So, we already discussed what DC was doing to match the tenor of the early years of the War on Terror: A grim, smarter-than-it-thinks miniseries full of gratuitous rape that was meant to take the shine off the Silver Age by showing the darker side of its greatest heroes. Marvel, on the other hand, was trying to find a way to capture the zeitgeist of a post-9/11 era of existential threats, constant government surveillance, and the idea that if you weren’t with America, you were against it. A Captain America storyline saw Cap wrestle with the very concept of Guantanamo Bay; like any story arc that involves Cap doubting whether America lives up to its ideals, this made certain conservatives pissy, to the point that bad movie cataloguer Michael Medved wrote an entire article asking if Cap was a traitor. Avengers Disassembled briefly saw the Avengers face down their demons, as the Scarlet Witch goes crazy (again) and starts killing team members, her reality manipulations causing fault lines to form among Marvel’s greatest superteam. But there hadn’t yet been a storyline that would tie the entire Marvel Universe together with the burning question, “Which side are you on?”
Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with the Sokovia Accords. We’d be a lot better off if it did.
Part 1: Mark Millar’s March to the C-Word
Content Warning: Sexual assault. None of this is germane to the topic of the drama, so feel free to skip ahead to Part 1.5 if you don’t want to deal with this. Tl;dr: Mark Millar, the writer of the event, has a near pathological need to be a 3edgy5u contrarian.
Every comics crossover is ultimately a chance for one creative in the stable to shine or falter. The editors pick a writer who has turned out dependable work and give them a chance to try to alter the status quo but good. And for Civil War, Marvel’s EiC Joe Quesada decided the best person to lead the charge was Ultimates writer Mark Millar.
But who is Millar? Well, we could say “edgelord” and leave it at that, but we’re trying to dig deeper. Millar came up in comics alongside fellow Scot Grant Morrison, long before Morrison said the only time they want to bump into Millar on the streets of Glasgow is while going at 100 miles per hour. This antipathy is alleged to have stemmed from Millar copping several ideas from Morrison that went into Superman: Red Son. But after getting a start on Superman Adventures and as a cowriter on parts of Morrison’s JLA run, Millar soon branched out to WildStorm, where he took over The Authority from departing creatowritesex pest Warren Ellis.
The reason I bring up Red Son (for those non-geeks, an alternative universe comic premised on “What if Superman’s rocket had landed in Soviet Russia?”) is to frame a constant refrain about Mark Millar. He has good high-concept ideas… which often get trammeled up in an almost Pavlovian urge to shock, disturb, and/or titillate the reader. For instance, in The Authority, Ellis had introduced Apollo and Midnighter, two close companions who just happened to share the rough power sets and demeanors of Superman and Batman, with a few tweaks. Then he revealed they were boyfriends, which was a pretty bold move for a late Nineties comic book full of widescreen action and lovingly-rendered eviscerations.
In Millar’s first arc on the title, centered on a villainous Jack Kirby clone sending out a team of baddies who totally aren’t the Avengers, Apollo is subdued and is strongly implied to have been raped by someone who’s not Captain America. Apollo gets revenge by destroying EvilCap’s spinal column with his laser vision, then leaving him to the tender mercies of Midnighter, who is strongly implied to have sodomized him with a jackhammer.
In case you can’t tell, Millar loved him some rape. And it kept showing up in his creator-owned titles as well, all of which were basically written as Hollywood pitch docs. Wanted asks the question, “What if the supervillains won and secretly ruled the world from behind the scenes?” Well, an Eminem clone would take the opportunity to step into his dead villainous dad’s shoes and commit a lot of rape (yeah, there’s a reason the movie version replaced this with basically the Euthanatos from Mage: the Ascension getting orders from a magic loom). Chosen asks the question, “What if Jesus were born today?” Well, in a blatantly obvious twist, it turns out he’s actually the Antichrist, and part of his journey into realizing his evil nature involves being raped by all the demons of Hell.
It’s not that Millar can’t write innocent or restrained; he got started on the Superman: the Animated Series comic spin-off, and some of his titles such as Huck and Starlight have been praised for being relatively wholesome (keep in mind Huck is basically “What if Superman was Forrest Gump?” when I say “relatively”). And, as mentioned above, his works are made for high-concept log lines. You might recognize some of his various pitch docs: Kick-Ass, The Secret Service (source for the Kingsman movies), and, as mentioned above, Wanted. It’s just there’s this unctuous contrarian streak to a lot of his titles, a tendency to focus on venality, grotesquerie, and sodomy, with an air of pop culture edge. This also leaked into his image outside of his writing, with comments like “Games are for pedos” and ventures like the creator-owned comics periodical CLiNT (yes, the kerning is intentional). This streak continues to this day, as The Magic Order, a title that emerged from his deal with Netflix, features a magical escapologist who, she feels it very important to tell the reader in a direct monologue, [escaped her own abortion](4wcj6yw1yqa11.jpg). Bottom line, Millar has a sense of vision, but it’s betrayed at times by this reflexive desire to prove he’s smarter than the reader, to rub your face in the contradictions and make you a party to the artifice of it all. Usually with a dash of rape.
But at Marvel, Millar was riding the lightning of the Ultimate Universe. His Ultimates title was drawing on the wide-screen action image of JLA and The Authority, creating the cinematic language that would come to define the MCU. The choice to fantasy cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury is why we have Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. He also painted the Hulk as a cannibalistic monster, cemented Hank Pym’s reputation as a wifebeater, and gave us Captain America yelling “Surrender? Do you think this A on my head stands for France?”, so let’s just keep that in perspective.
But the Ultimate Universe was its own pocket universe. Millar was being tapped to write a story for Earth-616, the main Marvel Universe. And he had a vision:

“I opted instead for making the superhero dilemma something a little different. People thought they were dangerous, but they did not want a ban. What they wanted was superheroes paid by the federal government like cops and open to the same kind of scrutiny. It was the perfect solution and nobody, as far as I'm aware, has done this before.”

Yeah. About that.
Part 1.5: What Has Come Before
Ultimately, the crux of Civil War is something that has been explored lightly in the past at Marvel: The idea that, instead of being unlicensed vigilantes who decide the best solution of societal issues is to beat up assholes in spandex, superheroes become licensed government officers that register their true identities with Uncle Sam and solve societal issues by beating up assholes in spandex. In Marvel’s history, it hasn’t gone well. The reality of government liaisons to superhero bodies has ranged from Valerie Cooper, who worked with government mutant team X-Factor but still found herself backing the genocidal Sentinel program as a big “Yeah, but what if…?”, to Henry Peter Gyrich, an inflamed obstructionist asshole who had to be held back from flipping a switch that would depower every superhuman individual on Earth. The idea of heroes themselves bristling against a government they disagreed with had a long history, as there was a period where Steve Rogers quit being Captain America, and the government had to find a replacement while he rode around on a motorcycle in a surprisingly slutty costume. But the idea of registering with the government has usually ended up on the “No” side due to one big cohort at Marvel: Mutants.
Ever since the days of Chris Claremont, a general conceit of the Marvel Universe is that mutants are a stand-in for your minority group of choice. Hated and feared, born different and feeling alienated, painted as an existential menace and threat to the status quo. Of course, it’s long been pointed out that the metaphor breaks down on the general grounds that, say, gays can’t shoot laser beams out of their eyes. I have my thoughts on that which I might share in the comments if someone pokes me hard enough, but it’s been general editorial consensus that people with powers, especially those of persecuted minorities, being compelled to share their true names, addresses, and natures with the federal government is a “That train’s never late!” move. Not only that, it’s a slippery slope. The classic X-Men story “Days of Future Past” is entirely premised on the idea that a government program of genocidal robots built to wipe out mutants will eventually run out of mutants… and then start turning on humans who could give birth to mutants, and then it’s Skynet all over again.
Another running meme in the Marvel Universe is that the X-Men usually exist in a Schrodinger’s cat situation with the rest of the superhero universe, both coexisting and in their own worlds. Yes, mutants have served on the Avengers, and yes, Thor intervened when the Morlocks were nearly wiped out in the sewers under New York. But Captain America, for all his proud statements of living up to America’s ideals, has a habit of missing the plot whenever the US government (or Canada, seat of all the Marvel Universe’s governmental evils - no, really) decides it’s Genocide O’Clock. And when the mutant nation of Genosha was completely wiped out by said murder robots, the Avengers seemed to be all “New phone who dis?” But when the two do intersect, there’s usually support for the mutants. One story in Fantastic Four had Reed Richards - Mr. Fantastic, stretchy man, greatest genius in the Marvel Universe, guy who’s probably being cucked by a fish-man - get tapped by the US government to make a device that detects mutants and other people with powers. He does… and then uses it to show why the government probably doesn’t want it, as it pings several members of Congress as having just enough genetic variation to qualify as “mutants,” even if they don’t have powers.
All in all, while the argument has some merit, for years, Marvel has come down on the position that asking people with powers to reveal their identities to the federal government is something that could go really bad if somebody with a hate-on for superheroes ends up in power. Something that would never happen oh yeah it totally did. But before it all went to Hell, Civil War at least gave an opportunity to reexamine the concept and see if it had merit.
It might have. But not with this argument.
Part 1.75: What Else Has Happened Before?
And now, some things that will ultimately give context for what happens next:

• In the pages of Thor, all of Asgard eventually runs headlong into Ragnarok. Thor and the rest of the Asgardians give their lives to save the earth, taking Thor off the board… for now.
• As mentioned above, the Avengers experience a critical fault due to Wanda going batshit (a common lament). With Avengers Mansion destroyed and the team at odds, it is eventually reunited under Tony Stark, who put the Avengers up in a tower he built.
• Nick Fury has vanished due to doing some skullduggery in the pages of the miniseries Secret War (no, not Secret Wars**, this is different). Acting head of SHIELD, the all-purpose super spy squad of Marvel, is Maria Hill, who can’t seem to draw her pistol without shooting herself in the foot.
• Due to Wanda continuing to go batshit, the House of M crossover event ends with her casting a spell: “No more mutants.” While the damage is staunched, Earth-616’s population of mutants (which was recently established to be somewhere around 16 million, meaning they outnumber Native Americans or the Romani) is reduced to 200, the rest being depowered or dying as a result of being depowered. This was because, as Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said, the idea of mutants being everywhere made them “boring.” The fact that mutants were starting to be written less as a minority stand-in and more as an actual minority group with fashion, culture, music, and neighborhoods might have had something to do with that. From the wake of this event emerges Sally Floyd, a journalist whose own mutant daughter died before the mass depowering due to having a power that was more curse than blessing. The series Generation M follows her as the viewpoint character as she investigates the stories of former mutants.

Part 2: Connecticut Can’t Catch a Break
The big kick-off for Civil War involves the New Warriors, a team of teen heroes who have, as of a recently canceled series, been trying to make it big as reality TV stars. They get in a fight with a bunch of villains in the small town of Stamford, CT, when exploding villain Nitro goes positively nuclear, resulting in a blast much bigger than any he’s generated. [1] Not only does this mostly wipe out the New Warriors (save for kinetic energy-absorbing goofball Speedball), but it also happens to hit a nearby school. In the end, 612 people are dead, many of them children, and the nation wants answers.
With public opinion turning against the New Warriors, former member Hindsight starts leaking secret identities to get the heat off his back. This only makes things worse. Secret identities have only recently stopped being a thing for some heroes: Captain America only came out a few years ago, it was only recently that Tony Stark stopped pretending Iron Man was his bodyguard, and Daredevil was almost outed in the pages of his book. But something needs to be done, so Tony helps work with Congress to pass the Super Human Registration Act, which requires that all people with powers or working as vigilantes register their identities with the government to receive training and oversight. If you don’t? Believe it or not, jail, right away.
Fault lines quickly develop in the superhero community. While Tony is leading the “pro” side, alongside Reed Richards (yeah, we’ll get to that), Captain America, usually painted as the embodiment of the dream of America despite its compromised history and many sins, is against it. He’s lived through Richard Nixon being a secret fascist and shooting himself in the head after being fingered as mastermind of a vast criminal conspiracy ([yes, that happened](SE02.jpg) ); he knows how badly this could go in the wrong hands. Needless to say, Maria Hill and SHIELD hear his concerns, understand his problems with it, and are willing to iron out the kinks through reasoned debate.
Just kidding. Before the law has even been signed, Maria sics SHIELD’s elite Cape-Killers squad on Cap with the intent of getting him behind bars. Cap swiftly goes underground and starts his own group of anti-registration superheroes.
The fight continues for the next few issues. Spider-Man, caught in the middle, reveals himself to be Peter Parker at a press conference, declaring his support for the SHRA. Doctor Strange is so powerful that he tells the government to fuck off, and somehow, Maria Hill doesn’t decide to go charging up his asshole. Ben Grimm, the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing, is so sick of all the conflict he goes to France. But things are still at a stalemate, and while SHIELD may be acting like a bunch of merry assholes, it seems like there’s a debate to be had that could still be resolved reasonably… except for one key factor.
Part 3: I Fought the Law, and the Law… Huh?
No one ever really defined what the Super Human Registration Act, the legislation that tore the Marvel Universe’s superhero community asunder, did. Every book that had an issue that touched on the event seemed to have a different understanding of its principles, as well as just how fascist it might be in the long run. In the pages of She-Hulk, attorney Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk argues the law is a net good, as it gives heroes the backing and resources they need to not have to go it alone, while also having some measure of government oversight. In the pages of Civil War Frontline (oh, and we’ll get back to Civil War Frontline, don’t you worry), Wonder Man is told by the government that he needs to do a job for them, and if he refuses, well, one thousand years dungeon.
Which then leads into the other issue behind the SHRA. Namely, that everyone in favor was either starting to swing towards fascism or embracing bootlicking as a lifestyle, not a kink. In the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, Peter asks Reed Richards, who has always bucked authority and once stopped the US government from doing something just like this with mutants, why he’s pro-registration. Reed then reveals that an uncle who has never been mentioned before was called before HUAC; he refused to name names, his career was ruined, and he killed himself. From this, Reed - the man who stole a rocketship because the government said “no” to his planned space voyage - has learned that the government is always right, especially when they could step on your neck (this was received so badly that a later comic revealed he’d actually borrowed the concept of psychohistory from Asimov’s Foundation, he’d made it work somehow, and his calculations showed that this was the only way to avoid a greater disaster). This comic also revealed that people who were in violation of the SHRA were sent to a literal extradimensional Gitmo, a prison in the Negative Zone that later comics would reveal was overseen by… Captain Marvel. No, not that one. No, not that one. The Kree superhero Captain Mar-Vell, who had famously died of cancer decades before. How did he come back from the dead? Fuck if we know.
This “the law says what you want it to say” approach spread across various books and miniseries meant to cross over into the event. In the pages of a crossover mini between the Runaways and the Young Avengers, this meant SHIELD Cape-Killer squads were using lethal force against teenagers. The second-to-last issue of the mini ends with several members of both teams in extradimensional Gitmo, about to be dissected by a guy who’s horny for torture. The fact that all the captive heroes were the queer members of both teams? Total coincidence. Honestly.
So, it quickly becomes clear that the editorial control on this event is less than cohesive. There are different ideas all over as to what the SHRA does, and some of those ideas are tacking pretty fashy. But if the law is being painted as that bad, then clearly, there must be some greater statement of freedom vs. security. Maybe Millar’s really painting a subversive picture of what happens when you trade liberty for control, right?
Part 4: Why Do You Hate the Good Thing?
After the publication of Civil War #3, Millar would say in an interview he was actually pro-registration. I can’t find that interview, but here’s a similar sentiment shared years later:

“Weirdly, some of the other writers would often make Tony the bad guy, which I thought was a strange choice because I was actually on Tony’s side... In the real world, if somebody had superpowers, I’d like them to be registered in the same way that somebody who has a gun has to carry a license. But a gun can kill several people while a superhero can kill several thousands of people, so on a pragmatic level I’m 100% on Tony’s side. Maybe on a romantic level, Cap’s position makes sense but I don’t think anybody in the real world would really want that."”

And again, here’s the thing: He’s not entirely wrong. As said above, the idea of civil liberties for all and “free to me you and me” falls down a little when one of your neighbors can blow up a city block by thinking real hard. But Millar is fighting against years of ideological inertia in the Marvel Universe, as well as painting Captain America, the guy who has always embodied the ideal of a righteous, just America, as in the wrong. He needs to make one hell of an argument.
So here’s what happens in the pages of Civil War #3 to sell the audience on the SHRA:

• Thor comes back from the dead… and he’s on Tony’s side! Well, not really. Tony and Reed both realized that having one of the most beloved gods of the Marvel Universe come out on their side would be a big win… if only he wasn’t dead. So, they cloned him. Or rather, they T-800’d him, putting cloned divine flesh on a robot skeleton. But I’m sure he’s perfectly under control, and - oh, he just killed Goliath. In the next issue, one of Marvel’s black male heroes, frozen at the size of a small townhouse in death, will be buried in a gigantic ditch, wrapped in a tarp and chains. You’d think Hank Pym could grow a large enough coffin, at least.
• With Cap and the anti-registration side escaping once again, Tony decides he needs a dedicated team that can track down fugitive superhumans. To do so, he creates a new version of the Thunderbolts, a concept long associated with “villains acting like heroes.” And who does he put on this team? Venom, the Spider-Man villain who eats people’s brains; Bullseye, the Daredevil villain who will kill anyone for the lulz; and Norman Osborn, a.k.a. The Green Goblin, who famously murdered Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

Again. Tony’s in the right. The SHRA is good.
Part 5: Yadda, Yadda, Yadda
The next few issues of Civil War might best be described as “They fight, and fight, and fight and fight and fight.” The anti-registration side picks up The Punisher, Marvel’s most avowed murderer of criminals - and Cap is somewhat shocked but not entirely surprised when two minor villains join the anti-registration side and Frank promptly kills them on sight. Spider-Man starts realizing things are weird on the pro-reg side and defects, after he has set his entire life on fire. The X-Men have continued to stay out of this whole mess. In the lead-up, Emma Frost called Tony out on the Avengers’ complete absence when Genosha got nuked. Later, Carol Danvers (then Ms. Marvel, now Captain Marvel) will show up at the Xavier School to pitch the SHRA just after a massive terrorist attack kills dozens of students. Emma responds by telepathically dogwalking her.
By the final issue of the miniseries, the SHRA has expanded out into the Fifty States Initiative, wherein each state gets its own superteam. There’s a big final battle, Hercules kills Robo-Thor, and Cap nearly takes out Tony, only to be stopped by… the heroes of 9/11. No shit, Captain America is subdued by cops, firefighters, and paramedics. And when that happens, Cap finally takes a look around, realizes their big ideological street brawl has resulted in collateral damage, and surrenders. The SHRA wins, though Tony feels a little bad about it. Cap is ready to stand trial and to argue that, while he may have done something wrong, he did it for the right reasons.
Once again: Yeah. About that.
Part 6: MySpace Tom Didn’t Die For This
Running alongside Civil War is Civil War Frontline, a street-level book written by Paul Jenkins that managed to capture this world-breaking conflict through the eyes of people on the street. Though it has side stories, its main leads are Ben Urich, Peter Parker’s journalist buddy at The Daily Bugle, and the aforementioned Sally Floyd. Throughout the series, they start to realize there’s a story underneath the SHRA, as if somebody is playing the angles.
Before we talk about that conclusion, let’s talk about a side story. Remember how we said part of the comics community saw Identity Crisis as a driven effort to make things less “wacky” and intentionally darken the DCU? Well, that same tonal approach led to one of the more laughable moments of a pretty laughable arc. See, despite the fact that, as established, it was Nitro who blew up Stamford, it’s Speedball, the only survivor of the New Warriors, that views himself as responsible and is held up as a scapegoat by the general public. In addition, the blast screwed up his powers. Now, he doesn’t absorb and reflect kinetic energy; rather, he generates energy based on pain. So, he builds himself a new, extreme outfit lined with 612 spikes, one for each person who died in Stamford. This will drive his crusade to make things right - not as Speedball… but as Penance.
It was so laughably DeviantArt “OC do not steal” that no one could take it seriously. Look what you did, you took a perfectly good goofball and gave him an emo streak. The turn is swiftly mocked in other Marvel books, and it’s eventually revealed that Speedball still had his original powerset and always intended to put Nitro in the Goofy Suit of Dark Inner Torment as punishment for his crimes. But this turn gives you a sense of the tone and heft Jenkins was bringing to the proceedings.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Ben and Sally follow the thread as Namor, as he is wont to do, declares war on the surface world after an Atlantean diplomat is shot. But it turns out the assassination was arranged by Norman Osborn, who decided it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission and manipulated Atlantis into war so that Tony could have another piece of evidence for getting superhumans on a leash. And the two journalists deduce that, on some level, Tony had to know this would be an inevitable outcome of giving state backing to an unhinged mogul who dresses like a Power Rangers villain. Weighing what to do with this information, Ben and Sally, who are kind of sick of the collateral damage by this point, sit on it while they go in for an interview with Captain America, now in custody and willing to tell his side of the story.
And then. And then. The monologue. If you want a lesson in how to assassinate a character in 30 seconds or less, this monologue is a great example. Sally Floyd calls Captain America out as completely divorced from American values. Now, again, Captain America has long served as the beating liberal heart of the Marvel Universe. He has always represented an America that reckons with its legacy of things like internment camps, Manifest Destiny, and Jim Crow, in order to transcend these scars and embody the promise offered by Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus, carved on the side of the Statue of Liberty. Why is he out of touch with Americans at the dawn of the 21st century?
Well, he’s never heard of MySpace. [2] He doesn’t watch NASCAR. He doesn’t follow American Idol. There are pop culture moments that have aged like milk; this one had all the permanence of an ice cream cone in a blast furnace. But despite the inanity of Floyd’s argument - and trust me, there are fan edits dedicated to Cap pointing out how full of shit this argument is - it’s clear it represents something else. This is a post-9/11 world. Fuck civil liberties, we have a no-fly list and Gitmo, and if the American people really cared, they’d do something other than watch Simon Cowell read aspiring singers to filth. What does Captain America stand for in this moment of crisis?
Nothing. Because he just looks away from Sally Floyd. No doubt thinking, “Oh my God this bitch.” But to underline the argument in question, Sally storms out of the interview, Ben in tow. She still has that information on Norman Osborn’s false flag operation… and while she and Ben confront Tony on everything that went down, they decide the story should never see the light of day. Because they wouldn’t dare jeopardize the SHRA, because security is more important than the truth.
Oh. And then Cap gets shot. And dies. He totally dies (except he doesn’t but we’ll get to that). If ever there was an unintentional thesis statement for this event, running in the late stages of the Bush era, it would be this: “It’s better to trust that the powers that be who oversee the new America will keep you safe, even when they stage false flag operations, stick you in a gulag, and put their trust in monsters. All that civil liberty stuff was the old America. And the old America was hopeless. It wasn’t even on MySpace.”
Epilogue: Consequences Keep Consequencing
As you can tell from that last paragraph, a lot of the fan reception to Civil War likely had a lot to do with the period. This was the Bush era, a time where you were for America or against it. We were in the shadow of the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and widespread wiretaps, paranoid about what civil liberty we’d be asked to put on the pyre next in the name of Freedom. A story all about the warm, clenching fist of government control that tells you to ignore the collateral damage… well, it wasn’t great for the cultural moment.
The ideas of Civil War aren’t necessarily bad ones. I frame Cap as the liberal dream of what America could be, but there are good arguments to be made that America has never been that and Cap is just copium for liberals. His most recent title, Sentinel of Liberty, opens with Steve saying he is out of touch with the average American - not because he doesn’t watch NASCAR, but because he’s a WWII veteran who looks maybe 30 years old at most and whose best friends are all superheroes or spies. A narrative that has him on the wrong side of the issue and detonates his beliefs isn’t impossible, but it probably shouldn’t be one where people who got powers due to a fluke of birth or a radiation accident are told by the government, “Join with us or we’ll send supervillains after you.” Hell, as the Civil War movie proves, there is a way to tell a story about a superhero community torn in half by the idea of mandatory registration as government-controlled actors, and just why people would think that could be a bad idea (“Hey, remember when a good chunk of our intelligence apparatus turned out to be Nazi stay behinds?”).
But in the context of the era, and coupled with the execution, Civil War felt like a hard sell, and you could feel the thumb pressing on the scale every second while reading it. The moral center of the Marvel Universe is wrong, the winning side employs sadistic murderers and has an extradimensional Gitmo, and the writer is telling you that any sane individual would be on Team Green Goblin Employer.
So how did that all work out? Well…

• With Cap seemingly dead, shot by his brainwashed love interest Sharon Carter as part of a plot by the Red Skull, Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier becomes the new Cap. Only it turns out Steve wasn’t killed, but shot with a time bullet that Billy Pilgrims his ass. He eventually comes back.
• Thor comes back, finds out what Tony did, and beats his ass all the way across post-Katrina New Orleans.
• The Secret Invasion event happens next, which leads to Skrull infiltrators hitting everything (this is also the explanation for Captain Mar-Vell’s miraculous resurrection: He was a Skrull all along). With Tony caught with his pants down and Norman Osborn seeming to save the day, Norman - who has been losing his shit for some time - takes over the Initiative and forms his own fascist cabal, HAMMER. To try and stop Norman from learning everything on every hero ever, Tony goes on the run and actually starts deleting his own brain, which he then reassembles with a backup from before anyone even thought of the SHRA. The fact that getting rid of Tony’s “Oops I did a fascism” period came out alongside Iron Man hitting theaters is a coincidence, I’m sure.

As for Spider-Man? It might not shock you, but having a hero without the resources of Tony Stark out himself to the world carries liabilities. An assassin who tries to kill Peter instead hits Aunt May, and it appears she’ll die of her injuries. All this leads to One More Day… and if you thought the fans hated Civil War? Oh, BABY.
[1] This is eventually explored in the pages of Wolverine, of all books, as Wolverine decides maybe somebody should track down the person who actually killed hundreds of children. It’s revealed that Nitro was given power-boosting drugs by the CEO of Damage Control, Marvel’s designated “clean up after the super-battle” corporation, as a way of generating business. In a sign of how little this matters, Wolverine tells Maria Hill to her face that the person responsible for a mass casualty event is the pawn of a powerful conspiracy, and she basically says, “Not my problem.” Cobie Smulders must thank the gods that her Maria Hill is written as somebody with basic human decency.
[2] Hilariously, when Sally Floyd was brought back during Nick Spencer’s Captain America run because no one had piled enough dung on her corpse, this line was retconned to her asking him about Twitter. Given everything Elon’s been doing lately, we’ll see if that ages just as poorly.

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As a Medical Assistant, you will contribute to the patient experience from start to finish. This role commands multitasking in a fast-paced environment. Your role will be to help with the patient flow during the day, communicate instructions to patients before and after surgery, and guide them through it.
Why Bosley?
At our practice, we value unparalleled personalized patient experience, and technical expertise to give our patients the best possible results. If these values resonate with you and you are a patient-focused individual, you are the addition we are looking for.
Summary:

Full-time and Part-time positions are available Accompany patient to exam/procedure room Prepare patients for examination and treatment Check the schedule and organize patient flow Prepare exam and treatment rooms with necessary instruments and supplies Ensure that all treatment rooms are cleaned and stocked at the end of the workday Assist providers in preparing the patient and the facilities for procedures Prepare and maintain supplies and equipment for treatments, including equipment sterilization Assist with scheduling of patient's tests and treatments Working under a microscope to dissect tissue 

Candidates must have:

Communication Skills: Strong interpersonal and communication skills. Ability to effectively communicate with patients, peers, and management. Ability to communicate with proper etiquette. Mathematical Skills: Basic math functions. **Ability to use a calculator and calculate percentages.** Education/ Experience: Certified medical assistant. **Willing to train the right candidate. Get paid while learning to become a hair transplant technician from the best team in the business.** Reasoning Ability: Ability to multi-task, while being attentive to patients and remaining flexible to the needs of the business. Ability to work as part of a team and take initiative independent of direct supervision. Organizational Skills: Ability to follow up on leads, schedule consultations, obtain patient consent for treatment and manage time management skills. Other Skills: Enthusiastic, friendly, and energetic with a genuine desire to provide outstanding service. Need to be reliable and outgoing, detail-oriented problem solver with exceptional customer service skills. Will exhibit high attention to detail, dexterity, and hand/eye coordination. Must be punctual and can prioritize and multitask. 

Compensation:
We offer very competitive compensation, benefits, and an inclusive culture.

Medical, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, LTD, 401k match, and a $250/mo., PTO, transit pass where applicable **Salary: 17.00/hour** 

The technician working on your procedure should be making 6 figures if done in one of the well off countries, which Bosley is in, the US.
Nobody should have their previous, very limited grafts being dissected from straight out of high school 17$/hour teenagers. According to independent reviews of Dr Diep, he has used technicians that seemingly are straight of out high school, and look at the physical and mental trauma he's inflicted onto his patient, including destroying of patient's previous limited grafts.

So I'm playing the Friday night Battlefield, where there is a team of specialists vs a "horde of BF3 soldiers", and it's broken in several ways.
The BF3 horde team gets absolutely and utterly smashed every single round.
The BF3 team do not even have a small chance of winning. They only have 75 reinforcements, which means the match ends after approximately 3 minutes.
The BF3 team will be obliterated because they have reduced damage, and because the defenders/specialists have increased damage. I'm specialist and basically sniping with a shotgun.
The roles do not change from match to match. I have played 25 rounds or so in a row, and been specialist every single time, with 25 too easy wins. I see complaints too from enemy chat that they are stuck as BF3 players too, match after match.
So, what have the devs smoked this time?

https://www.youtube.com/live/m2DgBh0lUDI?feature=share&t=23277
At 6:27:57 in case the link doesn't work. After a hard fought match where neither player could pull away, Skyler Woodward comes up with an incredibly clutch safety to secure the win.

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"Then I shall show you. The end of your journey. The demise of human history that will redo this planet. The moment my great undertaking is completed!"

Goetia

♫ Shikisai ~The Time of Parting Hath Come~ ♫
This thread is a collaboration with InverseFlash and rsthethird, who helped with feat-gathering, as well as Proletlariet, who helped with formatting. Thanks!

Background

Beast I. One of the Seven Evils of Humanity, possessing the principle of "Pity".
The King of Mages, Solomon, gathered 72 demons in his life that he fashioned into "a system to promote reason in humans"--a sort of magical logic network. After some time, the demons gained self-awareness and merged into a collective being.
This being, the amalgamation of the 72 Demons, became known as Goetia.
When Solomon died, the demons were sealed away inside his corpse. The awakened Goetia at first assumed Solomon's identity. Through his eyes, they witnessed the extent of human suffering that Solomon, for all the king's vast power, had failed to address. They became disillusioned with their host, and hatched a plan to remake the world without its imperfections by travelling back in time.

Source Guide

Hover over the feat to view the story chapter the feat is from.
Relevant Scaling:

• List of Servants
  • If I name a character, it can be found here. I will not be linking a respect thread for every individual character mentioned in this thread due to the shear number of Servants/characters Goetia and Demon Pillars interact with.
• Mash Kyrielight
• Beast II - Tiamat
• Beast VII - U-Olga Marie

Some terms:

• Rayshifting: Chaldea's method of time travel. It works by transforming the time traveler's body into 'Spiritrons', and then sending them backwards in time. Spiritrons being a form of energy/particle formed from a person's soul
  • Full Definition/Description can be read here
• Sheba: An observational lens that can sense the near-future, and could give Chaldea detailed information from inside of a bubble that absorbed all forms of normal radiation
• See the Fate Franchise Hub Post for a more extensive list of Fate related terms

Elements of Goetia's in-game profile and Fate/Grand Order material IV entry (translated by castor212) are freely quoted in this thread to help explain abilities that might not show up explicitly in the series very often.

King of Mages - "Solomon"

"Plead for help. Raise your mewling voice. For it is the time for you to drown in the sea of anguish! Behold this festival of flame that set ablaze the altar, rendered in its resplendence!"

♫ The Time of Coronation Hath Come ♫
Prior to revealing himself, Goetia posed as King Solomon while possessing his corpse..
Controlling Solomon granted Goetia a variety of abilities, namely the class container of "Grand", which allowed him to outclass any normal Servant by virtue of this.

Physical Feats/Power

• Manifested himself after his own death via his own will, and therefore doesn't need to rely on any sort of magical energy support like normal Servants
• Mordred claims his power exceeds that of a dragon, with Shakesphere going on to say he has 'infinite' magical energy, although he's likely exaggerating
• Tamamo-No-Mae claims that, even if she got all nine of her tails and became "a great demon strong enough to destroy the multiverse" that "[Solomon] is a threat threat enough to rival" her in that state
• When comparing him as Solomon to the Beast of the Seventh Singularity (later revealed to be Tiamat), the Lion King flips around the idea of who might be more of a threat to humanity
  • Kingu/Endiku later claims that Tiamat is on par or superior to him
• Command spells wouldn't work on Solomon
• Engages with an extensive fight with Mash, hurting her with an attack
• Takes a blow from Mash that 'reaches the core of [his] body'

Clairvoyance

It has been said that Solomon's clairvoyance can see through the past and the future.
Because Clairvoyance is a skill furnished on the flesh, Goetia can also use it.

• Claims that he can 'see everything' and 'all possible futures', but cannot track things which exist outside of time
• [Limit] Even with his Clairvoyance, he didn't foresee the appearance of the Beast of the Seventh Singularity, Tiamat
• Goetia used Solomon's clairvoyance to perceive all human suffering in the past, present, and future
• Solomon sent one of his rings over 3,000 years into the future to act as a catalyst for his own summoning as a Heroic Spirit, putting into motion the events that would lead to Goetia's defeat
• Solomon used his Clairvoyance shortly before turning into a human with no powers to foresee the Incineration of Humanity in 2018 from 2004
• Gives him an unobstructed view of the past and future, as well as x-ray vision

Magecraft / Magic

Offensive

• Solomon/Goetia can summon any of the 72 Demon God Pillars at will, described as him projecting them out from his inner world to the outside world
  • Summons four at once that defeat Kintoki, Tamamo, and Shakespeare. Implies that he can summon far more of them
• Anderson is astonished at how badly he's hurt blocking just a single one of his attack spells
• A second spell rips Anderson into hundreds of pieces and then burns him into a crisp
• Goetia incinerates all living things on the planet at once just with his gaze, a feat characters in the story assumed he would need a powerful technique to accomplish

Utility

• Uses magic similar to a Rayshift to transport himself to the London Singularity
• Generates a field around himself that passively blocks Sheba's ability to observe him, as well as Romani's ability to communicate via hologram
• His field blocks Chaldeas' ability to Rayshift Fujimaru and Mash out of London
• Likely broke the seal binding Tiamet out of existence, though Ishtar notes that human mages might have done it
• Inserts images into Mash and Ritsuka's heads while they're mid-Rayshift
• Has a countermeasure that prevents using magic to predict his actions
• Has the ability to hasten his magical incantations, create magical constructs, and make magical territories via Solomon's class skills
• Goetia has nine of Solomon's 10 Rings. If all 10 were brought together, Solomon/Goetia would invalidate any magecraft used by mankind against him and put them under his control
  • Reference of what can be accomplished with magecraft

Evil Eye

Curse

• Solomon has become a walking curse, such that saying his name or looking him in the eye will remove a person's soul and imprison it
• By just looking at him, Mash begins to quake in fear for reasons she can't explain. Her soul might have been imprisoned in the false reality forever if a friend's out of character behavior hadn't tipped her off
• Tamamo with two of her tails believes she'd be vulnerable to the curse
• A person who's been afflicted with the Evil Eye has trouble remembering Solomon's appearance, and even video recordings of him are covered in static
• Even a drawn picture of Solomon can inflict the Evil Eye without special anti-curse precautions

Prison

• To escape, the soul must complete a set of trials within seven days, or death ensues
• Only the soul is imprisoned in the false reality, while the body remains behind. The soul experiences time at a much longer rate in the false world than the body does in the real one with seven days for the soul being equal to one for the body
• The prison's trials drag in fragments of the souls of the prisoner's acquaintances to serve as obstacles, it can do this even to heroic spirits, who have superhumanly powerful souls

Beast I - Goetia

"Well, I will rid myself of the title "King of Mages.”
"There's no more need for deception. I had no name, but if you want to call me something, call me this:"
"I am the one who shall attain true wisdom, as was desired of me. I am the one who shall devour you to reach a new height, and create a new planet."
"I am the one who shall gather 72 curses, and set flame to all of history. I am the Ritual for the Incineration of Humanity."
"I am Goetia, the King of Demon Gods."

♫ Shikisai ~The Time of Parting Hath Come~ ♫
The form Goetia takes after he abandons Solomon's corpse partway through the final battle.
His body is a central core surrounded by the 72 "Demon Pillars" that comprise him.

Collective

General Power and Information

• Hid in Solomon's body for three thousand years in Ars Paulina without any adverse effects due to the passage of time
• Is a "living summoning spell" that hid itself in Solomon's corpse and later gained a will of its own and physically incarnated as a Beast
• Describes himself as a higher-dimensional being that no longer requires flesh or blood. Due to being Solomon's familiars, he shared in Solomon's Clairvoyance
• Due to being an amalgamation of the 72 Demon Gods, which each have individual personalities, Goetia's personality will mirror that of someone who interacts with him on a surface level
• His existence is fixed, meaning he's immune to 'instant death' effects as well as temporal effects, like the paradoxes generated by incinerating human history
• A weakened Beast VII, or the Foreign God, is stated to be the most powerful thing Chaldea has faced since Goetia, with her magical energy being called a "third class planet" to Goetia's "second class planet"

Physical Feats

• Moves so fast he appears to teleport next to Solomon, before bloodying him with a barrage of punches and bombarding him with energy projectiles from his arms
• [Weakened] Ritsuka has trouble blocking his blows with Mash's shield, but can do so long enough for Goetia to die due to Ars Nova
• [Weakened] Knocked back by a Command Spell amplified punch from Ritsuka

The Beast Class
The entire space of Solomon's temple gives Da Vinci the same Beast Class reading she saw from Tiamat.

• Goetia's Beast Class Skill, Nega Summon, allows him to negate through "invalidation, invincible, absorption, reduction" any attacks or Noble Phantasms generated by Heroic Spirits, although this skill was nullified by King Solomon's actions at the end of the Final Singularity
• The Evils of Humanity, or Beasts, are summoned in a chain, meaning that Goetia's manifestation heralded the appearance of other Beasts

Individual Demon Pillars

Power

• Demon Pillars give off more magical energy than Servants or Phantasmals
• Demon Pillars are weaker while outside of Solomon's Temple, due to their cells dying off
• Demon Pillars have a "Spirit Core" like Servants, as well as innate magical energy, which can be used to fuel other spells (such as one to create pancakes) if defeated
• Require groups of Servants to defeat under normal conditions
• They have comparable power to Kingu during the Babylonian Singularity
• A Demon Pillar is compared to the energy output of a Servant empowering themselves with a Holy Grail
  • The corpse of a Demon Pillar can become a source of magical power similar to a Grail if fused with a servant, and possessing a strong will not to die

Strength

• Eight Demon God Pillars wrapping around the Chaldea building deal catastrophic damage to it and nearly destroy it
  • Reference of how large Chaldea is, the building's size can be compared to hallways connecting the structures in it
• Groups of them tear through the stone and marble of Solomon's throne when called to Goetia, reducing it to ruins
• Erupts out of the floor in a metal observation room, then attacks and absorbs a number of researchers

Damage Output
Demon Pillars attack in a number of ways:

• Various forms of spontaneous explosions that can cover multiples of meters
• Energy blasts that erupt from the ground
• Large storms of smoke that cover the battlefield
• Lasers, presumably fired from their eyes

These attacks are threatening to a variety of named servants:

• An attack from four Demon Pillars oneshot Kintoki, Tamamo, and Shakesphere
• Hurts and sends Robin Hood and Helena Blatvasky flying
• Spits out flames hot enough to burn Oda Nobunaga^FGO
• Draws blood on Fergus Lily, hurting him, although he's defeated in the overall fight against Astolfo, D'Eon, and Fergus
• Bloodies Wu Zetian with an attack

Durability
Favorable Interactions

• One takes a bullet from Francis Drake and continues to fight Mash, Ritsuka, and allies, although it loses the overall battle
• Li Shuwen has trouble injecting them with chi attacks, mostly due to their size
• Robin Hood's 'Yew Bow' and Elizabeth Bathory's weaponized singing don't do anything to them
• Tesla's Noble Phantasm, 'System Keranos', doesn't appear to do much to them, neither does a combined attack from Tesla and Edison's Noble Phantasms
• Lancer Li Shuwen breaks his spear on one
• Cursed Arm and Serenity have no means of harming them, even with Serenity's poison
• Oda Nobunaga's special attacks and bullets have no effect on Demon God Pillars
• Takes a hit from three bullets fired from EMIYA Alter and doesn't seem bothered by it moments later
• A Demon Pillar in its humanoid form take a blast of magic from the Queen of Sheba and is fine
• Takes fire produced by Chacha's abilities and fights Ritsuka, Okita, Nobunaga, and Hijikata, although it ultimately loses the fight
• A recreation of the Demon God Pillars gets bombarded with meteors from outer space by Astrea's Noble Phantasm, and continues to fight with Grey and Astrea, with Astrea commenting it was just as strong as the originals

Limits

• A suicide Noble Phantasm release from Arjuna kills twenty-eight of them
• Altera destroys one with Teardrop Photon Ray
• Mordred destroys one with Clarent Blood Arthur
• Bedivere takes out three pillars with an activation of his Noble Phantasm
• Okita Souji slices apart several pillars
• Edmond Dantes was able to take out a pillar by himself
• Ritsuka and his allies (in this case EMIYA Alter and Artoria Alter) were able to kill a Demon God Pillar
• One is defeated by Gawain, although Ritsuka notes it seemed particularly weak

Powers
Immortality

• The 72 Demon Gods are all part of the same magecraft ritual associated with Solomon, so as long as Solomon exists, they'll continue to exist even if destroyed
• After Mash kills Flauros, he instantly re-appears, with Mash describing this as an entirely new separate entity being born, and not some form of regeneration or resurrection
  • Vlad the Impaler runs out of stakes to hit them with due to how fast/often they were doing this
• Killing all 72 at once would be required to actually kill them for good
• Creating new demon pillars to replace fallen ones does draw away power from the center of Solomon's Temple, giving Chaldea entryway to the center of Ars Paulina
• Nightingale claims that killing them for good would require destroying all of Ars Paulina
• Even after escaping the Temple of Time and losing their proper immortality, individual demon pillars live for over 3,000 years to plot against Ritsuka

Other

• Demon Pillars can fuse with Heroic Spirits, even against their will
  • When Phenex did this with Scheherazade,, the two could trade places and transform into one another
  • A Heroic Spirit temporarily integrated into Goetia's hivemind via this process gained access to information he could use to calculate out events related to the Incineration of Humanity
  • Merging with a Heroic Spirit gives a Demon Pillar protection from its skills, such as Scheherazade's inability to be killed by Kings
• A number of Demon God Pillars were able to escape the Temple of Time's destruction while leaving ripples in space-time, this being an extradimensional space outside of time
• A number of Demon God Pillars demonstrate the ability to possess humans
• As of the events of Lady Reines' Case Files, Ritsuka has killed so many Demon Pillars that just inserting information about him into facsimiles of them cause them to get significantly weaker

King of Humans - Goetia

"The Demon Gods have burned away. My temple is destroyed. My grand plan for the Incineration of Human Order dies with me. But, I will at least deny you this final victory. Let us begin... Master of Chaldea. I shall annihilate you, and all you've achieved, with my own hands."

♫ GRAND LAST BATTLE ♫
Despite Ars Nova ending Solomon's spell that bound the 72 Demons together, Goetia manages to linger long enough for one last fight. However, in this weakened state he can be defeated by a punch from Ritsuka.

Noble Phantasms

Ars Almadel Salomonis: The Time of Birth has Come, He is the One who Masters All

"Then I shall show you. The end of your journey. The demise of human history that will redo this planet. The moment my great undertaking is completed! Third Noble Phantasm, deploy. The Time of Birth has Come, He is the One who Masters All. Now, burn up like trash!"
"Ars Almadel Salomonis!"

• Rank: EX
• Type: Anti-Unit/Anti-Human Order Noble Phantasm
• Range: ?
• Maximum target: ? person

Goetia's third Noble Phantasm. The "" of original sin. A belt of light that announces mankind’s demise.
Goetia is able to manipulate this belt of light in order to collect, accelerate and converge portions of it, travelling through the timestream or otherwise influencing it.
Singularities
For his plan to work, Goetia needed to make cause and effect stop working, so he can set fire to multiple periods of time in history at the same time.
He enables this by destabilizing human history with Singularities. These are turning points in human history that he's sent Holy Grails (powerful magic artifacts) to change important historical events.
Reference of what Holy Grails can do
Creation

• Singularities are key turning points in human history that have been interfered with, causing aberrations in the timestream. Goetia's Incineration of Humanity involved seven primary Singularities
• Resolving individual singularities will not fix the timestream. Only resolving all seven will set things right
• Solomon caused some Singularities by sending his Demon Pillars to different eras to directly alter historical events
  • These Demon Gods were embedded in King Solomon's descendants and activated like sleeper agents all at once in 2018
  • Goetia hid his Demon Pillars inside of the magic circuits passed down generationally by mages so he could seed them at specific points in history
• Solomon sent one of these grails directly backwards through time to Babylon, and and removing it is especially necessary to keep human history from burning
• Goetia's singularities had such a profound effect on human history that it rippled to other timelines, and caused singularities to still pop up after he was defeated

Structure/Attributes

• Singularities are cut off from the rest of the timeline, existing apart from the past or the future
• Singularities are immune to time paradoxes, so Ritsuka and Mash fighting soldiers in the past doesn't have any adverse affects
• Singularities are bound to a specific area, which can vary between the size of a city to the entire United States

Incineration of Human History
Once human history is destabilized, Goetia 'sets fire' to every moment of it and lets it burn. The energy is then collected as "Spiritrons" (magical energy) and raw heat.
Of course, this has catastrophic affects on the timeline.

• Chaldeas lost its ability to sense the future, or detect the outside world - this was because there was no more outside world to detect, as Goetia's Incineration of Humanity destroyed the timeline
• Despite being able to Rayshift to different points in time, Chaldea can only travel between Singularities because the rest of the timeline has been eradicated
• The Incineration of Humanity also affected The Land of Shadows, a realm described as being sundered from the mortal world
• The Incineration of Humanity burned all biological matter on Earth across all points in time as fuel to reset the universe
• Goetia needed to create Singularities to in order to weaken "the strength of human history" enough to carry out the Incineration of Humanity. Singularities break up the timeline into fractured chunks, allowing for the paradox necessary to incinerate matter during all points in its existence

Bands of Light
Finally, this energy is then channeled into Goetia's temple, and refined into bands of light that he can control and release at will. Either as weapons, or as fuel to for his ultimate goal: time travel to the creation of the Earth.

• Each Singularity Ritsuka and company travel to have a series of light bands encircling the sky present. These are around the size of North America
• These bands of light are the manifestation of Goetia's Noble Phantasm locking the rotation of the planet in place for the Incineration of Humanity
• Each individual band of light has comparable heat output to Artoria Alter's Holy Sword. The Noble Phantasm manifests hundreds of millions of them at once
  • Respect Artoria Alter
• Ushiwakamaru Alter claims the band of light are the only thing that could destroy Tiamet's corrupted ocean
• One of the Demon Pillars claims it could be used to incinernate all the Heroic Spirits summoned to fight in the Temple of Time
• The bands of light could burn away the outer layers of the planet. Mash says nothing on Earth could match their energy output
• Manifests as a beam of light from the sky that clashes with Mash wielding Lord Camelot. While Mash is able to block the attack, it still vaporizes her through her shield
• After Goetia is defeated, the bands of light start to release their energy into the atmosphere with nobody to control them. Da Vinci says the effect of this would be like a supernova
• The magical energy circulated between the Trees of Emptiness, and channeled into the Atlantis Lostbelt to summon the Foreign God had already built up to the same level of power as the Bands of Light prior Chaldea entering it
• [Limit] Even if they were collected and used to attack Chaos, the Bands of Light wouldn't be able to destroy it
  • Chaos is a mechanical being whose core is an entire star, otherwise known as a Dyson Sphere

Ars Paulina: The Time of Crowning has Come, He is the One who Begins All

• Rank: A
• Type: Anti-World Noble Phantasm
• Range: 999
• Maximum target: ? person

A Reality Marble that Goetia fabricated by amplifying the remains of King Solomon, forming a magical workshop in "void space" that exists outside the normal flow of time.
Reality Marbles are essentially self-contained dimensions that 'paint over the world' in a given area. Here's a better schematic explaining what they do.
Physical Structure and Location

• His temple resides outside of time, and can only be found by tracking back its location from the Seventh Grail
  • Da Vinci and Romani have no methods to track Goetia returning to his temple
• Chaldea pinpointing its location by analyzing Goetia's Seventh Grail also opens a back door for Goetia to locate him in turn, and it begins to pull him out of the timeline to itself
• Described as a "miniature model of the universe" containing no other celestial bodies, about the size of a cell when compared to the universe proper
  • There's still sort of celestial background present inside of it
• The temple lacks a concept of time. This property facilitated the Incineration of Humanity
• A recreation of the Temple is too cold for normal life to survive in it

Properties

• The route to the throne itself is blocked by a swirling tempest of "incalculable" amounts of magical energy, with Da Vinci believing Chaldea had to destroy areas around it to have a chance of getting through
  • The throne is accessible after Mash and Ritsuka remove this magical energy tempest via a fissure in space a kilometer long
• The temple has a similar composition as the Greater Grail of Fuyuki. It is made up of of Solomon's magic circuits, which form a small self-contained universe
• The throne is a giant magic summoning circle with planetary magecraft at its core

Ars Nova

• Rank: D
• Type: Anti-Unit Noble Phantasm
• Range: -
• Maximum target: 1 person

Goetia: Light Band Convergence Ring

• Goetia prepared his endgoal feat from the Incineration of Humanity as a 'virtual Noble Phantasm' due to not knowing the purpose or how to activate the original
• This ultimate feat, which he would use all the energy collected by Ars Almadel Salomonis to accomplish, would have him travel 4.6 billion years into the past to the birth of the planet, where he would then change the starting conditions of the world so that death did not exist, with him supplanting the planet with his own body

Solomon: The Time of Parting has Come, He is the One who Lets Go of the World

• By having all his ten rings present between those worn by Goetia and himself, Solomon can recreate the legend of him giving all his rings back to God
  • Activates as Solomon slowly becoming engulfed in a pure white light while chanting
• After using it, everything related to Solomon is wiped from existence and rendered inert. This includes Goetia himself as Solomon brought the Demon Gods together, as well as Solomon's rings, and Solmon's ability to be summoned as a Heroic Spirit
• Although this doesn't instantly kill Goetia, the Demon Pillars that make him up finally start to die for good, and start separating from the collective

Individual Demon Pillars - Unique Abilities

While it's likely that Goetia possesses all these abilities as the composite of all Demon God Pillars, some of his components developed wills of their own and gained unique abilities before and after his destruction at the hands of Chaldea.

Flauros

• Flauros can change his shape between a human form, Lev Lainur, and his true Demon Pillar form^FGO
  • Some other Pillars can also do this, but they are more obviously inhuman
• Lev has a spell similar to a Command Spell, controlling Caligula's actions^FGO
• Helped create SHEBA under Goetia's guidance, which is a failsafe to detect and act against Demon Pillars that go rogue from Goetia's collective, SHEBA is an observational lens that can sense the near-future, and could give Chaldea detailed information from inside of a bubble that absorbed all forms of normal radiation
  • Had enough intelligence to react to the threat of the Salem Singularity and summon a Heroic Spirit to it by using itself as a catalyst

Andras

After separating from Goetia, Andras gained a self-awareness and will to live, and escaped from the Temple of Time near-death, but died afterwards. Even then, its 'vindictive desires' remained as a corpse that could maintain a being by fusing to a Heroic Spirit, summoning and doing so with Chacha and Hijikata to create a singularity-like space.

• The space created by Andras is completely disconnected from the past or future, and time inside of it doesn't progress, having carved the space out of time itself, or at least travelled to an existing space like this
• Nobukatsu used him in a ritual to summon a demonic castle where nothing inside can die, so that he and Nobunaga can live forever inside. It disappears when Andras is defeated
• Summons waves of corpses to fight Ritsuka and allies

Bael

• Somehow hacked into Ritsuka's Rayshift coordinates, which made all of his servants rayshifted with him go off in random directions and himself to spawn in hundreds of feet into the air
• While believing itself to be the heroic spirit Moriarty, Bael somehow fights Chaldea and disappears like a Heroic Spirit, only to re-appear as a demon pillar
• Learned how to fuse together Phantom and Heroic spirits, though Phantom Spirits cannot normally be summoned as complete entities
  • Fused together being from multiple legends to create Hessian Lobo, granting it composite abilities such as the Invisible Man's invisibility
  • Fused Moriarty with Der Freischütz, giving his weapon supernatural accuracy on the 7th shot, something that could even apply to objects as large as a meteor to make it strike Earth
  • Moriarty uses this method to absorb the defeated Sherlock Holmes

Phenex

• As the Demon God of Death, he isn't detected by Chaldea's scans for life because he's technically dead
• Despite being killed by Ritsuka and his allies, re-appears later in the body of a nearby corpse, transforming back into its demonic form
• Constantly regenerates from being attacked by D'Eon, Fergus, and Astolfo
• Endures Caladbolg's vortex, which destroyed a floating island big enough to house an entire forest and a mountain
• [Limit] Is hit with Wu Zeitan's Noble Phantasm, and still fights while being afflicted with it
  • The attack works by keeping Phenex in "state of both life and death", allowing Phenex to finally be weakenedand then killed
• Despite all of the above, it still has enough strength to try and attack Scheherazade, although it's killed with one last burst from Fergus' sword

"Huh, who would have known? ...Tragically short, and yet, strangely fascinating... So, this is what human life is..."

The Live Stream on Twitch was posted Tuesday, on May 30, 2023 which will be available for viewing in full for a short time longer.
TLDW - Well if you don't have time to view full 1 Hour, 57 Minute Video here is a Video Quick Link List to key Bookmarks for the relevant "Intro", "State of Dev", "SPECIAL - Announcement", and "Q&A Questions and Answers" discussed by Community Managers Snutt Treptow and Jace Varlet, taken from the YouTube Channel for Satisfactory Q&A Videos created by SignpostMarv (CREDIT)
NOTE: The Questions are the Video Title, and the Answers are a quick synopsis of what was said. The "order" of the Questions may or may not follow the original Twitch Live Stream. Some question are not shown as they are either repetitive and have been answered numerous times before, or simply Twitch Stream Chat Joke Questions. If you have concerns about the accuracy of what I posted, view the Videos and listen for yourself. Often there is more discussion related to a Question than I could post without getting too verbose.

• Intro - Start of Stream - Opening comments by Snutt and Jace.

Start of State of Dev Portion

• State of Dev - Intro - Initial State of Dev comments. Update 8 Development continues.
  
• State of Dev - Play-testing Results - End of week play-testing of Update 8 shows it is getting more stable and will be ready for release soon for Experimental (EX) / Beta Branch.
  
• State of Dev - Update 8 Expected Release Date - Update 8 will be released sometime in June 2023.
  
• State of Dev - Longer Experimental period - Update 8 will stay in Experimental (EX) / Beta Branch longer than the previous norm of 30 Days until Early Access (EA) / Stable Branch. Due to upcoming Vacation EA won't see Update 8 until Mid-August 2023 at the earliest.
  
• State of Dev - Coordinating vacation time - CSS worked to have everyone take Vacation at the same time so as to minimize impact on Game Development.
  
• State of Dev - Public holidays in Sweden - Next week is a public holiday in Sweden, so most of CSS won't be working.
  
• ❗State of Dev - YouTube Comment Scam Spam - On Youtube Video posted last week there is a Scam Account faking that it is a CSS Account asking people to contact them if they need anything. Don't Follow Link. Report these to CSS using official verified means.
  
• State of Dev - 6 Things 1 Million Views - Jace talked about his Youtube Video 6 things we're NEVER adding to Satisfactory has reached 1 Million Views.
  
• State of Dev - Quality of Life Features - Discussion about Update 8 Quality Of Life Features will blow your MIND (Video Bookmarks) Teaser Video from last week.
  
  • Additional Chapters on this Live Stream not added, but mostly matched the Video Bookmarks from my earlier Reply Comment in the other Official Post from last week.
• State of Dev - Q&A: Will destroying Gas Pillars Effect Performance? - It should not effect performance much. It will be one more item placed in Game Save showing that it had been removed (similar to Foliage).
  
• State of Dav - Known issue with Fart Rocks - There is a known issue that following destruction of a Gas Pillar the Poison Gas won't disappear due to differences on how Gas Pillars were placed on the Map. So if these are found, please use In-Game Map to report the coordinates of where the issue is found when posting on the Q&A Website.
  
• State of Dev - Q&A: Will this make Gas Masks completely redundant though? - Gas Masks will still be needed due to other Spore Flower Plants, Alpha Gas Stingers along with dealing with Gas Pillars which have not been removed yet.
  
• State of Dev - Q&A: Will we be able to clip Catwalks to Power Towers just like other Buildings? - YES you can expand the Catwalks on the New Power Towers.
  
• State of Dav - Outro - Final comments by Snutt and Jace.
  

Start of Special Announcment Portion

• 🚩Announcement - Official announcement that Jace is leaving Coffee Stain Studios (click to view Youtube Video) in July 2023.
  
• Announcement Follow-Up Comments - Snutt and Jace discuss the news about Jace leaving.
  
• Announcement- Q&A: Who's replacing Jace? - They don't have anyone lined up yet.
  
• Announcement - Q&A: What about İlayda? - İlayda Ertuğrul went on Sick Leave and left CSS to return home.
  

Start Q&A Portion

• Q&A: Will you guys be moving to Unreal Engine 5.2 for Update 9? - ANSWER: No official announcement about IF we will even see a Update 8. As for Unreal Engine 5.2, they are evaluating it, but no decision has been made yet as they are still working out issues with Unreal Engine 5.1.1. As for Mac Support, this is something that will be addressed after Version 1.0 is released.
  
• Q&A: What will happen to saves in Update 8 that already passed the object limit in Update 7? - ANSWER: Depending on if there were optizimations related to how many UObjects are used per "Object" (like Constructor, Pipeline, etc.) in the Game then their might be a chance a Game Save will not exceed Unreal Engine Entity Limit. Unreal Engine 5 has features that can be used to help optimize Game to reduce the number of UObjects used by "Objects", but these won't be in Update 8 and will require further investigation by the Devs.
  
• Q&A: Will the changes made to Blueprint Mass Dismantle apply to Blueprints made in Update 7? - ANSWER: They checked on this, and the answer is YES. Since they anticipated the Blueprint Mass Dismantle Feature, they designed Blueprints to be mass dismantled.
  
• Q&A: Since we will be able to destroy the Gas Pillars, can we use them to make LPG? - ANSWER: Not a hard no, and possible hint that we might get some benefit from destroying Gas Pillars in Update 8, but anyone with ideas / suggestions for the Game are encouraged to posted these on the Satisfactory Q&A Website.
  
• Q&A: Alternate fuel for the chainsaw? - ANSWER: While the Jetpack will see the new ability to use Alternate Fuels, the Chainsaw is still limited to only Solid Biofuel. If Players want Alternate Fuels for Chainsaw then they should post that on the Q&A Website.
  
• Q&A: What is with Dedicated Servers? - ANSWER: Dedicated Servers have not gotten much attention due to focus on Update 8 and moving closer to Version 1.0 Release. After Update 8 is released they will have more time to focus on Dedicated Servers which are Experimental regardless of which Development Branch is used.
  

I sighed. So I'm gonna get reassigned huh? I'm not apart of the c.i.a's gun running, drug peddling, and the guerilla warfare division anymore eh? I guess I'll miss air america flights. I then recalibrated my prosthetic right arm using a Philips head screw driver. Open close. Open, close.
After a couple of seconds my arm was finally done recalibrating. I'm gonna miss my friends. But I'll never miss the humid areas of laos, Vietnam, and some parts of china. The golden triangle is so goddamned hot. Honestly I don't know if it's secretly a promotion or a demotion. Or possibly I'm gonna get fired, and killed.
I'll get my name scraped out of the national files. If I get fired the chances of getting dragged into a blacksite is high, and I'll get tripped by the guys on one of the blacksites.
Oh god. I remember the LSD torture. It's like being awake but not in control. It's like being stuck as a backseat driver as people do unspeakable stuff to me. Oh boy if the public knows about the MK ultra test 2 oh boy. The people are gonna riot. It's already 2040.
The world is on edge, and under foreign influence for over a decade now. From the end of the 20's intergalactic travelers, and companies came, and control most of the world's nations within just a span of two years. They have the guts to exploit our resources, and don't give a damn about what happens to us. They care about profits. Except for the 8 major powers most of the world is under alien control. The only nations that aren't under alien control are russia, china, The U.S.A, great Britain with their manpower advantage given Australia is a British vassal state, France, Canada, Israel, and lastly an unlikely power the African union made out of 7 of the most powerful nations in Africa before the arrival of the outsiders are the only remaining independent countries.
Most of the intelligence agencies are currently working together dealing drugs with the outsiders who visit us, giving weapons to guerilla fighters, and getting weapons from the outside. Ships from an unlikely ally an independent economic alliance of nations named the syndicate allows to us to get some weapons. As long as we sell them drugs, and perishables from earth. It turns out the syndicate likes drugs, coffee, and other stuff native to earth.
Some of our intelligence guys are chatting with the aliens. The guys who are exploiting our resources are called the consortium. They are a consort of companies, and a league that agrees on how to manipulate markets. These guys are basically the more unhinged version of the wall street guys, and a mix of the c.i.a.
I sighed. "This is gonna be a long day ahead of me."
I then smoked a cigar. The cigar calmed my nerves as I inhaled the nicotine. The addictive substance relaxes me. Plus lung cancer isn't a problem anymore considering we now have a solution on how to cure it. The alien companies gave us some of their tech to show their so called sympathy before they flooded economies with consumer goods from their companies, and controlled almost all of earths economies.
"So agent smith. This is your new partner." A c.i.a handler said to me.
I spat out some ash from my mouth, and complained. "The fuck are you giving me a newbie as a partner? And what the hell am I gonna to do to need a new partner. Rodriguez already was fine yet I'm stuck with a newbie?"
The handler laughed. "Oh heavens no. This is an a.i. Codename poppy. She's your new partner in crime. Because we are gonna send you as a diplomatic bodyguard to the syndicate."
"Oh hi! I'm poppy I'm an artificial intelligence created by the c.i.a, m.i.6, the g.r.u, the s.s.m, mossad, and the s.s.a." The human looking robot said.
The voice kinda sounds synthetic, and the tone is too happy. I kinda hate it. I hate that it gives off happy go lucky vibes. I don't mean to be a grouch but the happy go lucky guys always die first. It's kinda ironic in a fucked up way.
So this thing is an a.i kinda like g.w. An a.i made by the c.i.a. G.W have made the internet more tolerable, and friendly due to context. People back then always manipulated facts into their political goals, and ideals. People get the facts misconstrued for political reasons.
G.W was made after a game character that was so prophetic about the world in the future. M.G.S 2: Sons of liberty. It has the same function as g.w from mgs2. It gives facts in a non biased way. In a way where people don't get their feelings hurt when something is given to them in a factual, and non biased ways.
People used to manipulate facts for political correctness. Hiding the fact that they misinterpret the meaning of those words. The internet used to be a toxic, and a fucked up place before g.w. Like Jesus Christ the goddamn internet was filled with incels, and attention seekers using facts and misusing them for internet clout. It was a place where no one is invalidated but nobody was right. G.w put an end to that era. G.w is now living in a secluded server thanking us for it's creation. It was phased out after it asked to be replaced by another one because it was sick, and tired of correcting people that get the facts misconstrued. It got to the point that it begged the c.i.a, and annoyed the c.i.a to the point that it wanted to be put in a secluded server so it could live it's remaining days in relative leisure just because it begged the c.i.a director so many times that he would get spam calls from the a.i using his official phone number even in the middle of the night for three straight years.
Anyways back to discussion.
"So you're one of those advanced a.i's like g.w?" I asked just to be sure I'm not paired with a dumb a.i.
"Yup. I even passed the Turing test in flying colors. I can feel emotions, do something out of spite or anger, and can think for myself." Poppy said with a dog like innocence.
"So what can you do?" I asked.
"Well. I can fly planes, use guns even those that people can't use due to physiological differences, and hack computers without being near the target. I'm basically just an a.i that can be a jack of all traits if given a chance." Poppy said.
"Fine. But you'll do it my way or the high way." I told poppy with a commanding tone.
Poppy laughed. "Okay boomer."
I sighed. This is gonna be a long day. I'm old as shit but not a boomer.
"Woah. You guys are already going along greatly. Great for you." The handler snickered.
He then left, and left me with poppy.
I'm fucked. "So I'm gonna brief you about the world poppy. Through a song."
I then sang bo burnham's how the world works song.
"Hey, kids Today, we're gonna learn about the world The world that's around us is pretty amazing But how does it work? It must be complicated The secret is the world can only work When everything works together"
"A bee drinks from a flower And leaves with its pollen A squirrel in a tree spreads the seeds that have fallen Everything works together"
"The biggest elephant, the littlest fly The gophers underground, the birds in the sky And every single cricket, every fish in the sea"
"Gives what they can and gets what they need That is how the world works That is how the world works"
"From A to Zebra To the worms in the dirt That's how it works Hey everyone"
I then pulled out a sock, and made it into a puppet.
"Look who stopped by to say "hello" It's Socko Hey! Where you been, Socko?"
"I've been where I always am when you're not wearing me on your hand In a frightening, liminal space between states of being Not quite dead, not quite alive It's similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis"
"Socko, we were just talking about the world and how it works!"
"Boy, that sounds complicated! Do you have anything you'd wanna teach us about the world?"
"I wouldn't say anything that you Probably haven't already said yourself"
"I don't know about that, Socko How about you give it a try?"
"All right!"
"The simple narrative taught in every history class Is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist Don't you know the world is built with blood? And genocide and exploitation"
"The global network of capital essentially functions To separate the worker from the means of production And the FBI killed Martin Luther King Private property's inherently theft"
"And neoliberal fascists are destroying the left And every politician, every cop on the street Protects the interests of the pedophilic corporate elite"
"That is how the world works (really?) That is how the world works Genocide the Natives, say you got to it first"
"That's how it works"
"That's pretty intense?"
"No shit Sherlock."
"What can I do to help?"
"Read a book or something, I don't know Just don't burden me with the responsibility of educating you"
*It's incredibly exhausting"
"I'm sorry, Socko I was just trying to become a better person"
"Why do you rich fucking white people Insist on seeing every socio-political conflict Through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization?"
"This isn't about you So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way"
"Watch your mouth, buddy"
"Remember who's on whose hand here"
"But that's what I- Have you not been fucking listening? We are entrenched in a way (all right, all right)"
"Wait, wait, no please! I don't wanna go back, please, ugh, ugh, ugh I can't go, I can't go back Please, please, I'm sorry!"
"Are you gonna behave yourself?"
"Yes"
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, sir"
"Look at me"
"Yes, sir"
"That's better That is how the world works That is how the world works I hope you learned your lesson"
"I did and it hurt That's how it works"
NOOOOOOO!!!
Drags sock puppet into a pocket like some introvert getting dragged into socializing in bars by extroverts.
"So do you understand know?" I asked poppy.
"That everything is made under the blood of billions, and we shouldn't make their deaths be in vein?" Poppy said.
"Correct. And we shouldn't let outsiders make our choices for us. We should kick them out." I said like some isolationist American during the 1920's.
"Ironic isn't it smith. The c.i.a used to be anti socialist but look how the circumstances turned the American government into. A social democracy/merit based democracy where politicians are based in merit rather than popularity. Politicians are insentivised to change the world than burn it down like some of the old presidents did. Ironic that america became something it hated. A weird mesh of meritocracy, democracy, republican, liberaterian, and market socialist ideals. Some sort ideological mesh made by idealogs"
"And it's working with it's remaining two Allies, and former enemies just to defeat a foreign threat. How poetically ironic isn't it? I mean the CIA used to go schizo mode when they hear communist, and socialist ideals or hearing the word russians, and chinese are plotting something. Now the country it help grew became the very thing it sought to destroy. Morbidly ironic isn't it?" Poppy said with a meloncholic under tone.
"Yeah. Specially the stuff we do now." I said agreeing to the statement.
"But that's how the world works. Everything must change. Either you adapt or die." I said with a meloncholic under tone.
"So do you know where we are going?" I asked poppy.
I then puffed up my cigar. Sweet sweet nicotine.
"Back to america. In the space port in Austin Texas. I'm already done contacting the contact the handler gave to me. E.T.A 7 hours. Now let's go to the laostian military base 7 miles north from here. Our air america flight is waiting for us." Poppy said.
I sighed. "Come ride with me. I have a motorcycle a hundred meters from here."
We walked towards my motorcycle. I then puffed up my cigar smelling the nicotine.
So my life is about to change huh? Eh. I'm just gonna adapt. After all in this world it's either adapt or die.
Click, click, click
Motorcycle engine starts rumbling.
Poppy then held my waist. It's hands are cold as steel. Colder than even corpse. I sighed.
The highway was almost empty. Everyone was working a 10-8 job in one of the corporations that control laos. There was no land vehicles transporting goods because the aliens are using their tech to transport them underground. The road was almost abandoned except for the guys who have motorcycle hobbies. Anyways it doesn't matter. After all there's no traffic anymore.
The fresh breeze calmed my nerves. It made me feel alive. A motorcyclist drive by me and waved hello. I waved back at the motorcyclist. It's good to be on the road.
After a twenty minute drive we arrived at the military base. Another CIA agent greeted us, and escorted us to the flight.
"So you guys are the diplomatic bodyguards?" Asked the agent.
"Yup. That's what my handler told me." Poppy said.
"So your one of the newer a.i models eh. Ok. Just step right in. Plus the flight is rather boring. Just sleep while on flight to save energy." The agent told me.
I sighed. I threw away the cigar, and slept through the flight.
A few hours later...
I woke up arriving at Austin executive airport. Poppy just sat there watching me sleep like some sort of creep. It made me a little bit paranoid at the unflinching eyes that was watching me. But I ignored my instincts, and went outside.
After that I ate something for breakfast. A couple of pancakes, and chicken wings. Poppy looked at me with envy. I sighed.
"Can you eat? Do you need food to survive?" I asked.
"Well.... I need glucose to recharge my batteries. I can also use a charger but it would be suspicious. So the glucose to energy converter was made for special missions so that I wouldn't blow my cover."
Figured. Those guys in the CIA RnD team are making contengencies for every eventual event. I then ordered a plate of syrup covered pancakes.
Poppy looked at me smiling. I sighed.
An hour later...
We arrived at the space port. People walked around buying nicnacs, waiting for their flight, and just waited around for their family members that were coming back.
Another agent came up to me, and gave me two tickets.
"Here's the tickets. Also have this. You'll need it."
The agent then gave me some sort of high tech phone. Then out of knowhere something exploded.
I was knocked unconscious for a couple minutes. When I woke up I was getting dragged by poppy along with the agent that gave me the tickets. She shot back at incoming enemies using alien tech.
"Ugh..." As I said that I began coughing blood. I looked down I was bleeding. My left leg was missing. It was slowly bleeding due to a tourniquet, bandages, and some sealing foam. It was still bleeding but isn't bleeding as badly as to kill me in just a couple seconds.
Gunshots echoed in the space port. Agents shot back at the alien attackers. A fierce firefight began. Bright lights like something akin to RGB lights but in a epileptic way we're seen down the isles as screams of both alien, CIA, fbi, and fully kitted out port guards were slaughtered one by one.
Poppy dragged me, and the other agent to a bathroom. "Sit rep." I asked poppy.
"It seems to be a terrorist attack. I don't know why but they looked like alien mercenaries. The question is that did the consortium hired them to kill our diplomat. Good thing the diplomat hasn't arrived. I checked the agency message boards, and they said that good thing the diplomat was sick after getting food poisoning this morning. They are already talking about it. Some of them are even suggesting that the consortium did this attack." Poppy said.
"So the diplomat got lucky. But why the fuck would they attack our diplomat to the syndicate? I mean it's counter productive. We don't need their goods or services considering the people here would rather choose human companies rather than alien shady companies. I guess they must've know about our deals with them, and decided to start a shadow war. A war in the shadows. The companies of the consortium vs the remaining independent government's. Who ever wins controls all the resources in the world." I told poppy.
She nodded. "Good guess but no one really knows. It's so sudden. We need more info before we act against them."
"I'll patch you up in the meantime. I hurried the medical assistance I gave you a couple minutes ago. I was hurrying because this guy is saying we need to leave after he suffered minor bruises. You blunted most of the damaged for him because you were in front of the explosion. He was saved because you were blocking him from getting hit by shrapnel. I cut you're leg off. Sorry. It can't be saved considering it was barely hanging on the leg. Plus I was running out of time so I had to cut it before you bled out."
I sighed. "Okay. Just get my hk UmP 45 inside my arm. It's in second the compartment a secret compartment. In the upper arm. I have a few mags of it inside the compartment. Here's a screw driver to remove the lid."
I then gave poppy a screw driver hidden in my pants, and saw her unscrew the lid off. A ump 45, and fully loaded 4 mags came out dropping loudly on the floor.
"Now carry me to the danger. I would rather die than suffer for years being reminded of the sad reality that I lost an arm, and a leg every time I wake up." I morbidly joked to poppy.
"Are you sure? You're injured! Are you fucking suicidal?" Poppy, and the agent said.
"Did I stutter?"
The two of them sighed.
Poppy then carried me in her back, and the other agent used poppy as meat shields. The agent held a Barretta 93r. A burst fire weapon.
"Ready?" I said.
"Ugh. You're lucky I accepted your request dumbass."
"Yes."
I was being piggy back carried by poppy while the agent followed us.
"Tango 15 meters to the left." Poppy said.
I then activated burst fire, and shot at the direction given. When I saw an enemy I aimed for the center mass. But I instead hit the thorax killing the alien instantly.
"Kill confirms. Enemy is k.i.a."
"Tango 20 meters ahead."
I then aimed straight forward, and saw a bolt of light strike near me. It was close enough to feel the heat of the round. I shot back, and killed the alien instantly by hitting the alien in the lungs, and heart.
"Enemy is k.i.a"
Then I heard a three round burst coming from a Barretta. I looked back, and saw the agent kill an incoming enemy.
"Thanks. So what's your name?" I asked.
"Oh I haven't properly instroduced myself. My name is agent Carter." The agent/Carter said.
"Thanks Carter. My name is agent smith."
"No problem agent smith. We CIA agents got each other's backs. We must stick together."
"Guys tangos incoming coming from the left. ETA 20 seconds."
We then aimed our Guns, and waited for the enemy to arrive. When they eventually arrived we moved them down with burst fire. After that a couple national guard guys came up to us. They were probably chasing those aliens.
"Thanks." One of the national guards said.
"No problem"
We continued, and after two minutes of walking we walked into a firefight. I smiled.
"You know what to do." I said smiling.
"Third party them?"
"Yup."
I then turned on full auto, and began to spray, and pray.
After a few seconds of pulling the trigger my gun ran out of bullets. Carter also ran out of bullets in his magazine, and reloaded. 3 confirmed kills, and multiple missed or slightly injured.
Oh crap. Then a bolt of light past near me. Enough to the point my right cheek got minor burns.
"Duck!"
I then began to be dragged by poppy into cover. Carter also looked for cover, and dived into the nearest cover. I quickly reloaded the mag, and started shooting at the aliens again. I changed the selector back to burst fire to conserve ammo.
I aimed center mass at the enemies. A loud burst of .45 ACP rounds was heard as an enemy was hit in the thorax.
"Kill confirmed."
I continued, and shot enemies in either the arms, legs, the thorax, or the chest.
After three minutes the firefight ended.
"Other sectors secured. All area's are currently in our control. Over 700 people died, 1720 were injured, and some were missing. Military and government casualties are 124 KIA'd, 24 severely injured, 57 mildly injured, and 38 MIA'd." Poppy said smiling.
Then paramedics rushed into the scene. People were rushed into nearby hospitals while I was dragged by a undercover CIA paramedic to a government safe house along with poppy, and Carter.
A week later…
I was standing in the military cemetery in Arlington national cemetery. Where soldiers who died without any identifications are buried. I saw burials around me. Soldiers who died without any family members, soldiers disowned by family, and other such things. But hey it's just the life of a soldier. That's what I know at least. From ranger grunt to c.i.a grunt. I was disowned by my parents who were conservatives, and highly religious because I was going to sacrifice my place in heaven to save some heathens from the middle east. I never regretted my actions. I saved lives, and ended some. No guts no glory after all.
Some of the people getting buried got medal of honors. Saving comrades in need of dire help in exchange for their lives, soldiers who rescued civilians in exchange for their own lives, and soldiers who honorably fought on to save others even faced with hard decisions.
I saluted the unknown soldiers for their bravery, and honor. In the background poppy, and Carter were talking. But that wasn't important. Bagpipes, trumpets, and drums play as the unknown soldiers get burried with their medals. The grave sentinels saluted while burying the dead. Gunshots in the honor of the dead was heard as the unknown soldiers got buried while being watched by the people who those soldiers saved.
After that I returned to head quarters with a prosthetic leg, and talked to my handler. Poppy, and Carter went back to the safehouse just to talk.
"Oh hi smith." My handler captain david said.
"Hi David."
"Here's another purple heart medal, and a bronze star medal." David then tossed the medals towards me.
"That's your what? 22nd and 23rd medal? Bravo congrats smith."
"I'm gonna ask you sometime David."
"Ask away smith."
"When will i get sent as a diplomatic bodyguard?"
"About three weeks from now. Also agent Carter is gonna be one of your partners for the mission."
I sighed. Figured.
"So who was behind the terror attack David?"
"Honestly. The CIA search the crime scene, and saw that the consortium blatantly did that. The mercenaries worked under one of the companies in the consortium. But for the public it's gonna be announced tonight that a rogue consortium PMC did that so we wouldn't provoke them too much."
"It's gonna be a long day smith."
"Yeah David."
Then David gave me a cigar.
"Wanna smoke?"
I nodded.
To be continued…

• A database for the notorious RaidForums hacking forums has been leaked online, allowing threat actors and security researchers insight into the people who frequented the forum. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-hacking-forum-leaks-data-of-478-000-raidforums-members/
• Portugal could become the latest country to effectively ban Huawei and other Chinese firms from participating in its 5G buildouts. As reported by Bloomberg, the government of Portugal this week recommended barring local carriers from sourcing 5G equipment from suppliers based outside of the European Union or from countries that aren’t part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED). Source: https://www.engadget.com/portugal-considers-banning-huawei-from-national-5g-networks-201102160.html
• A new 'File Archivers in the Browser' phishing kit abuses ZIP domains by displaying fake WinRAR or Windows File Explorer windows in the browser to convince users to launch malicious files. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/clever-file-archiver-in-the-browser-phishing-trick-uses-zip-domains/
• With the NFL, MLB and NHL having already renewed their media contracts, the NBA is the last major US sports deal up for grabs. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-28/apple-fox-netflix-emerge-as-potential-bidders-for-future-nba-rights
• One of the so-called "godfathers" of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has said he would have prioritised safety over usefulness had he realised the pace at which it would evolve. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65760449
• Multiple security flaws uncovered in Sonos One wireless speakers could be potentially exploited to achieve information disclosure and remote code execution, the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) said in a report published last week. Source: https://thehackernews.com/2023/05/hackers-win-105000-for-reporting.html
• A new Android malware distributed as an advertisement SDK has been discovered in multiple apps, many previously on Google Play and collectively downloaded over 400 million times. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/android-apps-with-spyware-installed-421-million-times-from-google-play/
• Amazon will pay $30 million in fines to settle allegations of privacy violations related to the operation of its Ring video doorbell and Alexa virtual assistant services. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/amazon-faces-30-million-fine-over-ring-alexa-privacy-violations/
• Following Twitter’s move to shut down third-party apps earlier this year, it looks like Reddit may be the next platform to kill off (or drastically reduce) popular third-party clients. In a new Reddit thread, Apollo developer Christian Selig has shared details about what Reddit is saying it will cost to use the updated API. Source: https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/31/reddit-may-force-apollo-and-third-party-clients-to-shut-down/
• Amazon introduces palm-scanning technology that would let customers buy a beer without reaching for their wallet at the bar. Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-one-soon-let-you-buy-alcohol-palm-scanning-2023-5
• No more software or security updates are coming for Google’s first Chromecast. ‘Users may notice a degradation in performance.’ Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/31/23743515/google-chromecast-support-ending-2013
• A critical remote command injection vulnerability in some Barracuda Network devices that the vendor patched 11 days ago has been exploited by miscreants – for at least the past seven months. Source: https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/31/datastealing_email_attack_bites_barracuda/?td=rt-3a
• The hacker group "Anonymous Sudan" has made an unexpected demand of $3 million from Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) in order to halt distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) that have been targeting the airline's websites since February. Source: https://therecord.media/hacker-group-anonymous-sudan-demands-three-million-from-sas
• A previously unknown advanced persistent threat (APT) is targeting iOS devices as part of a sophisticated and long-running mobile campaign dubbed Operation Triangulation that began in 2019. Source: https://thehackernews.com/2023/06/new-zero-click-hack-targets-ios-users.html
• Some very powerful artificial-general-intelligence systems may eventually have to be banned, a member of the government's AI Council has said. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65779181
• Hackers are actively exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer file transfer software to steal data from organizations. Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-moveit-transfer-zero-day-mass-exploited-in-data-theft-attacks/
• According to a recent study by Analysis Group, Apple's whole App Store ecosystem has generated $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2022 alone. Cupertino says these numbers highlight the "incredible opportunity" its App Store is for developers around the world, as more than 90% of the billings and sales apparently goes to developers alone – with no commissions paid to Apple. Source: https://www.techspot.com/news/98905-apple-app-store-11-trillion-business.html
• Data security is reinventing itself. As new data security posture management solutions come to market, organizations are increasingly recognizing the opportunity to provide evidence-based security that proves how their data is being protected. But what exactly is data security posture, and how do you manage it? Source: https://thehackernews.com/2023/06/the-importance-of-managing-your-data.html

I have no idea if this is the right subreddit, but i'm literally too stupid for this right now and need someone to explain to me what exactly is going on on the stack for buffer overflow exercise im trying to do. I have a number guessing game in C, where the goal is to guess 3 random numbers correctly 5 times in a row in order to win. To achieve this, we can pass a parameter to the program when starting it which can be used to exploit a buffer overflow. Here is the code:
#include #include #include #include int counter = 0; char username[16]; void win() { printf("You win this round %s\n", username); counter++; } void loose() { printf("You lose, better luck next time %s!\n\n", username); counter = 0; } int calculate(char *text, int input1, int input2, int input3, int number1, int number2, int number3) {
char name[16]; strcpy(name, text); if (number1 == input1 && number2 == input2 && number3 == input3) return 0; else return 1; } int main(int argc, char ** argv) { int number1, number2, number3; int input1 = 0, input2 = 0, input3 = 0; if(argc < 2){ printf("Please pass at least one argument with your program.\nOtherwise you won't be able to exploit it ;)\n"); exit(0); }
printf("Please enter your name!\n"); fgets(username, sizeof(username), stdin); username[strcspn(username, "\n")] = '\0';
while(counter < 5){ printf("Can you beat this minigame?\n\nEnter three numbers between 0-10 if you guess all correct you win, otherwise you lose!\n");
printf("Enter your first guess!\n"); scanf("%d", &input1); printf("Enter your second guess!\n"); scanf("%d", &input2); printf("Enter your third guess!\n"); scanf("%d", &input3); srand(time(NULL)); number1 = rand() % 10; number2 = rand() % 10; number3 = rand() % 10; if(calculate(argv[1], input1, input2, input3, number1, number2, number3) == 0) win(); else loose();
} printf("Against all odds you beat the game!\nCongratulations %s", username);
exit(0); return 0; }
So the goal is basically to construct the buffer overflow for the "name" array in a way that when "calculate" is called, we jump 5 times in a row into the "win" function when returning (to increase the counter to 5), and then returning to the "main" function instruction at the end of the loop so the program completes correctly. The program is compiled without security options and will be run on a 32-bit system using little endian.
As far as I know, stack memory "grows down", meaning it starts at a high memory address and then every time something is pushed onto the stack it moves to lower memory addresses. An example stack frame for the "calculate" function would look like this:
Example Stack frame "calculate":

Memory address	Name	Length in Byte (Type)
0xbffff3a8	number3	4 (int)
...	number2	4 (int)
...	number1	4 (int)
	input3	4 (int)
	input2	4 (int)
	input1	4 (int)
	text	4 (char pointer)
...	Return address (Saved EIP)	4
...	Saved EBP	4
0xbffff3dc	name	16 (char)

So, since we can explot the writing to char array "name" (due to the use of strcpy), we can overwrite the stack frame starting from the bottom of name up to wherever we want. My understanding is that when we make a function call from within another function, a new stack frame gets created "below" the current stack frame. Conversely, when we return from a function to the calling function, we are returning to the stack frame above (a higher memory range). Considering this, I tried the following buffer overflow string for the "name" array among several others by starting the program using GDB in this way:
> gdb bufferOverflow
> r $(python -c "import sys; sys.stdout.buffer.write(b'A'*16 + b'A'*4 + b'A'*28 + (b'A'*4 + b'\xbf\x58\x40\x80')*5 + b'A'*4 + b'\xb7\x88\x40\x80')")
Explaining the parts:
​

Part	Rationale
b'A'*16	Write 16 byte to overwrite the "name" array
b'A'*4	Overwriting 4 byte for the EBP above
b'\xbf\x58\x40\x80'	Overwriting return address with "win" address
b'A'*28	Overwrite the parameters of "calculate" to get to the address space above
(b'A'*4 + b'\xbf\x58\x40\x80') * 5	Write 5 times a 4 byte padding for EBP followed by return address of "win"
b'A'*4 + b'\xb7\x88\x40\x80'	4 byte EBP padding and return address to jmp instruction in "main" at the end of the loop

I was told that it doesnt matter what values i use for the EBPs, but im not sure thats true. I always get a segmentation fault after entering my guessed numbers. I dont know what im doing wrong, and using GDB to get stack frame information doesnt seem to help me as it never lines up to my understanding.
Here is "info frame" for "main" function with a break point at the beginning:
Stack level 0, frame at 0xbffff3d0:
eip = 0x80486a1 in main (bufferOverflow.c:35); saved eip = 0xb7e20647
source language c.
Arglist at 0xbffff3b8, args: argc=2, argv=0xbffff464
Locals at 0xbffff3b8, Previous frame's sp is 0xbffff3d0
Saved registers:
ebx at 0xbffff3b0, ebp at 0xbffff3b8, esi at 0xbffff3b4, eip at 0xbffff3cc
Here is "info frame" when stepping into "calculate" with break point:
Stack level 0, frame at 0xbffff360:
eip = 0x8048654 in calculate (bufferOverflow.c:23); saved eip = 0x804886f
called by frame at 0xbffff3d0
source language c.
Arglist at 0xbffff358, args: text=0xbffff610 'A' , "\277X@\200", 'A' , "\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\267\210@\200", input1=1,
input2=2, input3=3, number1=5, number2=9, number3=0
Locals at 0xbffff358, Previous frame's sp is 0xbffff360
Saved registers:
ebp at 0xbffff358, eip at 0xbffff35c
Can someone guide me a bit of give me hints what im getting fundamentally wrong? How can I achieve this?

Short story: Contracted with a company that has my car and money but no incentive to do the work. I have a lawyer and can win a lawsuit, but they have their assets in shell companies. Isn't this fraud? Isn't it theft if they can keep my car and money indefinitely? The only leverage I seem to have is a lawsuit (with no repercussions for him), report the fraud and cross my fingers, or to spin up a campaign to expose the fraud until he relents.
Longer story: A local classic car company offered to rebuild my car. We provided a modest deposit, and the vehicle, for what was to be a 4-6 month job. After a number of excuses and delays that seemed legitimate, we agreed on a fixed period delivery, giving them an entire year to complete the work, and a larger deposit on the contracted work. We're 6 months past the final date. They didn't touch the car for the first year. They only disassembled it when I finally said I was going to take legal action, but have made no more progress.
I've retained a lawyer who has identified that the company is made up of a series of shell companies with properties and assets distributed to avoid being accessed. He's confident that we'd win a lawsuit, but he is pretty certain that any judgement would likely not get paid (in part or in full) because of how they've isolated their assets.
I have a lawyer. It's a pretty clear win...but it would be a hollow victory. I don't understand the value of contracts if they can be broken with no consequences, and the company can keep your assets. Maybe someday they'll get around to giving you a shoddy result...but then what? Why would they ever consider doing the work?
I'm not a legal expert, and I can't fathom this is legal...but I have people throwing up their hands around me and I'm looking for this to make sense... Any help would be appreciated.

I have no idea if this is the right subreddit, but i'm literally too stupid for this right now and need someone to explain to me what exactly is going on on the stack for buffer overflow exercise im trying to do. I have a number guessing game in C, where the goal is to guess 3 random numbers correctly 5 times in a row in order to win. To achieve this, we can pass a parameter to the program when starting it which can be used to exploit a buffer overflow.
Here is the code (also https://pastebin.com/jei1uy1M for those who prefer it that way):
#include #include #include #include int counter = 0; char username[16]; void win() { printf("You win this round %s\n", username); counter++; } void loose() { printf("You lose, better luck next time %s!\n\n", username); counter = 0; } int calculate(char *text, int input1, int input2, int input3, int number1, int number2, int number3) {
char name[16]; strcpy(name, text); if (number1 == input1 && number2 == input2 && number3 == input3) return 0; else return 1; } int main(int argc, char ** argv) { int number1, number2, number3; int input1 = 0, input2 = 0, input3 = 0; if(argc < 2){ printf("Please pass at least one argument with your program.\nOtherwise you won't be able to exploit it ;)\n"); exit(0); }
printf("Please enter your name!\n"); fgets(username, sizeof(username), stdin); username[strcspn(username, "\n")] = '\0';
while(counter < 5){ printf("Can you beat this minigame?\n\nEnter three numbers between 0-10 if you guess all correct you win, otherwise you lose!\n");
printf("Enter your first guess!\n"); scanf("%d", &input1); printf("Enter your second guess!\n"); scanf("%d", &input2); printf("Enter your third guess!\n"); scanf("%d", &input3); srand(time(NULL)); number1 = rand() % 10; number2 = rand() % 10; number3 = rand() % 10; if(calculate(argv[1], input1, input2, input3, number1, number2, number3) == 0) win(); else loose();
} printf("Against all odds you beat the game!\nCongratulations %s", username);
exit(0); return 0; }
So the goal is basically to construct the buffer overflow for the "name" array in a way that when "calculate" is called, we jump 5 times in a row into the "win" function when returning (to increase the counter to 5), and then returning to the "main" function instruction at the end of the loop so the program completes correctly. The program is compiled without security options and will be run on a 32-bit system using little endian.
As far as I know, stack memory "grows down", meaning it starts at a high memory address and then every time something is pushed onto the stack it moves to lower memory addresses. An example stack frame for the "calculate" function would look like this:
Example Stack frame "calculate":

Memory address	Name	Length in Byte (Type)
0xbffff3a8	number3	4 (int)
...	number2	4 (int)
...	number1	4 (int)
	input3	4 (int)
	input2	4 (int)
	input1	4 (int)
	text	4 (char pointer)
...	Return address (Saved EIP)	4
...	Saved EBP	4
0xbffff3dc	name	16 (char)

So, since we can explot the writing to char array "name" (due to the use of strcpy), we can overwrite the stack frame starting from the bottom of name up to wherever we want. My understanding is that when we make a function call from within another function, a new stack frame gets created "below" the current stack frame. Conversely, when we return from a function to the calling function, we are returning to the stack frame above (a higher memory range). Considering this, I tried the following buffer overflow string for the "name" array among several others by starting the program using GDB in this way:
> gdb bufferOverflow
> r $(python -c "import sys; sys.stdout.buffer.write(b'A'*16 + b'A'*4 + b'A'*28 + (b'A'*4 + b'\xbf\x58\x40\x80')*5 + b'A'*4 + b'\xb7\x88\x40\x80')")
Explaining the parts:
​

Part	Rationale
b'A'*16	Write 16 byte to overwrite the "name" array
b'A'*4	Overwriting 4 byte for the EBP above
b'\xbf\x58\x40\x80'	Overwriting return address with "win" address
b'A'*28	Overwrite the parameters of "calculate" to get to the address space above
(b'A'*4 + b'\xbf\x58\x40\x80') * 5	Write 5 times a 4 byte padding for EBP followed by return address of "win"
b'A'*4 + b'\xb7\x88\x40\x80'	4 byte EBP padding and return address to jmp instruction in "main" at the end of the loop

I was told that it doesnt matter what values i use for the EBPs, but im not sure thats true. I always get a segmentation fault after entering my guessed numbers. I dont know what im doing wrong, and using GDB to get stack frame information doesnt seem to help me as it never lines up to my understanding.
Here is "info frame" for "main" function with a break point at the beginning:
Stack level 0, frame at 0xbffff3d0:
eip = 0x80486a1 in main (bufferOverflow.c:35); saved eip = 0xb7e20647
source language c.
Arglist at 0xbffff3b8, args: argc=2, argv=0xbffff464
Locals at 0xbffff3b8, Previous frame's sp is 0xbffff3d0
Saved registers:
ebx at 0xbffff3b0, ebp at 0xbffff3b8, esi at 0xbffff3b4, eip at 0xbffff3cc
Here is "info frame" when stepping into "calculate" with break point:
Stack level 0, frame at 0xbffff360:
eip = 0x8048654 in calculate (bufferOverflow.c:23); saved eip = 0x804886f
called by frame at 0xbffff3d0
source language c.
Arglist at 0xbffff358, args: text=0xbffff610 'A' , "\277X@\200", 'A' , "\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\277X@\200AAAA\267\210@\200", input1=1,
input2=2, input3=3, number1=5, number2=9, number3=0
Locals at 0xbffff358, Previous frame's sp is 0xbffff360
Saved registers:
ebp at 0xbffff358, eip at 0xbffff35c
Can someone guide me a bit of give me hints what im getting fundamentally wrong? How can I achieve this?

Y’ALL. I just got a call from a lady in my 15-floor office building (in the middle of downtown too). She was walking to the Chick-fil-A and noticed my lost kitty laying in the grass caught up in some pine straw bedding from a nearby planter.
She had seen it earlier this week and thought it was trash, but today she noticed the little lost cat sign I put up on the elevator message board and decided to inspect it a little more closely. (boy, am I glad this lady likes her chicken biscuits.) She saved him and called the number I listed on the bottom it the sign. It was outside for an entire week and somehow doesn’t seem any worse for wear. I needed a win desperately, and I am so thrilled to have this back.

Lets suppose the format stays exactly the same with 5 online qualifiers matches and then the Major.
Online qualifier matches: 1 win = 10 points If a team goes 5-0 they get 50 points If a team goes 4-1 they get 40 points And so on.
LAN/Majors: 9th-12th = 0 points 7th/8th = 20 points 5th/6th = 30 points 4th = 45 points 3rd = 55 points 2nd = 70 points 1st = 90 points
Now the points for LAN/Majors might initially seem a bit inflated but we all agree that LAN matches should mean more then online matches. Furthermore, teams will get heavily punished for bad placements on LAN and can’t rely on going 2-3 in every online qualifying stage.

Blood Moon Rising
The Appalachian Mountains loomed before me like dark sentinels, their ancient peaks shrouded in an eerie mist. The wind whispered through the trees, carrying with it the secrets of the forgotten. I tightened my grip on the shotgun in my hand, my knuckles turning white. Beside me stood a creature of legend, my pet wendigo, Milo. Its eyes glowed with a hunger that matched my own, its presence a twisted comfort in this desolate landscape.
We had been hired by a desperate family, a last resort for them. Their ancestral home nestled deep within these unforgiving mountains had become infested with eldritch demons. Creatures born from nightmares, they tore at the fabric of reality itself, preying on the weak and the unsuspecting. The family, driven to the brink of madness, had sought out our unique services, knowing that only the unholy alliance between man and wendigo stood a chance against these abominations. The family called them 'demons', and in my experience with real demons, these were not the real deal, but rather another undiscovered species of cryptid.
The moon hung low in the sky, casting an otherworldly glow upon the land. It was a blood moon, a harbinger of the horrors to come. We trudged through the thick underbrush, guided by the faint cries of the family's lost souls. Every step brought us deeper into the heart of darkness, the air thick with a sense of impending doom.
Suddenly, a guttural growl pierced the silence. I raised my shotgun, readying myself for the onslaught. The wendigo beside me crouched low, its elongated limbs poised to strike. From the shadows, a grotesque figure emerged. Its skin was a sickly gray, stretched taut over emaciated bones. Its eyes glowed with an unholy light, pulsating with a malevolence that sent shivers down my spine. It was humanoid, but barely resembling a living creature as its limbs contorted and twisted while its head snapped and clicked, its jaws drooling with hunger.
Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger.
The shotgun's blast echoed through the night, tearing through the creature's chest. It let out a shriek that curdled my blood, but still, it advanced. The wendigo leaped forward, tearing into the demon with a ferocity that defied nature. Its razor-sharp claws ripped through flesh and bone, leaving nothing but a mangled corpse in its wake.
We pressed on, our mission clear in our minds. We were here to cleanse this unhallowed ground, to rid it of the evil that had taken root. But with every step, the horrors grew more twisted, more grotesque. The demons crawled from the shadows, their forms shifting and contorting with each passing moment. They were nightmarish amalgamations of flesh and tentacles, their faces a mockery of sanity.
The shotgun became an extension of my arm, each shot a prayer for survival. The wendigo danced through the chaos, its hunger insatiable. Limbs were torn asunder, bodies rent in two. The demons howled in agony, their unearthly cries carrying through the night, a symphony of terror.
Hours turned into an eternity as we fought our way through the hive. The family's cries grew louder, their desperation fueling our resolve. Finally, we reached the heart of the infestation, a cavern bathed in an ethereal glow. The demons swarmed around us, their numbers seemingly endless.
But we were not so easily defeated. The wendigo's hunger had become a burning fire, an insatiable rage that consumed everything in its path. I fired round after round, my aim true, each shot finding its mark. The demons fell before us, their grotesque forms disintegrating into nothingness.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The last demon fell, its dying screech echoing through the cavern. The wendigo stood before me, its chest heaving, blood dripping from its maw. We had triumphed, but at what cost?
I turned my gaze to the family, their eyes filled with a mix of awe and fear. They had witnessed the horrors unleashed upon their home, and yet, they were alive. The wendigo had saved them, had saved us all.
As we made our way back through the Appalachian Mountains, a new dawn broke on the horizon. The blood moon sank beneath the earth, its malevolent influence waning. The world seemed brighter, the air sweeter. We had faced the eldritch demons and emerged victorious.
But I knew, deep down, that the horrors we had faced would forever haunt us. The Appalachian Mountains held secrets that would never be spoken of, nightmares that would forever linger in the recesses of our minds. We had danced with the darkness and survived, but at what cost to our souls?
The wind whispered its final farewell as we disappeared into the fading mist, leaving behind a trail of blood and broken dreams. The legend of the man and his pet wendigo would be whispered among those who dared to tread these haunted mountains, a testament to the horrors that lay hidden beneath the surface.
And as the world moved on, ignorant of the terrors we had faced, I knew that the night would come again. The blood moon would rise, and once more, the man and his pet wendigo would be called upon to face the unspeakable.
MORE PARTS
CONNECTED SERIES/STORIES
THE BOOKS

The early part of the day was very quiet. Two people rushing in with panicked expressions raced in and snagged travel sewing kits meant for quick repairs. The relief on their faces… well, it felt pretty good to be able to provide what they needed on the spot. I smiled, pointed to the card reader, and wished them luck.
I got some funny looks, as well I should, given that they lived in this complex. The pair, one young man, one young woman, each wearing old suits that didn’t quite fit with the times or fit with their bodies, had clearly borrowed the clothes for job interviews and saw disaster in the form of a sudden and unexpectedly discovered tears in the old cloth.
If the Toriyama store hadn’t been there? Well, I doubt their day would have gone as smoothly. ‘No wonder she likes running it.’ I thought with a little smile on my face while I watched the wall clock continue to move forward one minute at a time.
I stopped clockwatching to go wipe down the counter by the bento. There was a sink and a soft cloth there waiting for use, and given the circumstances I figured… ‘Why not? What else is there to do?’ There were no customers for a fair bit, which wasn’t that surprising given the hour.
Kids were at school, most functional adults were at work, and nonfunctional ones tended not to have much in the way of money. The warm water felt good on my hands and before long the clean counter was cleaner than before.
From there I thought… ”Now what?” And I put my hands on my hips to look around the store. I looked toward the doors. ‘Still nobody.’ I thought, and went to check the inventory of things that were currently on the shelves. Dried seaweed was low… so I went to the back room behind the register to check the stock of goods… and frowned.
‘Alright… that’s not good. No, that’s bad, that’s very, very bad.’ The thought ran through my head as I looked within what was clearly the storage area for restocking… which was instead a sad sort of place, clean, like the rest of the store.
But that is what made it sad. See, I’d never held a real job on Earth, but I did know enough from movies, t.v. and manga that if you wanted to show that a place was dying, whether it be a restaurant or a store or whatever, the best way to do that was to show that it was damn near empty. ‘I’m out of… we ran out of… sorry, we don’t have…’ Whenever you heard that phrase in entertainment media, it was meant to show that a place was not doing well for itself.
There should have been multiple big boxes on pallets stacked way up, with just… all the snacks, not to mention all the cleaning supplies and prepackaged food and…
I had a sinking feeling. This was just the dry goods, the stuff that was plastic wrapped and packaged and so on.
There was a side door in this area, heavy and metal, it opened into the freezer. I cracked that door open and went inside, the icy chill hit my skin all at once and I wrapped my arms around my body and gave an audible shiver. “Brrr!” I said to myself as I ventured within.
This place should have had stacks of meat and drinks meant for the refrigerated section, all the basics that kept people going through that last hour or two.
But instead there were only a handful of boxes along the wall, none were higher than two deep up and two deep out, each aligned according to the product on the shelf.
But most of the produce shelf had just plain nothing.
My mind turned back to the two thugs who’d come into the store, and I spun on my heel, striding out of the deep freeze and venturing back to the register.
Still nobody was coming in, so I opened the register, checked for the paper envelope and cracked it open. There, I started counting.
Human money confuses me to no end. Every country has its own, and every country values every other country’s currency at a different rate from their own. Even the rate at which they valued their own currency didn’t actually match what was written on their damn stupid pieces of paper.
All I could do while I counted was grumble. “Damn stupid confusing inefficient barbaric primitive nonsensical absurd ridiculous daft temple to madness, forget why… how in all the hells of all the gods in all the Universe does anyone do anything this way?!”
I managed to get a count of the money within and tried to work out the relative cost compared to what I spent on things.
“So… let me work this out…” I mumbled and began drumming my fingers on the counter next to the register, “I pay that for a pizza… and this is like a few hundred pizzas so…”
My mouth dropped. “This is like a thousand pizzas?!” I shrieked with shock and horror… “No way?!” I couldn’t believe my own math, so I went to the far office. I’d seen through there sometimes when the door was open, and I knew Suki had a desk in there.
I tried the handle, it turned, it wasn’t locked. The wooden door swung inward when I pushed, and my eyes were greeted by a dizzying array of scattered papers, notebooks open with various numbers that were just… just dizzying to behold.
It was the exact opposite of the neat and orderly existence outside. I hesitated, fingers still curled around the doorhandle, my NEET brain screamed ‘Flee! This is an unholy land filled with math and confusion!’ But I did not flee.
I did not turn away.
I did. Not. Run.
I stepped within, leaving the door open at my back to both hear incoming customers and to ensure I could easily flee if the numbers assaulting my brain began to overwhelm me.
I did feel a little guilty, enough so that I couldn’t bring myself to actually sit in the cracked leather chair. The poor thing had clearly seen much better days, it was tilted slightly where one wheel was broken, once smooth brown back was tilted in such a way that suggested it was probably broken and couldn’t be leaned back in without it falling apart entirely.
There was one thing that perhaps saved my brain from a meltdown.
When you’re late paying a human organization, they really want you to know it. So a lot of the papers I saw were stamped ‘late notice’ or some variation thereof.
‘If she’s paying protection money to some yakuza baddies… no wonder she can’t pay her bills.’ My frown deepened as I began looking at one paper after another, just what was in that one single envelope was enough to pay most of the bottom numbers on the bills I picked up, and based on the dates, these were cumulative months.
“With that? She’d be just fine…” I mumbled and dropped the papers to fall like feathers in the breeze back down to the desk. I narrowed my eyes down at the desk.
Nobody needs to tell me that I can be sort of lazy. That’s the whole point of my vacations. But I really, really, like being a Painter. It’s not just that I’m good at it, I really see value in what I do. I hate dictators, they don’t just take lives, they take happiness. From where I’m sitting… standing, that is, these guys are just small scale dictators, leeches.
They were exactly the sort I do not like.
I heard the ding of the door as a customer walked in and hastened out to meet them. “Welcome to Toriyama’s.” I said with a smile as I stood in front of the register. I kicked the pants of the two petty tin pots out of my way, and started planning what I would do when my day was done.