Memoirs of a RAFian

[Cloak]

Eh, it could've been worse. You could have shouted at someone to get up on the hydra's back. Over and over and over again;) Okay, that was Kingdom Hearts 2, and had nothing to do with Jeff Goldblum.

Has Cloak not noticed the temporal loop yet?

And yes, Cloak has not noticed the temporal loop. It is a reference to me when I get hyperfocused on something. I tend to lose track of things around me, including time itself.

New chapter.

CHAPTER TWELVE:
The House

He had reached the house. And Cloak could not believe his eyes. It was a mirror image. A mirror image with deliberate flaws. It was a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, single-story house.

The hill leading to the house sloped upward, instead of down. The dirt driveway sloped upward at the left and the righthand side of the loop was eroding away down the center. Trees grew in the middle of the loop, grew wild and untamed. There were bushes and trees everywhere, all wild and untamed. The hill sloped downward from the right side of the eroding side of the loop, and there long grass the color of straw grew stubbornly there. The lawn hadn't been mowed for quite a while, as the most stubbornly hardy grass shoot poked up ibstinately from the snow.

Cloak hesistated. The house. The house . . . was like someone took a mirror to the house he had lived in with his mother and made a mirror image of it. The breakfast nook -- which Cloak never had understood the fascination with -- was on the left side of the house instead of the right. The front porch had a partially rusted swinging couch on it, with white paint flecking off. The porch was wooden boards and the porch was cluttered rather horribly with sun-dried, forgotten equipment with leaves in it. The porch was covered, so no snow covered the clutter. An electric lawn mower was here, its battery presumably stored within. The walls to the right was tiered like stairs. The roof looked leaky, just like his mother's house.

The wall to the left was encrusted with ivy and overgrown plants, one of the ivy vines reaching up to just barely not touching the roof. There was an above-ground pool with a metal siding painted blue. The water within the poorly-maintained, forgotten pool was like a frosen swamp. This was also the side with the fuse box, the flip-top cover of which would not shut more than forty-five degrees.

On the other side was a shed where forgotten detritus of the years was stored to rot into nothingness. The back porch was not covered, and it was covered with snow, and beneath that was a layer of leaves that remained caked to the wood. And all around were trees, surrounding this dilapidated homestead not unlike the hair upon a man's face.

It was eeriely similar*. . . .

One look at this house, and one may have assumed that it was abandoned. But there was a pristine truck colored red with bands of blue. With white stars inthe blue bands. The owner of the truck had also painted the rear window of his truck -- a practice the Realm Walker never understood, as it seemed rather dangerous to him --as well as a flag mounted in the back. It was not a good flag.**

But this truck permitted Cloak to know the kind of man that he would be dealing with. He wasn't expecting him to be really pleasant. But if he was the right guy . . . Cloak thought he had an idea of just why Rotiart left. He felt another pang of guilt of how he treated him, before he knocked on the door. . . .


*Yes, this is what the house looked like when I left.

**And this is completely fabricated. I honestly do not know someone with such a truck, but it would not surprise me if one such truck existed. And I think you know what the flag and symbolism was, though I was deliberately vague about it.

[Cloak]

New chapter.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
Slowly, Now, Slowly

Aquilai managed to get a portable scanner that looked rather like the PK meter from the "Ghostbusters" franchise. Then he shooed everyone out of his TARDIS and he shrunk it down and returned it to its pendant form.

"Okay, we go this way." Aquilai said, and they took off in that direction.

"We know where the warehouse district is, though," Underseen pointed out, earnestly.

"Okay -- I'm taking bets now." GH said, guitar slung carefully over his shoulder.

"Bets?" Saffa asked. "Bets for what?"

"Who the mastermind behind this is," GH said, grinning broadly. "I got fifty on Malice."

"Oh, c'mon, GH," Saffa said, "we all know who's behind it!"

"Malice?"

"Who else?"

GH hesitated a bit, before saying, "Robocop?"

Saffa slapped him upside the head, playfully.

"Hey!" he complained.

"I have a question," Abby said.

"Shoot," Aila said.

"Bang." GH said.

"Hilarious," Aila said, dryly, then addressing Abby, "what is it?"

"When we get there," Abby said, as they stopped, "just how do we stop it?"

Silence.

"Okay . . . that answers that." she said, correctly interpreting the silence.

"We'll come up with something," Saffa said, confidently.

"Somehow,"  GH said, "that's not comforting."

[Cloak]

New chapter.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
The Confrontation

KNOCK. KNOCK.

Cloak not expected the response.

"WHO THE 'ELL CAN THAT BE?!"

Was this guy always this hostile? Cloak tried his best not to make snap judgements. But between his obviously gentlemanly behavior, the truck, that crude flag, and the dilapidated mess of a house . . . it was hard not to make one or two snap judgements.

"IT HAD BETTER BE GOOD!! At this hour . . ."

It was scarcely six o'clock in the evening. Cloak knew that his projected form from his ID mask made him look younger -- ah, younger respectively -- than his true age. He wondered if this would prove to be a problem. But, no matter.

Cloak noticed the door, painted brown, had a rather noticeable gap beneath it. He wondered idly if the interior was like his mothers house -- drafty with rear part of the house having the wall come away from the floor. There were times where Cloak had to sleep with two or three blankets atop himself just to stay warm, when he had to sleep in the living room due to his room being all moldy -- or the Realm Walker equivalent of mold, anyway. All in all, it was a horrible place to live -- not really fit for habitation, unless you happened to be a vermin-form Realm Walker.

The door swung open very easily, and Cloak saw the man from the photo, although with several noticeable differences, wearing a stained, white wife-beater and boxers with hearts on them. He was balding and he had let himself go, having put on a very noticeable amount of wait. He seemed to be missing a number of teeth, and wore a very haughty, very ugly look upon his face.

Cloak's original assessment was proving itself to be correct. This wasn't going to be pleasant.

"What the hell to you want?" he asked, aggressively.

"Do you have a son, sir?" Cloak said respectively.

"What business is it of yours?"

"Please, sir, answer the question." Cloak said, evenly.

"Fine. I had a brat of a kid, yes. But the lousy ingrate ran away years ago!" he snarled. His aggression was wholly unnecessary. But Cloak could tell why he was being so aggressive with a single sniff, detecting copious amount of alcohol on the man's breath. He could be drunk, but drunk enough to not remember this exchange? Who knew? He continued, "Lousy kid. Disrespectful, you know. Insubordinate. No respect for his father! Always talked back! God knows how many times that I had to get the belt out . . ."

Cloak suddenly remembered great big welts on Rotiart after he came to RAF in the video. They were half-healed, but they were still there. Cloak was finding himself not liking this man, but he hid his feelings, as he was expert in doing.

"His mother ran away and left me alone with the boy, you know," he said. Cloak wondered why he was being so open. Just how much alcohol did this guy have? "Just up and left me with him at the hospital! I never heard from that **** again. Ditched me, and left me with that disappointment son!"

"He's dead," Cloak said, tonelessly. It could have been seen as rather blunt, but such subtleties were lost on this man. And, if Cloak had expected an emotional response, like tears or grieving, he was sorely disappointed.

"Good!" he said, savagely. "Good! The world is better off without that S.O.B.! Throw the body to the wolves, I say!"

Cloak said nothing. He scolded himself for expecting any other reaction. He knew that this man was abusive. He knew what he was likely to find, but yet he altruistically was hoping for different.

Then the man hiccuped, turned around, and shut the door behind him. Cloak heard, felt, and Earthsighted a massive thud. He had passed out right behind the door. Cloak frowned with distaste as he took his leave.

That did not go as he expected, but he fulfilled his duty. He can return to RAF now.

[guitarhero01234]

Way too many people like that in my area. That depiction was all too accurate, Cloaky.

[Cloak]

Now you see why Rotiart was so eager to leave.

• Book DCCCVII: "Possessed By Feelings" -- The RAFians must deal with some specialized spirits.
• Book DCCCVIII: "The Shambling Dead" -- The RAFians must deal with "shamblers".

Hopefully, I'll be able to write these. My anxiety is mounting though . . . if this investigation doesn't get some resolution soon, the stress and anxiety is going to give me a heart attack.

New chapter.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
Weakening

As it turned out, if this temporal loop was Malice's master plan, she seemed to bore of it rather quickly. She was going through book after book, searching for something known only to her. But all the books contain star charts and astronomy information.

She seemed to have discovered something hse found remarkably interesting, that she had put on the back burner for this whole temporal loop thing. The entire reason she did this, aside from the entertainment value, was so she would essentially have limitless time to think up some more schemes. She managed to get one RAFian killed, and she had decided that, although slow, it was probably best to do it that way. That was she could maximize the plan she could inflict.

It would serve them right. Punishment -- granted, it was entertaining punishment -- for daring to defy her. For daring not to capitulate. . . . Well, this was just an excuse, she recognized, an excuse for her to do all these heinous, malicious things. But she would never admit it aloud, unless she decided to allow herself to on a whim.

She could be very mercurial in values at the best of times.  She only did things when she wanted to, and she obviously had no qualms about killing others, even those of her own species.

And despite all this, she ignored that the magic card's power was stumbling. It was not as powerful as it was before the first temporal loop. With each loop its power seemed to drop marginally, so that it was not noticeable at first. But then again, Malice had seemed to lose interest even faster.

She became keenly interested one particular place on the star chart. The problem would be finding transportation to it, to this indolent Gossamer place. She ignored the weakening magic of the card, despite the cost it took to even get the blasted card to begin with. Callously forgetting the lives sacrificed to obtain such a card.

It just proved that Malice had only concerned herself with one life, and that was her own. All others were superfluous and extraneous to her. The way she saw it, they -- Dweller or Walker -- only existed for her to manipulate and use to her own ends and intentions. She had no qualms about even killing her own mother and father. She had no siblings, or she would probably have killed them as well.

She had grown so indifferent about the card, she decided that it was time to change "dens". She packed up the few things she considered important into a satchel that an Undetectable Extension Charm imbibed into it. She stowed it under cloak -- somehow. Then she left.

And she left the card behind.

[redtailedsaffa]

Oh man, I hope all that **** gets cleared up fast. You really don't deserve it.

[Cloak]

Story of my life. But thanks for your support, Saffa. It may not seem like it sometimes, but I do genuinely appreciate it, and I mean that sincerely.

New book ideas. Essentially a mini-arc of sorts.

• Book DCCCIX: "The Reigning Raptors" -- A mysterious force sends Power Ranger-like shabtis after the RAFians.
• Book DCCCX: "As All Courage Dies . . ." -- The RAFians must face the saurian Animiraptor.
• Book DCCCXI: "As All Friendships Die . . ." -- The RAFians must face the lupine Amicitiaraptor.
• Book DCCCXII: "As All Sincerity Dies . . ." -- The RAFians must face the botanical Sinceritasraptor.
• Book DCCCXIII: "As All Knowledge Dies . . ." -- The RAFians must face the insectoid Scientiamraptor.
• Book DCCCXIV: "As All Reliability Dies . . ." -- The RAFians must face the pinniped Firmitateraptor.
• Book DCCCXV: "As All Love Dies . . ." -- The RAFians must face the avian Amorraptor.
• Book DCCCXVI: "As All Hope Dies -- Again . . ." -- The RAFians must face the rodentlike Spesraptor.
• Book DCCCXVII: "As All Goodness Dies . . ." -- The RAFians must face thd feline Bonumraptor.
• Book DCCCXVIII: "Duff, the Magic RAFian" -- Three bedtime stories that Duff (in-story Duff) does not approve of. ()

All titles subject to change. Tell me what you think -- and I know some of them may seem like I'm rehashing old storylines, and hopefully I'm not. And hopefully I get to write them, or even outline them.



New chapter.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
Parallels

Cloak had retreated back to the forest, where he allowed himself time to mull everything over, as he prepared to camp out for the night, though he probably needn't to do so. He probably could easily make it back to RAF, to his thread, from here.

He thought on how every came about. On just how much he had learned. He had no idea just how Rotiart's life paralleled his own so much. Granted, there were things that were dissimilar, but, surprisingly, they were in the minority.

One bad parent . . .

For him, it was his mother, who saw him as nothing but an extension of herself, as is common for narcissists, and she wondered why he was so serious all the time, ignoring just how hard she was on him (for she did not understand just how miserable he was -- he could talk to his aunt Wheeza, his sister Faith, or even Shadow about it, but not her). It was ironic that she could not understand the feelings of others, yet she was in the nursing profession.

For Rotiart, it was his father, his horribly racist and xenophobic father, who reveled in his ignorance. His father did not care for the feelings of his son, as a man who thought men were supposed to be insensitive and cruel, interpreting them as strong and manly.

An absent parent . . .

For him, his mother chased his father away and made him think that it was his fault, that his father did not want him. That he did not love him. But Cloak was not only his only son, but he was also his father's firstborn (Faith had a different father than he did). Granted, his father was not a perfect man, but he would admit to his imperfections and flaws and mistakes, something his mother was seemingly incapable of, due to her pride and hubris problems. Theirs, father and son, was not an easy one in any case because they were also very different in personally with his father being a bit more extroverted than his son. But he tried. He tried make his marriage to Ursa work. He tried to be a decent father to Cloak. It shamed the Realm Walker that it took him this long to realize it.

For Rotiart, he never knew his mother. He never had any influence from her. He didn't even have a letter. His mother did not even attempt to contact him, he was just a mistake to her. Something that should have never been. But because of her deep-seated beliefs, she did not abort him, but abandoned him at birth. It didn't make a lick of sense, but not everything does in this world.

But the most glaring difference was that Cloak's mother threw him out, and Rotiart ran away of his own accord.

Cloak, despite what he may say outwardly, was scared of leaving his mother's house, despite being treated like garbage and repeatedly wondering why he kept returning after his periodic sojourns to RAF. He was afraid of leaving all that he knew . . . afraid of never seeing Shadow or Faith again, even though they did not live in the house (it was a favorite threat of his mother's, and Cloak had reason to believe she used him in such a way with his father). Even mere hours afterwards, he wanted to go back . . . but he recognized it as the very same symptom that made abused women want to return to their abusers. It was a very difficult feeling to overcome.

Rotiart had the foresight to escape upon his own violation. Perhaps he had nothing tethering down as Cloak had. Perhaps he had just gone beyond the part of caring. He just knew that he had to get away . . . Cloak wish that he knew enough to do that. If he had . . . he would have saved himself a lot of heartache.

And of course, it was during these ruminations that he final recognized the temporal loops for what they were, deciding to actually pay attention to the wave of nausea that washed over him and dissipated alarmingly quick.

[Cloak]

New chapter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
Meeting Up

"I think its over," Aquilai said, opening his TARDIS door to the morning's early light. "Well, at least for now."

"Time's still looping, Aquilai," Saffa said. "It's not over."

"Uh, Saffa?" GH said.

"What?"

"Your hair," GH said, with a meek point.

"What about it?" Saffa replied, a little cranky. She had a severe case of bedhead, rather like Toph in the "Avatar: the Last Airbender" episode "Tales of Ba Sing Seh". GH was actually afraid to say more -- more out of decorum than anything else. So, he let it drop, as Aquilai opened the door to the outside.

"You know all this time loop crap is starting to get monotonous," Abby said. From the way she said it, it was apparent that she, for whatever reason, did not have a restful night's sleep. "I hope that we can stop it today."

"Just how do think we can do that?" Saffa said, surly. "Something that powerful may not be able to be destroyed by us."

"Oh, don't count yourself out so easily," came a voice, "you're far stronger than you give yourself credit for."

"Cloak? I thought you were --"

"Telling Rotiart's next of kin -- which only consisted of his father, apparently -- of his death," Cloak supplied. "I did. He didn't care. I could see why he ran away from that . . . that 'home'."

"That's . . ." Abby said aghast, unable to finish her thought. Saffa just looked down, no doubt feeling the same guilt thst Cloak did.

"Let's destroy the source of the temporal loops," Aquilai suggested pragmatically. "It's close by."

"Yes, yes, the warehouse district, we know." Saffa said.

"Really we should call it the 'criminal hideout' district, with just how many of them are abandoned." Underseen mused as they headed out.

"But why are they abandoned?" Ailia asked.

"You try paying to heat a building, to support a building like that in this economy," GH pointed out sardonically. "You know how most executives are such cutthroat pennypinchers."

[Cloak]

New chapter.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
Unguarded? Suspicious!

"My god, this is so cliché," Saffa said. Her bedhead had decided to settle down. Cloak was glad that he did have that problem, having feline fur instead of hair, though he didn't say out loud. He didn't want to antagonize. "The abandoned warehouse hideout? That is such a Saturday morning cartoon villain standard."

"You can't deny that our lives are right out of a Saturday morning cartoon," Abby noted. "When you consider all the crap we've been in over the last year or so."

"Why are you guys haunched over like that?" Cloak asked.

"Keep your voice down!" Abby hissed.

"Guys, with exception of a few mice and assorted insects and other arthropods, there isn't anyone here," the Realm Walker said, rather bluntly.

"How can you be so sure of --" Aila began, before she saw that Cloak was staring at her with a slightly reproachful look. Then she realised her faux pa, and corrected herself, "Oh, right! Earthsight. Sorry!"

"Why would Malice just up and leave the source of her latest scheme?" GH said.

Cloak thought it over, and came to the conclusion he could see. "But there lies your answer right there. 'Her latest scheme'. She has clearly bored of her current plan and, quite possibly, has already moved on to her next one."

"That seems a bit . . ." Abby began, trying to find the right term, "wishy-washy, I guess."

"It's a bit flighty, a bit cagey, I suppose," Cloak replied. "I do not pretend to understand her. Things that I think I know about her, she decides to flip around, twist or alter these once concrete things."

They came to the warehouse door, and creaked it open, as Cloak added, "And I think she does it deliberately."

"Why would she do it deliberately?" Underseen asked.

"For kicks, probably," GH shrugged.

"What the gung-ho guitar player said," Cloak said, nodding towards GH. "What's wrong, Aquilai?"

"This signal . . . it's weaker than it was yesterday," the Time Lord said, both perplexed and curious.

"I thought it was in here, though!" Saffa proclaimed. "This warehouse can't be that big!"

"I don't think has anything to do with distance," Cloak said.

Aquilai saw where Cloak was going with this, and nodded in agreement. "It's getting weaker."

[Cloak]

New chapter.

CHAPTER NINETEEN:
Well, That Was Anticlimactic

"Weakening?" Underseen asked.

"It makes sense," Aila said. "While whatever device is doing this may have been very powerful before the first temporal, the amount if energy must have taken a powerful amount of energy. And if the the object's energy was finite . . ."

"If it was finite," Aquilai finished, "it would eventually run out."

"Which means us coming here was completely pointless," Abby pointed out aptly.

"Not necessarily," Cloak said. "I choose to see it as an opportunity. Malice was obviously behind this. Perhaps she got careless and left something behind, a clue to her next scheme."

They proceeded further and further into the warehouse, which was actually surprisingly sizeable. Cloak wondered idly if this was a TARDIS, as it seemed to be larger on the inside then on the outside. But his Earthsight easily disproved it, it was just an optical illusion, due to how empty and derelict the warehouse felt.

"Wait, do you think that object that Malice made from the corpse pile during . . . during our fights with the Wesen," Underseen said, thinking aloud. "Could that be the magical object that Malice made? The one that did this temporal loop thing?"

"She needed thirty or so dead bodies to create a magical artifact to cause time to loop?" Aquilai asked.

"That sounds like really dark stuff," Saffa remarked. "Really dark magic."

"We can consult Broken and Faerie about the possible ramifications of it later." Cloak said, peering around the dingy dim warehouse. Then he pointed, able to sense the temporal/magical energy, narrowing down their search. But the energy signature was dwindling. "There."

They walked to the place were the black card hovered, alone and forgotten. Everything else was empty. Nothing else here could point them to the direction of her next scheme and the card's light was more purple than black, and it was sputtering. It was clear that it did not have sufficient energy to reverse time again.

"Well," Saffa said, "who'da guess that this would eventually work itself out without any interference from us whatsoever?"

"Man, that's anticlimactic," GH said.

"Don't complain," Abby said, "it's actually a bit nice that it's gonna resolve by itself. A bit less responsibility for us."

The card's energy was then depleted and it crumbled away, blowing in the breeze like petals from a black rose, eventually collapsing into a brackish black ash. Cloak looking at it began to wonder . . . what if this was merely a tactic to give Malice more time to plan out her next scheme or schemes? What if that was the reason that she seemed to forget about it so easily?

Clearly, this was her hideout, and she had a habit of changing her "dens", as due to her Tasmanian devil form. And clearly changed to a different "den". She must have known that they would eventually locate this one, as she knew that he was also not affected by the time loops as she herself wasn't. Cloak could never really divine her motivations or mindsets too easily, as she tended to thing remarkably different from him.

The RAFians returned to the forum, and, yet, Cloak found himself . . . uneasy. But he did not know or understand why.

[redtailedsaffa]

Sorry for not checking in earlier, life suddenly got crazy and a whole lot of things to do just got dumped on me. Nice to finally check in, though. Though tomorrow presumes to be even worse.

[Cloak]

I assumed as much, to be honest, Saffa.

And, after I post the next chapter, it'll be official. Year 1, story-wise, will be over. And it'll 100 books done!

New chapter.

CHAPTER TWENTY:
End of the Year

This time the end of the year festivities went off without a hitch. The fireworks went off at the stroke of midnight. It may have been pretty and entertaining and all that.

Cloak would not know. He didn't attend the fireworks. He never liked fireworks. Much too loud and ostentatious for his tastes. He did not know why he saw them as tawdry and overly flashy, but he did.

He remained within his thread, pondering over recent events. He attempted to try to divine Malice's ultimate goal. He did not know why he was so unable to let things go and so unable to not dwell over things, but it is just what he did.

And he kept coming back to his guilt. His guilt over Rotiart's death. He had hoped that, somehow, Rotiart was not dead. That he had, somehow, survived. It absolutely, ridiculously ludicrous, of course. He was there. There was no way that he could have escaped unnoticed by all.

There didn't seem any substance for this naive hope to adhere onto.

***

Cloak was in an obvious dream, and he was lucid, it seemed.

"Cloooooooak . . ."

An eerie voice whose source he could not locate at first.

"Clooooooaaaaaaak . . ."

The voice called out, and Cloak thought it sounded familiar.

"Cloooooooooaaaaaaaa aaaaak . . ."

Then Cloak recognized it.

"Rotiart?"

"Clooooak," the disembodied voice of Rotiart said, "why didn't you save me?"

"I . . . I tried! I . . . what the Veil?"

Now Cloak was sure this Rotiart was a dream construct. He appeared to have a T-800 body with Rotiart's face. He wore dark sunglasses, a rather unique-looking derby hat, and a gaudy necklace of three vaguely manta ray-like things made of metal. These things weren't exactly big, about the quarter the size of an Heinlin. He wore three watch-like devices that resembled the prototype Omnitrix, the "Alien Force" variety of the Omnitrix, and the ture Omnitrix. All in all, a very unappealing design.

"You're . . . not Rotiart."

But, in reply, the fashion abomination in front of him, his eyes glowed a sickly green, seen from even behind the sunglasses, and spoke in a voice that was not a voice. Spoke in silence that was not silence. Cloak couldn't explain it, but dreams often did not make sense. But with each line, that was somehow communicated, this dream construct of a gawdy Rotiart faded all the more.

"THE FIRST YEAR DIES,
AS THE SECOND WILL RISE.
THERE WILL BE A CREATURE WITH NO PEER,
THE USUAL TACTICS WILL WRONG YOU STEER,
THIS STRANGE BEASTS WILL NOT BE BEAT,
LEST YOU EMPLOY THE BOY'S FEAT.
THEN COME VISITORS OF SAURIAN DESCENT,
AND A CHANGE OF A FRIEND WILL CEMENT.
MANY WILL BE CRAMPED WITHIN ONE,
IMPOSSIBLE CAN IT BE UNDONE.
THE ADVANCES OF A WITCH WILL BE SPURNED,
HER ENMITY AND WRATH WILL BE WELL-EARNED.
ENTOMBED WITHIN ARTIFACTS MIGHT,
ONE'S PAST MAY COME TO LIGHT.
BEWARE THE XENOPHOBE'S HATE,
ALIEN ASYLUM IT WILL NOT SATE.
THE SKIN-WALKERS WILL BE CAUGHT,
LEST MAD MEN ARE FOUGHT.
THEN COMES THE OUTCAST,
OF ITS KIND, IT IS THE LAST."

Then, with sudden abruptness, the dream ended.

***

Cloak awoke. Awoke to the first day of the new Dweller year. He blinked a bit.

"That was surreal," he muttered, commenting on the dream.

[guitarhero01234]

*Claps*

Amazing way to end the first year, Cloaky!

[redtailedsaffa]

And he gave us a Marvel-post-credits-scene-style next-year preview, too.

[Cloak]

"Next year", you say?

Anyway, I'll post the new chapter of the first book tomorrow, when I see if I still have my job or not. It'll be a full two weeks since I haven't worked, and I would need to reapply to get my job back, losing any vacation time I accrued. Complete BS, I know. But this is America, and execs and such don't care about screwing over the little guy.

At least I got through Book 100.