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Build 6.15
Bryce Kiley
2011, January 22: Brockton Bay, NH, USA
Really, I was impressed with Uber and Leet. They’d managed to stay in the race, and even had the most varied arsenal, myself excluded for obvious reasons. That was a lot more than most people expected if PHO’s shit-talking was anything to go by.
Alas, I was quite used to being electrocuted. Thunderbolt and Shock Wave were SAINT’s bread and butter and we sparred regularly. To me, spontaneous lightning strikes were just things that happened every other day.
Which wasn’t to say it didn’t hurt. I got a nasty shock out of it and my UI blared warnings at me as I tumbled along the dirt road. My core systems were still functional, but there was simply no easy way to handle that much electrical energy being deposited onto my person all at once. At least, not while I wasn’t grounded.
Leet probably assumed all targets would be, that most of the energy would get soaked up by the ground and the rest would act as an EMP. Unfortunately for me, I skated on pyrobloin. I didn’t have much choice other than to take the full lightning bolt.
The most important thing they managed to ruin was my barrier module. It took the brunt of the attack, as it was designed to, but ate up the last of its charge in exchange. For the final leg of this race, I’d be relying on Protect and the natural durability of my raid suit to see me through.
Then again, I didn’t have much left after that Meteor Impact, anyway. Blitzing a giant lava monster was the single funnest thing I’d done tonight, but I did fuck myself a bit.
Maybe I should have just shot it with a Muggy Ball. Oh well, it was a bit late to regret my actions.
I dipped my way around a rock as a worm made of sand and gravel rose up to swallow me. Leaping into the air, I turned my body until I was parallel with the ground and staring up at the fucked up moon the xiaolin showdown had created.
I kicked off a small brick of pyrobloin as I curled my stomach. The impromptu sit-up altered my center of gravity, flinging it forward and giving me just enough hang time to avoid the maw of the worm. It was close enough that I could have reached out and touched its dusty hide.
Landing, I let out a whoop of excitement. Up ahead was the mountain proper, riddled with countless tunnels of varying sizes. “Was that supposed to be the lightning bolt from Mario Kart? It’s supposed to shrink you, not be an EMP. What an amateur. You’re never going to stop being made fun of at this rate, Leet.”
“Fuck you too! Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a shrink ray?” Leet raged.
“Can’t be that hard. Sounds like a skill issue.”
“Yeah? You do it, then, asshole.”
I cackled. How could I resist that setup?
I scanned the mountain’s face. The tunnels probably linked up with each other. These worms exited in all directions. That gave me an idea. No one expected me to stay on the tracks, anyway.
Leaping into the air, I turned so I could face my competition. I pulled out my ray gun and flicked the revolver setting. This sounded like a hilarious way to unveil my shrink ray. And well, ignoring my intrusive thoughts wasn’t how I’d gotten this far. Laughing like a loon, I held it to my own head.
“Fuck this. Fuck you all. If you can’t stay true to the source, I’ll just do it for you.” So saying, I pulled the trigger.
I went from a respectable five and a half feet–the regalia and helmet added a few inches–to the size of a walnut. It was a uniquely disorienting experience, not because I couldn’t compensate, but because the world suddenly became exponentially bigger.
Yet, I could not lose my balance even now. I flipped like a coin and oriented myself towards the smallest tunnel I could find. It must have been a super-tiny sandworm because the diameter was only as big as a grown man’s arm. Which was good. Once I got inside, there wasn’t any way for anyone to hinder me.
Uber must have realized that as well because he didn’t let himself gawk for long. He slammed his hand on a button on the dashboard. Knowing those guys, I bet it was Bowser-shaped.
The front of their kart opened up again. Admittedly, it’d already been a bit dinged up after their chain chomp; I was surprised they had anything else inside. Yet, they did. They had an entire compartment beneath their kart, from which I heard the sound of thrusters.
Then, out came a giant, green, spiked shell. Or, parts of a shell. Five missiles burst forth in a specific pattern before they were pulled together, probably with that gravity tech Leet used all race to stay on his kart. The missiles morphed a bit, rounding out and growing spikes to form Bowser’s iconic shell.
This must have been Bowser’s special move in Double Dash, or their best approximation of it. If Mario had his special, that giant fireball, then it stood to reason that the koopa king had his own. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where Leet made one for himself but not for his best mate.
It was a novel way of fitting the oversized explosive in the kart. By launching separate missiles and having them assemble in midair, it allowed them to save space and distribute weight more evenly throughout the kart. I wondered where Leet had gotten the inspiration because this was a genuinely novel application of tech he’d already shown before.
Well, it wasn’t all that practical, of course. A composite missile like that wasn’t any more destructive than a single, large one. It was overengineered to the point of impracticality, but for the pair who cared most about fidelity to their video game of choice, it was a good idea.
“Nothing personal, but we’re winning this race, Creed,” Uber said with an excited laugh. “Here’s to hoping you can survive this.”
I raced ahead. My overall speed had dropped markedly, a function of my size. It was one of the downsides of riding regalia; so much was dependent on my stride. “No worries, man. Better me than anyone else. Besides, I had fun and this looks like a neat way to cap things off.”
“You’re an adrenaline junkie, huh? Ever consider skydiving?”
“If at first you don’t succeed, it’s not for you. Seriously? That shit sounds boring.”
“Fair enough.”
I made it, but barely. My walnut-sized body dove into the dirt tunnel as the Bowser shell gained on my position. It, damn near the size of a whole-ass apartment building compared to my current height, crashed into the mountain with a deafening boom. I formed a hasty Protect and braced myself for what came next.
Then, the shell exploded, because of course it did. Five missiles worth of Leet’s special explosive payload crashed against the mountain. I didn’t know how many tons of TNT each missile equated to, but it was enough to completely collapse my section of the mountainside.
Given my current diminutive size, the pressure wave crashed into me like a tsunami. It shattered my Protect instantly and I was sent hurtling down the tunnel. The shell was the powder and hammer. The tunnel was the barrel. I was the undersized bullet, bouncing around randomly against the walls.
I tried to negate the impacts by riding out the pressure wave, that was what the Rumble Regalia was good at, but there were limits. In the confined space, the best I could do was to cushion the blow. Even then, I heard something crack. I felt my arm snap at the wrist as I tried to catch myself against the wall. A durable suit didn’t mean a durable body.
I bit the inside of my cheek to avoid screaming in pain. The taste of iron filled my mouth. This wasn’t new. I hurt myself worse whenever I trained my Road. That Flygon bastard in Damascus literally ripped my radius and ulna apart with what amounted to an oversized power drill. Still hurt like a bitch, but pain was an old friend by now.
I skidded to a stop and ran a quick diagnostics check. The comms were, thankfully, still functional. Now that the ringing in my ears had passed, I could hear their voices trickle in.
“Creed? Creed? Are you okay?” Sabah called worriedly. “Oh god, if you fuckers actually hurt him, I’m going to kill you both.”
“What the fuck? He literally asked for it,” Uber yelped.
“Let’s hope you bastards didn’t skimp on your shields.”
“No need for that, Maven. I’m fine,” I cut in before Sabah could make good on the threat. We’d left APEP’s S-class ordinance back at the Gullrest, but that wasn’t to say she wasn’t dangerous. “I just got banged up a bit.”
“Creed? You’re okay!”
“Of course I’m okay. I can heal myself, remember? Just finish the race and have fun, Maven.”
“I swear to god; you’re the most frustrating son of a bitch in the world. Do you have any idea what that looked like? They blew up the mountain!”
“It was more like a quarter of a mountainside,” Uber tried to defend himself.
“Shut up. You want napalm? I have napalm.”
“Yes, ma’am. Shutting up, ma’am.”
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear until now,” I mused. That’s how I knew she was really pissed; she’d gone full big sister mode, height notwithstanding. “Sorry for worrying you, Maven. Really, I did promise that no one’s going to die, right? And you know how I feel about promises.”
“You better be okay, Creed. I don’t want to tell The GOAT that you got yourself blown up playing real life Mario Kart,” she said. Truthfully, we had no idea if Amy was asleep or awake. Knowing her though, she’d see this first thing in the morning regardless.
The race continued apace even as I settled in to give myself a checkup. One hand for Colonel Mustang’s ignition-based alchemy, the other hand for organic alchemy. I’d never been happier to have taken that precaution because the shattered Protect was a bigger problem than I’d let on.
In short, I was tapped, damn near completely out of aura. There was a reason most pokemon didn’t spam Protect constantly. Projecting aura like that was obscenely costly, especially when an attack was heavy enough to break it completely. I’d spent quite a lot of aura turning myself into a comet earlier; I simply didn’t have enough for a blanket Recover.
Instead, I ran my hand along my broken arm. With a wince of pain, I wrenched the bones back into place and mended them with a hasty bit of alchemy. The muscles were still torn so I wouldn’t be using my right arm for the rest of the race, but that was fine. It just needed to look pristine for my worrywart partner.
X
Sabah Azimi
I thumbed APEP’s missiles, the incendiary variant. Turned out, “not good enough for S-class disasters” was a far cry from “harmless.” There was a whole lot of wiggle room between the two, actually. I had a feeling Amy would have vetoed a lot more of APEP’s arsenal had she bothered to read the briefings we gave her in full.
Bryce’s last two specializations had taught me more about the fine art of ballistics and creative ordinances than I’d ever thought possible. And it really was an art. Every type of bullet he had in his fancy revolver had been converted to micro rockets, stacked neatly in speedloaders and sealed inside dimensional storage pockets.
Still, I held back. I was supposed to be the healer, or at least, the diagnostician. Already, PHO called me the reasonable one, as if they expected me to be the one to keep Creed’s nonsense in check. I couldn’t just turn Uber and Leet into slag for dropping a cliffside on Sierra’s little brother.
Instead, I took my anger out on the sandworms that rose from the ground to impede me. Some of them were large enough to swallow APEP whole, but they were still made of sandstone in the end. The faster this race was over, the sooner I could go strangle the idiot.
Which idiot was still up in the air.
“Out of my way,” I growled softly. My fingers danced on APEP’s controls as the sky was filled with the sound of dozens of shrieking missiles.
These were unlike the ones I'd been using until now. They were tiny warheads sealed inside of bigger warheads, four per cluster. The main warheads opened to release the cluster after traveling a set distance. Then, each micro-missile could lock on to a specific target for maximum spread and efficiency.
Apparently, conventional militaries had them, too. They were called MIRVs, or “multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles,” but the terminology didn’t work for these since they didn’t exit and reenter the earth’s atmosphere.
Regardless of what Bryce called them, they were really satisfying to use. The entire mountainside was filled with the sound of explosions. Fireballs bloomed like flowers in a meadow. It felt as if we’d all been shoved inside a giant’s popcorn kettle, with admittedly more explosives.
When I was done, the track wasn’t even discernible under all the rubble and free-floating dust. I’d missed the mountain Bryce was in, of course. And if Uber and Leet had a few close calls, well, message sent.
The sandworms? What sandworms?
“The finish line is somewhere downhill, right?” I asked the moon.
“Holy shit… Restraint. Learn it, woman,” Announcer Moon muttered.
“Hmm? Did you say something?”
“Whatever. Yes, the finish line is downhill.”
“Lovely, thank you.”
I revved APEP’s engines and drove straight into the cliffside. Spikes deployed from the wheels, anchoring me to the sandstone as I ignored the rubble-filled tracks altogether. This race had gone long enough.
Besides, everyone else was probably running on fumes, if they were still in this at all. I was pretty sure the Merchants hadn’t recovered.
“Say, Moon, who’s even in the race now?” I asked as I passed Uber and Leet.
“Everyone. Honestly? It’s impressive how little damage Leet’s little lightning bolt did,” Announcer Moon said, laughing. “Even Squealer’s truck is still running. Slowly, but it’s running.”
“Of course it is. The metal body acts as a Faraday cage. Lightning does strike cars on occasion, you know. It might damage electrical systems or the tires, but unless you’re touching metal directly when it happens, it’s not going to kill you.”
“A car buff, are you? Well, whatever the case, she’s still in it. What’s weirder is that Armsmaster is as well.”
“I used an electromagnetic current to redirect most of the charge,” the heroic tinker grunted. “It has proven to be an effective, multi-purpose defense throughout this race.”
“You’re fucking with me. That shouldn’t work,” Leet complained. “The lightning’s an EMP that bypasses conventional hardening methods!”
“Emphasis on ‘conventional.’ Even had the bolt struck with full force, my power suit is highly insulated and my bike’s motor system is almost entirely mechanical. An EMP is unlikely to destroy either.”
“Ugh, see, Uber? I said we should build a stronger Lakitu!”
“We didn’t know what protections they had, man,” his partner replied. “Better safe than sorry. Besides, it’s more fun when everyone has a shot at crossing the finish line.”
“You suck so goddamn much. I could’ve at least taken out Squealer.”
“If anyone’s car is purely mechanical, I feel like it’d be Squealer’s. She probably survived off pure luck.”
That invited another round of swearing from the newly recovered Merchant. A salvo of trash, green shells, and Miss Militia’s grenades rained across the surface of the cheese-shaped mountain. The dust made it damn near impossible to see so I wondered how any of them managed to aim at anything at all.
Fools, the lot of them. I wasn’t the best driver, I knew that, but I did have the best car, and I wasn’t obsessed with blowing other people up. It also helped that I didn’t mind quicksand or other hazards so I could simply drive right through them.
Now that I thought about it, APEP had a drill function. It was an all-terrain vehicle in the most literal sense. I could probably dig straight through to Bryce, but I thought better of it. I didn’t think I could find him inside the mountain. Even if I did, I wasn’t sure if I could stop before running him over. He’d never let me live it down if I did that.
I cut through the surface of the mountain while the others crammed themselves in through the winding tunnels. Driving while my spiked wheels hooked onto the cliff face was slower, but if it meant I didn’t have to navigate through that mess, then I’d take it.
Soon, APEP leapt over a ledge and onto the canyon pass that marked the final stretch. The Third Arm Sash stretched out to form the finish line, literally allowing the victor to claim their prize.
Behind me, the ArmsCycle burst from one of the tunnels. Its headlights flickered off as it entered the light.
Our lunar emcee counted us down: “And here we have the home stretch! Maven up front! Armsmaster gaining in the winding canyon! Uber just came out of the tunnel! Will we see an upset? Will Maven defy the odds and take home the gold?”
I felt laughter bubble inside. It was the sound of disbelief and triumph in equal measure. I hadn’t thought I could win, not really.
I’d had APEP for barely a week and it wasn’t as if I got to practice handling it in races like this. Sure, no one else did either, but I’d thought my lack of experience would bite me harder than it had.
All else aside, there was Bryce. Creed. The crazy son of a bitch who thought a “xiaolin showdown” was an appropriate way to settle who the best tinker in the city was. He said he had SAINT off doing other things, that the distraction was necessary, but I knew the truth. He wanted this, wanted a way to cut loose.
APEP passed a few more tunnels, the holes in this Swiss cheese of a mountain. I didn’t know what did it, but one caught my eye in particular. It was small, only as thick as a human arm. I almost paid it no mind. All the racers were accounted for… except one…
I froze. APEP kept driving, but I froze. I saw something leap out and catch the corner of my windshield. It was blurry with the dirt, but I recognized the burnt-orange gleam of his visor, and that ridiculous cape of his.
“No way. Moon, where is Creed?” I asked, already knowing the answer. He was the size of a walnut right now.
“Hmm? Oh, I did forget about him, didn’t I? Silly me,” he said, in a way that implied exactly the opposite.
“You didn’t forget.”
“No, but it was funnier not to say anything.”
“You're a bastard.”
“Sweetheart, I'm an entertainer.”
“I don't get it. Where's Creed?” Leet asked. “Did he bail? Did one of us run him over?”
I knew the answer. Just to be petty, I turned on the windshield wipers. A satisfying thunking noise filled the air.
“Really, Maven?” Bryce muttered as the windshield wipers smacked him on the head repeatedly.
“Really, Creed?” I shot back glibly. “You just can’t let me have nice things, can you?”
X
Colin Wallis
This was, dare I say it, fun. I seldom got to cut loose like this. Being a Protectorate hero, or any law enforcement officer, was about taking measured steps forward. Maintaining the status quo often mattered more than immediate gains. To that end, restraint was paramount.
Tonight bucked the trend. I got to test many of my new inventions. The adjustable tires performed well. The bike’s electromagnetic shields were adequate, if energy-intensive. The gyroscopic stabilizer in the sidecar also seemed to be functional, pending Miss Militia’s feedback. Lastly, the targeting and combat algorithm in my helmet passed this field test.
Altogether, I could consider this a productive session. Nothing I had was especially flashy, but that was the key, I’d found: Stable, high-performance technology was more preferable to brief moments of glory. Tinkers who treated their tech like fireworks or bombs inevitably fizzled out early in their careers.
Just ahead, Maven closed on the finish line. My helmet calculated nineteen hundred yards, a little over a mile. For a hundred mile race, we were in the very last stretch. Even assuming she’d used the entirety of whatever passed for nitro to her cola-car, its standard speed was already impressive. Passing Maven using my bike alone was impossible at this juncture.
Then, I heard the moon’s comment. I’d taken some comfort that I’d beaten Creed while relying on my own prowess as a tinker. Kid Win had made some contributions, but everything from the ideas to the primary construction had been mine.
But I was not second. I was third. He wasn’t even racing anymore, simply lounging atop Maven’s windshield like a parasite. There was a conceit to it that I could not forgive.
I grunted in annoyance as I reached for the key. “Miss Militia, hold tight. We’re winning this.”
She dismissed her rifle, morphing it into a combat knife at her hip. A specialized harness pulled her back into her seat. “I was wondering when you were going to use that.”
“An ace in the hole should be saved for the last moment, when none can respond.”
“True enough. Let’s show them that you’re not the only great tinker in the Protectorate.”
It was true. I said I hadn’t made too many changes to the bike. As a focal tinker, I couldn’t; it was simply too inefficient for me to work on an extended project like the ArmsCycle. I added modules and relatively minor adjustments that could be repurposed into my own armor, but I never touched the chassis.
That, I left to Kid Win. He’d grown by leaps and bounds since Creed told him his specialization. There was a bit of poetry in this, in Creed’s defeat coming at the hands of the Ward. After all, Creed himself had tapped the boy as a rival of sorts.
Grabbing the ignition key, I twisted it far to the right. Golden light erupted from the ignition. Patterns of shimmering gold spread out across my bike, at odds with my preferred cobalt-blue. Then, several things happened all at once.
First, Miss Militia’s sidecar folded behind and above the rear tire. The fender protecting the tire tucked itself neatly beneath and into a slot in the bottom of the sidecar. At the same time, panels opened along the sidecar, providing further connection ports. This reduced drag and aligned the ports with the ArmsCycle’s central axis, providing better stability for what came next.
Then, several of Kid Win’s more viable tinkertech teleported to our position. His teleporter was a work of art. No matter how fast he was moving, the teleporter would dimensionally transport, orient, and connect the required piece from his lab directly to his armor in the desired configuration. Or in this case, my bike.
The eight anti-grav thrusters he used in his hoverboard attached themselves, four per side. Two went on the central disk of the bike’s tire hubs. Two more supported the chassis directly. They connected at precisely the same time to provide equal and opposite force so as to not destabilize our forward momentum.
Then, an oversized booster, more akin to a jet engine than anything that belonged on a road-legal vehicle, formed around the sidecar in sequential parts. Each individual part connected to the ports in a configuration that made zero sense to me, but Kid Win assured was vital.
The sidecar wasn’t originally a sidecar. It used to be a nest, a mount for something Kid Win called an “Alternator Cannon.” He’d been found with the plans post-fugue after his last interaction with Creed. Director Piggot had taken one look at it and prohibited its deployment for anything outside A or S-class crises.
So naturally, he’d been thrilled when I approached him to remake the cannon. Director Piggot had prohibited its use as a cannon. If it got remodeled to fit a sidecar, and act as a last second booster, well, that was no longer a cannon, was it?
“Configuration complete,” Miss Militia reported, reading from the interface installed into the nest. “You’re good to go, Armsmaster.”
“Understood. Thrusters active in three, two, one,” I counted down.
“Wait, that’s allowed?” Creed complained petulantly. It was a beautiful sound. “Oi, he’s teleporting crap from the Rig!”
“I don’t see why not. I let you have your hammerspace, didn’t I?” the moon said, ruling against its… creator? “Dimensional hijinks are perfectly acceptable and have always been. Don’t get salty now that someone’s better at the game than you.”
“That is such bullshit, but fine. I guess Halbeard can have the wu.”
I squeezed the throttle. A torrent of blue fire erupted from behind Miss Militia. As the Alternator Cannon, the nest was supposed to brace against the force to hover in place, giving Kid Win a stable platform to aim from. As the sidecar and booster, there was no such thing. We relied on the anti-grav thrusters to keep us stable, but otherwise rocketed forward.
Immediately, we went from a manageable two hundred miles an hour to well over six hundred. It was only because of the safeties built into the bike that Miss Militia and I weren’t turned into slurry from the sudden acceleration.
Even then, it was a close thing. I passed Maven, then Creed as he leapt from the windshield. He grew mid-flight, his regular height adding precious inches to the photo finish.
His finger almost grazed the sash, but when the smoke cleared, the sash was in my hand, not his.
“And what a photo finish that was. We’ve got the Protectorate pals in first! Then Creed! Maven! The gamer gremlins! And the crackhead trio doesn’t finish the race,” the moon shouted. “I mean, I suppose I could let them finish, but I’ve had my fun. Good night, everyone.”
I came to a dizzying stop as the world shifted around us once more. Kid Win’s additions certainly worked, but it was a good thing I’d waited until the last moment to use them. I estimated perhaps four extra seconds worth of fuel, and that was if my bike didn’t break down from the stress such speeds put on it.
The world rumbled. Then, time seemed to reverse itself. Our announcer withdrew into the sky. It turned around, hiding the disturbing grin in the dark side of the moon once more. The three mountains shrank and sank back into the asphalt. The balloon banner that the college kids made reformed itself. Before we could say a word, we were back on campus.
It was disorienting in the extreme. One second, we'd barely crossed the finish line. Next, we stood at the school’s south lawn, as if it had all been a dream.
Of course, no one could deny what had happened. Our vehicles looked like they'd escaped a warzone. My bike was running on fumes. Maven’s racecar needed a new paint job. Uber and Leet's kart needed a new grill. The dumpdozer, which had been transferred to us again, was missing large sections of its armored paneling.
And then there was the sash in my hand. It was blue, about six feet long, and quite stretchy. More importantly, it was proof that I’d won. No, that we, the Protectorate, won.
I couldn’t help it. I shot Creed a confident smirk. “I do believe this makes me the best tinker in Brockton Bay.”
His grumpy middle finger was the most satisfying sight I’d seen in a long time.
Author's Note
This concludes the chapter, and the arc. Except maybe a PHO chapter. Feel free to leave questions, troll posts, memes, and everything else. Hope you guys enjoyed this weird segment. I’m still not sure what possessed me to write a Mario Kart race, but it felt appropriate.
While writing this chapter, I learned that commercial planes are expected to get struck by lightning multiple times per year. They have conductive exterior plating that channels the charge through one of the extremities, likely a wing tip, and away from the plane. This keeps passengers and fuel tanks safe.
Bryce… isn’t a plane. Just because it works for planes doesn’t mean it works for Bryce. It’s something he’ll have to remedy eventually but he hasn’t seen a need to build a specific counter for that yet.
I had to check Bryce’s height in my story notes. He was 14 at the start of the story so was only 5’ 2”. He’s since grown a bit more than an inch and put on a fair bit of muscle from all that exercise. His size is the biggest reason people assumed he was Wards-age early on.
What Sabah said about lightning strikes and cars is true according to the National Weather Service.
Animal Fact: The water deer is a type of deer native to China and Korea. There are two subspecies (Chinese and Korean, obviously), and though they are in the cervid (deer) family, they get their own tribe, genus, and species because they’re so weird.
For starters, they only weigh about 20-31 pounds. Newborn fawns are small enough that you could carry one in your palms. They’re cute, so long as you ignore the tusks.
Yes, tusks. Like musk deer, they have big ol’ fangs. Bucks can have fangs as long as 2.2 inches on average (3.1 tops) while does have tiny fangs, just 0.2 inches on average. These fangs are used mostly in male rivalries and can be drawn back when they’re eating.
Lastly, they’re very individualistic. Herds aren’t really a thing. Males are highly territorial and will shank each other for existing, especially during rutting season.
Females do congregate in small groups sometimes, but will scatter rather than flee together at the sight of predators. They’ll also get territorial and chase other females away shortly before and after giving birth to monopolize resources.
Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. If you’re also like me, you can find my works on
Space Battles: https://forums.spacebattles.com/members/fabled-webs.514019/
Questionable Questing: https://questionablequesting.com/members/fabled-webs.29875/