gu@rdi@n104: Looks like RL kept you busy for a while. The hive mind’s been pretty busy over here too. Had a chance to look yet?
ShyHand71: Not yet. It’s like you were poised and waiting for me to come back online.
gu@rdi@n104: Maybe I was. You’ll never know. Another reminder from your favorite forum admin that your 48 hours of silence are up. And then some, am I right? Comments and posting new threads are officially open to you now. Welcome to the club.
ShyHand71: Great. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Thanks.
Cheyenne grinned. “If the guy can’t pick up on virtual sarcasm, he can try to figure that one out all he wants.”
gu@rdi@n104: Glad to hear it. Let me suggest a quick peek into Topic #1742 by OP FerrisMedals82. You might find something interesting in there. If you have any questions, lmk.
ShyHand71: Got it.
The admin sent her a thumbs-up emoji, and Cheyenne exited the private chat. She still had no idea what she’d done to give gu@rdi@n104 the impression she was this drow Berserker resource everyone had been posting shout-outs to on the message board last week. “Maybe he’s as good at guessing as I am.”
With a shrug, she steeled herself to read the rest of the comments on the thread she’d clicked into before she went anywhere else.
AlpacaLipsMeow: Anyone have any news on the secret fight that went down on Thursday? A buddy of mine in the area said he’d heard it was F-Force, but the guy’s a chronic liar. Trying to double-check here. TIA.
FerrisMedals82: Maybe your buddy’s onto something. My cousin owns a bagel shop downtown. Said the assholes who’ve been pressing him under their thumb up and disappeared. Missed their last weekly round on Friday. Maybe D had something to do with it?
PWNpalACE420: It was a raid. I live two blocks away from the event center and saw F-Force with my own eyes. Black Hum-Vees and everything. Fell weapons. The whole deal. If D had something to do with it, he probably got popped during the raid. Or turned. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it after that.
AlpacaLipsMeow: @PWNpalACE420 I saw your original thread post from Thursday. If you saw F-Force out in the middle of the street by your house, how the hell did you miss seeing D? Nobody lives two blocks away from the event center, smartass. We might be on the dark web, but Google still works.
KlausTalker: @AlpacaLipsMeow Looks like your chronic liar of a cousin sent one of his friends to troll your thread. Sorry, @PWNpalACE420, but I have a hard time believing the D resource we heard about last week marched right into an F-Force raid on a whim. D’s been looking out for the little guy. All of us. Why would he think he needed to be a part of an F-Force raid? The guy’s obviously not an idiot. @FerrisMedals82 I want to hear more about your cousin’s shop and the inexplicable pause in the shakedowns. Maybe put up a new topic?
PWNpalACE420: @AlpacaLipsMeow Okay, asshole. You wanna make this real? I have no problem settling it in a fighting pit like back home. O’gúl-style. If your balls are big enough to take this out from behind the safe little square of your tiny keyboard in your mom’s basement, I’m all yours.
AlpacaLipsMeow: @FerrisMedals82 @KlausTalker I’d jump on a new thread about whoever’s gone missing after Thursday, F-Force or no F-Force. Nice to know when the lowlifes on this side get taken out. It would be totally cool if D were a part of it, wherever he is. He probably wasn’t, though. Still, our people catching a little bit of a break can’t be a bad thing.
AlpacaLipsMeow: @PWNpalACE420 Come at me, bro.
Cheyenne clicked out of the thread and let out a chuckle of disbelief. “These guys have way too much time on their hands. And they think I’m a dude. Of course, they do. Like eight-year-olds learning JavaScript.”
She scrolled to the top of the message board, where two new topic threads had been opened in the few minutes since she’d entered the Borderlands forum. Ignoring them both, she went to the topic that had previously been at the top and was now third in line. Topic #1742, OP FerrisMedals82: I Got 99 Problems but an Orc Trying to Strongarm Me Ain’t One.
“Geez, are these people for real?” Cheyenne forced herself to take a break and raid her kitchen for anything worth eating. Five days out cold with nothing but IV fluids meant the plate of FRoE-issue mush hadn’t made a dent in the giant hole her stomach had become.
“Groceries. I need groceries.” She grabbed the last box of all-natural fruit gummies and dumped out the last hand-sized package before tossing the empty box on the counter. “Mom would have a fit if she saw what I’m eating. Bet she’s never cracked open one of these.”
Smiling and chewing on the first few pieces, the halfling went back to her computer to enter the 99 Problems thread. She scanned the first ten comments before the rest of the thread turned into a speculation fest. “At least they got the major points right. Mostly.”
Seven different businesses owned and operated by magicals in the city and on the closest Border reservation had found it odd their regularly scheduled shakedowns hadn’t taken place, all of which would have gone down between Friday and today. Although nobody, including PWNpalACE420, could prove there had been an F-Force raid, all these magicals were under the correct impression that whatever had happened Thursday night was responsible for getting the thugs off their backs.
“Nobody has proof it was a FRoE operation, and nobody has proof I was there. That’s a start.”
The next thing she wanted to check out was the supposed call board for the Borderland forum’s new D Resource, which gu@rdi@n104 had named Cheyenne when he’d started the topic last week. It had some calls on it after the recent “big news” about the alleged raid, but none of them caught
