I find it amusing that the author's name and the subject matter of the story are so entangled.

Hanging in the straps of her parachute, Hek concentrated on two things. First, keeping pressure on the wound in her thigh. There was a lot of blood coming out of that gash, and if she lost consciousness on the way down, she knew she’d never wake up again. Second, she was trying to take in the aerial view of the landscape, take note of prominent features, and most importantly, keep track of where their transport was crashing. She managed to fumble her NetHand free from its pocket on her jacket and began snapping pictures of the jungle and her surroundings as she drifted down. She couldn’t see any other ‘chutes, but they were designed to blend into the sky, so that didn’t mean much. The smoky trail of the transport, though, was pretty easy to spot. She stowed the device seconds before the first tree slapped her in the face with a stinging branch. She lifted both arms to shield her face and tried tucking herself into a ball as she crashed down through the upper branches, each impact a little more serious than the one before as the limbs she was plowing through got thicker. She was yanked to a halt and felt herself swinging. Great. She quickly lowered her right hand to press on her wound again, then more cautiously lifted her face from behind the shelter of her left. Yep, she was flying. Or hanging. The ground looked a long way down. Looking above her, she could see the ‘chute clearly entangled in the tree’s arms. She bounced in the harness a couple of times, but nothing shifted. She was stuck. Ok, fine. Stuck in a tree, wounded, and lost. Critical priority was to survive. At this second, the biggest threat was her leg and the blood pulsing from it. Hek pulled out her knife and gripped it between her teeth, then reached as far above her head as she could and grabbed a handful of the slender suspension lines connecting the harness to the entangled ‘chute above. She released pressure on her leg just long enough to cut several strands, maybe a meter and a half long. Next she needed a pad of some sort. Since the leg of her pants was already ripped, and she would need to clear that area to proceed, it seemed like a good place to begin. Cutting the fabric free, one-handed, while dangling in a harness proved to be a bit of a challenge, but she did manage to salvage some fabric while exposing her thigh. Taking a deep breath, and working quickly, she released the wound. Folding the cloth remnants into a thick square, she pressed it firmly onto the bloody gash then wrapped it tightly with the cord. Far from perfect, but it would let her work with both hands for the next few minutes. Getting her backpack free from under the harness required some gymnastics; not dropping it required a small miracle. She managed both, then clipped the pack onto her harness to keep it safely by her side. Carefully, but quickly, she slipped her blood-covered hand inside. Years of training with this equipment had given her the familiarity to find what she needed by touch; the first aid kit was a cool, smooth rectangle. She slid it to the top of the pack and gently opened the lid. There, a pressure bandage, that was what she needed. The paracord she’d used to bind the makeshift bandage was embedded in her flesh; she’d tied it a little too tightly. Deliberately, she slid the blade of her knife between her brown skin and the constricting cord, only nicking herself a little. The cloth pad fell free. She quickly sheathed the knife then applied the pressure bandage. As it auto-inflated and the blood stopped running, she allowed herself a sigh of relief. She fished out a broad-spectrum antibiotic and swallowed it dry. She looked at the painkillers, but decided that a clear head was more important than quenching the burning sensation consuming her leg. Ok, critical priority addressed. Following her training, Hek evaluated her status. Wounded; stuck in a tree; separated from the team; lost; carrying limited supplies. Next, she evaluated the situation. No immediate threat; no expected motivated hostility; environmental dangers probable. Hek saw two immediate courses of action. Getting down from this tree was high on the list. Trying to contact her team was equally high. Since she seemed to be safe for the moment, and since getting down would be easier with some help, she reached for her NetHand. Its functionality would be limited without access to some form of network, but it was capable of short range direct radio contact. She swiped to the radio app and hit the emergency pulse. A simple burst of broad-spectrum radio waves, it would trigger an alert on any receiving device. That was a risk, not knowing for sure what had caused their crash. It was possible that there were hostiles nearby who were responsible; if so, they would be alerted to Hek’s survival and her general direction. But intel marked this area as unclaimed; likely the only people with receivers would have been on the transport with her. She waited five minutes, hanging there beneath the jungle canopy, before toggling the burst again. This time, a responding burst came within seconds. No contact, no voice, no text, just another burst. Coming from the… wait, which way was north? The map app in the NetHand was functional, but the thick tree canopy blocked line of sight to the GPS satellites. She could see where she had been when she entered the trees, but there was no directionality. She had a compass, an old-school magnetic needle, but it was buried in the backpack. She preferred not to risk spilling its contents from up here. Ok, the burst came from the direction of that big, rotten tree. She’d check the compass when her boots hit the ground. Toggling to the text app, she thumbed “Hek:C3:MR:SB:NA” Hek: Condition 3 (moderately wounded): Mobility - Restricted: Situation - Benign: Need Assistance. A few moments later came”Cro:C1:MX:SB:NA” Cro: Condition 1 (lightly wounded): Immobilized: Situation - Benign: Need Assistance. Ok, so Cro was out there, but wouldn’t be coming to her aid. At least neither of them were in immediate danger. Sighing, she looked down. That had to be a ten meter drop; in peak shape, she could probably manage it without serious injury, but with her leg in the shape it was, that was a bad gamble. Looking around, she was only a few meters away from the tree trunk. Swinging over to grab it may be an option. Looking up, the limbs above her were certainly strong enough to support her weight, but were about five meters distant. Trying to pull herself up five meters of paracord didn’t sound all that appealing. She pulled out her knife and, gathering several strands of cord, cut them loose, keeping as much length as she could. Tying the ends together, she attached one end of her makeshift rope to her backpack then began lowering it to the ground, mentally counting the distance as the cord passed through her hands. More like eight meters than ten; still, pretty far for a compromised leg. She let the remaining cord spool down, tying the end to her harness. Now the backpack wouldn’t interfere with her attempts to swing to safety, but she could still pull it up if needed. Taking a deep breath, Hek began to wobble her body to and fro, slowly building up swinging momentum. It didn’t take long to realize that this was hopeless. It wasn’t as if she were a pendulum suspended on a single cable or a child on a swing; she was tethered to her chute in dozens of locations. It, in turn, was snagged in the tree in multiple spots. As she swung, the tension on one suspension line would loosen while another tightened, twisting the harness and changing her direction. While she may eventually be able to get enough momentum to reach the trunk, there was no chance she’d be able to control her facing, so the odds were that she’d simply batter herself silly. Fine. Up it was. Starting close to her harness and working up to the limit of her reach, Hek gathered cords that weren’t pulled taut and tied large loops in them. Using the freedom afforded by her dangling position, she slipped the foot of her uninjured left leg into the lowest loop, then began pulling herself up with her hands. It was difficult, of course. The cords were thin and slick, and her hands were coated with blood and sweat. Still, after a few minutes of straining, she was standing upright in that loop. Pausing first to tie more loops as far up as she could reach, Hek then put her injured leg’s foot into the next loop up. Pulling with her arms, trying not to use the damaged leg at all, she elevated herself a few more centimeters. Then she shifted the other foot up a loop. Step by step, with frequent pauses to add loops to her makeshift ladder, Hek rose into the awaiting embrace of the tree’s arms. Once there, she straddled the easiest branch to mount and took stock of her situation. Shimmying to the trunk looked pretty straightforward. Going down would be challenging; the trunk was pretty smooth, and larger around than her arms would reach. A climbing strap would be needed, which the webbing of her harness could certainly supply. First, though, she needed to recover as much of the ‘chute as possible. There was no denying that the silk and the cords could be useful. Once on the ground, Hek packed the remains of the parachute as tightly as she could, shoving them and the harness into a small sack. Retrieving her compass from the depths of the backpack, she determined that Cro was roughly south by southeast. Using the NetHand’s mapping app, and comparing the map with the images she’d snapped from the air, her best guess was that the wreckage of the transport was east of her. The GPS was still useless, not having access to clear skies. She dropped a pin at her last confirmed location and enabled the inertial tracking. It wouldn’t be accurate, but some reference was better than no reference. Going to find Cro would be out of the way, but clearly she had little choice. Thumbing over to text mode, she sent “EnRCro.” En Route to Cro. Then, casting about, she found a broken limb that would make a suitable walking stick. She set about trimming it and shaping it a little with her knife, then wrapped some silk from the ‘chute around the grip. While she was working on that, another emergency pulse flared on the screen. Still coming from SxSE. Pulling her backpack over her shoulders, Hek limped forward into the jungle. She’d done survival training in the jungle before, more than once. All of them had. Hek had hated it. The stifling heat, the suffocating humidity, the constant physical labor of pushing through undergrowth and tangles of vines, the swarms of biting insects, the cobwebs, the ants… it was a nightmare. The soldier in her mind took all of those distractions and shoved them relentlessly into a tiny box, safely away where they wouldn’t interfere with the business at hand. Find a path. Be alert for dangers. Stay alive. After an hour, her NetHand chimed. Cro had sent another emergency pulse, pretty much on schedule. Good, that meant he was functioning, alert, and observing protocol. She compared the direction with her compass; the signal was almost due south now. Clearly she’d drifted off course, but that was to be expected. With the foliage so dense, there was no direct path possible. She was constantly circling around giant trees, or bypassing patches of thorns, or following a game trail that provided easier movement but wasn’t quite leading the right direction. Adjusting her bearing, she continued on. The terrain was ever so slightly downhill, a fact that she noted and filed away. Whatever was downhill on the way out would be uphill on the way back. An hour later, the device chimed again. She paused to consult it. Almost due west now. She had passed him, or was currently passing him. “SigA2,” she sent. Signal twice by audio. She paused and listened intently. Nothing. But the jungle was dense, and full of sound. He could be 50 meters away and she wouldn’t necessarily hear anything. So she headed west. The ground was considerably wetter here. Her booted feet sank a couple of centimeters into the ground, and pulled free with sucking noises. The large trees were still omni-present obstacles, but the undergrowth was definitely thinning. After 20 minutes, she resent the same text. This time, ahead and to the right, she faintly heard the artificial wail of a NetHand siren. Good, she was really close. “SigR.” Signal received. She pressed forward. Ten minutes later, she heard it again, still ahead and still slightly to the right, but much more clearly audible. “SigV,” she texted. “Hek!” came a man’s voice, close, almost straight ahead. “X,” she texted. “Slow and easy!” came the voice. Hek moved forward with extra caution. The ground dragged at her boots, pulling them deeper with each step. She began staying closer to the trunks of the great trees, stepping on their roots when possible. Then she could see a ‘chute, tangled in the branches ahead, its empty harness only a few meters above the ground. Already anticipating what was coming next, she continued forward slowly. There, in the middle of a clearing, and buried almost to his chest in treacherous black muck, was Cro.

Molly’s - Chapter 12 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii Forklifts are deceptive things. On the surface, they’re quite simple. The vehicle has a lever that toggles between forward, neutral, and reverse. There’s an accelerator pedal, a brake pedal, and a parking brake. Like a car, I think, but with fewer controls. The steering is different than a car or a bicycle, though. The rear wheels steer, and the forklift pivots around the front wheels. It feels weird at first, being pushed sideways as you turn, but the design means you can pivot 90 degrees with very little forward movement, which is handy in the aisles of a warehouse. Aside from that, the forks travel up and down on the mast. The mast can be tilted forward or backward, and the distance between the forks can be changed. Sounds simple, no? It started the Monday after the coconut intervention. As I passed Molly on my way to drop my stuff in my locker, she handed me a small booklet. “Conrad is waiting for you in the yard,” is all she said. I glanced at the book. It was old, tattered, and had greasy fingerprints all over it, but the cover was still clearly legible: Operators Manual Nishigumi Models RFN-113, RFL-117/A, RFN-133/233. I shrugged, tossed my backpack in my locker (my locker!), and trotted outside. Conrad was sitting in the shade of the warehouse, leaning against the wall, the image of comfort and relaxation. “Morning, Tad,” he called. I trotted over to sit beside him. “You want me to read this?” I asked. “Cover to cover. Twice. But wake me up once you’ve finished it the first time.” With that, he pulled his cap down over his eyes and settled into a more relaxed position, something I wouldn’t have thought was possible. I opened the cover. It turns out that the RFN/RFL series are forklifts manufactured by, you guessed it, Nishigumi. The manual was excruciatingly boring. Of its 114 pages, maybe a dozen had useful information about how to actually operate the things. Maybe another dozen had useful information on maintenance. The remainder were full of warnings and precautions. I imagined that an owners manual for a venomous snake would have fewer warnings than this. Closing the last page, I nudged Conrad, who lifted his cap. “What did you think?” he asked. “These things are like spitting cobras, and should never be approached or otherwise handled,” I responded in my best dead-serious voice. He laughed. “OK, I’m glad to see you’re taking safety to heart. Maybe some of those warnings are a little on the obvious side, but I want you to really think about the quantity of them. There are a lot of ways to hurt yourself and other people with a forklift, and most of them boil down to carelessness and inattention. Operating the machine is really quite easy. So is messing up. Wait here.” He popped to his feet and strode into the nearest door. A few minutes later, the loading door for bay two opened, and out he came, driving the lift. He parked it in the middle of the yard, then waved me over. “Read the manual again, cover to cover. This time, take the time to look at the machine as well as the illustrations. Do the inspections. Locate the controls. I’m taking the keys, so you can’t accidentally do anything, so feel free to press the pedals, move the levers, touch everything. Inasmuch as you can, practice. Come get me when you’re feeling comfortable.” I spent about an hour. Like I said, there really wasn’t much content in the book, but I liked having the machine (it was an RFL-117, if you’re interested. Not a /A, just the basic model) to look at and touch. I did the initial inspection a couple of times, being fairly sure Conrad would want to see me do that. I also inspected the hydraulic seals and the reservoir level as recommended in the maintenance section. The rest of the time, I sat behind the wheel, moved the levers, pressed the pedals, and may have made the occasional “vroom vroom” or “beep beep” noises. Then I went to get Conrad. As expected, he watched me go through the initial inspection. Then he handed me the keys. “Start it up, go forward ten meters, stop, and park.” I took a deep breath and tried to control my racing heart, then leapt into the driver’s seat. “Stop!” he barked. “Get off, start over.” Ok. Right. Making sure to grab the assist handle, I got off the RFL-117, took a step back, then started forward again. “Stop! I said, start over.” Deep breath. Another. Don’t blow this. I took a step back, then walked slowly around the machine, performing the safety inspection. You remember, the one I had just done in front of him like two minutes ago? Yeah, that one. Having made sure that no leaks had sprung or any parts fallen off during the last two minutes, I climbed deliberately into the seat and inserted the keys. “Stop. Get off, start over.” I sat there for a minute, focusing on my breathing, before dismounting. I took a step back, then commenced to walk around the RFL, doing the initial inspection. Then I mounted it, supporting myself with the grip assist and the seat back. Once seated, I made sure to inspect every control. Parking brake, set. Drive in neutral. Lift control in neutral. Steering centered, more or less. I reached up to adjust both rear-view mirrors. I belted myself in. Looking forward, I announced in a loud, clear voice, “Clear forward.” Turning to the left, I announced in a loud, clear voice, “Clear left.” Turning to the right, I announced in a loud, clear voice, “Clear right.” Then twisting around, I looked over my shoulder, announcing in a loud, clear voice, “Clear behind.” Then I inserted the keys, and paused to look at Conrad. He nodded with an approving smile. I twisted the key. Electric vehicles don’t make any real noise when you turn them on, just a single “beep,” so that was anticlimactic, but lights on the dash came on. I checked the gauges for battery charge and hydraulic pressure; both looked good. I sat there for a minute. What came next? I knew I needed to press the brake pedal before disengaging the parking brake, but I needed to put it in gear before that (which is counterintuitive if you ask me). But I was missing something. I just knew it. I’d skimmed over the manual twice, and I was forgetting something. Sigh. “I don’t remember what comes next.” It cost me a lot to say those words, but I knew if I got it wrong, I’d be restarting anyway. What could it hurt to ask? Conrad smiled. “It’s ok to ask and best to be sure, Tadpole. Tilt the mast to the rear then raise the forks a bit.” Right! The mast was the first lever. Forward for down, backwards for up. I grabbed it, pulled back… and the forks started to rise. No! First lever for forks, second lever for mast! “Stop! Lower the forks, shut it off, and start again.” And so it went. I actually got the sequence correct the next time, but got things turned around when Conrad told me to shut it off after successfully moving ten meters. Then he made me do the entire sequence again to back up the same ten meters. Once I had accomplished that, he had me repeat the sequence ten more times. Inspect. Mount. Startup. Move forward. Park. Shutdown. Dismount. Inspect. Mount. Startup. Move backwards. Park. Shutdown. Then we added turns: left; right; full about. Then we added moving the forks: up; down; separate; close; shift left; shift right. Then tilting the mast; forward; rear; center. Over and over and over, doing just the simplest of tasks, with Conrad unforgivingly barking “Stop! Park, shut it off, do it over” every time I made a mistake. I hated it. When I came in Tuesday, Conrad and the RFL were waiting. He had spray painted lines in the dirt to represent the corridors and aisles of the warehouse. We spent all morning with me approaching the lift, inspecting it, getting it running, then moving around a corner or two. If I smudged a line, I had to park, shut down, repaint the line, then restart. If I made a mistake in a sequence, or took a shortcut of any kind, I’d hear “Stop!” And so passed the morning. After lunch, Conrad placed a couple of empty pallets on the ground inside the “aisles.” This was actually challenging. Getting the forks lined up just right, inching them into the gap without touching anything, lifting a pallet and moving it without crossing the lines, setting it down, sliding the forks out without moving the pallet… that was all hard! When I left at the end of the day, I was frustrated at how poorly I felt I was doing. Wednesday, the empty pallets had been replaced by pallets with boxes. Empty boxes, but boxes nonetheless. The entire day was dedicated to moving those pallets from one spot to another then back again. Over. And over. And over. Seriously, all day. Thursday, the pallets were stacked. And they had some weight to them. Which, it turns out, made some aspects of the job easier. If you jar a pallet that’s piled with empty boxes, the empty boxes fall off. If the boxes have some weight, and therefore some inertia, a little tap doesn’t cause a boxalanche. But I didn’t deliver many taps; I’d had that drilled out of me the previous day. Friday, the pallets were stacked higher. Taller than the top of the lift. Saturday, there were lines painted on the ground, and a small mountain of pallets off to one side. And Conrad was there. He’d never been there over a weekend, at least not while I had been around, but he was there. For me. “Build a maze,” he said, “four pallets tall.” It took me nearly all day, and once I had to take part of it apart because I’d managed to block myself, but when I was done, it was perfect. The pallets were stacked evenly with edges flush, and the piles ran in straight lines. Sunday, someone had painted red Xs on many of the pallets. “Take the red ones out,” he said. That was devilish; most of the red ones were not on the top of their respective piles, so I had to move other pallets out of the way. Which meant I had to find a temporary place to stack them that didn’t obstruct me. “Put the red ones back where they came from,” was Monday. I finished that before lunch. “Take the maze down, and stack the crates over there.” I finished that before closing time. Conrad watched me carefully, but didn’t say a thing. After I finished, he came over to me. “Tadpole, you have been an exemplary pupil. You are deliberate, careful, and very attentive to your driving. Do not let that change.” He paused, then continued. “You are now a probationary forklift operator. You are not to use this machine unsupervised, but you are cleared to use it in the daily performance of your duties. You have access to the warehouse and will be expected to both store and retrieve items as needed.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Tad.” He extended his hand for a proper handshake, which I was happy to provide. “Come on. Let me show you where to park this thing.” I was trembling a bit as we walked into the warehouse and Conrad showed me the charging station, then watched as I put the RFL to bed for the night. I patted the machine on the mast. “See you tomorrow, Rafael,” I whispered.

Molly’s - Chapter 11 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii Summertime is a different world, at least for young people. There is no school, and depending how adept you are at avoiding summer programs, it’s a time of freedom. No responsibilities, no alarm clocks, no homework, just fun! At least, that’s what you tell yourself as you count down the months, then the weeks, then the days, then the hours, minutes, and seconds until the final school bell for the year. Parents have a different viewpoint, I think. They seem to feel like your days should continue to be filled with things. In years past, mine had made sure to sign me up for every summer program imaginable. Some of them I actually enjoyed; others, I’d have rather gone to the dentist. But this year was different because of Molly’s. There were still summer programs I wanted to do. I think I said earlier that I like maths and sciences, and there were summer programs in physics, engineering, precalc, applied trig, and a few others that I was excited about. My folks forced me into a couple of university prep seminars, despite that being years away. I even agreed to take a couple of music classes, inspired by memories of Olaf’s crew playing and singing, thinking maybe I could be part of that next year. I did not, though, get forced to choose programs just to keep me busy. My parents knew that if I had spare time, I was likely to spend it at Molly’s. So no intramurals this year. No dance. No horse camp. With very few exceptions, if I didn’t want to go, my parents didn’t push back. It was pretty liberating! Weekdays at Molly’s were a different experience. I had no idea that Molly had a sales staff, for instance. Glorinda worked the front; she was every bit the gorgeous princess you’d expect from someone with such a name. I was fascinated by the fact someone so lovely, so impeccably put-together, could work in a salvage yard without ever getting a smudge on her hands or a spot on her dress. I learned that she had two superpowers. First, as I said, she always looked perfect. Second, she could upsale like you would not believe. I’m not kidding you when I say I watched people come in for small replacement components, such as a dozen tread links, and leave with an entire new weapon assembly. Then they would come back the next week and have it happen again! Matt worked out of an office in the back. He spent most of his time either telcomming or on the GlobeNet, which he could easily have done from home, but he preferred the companionship at Molly’s. He was a slob, but a very cute slob. I came to find out that he was single-handedly to blame for the awful smell I’d encountered when I first came here. Still, he was friendly, charming, and had a wickedly sarcastic sense of humor. He was as perfect at interfacing with remote clients as Glorinda was in person. I had met the mechanics at Olaf’s party, but now, I found myself working at their sides most days. All three were very talented and capable, but of course each had specialities. Maurine was the resident expert on hydraulics. “Maurine makes it move!” was what we said. Gran was incredibly intuitive about electronics and computer interfaces, but didn’t get a catchphrase. Neither did Conrad, who could make an engine sing. While it was an accepted truth that most engines, when in peak condition, were between five and ten percent more efficient than their manufacturers claimed, Conrad prided himself on getting at least a fifteen percent performance boost out of any engine he touched. With me at their sides, we spent our days finishing the work that Olaf and his crew had begun. All of the components that had been stripped from broken tanks had to be cleaned, evaluated, and serviced. Some were rebuilt to be sold as units; others were dissected to be used as parts. I began to get pretty savvy in both directions. Gran, Conrad, and Maurine had worked together at Molly’s for years, and had a rhythm. Unlike Olaf’s organized chaos which had plenty of room for additional hands, it was a real challenge for me to find ways to be helpful instead of getting in the way. My comings and goings for various school programs didn’t help. One day, I walked into Molly’s to find Molly and the mechanics (doesn’t that sound like a great name for a band?) sitting in the break room together. “Tad! Come in, grab a donut, and have a seat,” said Molly. Oh, crap. I did as instructed, not even looking at the box to see what kind of donut I had picked. This couldn’t be good. “We’ve been talking about how to best make use of you for the rest of the summer. We’re concerned that things haven’t developed organically, and want to make sure that we find a productive way to continue your growth.” Yeah, whenever grownups start talking like that, you can bet that I’m about to be very unhappy. I took a mechanical bite of my donut. Coconut. It figures; I hate coconut. “Molly, you’re scaring our poor Tadpole!” said Gran. “Tad, just tell us, what do you want?” I looked at her blankly, donut crumbs falling in my lap. “Wud do I wan?” I mumbled around a mouthful of tropical ick. “Yes, what do you want. Clearly you love being here. Why? What do you want?” What did I want? No one had ever asked me that before. Ok, that’s not true. People asked me that all the time. My parents asked. My teachers asked. My friends asked. But usually it related to breakfast choices, or after school programs, or weekend movies. What Gran was asking me felt like a very different kind of “What do you want?” So, what did I want? “I love tanks,” my mouth said, having managed to choke down the gross pastry. While my brain was genuinely curious about what was going to come out next, my mouth continued: “I think I’d like to build them one day.” I suppose, were there to be a moment in the movie of my life to cue the dramatic music, that would have been a really good spot.

Jiminy Christmas... I put up an empty post as a placeholder so Hexed can try to teach me things about the forum and using the Move power, and now someone is accusing me of spamming? I've got two words for you.

PLACEHOLDER

Shouldn't be. Molly's will continue here in the AWS. I don't think I'd survive a one-story-per-month release... I need releases much more often than that!

October 31st. Halloween. More correctly, Hallowe’en. Even more correctly, All Hallows’ Evening. The first of the three-day Allhallowtide, which goes on to include All Saints’ Day on November 1st and All Souls’ Day on November 2nd (at least according to the Roman Catholic Church). Blame Pope Gregory III; he settled for three days back in the 700s. Pope Sixtus IV upped it to an 8-day observation in the 1400s, which lasted 500 years until fun-hating Pope Pius XII started his reforms in the 1940s, reducing Allhallowtide to the original three days. She loved the eight-day version. Or perhaps you call it Samhain. That’s likely of you’re of Celtic descent, or have a fascination with all things Celt, or are one of those woo-woo new age witches. You probably attribute its origins to the Druids. And if you’re really, really deep into it, you might even call it Nos Calan Gaeaf. Do you know the poem? “Adref, adref, am y cyntaf', Hwch ddu gwta a gipio'r ola'.” She did. Dia de Muertos (or Dia de los Muertos, depending on exactly where you grew up) is another option. And this, of course, is descended from the Aztec worship of Mictēcacihuātl. May Aztec gods appear before you and demand you pronounce their names! She could have. The list is actually fairly long, but here’s the thing; there are a lot of cultures, living and extinct, that have rituals and beliefs surrounding this time of year. Not all of them knew it as October 31 (the Gregorian calendar being something of a recent invention), but all of them knew (or know) it as a time when the veils between the world of the living and the world of the dead grow thin. Some of the observations are based in terror. Have you ever wondered why you put on a mask for Halloween? It’s so the wandering spirits of the dead won’t recognize you as a living being and take possession of your soul. Some of the observations are based in the joy of remembering and celebrating the lives of the ancestors. Dia de Muertos heads that direction, with parades and fireworks and offerings to the dead. She really loved Dia de Muertos. We’d traveled to Mexico twice to be part of it, but that wasn’t odd; we’d celebrated in many ways, as many as we could. The top of the list every year was writing our names on stones that we tossed into bonfires for Calan Gaeaf to see if we’d die in the coming year. The last time, her stone had been missing the following day. I didn’t take that seriously, but I should have. She did. Lots of bonfires. Almost all of the ceremonies had bonfires. If there weren’t bonfires, there were candles. Often there were both. Flame, the element of flame, is apparently important because it transcends the veils and exists in both worlds at once. If she hadn’t been there, flame would have gotten me killed. We met at the university in a “cultural philosophy” class. I was there because it seemed like an easy elective. She was there because she believed in it all. Pick a mythos, a religion, a philosophy, a fad, anything with woo-woo, and she believed it. If you could work in the words “astral,” “new,” “empower,” or “goddess,” she believed it twice. Of all the hippie-dippy people you could ever hope to meet in your lifetime, she was the hippie-dippy queen. We were as opposite as it was possible for two people to be. Of course we fell in love. You would think that subscribing to over 200 individual belief systems would paralyze a person, but not her. I like to think that, if there was an underlying Truth, she somehow found the fragment each system accidentally got right and was managing to put those fragments together. I didn’t actually believe it, but I liked to think it. We joined the service together. The threat of war from our neighbors to the south was too real, and we were too idealistic, to let ourselves sit on the sidelines. We enrolled in the combat engineers. War came while we were still in training. By the time we were deployed, the enemy was deep within our own borders. They had tanks, good tanks, and plenty of them. Our tanks may have been better, but we didn’t have nearly as many and they were spread widely. We depended on other ways to slow them down. Trenches. Mines. Barricades. Combat engineers. Once we were bivouacked directly in the path of an enemy column. They would be on us in two, maybe three, days. We had a bridge to demolish, roads and forests to mine, buildings to booby-trap, all manner of delayed death to sow. We were working 20-hour days with bleeding fingers and breaking backs, but it was October 31, so she had to have a fire for Nos Calan Gaeaf. We wrote our names on stones and tossed them in before settling down for three hours’ sleep. If the stones were still there after the fire went out, we’d live throughout the coming year. We were yanked from slumber and went straight to work; it was 20 hours later that we got to rest again. My stone was still in the firepit. Hers was not. She didn’t say anything about it, just looked a little sad as we lay down for our brief sleep. It wasn’t until maybe a week later, after we’d been evac’d from that location and had a chance to breathe, that she even mentioned it. “I’m only sad because it means we’ll be apart for a time,” she said. “Huh?” I replied, looking up from my instant coffee. “It’s ok to miss me, love, but remember that it’s temporary.” I really had no idea what we were talking about, but she moved in to kiss me and I forgot all about it for a year. Late the following October, we were once again sent to do what we were always sent to do: stop tanks with our bare hands. We were supposed to have two days before the enemy arrived, but they had some hotshot commander, a fellow named Chip, and the gods had his back. He made it to our position in 12 hours. We weren’t ready. How could we be ready? The command was to pull back, but we all knew that if we didn’t hold, people down the road would pay the price. So we stayed. I killed two of the enemy war machines with portable rockets. I lobbed a few grenades at them, hoping to get lucky and damage a tread, but to no avail. I even took a rifle shot at a commander who foolishly stuck his head out of a hatch. I missed, but I did try. But mostly, once the rockets and grenades were gone, I hid. There was a drainage culvert and I hid. The fighting started the evening of October 29. My munitions were gone by the morning of October 30. So I hid, and I lay in my own waste, and I drank water from the ditch, and I prayed to all the gods I’d never believed in for my own salvation, and for hers. While above me, and around me, the battle raged. On the morning of the 31st, the enemy had penetrated maybe a kilometer farther. Our troops were doing a magnificent job holding them, but the actual battle had moved just enough down the road that it wasn’t over my head. I could still hear it clearly; could still see the flashes and smoke just a few hundred meters away. I crawled out of my sanctuary and began to look for her. The landscape was ruined. There were bodies of war machines, vehicles, and soldiers everywhere. There were craters, and parts, and fires. Both sides were too locked in the fierce conflict to spare any effort at cleanup. I even heard the moans of wounded who had been lying there for days, but other than to see if they were her, I offered no assistance. It only took a couple of hours to find her; we were never far from each other. I guess I should say, it didn’t take long to find most of her. Her hip had been blown off; the left leg wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I dropped down beside her, placed her head in my lap, and there we sat as the sun climbed to its zenith then headed down. As sunset colored the sky and with the shrieks of war as a background accompaniment, I began to gather wood. There had been a fence here, before tanks had rumbled across what had been peaceful plains. And there were the remnants of barricades, measures of desperation that had failed to inconvenience the enemy at all. But the barricades were made of good, hard wood, and the lumber in the fence had been soaked in pitch. Both would burn well. My body was weak and betrayed me frequently, but I built as much of a pyre as I could, then wrestled her body to the top of it. I knew she’d like that. Very woo-woo, very old. Gasoline was easy to find. There were tanks of it all around me. I doused the pyre liberally. I probably soaked myself pretty thoroughly as well, but that wasn’t really my concern. I mean, I had no plans to immolate myself, but neither did I have plans to live. I, or what was left of me, was just focused on this one task, to see her one more time. I got stuck for a little while, wondering if I should wait for midnight. Was that when the veils were thinnest? Or was that just some bit of a fairy tale stuck in my head? In the end I decided not to wait, lest some enemy patrol or sniper chance upon me before I’d had my try. I lit the pyre and sat down to wait. I was a doomed man, of that there was no doubt. No matter how busy the enemies were, someone was going to look back and spot my bonfire, and someone was going to come to investigate. I just hoped they took a while. “Honey, you shouldn’t be here,” she said from behind me. I didn’t turn around. That’s how these things work, right? “I have to be,” I said. “I have to say goodbye.” “I told you, my love, it isn’t goodbye. And it’s ok to miss me, but we’ll be together soon. Now, pick yourself up and go hide under that tank over there, the one with the really big gun. Stay there for two more days. Do not answer when you hear someone calling tomorrow; stay quiet and don’t let them see you. Don’t come out until you hear a horn in two days.” Then she was gone. I stumbled to the tank, maybe a hundred meters away. I crawled underneath it, lay down in the mud, and sobbed myself to sleep. The next day, I heard a voice calling, searching for survivors. The language and accent were my own, and the appeal in the voice seemed earnest, but I stayed hidden. I didn’t even peek to see whatever there may have been to see. The following day came and went. Long after the sun went down, I heard the bleating of a horn. I crawled out and saw an ambulance sitting there; men with dogs around it, searching for survivors. After a few weeks in the hospital, I was discharged, both from the hospital and from the service. I even got a medal and a pension. Apparently I have a piece of shrapnel buried in my brain and that is grounds for the army not to want me. I don’t really notice it, but I do notice that people tend to look at me strangely whenever I start to talk about my story. So I don’t. The days are getting shorter, and the leaves are turning colors. October is running out. Soon, I am going to lay beneath the stars, with a picture of my love, and light a bonfire. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get to say hello, Mictēcacihuātl willing. Woo-woo!

Molly’s - Chapter 10 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii I’m not a big fan of history in general; there’s just so much of it, and it all can be summed up by saying “dead people did something, and here we are today.” But the specific histories of things I like, well, that’s a different story. It’s probably no surprise to you that someone who loves tanks as much as I do is an avid buff on the history of the tank, and of the wars in which tanks were important, and on the history of Tanki itself. As I became part of Molly’s, it was inevitable that I’d start to wonder at the histories of the tanks sitting in the yard. Under Twee’s intermittent guidance, I became more skilled at piecing together stories from their remains, but that sort of investigation left too much to my imagination. The rusted hulk with the ruptured floorplate had clearly met its demise by rolling over a mine, but where? When? Why? I was still haunted by that refrain I’d imagined when I first walked in: “Now, I am junk, and I am Molly’s.” Most of the more recent hulks were easy enough to backtrack. If I looked hard enough, and scraped rust off in the right places, I could find serial numbers. The Tanki archives keep exhaustive records; anything in the last 20 years is available. So, with a serial number, I can look up that tank’s competitive history, even watch footage of its fights. That’s if it fought in Tanki, and during the last 20 years. Many of the tanks at Molly’s fit those criteria. Many, but not all. This became a bit of an obsession with me. After my first encounter with Twee, I wanted to up my game. I’d pick a hulk, and either ride out to Molly’s a little early, stay a little late, or spend my lunch break crawling over it, looking for signs. I could usually manage to get two, sometimes three hours in every weekend. Once I thought I had a fair assessment, I’d look up the archival footage and see how well I had done. Then, knowing what had actually happened, I’d go back to the hulk and look for the evidence that I had clearly missed. One day, I found a tank I knew. I didn’t realize it at first, of course; it was just another hulk, and a big one. It had been pounded hard on both the right side and the front by a rapid fire cannon, probably Twins. There were dozens of overlapping impact craters in the armor. Individually, each was insignificant, but with so many of them, the armor was pretty beat up. I imagined that this tank had been caught broadside by its opponent. The pilot had reversed and turned, bringing the front armor and main canon to bear. And probably had survived, driving off or killing the attacker. But there was also a gaping hole on the right side, clearly a kill shot, and clearly delivered by a different gun. So this tank had been part of a team event and facing more than one opponent. Sometime after, or even during, its confrontation with the Twins, another enemy had broadsided it with something large. Hard to say what, but it was a blast hole, not a puncture, so I was leaning towards high-end Smoky. When I went home to look up the serial number that night, I realized I had watched this battle. My tank had been defending its base in a Capture-The-Flag event and had actually found itself facing three enemies. The Twins were mounted on a light tank that served to get its attention. As the defender turned to engage, two other tanks emerged from cover; to the left was a medium with a Vulcan, and far away to the right was a heavy with a Magnum. The pilot had made a mistake in turning to face the Twins, but was committed. He ignored the others and concentrated on finishing at least one enemy, but had to know that he was finished. Even his Mammoth would be no match for that incoming artillery after the pounding he had already taken. I remember watching the match with my parents when I was young, maybe five or six years old, remember how I’d felt the urge to cry while watching the brave tank stand its ground against three aggressors. I felt that way again. If he’d only known the Magnum was out there, had only been facing the correct direction, he could have held his ground. As it was, the enemies took his flag and won the game. Next weekend at Molly’s, I looked the remains over again. How had I missed the damage on the left side from the Gatling gun? The answer was that it was subtle, tiny little dents in the armor that were hidden by years of rust. I’d have needed to de-scale that side to have noticed. It was a while before I encountered Twee again, but when I did, the only thing I wanted to talk about was that tank. “The rusty patch should have given you a clue,” he said. “The parts of the tank that weren’t all shot up still had a healthy coating of paint. Next time, look for inconsistencies.” Well, duh, when he said it like that, it was pretty obvious. I smiled and gave him a hug. It was nice, actually, hugging somebody my own size! “Thank you,” I whispered. “You’re coming along nicely, Tadpole,” he replied.

I love the concept of this article! As a fan of real-life armor, it's nice to see someone else draw these parallels! Just expressing a difference of opinion, but the M4 was inferior to the Panzer IV, and the Panzer IV was inferior to the T-34. I'd argue that the M4 Sherman was the least effective tank of its era. It was, I think, the least efficient tank at the beginning of the war, but by the end of the war, the Tiger probably held that particular crown.

What I've learned is that there's not really an "average" turnaround time. It seems to be contingent on three things: 1. Availability of a Helper. There are only a handful of people looking at these articles. They give as much time as they can, but volunteering on a forum is bound to take a back seat to other priorities on occasion. 2. Workload. How many stories are there in the queue? That's a variable. Also, is the newspaper publication date approaching? There's overlap between the people who approve articles here and the ones who work on the paper. 3. The neediness of the article. If an article is well-written, grammatically sound, and generally not in need of correction, it will get posted faster. The more help an article needs, the longer an approval will take. Trying to correct mistakes without changing the intent of an author's words must be a difficult, and time-consuming, process.

I'm thinking about moving my consolidation page here from the FAQ. I didn't do it earlier because I was lazy, and didn't see a need. Now that I've been promoted, it's a link that doesn't work for me! D'oh! Wish I'd decided to move it when I just had 30 or so stories posted!

Loving it!

Thanks, LOL! Although I can't speak to any formatting glitch, it looks right to me! I did catch two typos after the fact, though... Looks like I am slipping ;)

yep!

Molly’s - Chapter 9 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii Once Molly was gone, I stomped over to the tank and got straight to work. No, no I didn’t. If I’m being honest, I sulked. “Look, but see. What’s that supposed to mean?” “Stupid little man.” “Molly must be out of her mind.” These are some of the useful mutterings I occupied myself with while pretending to study the stupid tank. Probably, I wasted two hours on that, getting sulkier and sulkier as I got more and more miserable standing out in the hot sun. I decided to take my lunch break early. Sitting in the air conditioned showroom, munching my pb&j as I strolled around the displays, I let myself remember all the fun that I’d been having here, and all that I’d learned. I ran my hand over a stabilizing gimbal with a bit of love. I’d helped Frau pull this one out of a turret and now it was on the showroom floor. I licked my fingers clean and sighed a deep sigh. “Let it go, Tadpole, let it go” I told myself. Funny, that’s how I thought of myself now. Tadpole. It was more my identity than the name I’d been using all my life. Well, Tadpole wasn’t going to spend any more time sulking. Tadpole was going to learn how to see. I went to my locker and loaded my toolbelt with items I thought may prove useful, then slugged down a bottle of water before returning to the sun. I repeated my walkaround, this time not harrumphing or pondering, just looking. I didn’t see anything wrong with my initial assessment; medium sized tank, medium sized gun. Frowning, I stared at the muzzle of the cannon. Definitely in the 100mm range, but what was it exactly? I trotted back to the garage and grabbed a set of calipers. Climbing out to the end of the barrel wasn’t terribly hard for someone as nimble as I am, but sitting there trying to get an accurate measurement of the bore took all of my balance and coordination. It was 125 mm, which is on the edge of allowable for a Classic. I shone a flashlight down the bore. It was smooth, not rifled! Ok, that was technology from post WWII, so I was clearly wrong about this tank fighting in a historical division. Smoothbore allowed for some very advanced munitions; a 125mm smoothbore was serious firepower by any standard. So, why put such a gun on a medium tank? I walked around, tapping the surface with my heavy hammer. It wasn’t scientific, but I could get an idea of how thick the armor was by listening to the sound it made, and this tank had a surprisingly thin skin. It would be suicide to take a tank this soft into an arena which allowed advanced weaponry. What was the driver thinking? I stepped back and let my eyes float. Was there a faint lattice pattern in the paint? Leaning closer, I could see faint rectangular mismatches in the paint, as if an extra layer of paint had been applied after the tank had been covered with dozens and dozens of rectangles, each about 50 cm long and 30 cm wide. You’re probably there already, but it took me awhile to see the answer. Reactive armor! This thing had been covered in reactive armor, which would have made it more of a match for someone else’s big gun. Since there were no scorches to the paint, clearly it hadn’t been hit anywhere in the body or turret. Alright, if every other part of my initial assessment had been wrong, I was now willing to bet my impression of the damage was wrong as well. I went to the left tread and peered at it very carefully. The front drive wheel was mangled; its spokes were all chewed off. And there was a hole clean through it, almost dead center. I put the calipers on that hole; it was approximately 30mm. So, not shrapnel, but a mighty good shot from a hyper-velocity weapon, probably a railgun. Jiminy Christmas! A precision shot like that would cripple this tank. Probably the drive wheel would end up welded to the chassis; at the very least, the gearing and differential inside were shredded. Either way, the drive wheel would not want to turn. Forcing the issue would damage the underside of the track, which a quick glance assured me was the case. But the color of the exposed metal was wrong. I knew what hardened steel looked like, and now that I was looking, the color was wrong. I used my hammer to tap the drive wheel, road wheels, the links, everything I could reach. They all sounded wrong. So, not steel. Titanium? Not to be redundant, but Jiminy Christmas! The expense of that! But it would shave a lot of weight off the drivetrain, plus make that vulnerable area a little tougher. So, small tank, light armor, titanium treads. Everything in the name of weight. At this point, I was willing to bet that the engine inside was a monster; the driver had been depending on speed and agility to win the day. Whoever put that round through his drive wheel was either incredibly lucky or amazingly skilled. Walking around to the back of the tank, I decided on amazingly skilled. There was one more hole, almost perfectly centered in the engine compartment. I knew what I’d see when I opened the service hatch; a mangled mass of twisted metal. This tank was dead with a capital D! I grabbed my strap wrench (Olaf was right, those things are handy for everything!) and broke loose the toggles securing the engine maintenance hatch. What was inside was heartbreaking. The engine had been magnificent. It was indeed a monster, probably had more horsepower than a standard Juggernaut. There’s no doubt that this tank would have been FAST. But it was only wreckage now, nothing but gleaming, shiny, shredded bits of metal, completely decimated by that hyper-velocity slug. Peering in, I could see that even the inner firewall had been breached, the skin of the pilot’s capsule showing through. Wow. I sat down and thought about how this would have played out. That much engine on a tank so light, it would have been blazing fast in a straight line. But could it maneuver at that speed? With the hull, armor, and treads so light, the 125mm cannon would make her top-heavy. A hard turn at speed may well flip her over. Heck, firing the gun to one side may well flip her over! The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. With the reactive armor, probably this driver’s best choice would have been to charge the railgun headon. Count on taking one hit, surviving it, and closing to effective range for the Smoky before taking a second. Trying to dance around would invite the type of damage I was seeing. So, unless I was missing something (and I was willing to entertain that possibility now), this was a case of a rich driver with little experience being owned by a genuinely skilled opponent. And Molly was right, this tank was a good salvage. The high-tech smoothbore seemed in perfect condition and would fetch a good price with very little labor involved. The titanium drive train, although not complete, would still be very attractive to others with more money than sense. I still had a couple of hours before Twee’s return. I decided to investigate a little more, see what else I could see. Climbing to the top of the turret, I opened the hatch and slid inside.

While I can neither confirm nor deny any link between my character and you, I can assure you that Twee rocks!

That link doesn't work, btw.

This is fun! I like the dog hiding from the thunderstorm, a lovely realistic detail.

Molly’s - Chapter 8 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii I spent the next week in the strangest emotional state. Or states. Sometimes I was euphoric, positively giddy from the sense of accomplishment and belonging that Olaf’s ceremony had produced. I still couldn’t believe that I was important to such a cool group of people! That feeling would normally shift to a sort of melancholy as I contemplated a year without seeing my new friends. From there, I’d get worried about what returning to Molly’s would be like. Would I find the same satisfaction scrubbing links and sweeping floors that I had before? I mean, I’d never really liked it, but I had enjoyed earning a place. Now that I had a locker, would I still be chief broom-pusher? But remembering the locker would remind me of the party, and my grin would return… And so it went. By far, the two most common questions I got asked that week were “What are you smiling about?” and “Are you ok?” As I pedaled up to the warehouse, there was a large flatbed truck parked outside with a tank on it. I could hear the rumble of the crane, see Molly driving it up as I leaned my bike against the wall and walked over to see what was going on. So far, I had only seen trucks laden with parts leaving Molly’s; I’d never been around when a new tank came in. I knew it happened; the periodic appearance of new tanks in the yard proved that. I’d just never seen it before. There was a person, a small man, standing on the tank, guiding Molly over with hand signals. Once she was in position and lowering the cables, he took care of catching them and securing them to the tank. After checking each connection several times, he lept lightly to the ground, picked up a pair of guide ropes, and gave Molly a thumbs-up. With the deep whine of a high-torque electric motor under strain, the tank rose slowly into the air. They didn’t move it far. Molly just rotated the crane a bit as the small figure walked along, using guide ropes to keep the tank from spinning. They set it down on the innermost ring, first to be stripped when needed or when Olaf’s crew returned. Or were there other crews that visited Molly’s on a different schedule? I didn’t know. Anyway, the closest tanks to the warehouse held the most valuable salvageable parts. The farther you got from that center, the fewer salable parts remained, until you got to the hulks that were only useful as recycled steel. The small person cleared the chains and waved Molly off, then walked over to stand beside me. When I say small, I mean it. Clearly he was an adult, but if elves were a real thing, then he was one of them. A grown person, but reduced to two-thirds scale in perfect proportion. “It never ceases to amaze me, how with just those two ropes I can control something as massive as a tank,” he said. I nodded. “Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.” He smiled. “It is one of those cases where the theory seems unbelievable until you find a way to try it in practice. So, speaking of theories, what’s your theory about this tank?” I looked at him. He was small, I mentioned that, so we were eye to eye. He was of a slimmer build than me; I felt a moment’s pity for an adult who was so tiny that I could probably take him. I had no idea who he was, but since I had nothing more pressing to do until Molly returned and put me to work, I decided to play along. It was a mid-sized tank with a common cannon, the kind that the Tanki commentators call “Smoky.” The cannon itself wasn’t terribly impressive, something in the 100mm range. Not a tank you’d see in the more popular Tanki categories; probably one of the historical events. It looked like the same level of capability that was used in WWII, so that put it in the Classic division. I made a great show of walking around the tank, peering at it, harrumphing, and nodding to myself. There was some damage to the left track around the front drive wheel. Clearly not a direct hit from another Smoky, the only cannon used in Classic, so most likely shrapnel from a near miss.That would have limited the tank’s movement, but probably not immobilized it. The only other damage was on the rear, where there were signs of fire having erupted from a small hole. Again, clearly not a direct hit, so another shrapnel hit. The driver probably kept fighting with a compromised cooling system and overheated his engine until it seized and burned. I walked smugly back to the man. “A medium tank with a medium gun, probably entered in the Classic historical division. And one very unlucky driver. Shrapnel from a near miss damaged his left tread and limited his maneuverability. I’m guessing he tried to flee, but shrapnel from another near miss punctured his radiator. He kept driving until his engine failed.” My smile was probably as obnoxiously smug as I felt. How about THAT, little man? Of course I didn’t say it, but I’m sure he heard it nonetheless. His laugh was pure Christmas. There was nothing malicious about it, only joyful, but he was clearly tickled by my little story. “Oh, Tadpole, next time spend more time looking, and less time pretending to look!” He walked away still laughing to meet Molly, who was returning. I struggled with my emotions. If I’m being honest, mostly I was embarrassed at being called out on acting the pompous ass. But what adolescent was ever honest with themselves about being wrong? I told myself I was angry. Who was that man? How dare he laugh at me like that? I’d made a thorough assessment (I hadn’t) and my theory was a good one! (it wasn’t). He had no right to laugh at me like that! (Ok, that’s debatable, but in hindsight (20/20, remember?) he wasn’t laughing at me, he was laughing at my posturing.) The man climbed into the cab of Molly’s car and, with a friendly wave in my direction, started the engine and headed out. “Who was that?” I demanded angrily of Molly. She smiled. “That is my partner, Twee.” Molly had a partner? “Twee is the one who scouts, evaluates, and bargains for the tanks that we strip here. Well, he’s one of the ones, but by far the best of the lot. He only brings us gold.” Gold? This tank? Molly’s partner, the man who earned his living evaluating and bargaining for busted armor, thought this tank was gold? “He’s gone home to shower and have a nap, but will be back before dinner to see if you’ve changed your mind.” She frowned a little at me. “Do not waste this opportunity. Your time with him comes out of our time together. He’ll be back on the road tomorrow morning. If you’re cutting into our quality time, you’d better be learning something!” Oh! By “partner,” she meant in more than one sense of the word! “Now, go. You spend the day with that tank. I’m supposed to tell you to ‘look, but more importantly, see.’ Go see what you can see.”

I've got 10 chapters written, and story ideas for 5 more. Looks like we're about halfway through right now.

Nope!

Thanks! ANd I appreciate the insta-post on this one!! ;)

Molly’s - Chapter 7 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii The last Sunday that I was going to see Olaf and his crew was a bittersweet occasion, to say the least. It had just been six weekends, but I really liked these people, and they seemed to really like me. Plus, I fit into the team! I mean, it wasn’t like going to classes or playing intramurals or anything like that. Sure, I was the kid, and sure, I had a ton to learn, but everyone treated me like a person, you know? They put me to work wherever they needed my help, just like anyone else. My lack of skills may have limited those options, but still, they never treated me like anything other than the new addition to the team. I was sure going to miss that. They weren’t rolling out until Wednesday. Normally, they would hold a party on their last day, but knowing I wouldn’t be able to attend until after school, they bumped it up to Sunday. Which just goes to show that they really did like having me around! My parents were invited as well, which mortified me, but was out of my control. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a party with a crew of people who work, seriously work, for a living. Olaf’s crew had been laboring at Molly’s, nonstop, for six weeks. They had steam that needed to be blown off, make no mistake. My folks had cautioned me before we went that if things got too rowdy, or if it seemed to them that there was too much drinking or recreational pharmaceutical use, we’d be leaving early. It wasn’t anything like that, at least not while we were there. It seemed like everyone on the crew played some sort of musical instrument. Some were barely able to play a couple of songs, a few were downright amazing, but they all took turns playing, and everybody seemed to enjoy it all. Not all of them were skilled singers, but that didn’t stop everyone from joining in on the songs they knew. The food truck crew outdid themselves, with wave after wave of deliciousness flowing in alternating waves of sweet and savory. Steak fingers were chased by melon coolers were chased by pizzas were chased by cookies… you get the idea. And the games! Using broken bearing cases to improvise a set of horseshoes; round after round of “guess what this piece is”; timed carburetor assembly; pugil stick duels while balancing on a tank barrel (the bout between Olaf and Shock was epic!) Clearly, these folks were old hands at using materials on-hand to entertain themselves. This was also the first time I got to meet Molly’s mechanics: Maurine, Gran, and Conrad. I felt a little shy around them; they seemed to be very interested in me and kept making excuses to come over and talk, or to bring me a pastry, or to invite me to play a game. I mean, I appreciate that they were being nice, but I didn’t really know them, you know? As it was getting close to time for me to leave, Olaf called everyone together in a circle. “Friends, it’s always a delight when we come to see Molly and her crew!” The crowd cheered and clapped enthusiastically; Molly smiled and hugged the gentle giant. “And this year, we’ve made a new friend in her new Tadpole!” This time, the hooting and clapping was for me. I didn’t know what to do, so I burst out in tears and ran up to hug Olaf and Molly together. He stroked my hair in a soothing manner, his hand larger than my head, as he continued. “We all started somewhere. More than one of you started here at Molly’s.” There were murmurs of agreement and some nodding heads. Really? Some of Olaf’s crew had started out just like me? “Tadpole,” Olaf pulled me away from the group hug so he could address me directly. “Tadpole, you have really earned the right to be here tonight. And we’re going to miss you. But every young mechanic needs their own tools. So, we’re going to help get you started.” With a grand gesture of his arm, he spun me around. There stood my parents! Dad was holding a new toolbox, and Mom a tool belt. She walked up and wrapped it around my waist, then Dad handed me the box. I’m sure I mumbled something about being thankful. Surely I mumbled something about being thankful. I sure hope I mumbled something about being thankful. Anyway, Olaf tussled my head and said “Until we see you next year!” everyone hooted and stomped their feet and applauded again. I didn’t know what to do, but the crowd broke up and the party resumed, so at least they weren’t all staring at me. Mom and Dad walked me over to a vacant chair and sat me down while I tried to process the emotions that were overwhelming me. As I sat there, Olaf walked up and handed me a large strap wrench. “It’s amazing to me how often these things come in handy,” he said, then walked away. As I was turning it over in my hands, Shock came up and handed me a two kilo hammer. “These are great for pounding link pins,” he said. Not knowing what else to do, I put it in my empty toolbox, and slipped the strap wrench into the pouch on my new belt. “A good mechanic is never without a screwdriver,” said Tau, hardly pausing as she walked by and handed me a five-piece set of them. And so it went. For the next hour or so, people would break away from what they were doing and walk over to give me a tool (or set of tools.) By the time it was done, my toolbox would barely close and my tool belt was weighing me down. I was so happy that I cried, over and over again, as the gifts kept coming. But I think the best gift, the very best of all, came from Molly. As we were heading to the car, me struggling under the weight of my new tools (of course I wouldn’t let anyone help me!), she intercepted us. “There’s an open locker in bay one if you want to claim it, Tadpole.” Me! Can you imagine it? Me, with my own locker! My own tools! If ever there had been a point of no return for my association with Molly’s, there was no doubt I was on the other side now.

I debated using "behind closed doors" and "in my absence" but those didn't fit with the adolescent simplicity of Tad's thought processes. The machinations are not internal to Tad; they are external forces beyond Tad's control.