo could predict the future with his fecal matter. You know how some people read fortunes by brewing loose-leaf tea and interpreting the leaves at the bottom of the mug? They call it tasseography. Mr Mierdo practiced ASSeography, and was a bona-fide shaman. He always painted in shades of brown. His canvas was the bathroom divider. He tried to warn me about Colin.
You dumbass! I was warning HIM about YOU!
The sales people at these gyms would hand out vouchers in an attempt to recruit new clients. Thanks to whomever we're currently blaming when life sucks, most of the vouchers ended up being used as currency among local hobos and junkies. Camping out on the side of the highway and getting fucked up every night sounds like a great idea at first, but given enough time on the streets, everyone shits their pants.
Well, maybe not everyone.
I ran into Hugh a bit later using one of these vouchers. It turned out that he had been stockpiling the damn things since before he walked off the job. It turns out that the blow-job :: day-pass exchange-rate was stacked in his favor. When he lost the job, he "forgot" to tell his wife. He had gone on a bit of bender with blackjack and hookers- except he didn't know how to play blackjack.
"You know that you can get twice as many sexual favors if you just do it in your car, right?"
Hugh rubbed his eyes and let out a sigh.
"My wife took the car when she found out."
"Found out what? That you got fired? That you got a handjob from a hobo chick?"
"Seymour," Hugh looked around and lowered his voice to a whisper. "I GET these vouchers in exchange for doing ... various things for THEM! I'm losing the house and will probably be homeless in a few months. I figured it best to get used to this sort of shit."
Bullshit.
Crapter 3
You come out of a blackout hovering over a shit-filled toilet.
Using the wall-mounted handlebar and plunger handle to hold yourself up, you recognize some, but not all, of the diarrhea and vomit staring back at you. Was it Nietzsche who warned about staring into the void? I don't know if it stares back at you, but it certainly farts directly into your face.
You chug a steel reserve, hit the bowl, then pay for your Taco Bell. As you bite into your chalupa with extra fire sauce, bliss washes over you and your brain mercifully goes into a sort of low-power-mode.
Fuck, I didn't wash my hands before leaving work. Am I lucky enough to get a disease that'll kill me sooner rather than later?
You unclog a toilet.
You replace a urinal.
You pull a softball-sized clump of hair up from a shower drain and recognize the hair of at least 3 different women that you've thought about while touching yourself.
In the handicapped stall of the womens' showers, Colin is pulling his pud to a discarded tampon and a lock of red hair. For a split second, he remembers better days when these stalls included soap dispensers that he could jizz into.
I know this because Colin knows this. He's the reason why those soap dispensers were removed in the first place (and why the mens' showers no longer have curtain rods).
You check-in 200 lbs of those public-restroom sized rolls of shit tickets.
Colin uses the last of the TP at another gym, wiping until blood is drawn, then he wipes some more.
You mention to the front desk clerk that someone might be stealing the big rolls of terlit paper .
You wonder why your ass is always so raw.
You wonder why there seems to be blood stains on some of your white drawers.
You switch to black and brown drawers.
Somehow, your crusty old white drawers keep showing up in the laundry. You swear to throw them out after wearing them one more time. You turn on the TV and watch a re-run of Home Improvement.
"I don't think so, TIM."
You fantasize about being maimed on the job by the likes of Tim Allen and spending a month or two knitting and watching fart fetish videos on the internet.
Colin takes a loose, rancid shit. He wipes a single time and doesn't even look at the paper before sticking the wad of TP to the wall. He leaves without flushing or washing his hands, of course.
Colin modifies his home TP dispenser to hold 18" spools of shit tickets. He rounds out the evening by shitting in a scavenged pair of womens panties and letting it dry over night.
Colin is not quite right in the head.
The boss has been hassling you about the uptick in overtime and the ever-growing paper expenses on your route. Someone tore the seat off of a handicapped commode the other day. The supply company sent you an extra toilet seat by accident. It just barely fits on your own porcelain throne, but what seems to be enough room to fit another pair of butt cheeks has you feeling like a king.
Industrial TP dispensers have a mechanism that allows you to load two giant rolls of TP so that, in theory, you've got a buffer before people start wiping with their hands and smearing the shit on the walls. Get to the end of a roll? just slide the lever over and BAM- you've got a whole 'nother round of tickets to the carnival of caca.
The backup roll- no one who uses the public shithouse need worry about asking for another roll.
This is a convenience for the guest who gets to take a shit- on the floor if he wants to- for free.
Ever since rumors began to circulate about another plumber in the company being fired for taking home half-spent rolls, no one's allowed to bring home even the tiniest bit of TP. Since then, stacks of all-but-spent rolls of tickets have been piling up in each facility. I vaguely recall the head office suggesting that we manually roll several-dozen lengths of old TP onto a single cardboard tube as a way to 'recycle'. It shouldn't of been surprising considering that it IS called the HEAD office after all.
Mr. Mierdo predicted this when he used his 'natural' fingerpaint to depict a bunch of circles with arrows pointing to one BIG circle. The other side of the stall depicted a giant anthropomorphic penis with a penis of its own. The effigy seemed to be forcing it's tertiary penis into a stick figure's mouth. An arrow pointed to the stick figure and the word "FAG" was smeared in big, angry, corn-speckled butt mud.
It wasn't until the prophet himself turned to me on my way out the door and said "YOU FAGGOT!" that I realized that this particular premonition was meant for me.
Colin slips Mr. Mierdo a fiver for "the usual" and they trade pants behind a dumpster and take turns farting in each other's faces.
You're a toilet cleaner and you're smelly and horny and you spend all day being intimate with the ugliest parts of the most attractive people. There's a fresh crate of shit tickets waiting to be checked in. You break open the box, drop your pants, and let loose a wet fart down the tube of each stack of TP. When I say wet fart, I'm talking about the sort of fart that would stain your drawers and maybe your pants. But who cares? The inside surface of the tube will never be seen by the bathroom bandits.
Like sticking pennies up your ass for confidence, this was a petty way to get one over on the bougie bastards and make them smell MY ass for a change.
It turned out that plenty of people working at the various gyms got bored enough to wind all the last bits of TP into one big roll. It actually amounted to having 2-3 emergency backup rolls at each facility. Of course, I blessed those rolls with flatus spiritus as well. Some of the lengths of paper even came out with specks of bunghole butter. One guy actually came to the front desk of one of the clubs holding shitty tissue with two tones of brown streaks on it and attempted to convince the manager that some kind of shit bandit was wiping with the TP and putting it back into the dispenser.
Some people just aren't right in the head.
you wake up in a toilet stall in the seediest gym of the route.
It takes me a moment to realize that I'm in the daycare bathroom. Just about every gym had a daycare built-in for moms looking to shed baby weight and shop for new dads for their kids. Each daycare room had its own set of shithouses. One would feature a full-sized toilet and a changing table (6 months was the minimum age to leave a kid in one of these menageries). The other commode was meant for kids who knew how to wipe their own asses (if but poorly) and featured a toilet that was straight out of Honey I Shrunk the Toilet.
The shithouse that I found myself in did not feature a changing table.
They say that the second fasted thing in the world is a butthole clenching shut following a substantial dump.
What's THE fastest thing in the world? Well, some call it Poseidon's Kiss, or Leviathan's lick, but what we're dealing with is simply an ice-cold drop of water mixed with piss that shoots up into your bunghole like Randy Quaid at the end of Independence Day.
You just ruined that movie for anyone who hasn't already seen it.
Fast-forward to break time. I'd taken to eating lunch on the toilet. My bean and cheese burrito dripped a bit from its rear-end onto the seat.
"Hey, do you have an extra roll by you?" A voice echoed from the stall next to me. "There's not TP in here! Both rolls are missing!"
That's odd. I always kept the dispensers topped-off. Maybe I forgot. Maybe someone was messing with me.
I obliged and used my keys to open the dispenser and slip the smaller of the two rolls under the divider.
Colin had gotten a hold of a TP key and had taken to stuffing his gym bag with the smaller of the two rolls any time he used the facilities. By now, hiding shit stains among re-rolled TP was a daily ritual.
You wake up behind the wheel of your van in the parking lot of your next appointment. You haven't taken the spent taco bell wrappers to the trash in about a week, despite having access to a dozen dumpsters containing things far more vile that the fast food wrappers that add to the pile of shame you already carry around along with replacement plumbing parts and boxes of TP and toilet seat covers.
I check my watch and see that I've got time, and gather up as many fast-food bags and wrappers and head to the dumpsters.
"Hey! Do you mind?!" the heap of trash in the dumpster seems to call back as I chuck bag after bag of half-eaten and watered-down fast food offerings.
This is how Colin and I met.
You wake up in the shithouse. Again. This time's it's the ladies room.
Colin's shit-caked shoes, held together with duct tape, are hovering an inch about the tile floor in the stall next to mine.
He drops a log into the swamp.
He drops another, then another.
A thunderous, stinky fart snaps me out of my fixation with the shit-caked shoes that haven't seemed to left a trail of footprints. That's odd.
"Hey, what time is it?"
"It's time to wipe your ass and light a match. Also, it's just a little bit after 4pm."
I had to know if Colin had raided the TP dispensers while I was sleeping one off.
If I could blackout and wake up on a different toilet, could I wake up with a different set of buttcheeks?
I asked if Colin needed any TP.
Colin chuckled and showed me a single square of TP from the gap underneath the divider. I watched as he gathered up the paper in the center of the sheet like we were about to fold a paper airplane. Instead, he tore the tip of the paper and unfurled it, sticking his middle finger through the center of the paper.
"Hold this for a moment." Colin handed me the bit of paper that had been torn from the center of the shit-ticket. "Sometimes, you have to wipe your ass with a single square of TP."
A shit-covered finger appeared near the bottom of the divider. The square of TP was like a ballerina's tutu with various shades of brown and red at the base of Colin's finger. In that moment, Colin gathered up the TP and wrung the poop from his finger.
Somehow, his finger was now immaculate- except for the crust under his fingernail.
"You still got that hole-punch of paper?" I passed it back under the divider and Colin used it to thoroughly clean under his fingernail.
I wiped my own ass, flushed, and headed out to wash my hands. From Colin's stall, it sounded like he was licking his fingers after eating a rack of BBQ ribs.
I pretended to wash my hands and clocked out for the day.
You wake up, and you have to shit. It's an emergency.
Somehow, you're still in the van in the parking lot of your last appointment.
Using one of the dozen or so keys on my jailer's keyring, I unlock the service door with shaky hand and sprint to the men's room. Letting loose a mudslide that no-doubt coated the underside of the seat, I let out a sigh of relief.
"For fuck's sake, light a match!"

The Perils of Adventuring in Kobold Country

"We're adventurers. You should thank us for being here."

The man's arrival had caught all three of them off-guard. Kroy was kneeling at the hearth, warming his thick dwarven hands at the fire he'd built. Shindara was at the rough log table with her spellbook out, quietly reviewing and memorizing the words to the Mass Sleep incantation and nibbling on some dried fruit from the cabin's larder. Ullian, the halfling scout and acquirer -- 'rogue' was such a judgmental word -- was poking through a chest of belongings they'd found behind the bed. None of them had seen or heard the big human until they found him filling the doorway, a long knife in his hand, demanding to know what they were doing in his home.

It had been Kroy who responded, of course. Not only was he the eldest of the three by two years, he was the most experienced, having three previous adventures under his belt and the brass badge of an apprentice member of the Adventurer's Guild to prove it. Shindara, despite her superior elvish education, was on her first foray beyond city walls. Ullian was also a novice at adventuring, discounting his past experience at liberating food from merchants' stalls and the occasional coin from a purse.

"Seriously," Kroy repeated as he let his hand stray near the axe on his belt. "You should be grateful. We came all the way out here from Angelport to help save people like you."

"Save me from what, exactly?" the man rumbled. He was big, not much taller than Shindara, but ox-wide and thick-limbed. His arms were nearly as big around as Shindara's waist. Gray-streaked brown hair hung down to his waist and a matching beard did the same. He was clad in rough buckskin and carried a hide bag in one hand, bulging with roots and berries. The sight of him sent a shiver through Shindara that had nothing to do with the late-autumn air and she pulled her sky-blue brocade cloak tight around her while bringing the words of the Arrow of Fire spell to the fore of her mind.

"Kobolds," Kroy replied. "They say the hills on this side of the river are full of them."

"Less full when we get done, right Kroy?" Ullian laughed as he nonchalantly closed the chest and slid it back where they'd found it.

"Aye. Forge-god willing, we'll cut their numbers by a few dens' worth."

The man sighed and sheathed his knife, dropping his bag by the door. "I'd offer you the hospitality of my cabin, but I see you've already availed yourselves of it." His tone was not exactly accusing, but it made Shindara redden a little and set aside the fruit. Kroy merely grunted affirmatively and took his hand off his axe. Somehow, that made Shindara feel even worse.

"S-sorry for intruding," she muttered. She fished a copper coin out of her purse and held it out, earning scowls from Kroy and Ullian, but the man just shook his head.

"What would I do with that out here? Buy honey from the bees or pay the creeks for fish? Keep your money. Regardless of circumstance, you're guests under my roof now." He knelt by the table and pulled up a flat stone from the floor, drawing much focused attention from Ullian. From the hollowed-out space beneath, he drew out a stoneware jug and a clay drinking-bowl. "I can offer mead, if the bold adventurers have cups to drink it from?"

They did. Some cheap but stout wooden tankards for Kroy and Ullian, a pewter cup for Shindara. The mead was wild-tasting and thin, but it was better than creek water.

The man sat on the fur-and-moss bed, the jug on the floor beside him, and eyed the trio over the rim of his clay bowl as they all took a few gulps. Kroy returned his look with typical dwarvish stoicism while Ullian paced the room and Shindara huddled nervously in the only chair. The tense silence made her want to fidget, but she controlled herself.

"There was a straw figure over there," the man said at last, pointing at a low log shelf on the back wall. It was adorned with various odds-and-ends. Some interesting stones and crystals. A three-eyed wolf skull. A stick with feathers tied to it. There was a conspicuous gap near the middle of this collection. "About so big. A little man made of straw and vines."

"Tinder," Kroy replied with a shrug. "We needed something to get the fire going."

"Mmm." The man nodded, tight-lipped, and glanced at Ullian. "Also had a good carving knife hanging by the hearth."

Ullian casually turned to put his belt-pouch out of view, but again it was Kroy, the leader, who answered. "Haven't seen it. None of us has."

"Ah."

The silence started getting tense again and Shindara, driven by the urge to break it, pulled a few coppers out of her purse again. "Are you sure you won't take coin? We don't wish to burden you..."

The man shook his shaggy head. "The only use I might get from coins would be the pleasure of having them. Except silver. I could make arrowheads from that, in case of wererats, I suppose. But fire works well enough on the likes of them."

Shindara started a little. "Wererats? There are lycanthropes in these hills?"

"Not anymore." He turned to Kroy, who was toying with his empty tankard. "More mead, dwarf?"

"Aye." Kroy came over and let the man refill his drink. "And the name's not 'dwarf'. It's Kroy. Kroy Dunaxe." He drew himself up to his full four foot height and thrust out his chin, though his own red beard was patchy and thin compared to their host's. "The elf-breed over there's Shindara Starsinger and the shifty little fellow is Ullian."

The man inclined his head slightly. "You speak those names as though you mean to make them worth remembering."

Kroy frowned, trying to figure out if that was an insult or not. "They will be!" he blustered. "You can count on that."

"And what should we call you, who are so good as to host us?" Shindara felt the need to be diplomatic. She wasn't sure quite how, or why, but she couldn't shake the feeling that Kroy's brashness was leading the party into trouble here.

The man just shrugged. "Should you have need to call me something, Jack will do. It's a name I'll answer to."

Ullian raised his tankard in toast. "Then here's to you, good Jack! For making your home available for our short repose." He downed his mead in one long gulp and began sorting through the bag Jack had dropped beside the door, picking out the sweeter berries and stuffing them into both mouth and belt-pouch.

"Just a 'short' repose?" Jack asked, voice too empty of sarcasm to be sincere. "Are you quite sure?"

"Aye," grunted Kroy. "This is just a stop to rest and top off our provisions. We mean to push on into the hills before making camp. I spied some bluffs higher up where I might dig us a defensible camping-cave. Likely enough, we'll find kobold sign there, too. We've enough food for a three-day expedition. That's enough time to find some warrens and let these two get their hands wet." He shrugged. "We might stay longer if we can raid the kobolds' larders for rations. They always hide their food caches, but if you can get one alive, a little knife-work will find the truth." His lip curled. "Kobolds are gutless little things."

"Please pray for our success and safe return, good Jack." Shindara offered the human a nervous smile.

Jack just took a long, moody pull from his mead-bowl, then set it aside. He looked each of the trio in their eyes, then asked, in a heavy voice, "So, what did they do?"

Shindara blinked at him. "Uh, pardon?"

"What did who do?" Kroy's brow furrowed and he frowned in puzzlement.

"The kobolds. What did they do to make you come out to the wilderness to take their lives?"

Kroy eyed him narrowly. "Does it matter?"

Jack shrugged. "To some. Maybe not to others." He stretched and cracked his massive knuckles. "Did they raid some farms across the river? Steal some chickens or such, so the farmers called you in? Back when they lived on that side, kobolds were bad about rustling sheep. They can't do that from here, of course. No boats to haul them on. But I could see them snatching chickens, maybe. Kobolds don't really grasp the idea of a living animal being someone's property."

"No one called us. This expedition is my own idea. These two show some promise as adventurers." Kroy packed a Guild grandmaster's worth of pride and condescension into his lowly apprentice rank. "But they need an easy first quest to get their feet under them. Kobolds are good for that."

"And that's all they're good for," Ullian added with a laugh. "Right, Kroy?"

"Right as iron on an anvil. We need to slay some monsters. Kobolds are monsters that need to die. It's that simple."

"So, is that what adventuring is, then?" Jack asked. "Killing when you can because you can?"

Shindara spoke up, her soft, lilting voice counterpointing the others. "It isn't about... killing. It's about fighting against evil."

"And I just asked you what evil the kobolds have done that needs fighting."

Shindara smiled. This was firmer conversational ground for her. Her schooling had included a solid foundation of classical elvish philosophy. "Evil is not something that is done, it is something that is. Ellihiniel's Second Postulate: 'Good and evil exist as fundamental qualities inherent to the nature of all beings.' Thus, a monster must always be a monster."

"Regardless of its actions?"

She nodded, warming to the subject. It had been a while since she'd conversed on such a level. Kroy and Ullian were fine companions, but not much for discussing intellectual abstractions. "The First Corollary to Ellihiniel's Second Postulate is, 'The morality of an act derives entirely from the morality of its actors.' Thus, any act by an evil being must be an evil act."

"And any act by a 'good' being is a good act?"

Shindara's smile widened. "Precisely."

"Even acts like murder?" Jack cut his eyes at Ullian, who had finished picking goodies out of the bag and had moved on to prying at stones on the floor when he thought Jack wasn't looking. "Or theft?"

"Say, rather, 'killing'," Shindara said awkwardly. "And 'appropriating'. Those would be the correct terms for such acts by a good being against an evil..." She, too, glanced at Ullian, then back at their host. "...or, er, 'less good' one."

Jack arched one shaggy eyebrow. "And how is it decided who is good and who is evil, then, if not by their actions?"

"Ellihiniel's Third Postulate: 'Condition follows essence.' Meaning that the relative goodness or evilness of any being may be determined by its appearance and mode of living. You have only to compare the graceful forms and sophisticated society of good beings such as ourselves to the brutish primitivity of orcs or kobolds to see the truth of this."

Jack stared at her, the eye contact making her nervous again. "So, murder and robbery are praiseworthy, provided the victims are less pretty and refined than the perpetrators?"

Shindara frowned and toyed with the hem of her sky-colored cloak. She looked to her companions, especially Kroy, but the dwarf was busy finishing his mug of mead. "I would not put it in those words," she said carefully.

"You didn't. You put it in a great many other words, most of them not your own." The tone of this last was not unkind.

"Pah! Leave philosophy for the clerics!" Kroy pounded a fist against his mailed chest. "We are adventurers. Men of action. All we need to know is where the monsters are and how to slay them. And it's time we were about it." He stowed away his tankard and shouldered his pack.

The trio filed out the door, Jack following silently behind. Shindara felt the weight of his gaze on her and turned to see him standing in front of the cabin door, huge arms folded across his chest. His expression was as stern and unreadable as ever, but his eyes felt just a little sad. Though she, as a half-elf, was almost certainly older than the human, had probably been in school for longer than he had been alive, he suddenly seemed very ancient to her. Ancient and weary.

She offered him a polite bow. "We thank you for your hospitality," she said. "As one who knows these hills, have you any advice to share with us ere we depart?"

"I can advise one thing, but I doubt you'll listen." He sighed. "If you go into yon hills seeking kobolds to slay, you may well find them. What you won't find is glory, or honor, or riches. You will not win praise and gratitude for your deeds. Bards will not sing your names nor children play-act your adventures. You will win no victories for righteousness. You may do all these things if you return across the river. Fight bandits. Battle the undead. Keep the cities of the graceful lords and ladies safe and bask in their appreciation. But if you go into the hills to slay kobolds, you will die there and be forgotten. This will happen."

Shindara shivered at the certainty in his voice and even Ullian looked uneasy. But Kroy merely laughed and shook his head. "Die?" he demanded. "At the hands of kobolds? They can barely use what pitiful weapons they have and have no stomach to stand and fight anyway. And if they do, so what? We have armor and magic and healing potions, and they just have their mangy hides. I've taken their scalps by the sackful before, in the southern desert, and I'll do so again here." He looked the big human up and down, lip curling. "You peasants may be right to fear such vermin, but we are adventurers! This is what we do!"

With that, Kroy spun on his heel and stomped away, back stiff and head high. Bolstered by his confidence, Ullian nodded, grinned, and set off after him. Only Shindara lingered, but faith in her companions and the rightness of their cause firmed her resolve in the face of Jack's words.

She nodded to him. "Thank you for your concern, good Jack, but despite such risks, evil must be fought. I have faith that good must triumph in the end, and you should, too." And with that, she set off, her longer legs soon catching her up to her companions.

Jack watched them file away onto the game trail that led up into the hills. The halfling was leading, scouting, but not too far in front. The armored dwarf in the middle, looking fairly alert. The elf-breed wizard trailing close behind, the dwarf having to remind her to check behind them periodically. Jack watched and noted, until they passed the first turning of the trail and were quite out of sight.

He sighed and shook his head. "They were warned," he muttered to himself, in the habit of those who keep mostly their own company. "Only one thing to do now." He drew the long knife from its sheath on his thigh and tested its edge. Satisfied, he put it back, then stepped inside the cabin. He put a hand up to the rafters and pulled down a heavy hunting bow and a quiver of arrows, mixed broadheads and bodkin-points.

His guests had raided the choicest bits from his larder, but there was still plenty of dried meat in there. He grabbed a few strips to eat on and then headed off into the woods. His strides were long, but unhurried. The game trail crossed a large creek a couple of miles down and the kobolds had dug out the ford there. It would take the party some time to find another place where a dwarf and a halfling could safely get across. He would catch up to them soon enough.

------

Crooked Tail was picking honeysuckles and keeping one ear cocked toward where her pups were wrestling in the clover when she heard the yipping call of White Patch, the sentry, warning that danger moved in the forest, heading in their direction. White Patch had the best eyes in the warren and was posted in the high fork of an elm, where he could rain spear and stone upon any threats. It was a dangerous task, demanding the highest courage, and was why White Patch was considered the most desirable kobold in the warrens of Flinty Hill.

That warning call meant, 'Unknown danger near. Be ready.' Quickly, but not panicking, Crooked Tail gathered her three pups and began shepherding them toward the nearest entrance to the warren. She made sure her basket of honeysuckles was secure so she wouldn't lose it if they had to run. Those were to flavor a sweet porridge for her sister, Warm Nose. Warm Nose had just birthed her first litter and sweet porridge was a good way to celebrate and to help keep her strength up. Warm Nose had always been so sickly. Crooked Tail had worried that she'd never find a mate because of that, but Bristlepaw had taken to Warm Nose the moment they'd met. And Bristlepaw was a good catch for any she-kobold, even if he did come from a down-slope warren.

White Patch let out another warning yip, a little higher this time, with a growl on the end. This one meant, 'Unknown danger near. Scent of blood.'

Now Crooked Tail felt real alarm. Probably White Patch was just picking up a lynx or bobcat that had finished a recent meal. Such creatures were not normally a danger to a grown kobold who was halfway-alert, but they had been known to carry off unwatched pups if they got the chance. Or it could be a bear. There were a couple of good-sized black ones who had taken to prowling the valley below Flinty Hill and hadn't yet been taught to avoid kobold spears and torches. But there was always the possibility that it could be those ones the elders spoke of in such fearful tones. The ones who came with long, sharp blades and impenetrable coats, with strange powers that blasted bodies and stole minds. That came from across the river, to kill and kill without ever sating their hunger for kobold flesh.

Adventurers, the elders called them.

Crooked Tail gathered her pups, who were too young to have real names yet, into her arms, then dipped her head and nipped the smallest -- and stubbornest -- by the scruff of his neck. The pup yelped, more from surprise than actual pain, as she straightened up and made the best speed she could with arms and mouth full of young toward the nearest tunnel mouth.

There was a crashing in the dry underbrush not far from White Patch's sentry post and she felt her heart skip with fear. The tunnel was not that far, but her mind was flooded with images of blood-caked, unkillable somethings swarming out of the woods and cutting her down, cutting apart her pups in front of her, breaking into the warren where Warm Nose lay weak and helpless with her little ones. The pups were heavy, and that tunnel seemed so far away.

And then she heard a voice. A deep, ringing voice that spoke Kobold with a weirdly smooth accent.

"White Patch, if you drop a rock on my head, I'll make you eat it."

Relief flooded Crooked Tail and she sagged, letting go of the pups as they started squirming in her grasp. As soon as they were on the ground, they ran toward the sound of that voice, squealing, "Jack! Jack!"

From up in the tree, White Patch laughed. "Ha! You scared me so, I almost dropped something stinkier than a rock on your big old head!"

"You do, and you'll eat that, too."

Other kobolds came out of the berry patches and tunnel mouths, ears up and tails wagging. Crooked Tail opened her muzzle in a smile as the big human strode into the clearing, moving carefully to avoid stepping on the pups that swarmed around his boots. His bow was hung on his shoulder and a big pack-sack was in his hand. She added her voice to the others. "Jack! Jack!"

A brown-and-white waist-high blur shot past Crooked Tail and barreled into Jack's leg, latching on like a tick. Spotted Tongue, the youngest she in the warren to actually have a name, barely more than a pup, was beaming up at him from down at his knee. She waved a dolly she'd made from straw and twisted vines up at him.

"Jack! I maked you another little human to keep you company! It's a she-human, so the other one will have a mate! You still have him?"

"I'm sorry, Spotted Tongue," he said, gentle as a father, "but some nasty pests got into my cabin and got him before I could stop them."

"Oh." That happened sometimes, with kobolds. Bad things came and took away a mate, or a pup, or a parent. You could only mourn, accept, and go on. Spotted Tongue's expression brightened again. "Is okay! I make you another!" She gave his leg a quick squeeze as he took the dolly from her and carefully tucked it into his buckskin shirt.

As the young she ran off, Crooked Tail came up and began trying to gather her pups from the mob around those big human feet. "It is always good to see you, friend Jack," she said.

"It does me good to see my friends well," he replied in the kobold manner. "How is your sister?"

"She had her pups yesterday. But she has always been so weak and sick. We worry for her. I am making honeysuckle porridge to give her. I can make enough to share with you."

"Your hospitality honors me. I bring gifts for Warm Nose, to celebrate her first litter." He set his huge pack-sack on the ground and knelt beside it, pulling items from within. "I gathered berries and tubers to keep her larder full while she recovers. And here is a potion which will keep her health up." He set the pouch and the little glass jar on the ground at Crooked Tail's feet. "And this, to wrap her and her pups in comfort while they rest."

With a flourish, he pulled forth a mass of cloth, bigger than anything woven in the warrens. It was blue as the mid-day sky, shiny and soft.

"Oh, Jack! How did you come by such a thing!" Warm Nose and her pups would rest well in such a treasure.

He shrugged and, for just a moment, his smile left his eyes. "I got it from someone who didn't need it anymore."

As she took the gift from him, Crooked Tail caught a scent upon his hands, the scent White Patch had picked up earlier. The scent of blood. His hands had been scrubbed with leaves and creek water, but the smell still clung. "Have you been hunting?"

"I have."

She sniffed again. "I do not recognize the scent of your prey, and you do not carry meat or furs."

"It was just some pests. Troublesome vermin that will not be missed."

"Oh. That is good, then." Some younger kobolds came to help her carry the gifts inside. "We will take these gifts to Warm Nose, along with your words of greeting. As always, you have the thanks and welcome of my clan, friend Jack."

And as she left Jack there, speaking to the elders and patting and tickling the pups, Crooked Tail couldn't help but reflect that the big human was proof for any kobold to see that truly good people came in all shapes and sizes.

sequel
------
more one shot stories

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