#bloated pipelines

[captaingimpy]

The Modern State of Game Development: A Call for Reflection

Game development has changed dramatically over the years, and not all of it for the better. As someone who’s spent time making, modding, and playing games, I can’t help but look at the industry today and see a troubling shift—one driven by reliance on shortcuts like AI upscaling, inflated development pipelines, and a lack of focus on optimization. These trends aren’t just disappointing; they…

[helltiervriska]

i was never able to give a shit about hiveswap . one of the worst things u can do as a media creator is introduce an entirely new cast with maybe .000001% as much development as the previous cast , then fail to flesh them out because of the intense character bloat attempting to mimick the past cast. yes, i was the first person ever to cosplay joey claire AND remele namaaq when they originally dropped the cast two-by-two. did i have to google their names to make sure i said the right ones, because of how unremarkable they are? yes. my point still stands

[liviawildrose]

𝐥𝐲𝐦𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝟏𝟎𝟏

WHAT IS THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM?

think of the lymphatic system as your body’s emotional janitor and drainage crew. it’s part of your immune system, and it does the following:

• filters waste, toxins, and pathogens

• moves lymph (a clear fluid) through your body

• helps circulate white blood cells

• absorbs fats from your digestive system

• balances fluids in your tissues

it’s made up of:

• lymph (fluid)

• lymph nodes (filter stations)

• lymphatic vessels (the pipelines)

• spleen, thymus, tonsils, bone marrow (support squad)

your heart pumps blood, but your lymph has no pump. it moves through muscle movement, breath, and manual stimulation. no movement = no drainage = sluggish, bloated, toxic vibes

WHAT IS LYMPHATIC DRAINAGE?

lymphatic drainage is the process of stimulating lymph flow to help it do its job faster and more efficiently. this can be done manually with massage or with tools/devices. it’s like giving your internal plumbing system a nudge.

benefits?

• reduced swelling/inflammation

• glowing skin

• decreased bloating

• boosted immunity

• improved healing post-surgery

• less brain fog

• reduced cellulite appearance

• de-puffing (hello, snatched face + jawline)

WHY YOUR LYMPH SYSTEM LOWKEY RUNS YOUR LIFE

when your lymph is stagnant, it doesn’t just affect your body it affects your mood, energy, skin, digestion, even spiritual flow. (yes, your energy field has drainage, too.)

poor lymph flow can lead to:

• chronic fatigue/ laziness/ procrastination

• frequent colds/infections

• puffy face or limbs

• brain fog

• digestive issues

• poor healing

• acne + skin flare-ups

• fibromyalgia or pain syndromes

this is your sign to stop ignoring your lymph.

SIGNS YOUR LYMPHATIC SYSTEM MIGHT BE CONGESTED

• you wake up puffy AF

• you get sick a lot

• your skin looks dull or acne-prone

• you always feel bloated or heavy

• your eyes feel heavy/tired

• you have sinus issues

• your underarms or groin feel tender (lymph node overload)

• water retention that won’t go away

TYPES OF LYMPHATIC DRAINAGE

A. MANUAL LYMPHATIC DRAINAGE (MLD)

• slow, rhythmic, skin-stretching strokes

• developed by Dr. Emil Vodder

• done by trained therapists or at home

• moves lymph from extremities toward nodes

B. MECHANICAL DRAINAGE

• compression suits (like Normatec)

• vacuum suction (like LPG Endermologie)

• electric rollers + vibration plates

C. INTERNAL (NATURAL)

• breathwork

• rebounding (trampoline bouncing)

• dry brushing

• sauna/sweating

• hydration

• movement & inversion yoga

HOW TO DO MANUAL LYMPHATIC DRAINAGE AT HOME

PREP:

• be well-hydrated

• be relaxed (stimulating lymph in stress = nah)

• use a dry brush or clean hands

FACE:

1. start at collarbone, gently massage down and out

2. jawline → ears → down neck

3. under eyes → temples → down sides of face

4. forehead → temples → behind ears → down neck

5. always drain downwards toward collarbone

BODY:

1. start at armpits

2. stroke down from arms to armpits

3. belly massage in clockwise circular motions

4. groin lymph massage with gentle circular movement

5. legs: ankles upward to thighs, ending at groin

tip: Always go from distal to proximal, meaning far-to-close to the heart. And be gentle lymph is superficial, you don’t need deep pressure.

DEVICES THAT CAN HELP

for the face:

• gua sha (natural, ancient, sculpting goddess magic) (i use this)

• jade rollers (cooling and de-puffing)

• Foreo Bear or NuFace (microcurrent tools)

• ice globes (i use this)

• vibrating massagers (i use this)

for the body:

• dry brushes (firm bristle brush for exfoliation + flow) (i use this)

• lymphatic paddle boards (i use this)

• compression boots (used by athletes + lymphatic clinics)

• vibration plates (you stand and it shakes your lymph awake)

• infrared sauna blankets

• LPG Endermologie machines

LYMPH-FRIENDLY LIFESTYLE HACKS

FOODS:

• raw fruits (pineapple, berries, citrus)

• leafy greens

• ginger + turmeric

• dandelion root

• seaweed

• chlorella + spirulina

• omega-3 rich foods

HERBS:

• red clover

• cleavers

• echinacea

• astragalus

HABITS:

• drink water (especially warm lemon water)

• move daily (walk, yoga, stretch)

• alternate hot + cold showers

• dry brush before shower

• rebound on mini-trampoline

• sleep well (drainage is boosted in deep sleep)

LYMPH + BEAUTY

• lymphatic drainage de-puffs the face like magic

• stimulates collagen production

• clears breakouts by boosting detox

• reduces dark circles

• tightens jawline and cheekbones

• boosts skincare absorption

SPIRITUAL + ENERGETIC LAYER

in many healing traditions (like Ayurveda, TCM), lymph = life fluid. congestion = blocked emotional energy

blocked lymph = blocked creativity, blocked intuition, blocked glow.

draining the lymph = restoring your internal flow, your connection to Self, Source, and spirit.

you wanna shine? clear your waters.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU DO LYMPHATIC DRAINAGE?

• face: daily or every other day

• body: 3x a week minimum

• post-op: depends on doctor’s advice

• vibration plates/compression boots: 15–30 mins a few times a week

CONTRAINDICATIONS + SAFETY

don’t do lymphatic drainage if:

• you have active cancer

• you have infections or fever

• you have blood clots or deep vein thrombosis

• you are pregnant (only do under supervision)

• you’ve had heart or kidney issues (speak to a doc first)

always listen to your body. gentle is good. pain is not.

FINAL WORD

your lymphatic system is like your inner spa therapist, immune defense squad, and emotional sponge rolled into one. don’t sleep on it.

if you want:

• snatched cheekbones

• less puffiness

• glowing, radiant skin

• fewer colds

• balanced moods

• deep detox

• emotional flow

then lymphatic drainage isn’t optional. it’s essential. give your body the love, movement, and flow it deserves.

[bogleech]

Had a dream last night I took a kitten to a veterinarian for some kind of gas bloating (does this even happen to cats? It's a deadly thing to pet rats) and the dream veterinarian diagnosed that as "the idiot to bubble pipeline" 😠

[janegoat]

You know, I've been thinking a lot recently about how much my plunge into the Pulp/Jarvis Cocker pipeline in the beginning of 2025 actually unironically changed my outlook on certain things.

The way Jarvis writes about sex and relationships feels more relatable and real than..any other musical artist's songs on the same topics I've ever listened to.

Not sure if anyone can relate or if it's just me, but the topic of sex always felt a bit scary and alien to me. Even though I had desires and thoughts of such a nature since my early teens, I always suppressed them and felt an intense sense of embarrassment every single time they occured. Not sure where that comes from: my parents and school barely played any part in my sex ed, so I was left to the internet to do all the work, I suppose. Mid to late 2010's internet where adolescent female sexuality was constantly condemned and made fun of. This, coupled with my crippling self-esteem issues and social anxiety, did not help the situation, and when I entered my first ever relationship at 16, my sex life naturally had a pretty rough start. And though my mental health gets better every year and my current partner is extremely loving and understanding, this aspect of romance still feels just as intangible as it did when I was a teen.

Enter my Pulp hyperfix that I conveniently got right before they announced their new album, and something just sort of..clicked for me. I was going through a rough point in my life and their music helped me get through many of my fears and sadness and, as you've probably guessed, through my issues with sex. I started being more open and comfortable with my partner, feeling less anxious about my lack of skill and generally feeling a lot more confident in my body and performance. All thanks to some old guy from Sheffield no less, heh.

It's hard to describe, but it really does feel like their music and Jarvis' general vibes were just perfectly suited to combat my particular form of repression. Their awkward earnestness, sensual mundainity and freaky romanticism just warmed my heart and boosted my self-image in more ways than one. Their music was the first to genuinely make me believe that sex is not a burden or an obligation, but something fun, sweet and natural, albeit weird, messy and never perfect. Something that shouldn't happen to you but should happen with you, together with your loved one.

I dunno, I just felt like I had to get this out of my system somewhere and Tumblr is the most anonymous place for me to do so in. Perhaps, someone else can also find themselves in what I just told. Hopefully, it doesn't feel too bloated or self-indulgent.

[1americanconservative]

@charliekirk11

Here are 50 MAJOR wins from Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that the media is ignoring

1. No taxes on tips — servers, bartenders, and bellhops just got a raise Promises made, promises kept

2.Made Trump tax cuts permanent — Biden wanted them to expire.

3.Child tax credit raised to $2,500

4.Overtime pay tax-free — work hard, actually keep more.

5.$1.6 trillion in spending cuts — the largest rollback of government bloat in U.S. history.

http://6.Work requirement for welfare — able-bodied? Then get off the couch.

7.Deporting 1 million illegal immigrants per year — no more catch and release.

8. Builds the wall—finishes it — 701 miles of serious border protection. Massive!

9.10,000 new ICE agents — law and order at the border. Huge!

10.Eliminates Medicaid for illegal aliens — American benefits for Americans.

11.“Trump Savings Accounts” for kids — build generational wealth from birth. Game changer.

12.Slashes IRS funding — no more 87,000 new agents breathing down your neck.

http://13.Green New Deal defunded — no more money for solar BS.

http://14.Energy production unleashed — back to drilling, fracking, etc.

15.Tariffs on Chinese-built ships — protect American shipbuilders.

http://16.Buy American, build American — required on all infrastructure projects.

http://17.Estate tax protections expanded — family farms and businesses stay in the family.

18.Repeals DEI mandates — merit matters again. DEI is dying.

19.Bans taxpayer-funded gender ideology in federal agencies.

20.Military pay raise + benefits boost

21.National missile defense (“Golden Dome”)

22.HSA accounts expanded — use them for direct primary care.

http://23.School choice tax credits — parents, not unions, control education. Historic!

24.Feds barred from mandating pronoun usage.

25.Medicaid block grants to states — local control, not DC strings. Saves hundreds of billions.

26.Revives apprenticeship programs — college not required to succeed. The cartel hates this.

27.1% of exports must ship under U.S. flag

28.Mandates voter ID for federal elections.

29.Ends ESG mandates in retirement accounts

30.Cracks down on Big Pharma middlemen

31.Bans drag shows for kids at federally funded venues.

32.Fires the climate cult from federal boards

33.Veterans get priority housing access

34. Tax credit for buying American-made vehicles

35.Stops Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland — our soil is finally protected!.

36.Bans CRT from federal training programs.

37.Ends taxpayer-funded abortions abroad. And defunds planned parenthood!

38.Guts federal diversity czars — cuts the bloated bureaucracy.

39.Revives the Keystone XL pipeline

.

40. Eliminates federal COVID emergency powers

41.Enacts Social Security tax cuts for seniors.

42.Defends religious liberty in the workplace

43. Restores due process on college campuses.

44. Massively expands trade school funding

45. Outlaws federal funding for gender transitions for minors.

46. Creates nationwide “patriot curriculum” grant fund

47.Halts funding to the UN’s woke agenda arms.

48. Tax breaks for adoption and large families.

49. Increases penalties for fentanyl trafficking — life in prison for cartels.

50. Restores cash bail in federal jurisdictions — no more revolving-door criminals.

And this is just a taste.

Promises made, promises kept.

[perfectlovevn]

im having bowel discomfort again so I've come to talk about how I think v milo would hold me and rub my tummy and get me warm water and get super concerned every tine andd does everything to make sure i gegt better bc it hurts him so muuch seeing his love going thru any pain oor discomfort

bc its recurring and so often at that he starts becoming striict about my diet and eating schedule and habits and

he doesnt trust doctors (lowkey karen of hin) so he fuckin dives into research on stomach and bowel related medical stuff. Shits his pants as he finds really terrifying worst case scenarios. and it started to extend to other medical horrors unrelated to my original digestive discomforts.

and he ends up becoming so paranoid he turns inti a new milo or smth idk lmfao

this could alsos start with pre milo i guess but i dont think he'd take charge thaht much that insistently unless i already urged him to. first 🤔

he'd probably be more subtle about it or just suggest mc healthier alternatives and tells them stuff like "dont eat those together it can cause bloatting !!! ☹️" "u need to use this once a day so you'll stay healthy!! D:" "i heard that could give u cancer from over exposure...😞"

and -- this is just my origin story of Yukii's doctor!milo.....

I AM NOT ORIGINAL

Anyways, best route is mc continuously self sabotaging despite Milo's concerns that he straps them to a bed and or smth and

one way or another he's going to keep you healthy and safe, even from yourself. Even if it drives you or him insane

yay i love milo!!!!!!

Vmilo doctor pipeline, I mean he has the drugging down, so…

[fuckyeahdwarffortress]

so you think the cooking system needs to reworked?

I think Cooking in Dwarf Fortress is quite overpowered, if simplistic, in its current state - however, there's a risk involved in trying to rework it.

As easy as I find DF, the core backbone of fortresses not starving to death is the pipeline between Fishery to Kitchen, assuming you don't want to spend time farming or animal husbandry.

The secondary upside to fishing is, of course, the fact most streams or underground lakes can be used for wells/watering holes (and farming), which brings a stronger incentive to use all the space you can for as much return as possible.

I sadly can't think of a good way to handle food/cooking in this scenario, though. You can have Dwarfs hold individual diet preferences (like Piscatarian, Vegetarian, etc), but this would cause the whole system to bloat and become arcane in an (admittedly) already arcane game.

Similar situations would go to trying to make better meals require more ingredients - if you have a bad harvest one season or your river freezes over or your animals get slaughtered unexpectedly in a raid, then you'd be stuck in a tantrum spiral waiting to happen.

Which... I think cooking is fine as it is. At the end of the day, I trust that it's gone through several checks like smithing or the economy. If you were to meddle with it, you'd likely end up with something that's not fun to play with/around.

[blazehedgehog]

(1/2) Is it hypocritical of me to want to see fangaming move to using free/open-source game engines when the source franchises are neither of those?

(2/2) I feel as though due to their head-start, engines like Game Maker and Clickteam are the ones you're "expected" to use for X franchise. There are already pixel-perfect Sonic and Mega Man examples for those engines, and I've been directly told by a Mega Man fan game community to not even bother programming my own MM game in Godot because it will just play sloppier, and that they won't forgive its flaws just because it was "programmed from scratch" or "uses a multiplatform engine".

I mean, accessibility is nice. And I think the desire to get off of something like Clickteam Fusion is admirable. I like it, I still use it, I actually want to keep using it even as Clickteam as a company feels like it is burning down around itself. But it is slow and clumsy and bloated.

But I also think people just make stuff for whatever they use. Clickteam Fusion and Game Maker were pretty entrenched in SFGHQ for the longest time because that's what everybody ten years ago was using, twenty years ago even, and that's where all the knowledge, tools, and pipeline is.

Thankfully, now we have Sonic Worlds Next, written in Godot, which means literally anyone can spin up a Sonic fangame with clean, accurate code without needing to own a license for some $150 piece of tech owned by an apathetic or ugly company.

[davidbrianhoward]

Why Smart Startups Are Turning to David Brian Howard to Fix Their Sales Engines

In the high-stakes world of startup growth, few things stall momentum faster than a broken sales process. Founders often spend months perfecting their product—only to realize too late that they have no scalable way to get it into the hands of customers.

That’s where David Brian Howard comes in.

With over 12 years of experience in B2B sales and go-to-market execution, David Brian Howard has emerged as a trusted operator for SaaS companies and service-based startups that need more than advice—they need revenue. As the founder of Cadre Crew, a firm that builds virtual SDR teams and outbound systems, Howard has helped dozens of companies escape flatlined growth and get back on track.

His edge? He doesn’t chase hype. He builds systems.

The Problem: Startups Don’t Build Sales Engines—They Wing It

One of the most common mistakes Howard sees in early-stage companies is confusing traction with repeatability. A few warm intros and inbound leads might get you to $10–$30K MRR, but it won’t get you to scale.

“I’ve worked with so many founders who can sell the product themselves—but when it comes time to delegate sales, they have no process,” says David Brian Howard. “There’s no documented pipeline, no CRM logic, no messaging that converts cold leads.”

The result? Founder burnout, inconsistent revenue, and missed opportunities.

The David Brian Howard Playbook: Precision and Process

Unlike traditional consultants who offer generic advice, David Howard brings tactical execution to the table. He’s built and led sales teams, rebuilt broken CRMs, and launched outbound campaigns that actually generate meetings—with high-intent prospects.

At the core of his approach is a system he calls Precision Prospecting—a methodology that combines deep prospect intelligence, context-driven messaging, and automation that feels personal.

Here’s what it includes:

1. Smart Targeting

Before a single email goes out, David Brian Howard’s team maps buyer signals—funding events, tech stack changes, recent hires—and builds lead lists based on real purchase intent.

2. Relevance-First Messaging

Forget “Just checking in” or “Quick question.” Howard teaches teams how to craft outreach that speaks directly to the pain point—usually within the first two sentences.

3. Scalable Support

Through Cadre Crew, Howard supplies trained virtual assistants and SDRs who handle top-of-funnel research and outreach, freeing up closers to close.

It’s a model that delivers results quickly—without bloating headcount.

Real Results, Not Just Theories

In late 2024, a struggling SaaS company in Miami brought Howard in as interim head of growth. Revenue was stuck under $20K MRR. There was no outbound motion. The sales team was out of steam.

Within 90 days, monthly revenue tripled. Demo volume increased 218%. The founder was offloaded from daily sales for the first time since launch.

This wasn’t luck—it was a system. And it’s exactly what David Brian Howard installs for every client he works with.

Why Founders Trust David Brian Howard

Howard’s background isn’t theoretical. He’s built revenue from the ground up, sat in the sales seat, and knows what it takes to go from founder-led selling to scalable growth. His style is direct, data-driven, and built around action—not noise.

As more startups shift away from vanity metrics and toward sustainable sales, David Brian Howard is quickly becoming the go-to partner for founders who want to fix their funnel and grow with purpose.

[chaifootsteps]

a few anons have already said what i feel about hearing they're hiring so many "amazing students." (ie. concerns of taking advantage of their inexperience to pay pennies/treat them poorly, putting too much work on them they aren't ready for, burning them out, etc.) there's another issue there about hiring students--or otherwise inexperienced artists--from a production standpoint. the hang-up of hiring inexperienced artists is just that: they're inexperienced. what happens is the more experienced artists then get intentionally or unintentionally shouldered with the added responsibility of teaching, correcting, fixing, helping, supporting, etc. the less experienced. having inexperienced artists in your pipeline can bloat it and result in extra time being taken to correct and fix mistakes, sometimes to the point of completely re-doing their work. "but artists should support each other" yes--but if you don't set-up your production--or prepare your workers--to be able to shoulder those added responsibilities you can wind up with multiple cases of burnout, disorganization, mismanagement, and workplace neglect. in the worst cases you can wind up with exhausted leads who lash out at the students who don't know any better, or unfair expectations from the higher ups that break the backs of the students who aren't yet ready or used to the workplace they've been brought into. disclaimer; having productions that can help prepare and uplift students into the industry are important, but they require a lot of patience, support, and planning to ensure a production still runs smoothly and their experience working on it is a healthy one. even mainstream productions have treated students and interns badly/taken advantage of them on productions. they're an unfortunately easy group to exploit, and spindlehorse shouldn't get a pass for being indie.

This is an extremely good point. Especially considering patience, support, and planning are all things Vivzie and the people she frequently appoints to higher up positions lack.

It's just a recipe for disaster, both for the show and these poor students who are just starting out.

[lemonylepid]

Protodermis can convert energy into a gel like substance called hemogel, or more well known by MU inhabitants as "Protoblood."

Pipelines through the body carry hemogel to places that need it, and it's stored inside matoran muscles (in the Mata Nui MU) or inside krom (in the Lihka Nui MU) and the heartlight core pumps it through said pipelines.

Across the body are contact points called "plugs" that absorb the energy from the pipelines and push it across conductors to new lines, such as across balljoints or feeding into organs like lungs.

Too much hemogel produced by overcharging (MNMU) or overeating (LNMU) causes a severe bloated feeling, and either needs to be drained or worked through, which is difficult in a bloated state. Burning energy for days in your home is a remedy most Turaga will prescribe, but trained Ga-Matoran doctors or the Kestora can properly and safely drain the excess.

The Mask of Hunger, the Avsa, can drain hemogel physically or through rapid discharging from afar. Careful when encountering wearers of this mask.

[bumbleknightsblog]

An Engineus Journey in 2024

Hey everyone,

This post isn't your typical opinion piece or how-to guide. It's more of a journey through different engines and technologies, aimed at sharing insights and providing context for my choices. I usually add some bee-related puns on Twitter (yes, Twitter, it's not "X"), but this is more of a tech discussion, so apologies in advance for less of that!

Let's start at the top. I'm bumble_knight, the current lead developer at Beehive Games, an indie studio that's been steadily growing over the last 5+ years. We're a small team driven by passion, juggling game development alongside full-time jobs and life's other demands. I understand the challenges; committing fully to indie game development isn't easy when bills and responsibilities are buzzing around, especially in an industry that's not exactly in perfect health at the moment.

Personally, I've immersed myself in game development for a while, tackling various projects across different technologies and platforms. Now fully embracing the indie life, each game I've worked on has brought its own set of challenges and rewards.

Recently, we launched our latest project, "Getting There," available on Steam, Epic, and itch, developed using Unity. Since the beginning, Unity has been our go-to engine. I've optimized Unity projects of varying scales to ensure smooth performance. However, discussions around Unity's runtime fee initially left a sour note. While Unity has made adjustments, the fee poses challenges for larger studios with higher burn rates and the future of the engine is still a bit uncertain.

To be frank, this incident reminded us that decisions were being made by individuals possibly disconnected from their consumers, potentially jeopardizing stability. Though the situation has evolved, it was a stark reality at the outset.

I embarked on a two-week technology investigation for our upcoming turn-based RPG, "Gaol Story." Initially exploring Unreal Engine, I hesitated due to the daunting task of migrating from C++ and concerns over Unreal's tendency towards bloat.

With a background in XNA, I considered returning to my roots and turned to MonoGame. However, the lack of robust editor support compared to Unity posed challenges. Originally planning extensive game customization, we utilized Dear ImGui, with Unity as our renderer. Transitioning to MonoGame's Dear ImGui implementation proved beneficial, yet grappling with its content pipeline became a hindrance, exacerbating my "engineitus" — the desire to build a perfect system without the constraints of a pre-built engine. So I moved on.

Experimenting with Godot in the past left me unimpressed with GDScript, but a team member's positive experience with it on another prototype prompted another look, in particular the C# branch. While Godot's node-based approach appealed to some, it didn't align with my workflow preferences.

Eventually, we returned to Unity for "Gaol Story," while eyeing Unreal Engine for future projects.

Reflecting on these experiences, I realized it's easy to be swayed by social media trends. However, players generally care little about the engine used; skill and execution determine a game's quality.

That's about it. I'm not entirely sure of the exact purpose of this post anymore, but if you found it useful, that's fantastic! Through this process, I set a time limit and embraced a fail-fast mentality, proving invaluable.

[thedietelf]

"I will eat until I hate myself, I will never eat until I hate your food" - Warlock pkayer, ooc, about hosts food

"giving the material plane a prostate check" -warlock

"if your docter says im going to twiddle your elemental node before a prostate check, leave, that's not a doctor" -fighter

"shouldn't have the housing market bloating like a racoon on the side of the road" -warlock, talking about filing for bankruptcy and the value of his house

"Consuming one (1) oreo binds you to a legal arbitration agreement" -warlock

"technically you're just a one piece flesh golem as well" -DM

"it takes a coven to raise a child, it takes a village to burn the coven" -fighter

"yes, no, yes, but even stupider." -DM

"...flesh golem onsie..." -warlock

"professionals at danger." "murder hobos." -fighter & dm

"Of course, a pure blood would never be racist. /s" "... that sounds like a flaw, and I don't have any of those." -witch & warlock

"one generates crab, the othet generates cancer!!!"

"this is why we need trigonometry!!!!!!" -taking about dowsing rods

"*mufasa voice* everything the sleet storm touches is fucked" -fighter

"got freezing rained on their parade (ritual)!!" -monk

"think fast chucklenuts," -warlock, casting psychic lance

"FIRE BAD" -enemy npc, a sentient flesh golem of a sort

"how many fingers am I holding up? say nya for me??" -warlock

"screaming psychic landmines, also the name of my garage band" -warlock

"i am Hence, i speak for the trees. do that again and I'll break your knees" -warlock about paladin

"the bullied child to catgirl pipeline." -artificer

"(distressed) Why am I hearing my organs?!" -witch

"what are you, a cop?" -the mantra of the party today

"so i need a permit for eggs in my fridge now?" -fighter

"thank you so much for saying the word 'kitten.' Wait, did I rewind too far?" -monk

"rather ridged in her thinking rn." -about a petrified woman

"hence? do you gotta potty??" "that's why the thinker squats" -about Hence's thinking face

"oh hes a djinn. oh excuse me, I'll pronounce it right. *Duh-jinn.*" "It's not delivery, its Digiorno." "DJail." -fighter & warlock

"

[grumpygreenwitch]

Fanfiction 15-16

Wherein things are put together, and then promptly fall apart.

Buy me a Ko-fi?

1-2-3 + 4-5 + 6-7-8-9-10 + 11-12 + 13-14 + 15-16 + 17-18-19 + 20-21 + 22-23 + 24-25 + 26-27

15

Morning found Jean asleep once again under one of those wings, the angel's head buried under a pillow, crisp sunlight spilling into the room. He reached out to brush his fingers over the crook of that arm, once again amused and charmed.

He got a wordless, sleepy moan in protest.

"There are curtains, you know," he pointed out, his voice made rough with sleep, his brogue perceptible even to his ears.

"They're all the way over there," the arm gestured vaguely. "I'm all the way over here. So are you. Jean."

"Mm."

"Not a sunflower."

"Always a sunflower," the vampire teased, and got a pillow to the face for his cheek. His angel scrabbled up just far enough to straddle him, and Jean lost all his breath to the beauty of Alyss, to the press of those legs around his hips, that groin so close to his. Wings cocked, the angel leaned down to kiss him, and Jean wound his arms around him, forearms brushing the soft down at the root of each limb.

Then Alyss was gone, heading into the bathroom. "Chere's going to be here any minute now with breakfast. Do you want him to catch you like that?"

"Man'd probably cheer," Jean muttered, but rolled to a sitting position, rubbing at his neck and trying to figure out what shape his life was taking all around him. Or what sort of future, if any, there could be for the two of them.

The future began to take shape when he came out of the shower, to find Alyss already squinting at his laptop while he held a croissant and pretended to eat it. Both their heads snapped around to a woman’s glad, high cry coming from the front lawn. "Kili!"

"That'll be Evie," Jean pointed out, rubbing at his freshly shaved face. He'd given up astonishment at how thoroughly Chere had stocked Alyss' bathroom with the vampire in mind at the point where he'd found his usual brand of toothpaste and his favorite shaving gel.

Alyss rushed to the window. From there he could see a flurry of barred owl-colored wings as an angel plummeted down and all but tackled Kliman, who was waiting on the lawn. The older angel answered with a matching cry of delight, catching the newcomer and spinning them around exuberantly.

Evelie, better known to the household as Evie, was the angel in charge of Massachusetts. She was a tall, sturdy creature with screech owl wings and very dark hair and eyes, and a direct, powerful, cheerful personality. Her skin was the color of fired clay, and she was Kliman's half-sister across a distance of several centuries. She was introduced to Alyss during lunch and seemed equally delighted to meet him.

"Lilah is escorting all my hard copy documentation over here. Well." She winked at him. "The stuff that's safe to move, anyway."

It was the first inkling Alyss got that Evie was another key stop along the escape pipeline that Kliman ran. Evie and her tech-savvy folk, as well as the contacts and friends she had in the Bay area, created new identities where possible, or simply made the old ones disappear. Alyss could see the critical usefulness of it: angels had a bad habit of getting stuck on whatever time period had seen them first hit their prime. It was usually the responsibility of their underlings, humans, vampires or angels, to keep up with the technology of the times. Evie had no such problem; her team came from people who knew the cutting edge of technology didn't leap and bound ahead of itself so much as it had strapped on jet engines and removed the brakes, and she flew in delight right along with it.

While he waited on the Massachusetts books, he worked on the Maine account. It wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected. Kliman had kept everything simple - too simple, in some cases. The very first thing Alyss had done had been data-dump every single number he could find dating back at least fifty years, bloating the books to bursting. Then he'd begun to methodically replace everything he didn't want found with harmless, but vaguely suspicious activity. Safehouses had been attached to imaginary mistress accounts; vehicles to relatives removed by six or seven degrees. He knew he was hiding a crime, perhaps one of the highest crimes any angel could commit against their own society. He couldn't make it disappear; perfect books would draw even more attention than haphazard ones. But petty sins of nepotism? No one cared about those.

He would work until Jean harassed him into breaking. Sometimes the vampire would simply drag him outside, to enjoy the advance of the season, its bluster and winds full of dry leaves, the passing herds of deer moving silently through the woods, the vicious warfare between chipmunks, the sweet and mournful calls of birds in the marsh. Sometimes they would share a meal and Jean would make agreeable noises while Alyss gushed about his work.

The vampire didn't care that he didn't understand. He cared that he could spend time with Alyss. Sometimes it strangled him, the reality of it, the old nightmare rearing up and telling him, it won't last. You'll lose him, too. Something will take him away, and there'll be nothing you can do.

But every time, as if some unseen signal had warned the angel of what went on behind the vampire's troubled green eyes, Alyss would move closer, slip his arms and his wings around Jean and kiss him, so lightly, so delicately, as if asking permission every time. And Jean would forget everything but his bird, his sunflower.

Two days after he'd gotten the Massachusetts books, Kliman called him to a meeting. Evie was still there, chatting quietly with Lilah when Alyss came into the meeting room, Jean two steps behind him. Kliman's brows went up.

"I asked him to come," Alyss preempted any protest.

"Oh, he's your Second then?" Evie seemed unfazed by this. "That's very convenient."

Alyss sputtered. "I'm nowhere near important enough to rate a Second!" he exclaimed, and Jean couldn't help but be amused. "You've got Gevaun and Lilah, I want him here."

Kliman laced her hands before her face to badly hide a grin. "Gevaun is my Second, Alyss."

"Oh, for goodness' sake." Red to his ears, Alyss sat down, primly setting his laptop and tablet before him on the table. "My preliminary report -"

"That's not why you're here," Kliman gave him a deeply affectionate look. "Alyss, why are you so bad with people?"

"Lack of practice," he admitted resignedly. "I had to choose people or numbers. It was really a terribly unfair choice."

Evie laughed. Kliman sighed and gestured for Gevaun to pour hot chocolate for them all. While they drank, she set before Alyss the plan they'd all been working on since that fateful night at the marsh: she wanted Alyss to take over for Evie in running the escape pipeline.

"No," Alyss replied at once, so terrified he blurted the truth without thinking. "No, I can't be responsible for people's lives. What if I muck it up?"

"What if there's no one, then?" Kliman replied. "I mean to make Evelie my heir, Alyss. She won't have time to do more than oversee; less even, while we find replacements for Alistaire, and a new caretaker for Maine. These people, these vampires, they deserve to have someone fully on their corner."

"Yes, someone capable!"

"Which you are."

"No, I mean someone useful!"

"Which you are," Kliman repeated, then reached out to catch the accountant's flailing hands. "You mean a warrior."

"Someone brave," Alyss strangled out.

"Alyss, none braver than the one who gave his coat away while three other people discussed shooting him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Gevaun flushed faintly, and Alyss stared at the older angel's hands. "He was cold. I'll mess up. I know numbers, not people. My head, it’s all numbers. I'll mess up and then what?"

"I believe your words were, then you make plans for when things go wrong. And you make plans for when those plans go wrong as well."

"Someone's told you an awful lot about what happened that night," Alyss protested grumpily. "There must be someone else."

"There is not. Gevaun must stay to help Evie with the transition. This operation is small out of necessity, Alyss, we need to hide what we're doing and we need to hide it very, very well. A thousand humans become vampires every year, and that's just the ones that are Made legally. Some die. Some are killed. Some think they are clever enough to escape their contract, unaware of the predator they've invited into their veins. And some very, very few find themselves bound in slavery to a true monster. They’re not many, but when you are one among a thousand you’re still very easy to find if you run. We need your expertise and they need your cleverness. And if you really think they need a warrior, well. There's one standing right behind you."

"You haven't even asked him!"

"Do I need to?" Kliman asked Jean directly.

"No," the vampire replied readily from where he was slouched against a wall. He'd been just as surprised as Alyss, but he wasn't as easily distracted by fifty other concerns as his sunflower. Kliman's reasoning made sense, and in truth he realized he should've seen it coming. The choice had always been between Evie and Rook, and Rook was too much the typical angel for Kliman to trust him with her domain.

More than that, he could see why they wanted Alyss to take over. His mind caught onto problems long before they'd actually, fully taken shape. He unraveled issues before they became such. He could keep track of vast, labyrinthine quantities of data, and put them together on the fly, making a whole that fit whatever the situation called for. If anyone could keep the escape pipeline running smoothly, it was his bird. But again they came to the one shortcoming of the young angel, and Alyss apparently understood that lack on himself better than anyone.

It didn't matter to Jean. He would fight the world for his bird. The realization struck him quietly at that moment, under the bright autumn sunlight in the tasteful meeting room: it wasn't just that he could think with Alyss nearby, it wasn't just that his nightmares went quiet. But in glimpses and hints he was catching sight at last of the man he'd once been, simply because it was the man he saw in the angel's eyes.

He shrugged. "I go where Alyss goes."

"Oh, for -!" Alyss turned on his chair to glower at him. "You're not helping!" But he was pink and flushed, and Jean could smell in the book and summer scent of his bird a profound sense of relief. Alyss would have never asked him to come, Jean realized, even while he bled at the possibility of losing him, even as he feared that the vampire might wish go his own way.

He grinned a little at his bird. "This is me helping. It makes sense and you know it."

Alyss ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and made a high-pitched sound of impotent impatience. Then he snatched for the slim folder that Kliman had set on the table between them, muttering sourly at all of them. Mainly because he already knew he'd lost the argument.

16

It wasn't a quick thing, of course. Alyss still had to work on the accounting for Massachusetts, which was incredibly complex. And he had to rebuild the Maine accounting from scratch; he refused to do anything less than hide the entire operation from its inception. But that work taught him the ropes of what he'd be doing taking over Kliman's pipeline better than any sort of training would have.

When the first snow fell over the Bay Alyss found himself moved into one of the buildings that dotted Evie's sprawling domain just past Natick. Kliman had retired to the Refuge to plan her Sleep and Lilah had gone with her; she and Gevaun would be taking turns keeping watch and helping the new angel in charge of New England. Evie and Kliman had even flown to New York to officially appraise the Archangel of North America of the changeover, which he'd graciously allowed even while mourning the loss of one of his most steadfast stewards.

Jean had overseen the work on the gatehouse lodge Alyss was given, a single-story, sprawling building lost in the woods, whatever gatehouse it once served long gone. On paper Evie had made Alyss her CFO and the vampire with him a groundskeeper. In truth, once he'd sorted through the Massachusetts books, upkeeping them took Alyss all of two hours a day, and part of that was simply sending reports to the people who actually dealt with the finances. Evie had made no effort to hide from them that the angel's real job could be dangerous, and made sure Jean understood what the vampire had already known: his real job, his only job, was to keep Alyss safe.

In working with those who, however anonymously, helped fund Kliman's pipeline, Alyss began to see the innate goodness he'd missed while doing his original job. As Jean had pointed out, the angel had been called upon only by those who didn't trust anyone else. In truth angels did care about their vampires, for the most part. The problem was two-fold, he quickly realized, and the fact that angels could be unspeakably cruel becausse there was no one to stop them wasn’t even the worst part; the biggest problem was that those who did care didn’t know what they were doing. Which was was really a very silly thing to have happening when angelkind had been making vampires for as long as they had. And that was before counting those humans who were Made without ever consenting to it.

The best part, though Alyss only admitted it to himself very quietly in the privacy of his mind, was having Jean with him. Jean, walking through the snow-clad woods full of whispers and winter sunlight. Or watching him chop wood, which was a favorite pastime of the vampire, and Alyss wasn't about to say no when the ax came out, always hoping the shirt would come off then, though it never did. Granted that Jean couldn't make tea, at least not that anyone alive could drink, and his coffee was not safe for anyone's consumption but his own, but his cocoa was nearly as good as Chere's. He couldn't make croissants at the drop of a pin, but his cornbread nearly gave Alyss an epiphany. He was a decent cook, a fair hand at cleaning, atrocious at laundry, and his love for Alyss shone on his eyes, as if the sight of his sunflower brought spring to the green of them after too long a drought. It made the angel's wings ripple every time he saw that look, the look that said he was seen, he was known, he was worth something as himself, priceless as himself.

And Alyss? Alyss was balm to Jean's heart. For the first time the vampire found himself talking, finally talking, about Moissani. About the betrayal of his Making, and the centuries of brutality that had followed.

Whenever the words wrung themselves out of him and left him shaking, exhausted and angry in their bed, it was always Alyss who was there. To hold him, to soothe him, to remind him that he was worth something, that he was himself. That his sunflower loved him without judgment, cherished him without condition, supported him without doubt. To Alyss he was not Moissani's guard dog or guinea pig. To Alyss, Jean was simply Jean. Sometimes his love for the amber-winged angel strangled him and his nightmares reared up, laughing, always laughing, at the very thought that he'd ever be able to protect Alyss. How could he possibly protect an angel that seemed unable to protect himself?

To be fair, when things did go wrong, there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.

Evie warned them that the Guild had requested leave to make inquiries of anyone who'd worked for Kliman prior to the angel's retirement. Given Gevaun had already warned her that the Hunters were sniffing around Maine because Alyss had warned Gevaun that someone was electronically sniffing around the Maine books, no one had been surprised. Jean had suggested, somewhat sarcastically, that they act surprised. But then he had as poor an opinion of the Guild as it was possible to have.

Evie offered to bring Alyss and Jean over to her Boston offices, where the wealth of bodies would throw off the Hunters' senses. But Jean had pointed out, not unwisely, that it would be suspicious if she did so. Instead Evie had sent three more vampires, including one of her own enforcers who, perky, cheerful and freckled to death, was happy to pretend to being Alyss' gal-Friday.

Alyss welcomed the two Hunters in his office, somewhat put out by the fact they'd showed up right when he should've been doing his dailies for Boston from his office. The small room in the lodge had not been fully converted to angel use; it had no windows and it boasted the old stone walls, covered in tasteful decorative knotted tapestries. Maia knocked on the door, opened it and called out, "The Guild Hunters, sir."

"Oh, for the love of prime numbers." Alyss put aside the work he'd been doing, not even looking at the two men when they came in. He'd been hoping to get some work, any work, done. "Could you not do this electronically, everything is filed electronically, and I have so much work to do -"

"Woah." The Hunters had come to a startled, bemused stop, and one of them lifted an appeasing hand. "We're not the IRS."

"I'm -" Alyss caught himself and straightened up. "I'm aware. I just. I'm working. I'm busy."

The other Hunter introduced himself with a bright smile and a firm handshake. He looked like a cowboy out of his element, dirty blond hair in need of a haircut and friendly blue eyes, a powerful, square face with a thin scar over one cheekbone. He was twice as packed in muscle as his companion, who was tawny-eyed, wiry and watchful like a wild animal, his fine black hair dyed a rainbow of colors at the tips. They were both carrying slim backpacks, and from one they pulled a tablet. The blond man, who introduced himself as Lance, did the questioning while his partner, Liam, wrote down Alyss' answers on a tablet. Alyss called for tea for all of them.

The angel's phone buzzed in his pocket, and Alyss smiled faintly at the Hunters, not really hearing what Lance was saying at that one moment.

Don't speak, Jean had told him, in between one fierce kiss and another before he retreated to the lodge's cellar. The vampire couldn't be in the same room as the Hunters; he had a price on his head that would have bought a small Caribbean island, one of the good ones. Your mouth runs away with you when you're stressed, Alyss. And it's always nothing. You keep your secrets better than anyone I've met. But these are Guild Hunters. They might be able to use the noise against you. Don't speak.

"Never heard of an angel in accounting before," Lance admitted conversationally. "Y'all are always doing more... sweeping stuff."

"Oh, I've never wanted to be the sweeping sort," Alyss declared. "I like my job, I like numbers. They behave, unlike people."

Lance snorted in amusement. "So, until Maine you just went from post to post, working books?"

Alyss nodded.

"So why stop here?"

"Evie promised I wouldn't have to deal with people," Alyss replied primly.

Lance barked out a laugh that sounded perfectly honest, and even Liam's mouth twitched as he glowered at his tablet. "Alright. We deserved that one. We'll be out of your hair as soon as we can, I promise."

Their questions were not surprising. Had anything unusual happened while he'd been in Maine? Had Kliman, Gevaun or the others ever behaved strangely? Had he seen new faces among the staff unexpectedly? Had any of the staff disappeared unexpectedly?

"People don't just disappear!" Alyss protested at that question. "Not from an angel's household."

Lance gave him an indulgent grin, but it was Liam who answered, distracted by what he was reading. "All the time, from every place. Angels are no exception."

Alyss huffed but he clung to his silence by basking in the smug feeling of knowing what Liam was trying, and failing, to do. The Hunter had been trying to hack into the angel's computers using proximity and time, and probably the office intranet. Unfortunately for him, Evie had some very interesting young folk working for her out of Cambridge. If he kept trying the Hunter was going to end up with a very fancy slab of dead electronics in his hand. Alyss' phone had not buzzed again, so Liam hadn't even tripped anything past the first level of security.

The Hunters crossed a look. Liam shrugged, and Lance stood up from his lazy slouch. For just a moment, Alyss caught a glimpse of something metal, thin and gleaming under the Hunter's winter coat.

Necklets. They'd come armed to take vampires down.

"Well, I think we've taken up enough of your time," Lance drawled amicably, offering his hand again. "No one else in your staff ever worked with Kliman or Gevaun?"

"They not my staff, they're Evie's," Alyss countered stiffly, though he shook the offered hand. "But I don't think anyone in the house worked for Kliman. Would you like to ask them?"

One of Lance's brows went up. There was no guile to the angel, no deception to his words. A few times his innate awareness, the sixth sense that detected lies when spoken, had tried to buzz, but it hadn't picked up anything really telling. It didn't help that the angel with the amber wings was easily flustered and tremendously literal. 'Sheltered' was the first word that came to mind when the Hunter thought of the accountant; Alyss had worked for some of the worst, most suspicious, least liked of angels in their society, and yet he seemed to have noticed none of his employers' sins. For the angel to be offering such ready access to the people around him could only mean they had nothing to hide, either.

He threw a look at Liam, who shrugged with ill grace. The hacker had been sure he could get into the angel's systems if he could only get close enough to hit the intranet, or an unprotected connection through a printer, a phone, the heating system. Apparently, he'd vastly overestimated his skills. "Just your gal. I imagine she runs the staff for you. Just a couple of questions."

"Of course." Alyss led them out, and Maia perkily, cheerfully, smilingly answered all of Lance's questions as if she'd worked for the accountant since he'd set foot on Massachusetts and not just for about an hour that day. The conversation degenerated into not-so-subtle flirting until Liam cleared his throat pointedly and Lance sighed, leading the way out. At that point, out of his office, Alyss didn't see a reason not to escort the Hunters out. Some part of him was deeply paranoid about those necklets; this was his home, these were, however short-term the loan might be, his people, his staff, his charges.

The day was brightly sunny and an utter lie; as soon as Alyss set a foot outside the cold made him gasp and he wrapped his wings around himself with a huff.

"You cold?" Lance sounded puzzled, and both the Hunters looked surprised. "I thought angels didn't get cold."

"I wish someone had told my parents that. Obviously they missed some important bits during the crafting process."

Liam snorted inelegantly and Lance chuckled, caught off-guard. "Well. Maybe we can help with that." He rummaged through their backpack.

"Oh, you really don't have to, I'm going right back inside, I'm late for my -"

The words died a terrible death as all of Alyss' breath exploded out of him. It wouldn't have been any more efficient if the Hunter had punched him, instead of offering a neat, folded parcel, tied with twine, a single printed page secured atop it. Someone had gone to some effort to set up the package just so, someone had told the Hunter exactly how and when to deliver it. And Alyss had just realized that all of his vampiric protection was still inside the lodge because, after all, their angel was just escorting the Hunters out to their car.

Alyss watched his hands move as if they were someone else's, taking the cloak he'd given to that unknown young vampire, so long ago it seemed, back at the marsh in Kliman's property. It had been washed, pressed, folded. The printout atop it was likely from his mother's social media, both of them somewhere in Belgium; he honestly didn't remember where. It had been winter and she'd been fussing with the clasp and folds of that same cloak, playing the part of doting mother to the camera.

The Hunters said nothing but Alyss realized Liam had moved until he was just at the edge of the angel's field of view, and just out of range of a casual swat of those amber-colored wings.

The necklets hadn't been to capture, Alyss realized. They'd come expecting to fight off vampiric security to get to him.

"Your presence's requested at Archangel Tower," Lance said very, so very calmly.

"I should like to get some things for the trip," Alyss was astonished at how calm he sounded.

"I think we'd all be happier if you went now, and we didn't have to break out the bolos," Lance said in the same even tone.

"I need to let my people know that I'm leaving," Alyss protested.

Lance gave him a long, level look before sighing a little. There was something very like wry amusement in the Hunter's face. "Alyss, that's kinda what we're trying to avoid."

"May I make a phone call? Right here, with you two listening?"

Lance looked at Liam, who shrugged. "Brief," the blond Hunter warned him.

Alyss nodded tightly, and fished his phone out of his pants.

He was already on the network monitor. It was nothing to key in the passcode for the killswitch and hit enter. The tablet in Liam's backpack blared a muffled warning, and the Hunter scrabbled for it.

"What did you do," Lance demanded, surging forward.

Alyss reeled back, dropped his phone, and stepped on it as hard as he could. Then for good measure he kicked the ruin of it into a bank of slushy snow.

"No!" Lance barked, a hand snatching at the angel's throat in a rough, angry grip.

Alyss didn't fight him.

"Fuck!" Liam was examining the tablet. "He fried the network. The whole place's gone dark. Every computer here's now worthless."

"I can't leave for New York with you holding onto me like that," Alyss said hoarsely, and only then did Lance seem to realize the grip he had on the angel. "And I think you better leave before the staff figure out what's happened."

"Raphael's going to have words with you, Alyss," Lance warned him tightly. "No amount of data burn's gonna help you with that."

"I'm aware." Alyss could feel himself shaking, and he knew it was not the cold. "But it's an hour between here and New York, and that's if I don't hit a headwind. An hour can be an eternity if you handle it just right, Hunter."

"It's over. You know that, right?"

"If it truly were over, you wouldn't feel the need to rub my nose into it."

The door to the lodge opened and Maia peeked out. "Alyss?"

"I think you'd better go."

"Lance," Liam called out, his voice tight. "She's the one we saw. There's three more we didn't and one of them smells real fucking old."

Lance ground his teeth angrily before spinning around and hurrying to their car. The Hunters drove away sharply, tires spitting gravel, while Alyss stood very still on the driveway. He was afraid if he moved his legs, which were apparently made of gelatin, were going to dump him on his face upon the muddy shale.

"Alyss?" Maia had rushed out to his side. There was a very black gun on her hands and a decidedly hard expression on her freckled, sunny face.

"I need your phone, please," he croaked, clinging to the cloak for a moment before spreading it out with a sharp snap; the printout of the photograph went fluttering away as he threw it over his wings and settled it on his shoulders. He was unsurprised to find Evie's number on the quick-dial list. "Evie, they know. I don't know how much they know but they know, and it's kind of... It's my fault."

"Alyss, what -"

"I burned the databanks here and fried the communication authorizations. You'll be hearing from all the other safehouses soon. They need to take all their electronic files offline. Now." He stalked into the lodge; the rest of the vampires were beginning to appear from their nondescript hiding places where they'd been pretending to be staff with varying degrees of success.

"But -"

"I have..." Alyss came to a dead stop and felt as if he might faint. "I've been summoned to New York."

"Alright," Evie's voice went taut. "We'll just put you in the system, then. Get you out to China, it's chaos over there -"

"Me? Me!" Alyss leaned against a wall and felt unexplainable laughter bubble up inside him. "How do you suggest I hide the wings and pass myself as someone else? I'm not a vampire, Evie, I can't be someone else, I can't be human, I can't pass. Do you realize what they'd do to the pipeline to get to me?"

"We can't let an archangel get to you, Alyss! They'll rip the pipeline information right out of your head!"

"They will," Alyss felt as if he couldn't breathe. "And it'll do them no good. But you'll have to trust me on that."

"But then how are we supposed to help you!" she cried out.

"You aren't. You're on damage control now, that's all you should be doing. I need to get going -"

"Going where?" Jean's voice demanded.

Alyss closed his eyes for a long moment. This. This had been the reason he'd been trembling, the reason he couldn't catch his breath. There was his vampire, all that was good, all that nearly three hundred years of solitude had been waiting and hoping for, all unknowing.

All taken away in the blink of an eye.

He hung up and gave the phone back to Maia, trying to find something to say, anything to say that would sum up the hundreds of things, of feelings and thoughts that he'd not yet shared with Jean. He'd believed, foolishly, that they'd have forever. But forever had come to a very abrupt halt. Alyss opened his mouth, closed it, opened it and closed it again. He couldn't even turn around to face Jean.

"Say something!" Jean demanded, a plea barely hidden in the words.

"I have to go." Alyss turned to look at him and the rest of the bewildered staff. "Get back to Boston and to Evie. Now." They either trotted or ran to obey him and he rushed into the office.

"Go where? What happened, Alyss?" Jean followed him into the office.

"They know, the Hunters know, so I imagine someone knows, I think they caught one of the vampires from Maine and now they know something, maybe not everything but they know, and they found my cloak so they know about me, at least, and that's not good at all, but -"

"So you're running?"

The fury in the words staggered Alyss as if he'd been punched. Once again he was left breathless, staring at Jean in shock even as the vampire stared at him in disbelief.

"You can't run from this fight, Alyss!"

"I'm not running!"

"Then where are you going?"

He couldn't tell Jean, Alyss realized. Because his vampire would then demand to come with him, and the Archangel would tear him apart. Or hand him over to the Guild. "I'm not running," he repeated.

"It sure fucking looks like you are!" Jean shouted. Nothing in him wanted to believe it. Nothing. His angel was so clever, so bright, so funny, so kind. But if there was one thing Jean had known about Alyss from the beginning was that his sunflower was not a fighter. And four centuries of trauma were rearing up inside him to remind him that angels were cruel, and selfish, and liars. Whispering that the only thing angels were good at was treachery.

You can't run away from every fight that finds you.

I absolutely can, and I absolutely will.

"Do you trust me?" Alyss shouted back.

"I thought I could!"

Jean saw his angel flinch and felt as if someone had dumped him into a cold well. What the hell was he doing? This was his bird, his sunflower, the one who saw him for who he truly was, who he wanted to be. "Alyss, what is going on. That's all I need to know. What. is going. on."

I thought I could. The words had been an unexpected, searing knife cutting right through Alyss. So. He'd been... nothing, in the end. Perhaps not a trophy but likely nothing more than a pleasant diversion. A rope for the vampire to dig himself out from under his past. He should have been angry, Alyss realized, he should have been furious. At least if he'd taken up with one of the suitors his parents had found for him they would have both been honest on where they stood.

But he loved Jean. He loved him no matter what the vampire might feel, or not, for him. It was, the truest part of his brain told him, why it hurt so much to hear those four words. Love doesn't beget love, his father had once told him in the manner of someone handing out deep wisdom. Best not to love at all.

But he did love, Alyss realized. Unwisely, apparently, but he did love. "I don't even know where to begin." Which was a lie, a terrible one. He already knew what he had to do.

"Not running would be a good place." Jean bit back any further words and dragged in a long breath, trying to master his own runaway trauma, knowing it, not him, was the one talking. Already the hurt, lost look in those sweet brown eyes was making him regret everything he'd said and done since he'd barged out of the cellar to the ruckus upstairs. "Alyss, I didn't -"

"I need to talk to Evie," the angel whispered numbly, patting himself down. "I left it... Where did I..."

"I'll get it," Jean said automatically, moving behind the desk to look for the damned phone.

He was still rummaging through folders and paperwork when he heard the door close and lock and for a moment, staring at it, he couldn't believe what he was seeing or what had just happened.

The office was one of two rooms in the lodge that had not been changed overmuch. The stone walls of it and the cellar remained, to a thickness of nearly a foot. There were no windows to the office, only the door, which looked like a gracious oak example of its kind, but wasn't: it was thin oak paneling over a reinforced blast door running on hydraulic hinges. It was a panic room, supposed to protect someone from the wrath of an angry angel, if they ever found out the truth of what the pipeline did.

In a pinch, it was a very good cage for an angry vampire.

Jean leaped over the desk. "No, no, nonono, Alyss! No! What are you - Don't!" He slammed full-force into the door. Unsurprisingly, it didn't budge. "Alyss!"

"I'm not running." His angel's voice was muffled, but no thickness of steel could hide the heartbreak in it. "I wish you could believe that. I wish you did trust me."

"Alyss!" Every old fear and far too many new ones were rising up inside Jean, strangling him, whispering a new, deadly truth: he'd done this. He'd done it to the both of them. He banged on the door. "Alyss!"

"I'll call someone from New York to let you out."

"New York, wha- " Jean abruptly realized there could be only one reason for Alyss to be going to New York. The breadth and depth of his paranoia-driven stupidity staggered him and launched him shoulder-first at the door. "NO!"

But Alyss was no longer there to hear him.

[kulvefaggoth]

There's a lot of things i would like to see in the next MonHun game but a cool thing they could add is a sub weapon system. These would not be the same as the main weapon types but simple weapons and tools you could use in addition to your main weapon. Stuff like a sword a shield a gun/slingshot/crossbow.

The idea would be that these would complement your choice of weapon by either synergizing with it or covering a gap in their skillset like if you're fighting a Rathalos using a GS you could take a ranged option to allow you some damage while he's flying or for you to knock him out of the air with well placed shots. Or if you're using a hammer you could take a small sword to allow you to cut the monter's tail. Usually they could require you to sheathe your weapon to use but also certain weapon combos should allow you to transition to your subweapon seamlessly or something like that.

These could be lightly customizable with a system similar to the rampage weapons from base Rise so you don't have to make them from scratch (also i think they would opt for something like this because making several sub-weapon models on top of all the main weapons and gear could add a lot of bloat to the 3D modeling pipeline). Ideally these could be introduced once you reach high rank.