Alex shot up from lying on the floor to a sitting position. Two Orcish guards stepped up behind the soul-forged, restraining his arms, one quickly locking a set of binding cuffs to Alex’s wrists. “Hey! Hey!” Alex protested. “I’m not the problem here. I was punched by the problem,” he nodded his head toward the Ceangar. “She’s the problem.”
The two orc guards that rushed up behind Fee Fee moved to restrain her, grabbing both of her arms and about to move them behind her back, already pressing her down. However, the Fury was stronger. She ripped one arm free from one orc, the clenched fist bursting into yellow-gold flames before driving that fist into the groin of the second. The second guard crumpled to the ground even as Fee Fee’s second fist burst into flame. She hammered the freed gauntlet into the jaw of the first guard with a powerful leap. The first guard was flung backwards, striking the ground, unconscious.
By this point, Vex had already drawn her hexgun, aiming carefully at the powerful Ceangar despite her shaking hands. “Why can’t you schizo stalkers just leave me alone?!” Vex demanded.
“We’ve got a job.” Fee Fee said with a casual smirk. “And that job’s you. The guild wants you back, and the Gathering of the Petals is more than a wee bit pissed with you for flying the coop.”
This was when Alex heard one of the orcs restraining him call in an order for backup after watching what Fee Fee had done to the first two.
“The Order of the Gilded Rose doesn’t own me,” Vex said defiantly. “I’m a free woman and want nothing to do with you lunatics.”
“That is where you are clearly in the wrong.” Came an elegant voice from behind Fee Fee. A graceful female figure stepped over an unconscious orc guard with a disgusted glance toward the figure at her feet. She was a High Elf. Her golden-blond hair was worn long and tied back in an intricate braid. Her eyes were shards of crisp ice behind a pair of half-moon spectacles, locked on Vex, who took a half-step back on reflex. The Elven woman wore a thick and long coat of snow-white fur over a fine white and blue dress suit of armor thread. The coat was made from the hide of a dire snow porcupine, complete with its dangerous quills. Her steps were punctuated by the clicking of her frosted glass high-heeled shoes on the metal floor of the dreadnought. “When you agreed to join the guild and signed those documents, you agreed to membership for a minimum of one hundred years. As a half-blood, that is only a small third of your lifespan. You’ll have your freedom once you finish your contract term.”
The two remaining guards drew their kinetic rifles and aimed at the Fury. Before either of them could pull the trigger, Fee Fee conjured four hovering javelins of pure flame, then launched two at each guard. The flaming weapons flew true, striking both orcs in the chest, passing clean through armor and flesh with little resistance. The two guards fell dead.
“Hello, Mesarra,” Vex said through clenched teeth.
“Hope you don’t mind that I called in backup,” said Fee Fee with a mischievous smile.
Vex let out an audible growl before turning to make her escape to the rear cars. She fled as far as Alex’s position before she struck something hard, knocking her to the floor beside the Soulforged.
Alex looked behind him to find another woman standing in a combat-ready stance. A Human woman with black, short-cut hair and eyes the color of tanned buffalo leather, dressed in a black and purple armor jacket over a gray tank top. Her right eye was a cybernetic implant that glowed with a sharp red light. Vex had bounced off a magic energy shield projected from the woman’s outstretched right hand. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said in a stern tone.
“Good to see you too, Willow,” Vex growled as she pushed herself to her elbows.
Alex flexed his mechanical arms, shattering the restraints before pulling himself to his feet even as Tro hurried over to help Vex to her own feet. Sin stood there, near the Fury, with a dumbfounded look on his face. Alex traded a look between each of the three new women and Vex, confused at the situation, but knowing that then was not the time for questions. What mattered was apparent. These women were after Vex, and as much of a bitch as she could be, she didn’t deserve whatever these schizos intended for her for that hundred-year contract.
“I don’t think so,” Alex said coldly before he spun and drove a fist into the shield behind them. The powerful blow sent a ripple through the static kinetic field, along with a spiderweb of cracks. But the strike wasn’t enough to fully break the barrier. Instead, Alex was flung back yet again, launched through the air to land at the feet of the Fury.
Fee Fee looked down at Alex with an amused expression. “Aww. Aren’t you a cute metal man. There’s no breaking Willow’s shields with something as weak as a punch. Kotos on cracking it though.”
Alex made to roll over to get to his feet, but was stopped when Fee Fee drove a glowing punch into his chest, knocking him not just back to the floor, but denting the metal plates beneath him. He moved to push himself up only to be jarred to a halt by the same fist that drove him down, held firmly in place with a strength greater than even that of an average ceangar, which could surpass the strength of an average human. Fee Fee gave Alex an amused smirk as she lowered her face to just in front of his skull. “You’re not about to interrupt our job, Skull Face. We’ve been chasing this dove for a while now, and now we’ve got her cornered, we’re not about to let some two-copper trog ruin it for us.”
Alex struggled against the Fury but had no success until something struck her in the chest with enough power to force the woman to stagger back a few steps. Alex turned his head in the direction of the attack to find Tro pointing a hand at the ceangar with an irritated look in his eyes. “Won’t let you,” the Neoform growled out like a beast.
Alex scrambled to his feet, finding Vex standing next to her brother with her hexgun aimed at the woman in the fur coat. “You’re not taking me alive, Mesarra,” Vex said in a cold voice, only barely shaking with nerves.
Mesarra flashed Vex a cruel and pretentious smirk as she pushed her glasses up her nose. “You don’t get a choice, Dove. You’re cornered, caged. Nowhere to go. Nothing you can do. Your only support is your soft-minded brother and a machine with no combat prowess.”
Sin sauntered over to the food stall with nervous steps, plucked a kabob of chicken and peppers before strolling over to stand beside Vex, stumbling along the way. He took a bite of chicken, chewed twice, before spitting it out. “Undeniably undercooked.”
Mesarra raised a challenging brow at the Immortal. “And who do you think you are?”
“A problem,” Vex answered for Sin, even as Alex moved to stand beside the others of his lance.
Sin shot a look at Vex before looking back to the High Elf and echoing her answer, “A problem.”
Mesarra gave a light chuckle, half amusement, half ridicule. “You don’t look like you’ll be much trouble for us, dear boy. On the contrary, you look more akin to someone who’ll end up as another corpse for the corporate grinder.”
Sin opened his mouth to speak, but Vex cut in. She aimed her hexgun at Mesarra, said, “I think we’re done here,” and pulled the trigger. The gun gave a resounding crack and kicked with a flash of scarlet light. At the same time, there was a burst of blue-white light in front of Mesarra as the blue-white glow behind the lance vanished. A magic shield stood before the snow-clad Elf, concentric rings rippling out from the deflected bullet, just in front of her left eye.
Mesarra’s smirk never faltered. “You never learn, do you, Dove?”
Alex took his chance with the distraction. He spun and threw another punch at the Human woman who barred their way to the rear of the caravan. If she dropped the first shield to protect her lance leader, then she could only hold one at a time. That meant this Willow woman was vulnerable, and he could put her out of the fight. The punch was aimed at her chest, with what would’ve been enough force to crush bone.
Alex’s punch was caught by an open hand, stopping it cold as if he hadn’t just thrown a blow that he knew could’ve turned synth-crete to rubble. Willow gave him an amused look and squeezed her grip around his fist before giving the hand a confused look. “What are you made of?” She sounded baffled at something, but Alex didn’t have time to wonder.
Alex looked over his shoulder to find the Mesarra pointing a ring toward Willow, which glowed with a pure white radiance. The Elf’s smugness only deepened as Alex locked eyes with her. Alex’s gaze slipped to the rest of his team. Tro kept a veiled hand aimed at the Fury, who stood between Ill Omen and the Elf. Vex kept her gun aimed at the Elf, her free hand slowly reaching into a pouch at the back of her hips. But where was Sin?
The glance back had only been for an instant, but the Immortal was nowhere to be found. Alex turned back to his opponent, ready to make another play, when an arm wrapped around Willow’s neck. There was Sin, putting the Human woman in a chokehold with a desperate and panicked look on his face.
Willow’s eyes bulged as she dropped Alex’s fist, gripped Sin’s arm with both hands, and hurled him over her shoulders with massive force. Alex ducked the Immortal’s flight and used the same motion to right himself to throw an uppercut into Willow’s jaw. The woman was launched off her feet and into an adjacent market stall, scattering assorted hand-sized myst-tools across the floor, the metal surface dented deep enough to hold a dire wolf's head.
Alex turned and charged the Ceangar Fury like a bull, his metallic feet pounding on steel and Ebon Glass plating like a raging war drum. Sin hadn’t even landed as Alex charged. Even as Alex closed the distance, Sin between him and the Fury, Tro’s sleeve twitched with another fired shot from whatever he was using to attack.
Fee Fee snatched Sin from the air like he weighed less than a handball, blocked Tro’s shot with Sin’s back, before throwing the Immortal at Alex. Sin struck Alex at the legs, tangling and tripping the Soulforged. Alex hit the ground and tumbled.
Vex responded by hurling something at Fee Fee’s feet. A black metal cylinder made up of four thick, glyph-etched bands rolled to a stop at the Fury’s feet. The glyphs on the device flared with vermillion light, leaking smoke-like shadows. Fee Fee’s eyes went wide, and she made to lunge away with a curse, but she wasn’t fast enough. The device burst into four flying rings that split open and sealed shut on each of the Ceangar’s wrists and ankles. The vermillion light flared even brighter, and the power raging around her gauntlets guttered out like a snuffed candle. Black veins laced up her exposed skin; her strength sapped as the shackles drew to each other with an almost magnetic force. The Fury fell, hog-tied. She struggled against the binds like a mad animal, cursing in an endless cascade, partly at Vex, partly at the restraints.
Even before the Fury struck the floor, Vex drew aim with her hextech revolver at the now exposed and unprotected Mesarra. With Willow’s shield gone and the Fee Fee incapacitated, the Elf was vulnerable. As Alex pulled himself free from Sin, he wondered why the pompous woman hadn’t thrown a single attack or moved from her spot. Even staring down Vex’s weapon, Mesarra still smirked, unfazed.
Mesarra flicked two of the fingers of her ringed hand at the ground at her feet. A thread of white power laced from her ring to sink into the floor of the dreadnought. The glow from that thread of light seeped into the plate floor, spreading a luminous glow through the whole of the car they stood in. Fee Fee’s bonds dimmed and weakened as moats of light rose from the floor to seep into the manacles.
Vex cursed and fired at Mesarra with another burst of scarlet light. Mesarra twitched her fingers to the left, and a gust of wind filled the closed space. The wind shouldn’t have been strong enough, but Vex’s shot flew off course to strike an Ebon Glass plate behind and to the left of the Elf woman and ricocheted with a loud ‘TING’ before flying to places unknown.
Fee Fee ripped free of her bonds, shattering the dark metal like plain glass. She climbed back to her feet, ready to keep up the fight. Her body began to emanate a glow matching the power that infused the floor. The Fury’s orange and ash eyes gave off a subtle glow of enriching power.
Tro’s sleeve twitched, followed by the pinging sound of something small and metal ricocheting at high speed. Fee Fee’s foot went out from under her, and she dropped to one knee.
Alex untangled himself from the thrashing Sin, who seemed to be having some form of seizure. The Soulforged scanned the field, searching for that Willow woman, nervous for her to rejoin the scuffle. He found her behind his team yet again, only this time, she held a long sword in both hands, plated in the same energy as the shields she’d blocked his attacks with. She raised the weapon, ready to drop Trouble while his focus was honed on the two before him. Alex would not abide such a cowardly attack from behind. He rushed her, covering all eight steps between him and her in an instant before he drove a shoulder into her gut.
Willow fell backwards in a sprawl, her long sword skittering away as the encasing power dissolved. Alex stood there, watching the woman, ready for her to try something else. But he wouldn’t act unless she tried something. She was one hot woman after all. Maybe he could convince her into his bed. That was sure to get her to change sides. No woman who’d touched his loins for an evening had ever been able to resist his manly charms.
While Alex was lost in thought, things got worse. Blood-red tendrils erupted from Sin’s chest, lashing out at anything and everything surrounding the Immortal. The limbs struck stalls and walls alike, causing a cacophony of beating. Sin thrashed and spasmed at the core of the seething limbs that blindly sought anything to feed on.
“Damn it!” Mesarra cursed, even as she redoubled her power, infusing the floor. As the glow grew in intensity, the tendrils slowed and shrank, but nowhere near enough to kill the effect of Vex’s hex round that had entered Sin’s body, which had been intended for the Elf woman.
“We need to fall back!” Fee Fee called as she leaped away from a tentacle that almost caught her around the chest.
“Back to the truck!” Willow called from behind Alex and his team. Before her team could answer, Willow raised a shield, encompassing Mesarra, and waved for her to hurry past the writhing threat. For Mesarra’s part, she looked more than a little reluctant to take that chance, but when Fee Fee leaped over Sin with an adept backflip, the Elf had little choice. She sprinted along one wall, ducking one scarlet limb and jumping over another before passing Vex and the team.
As Mesarra passed Vex, the Hexxen Bane threw a punch with her gauntleted fist glowing with vermillion power. This blow ruptured the shield like a soap bubble. Without skipping a beat, Vex drove the same fist into Mesarra’s gut, knocking the wind from her lungs and forcing her to double over. When the blow made contact, there was a flare of red-purple light from the point of contact.
Vex raised her sidearm to the Elf’s head, but before she could pull the trigger, Fee Fee tackled Vex, driving her to the floor. The Ceangar punched Vex across the face, once, twice, before Trouble dragged her off his sister and flung her at Willow. The Human caught the Ceangar with ease and set her aside even as Mesarra reached the two. As one, the three women turned and fled toward the rear cars.
Vex traded a look between Sin and her fleeing pursuers before snarling out, “Damn it!”
Alex half turned to follow their attackers as the three women vanished into the next car. However, as they fled, the glow that saturated the floor vanished. In response, the threatening tendrils grew in size, number, and speed. They couldn’t just leave the Immortal like that. This shitshow of a situation could get people hurt or worse, Alex thought to himself. They needed to fix Sin before they could even think of chasing those damned slither-spined trogs.
Without warning, Alex’s prayers were answered, at least in part. A vial of something gray-black flew from the other side of Sin to land and shatter across the immortal. The fluid seeped into the grotesquely deformed Sin, and the hazardous effect of the hex round slowed and nearly died out, but not completely.
From the other side of Sin, Architallis stepped forward with another vial in one hand, his pocket lab in the other, and Potato resting on his shoulder, chewing on something metal. The Vhenari calmly walked forward, eyeing the mutilated Immortal on the floor, six-foot threads still seeking hungrily from his chest. “What exactly happened here?”
“Explain later,” Vex said with authority, even as she reached into her hat to pull free a bundle of wire cable. She shoved the cable into Tro’s hands, then pointed at Sin. “Get that around his neck. Tie the other end to something heavy.” Vex turned to Architallis and pointed to the floor of the dreadnought. “I need you to melt a hole through there.” She then turned to Alex. “Once that’s all done, you throw him down the hole. We’ll pull him out after the effect wears off in a few minutes.”
“But, what about…” Alex trailed off as he pointed in the direction the attackers had fled.
“I’m going after them. Catch up when you can. I’m done letting those bitches chase me around like some piece of hunting game,” Vex said, even as she turned and sprinted in the direction Alex had pointed.
Vex rushed to follow the Gilded Rose lance. She wasn’t about to let them get away to ambush her again. Vex was done with this cat-and-mouse game. It was about time she sent a message to the rest of the guild of snakes.
Vex passed through one hatch into another car to find herself facing a wall of bodies. The crowd from the last car that had fled from the fight. The bystanders all watched her with terror, ready to flee from the presumed madwoman if she made any threatening move. Heedless of their fear, Vex dove into the crowd of packed bodies, pushing through them with huffed and shouted commands to move. The innocent fled from her like cats from a wolf, moving for any path that would get them away from her. Many trampled each other and jarred Vex in their panicked hurry to get to assumed safety.
By the time Vex got through, the Gilded Rose lance was nowhere to be found. Vex caught when Willow had mentioned falling back to their truck, meaning Vex knew their destination. She’d checked the caravan’s map while they had made their way to their housing. The vehicle storage was near the rear.
Vex bobbed and weaved through cars and crowds, these less panicked than the last, but still difficult to navigate, nonetheless. She pushed through to the vehicle storage dreadnought, found the hatch that led to the storage space ajar, and hurried inside. The space was near total darkness, aside from the slits in the roof that allowed airflow. It stank of rust, oil, dirt, and something Vex couldn’t put her finger on. The space was wide enough to store two moderately large combat tanks side by side and long enough to store six of the same nose to tail.
Through the shafts of gold-orange light, Vex spotted her team’s van at the foremost edge near the door. Aside from the van, Vex spotted three lightly armored, in-settlement road cars, a row of side-by-side mono-cycle bikes, a few armored field vehicles of various designs, and a single, massive Brutallis tank at the rear. Vex couldn’t help but wonder who in their right mind would bring something like the Brutallis to Conan’s Fall settlement. Something like that beast was meant for dealing with some of the larger and nastier monsters… or laying siege to a medium settlement.
There was a scuffling sound to Vex’s left, and her head snapped in that direction. She slid along the wall toward the noise, careful not to make a sound. A flicker of movement between two cars caught Vex’s eye, and she slipped closer. The sound of harsh mutterings came from the other side of the car Vex hid behind. Two doors opened and shut with slams. A buzzing alarm sounded as the dreadnought’s loading hatch swung wide.
Vex stood, reaching her arms over the roof of the car she’d hid behind, and fired off a blind shot as an engine kicked up with a rumbling roar. As the hatch swung wide, the light that flooded in revealed a large, armored, white and blue truck armed with two or three weapon systems Vex didn’t have time to identify. A small ding could be seen on the passenger-side door. The only evidence of her attack.
The pitch and pattern of the buzzer changed as the platform holding the enemy truck raised and swung to deposit it outside. The truck reversed at a jarring speed, landing on a dirt road before vanishing behind the rolling caravan in an instant.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Vex said as she spun on her heel and made for the rearmost car. She made it half a dozen steps when she spotted a pulsing blue glow between two of the city road cars. Vex followed the pulsing light to find an emergency beacon. ‘Why would they pop a beacon?’ Vex wondered. ‘Did they have backup? But there was no way that the Order of the Gilded Rose would waste a second Purple Rose Lance to collect me. I’m just a wayward. Those high and mighty Roses only think of me as some lost and misbehaving child.’
Vex didn’t have time for this. Those bitches were getting away. She turned and sprinted to the rear of the caravan. The path was almost empty, devoid of bystanders. Vex entered the rear car to find her lance arguing with a pack of irritated guards.
“For the last time!” Alex shouted in protest, “We didn’t start this disaster! It was those schizo, lunatic women.”
“I don’t see any women here,” the lead guard said in rising and hot irritation. “All I saw were four bodies of my men and the three of you,” the guard gave a horse-like snort and disgusted sneer as he looked down at Ex.
“Five,” Vex corrected as she stepped up beside Alex.
“What?” asked the lead guard.
Vex straightened her shoulders and locked eyes with the Orc who stood a head and a half taller than her. “There are five of us.”
“Find them?” Tro asked from behind Vex.
Vex half turned her head to her brother to answer, but never looked away from the eyes of the lead guard. “They got away, but left a surprise. Not sure what for.”
“You’re spewing the same dreck that these schizos? Where are these evil women that your mechanical friend claims killed my men and damaged our dreadnought market?”
Vex’s face screwed up in anger and disgust. “They got away. Jumped into a truck and ran.”
“They drove a truck off our moving caravan? And you expect me to believe that?” The captain sneered. “And what’s this surprise you claim they left? Did you plant a bomb on my caravan?”
“What?!” Vex exclaimed. “No! They left an emergency beacon in the vehicle storage. No clue why, since I don’t think they brought backup.”
“You did what?!” the captain said in a tone that cracked like a whip.
“What’s wrong?” Vex asked, confusion clear on her face.
The captain pointed an accusing finger at Vex. “You know what you did. I’ll deal with you after we get out of danger.”
“What danger?!” Vex demanded.
Borgash, the guard who had allowed the lance to board, stepped into the car, tension in his shoulders and neck plain to see. “We’re passing through an Orange Threat Zone. Bandit clans are known to frequent the area.”
As if cued by the Orc’s words, there was a loud BANG of a cannon shot. Immediately after, the caravan car jounced, sending Vex and Architallis staggering and throwing Ex off his feet. Tro held his feet with no issue, riding the jolt of motion like an experienced surfer on rough waves.
The guard captain tapped the therra-node at his temple and shouted commands before storming to the door, stopping in the doorway to speak over his shoulder. “I’m not about to let your friends have their way. If you interfere, I will have you killed.”
“Then let us prove we are not with them,” Architallis said as he righted himself using a table.
“Good thought,” Vex said. “Ex, Tro, take those guns by the rear gate,” she pointed to the two kinetic burst cannons that she had been fawning over before boarding. Next, Vex turned and pointed to Archi. “Sin should still be affected by the bullet he took. Is he still dragging his heels under us?”
“I-um… yeah,” the Vhenari answered nervously. “However, my arcane dampening compound has likely worn off by now.”
“Perfect,” Vex said with a smirk. “Head back to the hole. When I give the signal, cut him loose, but leave plenty of cable trailing him.”
“Why?” Archi asked with a raised brow.
“Shut your snout and go!” Vex commanded.
The guard captain stepped aside as Archi hurried past, then turned to the rest of the guards in the space. “Watch them. If they do anything suspicious, restrain and detain them… or just shoot them and throw their bodies to the bandits.”
Vex ignored the command and continued with her own plan. “Ex, punch down the boarding ramp.”
“What?” he asked.
“Shut up and do it!”
Alex shrugged, rolled his shoulders as he stepped up to the closed ramp. He pulled his fist back in a cartoonish windup before throwing the blow. The punch struck with a sound like a gong, denting the metal and snapping the latches that held it in place.
Behind the caravan was a fleet of no less than a dozen road warrior bandit cars, armor-plated and armed to the teeth with slapped-on weapons that ranged from small-caliber kinetic to large-scale elemental launchers. Each car was covered in spikes and blades, many adorned with rotting corpses or desiccated bones and flesh scraps. A car to the left of the caravan fired a blast from a frost cannon, striking the edge of the rear dreadnought and coating it in a spiked glob of ice the size of an orc. Luckily, the attack missed the treads, but it locked the kinetic burst cannon on that side in place.
“Damn it!” Vex cursed. “Ex, on the gun, NOW!” she pointed to the remaining functional defense weapon. “Blast these trogs back to the Lost Age,” she turned to Tro. “I need you to ride the ramp. It’s gonna be bumpy, but you're the only one who can. Watch for the dumbass Immortal and catch the cable. We need to trail him behind us for this to work.”
Tro gave a single nod before dropping to all fours and scampering down the ramp with motions somewhere between a wolf and a spider. As Tro was moving, Alex had wrapped his hands around the gun emplacement handles and drew a bead on the foremost car. He pulled the triggers, and the cannon gave a roaring ‘HWUMPH’ as a wave of solid force shot forward. The burst of near-invisible force struck the car at an angle, catching the tire and front quarter panel, launching the attacking vehicle off course and into another pursuer in a crash of screaming metal and rupturing rubber.
Vex turned to Borgash. “Where’s the controls to empty the septic tank above?”
The orc pointed to a control panel against the left side of the space. “The big brown button.”
“Great,” Vex said with a huff as she hurried over to the control console. She tapped her therra and started a call with Archi. The moment he picked up, she shouted, “NOW!”
“You don’t need to shout.” Architallis replied calmly, shortly followed by “Done. He’s heading your way now.”
Vex slammed the sewage button with a closed fist. At the same time she shouted over her shoulder, “Tro! You’re up!”
“Can do!” was her brother's reply.
Vex hurried back to the opening, just in time to see the ramp jump up as a mass of scarlet tentacles and Sin shot out from beneath. Tro snatched up the cable and took two steps back. Sin dragged along, directly beneath the fountaining spring of biological waste, coating him and the tendrils in foul-smelling paste.
“Lengthen the line!” Vex shouted to Tro over the rushing wind. “We need him as close to those bastards as we can get him.”
Tro did as instructed, feeding the line until Sin was dragging and bouncing among the chasing bandits, the tentacles lashing out at the cars, spraying sewage across the windshields, blinding the leading drivers, forcing them to slow and allowing others to take the head of the chase.
Vex jumped over to beside Alex and slapped the back of his skull to get his attention. “Hey!” he complained.
Vex jabbed a thumb towards the other kinetic burst cannon. “Trade. Crack that one free. We’re going to play paddle ball with Sin.”
“What?” Ex asked.
“Just do it!”
Your fic is absolutely thrilling every twist, fight, and character reaction feels alive, and I love how the chaos of the battle keeps me on edge the whole time. How do you manage to keep track of so many moving parts and characters while making it all feel so coherent?