DM Dailies Completion Thread [2025]

Sasha-5 sidestepped over to the left and peered over the side of the crate. In the darkness, she could make out moving figures that dodged in and out of view, behind crates and past them. She counted three, and they all seemed around the same height. By her estimations, they were only just taller than her.

As they moved closer, she was able to make them out better. They all had flashlights attached to their head, and when they looked to each other, she could get her first look at her to-be enemies. They were clearly not human.

They had four arms, all of them, and masks hooked up to where their mouths and noses were presumably at. Their bodies looked more like oblong giant insectoids than human-like. In one of the four hands, each of them held a long gun.

Sasha-5 ducked under one of the light beams and snuck over to the left of the room, where one of the three split off. Sasha-5 held herself close against the crate and stilled her breath. Light splashed on the wall in front of her, the beam getting smaller and smaller. It got close enough for Sasha-5 to hear its breathing through the mask. It came out as a rattle with each exhale, like it was forced or strained. The clicking from earlier might not have been their language or speaking, but rather their breathing. Sasha-5 didn't have time to pursue that line of thinking any further.

She waited as the enemy inched further forward, past the crate. The gun poked its way into her field of vision first, the flashlight bobbing to its movement. Sasha-5 was just far enough out of its way for it to not shine on her, and its light bobbed along the wall across from her, tightening its circle as the being stalked forth. It swinged its gun to the right, away from the crate. Sasha-5 waited as long as she could, until she could see its arms, and it began its tracking to the left. Just before it shined its light on her, she struck first.

The trip through New Zealand was amazing! Cloud had always appreciated the little nation because it felt like an ideal place to visit and an ideal place to live. He was such a nerd when it came to New Zealand. So of course the first thing he booked was a trip to the shooting of The Lord of The Rings. He actually hiked up the mountains where they filmed some of the extended shots, and it felt like magic to be where the actors were, to experience what they had experienced. When he rested on his hike, he could truly begin to feel like he was a part of all of it. Truly magical, the experience.

Of course, as of about two years ago, Cloud's entire worldview of what magical was had been completely shattered and torn apart when the truth came out. See, Cloud was not exactly what people called the perfect student in school. He didn't come from one of those wealthy, influential neighborhoods in New Jersey where the schools basically had more private tutors than students. Nah, see, he came up as the son of a migrant single mother who had to work two jobs just to keep them in one of the shoddy apartments in the rougher parts of the city. He came up as a son with a single mother who never talked about his completely absent father and berated Cloud whenever he tried to bring it up. So Cloud didn't have a father figure and there were many nights when his mama was working late and he found himself not having a mother figure either. And in those scenarios, what's a hyperactive boy to do? Definitely not learn, that was for sure.

So, Cloud wasn't really the best student. School bored him and he quickly fell behind the rest of his class. Reading was hard, comprehension was harder, and whenever he struggled, he acted out to get out of the embarassment. He fell more and more behind and he never really had a teacher care about him. By the time he got into high school, all teachers had been warned pre-emptively of his rowdy behavior, so they knew what to expect and didn't waste their time on him. It hurt, but hey, he got it. By his senior year, he had almost completely given up on his future and decided he would do what he wanted. Thankfully, by that time his mama was able to get a better paying job and didn't have to work two, so she was able to spend more time with him. She saw the writing on the wall (she always knew anything and everything Cloud tried to hide from her) and told him that he should get his GED if he wanted to drop out. It was either graduate or GED; she wouldn't accept anything else.

So they worked their asses off to help him study for the GED. And his mom was by far a better and more understanding teacher than anyone in a public school. When he got his GED, he told his mom he wanted to explore the world. He wanted to never leave the sun (which was more of an exaggeration than literal, but he did mean it) and that was when his mother finally told him about his father and the world he had been missing out on his whole life.

See, his dad, apparently, was Apollo, the Greek Sun God. Geez, even thinking about it was still a bit odd, but it also weirdly just made sense.