Valhalla - part 1
November 24th
Valhalla, Midgard system
Colony - Team Apple
08:22
"Husks! Husks! Husks!" Kaidan shouted, firing off his shotgun as the first of the hundreds of cybernetic reanimated corpses closed in on the small group of soldiers. He, Nihlus and John were the members of the group best suited to the purpose of fighting the husks as shotguns removed more tissue, and therefore caused more damage than a rifle that would cause internal damage and bleeding in a regular target. The thing with husks just was, they weren't regular targets. This was something Kaidan realized as he blew the left side of the Husk's torso away, only for the zombie-like creature to claw for him with its right arm, paying to heed to the fact that it, had it been human, its heart, left lung and a good portion of its intestines were now painting the ground behind it. The shotgun registered again only a second after the first shot went out, removing most of the head from the shoulders of the synthetic monster. It kept on running for a few seconds before the nanites in its body ceased functioning and died, letting it fall to the ground in a grey heap of limbs and metallic tubes and wires.
"There're so many of them!" He shouted, blowing the legs out from under another Husk trying to end him by replacing his flesh with razor-sharp claws that had taken the place of human fingers. Soft flesh and nails had been replaced with steel-tipped fingers and synthetic muscles.
"Alenko, do you know how to execute a shockwave?" Nihlus called, blasting the head clean off the shoulders of two husks at the same time by sticking the barrel inside the mouth of one before he pulled the trigger, letting the pellets travel through the back of the Husk's head before tearing the front of the skull of the one behind it in one go. Both creatures fell in a heap on each other, but the Turian Spectre had already opened fire on another husk closing in, taking its head clean off in a shower of black blood and sparks of electricity. A new Husk suddenly came from his side, and as he found his arms to be held in place by the newcomer's friend, he instead raised and kicked out with his leg, breaking the former human being in halves before turning the shotgun to the first Husk, removing its midsection before he stomped its head in on the ground.
"Yeah! I'm a Tier Six biotic, Shockwaves are pretty simple." Kaidan shouted back. The incoming horde of former humans had split the group in two, leaving John and Liara to be slowly forced away from them by a growing amount of Husks between the four. Above the constant wailing and moaning, regular shots could be heard fired from a Viper sniper rifle, each shot taking the head clean off the shoulders of the Husk in sight, or simply punching a hole clean through the head of it, leaving it to slump to the ground in a small stuttering of flailing arms and choken moans. Garrus, while not particularly enjoying his current job, had never had a higher score of headshots in one fight. It was actually difficult to miss, given the fact that the Husks were grouped together so tightly that they would only fall if they were in the outer parts of the horde. Otherwise they would simply be pushed along as their body started working.
"Good. When I give the word, send one right in front of the Commander and T'soni. Give them a little room to breathe. I'll provide cover for you. Got it?" Nihlus called out, grabbing a Husk by the neck and fastening a grenade in its mouth before he threw it back at its fellows, turning his side to the explosion that consumed six of the synthetic creatures.
"Yeah!" Kaidan shouted back, receiving a long scratch in his chest plate as one of the Husks got close enough to swipe at him. He promptly fired up his biotics before he delivered a wide Haymaker around him, the wave of dark energy sending multiple Husks flying back, a few missing only one limb. The rest weren't as lucky as the biotic energy in some cases tore them in half.
Nihlus then blasted another pair of Husks in the faces, tearing the skulls apart with wet explosions of grey matter and fragmented bone;
"Now!" He called, getting out of the way for Kaidan to work his magic. The Russian-Canadian glowed deep purple for a moment before he lashed out, sending a wave of exploding gravitational microspheres washing through the formation of Husks, knocking them up and down by the dozens, but only actually killing a few of them outright. The rest, as they impacted on the ground again began to slowly get on their broken feet and bones as they turned to face the human biotic. Across from them, John'Shepard and Liara had been given a small amount of room as the Husks closest to them had been swooped off their feet, promptly followed with weapons fire from respectively a Quarian's shotgun and an Asari's sub-machinegun. Where one simply blasted away the heads of the Husks, the other tore into the mangled and writhing bodies with surprisingly cold calm, her eyes going between radiating fear and rage as she kept the gun firing with small intervals so as to not overheat her gun. The Quarian then ignited his own biotic modules, courtesy of Cerberus, and sent a massive singularity towards the skies where it promptly curved downwards and impacted in the center of the horde, instantly beginning to suck dozens of the walking dead into the center of the gravitational disturbance, the close-to infinite gravity in the center mashing and crushing the Husks together as there was simply not room enough to hold twenty-five Husks in the room no larger than a small football. Of course, that was unless they were all mashed together into concentrated masses the sizes of tin cans.
Liara widened her eyes at the sight, but then ignited her own biotics as well, sending a high-powered warp towards the center of the singularity. Upon impact, the two opposing gravitational disturbances failed to integrate, instead causing a detonation of almost a thousand Newtons. The Husks, even those not caught in the center of the sphere, were smashed to the sides in a radius of two meters around the Singularity, granting the embattled forces a brief but much needed break before the space in the horde closed up and more of the Husks started closing in. The team reunited, standing shoulder to shoulder as the Husks closed in on them, claws bared.
"Goddess! The entire colony?" Liara asked, having found the number of Husks to be large enough to easily account for the seven-hundred people who had lived in the small settlement prior to the attack.
"Looks like it from my position. I'd say we have about… two thirds left, and my ammo-block is starting to really feel the toll. How about you guys?" Garrus asked over the radio, being too far away to communicate normally. Liara shuddered at the prospect of having to face twice the amount of Husks they already had.
"Well, here they come. Commander, I think we need-" Kaidan said, starting to turn towards the Quarian, only to find the commander already in the process of contacting the third team.
"Team Three, we need backup in the town-square. Coordinates 5-2-1-5-4-grid…ehm… Kazuat, just go for the giant firefight! Drop in the Mako and prepare for immediate engagement. Drop is danger close, out." He said, removing his wrist from his face as the team-to-team radio flickered off. He then leveled the shotgun towards the closest Husk as the horde crossed the magical seven-meter line. All weapons, three shotguns and one submachinegun clicked on in unison, then gave fire. The rounds and pellets tore into the ranks of the incoming horde, tearing the entire frontline of the creatures to shreds in one single barrage, then continued shooting as the following lines ran over the still twitching bodies of their comrades in death and enslavement. The guns rang out again, downing dozens of Husks as they were still in the process of stepping over their own dead.
For each shot, the target fell dead, oozing black and sticky ichor that only resembled human blood in the slightest. Had the team smelled it, it would have been more reminiscent of motor-oil and burned fat. Despite the horde still closing in from over five meters away, the constant splatter and shedding of desecrated blood started to stain the otherwise spotless armor of the Normandy team as they kept shooting, switching to biotics when the guns overheated. The only one who didn't have the luxury of flinging out dark energy was Nihlus, who instead opted to switch to his dual handguns, the pair of Carnifex's going off with loud bangs at each shot, packing the same power as a regular shotgun focused in one bullet. Even if he did not have the ability to control gravitational disturbances, none could say that Nihlus Kryik was falling behind his team. Where Kaidan, Liara and the commander all dished out singularities and warps at regular intervals, the Spectre's motto rang through over and over again: 'One shot, one kill'. Each time his handgun went off, a Husk fell to the ground with most of its skull missing, or a plate-sized hole in its torso. Either way it was enough to incapacitate the oncoming dead.
…
Valhalla, Midgard system.
SSV Normandy, Cargo bay
Fire-team three.
08:30 (Planetary time)
"Alright people, load up and get into the Mako! We drop in twenty!" Boss Delta-38 called out, hoisting his DC-17 blaster over his shoulder as he placed his helmet on his head, sealing the armor for eventual decompression. His hand pistol, a Carnifex with incendiary ammunition, was already on his hip as he strode for the Mako. Scorch and Fixer were with him before he had even finished the sentence, Tali, Tequila and Tengberg were with him the moment he had finished it. As a precaution of sorts, the Mako had already been made ready for drop, its shields been checked, the VI ensured to be in prime condition and the hull to have 100% integrity.
Fixer, being the only one on the team with any experience in driving the tank at all, instantly found himself at the driver's seat with Boss right next to him in the commanding officer's seat. Usually though, from what the clone captain had been able to understand, thát spot was usually filled by the ship's resident master engineer and hacker, Tali'Zorah. This time around though, the female Quarian was placed next to Scorch, Tengberg and Tequila in the crew's section of the transport. Tengberg, the 'odd on out' in the team, was still hefting his minigun with him, despite it having been somewhat folded into itself to allow for it to be actually brought along. It still took up the space of a folded-in battle-droid, but he supposed it would come to its right in case they were forced into a defending position. Tengberg, being the last one in, closed the hatch and slammed the hull three times, signaling they were ready to roll. Or, in their current case, to drop.
"Here we go!" Fixer shouted, giving the engine gas as he stepped on the accelerators, gunning the vehicle out of the ship and into a free-fall of several hundred meters. Just as with the time on that planet with the giant worm that tried to eat them, they all instantly felt the tug as gravity ceased being a factor inside the tank. This time though, they were all strapped in on forehand, knowing full well how annoying being tossed around like prey for the Gutkurrs. Fixer still had vivid memories of Sev riding one of the ugly beasts over the side of a cliff before jumping off at the last second, letting the predator fall to its death.
"I really should have known this would be like a rollercoaster…" Nikolai Tengberg said, his tone surprisingly calm for someone who as being dropped in a tank from over three hundred meters up. Instead, he just curled up his hands, fingers dancing idly over the compact minigun between his legs. Scorch himself wasn't too fund of this manner of deployment, silently preferring to be dropped in either a gunship or a Walker. Sadly, the Normandy had neither. It was one disadvantage to using a ship that small and fast. They didn't have the room for a gunship, or a Walker. Looking to his left, he could see the two women on the team, the hardcore corporal who had been slightly… distrusting, of them in the beginning, and the young female Quarian. Both were steeling themselves in different manners, yet with the same result. Tali, as he knew the Quarian woman or girl, thát he could decide on, was called, sat with her shotgun on her lab, fingers dancing over it in much the same way as Tengberg did with his. Scorch supposed it was due to them not being trained combatants.
Tequila, on the other hand, had her rifle standing vertically on her knee, one hand clasping it tightly while the other was loading a trio of grenades into a compartment in the underslung rail beneath the main barrel. She had a look to her, despite wearing a helmet that only let her eyes and top-most of the nose being seen, that bore witness to the amount of death and carnage she had seen in her time.
"Ten seconds people! Hang onto something!" Scorch heard Fixer call from the front. Tequila instantly clasped the grenade-department shut, bending over and attaching it to her back again. Tali gripped tighter around her shotgun and Tengberg seemed to place his boots against the opposite side of the tank, pressing his feet at the bottom of the seat across from him. He then just held his big gun tightly, making sure it wouldn't drop or rattle too much. Scorch himself felt a bit wary, hoping that his new leg wouldn't just short out in the middle of the mission. He also found himself to be scared. Though it was for the safety of a blue girl down there somewhere, not his own.
"Express elevator to Hell! Going Dooown!" Tequila shouted at the top of her lunges as she gripped her harness with both hands.
…
Valhalla, Midgard system.
Corporal Adrian Shepard, 413th
08:32
The sound of his assault rifle overheating was something Corporal Adrian Shepard could easily do without. It had been five hours since the hostiles had landed and begun to swarm the colony, and in that time they had killed all but three of the SpecOps and four marines. Cursing while he waited for the heatsinks to cool down again, Adrian ducked behind the raised defense-platform. It was standard equipment in all larger facilities to have makeshift shields and cover ready to be raised from the floor at a moment's notice, giving soldiers something to hide behind during enemy barrages and fire. Of course, there was a limit to how well that cover functioned when the enemy could penetrate it after only a few shots fired.
The whole place was, in his opinion, going to hell faster than a bullet could travel. And with a mass accelerator, that was pretty damn fast.
He looked back over the small cover, only just large enough for two men to squat down behind. The other man, Friedrich, was currently on the ground with a good chunk of his skull laid out on the ground as a puzzle, courtesy of one of the armed freaks currently peppering his cover with rounds fired from a gun seemingly merging with its arm. It was bulky, and in his opinion, ugly as all hell. It was of a brown and sickly yellow color and its body was bloated and twisted. It had a face, it seemed, stuck right in the middle of its body, four glowing eyes staring at him with empty purpose and hatred. It walked around on legs that seemed far too thin for it to be efficient, and one of its arms seemed to be much more… normal, than the other. Of course, it didn't take much for an arm to be more normal than one that was thick as a tree-trunk and had a giant gun instead of a hand. If he had to voice his guess, he'd say it looked a bit like a Batarian, but all the proportions were completely off. The creature, one of many, spotted his head and shot at him, three shots sufficing in draining his shields.
"Give me a fucking break!" He shouted, scurrying to keep his legs behind cover as well, seeing how the floor around his feet was being shot at. The moment the fusillade paused, he leaned over the cover again, firing his Avenger on full auto at the closest of the creatures. It had been that way for three hours, him being the last man he knew was alive. He had seen the SpecOps overwhelmed by enemy fire, yet they had still killed and killed, utilizing everything they could find and weaponize, even the bodies of dead enemies. After all, a Husk was made up off mostly metallic stuff, so if the wielder was strong enough, it would be like swinging an organic baseball-bat at someone. Still, of the twenty SpecOps he knew of, he had seen seventeen go down to the enemy attacks. Even super soldiers seemed no match for the endless hordes of… whatever the hell they were. Adrian kept shooting until his rifle beeped the warning, then ducked down behind cover again. Where he had been firing, four of the mutants or aliens now lay dead, while dozens were advancing on him.
The moment his rifle had cooled down, Adrian popped back up to fire his gun, but was startled by the sight that greeted him. What he had at first thought was some kind of attempt at first aid, he now fully noticed was actually the creatures cannibalizing each other. He watched, briefly, in disgust and horror as one of the creatures he had shot started tearing chunks of flesh from its dead comrade. Adrian then grit his teeth and opened fire again, the grain-sized slugs from his Avenger cutting into the creatures, tearing them into pieces with neither shields nor barriers to stop him. There wasn't even any armor to protect the thing. Only flesh, and lots of it. He kept up the fire until the thing dropped dead to the ground, dark blood pouring from it. Adrian then switched targets again and poured more fire into the next monster before he was forced to change cover. The sudden and unrelenting fire was already tearing holes in his cover, so he rolled from it, aiming for the overturned locker five meters away.
Already in the middle of his roll, he could feel projectiles starting to shatter his shields at a more than fast rate. As he reached the locker, he felt a round punch through his armor and penetrate his foot. Being too exhausted to scream in pain, he instead let out a hoarse groan as he felt the medigel in his armor beginning to kick in. Phase-II armor or not, those fuckers could punch through it with only a dozen good shots to whittle down his shields before starting chip away at his armor.
"God fucking- Ghaahhhh!" He grit his teeth as he started feeling the pain go away, temporarily replaced with the numb feeling caused by the painkillers in the gel. Forcing his eyes open again, he leaned against the locker, keeping his head down. Having regained his sense of direction from the numbness of the painkillers, Adrian looked over the locker, instantly forced back down by a withering fire unleashed by the incoming hostiles. Instead of risking a headshot hitting home, he leaned his rifle over the locker and opened fire, spraying the corridor with Devastator-rounds. The annoying fact was that the Devastator-rounds were meant for punching through armor. Here, there was no armor, and therefore the bullets tore straight through his enemies, often taking an overheated clip to down mere one or two of them. Still, he was rewarded with the roar of one of the creatures going down under the amount of fire he poured out, and as his rifle cooled down, he leaned his head out to sneak a peek…
And almost head-butted one of the creatures as it was a mere fifty inches from him. With a startled shout he whipped his rifle to smash the creature in the face, caving it in with the stock of his Avenger. As the creature reeled back in reaction, he leveled the rifle square against its four glowing eyes and pulled the trigger, replacing whatever it had for brains with tungsten. The grains kept flying out the back of its head, scratching the creature behind it. Adrian hardly cared anymore. He just kept the trigger pulled until the gun stopped shooting from overheating. As it fell to the floor, he pulled out his sidearm instead, aiming it at the face of the nearest creature. He pulled the trigger to his Raikou four times, then three more for good measure. The first four went clean through one of the eyes and the area around it, while the rest simply punched into the body, causing the still walking thing to stagger back, but otherwise keep walking. He needed it to get closer for the gun to have a bigger effect.
"Oi! Come and get me you bloody wankers!" He shouted, overheating the gun in the face of the creature, now only two meters away and shooting at him in return. This time around though, his shots had a bigger effect and tore large chunks of flesh off of his target. At first it didn't seem to care about the injuries, despite around one fifth of it having been blown away with plate-sized holes as replacements. It then reached the corpse of the other creature and began to feast off of thát instead. Adrian just scowled and pointed the gun at its head from his cover. With a dark scowl still decorating his face beneath his helmet, he pulled the trigger, blowing away most of the thing's head with a single shot. It finally reeled over and collapsed on top of its comrade. The corporal snorted in disgust as he changed back to his rifle, leaning out of cover again.
"Hello? Ehm… anyone still alive out there?" Adrian was caught completely off guard by his coms going off. In truth it would have surprised him less if one of the things started talking. Biting his tongue, he squeezed off a salvo into the head of the closest creature, downing it before answering his call.
"This is Corporal Adrian Shepard, 413th. I'm all alone safe for those freaks, location: Corridor D-5, west wing. Who is this?" the fact that the caller sounded almost a mix between embarrassed and nervous didn't make any difference to him. He sounded human, so he was a 'good guy' in this situation. There was a slight pause before the other side responded again.
"Biff! Biff someone else is not dead too!" Adrian leaned out of cover before he fired his guns again, downing a regular Husk as it ran down the hallway towards him. Compared to the things with guns, regular Husks were Childs play to put down. One round in the head and bam! No more mutated human. As he leaned back, he started to realize that the caller sounded anything but military.
"Who is this? Are you Alliance military?"
"Sorry about that" A new voice cut in, a bit deeper and more calm than the previous; "Only just pulled Danson from the stasis-tube…he's still a bit… confused. I'm Biff- Gamma Oh-Nine, GAR-shock trooper. There's just the two of us here, and a whole lot of bad guys… We're in sector… S-12… we're on our way to you now. No idea how long it'll take though… Try not to die in the meantime." And with that, the soldier named Biff cut the transmission, leaving Adrian to his own devices until help arrived. From the sound of it, only Biff would be a help. He wasn't sure about the other one though.
"Great, now I just need to hold here…" He muttered, looking out from behind the one of the lockers still standing. There weren't any more of the shooting things, but a lot of the Husks had taken their places. Adrian felt a bit more comfortable before he stood out from his cover. As he leveled his gun at the closest Husk, a stray thought hit him. Those two guys, Danson and Biff… Biff said he had pulled his friend from the stasis -tubes. As far as Adrian knew, they only had one pair of stasis-tubes in the entire facility. Those had been built after a patrol half a year back had found a large anomaly in space, in the space between the fourth and the fifth planet in the system. It had turned out to be a briefly occurring wormhole of some sort, from what he knew, which wasn't all that much. What he knew though, was that a pair of people in sealed containers had been taken to the science-labs only a day later, and then the stasis-rooms… tubes, things, had just been constructed overnight. How or why, he had no idea. Adrian then stood, with as rigid a stance as he could muster, before opening fire on the incoming Husks, tearing them down two at a time.
"Yeah! Come on! Come on!" He bellowed, letting his rifle register each other second, Husks going down in droves with holes in their heads. If there was one thing Adrian had picked up from all those old and, in his opinion, deflated and boring zombie-movies, it was that the head was the target. Zombies didn't care for shit if you shout their arms off. He ended up standing over a massive pile of Husks, each kill building to the small mountain. Of course, the SpecOps had been able to do somewhat the same with their bare hands, so even if he, and he admitted it with a smirk, kicked less ass than them, he still kicked major ass.
Hiss rifle registered again and again, downing Husks by the dozen even as they attempted to climb over the small barricade of corpses he had made as he shot them down. It was starting to resemble a freak-show more than a fight for survival at this point, making him stop for a moment and wonder if it wasn't all too easy? In his mind, Adrian knew that twenty SpecOps couldn't have been taken down by these things alone, considered the fact that he had been able to survive the whole thing. If there ever was a time he wished he hadn't jumped after Freeman… this would probably be the time and place to conjure up that wish. Still, he always knew that he had to make do with what he had, and at the moment he had a rifle, a Raikou-handgun and two more or less classified and armed people coming his way. True, one of them sounded like he actually knew what he was doing, but Adrian still felt a slight gnawing in his pit as he considered the consequences of letting those two run free. Still, Adrian was a soldier, always had been. He didn't undertake scientific missions and goals, didn't solve crises and didn't know a Quantum entangled atom from a Quark. He was a soldier, and what he did, was shooting things. As long as it was trying to kill him, it didn't matter if it was a giant worm, a freaking alien or mutants with guns for arms. They shot at him, he shot them, end of story.
Then, he picked up something new in the hallways. Or, 'new' wasn't the right word. The right word would be something akin to 'something that sounded big, pissed and lethal'. All he knew was that each time he had heard it, it had soon been followed by massive barrages of gunfire in the distance, and then screams and the sound of something heavy hitting steel, the floor or the walls. This time though, it just sounded so much closer than the other times. A long and deep, guttural roar. He could think of no creatures in the galaxy that made thát sound. And this time, it sounded like it was pissed at him in particular. He could actually feel the vibrations in the ground as it walked, like the old Jurassic Park movies. He just hoped it wasn't a Dinosaur coming to eat him. For some reason, that thought scared him more than the thought of dozens of the mutants bearing down on him.
As the thundering steps drew closer, he raised his rifle towards the massive pile of Husks, finally glad that he had the Devastator-rounds on. His eyes remained affixed on the pile of still bodies, finger twitching over the trigger. Adrian idly wondered how much ammunition he had left in his rifle, considering the amount of dead bodies on the floor. He tapped his comms again;
"Ehm… I don't know if you can hear me Biff, but I'm about to have company… and not the good sort." He said, feeling his voice etched with desperation and anxiousness. Taking down unarmed and armed infantry was one thing, but whatever was now on the other side of the bodies, wasn't infantry.
Then the roar sounded again, less than twenty meters to his front. That made it be just on the other side of the barricade. Gripping his rifle even tighter, Adrian started backing up, putting as much distance between him and the… whatever was on the other side of the bodies. He kept his finger over the trigger and his eyes only enough backwards to ensure he didn't fall.
There was a pounding of flesh impacted on by steel, then another. The sharp tearing sounds signaling that the bodies weren't being shoved aside, they were being torn apart by whatever insane being waiting to tear him a new one in all the meanings of the words.
The first thing he saw was a large claw, like the one you would find on a crab, stabbing through the mass of bodies. Then the claw was pulled back, and before he could even utter a sound, the claw emerged again, tearing a new hole in the mangled dead. To hell with this! He thought, then turned and ran for the closest regular sized doorway. Not even a second after he had turned on the spot, a loud crash sounded, and he suddenly found himself dodging flying corpses as they seemed to rain from the ceiling. He didn't stop to look at the cause, just kept running until he reached the doorway where the door itself had been torn from its hinges by a grenade. He could hear the heavy pounding of footsteps closing in on him as he ran, biting his lip in tears as the painkillers stopped numbing the pain from his foot. As Adrian reached the doorway, he jumped, impacting on the floor deeper inside the room and crashing into several chairs and tables still standing. He ended up underneath a table, it having flipped so as to conveniently hide him from the hallway. The moment he could hear his own mind again over the noise of his beating heart, Adrian could hear the enraged roars of the new creature out on the other side of the wall. He silently thanked God Almighty that the beast seemed to be no smarter than a dumb animal. Out of sight, out of mind, seemed to hold somewhat true in this case. Adrian then stuck to his own little piece of Heaven behind the overturned table, doing his best to be as still as humanly possible.
He definitely regretted the jump after Freeman at this point, wishing he could just be back home. And yet, it had been seven years since then. Home, as wrong as it sounded, seemed to be this place now. Just a shame there was monsters under the beds here.
1. Yes, this chapter was the shortest I have written yet since chapter 2. But, this is more of a stager than... Hell, let's just say it starts the battle for Valhalla and all the secrets stored within.
2. I have come to the conclusion that I can add new people, as long as they won't have the same impact that MC will have when he shows up. And the reason I have gone this long without adding new people is because of the saying 'too many Chiefs...' Anyway, people with a rank high enough not to listen to John or Jane are generally not what I'm looking for.
3. I dare you, I DARE you, to identify the two 'Stasis' people Adrian had a short conversation with. Seriously, enough cookies to be fat for the rest of your lives will be granted the one who knows these two guys.
As always, remember to review. It makes me write faster and longer chapters.
See you guys next time (And girls ;) I am glad that I now know that my story attracts both genders, as opposed to only guys. Don't get me wrong, I love you too, but... you know what? I love you all :D I know all writers say this, but I seriously think I have the best reader-base on this site!