What?! A fourth chapter in September? I'm gonna burn out my keyboard at this rate!

Dust in the Mass Effect

Chapter 11

"Clean Yourself Up"

As the skycar descended upon us, I felt a wave of odd relief wash over me.

Just as Sen had said, we were leaving the junkyard. It had only been an hour or so since I'd taken her up on the offer to join her crew. It was me, her, Tealer, Etrius, and Fleer. Between the five of us, we were carrying weapons, armor, ammo, tech, grenades, bedding, food, drinks, meds, and some valuable information on a particular stash of metal. We looked, smelled, and felt like shit, but at least we were finally about to be done with this place.

Finally, I thought. I could start putting this damn place behind me. I could take some time to forget about all the horror that had befallen me recently and, instead, focus on something more productive. As far as I was concerned, it was Illium or bust. Fuck Omega.

The car landed in front of us and raised its hatch, revealing a very pissed turian male.

"Spirits be damned, Valerys," the avian addressed Sen as the car's cargo racks opened for us to load. "Finally following up on that crazy threat of deserting, huh?"

"Better than wasting another day of my life in this pit," our fearless leader countered, throwing in her gun cases. "Besides, weren't you the most recent of several friends to recommend I 'give it up'?"

"Maybe, but I meant retire, move back home, and stop ignoring your parents."

The rest of us shot nervous glances Sen's way. That sounded a little too personal.

"Leave my parents out of this," she said calmly, brushing it off.

"They message me at least once a month asking about you."

"Didn't I say just to tell them I'm dead?"

"Yeah. I'll tell your parents that you're dead, and then your father will hunt me down and flay me," he argued as we quickly finished stuffing in all the luggage. It was quite spacious in the cargo hold, I noticed. This is the part where I should note that the car we were using was more equivalent to an SUV. Definitely bigger than your basic transport cab.

"Oh, just shut up and drive," the ex-Talon mercenary ordered as we all piled into the three rows of seats. It was the driver and Sen up front, Etrius and Fleer in the middle, and I got stuck in the back row with Tealer. As I scooted in behind the salarian, I noticed his neck and hands twitching a little. I didn't make much of it, writing it off as just natural salarian behavior.

Nothing else was said before the car hummed to life and left the floor. We were flying. With all the sorrow and apprehension that had preceded the moment, I hadn't even thought about how this would be my first time doing so. I'd never even been on a plane before coming here. The experience, however, was surprisingly dull. Thanks to Mass Effect technology, g-forces were negated. If the hatch hadn't been eighty-five percent window, I wouldn't have even known we were moving. Seatbelts, anyone? They were there, but nobody seemed to even acknowledge their existence. Probably just for emergencies, like an impending crash or something.

"So, I see you picked up a bunch of stray cats. They your crew now?"

"Yeah. Fished 'em out of the grime down below," Sen chuckled at our expense before gesturing to our pilot. "Everyone, this is Holden Korinthos. He's an old friend. Works for a local transport service."

"That's right, and this is a company vehicle," Holden added. "Try not to dirty up the seats too badly back there. My boss will rip me apart if he finds out I'm doing work gratis."

"What? I said I'd pay!" Sen interjected.

"No way! I want no record of this ever occurring. Once the Talons realize you've jumped ship, my door's gonna get busted down. Anything that connects me to you, including money, earns me time in a torture chamber. If anyone asks, I'm not even at work today. I didn't even use my own ID to get the car."

There was silence for a moment after that. I took the time to watch the overhead lights etch by. Watching them was a reprieve. It was everything I could do not to think about Nolan or Yun.

"I'm sorry," Sen finally huffed, looking out the window as well.

"Don't be. The sooner you're off this station, the sooner I have one less problem. Speaking of which, where are you and the Pips back there headed once you get off-station, anyway?"

"Like I said over the call, I can't tell you."

"Oh, come on! At least give me something to tell them if they decide to torture me anyway!"

"They're not going to torture you."

"Says you! You more-or-less ran their junkyard operation for over a year. You've been involved in their finances! You know their bookies by name, for crying out loud! They're gonna come aft- OW!"

Sen punched him in the face. Thankfully, the car was on auto-pilot.

"Remember when I said to shut up and drive?"

"…Yeah."

"Consider it a standing suggestion."

The damage was done, though. I couldn't believe that I'd overlooked how the Talons would be reacting to this. I mean, sure, Etrius might've mentioned that they wouldn't like Sen's desertion, but there hadn't been any talk about how much dislike there'd actually be. On the surface, a corporal didn't seem like much worth chasing. A corporal with ties to finances and other sensitive information, however… Let's just say corporate espionage was a real thing, and there were people whose job it was to keep such a thing from happening.

Silently, I think we were all second-guessing our decisions to go along with this.

"So, uh…" Fleer spoke up before anyone could awkwardly cough. "Where are we going, exactly?"

"To a block of apartments in the Erikthal District," Sen explained. "We're gonna lay low there while the transaction takes place."

"Have you found a buyer yet?" Etrius asked.

"Not yet. Shouldn't be too hard, though. Got a few leads from my friend on Illium that oughta find us a good deal. There are always parties interested in good hauls out of the scrapyard, considering the minimal oversight. All you have to do is send the offer to the right place, they'll send you a down payment, you give them the information, and then they send you the rest. Simple."

"A little too simple, if you ask me," Tealer remarked, ever the skeptic. "What if they don't pay?"

"Then you drag their name through the mud and maybe declare a bounty on them for good measure," the merc smirked. "You ever heard someone say 'bad for business'? That applies here. Businessmen like what we'll be dealing with aren't so keen on having their reputations tarnished."

"Here's hoping…" I heard Tealer grumble as we rose up and passed one of the giant claw rigs.

From here, I could see something I'd never noticed before. It was a massive metal door, probably large enough for a small shuttle to pass through. Without any ceremony, it split horizontally and opened enough for us to pass through. And pass through we did. No excitement, no added worry.

I had finally escaped the junkyard. My life was changing for the better.

Omega proper was, much to my combined shock and relief, exactly how I'd imagined it. A hazy expanse of gray, amber, and brown, with buildings both rising and hanging like spires in a cave. Cars and other vehicles buzzed around like lines of bugs, shimmering through the smog and decay. Those shiny screenshots that served as loading screens in the games, especially the ones of the Citadel, seemed particularly far away here. To be perfectly honest, I felt like I'd just climbed out of a puddle and into the mud.

"What a shithole," Tealer muttered. I couldn't have agreed more.

We landed at the apartments' parking lot less than fifteen minutes after takeoff. I felt a little iffy about not getting farther away from the yard, but then I wasn't the mastermind.

"Everyone load up. Let's get the luggage moved in one trip, please and thank you," Sen directed as we emerged from the car.

"You gonna call me to take you to the spaceport, too?" Holden brought up as we hastily grabbed our stuff and bussed it into the building.

"Nah. We'll time it so that they won't have a plausible window to react. We'll have our tickets off-station bought and used within minutes of the transaction, I'd say," Sen answered. "And, seriously, thanks a million for the help."

"Thank me when we're both outta this hellhouse," the surly driver requested coldly before closing the hatch and speeding away.

Sen had prearranged the apartment, so we were allowed right in. In spite of the earlier concern over how the Talons were going to respond, I could at least appreciate Sen's foresight to get things in order before we made our mad dash for freedom. It was a simple place, featuring little more than a sitting area, a kitchen, two bedrooms, a toilet, and a shower. Gender-neutral living space at its easiest. Personally, I wasn't looking for anything fancy. I was still riding the high of having escaped the junkyard.

"Alright," Sen chirped as we sat our bags down. "First things first. Boys, you're all going to shower."

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Excellent."

"Dust, you're first."

"Why him?" Tealer disagreed, apparently having missed civilized bathing as much as I had.

"Because I don't know what color his skin is supposed to be," she answered with the sad truth. I looked down at myself here, suddenly noticing a bunch of things that the dim lighting and dirty atmosphere of the junkyard had made me forget about. These included things like the fact that my skin had turned to match my namesake, and my fingernails were so caked with shit that I immediately contemplated just pulling them out. Odds were that, had I run a hand through my hair, people would have started coughing.

"When was the last time you actually showered?" Etrius asked with a genuine mix of curiosity and worry.

"Uh…" I wracked my memory. The last time I'd done anything close to bathing had been two weeks ago, which was the last time we'd brought in a water basin to dunk our heads into. The rest of me, well… Rubdowns with a rag were about as good as it got. No one ever said that living in the junkyard was entirely hygienic.

"Four months," I placed it around the last day I'd been somewhere that wasn't Omega.

"Yeah. You don't get to sit on the furniture until you've bathed," Sen decreed.

Thus, with mixed emotions, I relocated to the shower room. They were mixed because, on one hand, I was happy to be about to shower for the first time in ages. On the other hand, I'd just been called dirty. I didn't care if it was true. I still had my pride, and it didn't appreciate being called dirty.

"Leave your clothes out. We'll clean them while you're in there."

"Gimme a minute," I grumbled once the door was shut. "I'm crippled, in case you've forgotten."

"Want me to send in Tealer to help?"

"No!" Tealer and I exclaimed in unison.

"Then quit complaining. You get clean. We'll be out here making money."

On that optimistic note, I began the irritating process of taking off my clothes with only one good arm. I did try moving my injured arm, only to be met with an irksome sting. It wasn't as bad as it had been initially, but I still couldn't foresee using it properly until I got it to a doctor. At least my hand didn't hurt anymore. The pain was more isolated towards my shoulder, and with that I could at least be content. Better than not having an arm at all.

I let the bum limb fall to my side as I discarded the sling and tattered cloak Sen had gifted me, as well as my pistol. After that it was the jumpsuit. It had to be peeled off, much to my disgust. The damn thing hadn't been washed in a long time. Laundry was about as rare as showering back in the camp. In case it hasn't been made overly apparent yet, water is kinda expensive on Omega. Hell, it was probably costing Sen a good bit just to be running it in the apartment. Given how the stuff was probably shipped in and stored in limited reservoirs, the landlord probably had a switch that let him turn off access to any apartment that didn't pay up.

On that thought, I moved over to the shower and actually turned it on. Without missing a beat, water began to stream out of a ceiling-set faucet. I was almost amazed. Even though it was Omega and I knew it was all belying something unearthly sinister, I was taken aback by the hospitableness of the apartment shower. It was cozy, metallic, but still large enough to feel like you had space. It was more refinement I'd had in a living space than the previous four months combined.

Once I was ready, I stepped in and let the warm water brush me. Instantly, the affected areas of my skin were washed of the various dirts and grimes. The floor of the shower splattered with the remains, all of which eventually ran down the drain and out of mind.

"You in?" Etrius called from outside.

I quickly drew the shower curtain. "Yeah."

He came in and extracted my clothes.

"They should be clean in a flash. This place has a laundry machine, as it turns out."

I simply assumed that laundry machines in the 22nd Century were capable of performing the task so quickly that a single shower could cover the period of time.

And so I showered. It was… Well, I can't lie to you. It was fucking great. The shower came fully stocked with appliances for all races, and I took delight in using all the ones I recognized. I scrubbed every last inch of my body, from the soles of my feet to the tips of my ears. I didn't pull out my fingernails, but I did shear off the ends and clean under the tips as well as I could. I'd have even cleaned my teeth and eyeballs if I'd trusted the soap to be nontoxic. The best part was shampooing my hair. I don't know who stocked that shower, but they had good taste in personal cleanliness products. The smell alone brought a tear to my eye. I'd been silently fretting over my hair for a while, to the point of contemplating taking Cockney's route and going skinned just to avoid it being dirty. I hadn't done it, though, and simply kept it short as I always had. It was the best I could do without access to a shower.

My hair's bleach-blond, in case you were wondering. That makes the dirtiness stand out, which makes me self-conscious. Hence why the shower was fucking great.

Ahem… Anyway! Once I was done rubbing my parts raw and my clothes had been returned, I got out and dried myself as quickly as I could manage. Dry, I decided to hazard a peek of my visage in the mirror. Cue the wide-eyed frown. I looked like a zombie! My skin was practically white as a sheet, courtesy of four months in decreased lighting. I'd always had a lighter complexion, but this was ridiculous! At least my hair hadn't turned gray. That I could be pleased with.

"Things are looking up," I whispered to myself, smiling.

Once I was done fretting over my appearance, I found my clothes and slowly reapplied them to my person. It was odd to wear clothes that had been modernly washed and dried. Laundry back at the camp had been a lot of dipping and hanging over a fire. Now it was like the old jumpsuit had been breathed into a new life. I felt good as I slowly slid my hurt arm into it and zipped up the suit for the first time since the injury. I'd been running with it draped over on the afflicted side until now. Wearing it properly made it feel like I was making progress with something.

As I reapplied the sling, however, something in the back of my head clicked. Apartments didn't come with stocked showers or laundry machines – at least, not any that I'd ever heard of. You had to put them in yourself. Sure, Sen had planned ahead here, but there's no way she'd planned for movers to bring in an appliance, not to mention the furniture and bath supply.

A fully furnished apartment… this close to the junkyard…

"This is a Talon safehouse, isn't it?!"

That was Tealer outside, just to clarify.

I stepped from the shower room with the cloak slung over my shoulder, grabbing my pistol off the counter on my way out. Sen was standing indignantly on one side of the kitchen table with the silvery salarian glaring at her from the other side. Etrius was sitting on the couch, face in his hand. Fleer was working on her omni-tool, evidently more interested in it than the conversation.

"It's a safehouse for the local crews to use if things get heated," Sen spoke calmly. "I manage it. I know who's going in and coming out. There's no one slated to use it this week, so we're good."

"And who's to say that the landlord doesn't report in to your superiors and blow this whole thing open?" Tealer hurled an accusation that struck me as downright paranoid. "What if someone tries to use it off schedule? Was there not somewhere safer for us? Don't you think you could have at least fucking told us before planting us right under their goddamn noses?!"

"It works the best for us," Sen remained diplomatic, raising her voice but only a little. "I've used this place as a center for negotiating other haul trades before. Past clients will recognize the place's extranet address and trust me to make the deal. It'll make things go along faster."

"That's not good enough!" Tealer pounded the table. He was twitching, I noticed, even more than earlier back in the car. Could it have been nerves? He had been the one to ask about declining the deal back in the ship, after all. Now that the stakes had been raised a little, it was likely that he was looking for a chance to fold. Better to take what you have and run.

"I appreciate what you've done for me, but no amount of money is worth following you if it means that you're going to lead us into a varren pit to be slaughtered," he stated gravely. "If this is how it's going to be, I'll cut my losses and be on my way."

Sen's expression sharpened. Etrius looked up. I tensed, foreseeing what came next.

"I'm still feeding them false reports. They won't come looking."

"I don't care. I've said my piece. I'm walking."

"No… You're not."

Just like that, guns were reached for. Tealer and Sen moved virtually at the same time, each pulling their sidearms. Next came mine and Etrius's by virtue of slower reflexes. The only one who didn't draw was Fleer, who was still working with her omni-tool.

"You're gonna stay right here until I say so," Sen dictated.

"Ha," Tealer chuckled grimly. "One sign of mutiny and all the guns come out? I suppose this is where we separate the thinkers from the psychopaths."

"You think you're smarter than me," Sen tilted her head ever so slightly. "And with good reason, I suppose. You salarians shine at the whole 'figuring stuff out before everyone else' thing. But I can't let you leave until after the transaction's been made. Until I know how soon we can be off this station, I can't run the risk of you calling an Eclipse hit on us here."

"You're overthinking it," Tealer shook his head. "I'm out of Eclipse. All I want now is save my own skin, and part of that now involves getting myself as far away from you and this place as possible. I don't need your pittance to get off of Omega. I'm not some poor sodomite like the human or the quarian."

I grimaced.

"Then shoot me."

All eyes turned to Sen. She'd lowered her pistol and was glaring at Tealer.

"I'm wearing armor. My shields are up. That pistol will take at least four shots to pierce them. By then, Etrius and Dust will have put you down. And if you think you can turn your gun to one of them just because they're not armored, then I just want you to know two thing: I will kill you, and I won't do it quickly!"

The air in the room had suddenly gone from tense to simply murderous.

Tealer was twitching harder than ever by this point. His gun could barely stay forward. He could tell that Sen's words were honest. His amphibian teeth were gritted, and his eyes were blazing wide. This was it for him. He had to decide what was more important, his pride or his life.

Of course, in all of this absurdity, none of us were paying attention to Fleer. She'd just been sitting there next to Sen, fiddling with her omni-tool like there was no tomorrow. I could only suppose that Sen had set her to the task of making the transaction happen, and that she was ignoring our little quarrel because of her lack of a firearm. Besides, the transaction's completion was the key to resolving this situation. Once we had our money, we could be on our way and let Tealer go. So I was definitely all for her typing away.

That just made it all more surprising when she pounded the table and stood up.

"That's enough!" the quarian girl, who had been soft-spoken up until this point, declared.

We looked at her, and then at the able. On it was a tech mine she'd fabricated and placed when she'd put her fist down. Only Tealer, with his salarian reflexes, covered his eyes in time.

There was a small explosion, close enough to me so that my eardrums burst. The image of the table and its contents was burned into my vision within a white light. I heard and saw nothing else, feeling only the floor as I lurched and fell luckily onto my unhurt arm.

The room shook a little as I writhed in pain and uncertainty. When my vision finally started to fade back into the present after several precious seconds, I found the sight of what appeared to be Sen staggering towards the open doorway. Etrius was on the floor, trying and failing to get up. All I could do was watch as Sen bounced off the doorframe and collapsed onto her hands and knees in the outside hall. She tried to throw herself back up, but only succeeded in falling over.

And there we all lay. Tealer and Fleer were gone. Just like that, everything we'd been working towards turned to naught.

T

Roughly thirty minutes later, the two turians and I were sitting around the kitchen table. Sen and I were pretty bad off, having earned blood trails down our necks and splitting headaches thanks to our positioning at the time. Etrius was only slightly better, having avoided the damage to his aural organs. Instead, he had just been coldcocked by one of them on their way out. All three of us, defeated by… whatever the hell that had been. I wasn't sure if it was karma or farce. Either way, we all felt like shit.

We were waiting for Holden to come pick us up. With the two of them having made off with everything but the guns, we really couldn't afford to stick around. If either of them decided to call Eclipse or the Talons, then we'd be three injured idiots staring down the barrels of a lot of angry mercs' guns.

"Did you ever leave them alone together?"

Sen glowered at Etrius.

"Just once, when I went to check that intercepted report about the Suns and Pack," she admitted, sighing with knowing irritation. "You don't have to tell me that this is my fault. I'm very well aware of that fact. Don't you fucking worry."

"That's not what I was going say," he sighed. "I just…"

He lost whatever thought he had and simply bowed his head in disappointment, supporting his head with one hand and closing his eyes.

Sen, done talking as well, looked down and called up her omni-tool. It was blank, for the most part. Apparently, as the story went, she'd forwarded Fleer the list of contacts that could be potential buyers for the platinum. While Fleer had been skimming through and looking for information on the good prospects, Tealer had started up his stink. From what we'd pieced together via conjecture, she'd taken advantage of his distraction to hack Sen's tool and clear it out. That's why she'd been working all through it. I'd been right about her wanting to solve the situation, not that it helped.

Sen had spent the better part of the last fifteen minutes trying to get what information she could back into the device so that we could get out of here in a timely manner. Thankfully, it hadn't been stripped of its OS, so she was able to reestablish her extranet connection and get into contact with Holden. He was supposed to be arriving any minute.

"He's late," she grumbled towards the door, dismissing the omni-tool out of frustration.

It had to be infuriating. She'd made it as far as the door when going after them, but had gone down just there. Of course, they'd probably already been long gone by that point. There was literally a taxi lot just outside the lobby, and we were on the first floor. With the three of us immobilized, all they'd had to do was hop in and fly off into the expanse. We had no way to track them.

"You're sure you have enough money to get us off station?" Etrius seemed anxious.

"I checked my accounts. She didn't touch them. It'll clean out my backup funds, but yeah, I can still get us to Illium. Hopefully, my friend there will be willing to lend us a hand."

"You keep mentioning this friend," the male turian noted. "Can I trust that our meeting with him won't go the same way our coming to this apartment has?"

"Y-Yeah," she flinched at his lack of faith, not that she should have expected more. "He was arguably the most stable part of this plan all along. He's a good family friend. If anyone will be willing to help me, it'll be him."

"You're certain?"

"Yes. Even more so than I was about Holden, and he's turned out alright so far."

"'So far…'"

"Don't give me that," Sen growled. "You want out too? I already said it. You do whatever you think is right. You're a grown-ass man, capable of making his own decisions. If you think I'm a fuckup, then you can leave. I've got no reason to stop you anymore."

"I don't think you're a fuckup. Stop putting words in my mouth," Etrius dismissed, looking at Sen piercingly. "Look, the first step to becoming a leader is to acknowledge your mistakes, and I believe you've done that. You mistakenly trusted people you thought would honor promises made to you. Unfortunately, they weren't honorable at all. They played you and ran when it was convenient for them. I don't think they premeditated it, however. If they'd planned ahead, they probably would have killed us instead of just leaving us for the varren."

"So we got taken down by random planning and a little luck. Not exactly making me feel better, Alexian."

"Hold on. I'm not finished. The second step to becoming a leader is learning from those mistakes."

Sen just grimaced and put her head in her hands to think. I thought about saying something encouraging, but relented when I couldn't come up with anything.

"And, just for the record," Etrius added. "I intend to honor my debt to you two. I'd have been killed in that vorcha camp – we all would have. You saved my life. Don't count me among those slags that can dishonor such a debt. You'll have my support for as long as you need it."

We both looked at him, either awestruck or dumbfounded.

"Thanks, Etrius," Sen eventually worked out. I could tell she meant it, too, given the relief in her tone. After such a betrayal, hearing words of support had to be quite uplifting.

With that, her omni-tool pinged. Holden had arrived. We silently gathered our belongings and rushed them out, jamming them into the cargo bin so haphazardly that we nearly crushed some other bags that were already in there.

"Easy in there! That's my luggage, you idiots!"

"I see you decided not to hang around, either," Sen observed the driver's way as we repeated the piling in scene from barely an hour ago.

"Yeah, well, how else should I respond to 'We're compromised. Need extraction.'?" Holden asked between bouts of cursing and paranoid looking around. "I suppose whatever's got you running scared ate your salarian and quarian."

"They're the problem. Bastards jumped ship. Stole our money-making opportunity and wiped my omni-tool to boot."

"Shit…" the driver reeled slightly at this information before taking off into the murky void. "So we're getting out of the Terminus Systems, right?"

"Does Illium meet that condition?"

"Not really, but I suppose it's better than Deinech. You going to see Clavis?"

"Yeah. He's already offered support with this. He even forwarded me the money for our shuttle tickets."

"You bought them yet?"

"Yeah. Leaves for Nos Astra in an hour."

"An hour?! Dammit! That's too long!"

"It's that or we highjack a ship and fly ourselves there!"

"I can fly a small freighter," Etrius mentioned.

"No. That'll just give us more trouble," Sen shot down that suggestion before it could really get going. "We can wait an hour. Just calm down, okay? We're gonna be fine."

"Bullshit! Check the flights for Palaven. It's about twenty-thousand times safer there, and, y'know who'll just as willing to help you there? Your-!"

"It'll be a cold day in hell when I go crawling back to my father for help!" Sen exclaimed, obviously incensed by the prospect. Hearing about a turian with daddy issues on Omega made me nostalgic for another turian rebel, but that thought was useless to me. I pushed it from my mind as we maneuvered through lanes of aerial traffic.

"How long to the shuttle depot?" Sen inquired, derailing that train of conversation.

"Ten minutes."

"We can't go faster?"

"You wanna fucking drive? Shoulda brought your own ride. And didn't you just tell me to calm down? Why the rushing, then?"

"Because we're sitting ducks in the air, unless you just happened to bring a missile launcher in your luggage."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn't."

"I'm just saying. Once we're on the ground, we'll have our big guns handy. We can set up a defensive line. Y'know… Get military."

"You wanna 'get military' in an Omega spaceport?" Holden looked at her like she was both stupid and crazy. "That's synonymous with going to Afterlife and shouting blasphemy against Aria, by which I mean it's a great way to get your ass killed in an extremely painful way. There are gonna be more people with guns in there than we have thermal clips!"

"I meant it like we can if we have to!" Sen countered. "Don't act like you know Omega better than me!"

"Ah! Well, excuse me, Prin-!"

"GUYS!" Etrius and I both interjected at the same time. The two arguing turians turned to face us, stunned.

"Let's just get there," I said calmly, taking a deep breath.

"…Yeah," Holden sighed, shaking off his anger and maneuvering us into a different lane.

This chapter could also be titled 'And Things Get Worse', but that doesn't go along with the theme.

So yeah, that's a chapter for both the first and last days of September, with two chapters in between. Pretty sure this is a record for me or something. Might need to tone it back a bit, just to avoid burning myself out. We'll see.

Thanks again to Warhammer 2-4 for putting up with me and my crazy writing swing this month, as well as the reviewers for offering me words of encouragement! I seriously appreciate everything you all do for me. I seriously never thought we'd make it beyond 10 chapters, let alone 50 reviews! Let's hope we can keep up the effort!

Till next time, this is Digital Sage (not Surge), and I hope you are having a wonderful day.