Take This Foot

She slowly spun her back foot, digging her toe into the blood-drenched soil. She assumed she'd only get one chance, the soon official King of these lands was expecting another dull, meek princess. Not one well versed in combat, and whom could break a man's neck with a spin kick.

As he approached, she told herself that she would certainly die, but she'd be saving the lands, so it was alright.

He stood before her, she jumped, and kicked.

The pain of her broken foot was nothing compared to the emotional pain of failure, but she eventually got over both.

Path Review

I need, every so often, to stop and review where I am, so I can try to work out where I'm going.

I don't subscribe to any sort of mystical powers or beliefs, karma or whatever. But I do feel that if you're going to try and calculate where you're going to end up, you need to understand and come to terms with where you have been.

The path I've taken so far has been long and hard. At least, I hope it is, compared to the easy road ahead.

I never said I had to be realistic about this.

Booking Problems

The boss said that he wanted the next champion to be legit, a real 'shooter'. So I lined up the former MMA guy.

But he was too bland, apparently, so the boss vetoed him. So I set up the most charismatic guy on the roster to take it.

But he was too risky with his drug use and also got vetoed. The born again guy I pushed next, but he couldn't talk well enough.

Every time I settled on someone, there was a problem with them. So the bosses' son ended up reigning for over a year. Funny that, huh?

Seconds

The second the question left my lips, I'd have given anything other than her to pull it back. The second after that was spent staring at her face, her eyes widening as she realised what I had just asked.

The second after that was more of the same, her eyes as wide as she usually made them by the time the following second was done.

But as long as those four seconds were, they seemed a mere fraction of time compared to the four seconds she took to think and then answer.

"All right, but I choose the second girl."

Source Of His Power

We knew that the source of the Evil King's power was a powerful ring. So the plan was to sneak into his throne room, cut it off, then Zimin would shove his flaming sword up the King's backside.

The sneaking in worked. But when we got into the throne room, we were a little put off to find the Evil King had rings through most of his body parts.

We tried cutting a few off, but he just laughed at us. Growing impatient, Zimin made good on his part of the plan.

Turns out the ring was his actual ring.

The Wisdom Of Wise Words

Sometimes you need to burn bridges to see where you’re going.

But.

Sometimes the leap of faith you need to take is to not jump.

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side. And sometimes it’s plastic. And sometimes that’s fine.

Too much wisdom is taken as being infallible, because people don’t think of it as wisdom, they just see trite phrases that look good superimposed over mountains.

Every right move is a wrong move in another context. There’s always an exception to a rule.

Except pineapple on pizza, but then the rule exception rule needs an exception also.

Hangover Time

With a stable time loop of my older self giving to me before he died, I had a time machine from when I was 21. And while I probably would have done it anyway, my older self told me that while trying to change history was dangerous, merely being places was probably fine.

So naturally I attended every major party and indulged in quite a few pleasures. I had Little Su before she was ill, I drank with Lipstick while listening to The Duke, I was there when Unia burned!

Wait, what do you mean you've not heard of...

Dammit.