The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a towering ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, with a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

The street savant both blends into the streets but has a swagger that lets them have a commanding presence to those in their organisation , they work in more sociable ways but are fine with attacking stuff that threatens the land they call their organisation territory
Master of style
At level 3,The street savant takes a 1 hour long ritual where at the end of it they have a specially modified suit of armour that upon a command word and a phrase (for the look) change into a type of attire they so please . It is not illusionary and will hold up to inspection. This does not work on full plate armour or armour that is otherwise already magically enchanted. The look can be changed only once every 3 hours
The speaker
At lvl 3 When the savant rolls a a d20 and gets a 9 or below on a persuasion (charisma) or deception(charisma) check . It is treated as a 10, And it has to be verbal
Savant of the streets
At level 3 . You gain proficiency in firearms and you gain proficiency in leather workers kit . The organisation will give you a leatherworkers kit that is magically enchanted
Master of disguise
At level 6, you are able to perform a hour long ritual and give up to your profiency bonus amount of people a suit of modified armour that can change upon command , the change still follows the only once every 3 hours command . This does not work on full plate armour or armour that is otherwise already magically enchanted
Quick to fight
At level 9 .You are skilled with your quick hands and even quicker with your tools . Upon initiative having been rolled you are able to make one free ranged attack before initiative starts fully . The attack has to be with a ranged weapon or thrown weapon . Your skill with your tools means you are able to pull out your ranged kit without using a object interaction .
Silver tongued fighter
At level 13 ,As a bonus action you are able taunt your opponent which would a charisma verse wisdom check , if they fail it then they gain disadvantage on attacks against you until they beat a dc of (dc = 8 + proficiency + (charisma modifier) , they can try and clear their mind each turn . This can only be done on one target at a time .
Quick to draw At level 17 you are deadly with your ranged weaponry
You are able to make a secondary attack on your turn if the first attack was ranged and it can be on the same target or a different target . If fired at the same target you get a extra 1d10 damage added on .
This class is created for a more magically inclined setting , the armour isnt magic so gives no bonus to ac, it has its restrictions , like if your armour causes stealth disadvantage that stays even with its look changed. I need any kind of feed back on this please

To my dear and loving Prince Charming,
Oh, my future love of my life! Where are you? Could you be the man who takes his daily walk by my office, listening intently to Howard Stern podcasts while tuning out the rest of the world? Were you that cashier who greeted me at the self-checkout at my neighborhood Safeway, internally battling your desire to stare deeply into my eyes as you stacked the plastic bags onto the racks and locked up the cash drawer? Or perhaps you came to me as someone who wanted a quote for his new Chevy Silverado 2500 4WD, and wanted to discuss the differences between having full coverage versus just basic liability? Did I pass by you when I was at the gym the other day, as you headed outside to the pool while I made a beeline for the hot tub? Oh, my, you could by anyone, anywhere! I curse the universe everyday for placing you in my path and yet I'm so busy wrapped up in my own little world that I don't notice you!
You've been on my mind since I was young, the very first time that Ariel was able to get back her human legs and finally marry her prince. Oh, how wonderful true love must be, being willing to conquer all! After they unlocked from their kiss, they sailed on and lived happily ever after. Where were you? I looked for you in each school I had attended, during church nearly every Sunday morning, as well as during youth group on Friday nights. I had written you letters expressing my desire for you, dreaming about the way you would look at me at the very blessed moment when we would meet for the very first time. As I got older, I dreamt about our wedding day, the picture perfect life that you and I would have together, and how much happier I would be being with you than without you.
Surely, the universe must want me to keep looking for you! You can only find me if I make sure that I write that perfect bio, otherwise you will not recognize me. You are worth my taking 4,228,355 selfies for that perfect picture or you will just pass me by. Yes, you may have ghosted me and blocked me as you gave your ex another chance, but I know that you'll be back for me someday. I just need to try harder to get your attention. Maybe after losing some weight, you might see me as more than a friend to you. Or I just need to make sure that your divorce is final before we can start our new life together. Please forgive me, maybe I'm being too impatient as I should remain on the sidelines, trusting you that one day when you get over the one who got away, then you'll be ready to see how things go with me. Maybe I shouldn't be so selfish but instead allow you to cry on my shoulder as you grieve over the one woman you loved so much; once you finish drying your tears, then you'll see that the right woman was literally in front of you this whole time.
Please forgive me, as my efforts towards finding you have amounted to nothing but a history of failure. If you want to know where I am, I'm currently in hiding in my own crafted war room, trying to devise another tactic that will FOR SURE get you to notice me this time. I mean, you are out there, but the responsibility of locating you, selling myself to you and eventually winning you over to me falls exclusively on me. There's nothing that you need to do. Yes, keep longing for the one who got away. I want you to make every effort you can towards shielding your heart away from me, because you know how much I love a challenge. Provide for me 3,221,986 different versions of "I'm not just ready for a relationship" so that way I can keep biting your ankles, doing everything I can on my end to fully crack your code. I want your life to remain busy and dysfunctional so you can be somewhat truthful as you cancel yet another date with me because you really were too busy. How else would I learn to reschedule things with you and truly value our time together unless I know that spending time with you is not guaranteed? I also need to make sure that you're on the right app. Who knows ... maybe THAT is what is keeping us apart!! Could it be that maybe the secret to unlocking you entering my life is simply deciding between Bumble and Tinder, but ultimately switching to Hinge? Of course, you're already there waiting for me! It's just me, your obvious Dimwitted Damsel in Distress, who just needs to download that app to my phone and surely ... SURELY ... we'll both be one step closer to discovering our own happily ever after.
Yeah, do you really think that I'm talking to you, Prince Charming? The answer is no. I'm not talking to a real person, a real man who exists in this world, whose heart has GalaxiGazer boldly tattooed on it. I'm actually talking to a fantasy, a dream, an idea that someone else had cooked up in their mind and served it to me on a silver platter with a smile. I'm talking to a concept that many people have spent money, time, and talent crafting and developing. I'm talking to the source behind many successful marketing schemes that the C-Suite executives from Bumble, Hinge, Tinder, Zoosk, Match, E-harmony, Coffee Meets Bagel, Disney, Hollywood, and Hallmark have already discovered.
You don't exist.
You never did.
You never will.
There are those out there who hold out hope on your behalf, telling me not to give up on love and that "Mr. Right is just right around the corner". They will waste no time giving me fashion, beauty, health, and sex tips trying to turn the many villains out there into my hero in order to keep your legend alive. While I appreciate their efforts, they have yet to understand that telling me to keep chasing you is like seeing a rainbow during a rainstorm and believing that there's a pot o' gold at the end. Well, you don't see me getting into my car, driving towards this rainbow, and actually expecting to see it, do you? No. I've seen many rainbows (even multiples) with no pot o' gold at the end. Just goes to show.
While I'm not discouraging anyone from chasing after you, believing in you, and eventually finding you, I have chosen to confront you and see through you to understand that you don't exist. You're not real. And you know what? It's okay. I liken this to finally outgrowing those fairy tales that suited me well in childhood, but I'm grown up enough to know that's not real. Neither is Santa. Neither is the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. But that's what life is about. Living and learning.
So I bid you farewell, O Prince.
~ Me

Hi All,
I am planning on purchasing an EV and intend to have a level 2 charger installed through QMerit, as they partner with Chevy, for a credit with one of the following:
A. 32 amp (40amp breaker)
B. 40 amp (50 amp breaker)
C. 50 amp (60 amp breaker)
My current electrical panel is on 100 amp service. We use an electric dryer and an electric stove. In the summer, we may have a small 5k btu air conditioner or two running at night. Heating is hot water baseboard on an on demand gas combo unit. I intend to charge the vehicle during the night while we are sleeping so i don't intend there to be any cooking or laudnry being done in the middle of the night while charging. At most a couple of air conditioners running in the summer and possibly the boiler kicking in occasionally during the winter.
I have 2 questions.

1. Is it absolutely necessary that i upgrade my panel and service to 200 amp service or can I get though this with the 100 amp service that i currently have?
2. If upgrading to 200 amp, what ballpark figures do these upgrades cost? I am local to boston, MA suburbs.

Pics of panel attached.
https://preview.redd.it/6buepmondg3b1.jpg?width=694&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f6339629298bf182c9d16cb7a87187b891c52088
https://preview.redd.it/q4qq6vondg3b1.jpg?width=694&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9ec29519d532910677ffc7a06325be60f243927b
https://preview.redd.it/urb6w3pndg3b1.jpg?width=694&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2705dc019cc2398d84d16a69eea058e4e66a23d9
https://preview.redd.it/mdhp7bpndg3b1.jpg?width=694&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=03a923a155c19e647a62261fa9fc6fccce72edb7

The street savant both blends into the streets but has a swagger that lets them have a commanding presence to those in their organisation , they work in more sociable ways but are fine with attacking stuff that threatens the land they call their organisation territory
Master of style At level 3,The street savant takes a 1 hour long ritual where at the end of it they have a specially modified suit of armour that upon a command word and a phrase (for the look) change into a type of attire they so please . It is not illusionary and will hold up to inspection. This does not work on full plate armour or armour that is otherwise already magically enchanted. The look can be changed only once every 3 hours
The speaker At lvl 3 When the savant rolls a a d20 and gets a 9 or below on a persuasion (charisma) or deception(charisma) check . It is treated as a 10, And it has to be verbal
Savant of the streets At level 3 . You gain proficiency in firearms and you gain proficiency in leather workers kit . The organisation will give you a leatherworkers kit that is magically enchanted
Master of disguise At level 6, you are able to perform a hour long ritual and give up to your profiency bonus amount of people a suit of modified armour that can change upon command , the change still follows the only once every 3 hours command . This does not work on full plate armour or armour that is otherwise already magically enchanted
Quick to fight At level 9 .You are skilled with your quick hands and even quicker with your tools . Upon initiative having been rolled you are able to make one free ranged attack before initiative starts fully . The attack has to be with a ranged weapon or thrown weapon . Your skill with your tools means you are able to pull out your ranged kit without using a object interaction .
Silver tongued fighter At level 13 ,As a bonus action you are able taunt your opponent which would a charisma verse wisdom check , if they fail it then they gain disadvantage on attacks against you until they beat a dc of (dc = 10 + proficiency + (charisma modifier) , they can try and clear their mind each turn . This can only be done on one target at a time .
Quick to draw At level 17 you are deadly with your ranged weaponry
You are able to make a secondary attack on your turn if the first attack was ranged and it can be on the same target or a different target . If fired at the same target you get a extra 1d10 damage added on .
This class is created for a more magically inclined setting , the armour isnt magic so gives no bonus to ac, it has its restrictions , like if your armour causes stealth disadvantage that stays even with its look changed. I need any kind of feed back on this please

Join EarthCraft on the VoidedSky network and experience a new level of Minecraft gameplay with our custom-coded Earth map and factions system. Settle in real-world locations around the globe, enjoy nation building opportunities and engage in epic world wars.
Launching at tomorrow, be a part of our welcoming community and enjoy survival gameplay like never before. Plus, stay tuned for our upcoming servers featuring an MCRPG, minigames (occasionally with tournaments and prizes), and randomKits. Join us now and be a part of the excitement! Click the link to join our Discord community: https://www.voidedsky.net/discord

Join EarthCraft on the VoidedSky network and experience a new level of Minecraft gameplay with our custom-coded Earth map and factions system. Settle in real-world locations around the globe, enjoy nation building opportunities and engage in epic world wars.
Launching tomorrow, be a part of our welcoming community and enjoy survival gameplay like never before. Plus, stay tuned for our upcoming servers featuring an MCRPG, minigames (occasionally with tournaments and prizes), and randomKits. Join us now and be a part of the excitement! Click the link to join our Discord community: https://www.voidedsky.net/discord

Join EarthCraft on the VoidedSky network and experience a new level of Minecraft gameplay with our custom-coded Earth map and factions system. Settle in real-world locations around the globe, enjoy nation building opportunities and engage in epic world wars.
Launching tomorrow, be a part of our welcoming community and enjoy survival gameplay like never before. Plus, stay tuned for our upcoming servers featuring an MCRPG, minigames (occasionally with tournaments and prizes), and randomKits. Join us now and be a part of the excitement! Click the link to join our Discord community: https://www.voidedsky.net/discord

Like any draft analyst, he has hits and misses. The hits have been genuinely impressive:

• having Luka as the best draft prospect since his rankings started in 2006, with AD second.
• lots of guys who went in the second round or undrafted who became good/great players: Millsap 2nd, Lin 24th, Draymond 3rd, Jokic 5th, VanVleet 3rd, Zubac 8th, Payton II 9th, Wood 18th, Crowder 4th, Middleton 22nd, Whiteside 5th, Danny Green 9th

Aside from finding the diamonds in the rough, Pelton has also given low rankings to some of the biggest draft busts and disappointments.

• 2022: Johnny Davis 48th (drafted 10th)
• 2020: Wiseman 62nd (drafted 2nd)
• 2019: RJ Barrett 25th (drafted 3rd)
• 2018: Bagley 41st (drafted 2nd)
• 2017: Josh Jackson 30th (drafted 4th)
• 2015: Okafor 15th (drafted 3rd)
• 2014: Wiggins 20th (drafted 1st)
• 2013: Bennet 12th (drafted 1st)
• 2012: Kidd-Gilchrist 19th (drafted 2nd) Thomas Robinson 23rd (drafted 5th)
• 2011: Jan Vesely 47th (drafted 6th)
• 2010: Wesley Johnson 33rd (drafted 4th)
• 2009: Thabeet 12 (drafted 2nd)
• 2008: OJ Mayo 29th (drafted 3rd)
• 2006: Adam Morrison 28th (drafted 3rd)

Here's how Pelton describes his system:

For college and international players alike, my projections start with translating what players have done before with what they will do in the NBA for 14 core statistics: 2-point percentage; 3-point percentage; free throw percentage; offensive and defensive rebound percentage; assists; steals and fouls per 100 team plays; blocks per 100 2-point attempts; percentage of individual plays devoted to 2-point, 3-point and free throw attempts; turnovers; and usage rate.
Some stats tend to decline once players enter the league more than others. For example, free throw percentage rarely changes much, but players shoot much worse percentages from the field. For college players, this process also adjusts for strength of schedule to put players who faced different levels of competition on a level playing field.
Utilizing multiple seasons of data yields better projections than looking solely at the most recent season. In fact, for college players I've found that earlier seasons tend to project NBA performance better than more recent seasons because older prospects no longer have the same experience advantage in the NBA. So the player's most recent season is weighted two times, the season before that (if available) three times, and two seasons before that five times. The weights are opposite for international prospects, who haven't demonstrated the same pattern because they are playing against older opponents.
The last factor in the projections is regressing performance to positional averages for NBA rookies (for college prospects) and replacement-level performance (for international players). This helps account for outliers, particularly for stats that tend to fluctuate, such as 3-point percentage

Hello Reddit!
This is — for a change of pace — Cuzi from Team BethelFrankel, here to tell you that the ratings for Leo, Yingel, and Anatoli are now live on the Community Tier List! I’m sorry this took as long as it did. Fourmana was busy, the website was getting updated, and I was playing Honkai Star Rail. No excuses, just a sorry. As always, a “should you pull” section, followed by some big updates in preparation for the upcoming anniversary.

Should You Pull…

Leo - S-/S+ - Leo’s ceiling is nuts. In terms of raw damage, his damage potential is one of — if not the — highest in Forest. This is an impressive feat, considering that Forest is an element with beasts such as Jeriah, Paloma and Areia. His main issue is a large portion of this damage is gated behind requiring both Refinements and team support. This makes him a weird unit to rate; his R0 baseline performance undercuts Forest’s contested S-tier, with his damage scaling up to SS-tier levels the more e-tiles you feed him. The Goldie teams that could let him reach this potential, however, have hotly contested team slots. Jeriah, Naroxel, and Paloma all provide utility alongside their damage that makes them much more indispensable, leaving Leo and Gabriel to duke it out for the last slot in meta e-tile teams. Still, the fact he’s a top contender for that slot at all as a raw damage dealer speaks to his potential. He also fits decently well on other e-tile teams, such as those featuring Minos, Hiiro and Siobhan.
With Leo, you’ll usually want to use his second Active once per Burst turn before dumping all his stacks into it on the final Burst turn. The gimmicks on his first Active are largely flavor text: the second and third effects are difficult to use outside longer stages, while the first effect is only useful in mobbing. All this said, there are a lot of minor optimizations you can do with him. Firstly, his second active is only useful if you can ensure around at least 3-4 Normals including diagonals; saving the stacks to benefit from his Equipment’s Chain Combo buffs may be worthwhile if this is not the case. Second, the CD reduction on his first Active from getting 19 stacks only applies on cast; if you have enough enhanced tiles, saving his first Active to cast during his AT can let you gain maximum value from it. This room for minmaxing offers Leo some appreciated flexibility, cementing him as an excellent option on teams that can feed his appetite for e-tiles.
TL;DR: Pull if you want him and can offer the appropriate support, otherwise probably skip. Meta e-tile Forest has stiff competition for slots, but he’s as good an option as any to round it out after you have the core setup. Outside of e-tile teams, he’s usable but not great.
Yingel - A-/S at BT3 - Yingel is another addition to the “weird converters” we’ve been seeing over the past few patches, but this time placing heavy emphasis on 1x1 content. We did the math on her damage output and her damage leaves much to be desired, even for a sniper. Yingel’s kit is based around using special high-power Normals to stack a powerful defense ignoring buff. This sounds great in theory, but Yingel’s inability to normal attack in between her special Normals severely neuters her; it more or less means her Normal attack damage is the same as most other units, and makes her defense ignore stacking is too slow for it to ever realize its full potential.
Her conversion is similarly restrictive. 5 select tiles on a 2 CD is actually pretty incredible; the issue is her cross-shaped conversion pattern makes it incredibly janky to properly use and get contact tiles with outside of 1x1 content. Her conversion can be cloned by Axelia, but the high cloning cost and Axelia's other cloning synergies with units like Irridon limit its value.
Ultimately, Yingel is a combination of almost all the most powerful effects in all of Alchemy Stars nerfed in every way. This has its place — she’s a pretty good captain for 1x1 content, and better than most of Thunder’s bog-standard snipers even at BT0. You just won’t feel good using her over Luke, Reinhardt or R3 Wrath.
TL;DR: Probably Avoid. While Yingel certainly isn’t bad at BT3, there are significantly better options to go for at this level of investment. With the 2nd Anniversary being the next event, you don’t want to regret pulling on someone that may potentially collect dust on your account.
Anatoli - A - Anatoli is the welfare character for this patch and more or less a Forest Brock, offering niche but potentially valuable Aggro support and decent personal damage for mobbing. His active can also be used as a janky TP and gap closer if only selecting one target, which is… interesting, at the very least, and occasionally useful. However, his EQ is noticeably worse and the element he’s in has much less synergies for him. Forest also is home to some of the best mobbers in the game in Lenore, Migard, and Barton:DB, who are also just overall better units whose value doesn’t nosedive outside their niche. For a welfare, though, Anatoli is admirably effective at what he does — he’s a good investment if you don’t have one of Forest’s myriad mobbers, and will still see use in secondary or tertiary teams in content like Pandora’s even once you do.
Finally, his art and animations are top-tier — he’ll be a staple for those invested in the aesthetics metagame.
TL;DR: Build if you want. He’s very niche, but excellent at it — whether that’s important to you depends on your own account.

Tier List Updates

We’ve made some pretty big changes to the tier list, but none of them should be much of a surprise — it’s more or less just following through on things we had announced in the last update. The most important of these is we have new ratings now! The (N) rating has been added to units whose value dramatically improves in niche situations, while the (T) rating denotes units whose potential is locked behind requiring specific team setups.
Some background on this — the team is forever mentally scarred by Goldie, and I could honestly end the explanation here, refuse to elaborate, and leave. While that is partly a joke, Goldie is the unit that prompted us to think about how we tier things. Goldie is honestly pretty terrible outside dedicated e-tile teams that need very specific units, but said e-tile teams offer some of the best damage in the game. This unit design is a consequence of how the game has evolved — since the game has covered its bases for generalist units like Sinsa and Azure, characters’ roles have become much more specific. The tier list, formulated in the days of yore, couldn’t really account for that. We’re hoping these new ratings fix that.
This isn’t a perfect solution; the most glaring problem is how much it increases clutter in a tier list which already suffered from it. This forces us to be rather conservative about how we give these ratings, and we’ve tried to limit it as much as possible to units where the improvement is fairly drastic or units who are the linchpin of entire strategies. That said, if you feel we’ve missed someone we’re happy to get feedback about it! We’re far from perfect, and constructive criticism is how we can improve.
Finally, we’ve gotten rid of class ratings and nothing of value was really lost. They did more harm than good, and we’ve replaced them with extremely brief descriptions of what the unit actually does. So all that said… let’s delve into the units that got changed!
Goldie - SS(T) (is S-) – Behold, the woman behind the slaughter. Dedicated e-tile teams are incredible, and we’re letting Goldie eat the SS rating for almost all the units that dramatically improve due to it given the setup revolves around her.
Lilica - SS(T) (is S+) – Similar to Goldie, Lilica is taking the SS tiering for all shield synergies because they’re ultimately centered around her. Lilica shield teams offer some of the highest damage in Fire and are surprisingly strong in Water too.
Minos - SS(T) (is S) — Minos already had a note marking him as SS in specific teams, so we’re just adjusting that to fit into the new system. Unlike a lot of other e-tile units he doesn’t depend on Goldie to get the number of e-tiles he needs to shine, so we’re marking him separately.
Tessa - S+(T) (is S-) – Tessa’s interaction with low-CD units is pretty potent. The most notable of these is Axelia + MBT Roy and to a lesser extent Leyn, who push her damage above a good chunk of Thunder’s long list of detonators.
Lucoa - S(T) (is A) — Lucoa’s buff is one of a kind and instrumental in making a lot of Active-based teams work.
May - A(T) (is C+) — May is pretty important for certain Giles nuke setups and serves as the only other good defensive option on Lenore+Jeno setups. That said, neither setup entirely revolves around her which limits her overall tiering.
Axelia - S+(T) (is S) — Axelia’s ability to copy summons gives a lot of notable synergies even outside the aforementioned MBT Roy and Tessa. Of particular note is Reinhardt and Irridon, and her presence on whale Thunder teams is a testament of how much she improves its playability.
Brock - S(N) (is A-) — Brock is absolutely incredible in mobbing; his ability to aggro mob can trivialize waves and his Attack buff in these stages is very potent. The cherry on top is his importance on Giles nuke setups.
Nails - S(N) (is A-) — Nails’ Bleed application is only really contested by Pasolo, and he’s almost required on certain Elysium floors while also being strong on DoT weak enemies outside of that.
Chandra - A-(N) (is C+) — Chandra is amazing for Nightium farming, and the long-term value this provides is actually quite notable.
Giles - SS(N) (is S+) — Updated calcs show that Giles’ damage on shorter fights actually outdoes most of Fire’s S-tier even on 2x2; his ability to trivialize some stages by nuking them combined with his almost unrivaled 1x1 performance puts him at SS in the right situations.
Odi - S+(N) (is S-) — Odi has unrivaled Poison application, allowing her to clear some stages that even meta teams can struggle on.
Noah BT2 - S-(N) (is A-) — Noah’s Lilica synergies paired with the importance of her shield against certain specific damage checks gives her some valuable use cases, even if she usually is outdone by Philyshy.
Raphael - A(N) at BT0 (is B-), S+(N) at BT3 (is S-) — Raphael’s oddball mix of resets, conversion, damage and healing lets her function in a way no other unit really can, and makes certain endgame content like BoredomShatterblast significantly easier.
Erica - A(N) (is B) — Erica is the only decent reset option in Thunder, so your hands are often tied on certain stages. Still, her Detonator chain and team buff means she’s not deadweight.
Vivian MBT - A+(N) (is B-) — MBT Vivian’s raw conversion value makes her pretty powerful on the right stages. There is nothing quite like letting her paint boards yellow.
Keating - B+(N) (is C+) — Brock and Anatoli have shown that aggro is actually extremely valuable when the situation calls for it. However, Keating is hampered by their brutal cooldown combined with a lack of pre-emptive.
Zhong Xu - S(N) (is A+) — Zhong Xu was extremely disappointing for a unit that was meant to be Fire’s long-awaited select tile converter. That said, his push-pull synergies do make him worth using on some stages, especially alongside Charon and Brock.
Jane - A(N) (is C) — Jane’s ranking is almost entirely based on her ability to reliably auto-farm the penultimate Nightium stage with a specific setup. Outside of this, she’s still pretty bad.
MBT Tina - SS(N) — MBT Tina can be incredible — 4 pseudo-select tiles on 2CD alongside a very janky TP is nothing to scoff at. The issue is all this is contingent on being able to predict enemy movements and plan ahead with her tile placement; this isn’t easy nor reliable, but MBT Tina can even outdo Bethlehem in situations where it’s feasible.

Some Other Tier Shifts

Philishy - S (was S-) – Philyshy was initially downshifted during an era of content involving very high DPR checks. Abyss and Pandora’s Box did a lot to change this, and both game modes seem tailored to reward Philyshy’s absurd healing output and additional utility through her global teleport. She’s more than worth the $1 you may pay for her; while you still aren’t going to use her in most content that has a DPS check, her value is nigh-unparalleled outside of it.
MBT Frostfire - S- (was A+) – Like Philyshy, the higher importance of mobbing makes Frostfire much more valuable — especially given her mobbing capabilities in Fire are only really rivaled by R3 Regina. She’s still extremely reliant on her MBT and is entirely eclipsed by Giles in bossing, but the gap between her and her Old Seal brethren is now far closer than it used to be.
Leona - S- (was A) – Leona is probably the unit that was the most underrated in the tier list for quite some time: her 1x1 and 2x2 numbers are competitive on both fronts with other S tier units. She’s still too reliant on Burn and good conversion to truly be S-tier, but a well-supported Leona can carry you a surprisingly long way.
Barbara A- – Despite her overall numbers being better with the buff and the refinements, Barbara is still a unit that really doesn’t have much in terms of what she brings to the table. You could even argue her equipment buff being element-locked now makes her arguably worse! While that isn’t exactly true, it does go to show how decidedly underwhelming her improvements have been.
Vice R3 - S- (Was A) — R3 Vice’s performance is actually pretty incredible — her 1x1 performance outdoes most of Water’s other snipers, and her mobbing is potent. Her main issue is the competition she faces in both cases. Vice: KS is your go-to option in 1x1 content, and base Vice can’t be used alongside her; meanwhile, Water mobbing is a tightly contested spot between Azure, Fia, Mu Yuebai, Fleur, and Connolly. Still, she is pretty good on her own merits, especially considering she’s completely free.
Vic — While his overall ranking hasn’t changed, Vic’s description has been touched up. As it turns out, he’s one of if not the best option for the 5th slot in Water against purely 1x1 content. His performance tanks with summons, he’s a miserable captain, and his 2x2 performance is laughable — but it was pertinent to mention he does have a pretty well-defined use case for those who like him enough to invest in him. In a way it’s fairly in-character for him: even though he’s good at what he does, he’ll probably spend most of his time in your roster on the bench.

New and Future Content

I'd talked a bit about how tier lists are a pretty inherently flawed format earlier. We're doing our best to circumvent this — for all its failings, it is both straightforward and intuitive. Still, especially as we get closer to Anniversary, the team has found that it might help to branch out in the content we make to help both new and returning players. Recently, you probably saw Eclogia's beginner and advanced guides. If you haven't, you probably should! They're really well written and you can find them in the reddit post here.
We also have a lot more in the works. Trakan is working on an Ultimate Checklist — a super handy tool featuring an Aurorian Tracker, team building customization and even some Cloud Garden tools. Meanwhile, Ivory is working on a polished Lilica guide — a handy walkthrough to help explain one of Alchemy Stars' most unique and nuanced units. This is just the start, too — hopefully there's a lot more to come in the future.

Event CG Archive

Mechhydra here!
I apologize for not showing up for the last event–I got busy, and as a consequence didn't update the Archive for a while. Regardless, both of the past two events are now live for viewing. Stay tuned for the 2nd anniversary, where I'll be making my own standalone archive post for the first time in a long while!
Event Album Doc
Drive Folder

Community News

Sometimes I wonder if Fourmana has a secret vendetta against me. Maybe I wronged him in another life to have been stuck with writing this monster of an update. Perhaps my sins have caught up to me, and the gods commanded him to make me write this post in their displeasure. We’ll never know.
Jokes aside, it’s been an amazing time working with the team to push this update out, and I’m glad Four doesn’t have to deal with it when he already has a lot on his plate — he’s already put overtime into this project. As always, our rankings are tentative and we both appreciate and rely on feedback, especially considering this is my first time making a write-up of this length for Alchemy Stars. The tier list is written for the community, and it’s helpful to hear what you want from it!
And with that, I shall lay my metaphorical pen down to rest. Until next time.
Best regards,
Cuzimori
Team BethelFrankel

Image compilation: https://i.imgur.com/df3ycjI.jpeg or https://i.ibb.co/99yTT8s/38e1b3434fd2.jpg
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I first heard about this book many years ago (when Tim was on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2011). At the time I was an active drug addict and completely unmotivated to do anything so while the idea sounded interesting I didn’t take any action at all. Today (May of 2023) I have almost 8.5 years clean and sober, I own a couple different successful businesses and currently earn around $40k/month and have done so consistently for the last 3 years (I’m in my fourth year of earning at this level). The problem I’m having is that I’ve barely traveled and barely have any time to myself for this entire time. I have so much less freedom than I did when I was a salesman earning between $150k-250k/year. However, even at that level I was pretty much a workaholic and didn’t make nearly enough time for myself. When I stumbled upon this book again it sounded so appealing. I started reading through the book and listening to the audiobook simultaneously and I have to say, the concepts seem to make sense. If I can make this work for me, my life would be so much more enjoyable and I’ve made the commitment to myself to get started immediately. I hired a virtual assistant as a start, I’ve started to batch taste like checking emails, voicemails etc. Now I’m going to start back at page one and I’m going to use this book as a text book answering each question and taking pen to paper for each step. I will post results here every step of the way. I will also make short videos along the way for people that choose to follow that type of content I will post links to instagram/TikTok/maybe YouTube?
I’d love to have a community of people that have done/are currently doing the same. I’ve found that in getting clean and sober, one thing that has been invaluable is being around likeminded people; specifically likeminded people that have already succeeded at what I’m attempting to do.
I’m very excited to share this journey with others and to succeed together!

The owner of the Elite Tennis Center in Cannes (where Daniil Medvedev went) hasn't made only friends during his career, but also some very fond memories.
The strongest player you've ever faced?
My biggest impression is Nadal. I've played Federer, Djokovic, Agassi... The best is Nadal. Every point is hell. He has a monstrous shot quality. If you're up 40-0 against anyone, you think the game's almost won. Not against Nadal. He never gives up and you can feel it. When he takes control with his forehand, it's only a matter of time before you lose the point. He eats you up.
When I play Roland with juniors, I show them Nadal in training. He plays two against one. And he puts maximum intensity on every shot. I tell the kids, "Look, he's got 500 million in his account, over 20 Grand Slams (22), but he's still on the ball on everything, all the time."
The craziest?
Roberto Carretero. A Spaniard who won a Masters 1000 in Hamburg one year (1996). Out of nowhere. Nice guy, but completely crazy, whimsical. He was impressive, with incredible thighs. The Hulk in white! But he was a bit of a yo-yo. I played him in Palermo, in the qualifiers. As soon as we warmed up, he had an incredible kick and was lobbing me at the limit. I said to myself: "I've got to put everything into the first two games. Because he had three times my tennis, but he could go crazy and swing. I think I won 6-0, 1-6, 6-0. In the set he won, he was doing retro bunted returns on my first balls. He had mad talent. But he disappeared as quickly as he appeared.
In Short - 43 years old (FRA-MCO), right-handed, one-handed backhand, 1.73 m.

• Turned pro in 1997.
  
• Best ranking: 84th in January 2003.
  
• 2003: 3rd round at the Australian Open (his best Grand Slam result).
  
• 2006: Becomes a citizen of Monaco, for which he will defend the colors in the Davis Cup (12 v.-8 d.).
  

The funniest?
Michaël Llodra. He'll dare anything. His classic was throwing buckets of water at people. He'll throw food at you on the spur of the moment. He'll leave your snowshoe bag in a bush at a freeway service area and tell you 20 kilometers down the road. He did that to Marc Gicquel. We were driving back to Paris after a match in Rennes. When he finally said it, we took the next exit, turned around and the bag was in the bush... It could have gone far with him.
He could have lost you a match at the Australian Open in 2005 with his "Allez Goran! No ?
(smiles) We used to play team matches together in the winter. I'm not very tall, so to make fun of me, he used to call me "Goran Ivanisevic". We were on the same team, but his aim was to get me to make double faults. Then came the Australian Open. He had just lost his first round match (against Sébastien Grosjean). I was going to serve for the match. Then, as I came into the stands, he said to me: "Go Goran! Result: first point of the game, double fault. Damn! Pierre Gautier, my coach at the time, told him to piss off. Fortunately, I won the game and the match (victory 5-7, 5-7, 6-1, 6-4, 7-5 against Oliver Marach).
But yes, Mika has no limits. He was always pissing off the guy in front of him on the plane by slapping him. Every flight, every tournament. Every double in Futures, there was a fight. He'd light guys on fire three feet from the net. He also made Benoît Paire pull the pin in Miami (in 2013). Aside from that, he's a very generous guy. On a whim, he can invite you to the most beautiful restaurant in Miami and spend 3,000 euros. He's all there.
The meanest?
(Guillermo) Coria, (Gaston) Gaudio (finalist and winner respectively at Roland-Garros 2004), all those guys. Assholes, bad guys who looked down on us. I played Gaudio in Amsterdam (2003), and he looked down on me. So I beat him (6-0, 7-6). Yes, when you don't respect the guy... He arrived ten minutes late, he almost got scratched (disqualified), he carried his racquet bag like a handbag, he looked down on me. And he never said hello to me.
(Tomas) Berdych is the same, he never says hello. He's 80 times my career (Paris-Bercy winner 2005, Wimbledon finalist 2010), and yet I beat him in Monte-Carlo. There was also the Austrian (Daniel) Köllerer, who was completely mad. I think he was on drugs. He was imitating his opponents, taking the piss out of them... Everyone wanted to beat the shit out of him (he'll be suspended for life in 2011 for match-fixing).
The fairest?
Magnus Norman. US Open 2003, I beat him, saving a match point (6-2, 6-2, 6-7, 0-6, 7-6 in the first round) and cramping up. I couldn't play anymore, I don't know how I won the match. An hour later, he came to see me. At first, I thought he was going to yell at me, that he must think I'd been acting up: "My hat's off to you! Have you recovered? Good luck with the rest." Very classy.
Your most daring career choice?
Going to the Bollettieri Academy (in Florida) when I was 11. A guy who coached there, Sekou Bangoura, was on vacation in Cannes. He happened to drop by the club and saw me. And because I was so strong as a youngster, I stayed for three years. That's where I learned to fend for myself. I had seven dollars a day, I calculated, I did my own laundry... There were 400 kids. The only one who never went to evening duty to do his homework was me!
Tennis-wise, it wasn't very good, but there was a military rigor, a state of mind. In my group of eight, everyone was at least top 200 or even top 100: Iva Majoli (1st in 1996), Tommy Haas (2nd in 2002), Gabriel Trifu (148th in 2002), Max Mirnyi (18th in 2003), Anna Kournikova (8th in 2000)...
Worst moment?
My meningitis. I think it was in 2008. I was so close to dying. I spent a week in bed and was called twice by the SOS doctor. We flew to Finland for a Davis Cup match with Monaco. Incredible headache. On Thursday evening, I start vomiting. I tell the guys: "Get me to hospital quickly. The longest twenty minutes of my life, because then you feel like you're going.
When I got to the hospital, I was paralyzed on my whole left side. I was vomiting every three minutes. I could hear everything, but I couldn't speak or move. I have a vague idea of what a coma is, since I was in one for a few hours... After that, I was bedridden for two months, and when I went back to work, I had a crack in my hip that had never hurt before. I had to have an operation and was out of action for fifteen months. After that, you're 90 years old. After that, you appreciate everything. At Helsinki airport, I had an espresso: well, that was the best of my life!
And the best memory?
The 2011 US Open. I almost didn't go because I didn't have the level; I was barely winning at -15, -30. I was playing team matches on clay in Switzerland, I hadn't played a match on hard court all summer, and I was teaching on the side... But my coach at the time, Guillaume Couillard, had never been to New York, so I used my protected ranking (he'd had hip surgery in 2010) to get into the qualifiers.
And then, the father of a kid I'd trained invited me to sleep at his place. What I didn't know was that he was ultra-fortunate! I end up in Greenwich, with houses worth 20 million. In training, I go 6-2 every day. Guillaume and I have a row and don't speak for two days.
Then the qualifiers start. My hip hurts, I can feel it's the end. The first round was a struggle. After that, I play the best tennis of my career. I beat (Paul) Capdeville and (Paolo) Lorenzi. Then Olivier Rochus in the main draw, my only Grand Slam victory in three sets (7-6, 6-2, 6-4). After that, I couldn't do it any more, my leg was too sore (eliminated by Florian Mayer in three sets). I was pretty proud because I'd just come back from nowhere.
His life as a former pro player
Once he had put away his rackets, which he used at the end of his career (until 2013) almost exclusively to defend Monaco's Davis Cup colors, Jean-René Lisnard branched out into coaching and founded the Tennis Elite Center in Cannes, where Daniil Medvedev, among others, grew up. Today, the Center trains sisters Erika and Mirra Andreeva, Varvara Gracheva, Anna Blinkova, Hugo Grenier and Alexandre Müller, among others.

Background:

• Wheelchair user, drive from my wheelchair itself
• Both cars have a side ramp installed and a lowered floor. You can google Braunability Traverse or VMI Odyssey
• I'm a gear head and have been around cars since a very young age. I could fix a lot of things on my own, but due to my disability I can't even fill coolant on my own
• Drive for leisure only, love to drive, and like to go on long trips. Someday, I plan to take a road trip across US (West to East)
• Have a 2011 Honda Odyssey (with wheelchair ramp). Bought it about 6 months (had 100k kms) and driven 5k kms since then

Fixes done on Odyssey since purchase

• Transmission fluid flush
• Brake fluid change
• Oil change
• Tire rotation
• Check engine light fix - EVAP solenoid died ($500CAD)

Fixes to be done

• AC not cooling - leak somewhere
• Front brake rotors need to be replaced because steering pulsates on high speed braking. No urgent, pads have 80% life left
• Timing belt change coming up after 50k kms (maybe 3 years)

Otherwise, it’s a sweet ass van. I love it, which maybe bias, because it’s my first vehicle after 14 years of not driving. I have an opportunity to get a New 2022 Chevy Traverse with wheelchair ramp. Would cost me $30-40k CAD out of pocket
Why I should get it:

• I like the SUV look more than a minivan. Been drooling over it for more than 2-3 years now.
• Really want adaptive cruise control
• New vehicle, less problems (?) plus 3 year warranty

Why I shouldn’t get it:

• I drive for leisure only but I love that part. Only thing I look forward to everyday is going for a drive. Is it worth to spend that 40k for looks and self satisfaction?
• It’s a Chevy. Not trying to start a war but Honda reliability needs no advertising

I'm mid 30s and have goals of becoming a homeowner one day, something I've been saving for. This purchase would eat into 50% of those savings. Usually I am very frugal in EVERY aspect of life, but cars make me lose perception.
People who own (or their friends/fam own) Traverse, what would you say about its long-term reliability? Is it worth in the long run?