Just kidding. Hershey wasn't ready to die yet. Dying here was like buying this lavish piece of chocolate cake and then tossing it in the bin before taking a single bite, and he looked forward to eating his cake very much.
The ground was coming up fast, so he rotated his body so that the first part of him that came into contact were the soles of his shoes. He skidded down the street, the crowd diving out of his way as he came to a halt two blocks after touchdown.
He left an impressive trail of dust billowing up down his landing strip, but he didn't pay that no mind as he turned his attention to the sky for a second flying man to descend. Flying humans beings, in case you aren't aware, reader, aren't hard to discern from the non-flying variety, but at nighttime, they aren't as easy to spot, which was why Hershey didn't spot the plummeting one until it was right on top of him.
Wes exploded against the street so hard that he created a tsunami of jagged rocks heading Hershey's way. He avoided the man-made disaster, save for one particularly sharp tip of the spear-like spray slicing his cheek as he leaped for safety.
Where he landed wasn't good enough, so he kept hopping backwards as though the wave would keep chasing him, but it froze when it was almost as tall as the brothels on either side of the street. Quite the imposing appearance it had, like the rear of a porcupine, but at least porcupines didn't go around shooting their quills like this formation did. It almost—key word: almost—caught him off guard.
Hershey spun Dohsoon like a giant fan before him, but better. While giant fans could move a boat around a swamp, Dohsoon was able to generate wind speeds so powerful they captured the earthen projectiles in midair and returned them to their source, i.e., a Wes exposed now that he had deconstructed the tsunami into the pointy boulders returning his way.
Uh-oh. Not good. Once a piece of earth left his reach, it was fair game. He stomped his foot, and he set the global record for world's fastest manufactured wall at 0.93 seconds. It might even snag the award for world's sturdiest wall, because it took those boulders like a champ. They smashed, and they crashed, and they tried to tear that wall down, but it held firm, and the most it did was shake a little, the shattered pieces scattering all over the place. It would seem that there was nothing, and we mean nothing—not a single thing, magic or otherwise—that could destroy this wall and leave him feeling—
Oh, you know this is a setup to subvert Wes's expectations.
Wes, still behind sanctuary, discovered there to be this aperture all of a sudden cut into his partition, with this real strong draft threading itself through. He stood there for a moment, pretty sure that he had gotten some dust in his eyes and needed to clear them out.
After rubbing them, however, the aperture was still there, as though Hershey had somehow managed to break through the unbreakable, which would mean that the unbreakable was quite breakable. And that wall was a good meter thick, too. Ain't no breaking that without a little muscle.
Wes, though it wasn't the brightest idea in the world, poked his head through the hole, on the other side of which was Hershey with his demolition device. Standing there. Looking all smug. Bet he thought he was hot stuff.
“The hell is wrong with you?!” Wes yelled. “Are you trying to kill someone?!” said the man who turned another into a celestial spectacle a minute ago.
Hershey didn't respond. He just kept standing there, smirking. Look at that, he could twirl his hammer around and bang its heel on the ground.
“Ooooo, impressive. Aren't you cool as the rain, Mr. Hammer-Using-Guy—Hold on, why am I floating in the air?”
Side note: floating in the air was fourth on Wes's list of least favorite places to be. Floating as high as Hershey was taking him made it third on his list.
Now both men were hovering a good hundred meters above the city, give or take fifty meters, Wes at the mercy of Hershey, who had made a platform for himself out of one of the fragmented boulders.
“Hey there, buddy, you don't wanna do this,” Wes said from his windy cage. “We can talk this over and—”
The only language Hershey spoke was the one that went Smash! and Bash! and Pow! which were all sound effects his hammer made. And his method of negotiating went something like making his weapon go Crack! against Wes's body.
That tossed traditional negotiations out the window, which worked for Wes, who wasn't that great with words, anywho.
He caught the weapon and then showed Hershey the language he spoke when it came to negotiating. To sum it up, it involved Wes twisting himself around, pulling a switcheroo with his opponent, and then claiming their floating platform as his own turf. And to mark the end of their talk, he gave his foe a little sendoff wave. Hey, he could see his house from here.
Feeling that he drew the short end of the stick, Hershey rebelled, waving his hammer back and forth and unleashing several gusts of wind. More like blades of air, really. They sliced through the platform, clipping off the edges, and had Wes not winced, they might've clipped his eyebrows, too. Unrelated to the hair follicles Wes nearly lost, the platform started falling.
Now, dropping out of the sky from a hundred meters above the ground (give or take fifty meters) was worrisome. More worrisome was when you were dropping out of the sky and some chap decided he wanted to beat you up on the way down. Not the worst predicament Wes has found himself in, but it was moments like these he heard a little voice on his shoulder nagging him that he should've kept that office job. If he survived this encounter, he just might go crawling back begging for it.
Hershey was swinging wild, and Wes was jabbing mad, but with the limited space of their ground-bound hunk of street, neither was moving their feet around too much. Even so, there was some flow to their footwork. If moving your body rhythmically to music on solid land that was trying to kill you was extreme! dancing, then doing the same on a plummeting rock must be EXTREME!!! dancing. There was only one rule, and that was if you went over the edge, it was game over. gg no re.
Now that that rule had been established, Wes went ahead and did a backflip over the edge. It was an action so unexpected, Hershey spent a second trying to process what had happened.
Lessee here...
The guy he had been fighting...
...and who had been matching his pace fist-for-fist...
...pulled a rookie mistake...
...and jumped to his death.
It was such a baffling turn of events that the world started spinning. The sky was down, and the ground was up. It was crazy. Totally nuts.
Oh, wait, scratch that. The world hadn't inverted, Hershey was just upside down thanks to a dirty little miscreant clinging to the underside. The filthy little hoodlum, with the full strength of both his legs, gave the platform a sendoff for the world below, and for the second time tonight, Hershey found himself about to be pancaked on the city streets. No time to think, pal, just jump.
The boulder erupted into the street, and Hershey escaped being part of that artillery round much, much too close for comfort. No comfort time for him, however. His feet had barely returned to solid ground when a second mortar shell dropped from above, this one knocking up the earth in such a way that he found himself snared in what seemed to be an iron maiden made of stone.
It had a porthole so that he could see his jailer, who was patting the dust off himself as he stepped out of the smoke. “All right, guy. Now that I've got you in timeout, mind explaining why you think it's a good idea to go attacking people in a public place where there are innocent bystanders at risk of getting hurt? See where I'm going with this?”
“Don't act like you're so innocent! You're the one who kicked me into a public street where there was a crowd. Twice!” Hershey could hardly move a pinky, but he could run his mouth just fine.
Wes considered this perspective. “Hmm...When you put it like that, you make it sound like I'm a bad guy in all this, too...” He checked around to see if he had made roadkill out of a prostitute, but everyone seemed to be okay. Well, okay for suddenly being in the vicinity of a magus battle. Plus, there was also all that damage they had caused. Most of it was probably emotional, but the physical damage wasn't something Wes could pay for by saving up for a few months. Hopefully, Deirdre would patch all this up, but still. Being so reckless was unbecoming and inexcusable of a Hand—especially one ranked so high—and the gravity of the situation weighed down on him so hard that he found himself on his hands and knees. He was only just able to look Hershey in the eye as he sneered and said, “Aren't you a willy one?” Able to increase the air pressure when the most he could do was jostle his jumbo mallet around. Wes had to hand to the guy: he may have been rash, but he could give any ordinary magus a run for their money.
Speaking of running, Wes did some running himself, running here being a synonym for overturning a section of the street so that he was underground. He wanted to take the moment he had given himself to stretch his aching bones, but it was dark and cramped under here, and he heard a considerable kaboom he'd bet good money was Hershey busting out of his prison. He tunneled a ways to about where his captive had been before reemerging, not bothering with a fancy ambush, because, as expected, Hershey had fled from that spot and perched himself on the rooftop of a nearby tavern.
“Hey. Why are you holding back?” Hershey shouted, pointing his giant plaything in an accusing manner at Wes.
“Huh?”
“Don't Huh? me! There's no way I should be able to keep up with you. You're the Third Hand. The Third Hand! You're a living legend! All of the Score's Half are! So if I'm able to keep up with you, either that means I'm stronger than I thought or you're holding back.”
Wes sighed and shrugged. “All right. You caught me red-handed. I was holding back.”
“Why? If you wanted, you could've dropped a mountain on me.”
“And it's for that exact reason I held back,” he said. “This is, uh, this is a little embarrassing, but my boss, he, um, he told me he didn't want another Zorbrist on his hands, so if it ever happens, he'll dock my pay. Again...”
“What're you talking about?”
“You know the Zorbrist Mountains?”
“Yeah.”
“How do I put this without sounding crazy...? I created them.”
“You WHAT?!?!”
“I created them.”
“How?! Why?! What? I don't—” Sounded like Hershey's brain was on the fritz. “How in the world do you create a mountain range of all things?!”
“I was facing some dude, and he was really tough, so I got a bit carried away.”
“'A bit'? 'A bit'?!” He fell onto his rear, his face that of a man whose mind could not compute. “You—You—You call creating a mountain range getting 'a bit' carried away?”
“Leave me alone! I got yelled at about it enough, thanks.” Wes crossed his arms and mumbled to himself. “Stupid manager, telling me to hold back. I hold back, and look what it gets me...”
Hershey stood up, twirling Dohsoon around his fingers. “Well, we've come this far already. How about we finish this off? Without you holding back.”
“Rejected.” He dismissed his suggestion with a hand wave.
“Come on! Be a man about it!”
“What does 'being a man' have to do with anything? If I go all out, there's going to be a mountain range where this city used to be, and I'm going to jail, because let me tell you, there's no outrunning or outgunning Nos. 1 or 2, especially No. 2. You'd be amazed at how speedy that girly is.”
Hershey ground his teeth. “So what you're telling me is that I don't stand a chance against any of the Hands?”
Wes rubbed his chin. “Mmm...You might stand a chance against No. 10. No. 9, maybe...but that one's pushing it.”
He gripped his weapon's handle, wondering and considering what he had been working for all this time. All of that practice and all of that training and he was still light years away from his goal. “Wes.”
“?” Wes pointed to himself. “You talking to me?” He wasn't used to opponents referring to him by his name. Usually, it was something like you bastard or I'll kill you! Wait, that second one wasn't a name...
“What do I have to do to become the First Hand?”
“Be a god.”
“I'm serious.”
If he wanted a serious answer, Wes had to do some heavy thinking. “Eat your veggies, get plenty of sleep, and train and practice nonstop to become a force of nature. Or a one-many army. Whichever you prefer. Or better yet, get yourself an army. You're gonna need one to take on the First Hand's.”
“The...First Hand...has an army...?”
“Yeah, though she doesn't go around telling people that.” Wes threw his hand over his mouth. “Do you mind forgetting that part? I'm not supposed to go around telling people that.”
Hershey gaped for a moment before smirking. “All right.” He spun his hammer into a battle-ready position. “How about we make a bet, Wes?”
“No thanks. I tried gambling once, and it didn't end too good.”
“Listen to me,” he said. “I have no chance of beating you, so that's a condition I can't meant. But on the other hand, I haven't landed a real good hit on you. Nothing like that kick that sent me flying. So, how's this: If I get one good solid hit on you, you have to train me; and if you get a good hit on me first, you get whatever you want. Sound good?”
“Eh, there's nothing I want,” Wes said. “Besides, if you wanna become the First Hand, wouldn't you want, oh, I don't know, the First Hand training you? Not that she'd take you on, mind you, but you see what I'm getting at, right?”
“And that's why it has to be you who trains me,” he said. “I don't know any of the other Hands, so I'm stuck with you by default.”
“Gee, way to make a fellow feel special...”
“Well? Are you ready to train me, master?”
A chill ran up Wes's spine. That was almost as disturbing as a woman calling him daddy. “Could you do a brother a favor and not go around calling people that? It'll give them the wrong idea. And like I said, I'd rather not gamble if I don't have to, so—”
Too bad for him, Hershey was making it so he had to. The air surrounding the wannabe Hand kicked up, and this EF1 tornado encased him, ripping up shingles, smashing in windows, and knocking citizens off their feet.
Wes looked on at him, hair flapping and his face asking, Why me? and though nobody could hear it, he sighed. Very dramatically. No way he could oblige Hershey and go all out on him, but he couldn't screw around like he had been. Not with this twister and its conjurer coming down on him.
He slid his foot back and balanced his toes on a cobblestone for a second as he waited to see if Hershey would change his mind mid-jump and give up. He didn't, however, so he tapped his toes.
One second, Hershey was there. The next, numerous rock formations sprung up from all over had enclosed on him. Not much he could say or do about it, not when they were this quick. And then just like that, every part of his body, down to the last cell, hurt like you wouldn't believe. It was like that pain when you accidentally crack your head on something and it goes dohsoon! except all over and about five times as bad.
And then when the initial impact from the boulders was done and over with and he could see the block's brothels and bars again, there was Wes, right before him above the street, already driving his leg into his gut.
This was the second time Wes had performed this kick (must've been a favorite move), but the agony that accompanied this one was leagues apart from the first time. And then Hershey separated from his leg, and he was gone.
The backlash from that kick, believe it or not, created gales far more powerful than anything Hershey had fabricated all night. Where the one's smashed windows, the other's blasted apart walls. If Hershey himself hadn't been rocketing over the rooftops of the city's many districts, he would've found the sight awe-inspiring.
After sending his newfound fan careening over the city, Wes hopped onto the ridge of the bar Hershey had been standing on and used that as a springboard to catch up to him, leaving a massive gap where he pressed his feet.
Hershey was going fast, but Wes caught up to him in no time flat. He soared over him, and in the split second he was above, he rotated his body and drove him into the ground with a roundhouse kick.
Not a chance in hell he's getting up after that one, he thought as he slid to a stop in front of a wooden temple at the top of a slope. This was one of the quieter parts of town, but half the neighborhood was probably awake after that impact. The dust and debris was rising so high, someone might think a volcano had erupted in the middle of the city.
Wes sauntered up to the crater with his hands in his pockets, but he kept his distance, just in case. And his caution was well warranted, because wouldn't you know it, the wind began picking up, and where else was it coming from but the dissipating cloud of dust and debris?
Kudos to you, guy, Wes thought before realizing the wind was blowing him away. He locked himself in place by making weights around his boots and looked on as the cloud vanished and this massive vortex reached for the clouds and lifted Hershey to his feet. He was beaten, he was bruised, his clothes were in tatters, and had to use his weapon to support himself, but dammit if he wasn't the poster child of the inspirational phrases on all the posters hanging up in Wes's old school.
Walls crumbled, rooftops flew away, minutia was gliding every which way, and the being standing in the middle of this storm raised his hammer above his head, gathered a few breaths, then struck the pavement with it. But it wasn't the strike that Wes had to defend himself against. It was the huge, huge, huge blade of air that came from that swing, and it brought with it the concentrated force of all those whirling winds that had left leveled land where buildings once stood.
Wes dug out as much of the earth as he could, raising a monolith wide enough to tear apart the temple's facade and high enough that the only taller structure in the city was the castle on the hills to the west. But the larger this thing was the better, and he kept it coming, less like a mountain being formed and more of a tectonic plate itself breaking through the surface.
The wind came slicing down the street...
The monolith came bulldozing up it...
They were milliseconds from colliding
when a feminine figure in a familiar-looking, black, frilly dress appeared midair between them from out of the blue. She held up her arms, and the two attacks avoided her as though there were an invisible sphere surrounding her. The blade of air bent around and diminished, the weakened winds whirling and losing strength, while the monolith didn't shatter but melted, dribbling and flowing around her and flattening out until it resembled an exotic flower from a country to the southwest.
Hershey looked on, awe-struck that this young woman was able to manipulate his own magic with such grace and such ease. If he didn't know better, he'd swear this being here was a real angel descended from the heavens to call an end to this bout. The thought very nearly brought a tear to his eye.
Wes also had tears in his eyes. His knees were shaking and boots quaking. In all the years he had known her, seeing her power exhibited like this still made him feel like an ant trying to conquer the ocean. He gulped. She was going to kill him.
The wind was calming, and the earth was hardening, and then it was all still. No wind and a solid slab. She lowered her arms and floated to the ground, the hem of her dress ruffling and her hair weightless, until her flats touched the new formation with the lightest of grazes and she was gracing both men with her brilliant presence. She turned to Hershey and said with the most benign of tones, “What the hell is wrong with you?!” and then she slapped him. She was a good four to five meters away, but she flicked her hand, and Hershey felt the distinct sensation that was the signature pain of a woman taking her hand to his cheek. “Are you even remotely aware of how many crimes you committed tonight?!”
Hershey counted on his fingers. “None?”
You're joking, right? her face said.
“...Two...?”
“Does that include the bystanders you injured tonight?”
He hung his head. “I'm sorry...”
“You're lucky I was around to clean up your messes, because Parliament wasn't going to be happy if they had to foot the repairs bill,” she said. “You're even luckier that I was lying and that no one got hurt.”
“So...everything's cool, right?”
“No, everything is not 'cool'!” Her yelling made Hershey wince. “Do you have any idea how hard it was keeping up with the both of you? By the time I finished putting a roof back together or repairing the street, the both of you went flying seven blocks over. I haven't had that much trouble keeping up with another magus in...ever! I'm serious. All I wanted to do tonight was go out and maybe buy a nice dress and maybe a new pair of shoes. But no. You had to go picking fights for—for what, exactly? Because you want to be the First Hand? Yeah, that's how you get the position, you go around beating up every other magus you run across. Do you not know how Hands are selected? Through vigorous scrutiny, performance skills, and observation in the field by other skilled maguses. Which means that even if a Hand were defeated in battle, the person who defeated them isn't instantly promoted to replace them. Otherwise, we'd run the risk of having spies and general ne'er-do-wells becoming Hands. And while we're on the topic of that—”
While she was distracted with Hershey, Wes took this opportune moment to slip away before she yelled at him, too. He wasn't ready for another yelling at.
“And you!”
Too late, Wes. You're a dead man now.
“How in the world could you let him walk all over you like that? You're the Third Hand. Let me repeat that. The Third Hand. Are you telling me that you couldn't handle a no-name from the street?”
“Well, uh, you know...” He was twiddling his fingers, avoiding looking Deirdre in the eye. “Captain's orders to hold back and all that. You know?”
Deirdre did this moan-groan-sigh while facepalming herself. “I've told you before about controlling your magic, haven't I? But did you ever listen to me? Noooooo. It was always, 'Oh, the bandits and thieves I deal with are no sweat, so I don't need to train.' And then you finally fight someone tougher than your common street thug and look at what you do.” She held out her hand to showcase exhibit A of why Wes needed to learn more moderate use of his magic.
He looked on at the pile of splintered lumber that had once been a religious site. “I don't sound like that...” he mumbled.
Deirdre pointed in random directions, and where her finger went the rubble in that area picked itself up and floated over to where it was before it was rubble. “Starting tomorrow, I'm training you to moderate your magic. No ifs, ands, or buts. You'll be under my constant guidance until the captain feels you can control your magic. Got that?”
“Does the captain really need to know about this?” he asked as he ducked beneath a support column fixing itself.
“Do you think reports of portions of the city getting torn up aren't going to make it to his desk?” She used a second hand to make sure she restored the temple to its previous prestige.
Wes, feeling as though he was the loser in this fight, sank to the ground, which was then pulled out from underneath him like a carpet as Deirdre's stony rendition of southwestern plant seeped back beneath the street. “Yes, ma'am...I understand, ma'am...I'll report to you first thing in the morning, ma'am...”
Hershey, if there was a moment to make your grand escape, now would be the time. With all this junk flying around, it'd be a piece of cake to slink away pretending to be part of the self-repairing scenery. It was like your very own custom-made smokescreen.
“And you.”
“!”
Wow, you guys are awful at knowing when to sneak away from Deirdre.
“Don't think I'm going to let you walk away with a slap on the wrist like I'm doing with Wes.” She pushed the last brick into its slot with her finger from several meters away. “You've committed numerous crimes tonight, and unless you can cook, clean, or sew, I'm not letting you walk free.”
“What does cooking, cleaning, and sewing have to do with arresting me?”
“If you were able to cook me a five-star meal, clean my villa until it was sparkling, or sew me beautiful new articles of clothing, I might be tempted to look the other way,” she explained. “Can you do any of those things?”
“I can't cook that well or sew at all, but I can clean your house for you.”
“I didn't say my house, I said my villa.”
It took a minute, but the not-so-subtle differences in nuances between the two words were sinking into Hershey's skull. “That's just a fancy house...right?”
“Big, too,” Wes said.
“Big is such a passionless word,” Deirdre said.
“What would you say?”
She spent a moment to consider a more passionate word. “Brobdingnagian.”
“I'm sorry, is that supposed to be English?”
“It's lettered.”
“You're not making sense to me.”
Deirdre shrugged like, No mortal understands my sagacity, and returned the topic to Hershey's punishment. “Based on your reaction to cleaning my villa until it's so clean I can use my floors as a mirror, that's not an assignment you're willing to partake in. Therefore, I must turn you over to the city guards.” In a deeply saccharine tone, she asked, “Wes, would you be a darling and escort him to the guard station for me, please?”
“You're joking, right? All I wanna do is go home and go to bed,” he said and hurled his back against the ground to punctuate his desire for a mattress.
“Tsk. Useless Pilosa...” she muttered. She cleared her throat before speaking to Hershey. “Ordinarily, it'd be me who'd have to escort you to the guard station, but to be frank, I don't feel like it. So I'll have Alexander take you in my stead.”
Hershey raised a brow, and his eyes darted around, looking for a fourth individual in this scene. “Who's Alexander?”
Deirdre slashed the space beside her with her finger, and the air it ran across split open. It was like watching an eyelid open, except instead of an eyeball on the other side, it was a swirling purplish maelstrom of night terrors and dashed dreams, and from that eddying void emerged this thing, for lack of a better word. If there were a word for abomination that resembled an ant exposed to copious amounts of radiation, steroids, and dumbbells, it'd be that word.
“Ah—! Wha—?! What the—?!? What is that thing?!?!” Hershey was gripping Dohsoon for dear life as he tried to not wee himself.
“This is Alexander,” Deirdre said and scratched its chin like one might scratch a puppy's. “Isn't he the cutest?”
“Y-Y-Ya—” It's okay, Hershey, you can admit it: it's been a lifelong dream of yours to cuddle up with a mutated ant-like creature from another dimension. You can pretend to be paralyzed with fear all you want, but nobody'll fault you for confessing that Alex is your spirit animal.
“You ain't seen nothing if you think that one's scary,” Wes said from a seated position. “She's got thousands more where that one came from.”
“Alexander is not scary! He's precious! Isn't dat right? It is, isn't it? Whoo's a good boy? Whoo's a good boy?! You are! Yes, you are!” Did you know that gigantic ants fused with other gigantic ants are ticklish along the neckline?
Look at that, Hershey had so much trouble containing his excitement for Alex that he couldn't control the rings of wind orbiting his hammer.
Upon noticing his magic, Deirdre went, “Oh, right.” Then she waved her hand, a couple of runed rings fitted themselves onto Dohsoon, and the wind evaporated.
Upon noticing his lack of magic, Hershey went, “Huh?! What'd you do?”
“Sealed your magic. I don't want you hurting my poor baby here,” she said, nuzzling Alex's face.
Hershey's expression was that of a man thinking his last. Seeing that this was where it ended and accepting death.
“Be good, okay? Momma's got a special reward just for you when you get home,” she said to Alex, who licked her. “Hehe! Stop that!”
An envious chill ran up his spin. “Kill me. Kill me now,” he said, but when Alex seemed to obliged, he backed away like, Nope nope never mind I'll do anything you say JUST PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!
“Wes, let's go. I'm tired, and you've kept me waiting long enough for cookies.”
Wes sprung to his feet. “Can do.” He said to Hershey, “See you around. Probably. Maybe not...Anyway, take care!” When Deirdre joined him at his side, he turned to walk with her.
“Also, I'm demanding three dozen cookies to make up for me having to clean up your messes,” she said.
“You're not going to eat them all at once again, are you?”
“When else would I eat them?”
They talked some more about the sugary sweets as they returned to Wes's place, where he baked Double fudge double chocolate chip cookies which Deirdre feasted on, and then they forgot this night ever happened (at least until Deirdre began a week-long period of grumbling from having to fill out all the proper paperwork regarding this story's incident).
The end.
“Hey! What about me? I want cookies, too...”
Story's over, Hershey. Get out of here.
“Aw, man...This is so unfair...” he lamented as Alexander dragged him to jail by his collar. If he had one regret about tonight, it was that he wasn't getting the chance to try cookies that had proper flavor. Jail probably didn't have cookies. But if it did, they'd in all likelihood taste like sweet, sweet despair.
Moral of the story, kids: Don't go attacking strangers to fulfill the dreams you'll never accomplish or else everybody'll get to dine on succulent pastries, while you're stuck downing bowls of disappointment with a side of desolation.
The end. For realsies this time.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
