DiscoPosting

[Hard: Failure] — My god. It's beautiful. It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your entire life.

— "According to our survey across various platforms, it was revealed that certain modders are actively developing a means to transform Yasuke, originally depicted as a Black man in the latest Assassin's Creed installment set in Japan, into an authentic Japanese character."

[Trivial: Success] — The run-on chaff breezes past you, leaving only the core conceit. "Depicted as". Changing him "into an authentic Japanese character."

— Certainly takes far less imagination to view a Black samurai as a Black samurai than the tone of this article would suggest.

[Challenging: Success] — I need you to not listen to what your instincts are about to tell you. Ignore them and walk away from this. Close the tab, close the article. It isn't worth your time.

— Pull your gun.

— Yes, Ukraine has no serious chance of coming out of this with anything remotely resembling a victory and the immediate brokering of peace has been the only sensible path forward for the past two years.

— Camp shirts are short-sleeve, button-up (or button-down, depending on dialect) tops that are unique almost exclusively in the design of the collar. The collar is designed chiefly to lay flat, rather than something like a polo collar, which usually sticks up a bit regardless of whether or not the wearer has "popped" it.

— I knew a regular button-up wouldn't work as a replacement.

[Trivial: Success] — A regular button-up works fine as a replacement. Nobody's going to notice the type of collar on your shirt. If you really are that desperate for the camp collar, you can just get a long-sleeve camp collar shirt. They make those.

— I'm not a high-enough-net-worth individual to afford them.

— And the Amazon Basics catalog is out of the question ever since you started boycotting them...

[Hard: Success] — Chinese fast fashion. Temu and Shein, places like that. Not AliExpress, though. They make shit. In fact, you're wearing a shirt dropshipped from Temu right now. You paid $34.99 on one of the discount websites to get clothes you could have bought for a third of that direct from the source.

— But what if I get...ripped off?

— Don't buy anything unless it has a good amount of reviews and a positive score. That's all. You'll be in a buyer beware market, but it's not that hard to figure it out. Start small, build your wardrobe slowly. You can get some pretty good shirts from those websites for about ten dollars a piece.

— Time to get some disco-ass clothes, baby!

— If it causes more harm than it does provide others with important quotes and context they can use elsewhere, it isn't worth keeping up. The audience makes that call, not me.

DESTROYED BULK CARRIER — Alright, Detective. Time for you to analyze this crime scene.

[Challenging: Success] — Just rolled into the shop; a 171.6-meter long ship, last used for hauling thousands of pounds of fertilizer across the ocean. The stench of shit is just about baked into the steel. A massive hole, several feet wide, has been gouged completely out of the hull. Where once was ship is now empty space. The stern is completely submerged beneath the lapping waves, though the vessel doesn't appear to be taking on any more water than she already has. The damage is catastrophic. She won't be seaworthy again for a long time - if she can become seaworthy again at all.

[Challenging: Success] — With the ship's last-given trajectory being due northwest, and the hole being sheared through starboard, the rocket must have come from Yemen. From where you're standing, that'd be on the opposite side of the Red Sea. A vessel this large is an easy target; anyone with sufficiently heavy ordinance could have made that shot.

[Easy: Success] — The Houthis have both the means and the motive to pull it off. This is obviously their doing. They don't attack indiscriminately, either; whoever's ship this was, they're either a direct ally or supplier of Israel. That rules out China, South Africa, most of the Middle East...

— What's the verdict, Detective?

— Some dumb asshole steered a cargo ship into contested waters and got it blown up.

DESTROYED BULK CARRIER — The shredded steel of the derelict ship yawns in the seawater before you, groaning as it tries to hold itself together. It hasn't sunken yet, but it'll be a miracle if it survives the tow back to port. It's a long way from home. Home. That's the one thing you haven't figured out yet: where is home?

[Perception - Medium 10] Try to make out any identifying markings.

(SIGHT) — There! You can just barely make it out from this distance. Thick, white, block capitals, painted onto the port bow: RUBYMAR.

[Trivial: Failure] — A sudden wave of agony crashes through your joints, sapping the strength from your legs. Your nervous system is howling.

— No...

[Medium: Success] — Oh, God, Harry! Oh, God! What did you do?!

— "OH MY GOD, IT'S MINE! I STEERED MY BRITISH CARGO SHIP INTO THE RED SEA??????!?!?!?????!!??" (Proceed.)

— "You know...I'm not going to tell a Palestinian voter to vote for Biden. I'm really not. I won't."

— But...

— "What I am gonna do is tell a white voter who couldn't find Gaza on a map 6 months ago to miss me with their work-from-home-slacktivism and choose the lesser evil."

[Easy: Success] — Of course. Only the white votes matter to her.

— If a DDOS were launched on this website right now — if the feds came crashing down and an emote of a DPRK soldier took the entire server with it — this woman would hurl herself in death's way to post for you. You are sure of this —but why?

— Hold on, who is she to me?

— She is your half-sister.

— "I love pot. I can't get enough of the stuff."

— The Union leader raises an eyebrow. "Oh, do you, Harry? Excellent! Truly wonderful. I'm certain you'll find many men in the Union who would share your moral position on drugs. Not that they use them, of course! It would be both illegal and extremely unprofessional to be under the influence of drugs at the worksite."

— He's lying. He doesn't know that you're cool, yet. Everybody lies to uncool people.

— People don't think I'm cool?

— What? No, everybody thinks you're cool. But you're a cop, so he's expecting you to be a narc. Narcs aren't cool.

— "So, you wouldn't mind if I...smoked in here, would you?"

— "Actually, Harry, I would very much prefer if you didn't smoke anything in my office. It's my lungs, you see. Can't handle all of that second-hand stuff. It's nothing against you personally. You can step outside if you'd like to spark up." Evrart grins, tapping his fingers on a stack of papers. "Besides, there's still the matter of your missing gun to attend to."

[Hard: Success] — Nobody tells you what to do, least of all a civvie. It's time to show him what happens when someone refuses the request of a uniformed officer. You'll have to wait until he clocks out before you can strike, but he'll come back in the morning to the skunk-scent of a message.

New task: Smoke a blunt in Evrart's office

— The Yemeni maritime border meets Saudi Arabia's near Al Qunfudhah, splitting the Red Sea across the middle. From there, it stretches all the way South to Aden, and then continues a few hundred kilometers off the coast into the Gulf of Aden.

— Is that why the United States is bombing Yemen?

[Easy: Success] — Partially.

— It's the Houthis, sire. They've warned all of those ships heading down the Suez Canal that they're going to blow them to bits if they enter their sea-space. The captains haven't been listening, so they've been getting shot at. And the United States! Oh! The United States have started giving the companies military escorts! It's a dreadful, dreadful situation! Everyone needs to know how you feel about this!

— But...if Yemen says that the ships can't go through, isn't it illegal for the ships to go through their borders anyway?

[Medium: Success] — The international rules-based order doesn't seem to like it when other countries enforce the rules.

[Legendary: Success] — The weight of a world is lifted off of a dozen others. In Vietnam, in Bangladesh, in Timor, in Cambodia, in Chile, in Cyprus; the undercurrent breathes a collective sigh. One more piece is off of the board. The empire is running out of material.

— τελειωτικό χτύπημα.

— What happens now?

— For you, Detective? Or the world?

— For the world.

— Nothing.

[Hard: Success] — An old man who did his damage is dead. His spirit is gone, but the mark will remain. Him being gone solves nothing.

— And for me?

— For you? You celebrate.