Can You Make Fake Casino Chips - chismecalientito.com

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

This chapter was a labour of love, heists are hard. Big thanks to u/eruwenn for helping tidy up this bag of snakes.
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“Ranjaz K’Lua, you thieving scumbag!” the Kah’Ree in the purple suit exclaimed loudly as he spotted them across the busy room. “As I live and skral, I never thought you would have the Jolos show your face here again!”
Two J’Rami in suits detached themselves from the lobby wall, walking towards the Kittran and his friends. “Alfor, my old friend!” Ranjaz smiled broadly. “No need for the welcoming party, I’ve got your credits” —he gestured to Cygna— “and a sweetener, for all the trouble I caused last time.”
Alfor paused, lecherous eyes assessing the Fae’Dan. “You know I have a thing for purple.” He chuckled at his own joke and waved the guards back to their posts. “How about we have a drink, and discuss your forgiveness.” He pointed to Thor and Eruwenn. “Brought your own security, or are these Gal. Fed. goons? Everyone knows about your probation.”
The Kittran gave a broad grin. “I got a Tulseria-damned pardon, a new ship and a very lucrative opportunity.”
The Kah’Ree smiled. “How’d a thieving cat like you get a pardon?” He gave Ranjaz an appraising look up and down. “Oh? Now, let me guess, you need something from me and my brother?”
Ranjaz fired his finger guns. “You were always the smart one Alfor, that’s why you run the casino floor.” The Kittran stepped in close. “The item, do you still have it?”
Alfor tilted his head back and away from Ranjaz. “Your little guarantee?” He looked back down at Ranjaz. “We have it somewhere safe. Had some unusual people come by after you got caught. Asked a lot of questions. Made a lot of threats.” His face contorted in anger. “We got audited thanks to you.”
The Kittran smiled. “If only they knew you better, they could have simply paid you for the information.”
“We give nothing for free.” The Kah’Ree gave a sinister smile. “House rule.”
Ranjaz walked forward to put his his arm on Alfor’s back. “Let’s go see your brother. Have a few drinks, maybe gamble a little, and discuss our future riches.”
 
 
Ripley stood in the shadows of the staff shuttle bay, watching as the numerous employees of assorted races came and went. Loud laughter caught her attention, and a very strangely dressed Niham broke away from a small group and walked towards her. Ripley tried to maintain her low profile as the scantily clad female strutted towards her in long black boots with pointed heels that clacked loudly with every step.
Deliberately avoiding eye contact the Awakened tried to will herself into the wall but it was too late and a voice called out to her. “Hey Darling! You must be the one I’m looking for.”
Ripley shook her head. The Kittran had said the contact was an Ashi pirate captain, a master gambler and expert in procuring the unusual. “I don’t-”
“Listen cutie,” she interrupted, “you’re the one lurking in dark corners drawing attention to yourself. I’ve got your security card. You tell that fluffy little stud he owes me. And more than a bottle of Fae’Dan wine and a good time, if you know what I mean.” She held up the card between her fingers, just a little out of Ripley’s reach.
The Awakened considered the phrase ‘fluffy little stud’ and decided that, despite her hopes, this was probably her contact. “You’re Captain Whiplash?”
The Ashi laughed genuinely, the jiggling of tightly squeezed breasts bursting at shiny black restraints making Ripley nervous. “Oh, Darling! Only my little pets call me that! You may call me Sho’Na.”
Ripley was momentarily confused. “So, you aren’t a pirate captain?”
“I’m anything they pay me to be.” She smiled at the silver-haired woman's naivety. “You really are new to this.”
Ripley, caught off guard, simply nodded, then replied, “I’m a quick learner.”
“Good for you, Darling.” Sho’Na handed over the card. “Just make sure you get paid up front, and don’t use your real name with clients. Ruins the mystique.”
Ripley was unsure of what was being said. Turning the card over in her hands she saw that the holo-image on the front was of a male Arkellian. “This isn’t me?”
“Honey, I was given half a cycle to get you a level three security card. Just be glad it’s a biped.” Sho’Na looked Ripley up and down. “Our mutual acquaintance told me you were some sort of master of disguise who could even trick Selva Blaster.”
Ripley paused, then smiled. Her appearance had become such an integral part of her identity she had forgotten that it was entirely optional. “It won’t be a problem.” She looked at the card again. “Unless the owner comes looking for it.”
Sho’Na gave another bosom-trembling laugh that threatened to spill out at any moment. “Oh, don’t worry, he’s tied up at the moment.”
The Awakened considered the risk. “Hmmm, but for how long?”
The few strips of shiny black material that comprised Sho’Na’s revealing outfit strained under her amusement. “Don’t you worry, Darling. He paid for the whole night.”
 
 
Eruwenn had reassessed her opinion of Ranjaz many times since meeting him. The criminal. The loyal friend. The lazy trouble-maker. All were true, but now she was seeing something new. He sat opposite Toran, the brother of Alfor, in a game of dalcho she wished she could have taken part in, but was equally glad she did not.
At first she had thought the Kittran was outmatched, a few reckless mistakes costing him dearly as the Kah’Ree deftly selected his tiles. Toran was clearly a seasoned gambler, using a blend of the Remee Le’Bow Gambit and the Kowals’Kee Analysis she hadn’t seen before. It seemed to be dismantling Ranjaz’s tiles before he could even prepare his cards. A few fortunate dice rolls and he had taken a strong lead from the outset. The Kittran appeared desperate, playing any tile available to try and slow the defeat.
It had all been a ruse, she saw it; Ranjaz had saved his best tiles and carefully thrown hands to manipulate the cards. In just a few rounds he would be able to dominate the board and raise the stakes, recouping his losses and changing the course of the game entirely. She had encountered few players who could manipulate the game so deftly, using memory and layers of strategy to corner their opponent. It was magnificent.
Eruwenn couldn’t tear her eyes from the board as she stood beside Thor. The Awakened had shown no interest in the game, studiously watching the opposite door as Toran’s staff came in and out. When a waiter entered and began preparing drinks at the small private bar in the executive gambling room, Thor coughed. It was a strange thing for an Awakened to do, and Eruwenn finally looked up from the table. “Are you ok?”
Thor nodded. By the time he had looked towards her, she had returned her attention completely to the game. “You don’t seem concerned about your friend?” he asked.
The Anatidae watched as Ranjaz used a blind double feint, and the sheer audacity of such a move made her swallow hard. She didn’t look back to Thor, but mumbled a response. “I’m very confident in her abilities.”
The waiter was methodically placing drinks by each of the players, but when they stood behind Ranjaz the Kittran surged to his feet, shouting, “Hey! No cheating Toran! Getting your waiter to look over my shoulder? That’s a dirty move I’d expect from your brother!”
Thor had reacted faster than Eruwenn, pinning the arms of the Arkellian waiter in a vice-like bear hug. Toran slowly stood. He was big, heavily muscled, and the veins on his neck bulged as his anger rose. “Don’t accuse me in my own place.” He cracked his knuckles and glowered down at Ranjaz. “I run a straight game.”
Fearlessly the Kittran walked right up to the Kah’Ree and stared up into his face from waist height. “Don’t try and intimidate me, you son of a Vogel.” Ranjaz puffed out his chest and began pushing the burly casino owner. “Nobody cheats me!”
The blow caught Ranjaz across the cheek and sent him sprawling across the room. Eruwenn winced at the impact, but maintained her composure. Toran laughed. “Watch your tongue or I’ll add it to my collection.” He walked round the table and kicked Ranjaz in the stomach, glaring at Thor and Eruwenn, daring them to act. “Know your place trash. You’re at this table because you put credits up front. You are a dishonest thief, begging for scraps, and cosying up to me any my brother to get your little trinket back.” He returned to his seat. “Why would I need to cheat against the likes of you?”
Ranjaz stood, brushing himself off. “Fine, fine.” He waved a hand and Thor dropped the Arkellian. Ranjaz tapped him on the chest. “My mistake.” He sat down and picked up his cards once more. “You’re right Toran, you run a clean game. I’m just a sore loser.” He shuffled the order of the tiles that were still face down on the table. “To show my sincerity, how about we double the buy for the rest of the game?”
Toran snorted. “Double?” He looked at the Kittran, scrutinising his opponent. The game was already over; he had control of the board and his tiles occupied the three prime positions. Was the thief trying to buy his favour, he wondered? How much was the trinket he wanted truly worth? He decided it was worth testing. “Triple, and I’ll forget you dared touch me.”
The Kittran swallowed hard, his ears flat to his head. Toran momentarily worried he’d pushed for too much but a decision seemed to be reached. “Fine. Triple.” The look of defeat was delicious to the Kah’Ree.
 
 
Cygna had done her part and lured Alfor to a private room away from his security. She had danced, skipped and side-stepped his groping hands so far, maintaining a playfulness that ensured he complied. This sort of thing was not new to her; she had spent time undercover in the past. Fortunately, there had been little call for it since she had joined forces with Eruwenn.
Alfor’s eyes scanned her body once more. “The Kittran has very good taste.” He licked his lips, a small amount of drool escaping and running down his chin. He wiped it on his sleeve. “Now, I brought you somewhere quiet. How about you show me how sweet you can be?”
The Fae’Dan smiled coyly and continued her dancing just out of reach, glancing to the doorway where Alfor’s two guards stood watching her. “With an audience?” She raised her eyebrows expectantly.
With a sly grin he waved the guards out of the room. “Now come here and let me satisfy you like only a Kah’Ree can.” His eyes wandered over her body once more.
Cygna smiled, her own eyes moving from the Kah’Ree’s hands to his shoulders, then up towards his neck. An interesting fact about the Kah’Ree was the thick blood vessels on the side of their neck. They often bulged when a Kah’Ree was angry or excited, like Alfor’s were as he leered at her. She danced closer. Another interesting fact was that their brains were not as efficient as those of other species, hence the requirement for additional blood flow; more oxygen per limited thought.
He leaned forward, his eyes locked to her swaying hips. Cygna turned slowly, and his head tilted to appreciate her assets. The third, lesser known, fact about the Kah’Ree was that an interruption to the blood flow while they were in this excited state caused them to lose consciousness rapidly as their brain burned through the available oxygen. “My eyes are up here.” She smiled as he looked up at her with his head still tilted.
He sneered. “Who ca-”
The Fae’Dan struck the side of his neck with the edge of her hand, targeting the throbbing blood vessel with a powerful blow. The interruption to his brain's oxygen supply worked perfectly and he fell face forward onto the ground at her feet. She let out a sigh of relief and looked down at his unconscious body. “Thank you, that was particularly satisfying.”
She walked over to the door and peeked out, finding the guards standing either side. “He said to order us some drinks.” One of the guards nodded and immediately put his hand to his lapel communicator.
Back inside the room, Cygna used her foot to roll Alfor to his back and began searching his pockets. She came up empty. Her eyes caught a glimmer from his collar and she found a heavy gold chain, at the end of which was his security key. She removed it just as a knock came at the door. A deep voice from the other side called out. “Your drinks, boss.”
The Fae’Dan quickly messed up her hair. Using the back of her hand she smeared her lipstick sideways, and then pulled the strap of her dress down off her shoulder. She opened the door and, to her surprise, was faced with an Arkellian waiter. The bodyguards noted her dishevelled appearance and shared a smirk, and she said, “Oh, I wasn’t expec-”
The waiter pushed the trolley into the room. “Don’t keep the boss waiting, lady.” Before Cygna could reply they were inside and the door closed. “Relax, it’s me.”
Ripley’s voice sounded bizarre coming from the male Arkellian form, and Cygna’s eyes went wide in shock. Her sharp mind quickly adjusted to this new information. Of course the Awakened could change their physical appearance; she had just never seen it. They all seemed quite attached to their chosen human forms. “Neat trick.” She held out Alfor’s key. “Did you get the other one?”
Ripley nodded. “The Kittran played his part well. I didn’t see him take it, and didn’t feel it when he placed it in my pocket. Now that was a neat trick.”
The Fae’Dan smiled. “I think I’ll pass on that dalcho game.”
The Arkellian Ripley smiled. “Probably wise.” Turning, she slipped the key into her pocket and headed back out of the door.
 
 
Ripley entered the elevator to the owner's private offices on the top floor. Thanks to the distractions downstairs, the two large desks in the centre of the room were empty. She walked straight past them to the large leokas painting on the wall and swung it forward. Behind it was a Fae’Dan safe; she took out the two keys and a small homemade device the Kittran had given her.
Attaching the device to the bio-lock and standing before the safe, she elongated her arms to reach both key positions at once. There was more than one reason she was the one chosen for this task. The device beeped twice and small lights above each lock lit up. She simultaneously turned both keys, and there was a satisfying clunk.
She raised an eyebrow. The device had worked. The heavy safe door swung open and she began her search. Ranjaz had been very specific: while there was one item she had to get, she was to grab as much as possible to obscure their true target.
Quickly grabbing as much as she could she retrieved the keys and ran back across the room towards the elevator.
 
 
Cygna hauled Alfor back onto the seat, putting him in a more natural position and messing up his hair. She looked away as she began unbuttoning his clothes, pulling his trousers around his ankles and opening his shirt up to bare his chest. From a secret pocket inside her dress she pulled out a lace thong, setting it on his head like a bandana. She also had a small box which she opened, inside of which was a replica mouth with lipstick that matched her own.
Cygna carefully applied kiss marks all over his exposed skin before popping the fake lips back into the secret pocket. She took the Fae’Dan wine and partially filled two glasses, making sure to take a long drink from one and leave more lipstick marks. The rest of the wine was poured into the ice bucket.
She heard the sound of voices outside the door. The guards were arguing with someone, refusing them entry, but when the name Toran was mentioned it was Ripley who entered, still in uniform but now looking much like her usual self. She smirked at the Kah’Ree in his derobed state. “I can see you had fun.”
The Fae’Dan chuckled. “That’s the idea.” She looked at the Awakened in her true form. “You look… better.”
Ripley cocked her head. “It would be strange if the waiter came back to deliver a message.” She tossed the necklace key to Cygna, who replaced it on Alfor’s neck.
Reclining on the sofa and picking up her glass, Cygna took another long drink. “Get the other one back to Ranjaz quickly. This one won’t be napping much longer.”
The Awakened gave an almost Ranjaz-like grin. “You could always hit him again.” Before the Fae’Dan could reply she had ducked back out of the door. She caught the eye of one of the bodyguards and gave a head tilt back towards the room. “The boss is really enjoying himself!”
As the suited pair chuckled, the larger of the two got a message in his ear piece. “Hey, silver hair.” He grunted. “Boss has an important guest. Meet them in the foyer and bring them to the dalcho room.”
Ripley was relieved – she needed a reason to get into that room. “On my way.”
 
 
Toran was seething as he watched as the Kittran flipped his final tile. Why would he have waited so long to play the Wings of Tulseria tile? His stomach sank, and he couldn’t hold back his anger any longer. “Damn you!”
Ranjaz gave a full-fanged grin. “Looks like my luck turned at just the right moment.”
“Luck!” Toran’s tile snapped between his fingers. Why had he let the damned cat goad him into constantly increasing their bet? The cycle had started with him owing the brothers a million credits plus interest, and now the infuritating Kittran had won nearly forty times that. “Nobody is that lucky.”
“Woah!” Ranjaz held up his hands. “I would never cheat, well... certainly not a second time. After you caught me, I’d be a fool to try.”
“Hmm.” Toran looked at the two behind the Kittran. The big one would be a problem, but the Anatidae looked to be nothing special. “How about I give you back your little trinket and we call it even?”
“My trinket?” Ranjaz shook his head. “I had to convince you it was worth the million I owed. Why would you think I’d trade it for thirty eight million credits? I’ll pay what I owe, take my trinket and my winnings and leave.”
Toran folded his arms and looked across the dalcho board at Ranjaz. “And why would I let you do that?” The atmosphere in the room changed as the two security guards changed their stance. “Transfer the credits back to the house.”
Ranjaz dropped the grin, replacing it with a defiant glare. “What happened to you running a straight game?”
“The game was straight. You won, didn’t you?” He leaned forward, his eyes cold and hard. “You’re just in no position to collect.”
The Kittran was about to argue when the door behind Toran opened. He looked up as Ripley entered, and his eyes widened in shock. She wasn’t alone. “Toran, you bastard! You sold me out!”
“For ten million credits.” Toran stared hard at Ranjaz. “Care to make a better offer?”
Eruwenn’s eyes blazed with anger as the grey-suited Niham pulled up a seat and sat down beside Toran. “Now, now, you lied to me about having the item before. Don’t double cross me.” Sentinel Krast placed his hands together on the table, interlacing his fingers. “I’m not somebody who forgives easily.” He looked directly at Eruwenn. “Isn’t that right, former Councillor? A little far from your new Ambassador position, aren’t you?”
Ripley stood back against the wall. She had no idea who the newcomer was, but this most definitely was not the plan. The golden green Anatidae walked forward to stand behind Ranjaz. “Oh, I had a little vacation time saved up, and decided to spend it with my good friend here.” She placed a hand on the Kittrans shoulder. “And what brings a Sentinel here?”
Krast’s lips curled in what might approximate a smile. “I’m also acquainted with Mr K’Lua. In fact, we go back a very long way.” He turned to look directly at Ranjaz. “Now, return what is mine.”
Toran looked from Ranjaz to Krast. “Yours? You don’t look like the tiara wearing type.”
The Sentinel didn’t turn his head. “Ah, so you hid the data chip inside some shiny bauble. As inventive as ever, Mr K’Lua.” The Niham finally acknowledged Toran by looking at him. “Bring. It. Here.”
The Kah’Ree sucked air through his teeth. “Well, seems like we have something mighty important, and two very interested parties.” He stood and walked to his two security officers, who drew their weapons in unison. “Now then, I believe you” —he nodded to Krast— “offered ten million. How about it Ranjaz, old friend? What’s your counter offer?”
The Kittran had been sitting, silently seething at his double cross being double crossed. He looked at Krast. “Were you the one?”
Toran was surprised at being ignored, but before he could reply Krast answered, “The one?”
Ranjaz’s eyes narrowed, his ears alert, his tail swishing aggressively. “The one who took my friend!” he snarled as he felt Eruwenn’s hand holding him back gently.
Krast’s eyes glittered as he saw the impotent rage in his opponent’s eyes. “Ah, the poor deceased human?” He smiled his mannequin-esque smile. “And if I was?”
Toran snatched a pistol from one of his men and fired a blast at the ceiling. “Your quarrel can wait. Let’s settle our business first and you can kill each other after I’m paid.” He paused, then added, “but, not in my casino. Body disposal costs extra.”
Eruwenn’s hand gripped Ranjaz’s shoulder harder, and he braced himself. In one smooth move she both threw him backwards and to the right, and kicked the dalcho table up and forward into Krast's face. The Sentinel fell backwards as a blast from Toran struck the table, but Eruwenn was already on the move, sidestepping left and ducking forward into a cartwheel. Toran's gun had been following Ranjaz, but as her leg swept down it knocked the weapon from his grip.
Once she stabilized, her fist, already primed with momentum from the cartwheel, struck Toran below the ribs and knocked the wind from him. The guard, whose gun the Kah'Ree had been holding, lunged forward to grab Eruwenn but she simply deflected his hand, pairing his forward momentum with her rising elbow to swiftly render him unconscious.
The second guard had just begun to raise his weapon when a huge fist struck him in his chest, sending him careening backwards into the wall. Thor loomed over him, shaking his head as he retrieved the energy pistol. “Too slow.”
Ripley helped Ranjaz to his feet as Krast pushed the table off his chest. Toran was coughing and struggling to breathe as Ranjaz pressed the retrieved energy pistol to his forehead. “Double cross me?” He dragged the Kah’Ree forward. “I want to see the item, then I’ll pay what I owe.” The two of them awkwardly made their way back towards Krast, so Ranjaz could point the gun in his face. “Then we can talk about your body disposal fee.”
Krast stood, and his phony smile was gone. “You can’t kill me. The Sentinels will tear this place apart, hunt you down and kill you. You think I came alone? My ship is in orbit and waiting for my orders!”
Ranjaz grabbed him by the jacket, pulling him down to his level, and struck him in the face with the butt of the pistol. Thor cooly kept his stolen pistol pointed at Toran and the one conscious guard. By the third blow Krast’s face was bloody, his nose broken and he began to struggle against Ranjaz’s assault.
A muted boom caused everyone present to stop in their tracks. Alarms began to sound and Toran swore loudly. He pulled out his communicator, ignoring Thor’s pistol. “What the hell was that!” He held the device close as he listened. “My office?” He patted his pocket. Finding his key in place, he looked to Ranjaz and then Krast. “Seal the casino! And where is my brother?”
Ripley suddenly understood why the Kittran had told her to leave his device on the safe door. After a brief further moment of shock, which she kept from showing on her face, she realized that she had been carrying an explosive without being told. If they survived, Ranjaz was going to need to explain himself. Thoroughly.
Eruwenn, Thor and Ranjaz had backed away to the opposite side of the room, standing by the door. Krast stood alone, holding his profusely bleeding nose. The opposite door soon opened to reveal scrambling casino security, with Toran and his guard standing nearby.
The unconscious guard was carried out without comment, and the Kah’Ree turned to Ripley. “Why are you still here?” She nodded and slipped out of the door, leaving one less concern for the remaining three. “Alright, which one of your skrolg-licking bastards broke into my private safe?”
Krast spat blood onto the floor, pointing at Ranjaz. “He’s the thief. You and I had a deal.”
The Kittran smirked. “I’m a better thief than blowing up a Tulseria-damned safe. If I wanted to steal it, I would have done just that. I would not have announced my arrival and sat down to a game of dalcho.”
Toran looked between the two of them. “He’s got a point.” One of his men handed him a pistol, and he continued to talk a little distractedly into his communicator. “Well, check everywhere!”
Ranjaz stirred the pot. “He’s the bastard who double crossed me, why would he honour your deal?”
Eruwenn nodded. “A government agent can’t be seen working with criminals.”
Krast's face contorted in rage. “Don’t be a damned fool, Toran!” He pointed at Ranjaz. “This is clearly some convoluted distraction.”
Toran shook his head. “They had the upper hand. You were the one getting your face ruined.”
 
 
Cygna watched nervously as Alfor began to stir. Things were taking a lot longer than expected. Finally, her signal came; it was not as subtle as she had been led to believe. As soon as the explosion went off the two bodyguards quickly came into the room, glancing from Alfor’s sleeping body to her. She staggered forward, wine bottle in hand. “We need more drinkshh!”
The guard ignored her as he saw the condition of his boss. “Not again,” he groaned. “Toran will kill us for letting him get like this.”
The second guard stepped out into the corridor. “I’m not dressing him! Last time he tried to kiss me!”
Cygna paused, not having expected it to go this way. The first bodyguard walked out as well. “He pissed on my new shoes the time before that. I’m not moving him.”
Their communicators went off and their faces became more serious. Bodyguard two spoke first. “Damn it. Toran wants him.”
The first turned to look at the increasingly bewildered Cygna. “You!” He smiled. “You got him undressed. You can dress him.”
Cygna spotted Ripley running down the corridor towards them, causing her confusion to grow further. The Awakened shouted one word. “Sentinels!”
The Fae’Dan’s mind raced. The plan was clearly blown, and they had to get out. Fast. As the guards were now facing Ripley, she took the opportunity to kick one in the back of the knee. He fell forward, and as the second turned he was met with the upward swing of a wine bottle. The first guard discovered first-hand the shocking truth of how hard the knee of an Awakened could be, and both were unconscious by the time they hit the ground.
Cygna smiled at Ripley. "Thanks."
The Awakened gave a swift nod of acknowledgement. “A Sentinel turned up, so Ranjaz set off the diversion he promised. The other brother is busy trying to figure out whether it’s us or the Sentinels robbing him.”
Cygna took on board the new information quickly, knowing she needed to help the others. “I have an idea. Lie over there and look dead.” She ran back into the room, where Alfor was groaning and starting to move. She slipped the chain from his neck and dropped it into the ice bucket, where it sank out of sight below the dark Fae’Dan wine. She began to slowly shake him.
“Huh,” he grumbled, and slowly opened his eyes. “Wha.. what happened?”
Cygna clung to him tightly. “Oh thank goodness! I thought they killed you!”
“Killed?” Alfor’s head was pounding, his memory blurry. “Who-” He caught sight of his downed guards in the open doorway. “What the hell happened?” He began pulling at his clothes, and swiftly checked that his trousers were dry.
“While we were.. You know…” He nodded; he was buttoning up his clothes. He didn’t remember, but he knew. “Some scary men burst into the room and shot you! I was so scared.” She hugged him tight, pressing herself against him.
He put his arm around her. “What men? Be brave, and tell me what happened.”
She looked up at him, trying to make her eyes as big as possible, adding a lip tremble to really sell it. “I don’t know! They wore grey suits. And one of them took your necklace!”
“My necklace.” He clutched at his chest where it should have been. “Damn Sentinels! I told Toran we couldn't trust them!”
He stepped into the corridor, where Ripley lay on the ground with a terrible energy weapon burn on the side of her face. He pulled out his communicator. “Toran.” He instantly got hold of his brother. “I didn’t answer because I was knocked out. Damn Sentinels took my key, killed some of our guys.” He looked around. “Nobody important, just some waiter.” He finally pulled the underwear from his head. “I’ll go to the security room and look at the video.”
He ended the call and turned back to Cygna. “You stay here.”
She smiled. “Sorry, we can’t let you check the security footage.”
“Wha-”
Ripley struck him from behind and he crumpled to the ground, her fake burn melting from her face. The Awakened looked around, rechecking that all was clear. “I think that’s all we can do; we should get out of here. Come with me, my shuttle is in the staff bay.”
 
 
Toran closed his communicator and motioned to a guard. “Search him.”
Eruwenn wished she had some way to capture the look on Krast’s face when the remote detonator was pulled from his pocket. She'd have to hug the light-fingered Kittran later.
The Sentinel grit his teeth. “That’s not mine.”
“Sure, sure,” Toran agreed, while simultaneously shaking his head at the Sentinel. “Looks like you really didn’t come alone.”
Krast was furious, yelling, “I’m telling you-” He broke off when Ranjaz shot him in the leg, falling to the floor.
The Kah’Ree pointed his pistol at the Kittran. “Can’t let you kill a Sentinel in my casino, even if they did just rob me.”
Ranjaz was surprised the Kah’Ree had believed them so easily. “What about us?”
Toran sighed, lowering his weapon. “Take your winnings and get out. If you stole the thing once, I’m sure you can steal it again.”
Eruwenn and Thor both made to leave. Ranjaz paused, knowing he might not get another chance. “And him?”
The Kah’Ree looked at the Sentinel holding his wounded leg. “We’ll send him back to his ship. As much as I hate it, the Sentinels are untouchable.”
Ranjaz raised his pistol. “He took my friend.”
“And we’ll get him back,” Eruwenn said softly. “Then we’ll all deal with him, and the rest of the Sentinels.”
Krast sneered and spat blood once more. “Your human is dead.”
Ranjaz fired.
Krast screamed and grabbed his other leg. “You bastard!”
Toran and his men raised their weapons as the Kah’Ree yelled, “Get the hell out of here!”
Ranjaz turned and followed the others out of the door, but just as it was about to close he poked his head back in. “Oh, one last thing.”
Toran could be seen looking up just as the Kittran fired again, but he ducked out of sight before the true outcome of his shot could be seen. The shrieks of agony, however, followed the trio down the corridor as they broke into a run. Eruwenn spared a glance down at Ranjaz during their retreat. “What did you do?”
The full-fanged grin had never been larger. “Made sure we’ll see him again.”
On the floor of the dalcho room Krast was screaming in agony. He turned over to stare at the closed door. “I’ll kill you! I will hunt you down and kill every last one of you!”
Toran spoke into his communicator. “Tell the Sentinel ship to come get their man. And, bring a doctor. A really good doctor.” He nudged one of his guards and finally let out a chuckle. After all, the Sentinels had just robbed him. “You double-crossing scum always get what you deserve.”
The J’Rami guard raised an eyebrow. “Not sure anyone deserves getting shot in the balls.”
 
Next

When my sister Mary moved back into the house, it didn't sit well with my parents. She had moved out on her own for a year, and in that time had managed to blow every single penny at a casino. She claimed she would move out again, "Once she was back on her feet," but after eight months of her living with us, there seemed to be little hope of her leaving any time soon.
My mom and dad were desperate. They set up interviews, they forced her to job shadow, anything to get her a job. She was twenty-seven years old, and my parents were too old to be looking after her all the time. At my young age of thirteen, I wasn't able to move out, but I avoided being a nuisance.
Every day Mary would leave the house, normally very early in the morning. She would be gone all day. The only time I'd see my sister were at dinnertime, and that was it. After that, she would disappear into her room until she left again the next morning. Mary claimed to be spending all this time, "Networking," and "Searching for openings," but we all knew the truth; she was going to her boyfriend, Jeremy's place. None of us had seen Jeremy for a long time, as they never came over, but she would post pictures of them to her social media almost every day. They would be sitting on a bench at the park, or on a chair at the pool, or standing on the beach. In the standing pictures, Mary was always supporting Jeremy. He was leaning on her, arms around her shoulders. I learned to disregard her posts, as most of them were the same. However, I did notice that she had astonishing amounts of likes on her pictures. For some reason, I never seemed to picture my sister as, "popular," but it was a little strange seeing the hundreds of thousands of likes and followers she had.
A few times, I attempted to listen in on what Mary was doing in her room. I never heard anything interesting, just the sounds of her breathing and the trackpad on her laptop being clicked. During the day when she wasn't there, I didn't go into her room, as it was on the opposite side of our house from mine. On the rare occasion that I did happen to glance into her room, I didn't notice anything of interest, just some empty chip wrappers on the floor and several pictures of her and her boyfriend framed on her desk and nightstand.
I suppose I should tell you why I'm I'm explaining this to you. Well, I never thought much of any of her behavior until four o'clock one morning when I was aroused by the sound of the door slamming. It was unusual for me to be awoken by this. For one, I'm a deep sleeper, and on top of that, the door is on the complete opposite side of my house from where I sleep.
I slowly sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. I checked the clock. 4 AM. I groaned. Thinking I could catch a glimpse of my sister, I climbed out of bed and walked down the hallway that snakes through our house. As I neared the front door, I noticed a soft glow emitting from Mary's room. I glanced over at the window next to our door. No sign of Mary.
I didn't intend to snoop. I was just planning on turning off her laptop for her. But as I walked up to her bed, I realized that she had left open her Photoshop Project Page. I thought about her social media pictures, and it made sense that she would touch up her photos before posting them online. The thought came to me that this was what she spent all her time doing, during the day holding a photoshoot with her boyfriend, and editing the pictures at night.
Curiosity overcame me, and I was suddenly tempted to look at some of her files. What harm could it do? They were just a few pictures she had taken of her and Jeremy, and all she was doing were little basic things, like color correcting and touching up little blemishes. Having recently become somewhat interested in photography myself, I figured looking through some of her Photoshop files would be a learning experience for me.
So, I sat down on her bed and placed her computer in my lap. I clicked on the first one, the most recently updated project, titled, "Park 3."
As I waited for the file to load, I took a look around her room. Most of it lay shrouded in darkness. I could see a posters on the wall parallel to myself, and on the floor a pile of trash. On the bed next to me lay a dirty, stained duffel back. It was closed up, but the smell coming from it told me I shouldn't open it. The whole room emitted a foul stench, a combination of rotted food and mildew on the walls. I didn't plan on spending a whole lot of time in her room, just a minute or so, allowing me to take a peek at the image.
Eventually, the file loaded fully. I looked at the picture. It was a shot of Mary and Jeremy in some park, Jeremy's arms wrapped around her as if she were supporting him. At a glance, the picture was rather normal. There didn't appear to be anyone in the background, just a dirt path that trailed into a patch of woods behind them. They both had almost unnaturally wide smiles plastered on to their faces. It seemed like a normal picture.
That was before I started to analyze Jeremy. Actually, half of him looked completely normal. From the waist down, no blemishes could be seen, just a pair of ripped up jeans and a generic pair of tennis shoes. The colors looked good and there didn't look to be any issues. I guessed that Mary was working on editing Jeremy before she was forced to leave, as he was half done.
The disturbing part was his upper half. If I zoomed in very much at all, I began to see it. An unmistakeable blemish. An enormous bloodstain. It soaked his shirt almost entirely. From a distance, you might think it was just the color of his shirt. But once you looked at it, you knew exactly what it was. I didn't know where so much blood could have come from. Was he wounded? Did he hurt someone or something? Was it just my imagination playing tricks on me? After all, it was quite early, and I had just woken up. Perhaps my eyes were messing with me, making me imagine something in the picture that wasn't really there.
That was what I thought, at least, until I examined his face. It too, was splattered in blood. Not as much of it, but still very noticeable. It was also caked in what looked like mud or dirt. His cheeks were sunken in and his hair, which from other pictures seemed to be flowing, full, and blonde was now stringy and tangled, more like the color of soiled milk than anything else. But none of that was as disturbing as the eyes. They were cold, lifeless, as if he were staring off into space. From Mary's finished pictures, Jeremy appeared to have bright blue eyes, cheery and full of life. But here, they were less saturated, more dead than alive. They were a milky white color, glazed over in a way that made him look like a zombie.
Mary herself seemed to be fine. She wasn't perfect in the picture, the colors weren't as good as they normally were and there were a few scuff marks on her jeans. I was certain that she hadn't done any editing to herself yet.
I wanted to believe that this was all fake, just a creepy makeup job. But it wasn't anywhere near Halloween, and it all seemed too strange, too unfinished. She was clearly trying to hide Jeremy's issues with Photoshop.
I only had a few memories of my sister's boyfriend, and most of them were fuzzy at best. It had been years since he'd come to our house. The clearest memory I had of Jeremy was of him showing me a camera drone that he had just bought. I remembered feeling somewhat envious, as I didn't have anything like that. I remember begging him to let me fly it, and I accidentally steered it into a tree. It got a little dent, and Jeremy was furious. After that, I could recall anything else, but I could sill remember his appearance. He truly did have luscious blonde hair. His cheeks were full and rosy, not sunken and decaying. His eyes were crystal blue and not a milky white.
I exited out of Park 3 and opened up one called Beach 5. Again, only partly finished. The bloodstain was less pronounced, but still obvious. His face was cold and lifeless.
Then, another memory came to me, one that I had completely forgotten. I remembered the morning paper. I was reading through the obituaries, wondering if anyone I knew had died. I came across one. At the time, I refused to believe it was true. But now, I know it was. Jeremy West, age 30. Murdered mysteriously. They had found his body in a dumpster somewhere in town and had buried him in the local cemetery after a fairly informal funeral.
The police claimed that he had been beaten to death, but they weren't sure what with. There was also no evidence as to the killer themselves. It was all a mystery. Now, looking around the room, things seemed more menacing. Suddenly, the room smelled like decaying bodies. I could even see small bloodstains on the sheets that could easily be mistaken for ketchup stains.
I slammed the laptop closed and took a few deep breaths. There had to be a rational explanation for all of this. Maybe it was a different Jeremy that I'd seen in the obituaries. Maybe it was my overactive imagination that caused me to see those things. Every possible situation flew through my head at the speed of light, but none of them were right. I knew it. I don't know how I knew, but my mind wasn't playing tricks on me, and that was definitely the same exact Jeremy that was in the obituaries. That was my sister's boyfriend, dead. It made so much sense now; her strange behavior, the way she seemed to be supporting him in all the pictures....he was dead. But that arose a more nightmarish question. Who had killed him? Had my sister dug him up out of his grave, or did she kill him so that she could keep doing those photoshoots?
Then, the silence that penetrated the room was shattered. I heard the sound of the door slowly swinging open, creaking on its hinges. A few soft footsteps followed, along with the sounds of my sister saying, "I can't believe I forgot the laptop!"
In a moment of sheer panic, I dove under the bed. I hoped that Mary would just grab her laptop and leave. Then maybe I could run for help and tell someone about this. As I scooted further under the bed, my leg with something. A shovel. Covered in dirt and blood. I shivered. My sister padded quietly into the room. The only thing I could see of her were her feet. They walked slowly and deliberately to the bed, where she grabbed her laptop. Then, she opened it. Mary typed on a few keys, inputting her password. Then, I watched as she stomped on the ground in a fury.
"I know I didn't open that. Who on earth has been tampering with my files?" her voice was enraged, full of absolute hate. She stomped off out the room, but I wasn't sure exactly which direction she went.
After a few moments, I prepared my escape plan. I would crawl out the room, into the laundry room, and out through the laundry room window. After that I could hide out until daybreak, when I could tell mom and dad. As I readied myself to make my exit, I took another look around the room. Now that I knew about my sister, the whole room seemed more menacing.
Then, I heard them. Footsteps coming back up the hall. I froze. Now what? What if she found me? I stayed where I was, listening to her rapid advance. As she entered the room, I stopped breathing. from the position i was in, I could see that she was holding something. A garbage bag.
I watched in complete terror as she bent down, slowly. Her face soon became parallel with mine as she stared straight in her face. Mary's expression was a look of complete insanity. A mix of joy and anger. My sister was truly mad.
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream.
But then, something strange happened. Something I can only describe as a miracle. Mary's eyes swiveled around slowly, examining the area under her bed. I buried my face in the shag rug, wondering if she had actually seen me.
She reached out. I squeezed my eyes shut. There was no possible way that she hadn't seen me. Her hand continued to extend, past me, and toward the shovel. She grabbed it and pulled it out from under the bed. It brushed against the back of my shirt as it was pulled out.
I carefully turned my head to see my sister stroking the shovel, and saying,"It's time to see Jeremy again!"
With that, she turned and exited the room.

The results are in for Match 6. The winner is…
Player Team, with a score of 83 to Ernie Ford’s 62!

Category	Winner	Point Totals	Comments
Popularity	Players	25-5
Quality	TIE	24-24	Reasoning
JoJolity	Players	24-23	Reasoning
Conduct	TEAM	10-10

...“You know what I'm here for!” Effie’s words rang out as Ernie watched on at the unexpected turn of events.
“The funny thing is I really don’t know.” Ernie stood there and took in the scene. Was this the first time he had seen this type of outburst in the District? Ernie tried to recall, but now wasn’t really the time to reminisce on bad memories.
Something was afoot. Something about Ugo threatening them that was for sure. But if Ugo wanted somebody to fight him this would never be his plan of attack. “Would you care to enlighten me then, I wouldn’t mind this either way!” Ernie shouted back, his tone was neutral, the tension of the situation only increased, but he didn’t see a need to fight back even now.
“They sent us here, because they wanted us to steal your notebook!” Ernie heard the voice of Jenny behind a tree.
Things started to make sense to Ernie, the hiding, why it wasn’t Odin’s people doing this, and that outburst. “And what do you two intend to do?” Ernie moved his backpack from his back to carrying it on one arm.
“Well if you help us, you could send them a fake notebook! It’s not like we like those fuckers anyways!” Jenny replied beyond the trees.
Well that wasn’t so difficult was it, it only took one or maybe both of their ire to get to this arrangement. Ernie weighed this against the prospect that they were lying to him, but if it came down to it it would just be either a fight now or a fight later. “Alright I’ll help you! I’ll be in my cabin manuscripting! You two wait outside, this will take less than an hour!” Ernie shouted back over as he started to walk back to his cabin.
“Your funeral..wait what?!” Effie flipped as Jenny clapped an arm on her, “We did it, we can get out of this shitty situation.”
Effie looked around, The Murder receded back into herself. “Did that really just happen?” She held out the hope that it really would be that easy, she wanted to believe it but she felt a slight pang of confusion, guilt maybe?
Jenny continued on, “We just have to make sure that he does his end of the deal and we’ll be out of here in no time.” Jenny looked at Effie’s face as she noticed the change in expression, “You okay there? You let out a bunch just now and if you wanted to talk about it.”
“No I’m ok, come on we have to still keep an eye on him.” Effie brushed Jenny’s arm off and made her way closer into the clearing with Jenny following.
Well, that was somewhat anticlimactic. If you were hoping for a match with some more carnage in it, how about checking out a race out of a monster-filled urn and voting on it?
Scenario:
Sound’s Garden Eastern Strip - Heartache Casino VIP Room
“So kind of you all to come again,” a man dressed garishly in gold spoke to a roomful of wealthy highrollers, a lounge area with a wall taken up by a screen large enough to make the place double as something of a particularly cozy home theater, a setup which had typically been reserved for two things: watching games organized by Heartache Casino’s owner on the closed-circuits of buildings he owned, and being rented out for private parties and banquets.
“This is pretty unconventional,” a dark-haired sniper remarked between drinks, staring at the screen as it showed, largely, several shots of a building in Downtown Los Fortuna, which seemed to have rapidly grown occupied by a small group of Stand Users, some of whom familiar to the district’s regulars after some close shaves in the subways both occupied, “but it’s brilliant… Just needed to get your tech guy to get cameras in there, now you have a huge show for free.”
“Should you be drinking, Seido?” The gold-clad owner asked, raising an eyebrow, “I mean, if something comes up…”
“If something comes up, I’m off-duty, I’m just a guest right now, and I can shoot well enough sloshed to get myself out of a bind. If you wanted me as security, you should’ve hired me for that… Though really, I’d have rather been down there raising some hell if I was gonna shoot things.”
Tigran sighed, finding that fair enough, he supposed… He wasn’t going to hire this man when he was buzzed, and he wouldn’t do guard detail for free either. Apparently, the man literally came to the city walking out of a bar into the flag unveiling, so he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Still, though, even with moods high here, nobody seeming to mind the way anonymous characters like Oh No and Conqueror Worm mingled among them. Sure, they were kind of a low-priority target right now, with protests in the Business district, the hell-on-earth about to be unleashed Downtown keeping their worst nightmares busy, and the usual BS in places like the Waterfront and Industrial, but the man once noted for his supremely smarmy overconfidence had been feeling more anxious lately, probably because the Entertainment District’s criminal underground had taken some losses recently.
Things were riding high with several successful games, and the arrival of Conqueror Worm, revitalizing everything that they had thought they’d known and opening up whole new possibilities of what games might be possible to organize from a place of safety, all while not asking for a penny of payment. He was a weird guy, but a valuable asset, and all that was understood to be asked in return was that they pretend not to know exactly who it was underneath that big fleshy suit.
And then, the next time they had an in-person event, a bunch of them died in a fire, and on the way to… Well, who knew why he was there, but something happened that got a formerly active manager and ‘game’ organizer murdered blocks away from the site of the flames. Was it a sign, then, that the old ways really were dying, that they needed to change with the times or lose this subculture of theirs entirely?
Maybe, and maybe some would leave it like that, but Tigran “Golden” Sins knew another source of common ground with every one of their games to go wrong, to go awry, to risk the future and safety of all that they were, all that they had. Everything (besides that time he got punched in the face) that had gone wrong, from Thutmose leaving them, to events that were supposed to be disastrous bloodbaths going well for the ‘players’ and ruining bets, could trace back somewhere.
And she was sitting there looking very disinterested, nursing a sparkling juice in a very expensive evening dress and earrings, recently bought by the only man in the world he believed to be above himself.
“Having a good time, Metra?” Fox asked the star known to much of the city as TD/MD, smiling smoothly and paying her more attention than the event itself, where he was significantly more public than before. He’d spent how many thousands on her in a few days?
“Sure, yeah,” she answered, with a clear disinterest and foul mood.
“I understand if you’re not… we’re all sorry to have lost Thutmose. Most likely by where he was, whoever killed him would have done the same to us had he not interfered. So he would want you to have a good time, right?”
“Alright, everyone, last calls!” Conqueror Worm called out, many eyes looking all over. After getting back from camera work, he’d volunteered to handle bets, on account of his utter disinterest in profiting from his work there. Damn shame, honestly; Tigran loved that weird golden Stand-hurting sword he’d always been swinging around, and something belonging to a regional founder would be a hell of a get to wear around. “We know all the key players in that little downtown scuffle, so let’s hear it! Who’s biting it? Who’s comin’ out? Who’s gonna have the highest bodycount? Is anyone even gonna get IN?”
That Oh No guy, from the Institute, spoke up through that voice changer he almost always had on in his coverings. “I think that… Three people will manage to find their way inside. Nobody on this betting board.”
“Ooh, bold words from our boldest regular!” Worm leaned in close, asking, “how much’re you puttin’ on that?”
“Nothing,” No responded, “I just want to see what comes of it… I’m almost disappointed you needed to ask.”
Peas in a pod, those two. Tigran sighed, figuring he might need to drink through these proceedings, only to glance at Metra, suddenly, seeming to smirk, ears twitching as if that special pitch of hers had picked something up. “What? What’s so fun now, that-”
The heavily reinforced, hidden doorway to the VIP room burst open, bisecting the hollow yet burly door guard as sand and rocks spilled out of its hollow crevasse, the only herald within seconds of a quintet of Stand Users barreling in, led by a trio on two motorbikes as two others, curious but energetic, followed.
“All that you’ve done ends here, Fox!”
Around the same time, Heartache Casino Public Floors
“Uh… Glitch? I think… it might be good if we… go?” William Eyelash was not liking it here very much. His hyperactive coworker and teammate had practically dragged him here after what was otherwise a simple delivery performed in place of Zebra, who had been busy enough delivering food to the other side of the city. William was the one supposed to carry it out, but Glitch had practically jumped at the opportunity to do so.
Glitch herself, meanwhile, seemed to be very content eating some fries which she (very regrettably) had to actually buy instead of simply snatching it away from a poor, unaware bystander, and had already ordered another plate because they were just that good. Security was too tight, somewhat on edge - the moment she got close to someone or something, they immediately turned their attention to her. Still, she didn’t want to deprive herself of one of the many pleasures of life like that, so she didn’t mind paying too much. “Mmrgh..? Why sho?”
“W- well… you know… uh...” William wasn’t sure how to say it - he was scared enough of Glitch’s erratic mannerisms most days, and that was while he tried to steer clear of her. Were he to directly oppose her, he’d have no way of knowing what she’d do! On top of that, he couldn’t help but notice that she seemed slightly… on edge. She was usually hyperactive, but she seemed to be even more eager to jump from one thing to another recently, and to ignore anything that even slightly stressed her out. Considering everything that happened to the staff at the Elephant Bones recently, it made sense for her to be stressed, even if she didn’t really show it usually. “... um, you know the rumors about this place… right? ”
Glitch turned to look at William, tilting her head “Hm? What rumors?”. “Uh... well… about the ED… and the fighting rings… I saw an article about it on the Hermod, and… i- it could be dangerous to be here for too long...” hearing William say that, Glitch seemed to recede for a bit, thinking to herself. “Mmm... well, it hasn’t been a problem yet! Right? Besides, the other chips haven’t arrived yet!” Glitch didn’t want to think much about it - so long as these fighting rings were away from her, she could just ignore them and go on with her life, but if it really was here, then maybe it would be good to avoid this place… but the fries were so good... Glitch took another look at the table she was sitting at and at the plate of fries she’d ordered. She grabbed a handful and ate them. “Mmm… after the second order of chips comes! Then we leave! But only after then!”
“Alright...” William didn’t like this very much, and he couldn’t help but shoot nervous glances around as Glitch finished up. Just about every staff member here was on edge and uncomfortable - he knew how to notice these things, and it would make sense if this place really was connected to the underground. Ugh… Why did he come along with Glitch? He’d just have to hope that the second order would come soon, and then they’d be able leave just as quickly as they came in.
Naturally, as if fate itself had conspired to screw him over, he couldn’t help but pick up on ‘something’. Guards around the floor peered nervously into their phones, and most of them began rushing towards the stairwell. Glitch had noticed as well, her ears picking up on the nervous murmurings of the guards and their hasty footsteps.
“Uhh… G- Glitch, something’s happening, we should-” “Pleh! Can’t you wait just a second! The chips aren’t here yet! This isn’t-”
Before Glitch could finish her sentence, something flew into the room - the body of a security officer, clearly tossed away by some stand, flew from the entrance to the second floor, and landed right in the middle of a group of more security officers.
“Oh god oh god it’s happening oh no oh no oh no oh-” William was, as expected, positively freaking out by now. Meanwhile, Glitch was keeping her ears peeled out, having picked up on something… interesting. The voice of two people she vaguely recognized from “Taste of Fortuna” a month or so back.
“Hey! That’s Agnes! And that other chef whose food is good! Even better than the chips!! What are they doing here, fighting?!”
Soon enough, Agnes and Arpeggi really did pop into the room, their stands summoned as they staved off some guards with them. Much to William’s chagrin, Glitch grabbed onto his hand and summoned [Vida Loca], before hopping onto it, the massive feline hoisting him onto it as well, before running right towards the source of the commotion…
And right into the footpath of a terrifying giant who seemed to suddenly fall from the ceiling, several eyes along its body looking to them as its head rotated 180 degrees. “Well, wouldn’t you like to know?”
Several minutes earlier, A Few Stories Lower - Sound’s Garden Abandoned Subway
“Are you sure this is the place? Seems pretty fucking trashy to me, honestly…”
“That’s what makes it a secret passage, Agnes… They’re not exactly rolling out the red carpet to tell you how to get there.”
“Ugh, Astronomia wasn’t built for this shit. You’re paying if something gets stuck somewhere.”
“You’ve crashed it how many times this month alone?”
Arpeggi Osso Buco sat in the sidecar of a motorbike driven by one Ananas “Agnes” Bayley, through the abandoned subways of the Eastern strip. He’d meant to take this trip alone, like he had before, but of course, this fucking guy had to be the first on the team to learn that he was a Stand User, an active vigilante, and not only in part responsible for a certain cult’s influence plummeting to nothing in Los Fortuna, but had dedicated himself to making an enemy of the blight of the Entertainment District.
“Fuck it, I’m down.”
“You’re… What?”
“I’m down. Fuck those guys. I don’t even need to ask any more questions, they’re an absolute disgrace to be shown up by a real villain, and if you’re hunting their boss down, I’m with you.”
“You are the last person I would want watching my back in a-”
“Or I can tell Gabanna what you’re doing so soon after getting SHOT last time you tried your luck with these guys.”
“…bastard. Okay, just don’t get in the way.”
Minus a near-scare with RCR’s nightmarish train nearly running them down without noticing, and Arpeggi having to explain at some point that it was both private information from a set of informants and news now publicly printed in multiple sources about the higher-ups of this organization, it had mostly gone smoothly since then.
As they drove closer to the underside of Heartache, Arpeggi signaled for Agnes to stop, noting a destroyed set of hollowed-out mannequins of sorts, smoking and smelling like gunpowder.
“Hell is that?” Agnes asked, looking down, but Arpeggi, in turn, didn’t quite seem surprised. Before he could explain, however, another, distorted voice cut through.
“You’re late.”
The revving of a second motorcycle, a sport bike, had quietly synced with Astronomia, and the pair looked up to see a figure clad in orange and black, winglike scarf drooping upside-down, its rider atop the ceiling of the tunnel.
“You.” Agnes spoke with contempt, despite having never seen the Black Angel in person before, only for them and their bike to drop down right in front of them, flipping in midair to land gracefully.
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing a friend, let alone… Him.” The Angel sounded dubious about Agnes’ presence, adding, “since you took time picking him up, I’ve had to start picking off these weird… hollow doll-guards myself. They almost noticed me in time to signal the boss. I really don’t have the time for this today.”
“Sorry about that, he insisted,” Arpeggi wrote off, not wanting to explain the somewhat unsurprising (“ran into one another while doing their vigilante rounds, got to talking about the ED mainly”) story how he and the Angel met, “and he’s here right now… Say what you like about him, you saw that Being So Normal, I assume. He’ll be an asset.”
“I’ll kick your ass-et,” Agnes grumbled, “fighting them alone my ass. Ugh, teaming up with masked hero types like this… Pisses me off. We should be kicking each other’s asses, Angel.”
“Deal with it,” the Angel wrote off, before adding, “our contacts in there… They said basically everyone we might have any reason to get is on that floor with them, watching Downtown.”
“Right, some madman is acting out there,” Arpeggi noted, folding his arms and looking Westward, “I take it that’s why you’re in a hurry? You want to deal with them quickly and head out there next?”
“You got it,” they answered, “and admittedly, there’s a reason I had to come here first… Something I’m going to prioritize the highest, and if we take too long, I’ll have to leave having only done that.”
“You’ve got a grudge, is that it?” Agnes asked, “you wanna punt some fucker before moving on?”
“That’s… not why I’m targeting him,” The Angel noted, before adding, “that sword the Conqueror Worm always has on him… The ‘Sword of Sir Aurel…’ The future of the city might depend on me getting that Downtown. The contacts say he still has it with him, just like on that stream.”
“You’re pissing me off, pretending you don’t care about just one-upping that bastard,” Agnes chided, adding, “act like you’re ‘heroes of justice’ all you want… I’m doing this because these guys piss me the hell off, and seeing them fall will make me laugh. Do all of us a favor, cut the bullshit, and admit you’re gonna enjoy this, yeah?”
The others didn’t say too much more of note, then, beyond the Angel briefly examining Astronomia, putting something all over it that they claimed would ‘make it maneuver better,’ which Arpeggi had to calm Agnes into accepting, especially considering it meant they could ride up stairs with relative ease.
“Alright, from this secret passage, it’s a straight shot up a few flights of stairs to the VIP room… We should be able to burst it down without ever disrupting all the public patrons and fortifications up on 1F. Hold on tight, you got that?”
The motorbikes revved, then, and the Angel’s led Agnes in seeming to leap into the air, driving up and along the walls of the stairwell, before a long-haired figure emerged from the Angel, aiming something at a metal reinforced door, firing into it a few times, and it shifted in place as Pork Soda rushed towards it, placing a tab on the material before ripping it away, liquid metal blasting in the opposite direction the door would fly and swing at rapid speed, swinging like a deadly projectile and cutting more powerful puppet guards away as the three burst in.
Arpeggi called out, “All that you’ve done ends here, Fox!”
Not long after Arpeggi called that out, Fox himself, of course, was quick to stand, as were a few bold-looking members of the crowd, hurrying towards the fighters with his own accompanying doll-guard, small enough to hold in two hands and, with his large frame, swing like a hammer-thrower, lobbing up towards them and bursting open into a mess of pointed rocks as he drew closer, repelling Arpeggi’s immediate attempts to approach.
The swinging door, embedded with odd screws and still gushing metal soda, began to fly towards him, only for the sound of a rifle to fill the room, a single warping bullet putting out every one of the odd screws and careening it to strike Arpeggi back, sending him flying down the stairwell before either the Angel or Agnes could react.
Seido, sitting at his edge of the bar, finished downing his drink, holding his weapon in one hand and grinning a bit, slurring slightly, “thas’ goin’ on your tab, boss…”
Fox smirked, then, rocks and sand swirling around him and beating back the remaining attackers’ efforts to burst forward. “Let’s not fight up here, gentlemen… I’ve set this place up nice for a very special guest. Take it downstairs. Seido, consider yourself on the clock now.”
Worm, then, seemed to realize the Angel was staring at his movements, diving down into the floor below to the terror of the 1F patrons, and the rider hurriedly cut away from the clash, leaving Agnes to fend for himself against the rocky onslaught of Fox, all while Oh No watched and Seido, quickly, lined up another shot. Even on this upgraded bike, he knew the only response to make there. “Fffuck this!”
Pork Soda reached for Astronomia, a tab appearing on its wheel which, as the Stand weathered rocky blows, it pulled, blasting Agnes back into the stairwell, where he hit the wall with an, “oof!” before hopping off of his ride, which crashed and plummeted down as he abandoned it to slide down the railing, doing a cool combat roll to cover Arpeggi and the Angel as they rolled into the first floor, clearly concerned about what Conqueror Worm being there would mean for the patrons. Fox and others were shortly behind, with a certain exception.
Though nobody could hear it, by Metra Doria’s choice, as soon as Seido had spoken that aloud, she’d kicked up the chair she’d been sulking in all ‘party’ long, a pair of headphones appearing along her neck as a blast of sonic energy kicked it directly into the head of the hitman. Her heart skipped a beat, then, and she muttered under her breath, “shit, that actually worked… I got lucky, huh?”
“Entirely,” Oh No agreed, stepping forth himself and stretching, producing a very large, intimidating revolver from his cloak and beginning, idly, to load it, “but don’t treat that as a failing, TD/MD… You saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you had the instincts to take it.” No closed the chamber, starting leisurely towards the stairs after the rest. “This is getting tiresome, isn’t it? You see it too, how dull this has gotten… What potential they’re wasting here. What do you say we speed along what’s been a long, long time coming?”
“Well, wouldn’t you like to know?”
A golden, shining sword appeared out of the giant’s gross hand, and his presence alone made Glitch want to wretch, the smell of the Conqueror Worm fell, and vibes even more rancid.
“We got two more troublemakers here, eh?” Worm asked her and William with an amused tone, “Hell just broke loose here, and you’re tryin’ to run headlong into it! I like that! I like that drive! So what do ya say? Attacka them!”
Glitch didn’t know this guy, but something about his gleeful nature, the way that William murmured to himself in alarm when he spoke those distorted words, made her hairs stand on end, made her want to hiss and immediately turn her attention to him, and it seemed, then, that Worm could sense this.
“Another one who ain’t a fan, huh?” He shook his head. “Disappointing, but typical.”
At that, he ducked into the floor, before attempting to burst out from underneath and drive his blade up into Vida Loca, barely being scraped before hopping away from the rising attack and meeting it with a sharp, harsh claw, beating back his raw strength with her Stand’s own.
“I don’t know who you are, but you’re really not the kind of bad news that’s any fun!” Glitch called out from atop her mount, pulling off in time to avoid the ambush of a hollowed-out guard and note two others bothering William.
“That guy looks underage… He ain’t allowed to be on a casino floor without ID!” Worm declared with amusement, fully expecting what came next as several of the doll-guards attempted to strong-arm him.
“G-get away… Get away from me!” William was freaking out, then, and fairly fearing for his life, allowed Ocean Eyes to manifest, swinging and spraying acid all around, which bounced uselessly off of Worm’s hide, didn’t so much as drop near Glitch or Vida Loca, and melted away the threats in an instant.
The casino floor was pandemonium then, several high rollers, some random patrons, and of course, every named member fighting, Stands flying. Arpeggi expertly caught rocks tossed by Fox, only for him to still control them even as they were made to burn by NEXT LEVEL 2, though this eroded away much of the sands of his barrier, backed up by Agnes as he very competently kept a rocky barrier up regardless, Metra standing close by, shifting her eyes. The Black Angel tried to drive headlong into Worm, continuing his mess of a situation, while Glitch, mostly, managed to sneak off on her own, trying to find a way to support William and calm him out of whatever this was.
“Don’t move,” a modulated voice behind her said, and she heard something click behind her.
“Mrr?” She turned, then, facing the barrel of Oh No’s revolver head-on.
“This might be a bit loud… But it’s about time this ended.”
Before Glitch could react, No had pulled the trigger twice. Neither shot so much as grazed her, but seemed to hit tables, cameras, walls, ricocheting about in apparent chaos, before finally…
“I… What did…” Blood ran down the organizational ringleader’s outfit, bleeding both from a massive wound to the back of his knee and opening a massive hole in his shoulder, as the rocks he had been flinging around dropped like… Rocks.
Tigran’s voice was the next thing to ring out through the casino, now mostly abandoned bar the combatants.
“TOBY!!!”
Fox hadn’t even heard the shots fired, thanks to Metra, let alone noticed their angles; after all, the only one he knew of who could make a shot like that was knocked out and drunk upstairs, not to mention loyal to Tigran’s paychecks.
No twirled his gun around, holstering it and patting the bewildered Glitch on the shoulder. “Thanks for holding still… Didn’t want to hit you and ruin it all, after all. Hmmhmmhmahaha!"
“You… You motherfuckers!” Tigran wanted to cry then, especially as the others drew closer, seeing everyone who had fought against an ally of his here as little more than an enemy. Still, though, facing them off, he had to calm himself.
“Stand down,” Arpeggi demanded, “you’re outnumbered, completely.”
Tigran, rather than giving up, began to speak again. “You know, as the owner of this casino, I know the power of ‘games’. You see, if you call it a ‘gamble’, that sounds so… negative, no? So you call it nothing more than a simple ‘game’. That’s what draws people in. Getting people to play ‘roulette’ is harder, but if you call it a ‘roulette game’ and mask it correctly, it’s so, so, easy… However, the moment the ball is launched, it doesn’t matter, does it? No difference between a ‘gamble’ and a ‘game’... the ‘contract’ is the same - you abandon your money for ‘entertainment’ and for a slim ‘hope’ that you’ll succeed this time and make bank… It’s all thanks to these ‘games’... All of you lot, don’t you think so? Aren’t ‘games’ great? Hell, I’ve got an idea for one we can play right now…”
“Wh- what the hell are you talking about!” Arpeggi shouted out in anger. “I’m not putting up with this shit! You want a ‘game’?! Sure, fine! Here, how about this one - I go up to you, and have fun beating the shit out of you!” rushing towards Tigran, Arpeggi readied a punch and swung towards him - only for his fist to stop in midair, hitting against some kind of invisible barrier. He reeled back from the impact, stumbling backwards, feeling… weak. A look behind him revealed that Agnes, Glitch, William, and even Metra, the Angel, and No seemed to be feeling the same, struggling to remain upright.
“Y- you ‘agreed’... heh…” Tigran’s previously panicked expression quickly faded, replaced by a wide grin. “You agreed to it! You agreed to the ‘game’!” By now, Tigran broke out into uproarious laughter. “Always! They always fall for it, tempted by ‘games’! You… you idiot! I put the answer right in front of you, and you still missed it! ‘Games’, by their very nature, are tricks! Illusions! And my [The Grid] has the power to facilitate that! By agreeing to the game, my [The Grid] forces you to participate! There’s no escape now - you’re trapped in this ‘game’ of mine!”
As he realized he had screwed them all right at the last moment, Arpeggi’s vision began fading, and he fell onto the ground with a thud, blacking out.
???, an hour later, Heartache Casino VIP room
“Alright! Seems like our contestants for the first impromptu match of the day are waking up!”
“Plrrr..?” Out of nowhere, Glitch found herself standing straight, awake, somewhere unfamiliar. She tried to listen to see what was going on, only hearing the groans of William, Agnes, and Arpeggi, indicating that they were in a similar position to her. Of course, there was also that voice - she was… a ‘contestant’. It wasn’t hard to roughly figure out what exactly she was a ‘contestant’ of. She, and...
“...William!” Behind her was a whimpering noise, evidently William, and the sound of droplets of some kind of liquid splashing onto the ground, clearly [Ocean Eyes]’s acid. Ahead of her were Agnes and Arpeggi, talking between themselves about what the hell happened. Arpeggi sounded mad. Agnes… she wasn’t sure how he sounded. But she gathered enough from their conversation to understand that somehow, they were currently inside of a roulette wheel. Or rather, she, and everyone else, was shrunk, and placed into a roulette wheel.
“Now, this match is simple - a deathmatch to see who manages to survive! However, since we’re at the heartache casino… there’s an appropriate twist involved! See, our combatants for today are fighting on a roulette table, and meanwhile, our spectators for today are placing ‘bets’ to see which colors win out! Representing ‘red’, we’ve got our very own ‘Fox’! On black, meanwhile, we’ve got ‘Tigran Sins’, who set this match up!”
She summoned [Vida Loca] besides her, taking a look through the stand’s eyes and seeing the environment for herself. She was dwarfed by the room, trapped inside of this small roulette wheel. There was nowhere to run. William’s whimpers had escalated into sobbing, as [Ocean Eyes] hugged him from behind. Arpeggi and Agnes were arguing by now, shouting at each other. She took a deep breath.
“Now… I won’t keep you waiting any longer, since I just know everyone here’s excited to see what happens! So...”
First, Glitch got tossed into Los Fortuna and found a new home there, with the rest of the staff at the Elephant Bones. Then, they started getting into fights with other stand users - Shelldrake, Effie, Byte, William. She hadn’t been in one yet, but she knew very well the effects of them. Her friends had gotten hurt, some such as Father Blue even dying. Then the situation in the slums got worse, her home becoming less and less safe by the minute, her friends getting extorted and forced to work for ODIN, and now she and William were trapped here.
“Three… Two… One...”
She needed to get out. She needed to fight. She needed to win. She could overhear Agnes and Arpeggi bickering on the other side of the wheel, but knew that they were going to try and fight her and William as well. They had to. They’d been trapped by that man’s stand, and none of them knew what could be done against it, if anything.
[Vida Loca] stood behind her, a constant vibration coming out of it and creating a loud hissing noise that was soon mimicked by [Ocean Eyes], drowning out William’s sobs. She knew full well that, even if he was her friend, William was also a dangerous killer, meek though he might have acted. As hard as that whole situation was to grasp, she understood something else - that the more she stayed near [Ocean Eyes], working alongside it, the safer she was. She and William had to get out of this. And if they wanted to get out of this...
They would have to fight for their lives.
OPEN THE GAME!
(credit to magistelles for the image, both the censored and uncensored version!(CW: trypophobia))
Location: A roulette wheel in Heartache Casino, upon which players have been forcibly placed.
The map here is roughly similar to the image of the roulette wheel above. The outer brown layer represents the rim, the yellow layer being the wooden slopes down towards the center, the black layer being the numbers, the red layer being the pockets, the next layer being sloped wood up towards the center, and the center being a metal tower.
The map is 30 by 30 meters relative to the players, with the dotted tile being 5 by 5 meters.
The diamonds are the metal bumpers, about half a meter tall, and the blue circle is a weighted metal roulette ball which is a meter tall, both heights relative to the players.
The metal tower in the center is 8 meters tall relative to the players and the outside walls are 5 meters relative to the players. Players can not go past the rim of the roulette wheel.
Goal: RETIRE your opponents!
Additional Information:
There is an invisible barrier keeping the players and their Stands inside the roulette wheel. Everything else will pass through as normal, but the players and their attacks will be blocked by this barrier. The barrier is cylindrical around the entire roulette wheel.
The roulette system is currently automatic, 5 seconds after the ball falls into a pocket or stops moving entirely, it will start rolling again at top speed clockwise. The max speed of the ball is equivalent to B SPD and the ball is A DUR. You can expect it to make around 8 revolutions around the wheel before losing most of its speed if it is unimpeded by the players.
If the ball is destroyed or unable to roll, a new one will be thrown in from outside.

Team	Combatant	JoJolity
The Graveyard Shift	William Eyelash	“W-Well, I'll be going now...” You’re being forced to fight, and you don’t want anything to do with this! During the match, try to stay on the backlines as much as possible, assisting from there!
The Graveyard Shift	Tiger “Glitch” Ricky	"Nowadays, 30,000 yen is gone after you make one or two trips... So all that's left is to make more money, or go flat broke." You are being forced to fight here, and you hate it, so you might as well do something to cause the casino to lose money! Do whatever you can to constantly rig the roulette in favor of odds!
BADD GUYS	Arpeggi Osso Buco	"Does that alien not know what 'holding back' means?" You were tricked by that asshole, and now you’ve got to fight these two bystanders?! Fuck, this makes you irritated. Destroy as much of the area as possible over the course of your strategy!
BADD GUYS	Ananas “Agnes” Bayley	"I did say this seemed fun, but I wasn't talking about Cee-lo. I meant that it'd be fun taking your 30,000 yen from you." That girl over there is trying to rig the game, so play the agent of chaos and rig it towards the other end! Do whatever you can to constantly rig the roulette in favor of evens!

Link to the Official Player Spreadsheet
Link to Match Schedule
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Since McInerney is back in the news spreading conspiracy theories about our recent Presidential election, making up bullshit stories about US Special Operations raids, many will find this article I wrote six years ago helpful in learning who this guy is and what he is really about.
While many are familiar with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech, fewer have read the original drafts which include dire warnings about the future of America and what Eisenhower termed a “military-industrial complex.”
One of the original drafts, penned by speech writer Malcom Moos, reads:
“We must never let power, implicit in this combination, endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert, knowledgeable, and wise citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that both security and liberty may prosper.
In the councils of government, we must jealously guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We can ignore it only at our peril.”
The tone is softened slightly in the speech that Eisenhower delivered, but his message remained intact. Since the Eisenhower presidency, the military-industrial complex has grown and gone through a metamorphosis, the rhetoric changing to match the current threats, real or perceived, to the United States. The Cold War gave way to the War on Terror.
At the forefront of those who shape the rhetoric are often the same retired generals and admirals who staff the boards of directors of America’s largest and most powerful defense companies.
Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney carries three-star clout following an extremely impressive career. Retiring from the Air Force, McInerney served four tours in Vietnam, including hundreds of sorties as a combat aviator. Afterwards, McInerney served in a succession of important military commands. He is a graduate of West Point and also has a master’s degree from Georgetown. Since his retirement in 1994, General McInerney has also served on the board of directors for perhaps a dozen different defense and defense-related companies.
However, General McInerney says some very odd things. To the uninitiated, like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, he sounds “nuts.” When McInerney makes outlandish claims as a paid Fox News contributor, people sometimes describe him as sounding crazy. Yes, the general’s claims, a few of which we will examine here, are bizarre, but McInerney is not crazy. In fact, he is very intelligent, highly rational, and each of his words are very calculated.
The Pentagon’s Military Analyst Program When the Pentagon established the military analyst program in 2002, they did so largely to help build public support for the invasion of Iraq. Retired generals were recruited into the program by the Pentagon and given exclusive access to classified briefings, as well as tours of Guantanamo and bases in Iraq. While these analysts were presented on network news each night as being objective experts, they were actually being groomed by the Pentagon and fed talking points. Moreover, many of them had ties to major defense contractors with material interests in the war.
Former Green Beret and member of the military analyst program, Robert Bevelacqua, later said of the program that the Pentagon was telling them, “we need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.” When the New York Times sued the DOD to obtain documents about the program, they found that the talking heads we saw on television were referred to as “message force multipliers” and “surrogates.”
When one retired general in the military analyst program received talking points from the Pentagon, he wrote, “good work” and “we will use it.” That general’s name was Thomas McInerney.
Malaysian Flight 370 While McIerney is known for his very hawkish stances on foreign-policy issues, he is perhaps better known for the straight-up outlandish claims he often makes. One of the most curious is the theory he advanced on Fox News multiple times when Malaysian Flight 370 disappeared somewhere over the Pacific.
The theory: Flight 370 was hijacked by terrorists, probably the pilots, who then turned off the aircraft’s transmitters and flew the plane westward. The pilots then shadowed Singaporean Flight 68 in order to hide their aircraft’s radar signature as they flew over Indian airspace. McInerney insists that the Indian radar operators would not necessarily have picked up flight 370’s radar signature as most countries don’t have their “A-team” manning the radar late at night.
If we are to accept this bizarre leap of faith, we then have to invent some way in which Flight 370 then broke away from Flight 68. McInerney insists that the Malaysian passenger plane then landed in Lahore, Pakistan, and the passengers are being held hostage.
Fox News is always quick to point out on air how General McInerney has amazing sources and contacts within the Pentagon and elsewhere—an attempt to backstop his strange claims and theories. In this case, McInerney pointed out that it wasn’t simply his sources that gave him his information, but rather that logic dictated the plane was hijacked and flown to Lahore.
But this isn’t the same type of logic advanced by Plato, Hobbes, or even Machiavelli. McInerney is making inferences based on inferences based on inferences and none of it adds up or can be verified by anyone. Despite McInerney’s incredible sources that Fox News pundits constantly reference, no one that SOFREP has spoken to in the intelligence community lends a bit of credence to this claim.
DEFCON 1 “Something is happening out there and we are asleep at the switch.”
Another interesting statement made on Fox News by McInerney is that the United States should go to DEFCON 1. Defense Condition One is America’s highest level of alert and means that nuclear war is imminent. McInerney reminds us that America has never gone to this level of alert before.
Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the United States was on the brink of nuclear armageddon with the Soviet Union, we only made it to DEFCON 2. Why would America need to raise our alert status to DEFCON 1 in September of 2014? McInerney references a variety of nebulous threats. In various interviews he says that this threat could be nuclear, an EMP weapon, or cyber-warfare attacks against our infrastructure.
Where does this threat emerge from? General McInerney said on Fox that, “unchecked, ISIS is an existential threat to the United States…” However, there is no evidence that ISIS is even remotely an existential threat to America. While ISIS can—and gone unchecked, almost certainly will—become a threat to America, the idea that a ragtag group of jihadists could destroy America has no credibility. Even the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center came nowhere close to actually destroying America.
In the same interview, McInerney then repeats his suggestion that the government raise the alert level to DEFCON 1, and that he believes that multiple American cities are soon going to be attacked because ISIS has slipped through our porous borders and are already staging in American cities to strike. He then pushes for a “massive air campaign in Iraq and Syria.”
Nuclear Iran “Getting the bombs or the components of bombs into the United States would be simple.” (End Game, 27)
At the New Hampshire Institute for Politics, McInerney commented on one of his favorite topics: nuclear Iran. In this speech, he warns America that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon, possibly hand it off to a third party, and then it could be smuggled into the United States to be detonated in a city. McInerney would have us believe that while intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying a nuclear payload can be traced back to the country that launched them, a nuclear weapon smuggled into America would leave no fingerprints as to who the culprits are.
Of course, this claim is patently false. The science of nuclear forensics would allow us to quickly identify who built a nuclear weapon set off on American soil. Iran knows this. So does General McInerney. Contrary to many alarmists, Iran is a rational state and the Iranian government does realize that, should they launch such an attack against America, the nation of Iran would cease to exist in short order.
To effect a regime change in Iran, and according to McInerney, to prevent this nuclear nightmare, he advocates a 48-hour air campaign over Iran. The goal would be to set the Iranian nuclear program back at least 5 years. This would include the use of bunker busters, 70 stealth aircraft, and 400 non-stealth aircraft to bomb 2,500 targets inside Iran.
America’s Nuclear Deterrent “It is very safe and it is very secure.”
Considering the dire threats that McInerney insists America is facing on an almost daily basis, he made one curious appearance on television to assure the public that America’s nuclear stockpile is safe and secure. On January 14th, 2014, McInerney appeared on Fox to address reports of missile launch officers being caught up in a drug investigation and cheating on their certification exams.
General McInerney responded to the question of the disposition of our nuclear stockpile by assuring us that it is, “very safe and it is very secure.” He goes on to point out that there have been some human failings in our nuclear command, but that our “nuclear-deterrent force is in very good shape.” The general pushed for modernizing our nuclear forces and said that these weapons needed to be maintained, but when it came to the personnel and overall capabilities of our nuclear deterrent, he was very positive.
For someone who often warns Americans about dire threats against our nation and even insidious conspiracies from within (in a TruNews interview, he warned that Obama is carrying out a well-orchestrated conspiracy to transform America into a communist/socialist state), it is curious how he assures us that everything is fine with our nuclear forces. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The problems plaguing our nuclear command are not just limited to our aging stockpile, a few drug users in the ranks, or cheating on exams. Major General Michael Casey, who was in command of three nuclear wings, was relieved of command in 2013. The reason? Casey was boozing it up in Moscow and hooked up with two local women at a hotel. He was drunk, incoherent, and belligerent during his trip, and went missing for hours at a time. This sounds very much like a “honey trap” engineered by Russian intelligence services.
Vice Admiral Tim Giardina was also relieved from his position as deputy chief of U.S. Strategic Command, ostensibly because he used fake gambling chips at a casino in Iowa. With Giardina and Casey relieved within days of each other there may be a real conspiracy at play here. It seems likely that beyond a few human failings, America’s nuclear forces are heavily targeted, if not penetrated, by foreign intelligence agents. This raises the possibility that U.S. military counter-intelligence decided to clean house in October of 2013.
Again, the implications of these scandals within our nuclear command would not go unnoticed by someone with the depth of experience and knowledge that McInerney has. All of this begs the question as to why he goes on television to tell us everything is fine with our nuclear forces when he is also constantly warning us about foreign threats and the destruction of American cities.
END GAME “Syria is a domino waiting to fall.” (End Game, 54)
In 2004, McInerney co-authored a book called End Game with Major General (ret.) Paul Vallely. The two graduated from the same West Point class and became reacquainted when they were both brought into the Pentagon’s Military Analyst Program.
Their book opens with, “Today, America is at war with an enemy every bit as dangerous as Nazi 51D6TASMSFL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Germany or the Soviet Union: We know it as radical Islam” (End Game, 9). In order to counter terrorism, they advocate regime change (“major policy shifts”) using military action in six countries. Afghanistan and Iraq were two that had already been toppled when the book was published. They suggested further military action in Iran, Syria, Libya, and North Korea.
Since 2004, Libya has experienced a regime change while Syria and Iran have both been under serious duress. Interestingly, two other countries were identified for reform rather than military action: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But, according to the book, if Saudi Arabia can’t shape up, we may have to bomb them, too. End Game tells us that we don’t have time to take these countries out in sequence, but rather we have to attack all of them at the same time (End Game, 38). To what extent McInerney and Vallely have actually influenced the policy decisions to target these countries is unknown, but it is a safe bet that they have been hard at work behind the scenes.
End Game is also filled with predictions that never came to pass. For instance, they said that, if North Korea detonates a nuclear bomb, that Japan, and maybe even South Korea, would develop their own nuclear weapons (End Game, 25). They again assert that if a nuclear bomb was detonated in America that “evidence would vaporize,” making the weapon untraceable (End Game, 29).
Regarding Afghanistan, they write that, “The force level that NATO needs to maintain in Afghanistan is relatively small, the duties in the long term, relatively easy.” (End Game, 40). When it comes to Iraq, they write, “We are confident that the Iraqi people are up to the task, based on how enthusiastically they have embraced the opportunities to vote in meaningful elections.” (End Game, 44)
Considering the author’s failed predictions for post-war Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps we should scale back from attacking the rest of these “rogue” nations all at once with massive American air power as they suggest.
Maddow Gets it Wrong “We report, you freak out.” -Rachel Maddow
Interestingly, journalists and media commentators have never really put McInerney in the spotlight for his many irregularities. On the rare exception in which a critique is offered, it always portrays McInerney as a far-out-there right-winger. Four years ago, Rachel Maddow did a story on McInerney for her show on MSNBC.
The reason for her coverage was because McInerney was supporting an Army doctor who refused to deploy on the grounds that he suspected President Obama was not born in the United States, and therefore was not a valid President. In an affidavit written by McInerney, he praises the doctor’s courage and bravery for standing by his beliefs. Yes, apparently McInerney is a birther as well.
Rachel goes on to say, “what is news is that someone with General McInerney’s qualifications is saying that maybe the President is secretly foreign.” While Rachel is correct in pointing out how preposterous it is that a three-star general would endorse such a zanny conspiracy theory, she is ignorant of the calculated intent behind his carefully worded and pre-rehearsed statements.
She then wraps up the segment with, “the real story, it seems to me, is that a guy this nuts gets paid to comment on foreign policy and wars. The birther general is on Fox New’s payroll…” Rachel is directionally correct in pointing out the strange disconnect between the fact that McInerney is a retired three-star general and that his statements don’t make any sense. However, she misses the fact that, while his statements are off-the-wall, they are never off-the-cuff.
In short, McInerney does not actually believe the bizarre things that he says on air, but rather, these are carefully worded statements fed to the public for political purposes.
The Military-Industrial Complex Thomas McIerney is constantly on television beating his war drums and warning Americans about amorphous threats to our nation. According to him, we are just days away from a horrendous terrorist attack. But McInerney is not simply a television military analyst, rather, he is an active participant in the military-industrial complex via the various boards of directors upon which he sits. What he does is not analysis, but advocacy. He is an advocate for nuclear weapons, long-range bombers, UAVs (specifically Global Hawk), and he is an advocate of going to war with a half dozen countries simultaneously.
This is not conjecture or secret information from anonymous sources, but rather McInerney’s own words. In his book End Game, he claims to have plotted the liberation of Iraq in 2002 on a cocktail napkin with Paul Vallely. They then pitched this plan to Bill O’Reilly at a party hosted by the Fox News network, who agreed to have them on his show to talk about it. In End Game, the generals write, “We knew appearing on The O’Reilly Factor to discuss the plan was something of a risk. In the past, we had acted solely as military analysts. Presenting our plan came close to advocacy.” (End Game, 85)
General McIerney chose not to simply be a passive analyst, but to instead become an active participant in shaping history. He believed we could take down Iraq in 30 days, and that the rest would basically be a cake walk. The U.S. military invaded in 2003 and our soldiers fought, bled, and died in the streets fighting terrorists, Baath-party loyalists, foreign fighters, and run-of-the-mill gangsters in places like Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra for an additional nine years.
Mcinerney is not to blame for the failures of the war in Iraq, but his rhetoric is suspect when the companies he works with have a material interest in the United States going to war—wars in which the products endorsed by McInerney, such as air power and UAVs, would be employed. In order for those products to be used, the American public has to be kept in a constant state of fear. That fear can then be channeled and used as a vehicle to support war. The vehicle of choice for McInerney is radical Islam.
He isn’t a right-wing nut as people like Rachel Maddow would have you believe. If we were to take McInerney’s word’s at face value, the politics he endorses are actually divorced from any ideology in contemporary mainstream politics. Like Lyndon LaRouche, Thomas McInerney’s politics are so far out there that it is disingenuous to describe them as right-wing, Republican, or conservative. But it is highly unlikely that McInerney actually believes silly stories about Flight 370, Iranian nuclear weapons, and birther conspiracies.
Far more likely, he says these things cynically for purely political purposes.
McInerney honorably served his country for many years, but contrary to the lapel pin on his collar, what he does today is far from patriotic. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Misleading Americans with alarmism and hyperbolic statements is deconstructing our political process. An informed public is an absolute necessity for a democracy to function. When retired generals leverage their credibility to mislead the public like a pied piper for political purposes, we are in serious trouble.
When they lend their name to conspiracy theories, it only contributes to polarizing American politics and driving wedges between the American people. When politicians see that the talking heads on television are saying something that does not match up with what our intelligence professionals are telling them, it is then seen as an intelligence failure.
Thomas McInerney is not alone. He is one member of a clique of retired generals, admirals, and CIA officers who have created an echo chamber in which they cite each other as sources and stir up the political fringe of America. They do this intentionally, knowing that their alarmist messages will be diluted by the time they make their way down to more reasonable people. But in the meantime, the damage done to American politics is impossible to calculate.
This is one facet of the modern military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned us of.

This post started out as a comment for this thread, but then it got long and I decided it warranted its own post. It's about what to do when people stare you down and say things like "I think you have AK."
I love when people do this. The person is rarely if ever being honest, and most often looking for a reaction. Similar statements include "I'm thinking of calling," "I don't feel like you have anything here," or the classic "I don't know if I can fold this."
There are basically three levels of livetell training one can have. Either untrained, classically trained, or scientifically trained.
Untrained ranges from your online player who's mixing in live games to your rank novices and even includes some livegame veterans who actually ignore their opponents for some reason. These players will often have heard generalized advice about what to look for, but you can generally assume these players don't have any kind of system in place. If you don't have a system in place, then all you have is what's called a "calling reflex." Players want to call, because they want to win. They will look for something to convince them to call. Doing anything -- smiling, laughing, looking angry, fidgeting, receiving a phone call from your mother, they'll be looking for a way to interpret it as "that means he's weak."
What to do if an untrained player says this: If an untrained player says "I'm thinking of calling" or something similar (it's usually more aggressive like "I think you just have ace high" or "I feel like you're bluffing here"), they're looking for a reaction. If you want a call, do something. Anything. Touch your face (except not now, because COVID). Shrug. Smile awkwardly. Check your cards again. Shift your weight in your seat. Make a jerk-off motion with your hand. Scream out loud and then try to hide under the table. Doesn't matter if it's weak or strong, but things actually work best if they look less deliberate. Any of these things, though, can trigger a calling reflex. If you want them to fold, don't change anything. Pretend you didn't hear them. Wait for the dealer to tell you that you've won.
Classically trained means anyone who's read one of many hundreds of books on poker tells and/or has played a fair amount of live poker. You'll recognize experience and attention to poker tells by someone who's "standardized" their poker behavior. They often try to look at their cards the same way every time. They often try to use the same hand to act. If they use a card protector or a chip on their cards, they try to do so every single hand. Most poker pros have the same advice for how to avoid giving off tells, and players that follow this advice have usually heard advice on how to find tells, as well. The advice they've heard is almost always the same -- "Strong means weak. Weak means strong."
Players like these are more likely to call you when you announce your bets and raises loudly, or throw your chips in. They're less likely to call a carefully-placed bet done silently. They think you'll stare at them when you're weak and look away when you're strong. They're looking for all these behaviors. However, when they say something to you in a big spot, they're usually not looking for any of these things. You have to know what they're looking for and what they're thinking before you can really know how to respond.
Most modern tell books and even some old ones (like Mike Caro's book) recognize the difference between what's now called controlled and uncontrolled behavior. Controlled behavior is what you choose to do -- you choose to throw your chips in aggressively, to puff your chest out, etc. These are the behaviors that follow the "weak means strong and strong means weak" rule, and because they're controlled, they're the ones that classically trained players are least trusting of. They're the most common "tells", but also the least-reliable. Someone who's read the same book could easily be doing the opposite. So they look for the uncontrolled tells. The quick, automatic glance at your chips when you have a big hand. The way your hands shake a little when you hit a monster. The partially-concealed smile when they sound like they're going to fold. They've also read, or heard, that if they stare you down longer, they often will get a reaction after 20-30 seconds that they wouldn't if they acted faster. One of the most common questions they ask is "If I fold, will you show?" This has two objectives -- first, to see if you react positively to the concept of folding or are willing to offer something to get them to fold. Players with strong hands often immediately say "no." Second, because they want to see as many hands as possible to see if they're right. These players have a system and they'll follow it until you prove them wrong, so obviously never ever show them your hand unless you've reached showdown and have to.
What to do if a classically trained player says this: If they say something implying you're weak? They're probably thinking of folding. They're looking for a positive knee-jerk reaction. They're ready to fold if you smile (especially if you try to stop or cover it), if you look at your chips, or if you somehow look more comfortable. Speaking back is a mixed bag. Saying anything makes you seem comfortable -- one of the most commonly-quoted rules is "speech means the nuts." Of course, because they said they're thinking of calling you, a lot of players will speak deliberately to change their mind, saying something like "Well if you think I'm weak, you should call," which some books will advise as weak. This is why controlled behavior is less-trustworthy, both for them to read and for you to use to get them to do what you want. You don't know what books they read or what they believe, so it's best to rely on convincingly dropping some "uncontrolled" behavior. (This is also why they're more likely to say something that sounds weak, like "If I fold, will you show?" Some books advise this to make players who speak in response more reliably strong, although almost all consider the offer to show cards to be weak.)
So if a classically trained player says they think you're weak, they're looking for comfort. If you want them to call or raise, the best thing to do is to look like you're trying to seem comfortable, but aren't. If you catch yourself smiling reflexively, don't hide it -- force it bigger. Make it seem more fake. But generally, the best thing to do is to be as still as possible, hold your breath for a bit, then "break." Start breathing again, shift in your chair, make eye contact with them, force a smile... the big gun is to touch your cards. NOT to look at them, like there's anything worth looking at there. To simply touch them. When players are considering whether to call or fold a big bet, one of the things they often do before they fold is to touch their cards, and classically trained players know this. They'll often raise you with nothing if you do this.
If you want them to fold, just be comfortable. If it helps, know that they're usually saying something to you -- anything, really -- because they're thinking of folding. You've already won, so relax. Don't hold your breath or try to hold still. Don't even worry too much about seeming nervous. The more you're willing to engage, the more afraid to call you your opponent will be. One thing that has literally never failed for me when getting one of these players to fold is to stare at them for a second and then say, in mock seriousness: "Now, I don't know everything, sure, but correct me if I'm wrong here, because I've heard it both ways... I believe that putting nipples on a butt does not make it boobs. What are your thoughts?" That won't work for everyone, but basically, classically-trained players are warned that such behavior doesn't come from players who are afraid of being called.
Scientifically-trained players are few and far between. It's expensive and rarely cost-effective to learn how to actually find tells. The reality is, classical poker tells training is easier to learn, easier to implement (requires less concentration) and is usually effective enough to get by when combined with sound poker strategy. Actual scientific training can cost thousands, requires serious dedication and takes a lot longer. Rather than looking for general rules of thumb and common tells, scientific training involves watching an individual player, cataloging his behavior over time and in various situations, and then trying to come up with a strategy and implement it. A scientifically-trained player will say, "This player looks like he's got a fair amount of table experience and has somewhat standardized all his actions. He waits till his turn to act before checking his cards every time. He'll check his cards, usually looking at them for about 1 second, then plays with his chips with his right hand before placing a chip on his cards and finally calling or raising. Three times, he called or raised before putting a chip on his cards, then remembered to put one on after. All three times, he showed a premium hand of AK or better."
These kinds of live tells can be incredibly powerful if properly exploited, but obviously, collecting that kind of information is time-consuming and requires a lot of focus. Generally, the advice for playing against these players is not to worry about them. First, you're so rarely going to encounter one, and they're not unlike card-counters in blackjack -- they may very well have a system in place, but that doesn't mean they know how to execute it. For every successful card-counting blackjack player, there are three or four who learned a little about it but aren't good enough to actually make money. If anyone's interested in how to get such training, they can PM me and I can give them some information, but keep in mind that it takes long hours of study AND a significant course fee, and for most people, I wouldn't recommend it.
If you actually WERE sitting at a table with a strong player with good scientific training on how to spot tells, you still wouldn't have to worry too much. That kind of training means you can only really watch three or four players, so selecting profitable targets is the first step. When I sit down, I'm looking for someone who 1) gets into a lot of pots, so knowing whether they're strong is more worthwhile, 2) has somewhat standardized behavior and generally stays still, so things like breath rate and blink rate are easier to watch for, 3) always checks their cards at the same time -- preferably when its their first turn to act 4) looks like they have a reasonable understanding of poker (often, I'll reference a name like Phil Galfond or Fedor Holz and see if they recognize the name, as this is a good indicator of how intently they study the game). So for a lot of players, you won't be playing the playstyle that I'm looking for anyway. If you are, you can turn me off by checking your cards at a different time in the hand -- not as soon as you get the cards, but while it's someone else's turn to act, and my attention might be elsewhere. Also, the more mercurial you are in your actions, the more differences in behaviors I observe, the harder it is to watch you. Some behaviors mean something, and some mean nothing, so the more "noise" there is, the longer it'll take me to observe you. I prefer to play against casino regulars whom I can observe over long sessions (or, most ideally, several long sessions) and so can exploit productively long-term.
If a scientifically-trained player says he thinks you just have ace-high, he's definitely fishing for a response, but most of the time, he's already made a decision. Usually in this spot you want to treat him like a classically-trained player, because he's either got you figured out or he doesn't. If he does, just don't try to bluff him so often. Introducing more noise once he knows what to look for is rarely effective. The main benefit behind scientific training is that it's pretty reliable once you know what you're looking for on a specific player, so if someone's genuinely got you figured out, it's probably not profitable to play against him. You can try to figure out what you're doing wrong and do it differently, but you'll usually just be guessing, and that's hit-or-miss. Mostly miss.
But yeah, for every player who's actually able to find individual tells on you, there are literal thousands who can't and won't, so most of the time, when you hear probing speech play, it's an opportunity. The player's looking for something to influence his decision, and figuring out what he's looking for is key in getting him to do what you want.