I know quitting your job as a cook usually simply comes with two weeks notice or a ragequit walkout, but for eleven months I worked at a new franchise that had such potential which was being squandered by the incompetence of upper management. I present the nearly 6000 word thesis I turned in on my last day. Locations and names have been changed to cartoon references. Brackets represent ambiguous information in place of specific details.
Krusty Krab Careers Jobs
Opening in [Month/Year], Krusty Krab (KK) Bikini Bottom is on its 4th kitchen manager in less than a year. Krusty Krab O-Town has recently let go its inaugural kitchen manager and sous chef. Almost no member of the Bikini Bottom opening management team remains employed by KK. There is a pattern developing where one must question both the choice of employee and the directive given to new franchises. These lingering issues I brought concerns about in the first weeks of opening but was disregarded at every turn despite my experience with festival traffic. As a result I decided this was not a place I wanted to advance, but with a good-enough paycheck I’d be a lowly grunt in the kitchen four days a week, at five days a week I would have quit or been fired over a public outburst long ago. If Krusty Krab alters course slightly while being true to the brand this could be a successful chain.
My unique employment history in brick and mortar restaurants, food trucks, pop up culinary concepts, trade shows/conventions, and the film industry make me an ideal candidate to be on the opening team for new KK locations. My outgoing nature and foresight are valuable assets. For example, on training week before opening when I was standing around idly without a task I took it upon myself to organize the disarray that was dry storage. Overhearing Krabs tell another manager where he wanted the cleaning products placed, I had a jumping off point and the organization I created nine months ago is still largely in place. Since returning from my vacation in early February I have made it my mission to keep the storage area organized because it was again starting to resemble a hoarder’s house rather than a commercial kitchen. This is now part of my weekly routines because every time I turn my back there is more product being placed haphazardly just anywhere with little regard. I also recently reorganized the walk-in cooler because of problematic stocking with items being placed on the same shelf or below raw proteins. I also simply put all the like products together such as cheeses or fruits that were scattered amongst several shelves. With recent overordering I cannot keep up with the organization of the walk in cooler. The pattern recognition of food types and even simple shapes appears to be lost on the Bikini Bottom crew. My daily reorganization of containers is proof of this. Most days I’ll take a few minutes to put all cylinders together, all cambros together in descending volume, all deep and shallow pans next to each other rather than intermixed. My decision to be a kitchen manager at age 19 from 2005 thru 2008 and rarely enter restaurant management since is very calculated.
With my prior knowledge of professional kitchens I was becoming Bikini Bottom’s resident nag to coworkers as I made note of health department violations on a daily basis. I stopped after being largely ignored for two weeks. My regular health department nags include; a battle with jackets and hats being placed only in the designated area (a designated area that did not exist until I created a place for personal items a in January by neatly organizing the dry storage area again), waiting until prepped items are cooled before a cover is placed on top, placement of raw seafood, open containers (very often sugar, flour, and pancake mix bags ripped open and left), and dirty dishes/containers placed back in rotation. The dirty dishes and containers in rotation with the clean ones are at an atrociously high number. I have given up on making the 4th fryer seafood allergy safe too. With the low volume of seafood allergy safe items Bikini Bottom should purchase smaller baskets to visually discourage cross contamination with the other fryers and baskets. My skills to organize the kitchen do not end with simply where to store products to meet minimal health department standards.
Half of the space in the Bikini Bottom kitchen is completely wasted on an ill-advised walkway to the dishpit. An intelligent design would place a second doorway directly to the dishpit connected to the bar or where the bathrooms reside. Numerous times during the opening week of KK Bikini Bottom I said, yelled, sang, and muttered that we have too many food items for the amount of space we have. Icus stated that there was more space than Bluffington. Is Bluffington intelligently designed? Because Bikini Bottom most certainly isn’t. So Bikini Bottom actually has less space even if there is more square footage. See the attached diagram for an intelligent design that could potentially house a menu of this size. Bikini Bottom forces a line design on this kitchen when an open concept is needed for this menu. It’s as if this floorplan was created by a person who had only ever seen one commercial kitchen previously and couldn’t think 4th dimensionally to understand the needs of the workers to smoothly serve customers.
There is not enough counter space for pizzas without getting off the line, the microwave is placed completely out of the way, the freezer’s curved design is a waste of potential counter space and a falling hazard for containers stored on top of it, the toaster is an overcomplicated and overexpensive piece of machinery that serves exactly one purpose when a flat top could be used to toast bread and other purposes like a quesadilla special, sautee was designed without an overhang for spices, the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter for seafood allergies, there are no Frialator fryers which I have worked with at every single kitchen job previously instead we got the cheap Vulcan model (is that logical), the cheap low boy in pantry that doesn’t drain excess water anywhere it’s just supposed to evaporate somehow but doesn’t, the grill and fryer should be placed next to each other (with a higher volume of crossover than other stations), the floors are flat instead on having a mild decline towards the drains (just look at the standing water residing behind the oven right now), in the dishpit the spraying area and the filled sinks are backwards of a logical dipshit, the ramp to the back door is on the wrong side, there is no refrigerated place downstairs to stage extra food for busy shifts (the beer cooler is once again used for such food items because of this massive oversight), the prep station is an afterthought and miniscule, the dishes on the line are difficult to grab for anyone under 5’11” and inaccessible for anyone under 5’6” (instead of putting them underneath tables that also give that desperately needed counterspace I spoke of), there is not enough space to store to-go containers or boats behind the line, expo is lacking a low boy for the numerous items that are supposed to be cold but are instead kept at room temperature all day long, no one in management thought about buying shelves until right before Bikini Bottom opened as a result the clean full sheets sat on the floor for days, we had only the exact amount of 1⁄6 pans for an absurd amount of time making it impossible to rotate and clean them when necessary (which is daily), we still struggle with 1/9 pan supply. And just when I thought I documented all the poor design choices possible I stumbled upon a person whose office holiday party was booked at KK Bikini Bottom. The deck space works just fine as a deck. It does not double well as a gathering space. The space is too long and narrow for parties, it promotes little splitoff groups rather than a coming together of a larger gathering. It may be advantageous to contact a social psychologist for help designing a private party space that promotes intermingling rather than enforcing small pockets to form. The reorganization of the physical kitchen isn’t all that screams for an overhaul.
There are six positions on the line at the Krusty Krab; expo, oven, grill, sautee, fryer, and pantry. But the pantry and fryer positions are forced together like a bad remix. Everyone who mainly works pantry deserves a $6 raise immediately because it is a station and a half. Both Icus and Krumm, while kitchen manager, kind of acknowledged the pantry is too big for one station without outright mentioning the lopsided distribution of work. I imagine in the only location where this works, Bluffington, a second person joins the pantry at noon because of the unreasonable amount of items one person is tasked with. Bikini Bottom only has one person in this position at all times, maybe modify it for one person? The excess of items on the pantry position largely resembles a position I would call “set-up” or “build” at a previous job that made sensible choices. This build position should have tostadas, tacos, butcher’s blocks, toast, salads, lettuce wrap set ups, and preparing plating for whichever station is most bogged down. I have absolutely lost my mind yelling about salads at least once a month, ranting that they do not belong on the fryer position because of how illogical it is that five salads are included on the mountain of other items the pantry has. I have always considered working in a kitchen a kind of dance, and the pantry station demands an unnecessarily convoluted dance to keep up with the demand. Without the salads, tostadas, and tacos the station is already the busiest. Do we really need to combine ballet and swing by including these extra awkward dance steps in this single station? For a kitchen designed this poorly I suppose it is. Again, see attached document for an intelligently designed kitchen that might be able to accommodate this menu. Unless Bikini Bottom is going to close for a month to fix the baffling floor plan design the menu is shouting to be reduced to 30-36 items.
The menu is too big. Krusty Krab is the jack of all foods, master of none. In general I believe individual locations should be allowed 18% omissions, and 18% unique items to this wildly unwieldy menu sitting around 50 food items including sides. The insistence on keeping menu items that don’t sell at Bikini Bottom because of Bluffington is mind boggling. Chicken tenders do not sell at Bikini Bottom. fried sushi does not sell at Bikini Bottom, not enough to justify their place on the line. I don’t care how well these items work in Bluffinton. They. Do. Not. Work. At. Bikini. Bottom. If the KK location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sells an incredible amount of live krill does that mean Bikini Bottom and O-Town must sell live krill too? Take the fried sushi off the menu. I had a complete meltdown about this during a Dimmadome service and my valid point was met with indifference. Replace the kid’s tenders with a kid’s fish sticks. We already have the tilapia fish sticks on the line for tacos. Or make the kid’s fish sticks cod. We cut cod to order for fish tacos in spite of health code violations because it is too rare of an order to make beforehand. Saffron in mashed potatoes? If you must. Why are green tomatoes only on the menu during lunch? Bikini Bottom throws away a sizable amount of spoiled green tomatoes each week. Have green tomatoes on the menu all day long or don’t have them at all. The smoked salmon could go on salads or a special taco to justify its place on the line. The corn pico’s place on the line is unjustified. It only goes on one item, tostadas, which are not particularly popular. If we had a taco salad we could throw the corn pico on there. We also have unreasonable waste from unusable taco shells, smash up those imperfect taco shells and throw them on said taco salad. But before we add salads, let's get rid of the pear and kale salads. The pears' position on the line are unjustified, if we threw them on a taco variation maybe their place on the Bikini Bottom line could be argued but for now they only go on a salad that isn’t particularly popular. The kale salad is an issue of space for a 4th green for salads is too much. The krusty salad is my most hated house salad of all time. And it comes down to the toast with goat cheese. This ancillary step of spreading goat cheese on a cracker is an unnecessary step for an overly complicated dance and should be part of the expo dance if expo wasn’t a shoddily designed afterthought lacking a low boy.
There are a plethora of squeeze bottles on the pantry station that have no place on the overloaded station. They belong to an expo station with a low boy to keep them cold. Pantry has an overwhelming ten squeeze bottles: chipotle crema, sweet chili vinaigrette, buffalo, korean bbq, ranch, caesar, wine vinaigrette, lemon vinaigrette, honey mustard, and lemon aioli. Only the first four are justified on an intelligently designed fryer section, the second four belong on the build station, the last two have no place anywhere but expo. With this extra space sautee could keep their bottles and two purees cold in the fryer's lowboy instead of leaving them at room temperature all day inviting a pathogen party. This theorized intelligently designed expo would have room to keep these four squeeze bottles and a double of every sauce chilled to pour them into ramekins, a move that is highly common in the expo dance. The fact that expo doesn’t have a double of all squeeze bottles is foolish. Expo has to bother an overloaded station to pour these side sauces instead.
How many gallons of basil aioli has Bikini Bottom thrown away in 11 months? Four aiolis in general is way too many and most go on a single item; basil aioli on the incredibly unpopular veggie burger, lemon aioli for calamari, sweet chili aioli for the BLT that is only served half of the day, and garlic aioli actually goes on two items…I believe. What a colossal waste of precious little space, lose two aiolis and then you can sing the logical song with me. Perhaps we can put garlic aioli and sweet chili vinaigrette on the BLT separately and accomplish the exact same thing the sweet chili aioli does. The wings too have unneeded complications. Having worked at a sports bar specializing in wings for the better part of a decade I find KK’s plating of wings to be overly pretentious. The carrots, celery, and blue cheese have lost function. Heffer Wolf always said no one eats the carrot/celery julienne with blue cheese. It’s a complete waste of all the ingredients because you’ve gone too far with the presentation. Wings aren’t fancy. Wings are supposed to have a small pool of sauce and be sloppy. It’s like a sloppy joe that’s not sloppy, an unsloppy joe is a failure to sloppy joes just as the KK presentation of wings is a disparagement to the dish. Ever since training week back in 2022 I have used a scale to give Bikini Bottom a passing or failing grade.
Chokey Chicken to Chum Bucket is the scale I use to judge efficiency and sanity at Bikini Bottom. Both establishments are upscale casual dining experiences in Capitol City in the same vein as KK. Chokey had high employee retention and relatively smooth openings for new locations. Chum Bucket’s employee turnover was high and every location opening was chaotic. Which one sounds closer to KK? Chokey Chicken was filled with chefs I respect including Chef Ren Hoek who remains a close friend to this day. Ren lost his lifelong passion for kitchen work after working management at Chum Bucket. He’s actually seeking work in Bikini Bottom. Call him up at [phone number], but KK will give him Nam’ flashbacks of why he chose driving for a living rather than cooking for five years. The pair of us together helming Bikini Bottom with the ability to omit and create 18% of the overloaded menu can bring success to this franchise. We have worked well numerous times in the past on various concepts in the past including creating The Attack of the Pickled Tomatoes Burger for [Promotional live performance of a TV show] at the Capitol City Theater. We served 100 people in 60 at the [sitcom filming] lunch. That’s physically impossible but somehow we did it quite a few times.
A fun anecdote about Ren Hoek’s KK experience from the soft launch; on training week numerous times I brought concerns about being seafood allergy safe that were dismissed. As mentioned earlier the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter, one each of which seafood never touches. Before the soft launch Chef Stimpy from Bluffington insisted all customers just kind of know everything is prone to be seafood contaminated. Well, chef Ren was a customer that night and this absolutely was not communicated to customers. He claimed to have a slight seafood allergy and was not informed of what the crab soup was. In reality he does not have a seafood allergy. I didn’t discuss the seafood issue with Ren, separately we noticed egregious violations of food safety standards and we each responded in our own way. The soft launch service was so awful that night Chef Ren walked out of a free meal to pay for some ramen, never to return to Bikini Bottom. I attribute this oversight, and many of Bikini Bottom’s (and probably O-Town’s) problems to hubris over the Bluffington location.
Chef Chokey would also be hesitant to join the KK team. It will cost a finder’s fee just for me to reveal Chef Chokey’s name. Chef Chokey was a lead in the rapid expansion of Chokey Chicken restaurants. He opened numerous restaurants and was big on the philosophy that each restaurant must have its own personality in order to fit the unique local culture and the variety of working spaces. This is in direct conflict with the KK way that everything must be exactly like the Bluffington location no matter what. There was only one Chokey Chicken location that had the full menu, Chokey Springfield. Chokey Springfield had a large space which was intelligently designed to accommodate such a large menu. The KK menu is all over the place, closing in on 50 menu items which comes up as a failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale. This is not the only area KK comes up as a major failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale.
Has anyone in this company ever worked festival traffic before? Does anyone have the experience of working next to a major venue with 8000 seats before this one? The way Bikini Bottom handles Dimmadome services it certainly appears that the decision-makers fall on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Having all 50 items available during such massive traffic is completely asinine. An unwillingness to serve a partial menu is hindering the Bikini Bottom kitchen staff. I have worked festival traffic before, and Dimmadome events bring in festival traffic. I’ve worked inside a festival whose line never ended but every customer got their order in 5 minutes or less because the line kept flowing with only four items on the menu as that’s what was warranted at the B-Sharps Music Festival. I refuse to be set up for failure the way Bikini Bottom sets up Dimmadome services for failure. The entire week of concerts in [summer] 2022 I was set up for failure every day (it was after this I modified my availability to keep my sanity and my paycheck). When I brought my concerns about running efficiently during Dimmadome services I was labeled a B-worker for the first time in my employment history by Icus and Krabs. It is that moment which I was either going to holler at them both for being 2-dimensional thinkers who were obviously unqualified for the positions they accepted in this company, or just put my head down. If Bikini Bottom has a successful concert day service, hail your team because they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They swam with concrete shoes. I often wonder how many customers had bad experiences and never returned after concert days. A Dimmadome service should have no more than 25 items and have one or two specials to divert traffic towards an area the kitchen can keep moving. An Open Cup Open Plate (OCOP) special for foot traffic is absolutely needed. When I suggested OCOP special, Heffer was intrigued by this idea and immediately named burgers as the special to keep foot traffic flowing. Smithers wouldn’t hear this idea, babbling on about what’s advertised instead of hearing out a sound idea. This prattle despite radio commercials having inaccurate hours and social media promoting Bikini Bottom’s steak tacos to this day. I always found Smithers to be a better fit as a middle management office pencil pusher than as a hands-on restaurant manager. Overall I find KK managers are selected to be automatons not to question their orders rather than critical thinkers who could take the restaurant to the next level. During brunch service is another period of time that must be modified to lessen the heft of items. Having a full menu that barely works plus brunch is so deep into Chum Bucket territory, in my opinion we now have to use the Tropic Thunder scale of full [R-word censored by jobs] to describe a 60-plus-item brunch. Chef Ren hired back a Chum Bucket cook who had a mental breakdown and stormed out during brunch (plus full menu) service because Ren knew the employee was justified and upper management was completely unreasonable in their brunch requests. It’s not just questionable decisions that hinder KK staff but improper equipment as well.
This is the first restaurant I have worked at which uses a touch screen on the line rather than tickets. From day one I found this to be technology for technology’s sake inferior to tickets. Chef Ren forced a new Chum Bucket location to rip out touch screens from the line and bring in ticket printers because of the higher efficiency. The touch screen is a great idea for expo, not the entire line. My biggest gripe is that each station does not get all the information. Early on I was regularly yelled at for not staggering my items, well I can’t see the rest of the order; a problem I have never had with a ticket system. Touchscreen software is also much more prone to errors and glitches. When I reported an error during a heavy service Icus and Krabs blamed my skills on the line without looking into the malfunctioning screen further. It was glitchy for weeks before the two finally investigated and corrected the issue I brought to their attention long before. Those two gave me an immense amount of ammunition to dislike them in the opening weeks until I stopped caring. The issue I had with being unable to scroll beyond the bottom of a completely filled screen has returned and is still there as of [my last day]. There are also important details that get buried. A frequent meltdown I have is that sauce on side requests and other important modifications are not capitalized or in red to catch the eye as they have been at jobs with tickets. These details get lost on Bikini Bottom’s touchscreens. A sauce on side salad made by me will be wrong 50% of the time because of the instructions being camouflaged in a word salad. This goes for coleslaw on the side and drizzle on the side too. Drizzle in general I dislike because of the pretentiousness, but whatever, drizzle it on top rather than putting it in a ramekin if you must. There are numerous places where Bikini Bottom overcomplicates matters for reasons I cannot ascertain.
Why is there such a large variety of plates? Why do we have a medium circular plate for salads and a large bowl for salads with protein? This just confuses the simplest of matters. I was told this is done because of the high price hike with protein, a larger presentation was desired. But that price hike is the price of protein in 2023. Bikini Bottom should put all salads in the large bowls and use all the circular salad plates in a skeet shooting promotion. I understand why we have both a circular platter plate and a pizza plate but in my restaurant the circular platter plates must go...or maybe the large platter plate instead. Is the large platter used for anything besides fish and chips? That extra space on fish and chips plates are only used for side sauces which can easily be delivered to customers on small circular plates. What is the medium oval plate doing that the medium rectangular plate isn’t? And vice versa. Why do they both exist when they are approximately the same size? Let me write an internet commercial where we break a lot of plates so we can get some logical use out of the superfluous plates. I don’t care which one is destroyed, the ovals or the rectangles but one of them is an unnecessary redundancy in excess done again. Speaking of commercials, the unimaginative radio advertisements for Bikini Bottom are doing little to lure new customers to the restaurant.
The three radio spots I have heard on KBBL all sound like they were produced by a marketing 101 student who wasn’t a natural in the field. The voiceover actor was so uncharismatic I was certain someone from the office was chosen at random to read the copy. Then I heard that same voiceover actor selling pool supplies on another radio station so I concluded that Bikini Bottom must have hired the cheapest guy in town to produce the most basic of commercials. Perhaps there is someone else you could hire more qualified to voiceover these commercials, an actor with experience on an Emmy award winning cable program whose unique place in the film industry was written about on [website] would be a much wiser choice to be the voice of the KK? (See external link). In the ad there was no catchphrase, no jingle, no music whatsoever. This simple approach to commercials lacks the pizazz to catch the attention of radio listeners. The first two commercials I heard would get a C in marketing 101 as they were nearly the exact same and accomplished the bare minimum to sell wares, the third one would maybe get a B- because there was some sort of attempted gimmick with the voiceover whispering to represent thinking inside his head about what he was going to eat later at KK. Not only does this commercial give no reason for the man to think inside his head, the outside world still and unpopulated. To see what a creative person would do with this concept see the attached script. There is an attempted slogan that could become part of an ad campaign. Commercials aren’t the only lost opportunities in promotions.
There are numerous promotional celebrity tie-ins at Bikini Bottom’s fingertips with Dimmadome performers. The restaurant could have a Phish sandwich as a OCOP special on [Phish performance dates], or a pretentious Jelly Roll on [Jelly Roll performance date]. Has anyone reached out to the Dimmadome theater or talent management for approved special menu items to be promoted inside the dome? Perhaps a special 20% discount to ticket holders? Is Bikini Bottom capable of getting permits to extend Open Container hours beyond [cutoff time] for an afterparty or block party throughout a Dimmadome concert? I see additional marketing opportunities left on the table for all new locations.
I believe new KK locations are missing out on a marketing campaign by opening with the entire cumbersome 50 item menu. This is a staggering amount of menu items which is too much to ask new staffers to perfect all at once. After a few months expanding the menu by approximately ten items is catching to customers who haven’t returned after a single visit or infrequently stop into KK. There are ten new food items that might appeal to them. Just like it appears KK doesn’t know what it’s looking for in a good commercial spot, this company doesn’t appear to recognize a talented from an untalented worker until it’s too late.
It is my understanding that KK had a headhunter to find Icus, the first Bikini Bottom kitchen manager. If it were up to me I’d hire someone to break the legs of that headhunter for bringing in a subpar kitchen lead. We are still attempting to recover from the lousy choices she made in the floor plan. If anybody responsible for Bikini Bottom’s floor plan is still giving input, stop them immediately. Once the doors were open to the public Icus had his head in the clouds to a point where I questioned if he saw the writing on the walls of an imminent demotion and stopped trying as a result. I had a full deck of 3x5 cards in an archaic powerpoint presentation bringing numerous concerns to light that he kept putting off listening to until he was fired. Those same cards were broken out for this essay. The second kitchen manager, Krumm, is a good lesson in honesty. According to Heffer, Krumm was given a bill of goods about how smoothly KK Bikini Bottom was running. Since Krumm stepped into a latrine pit which he was led to believe was a heated pool, he left in short time. Krumm also had plans to modify the menu but when his bosses told him to be a rodeo clown rather than a cowboy Krumm didn’t take too kindly to that. Meanwhile Heffer was the savior of the Bikini Bottom kitchen. I didn’t agree with every single decision he made, but I did with a majority of them. Heffer’s overhaul was such a blessing so I didn’t have to fiddle with the organization of 60% of the equipment anymore, only about 20% now. Too bad Heffer’s crippling depression came back after bashing his head into the wall out of frustration with the shackles KK restrained him with.
The current management team is enthusiastic but inexperienced. I see an accumulation of small infractions that might bring down Bikini Bottom’s health department rating significantly. I see the entire management team being inattentive or unaware about organizational issues. Whatever bureaucratic nonsense corporate tasks everyone with from the original sous chef Skeeter to Patty Mayonnaise that makes them walk away from the line between 11am and 1pm especially is infuriating. I have never been left alone on a multi-person line during peak hours so regularly, and I won’t tolerate it anymore. As much as I believe in his drive, I imagine our current kitchen manager SpongeBob will be let go after a disastrous service during the Dimmadome concert season that someone has to take the fall for. Chef Ren and I could help bring experience in management and dealing with festival traffic...if corporate does not force us to follow a failing strategy.
After working nearly a year at KK you may ask why I’m not proficient on more than one station. Excellent question. First, when I move over to another station the squeeze bottles are never labeled (until Stu Pickles was hired, now they’re sometimes labeled), so I always looked at the glut of unlabeled sauces and I’d go back to my station because the basic information is missing (also a health department violation for having numerous unlabeled, unchilled bottles). In his first week the new general manager Stu Pickles pulled out 90% of the containers under the grill station because they were lacking labels despite an expected health department visit. The second reason for my menu ignorance is the mountain of prep for my own and upcoming shifts I have piled up on my station throughout service. My attention to detail appears to be next level with my ability to anticipate stocking all items for all shifts including the weeknd. The third reason I wouldn’t learn multiple stations is a defense against the afternoon conference calls. In [month] the Bikini Bottom line was unprepared for a busy post lunch because one cook was cut and our expo person was busy with a conference call. The two of us remaining on the line had a miserable slog through an unexpectedly busy afternoon. When I brought this up to Krabs he disregarded me, being a good bean counter he quoted the cost percentage. What he didn’t take into account was the missing expo person who could have jumped on the line and expo to help the understaffed two man team. That person was stuck on a conference call. Just recently I saw the company actively lose money because of this poorly thought-out meeting during business hours. A customer wanted to order a dessert that was 86ed but had been restocked by our prep cook an hour before. The server was unable to sell them their dessert because the only person in the building who could help un-86 an item was on a conference call. This conference call calamity is another bone-headed choice that speaks to a larger decision-making problem within the corporate structure. Finish the conference calls by 10:45 am eastern.
In conclusion, I quit my position as a lowly grunt for this company because of its unwarranted perplexing dance steps and below average management. I don’t care how much varnish and lacquer is supplied, I refuse to polish this Bikini Bottom turd as a manager or full-time employee under the current circumstances. You would have to take a pickaxe to the floor, possibly relocate the bathrooms to add a door to the dishpit, get rid of the cheap low boy that doesn’t properly drain excess water, and Mr Gorbachov knock down that wall in the middle of the kitchen to give the proper amount of space to work. Or simply reduce the menu to 36 items (including sides) because that’s the amount of space this dreadful design can comfortably output. Would Gordon Ramsay compliment KK for all the unnecessary convoluted complications abound, or would Chef Ramsay yell about keeping it simple and demand KK chuck it in the flip? Thanks to the numerous pop up restaurants I have been a part of and the hectic world of trade shows/conventions, I may have more experience than anyone else employed by KK in smoothly opening a new location. I would enjoy being part of the opening team to ensure new locations have an efficiency Bikini Bottom lacks, and to keep upper management away from their worst instincts. Work with me and Chef Ren and we will help you become a well oiled machine like Chokey Chicken instead of the Chum Bucket cesspit Bikini Bottom currently embodies.

I know quitting your job as a cook usually simply comes with two weeks notice or a ragequit walkout, but for eleven months I worked at a new franchise that had such potential which was being squandered by the incompetence of upper management. I present the nearly 6000 word thesis I turned in on my last day. Locations and names have been changed to cartoon references. Brackets represent ambiguous information in place of specific details.
Krusty Krab Careers Jobs
Opening in [Month/Year], Krusty Krab (KK) Bikini Bottom is on its 4th kitchen manager in less than a year. Krusty Krab O-Town has recently let go its inaugural kitchen manager and sous chef. Almost no member of the Bikini Bottom opening management team remains employed by KK. There is a pattern developing where one must question both the choice of employee and the directive given to new franchises. These lingering issues I brought concerns about in the first weeks of opening but was disregarded at every turn despite my experience with festival traffic. As a result I decided this was not a place I wanted to advance, but with a good-enough paycheck I’d be a lowly grunt in the kitchen four days a week, at five days a week I would have quit or been fired over a public outburst long ago. If Krusty Krab alters course slightly while being true to the brand this could be a successful chain.
My unique employment history in brick and mortar restaurants, food trucks, pop up culinary concepts, trade shows/conventions, and the film industry make me an ideal candidate to be on the opening team for new KK locations. My outgoing nature and foresight are valuable assets. For example, on training week before opening when I was standing around idly without a task I took it upon myself to organize the disarray that was dry storage. Overhearing Krabs tell another manager where he wanted the cleaning products placed, I had a jumping off point and the organization I created nine months ago is still largely in place. Since returning from my vacation in early February I have made it my mission to keep the storage area organized because it was again starting to resemble a hoarder’s house rather than a commercial kitchen. This is now part of my weekly routines because every time I turn my back there is more product being placed haphazardly just anywhere with little regard. I also recently reorganized the walk-in cooler because of problematic stocking with items being placed on the same shelf or below raw proteins. I also simply put all the like products together such as cheeses or fruits that were scattered amongst several shelves. With recent overordering I cannot keep up with the organization of the walk in cooler. The pattern recognition of food types and even simple shapes appears to be lost on the Bikini Bottom crew. My daily reorganization of containers is proof of this. Most days I’ll take a few minutes to put all cylinders together, all cambros together in descending volume, all deep and shallow pans next to each other rather than intermixed. My decision to be a kitchen manager at age 19 from 2005 thru 2008 and rarely enter restaurant management since is very calculated.
With my prior knowledge of professional kitchens I was becoming Bikini Bottom’s resident nag to coworkers as I made note of health department violations on a daily basis. I stopped after being largely ignored for two weeks. My regular health department nags include; a battle with jackets and hats being placed only in the designated area (a designated area that did not exist until I created a place for personal items a in January by neatly organizing the dry storage area again), waiting until prepped items are cooled before a cover is placed on top, placement of raw seafood, open containers (very often sugar, flour, and pancake mix bags ripped open and left), and dirty dishes/containers placed back in rotation. The dirty dishes and containers in rotation with the clean ones are at an atrociously high number. I have given up on making the 4th fryer seafood allergy safe too. With the low volume of seafood allergy safe items Bikini Bottom should purchase smaller baskets to visually discourage cross contamination with the other fryers and baskets. My skills to organize the kitchen do not end with simply where to store products to meet minimal health department standards.
Half of the space in the Bikini Bottom kitchen is completely wasted on an ill-advised walkway to the dishpit. An intelligent design would place a second doorway directly to the dishpit connected to the bar or where the bathrooms reside. Numerous times during the opening week of KK Bikini Bottom I said, yelled, sang, and muttered that we have too many food items for the amount of space we have. Icus stated that there was more space than Bluffington. Is Bluffington intelligently designed? Because Bikini Bottom most certainly isn’t. So Bikini Bottom actually has less space even if there is more square footage. See the attached diagram for an intelligent design that could potentially house a menu of this size. Bikini Bottom forces a line design on this kitchen when an open concept is needed for this menu. It’s as if this floorplan was created by a person who had only ever seen one commercial kitchen previously and couldn’t think 4th dimensionally to understand the needs of the workers to smoothly serve customers.
There is not enough counter space for pizzas without getting off the line, the microwave is placed completely out of the way, the freezer’s curved design is a waste of potential counter space and a falling hazard for containers stored on top of it, the toaster is an overcomplicated and overexpensive piece of machinery that serves exactly one purpose when a flat top could be used to toast bread and other purposes like a quesadilla special, sautee was designed without an overhang for spices, the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter for seafood allergies, there are no Frialator fryers which I have worked with at every single kitchen job previously instead we got the cheap Vulcan model (is that logical), the cheap low boy in pantry that doesn’t drain excess water anywhere it’s just supposed to evaporate somehow but doesn’t, the grill and fryer should be placed next to each other (with a higher volume of crossover than other stations), the floors are flat instead on having a mild decline towards the drains (just look at the standing water residing behind the oven right now), in the dishpit the spraying area and the filled sinks are backwards of a logical dipshit, the ramp to the back door is on the wrong side, there is no refrigerated place downstairs to stage extra food for busy shifts (the beer cooler is once again used for such food items because of this massive oversight), the prep station is an afterthought and miniscule, the dishes on the line are difficult to grab for anyone under 5’11” and inaccessible for anyone under 5’6” (instead of putting them underneath tables that also give that desperately needed counterspace I spoke of), there is not enough space to store to-go containers or boats behind the line, expo is lacking a low boy for the numerous items that are supposed to be cold but are instead kept at room temperature all day long, no one in management thought about buying shelves until right before Bikini Bottom opened as a result the clean full sheets sat on the floor for days, we had only the exact amount of 1⁄6 pans for an absurd amount of time making it impossible to rotate and clean them when necessary (which is daily), we still struggle with 1/9 pan supply. And just when I thought I documented all the poor design choices possible I stumbled upon a person whose office holiday party was booked at KK Bikini Bottom. The deck space works just fine as a deck. It does not double well as a gathering space. The space is too long and narrow for parties, it promotes little splitoff groups rather than a coming together of a larger gathering. It may be advantageous to contact a social psychologist for help designing a private party space that promotes intermingling rather than enforcing small pockets to form. The reorganization of the physical kitchen isn’t all that screams for an overhaul.
There are six positions on the line at the Krusty Krab; expo, oven, grill, sautee, fryer, and pantry. But the pantry and fryer positions are forced together like a bad remix. Everyone who mainly works pantry deserves a $6 raise immediately because it is a station and a half. Both Icus and Krumm, while kitchen manager, kind of acknowledged the pantry is too big for one station without outright mentioning the lopsided distribution of work. I imagine in the only location where this works, Bluffington, a second person joins the pantry at noon because of the unreasonable amount of items one person is tasked with. Bikini Bottom only has one person in this position at all times, maybe modify it for one person? The excess of items on the pantry position largely resembles a position I would call “set-up” or “build” at a previous job that made sensible choices. This build position should have tostadas, tacos, butcher’s blocks, toast, salads, lettuce wrap set ups, and preparing plating for whichever station is most bogged down. I have absolutely lost my mind yelling about salads at least once a month, ranting that they do not belong on the fryer position because of how illogical it is that five salads are included on the mountain of other items the pantry has. I have always considered working in a kitchen a kind of dance, and the pantry station demands an unnecessarily convoluted dance to keep up with the demand. Without the salads, tostadas, and tacos the station is already the busiest. Do we really need to combine ballet and swing by including these extra awkward dance steps in this single station? For a kitchen designed this poorly I suppose it is. Again, see attached document for an intelligently designed kitchen that might be able to accommodate this menu. Unless Bikini Bottom is going to close for a month to fix the baffling floor plan design the menu is shouting to be reduced to 30-36 items.
The menu is too big. Krusty Krab is the jack of all foods, master of none. In general I believe individual locations should be allowed 18% omissions, and 18% unique items to this wildly unwieldy menu sitting around 50 food items including sides. The insistence on keeping menu items that don’t sell at Bikini Bottom because of Bluffington is mind boggling. Chicken tenders do not sell at Bikini Bottom. fried sushi does not sell at Bikini Bottom, not enough to justify their place on the line. I don’t care how well these items work in Bluffinton. They. Do. Not. Work. At. Bikini. Bottom. If the KK location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sells an incredible amount of live krill does that mean Bikini Bottom and O-Town must sell live krill too? Take the fried sushi off the menu. I had a complete meltdown about this during a Dimmadome service and my valid point was met with indifference. Replace the kid’s tenders with a kid’s fish sticks. We already have the tilapia fish sticks on the line for tacos. Or make the kid’s fish sticks cod. We cut cod to order for fish tacos in spite of health code violations because it is too rare of an order to make beforehand. Saffron in mashed potatoes? If you must. Why are green tomatoes only on the menu during lunch? Bikini Bottom throws away a sizable amount of spoiled green tomatoes each week. Have green tomatoes on the menu all day long or don’t have them at all. The smoked salmon could go on salads or a special taco to justify its place on the line. The corn pico’s place on the line is unjustified. It only goes on one item, tostadas, which are not particularly popular. If we had a taco salad we could throw the corn pico on there. We also have unreasonable waste from unusable taco shells, smash up those imperfect taco shells and throw them on said taco salad. But before we add salads, let's get rid of the pear and kale salads. The pears' position on the line are unjustified, if we threw them on a taco variation maybe their place on the Bikini Bottom line could be argued but for now they only go on a salad that isn’t particularly popular. The kale salad is an issue of space for a 4th green for salads is too much. The krusty salad is my most hated house salad of all time. And it comes down to the toast with goat cheese. This ancillary step of spreading goat cheese on a cracker is an unnecessary step for an overly complicated dance and should be part of the expo dance if expo wasn’t a shoddily designed afterthought lacking a low boy.
There are a plethora of squeeze bottles on the pantry station that have no place on the overloaded station. They belong to an expo station with a low boy to keep them cold. Pantry has an overwhelming ten squeeze bottles: chipotle crema, sweet chili vinaigrette, buffalo, korean bbq, ranch, caesar, wine vinaigrette, lemon vinaigrette, honey mustard, and lemon aioli. Only the first four are justified on an intelligently designed fryer section, the second four belong on the build station, the last two have no place anywhere but expo. With this extra space sautee could keep their bottles and two purees cold in the fryer's lowboy instead of leaving them at room temperature all day inviting a pathogen party. This theorized intelligently designed expo would have room to keep these four squeeze bottles and a double of every sauce chilled to pour them into ramekins, a move that is highly common in the expo dance. The fact that expo doesn’t have a double of all squeeze bottles is foolish. Expo has to bother an overloaded station to pour these side sauces instead.
How many gallons of basil aioli has Bikini Bottom thrown away in 11 months? Four aiolis in general is way too many and most go on a single item; basil aioli on the incredibly unpopular veggie burger, lemon aioli for calamari, sweet chili aioli for the BLT that is only served half of the day, and garlic aioli actually goes on two items…I believe. What a colossal waste of precious little space, lose two aiolis and then you can sing the logical song with me. Perhaps we can put garlic aioli and sweet chili vinaigrette on the BLT separately and accomplish the exact same thing the sweet chili aioli does. The wings too have unneeded complications. Having worked at a sports bar specializing in wings for the better part of a decade I find KK’s plating of wings to be overly pretentious. The carrots, celery, and blue cheese have lost function. Heffer Wolf always said no one eats the carrot/celery julienne with blue cheese. It’s a complete waste of all the ingredients because you’ve gone too far with the presentation. Wings aren’t fancy. Wings are supposed to have a small pool of sauce and be sloppy. It’s like a sloppy joe that’s not sloppy, an unsloppy joe is a failure to sloppy joes just as the KK presentation of wings is a disparagement to the dish. Ever since training week back in 2022 I have used a scale to give Bikini Bottom a passing or failing grade.
Chokey Chicken to Chum Bucket is the scale I use to judge efficiency and sanity at Bikini Bottom. Both establishments are upscale casual dining experiences in Capitol City in the same vein as KK. Chokey had high employee retention and relatively smooth openings for new locations. Chum Bucket’s employee turnover was high and every location opening was chaotic. Which one sounds closer to KK? Chokey Chicken was filled with chefs I respect including Chef Ren Hoek who remains a close friend to this day. Ren lost his lifelong passion for kitchen work after working management at Chum Bucket. He’s actually seeking work in Bikini Bottom. Call him up at [phone number], but KK will give him Nam’ flashbacks of why he chose driving for a living rather than cooking for five years. The pair of us together helming Bikini Bottom with the ability to omit and create 18% of the overloaded menu can bring success to this franchise. We have worked well numerous times in the past on various concepts in the past including creating The Attack of the Pickled Tomatoes Burger for [Promotional live performance of a TV show] at the Capitol City Theater. We served 100 people in 60 at the [sitcom filming] lunch. That’s physically impossible but somehow we did it quite a few times.
A fun anecdote about Ren Hoek’s KK experience from the soft launch; on training week numerous times I brought concerns about being seafood allergy safe that were dismissed. As mentioned earlier the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter, one each of which seafood never touches. Before the soft launch Chef Stimpy from Bluffington insisted all customers just kind of know everything is prone to be seafood contaminated. Well, chef Ren was a customer that night and this absolutely was not communicated to customers. He claimed to have a slight seafood allergy and was not informed of what the crab soup was. In reality he does not have a seafood allergy. I didn’t discuss the seafood issue with Ren, separately we noticed egregious violations of food safety standards and we each responded in our own way. The soft launch service was so awful that night Chef Ren walked out of a free meal to pay for some ramen, never to return to Bikini Bottom. I attribute this oversight, and many of Bikini Bottom’s (and probably O-Town’s) problems to hubris over the Bluffington location.
Chef Chokey would also be hesitant to join the KK team. It will cost a finder’s fee just for me to reveal Chef Chokey’s name. Chef Chokey was a lead in the rapid expansion of Chokey Chicken restaurants. He opened numerous restaurants and was big on the philosophy that each restaurant must have its own personality in order to fit the unique local culture and the variety of working spaces. This is in direct conflict with the KK way that everything must be exactly like the Bluffington location no matter what. There was only one Chokey Chicken location that had the full menu, Chokey Springfield. Chokey Springfield had a large space which was intelligently designed to accommodate such a large menu. The KK menu is all over the place, closing in on 50 menu items which comes up as a failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale. This is not the only area KK comes up as a major failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale.
Has anyone in this company ever worked festival traffic before? Does anyone have the experience of working next to a major venue with 8000 seats before this one? The way Bikini Bottom handles Dimmadome services it certainly appears that the decision-makers fall on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Having all 50 items available during such massive traffic is completely asinine. An unwillingness to serve a partial menu is hindering the Bikini Bottom kitchen staff. I have worked festival traffic before, and Dimmadome events bring in festival traffic. I’ve worked inside a festival whose line never ended but every customer got their order in 5 minutes or less because the line kept flowing with only four items on the menu as that’s what was warranted at the B-Sharps Music Festival. I refuse to be set up for failure the way Bikini Bottom sets up Dimmadome services for failure. The entire week of concerts in [summer] 2022 I was set up for failure every day (it was after this I modified my availability to keep my sanity and my paycheck). When I brought my concerns about running efficiently during Dimmadome services I was labeled a B-worker for the first time in my employment history by Icus and Krabs. It is that moment which I was either going to holler at them both for being 2-dimensional thinkers who were obviously unqualified for the positions they accepted in this company, or just put my head down. If Bikini Bottom has a successful concert day service, hail your team because they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They swam with concrete shoes. I often wonder how many customers had bad experiences and never returned after concert days. A Dimmadome service should have no more than 25 items and have one or two specials to divert traffic towards an area the kitchen can keep moving. An Open Cup Open Plate (OCOP) special for foot traffic is absolutely needed. When I suggested OCOP special, Heffer was intrigued by this idea and immediately named burgers as the special to keep foot traffic flowing. Smithers wouldn’t hear this idea, babbling on about what’s advertised instead of hearing out a sound idea. This prattle despite radio commercials having inaccurate hours and social media promoting Bikini Bottom’s steak tacos to this day. I always found Smithers to be a better fit as a middle management office pencil pusher than as a hands-on restaurant manager. Overall I find KK managers are selected to be automatons not to question their orders rather than critical thinkers who could take the restaurant to the next level. During brunch service is another period of time that must be modified to lessen the heft of items. Having a full menu that barely works plus brunch is so deep into Chum Bucket territory, in my opinion we now have to use the Tropic Thunder scale of full retard to describe a 60-plus-item brunch. Chef Ren hired back a Chum Bucket cook who had a mental breakdown and stormed out during brunch (plus full menu) service because Ren knew the employee was justified and upper management was completely unreasonable in their brunch requests. It’s not just questionable decisions that hinder KK staff but improper equipment as well.
This is the first restaurant I have worked at which uses a touch screen on the line rather than tickets. From day one I found this to be technology for technology’s sake inferior to tickets. Chef Ren forced a new Chum Bucket location to rip out touch screens from the line and bring in ticket printers because of the higher efficiency. The touch screen is a great idea for expo, not the entire line. My biggest gripe is that each station does not get all the information. Early on I was regularly yelled at for not staggering my items, well I can’t see the rest of the order; a problem I have never had with a ticket system. Touchscreen software is also much more prone to errors and glitches. When I reported an error during a heavy service Icus and Krabs blamed my skills on the line without looking into the malfunctioning screen further. It was glitchy for weeks before the two finally investigated and corrected the issue I brought to their attention long before. Those two gave me an immense amount of ammunition to dislike them in the opening weeks until I stopped caring. The issue I had with being unable to scroll beyond the bottom of a completely filled screen has returned and is still there as of [my last day]. There are also important details that get buried. A frequent meltdown I have is that sauce on side requests and other important modifications are not capitalized or in red to catch the eye as they have been at jobs with tickets. These details get lost on Bikini Bottom’s touchscreens. A sauce on side salad made by me will be wrong 50% of the time because of the instructions being camouflaged in a word salad. This goes for coleslaw on the side and drizzle on the side too. Drizzle in general I dislike because of the pretentiousness, but whatever, drizzle it on top rather than putting it in a ramekin if you must. There are numerous places where Bikini Bottom overcomplicates matters for reasons I cannot ascertain.
Why is there such a large variety of plates? Why do we have a medium circular plate for salads and a large bowl for salads with protein? This just confuses the simplest of matters. I was told this is done because of the high price hike with protein, a larger presentation was desired. But that price hike is the price of protein in 2023. Bikini Bottom should put all salads in the large bowls and use all the circular salad plates in a skeet shooting promotion. I understand why we have both a circular platter plate and a pizza plate but in my restaurant the circular platter plates must go...or maybe the large platter plate instead. Is the large platter used for anything besides fish and chips? That extra space on fish and chips plates are only used for side sauces which can easily be delivered to customers on small circular plates. What is the medium oval plate doing that the medium rectangular plate isn’t? And vice versa. Why do they both exist when they are approximately the same size? Let me write an internet commercial where we break a lot of plates so we can get some logical use out of the superfluous plates. I don’t care which one is destroyed, the ovals or the rectangles but one of them is an unnecessary redundancy in excess done again. Speaking of commercials, the unimaginative radio advertisements for Bikini Bottom are doing little to lure new customers to the restaurant.
The three radio spots I have heard on KBBL all sound like they were produced by a marketing 101 student who wasn’t a natural in the field. The voiceover actor was so uncharismatic I was certain someone from the office was chosen at random to read the copy. Then I heard that same voiceover actor selling pool supplies on another radio station so I concluded that Bikini Bottom must have hired the cheapest guy in town to produce the most basic of commercials. Perhaps there is someone else you could hire more qualified to voiceover these commercials, an actor with experience on an Emmy award winning cable program whose unique place in the film industry was written about on [website] would be a much wiser choice to be the voice of the KK? (See external link). In the ad there was no catchphrase, no jingle, no music whatsoever. This simple approach to commercials lacks the pizazz to catch the attention of radio listeners. The first two commercials I heard would get a C in marketing 101 as they were nearly the exact same and accomplished the bare minimum to sell wares, the third one would maybe get a B- because there was some sort of attempted gimmick with the voiceover whispering to represent thinking inside his head about what he was going to eat later at KK. Not only does this commercial give no reason for the man to think inside his head, the outside world still and unpopulated. To see what a creative person would do with this concept see the attached script. There is an attempted slogan that could become part of an ad campaign. Commercials aren’t the only lost opportunities in promotions.
There are numerous promotional celebrity tie-ins at Bikini Bottom’s fingertips with Dimmadome performers. The restaurant could have a Phish sandwich as a OCOP special on [Phish performance dates], or a pretentious Jelly Roll on [Jelly Roll performance date]. Has anyone reached out to the Dimmadome theater or talent management for approved special menu items to be promoted inside the dome? Perhaps a special 20% discount to ticket holders? Is Bikini Bottom capable of getting permits to extend Open Container hours beyond [cutoff time] for an afterparty or block party throughout a Dimmadome concert? I see additional marketing opportunities left on the table for all new locations.
I believe new KK locations are missing out on a marketing campaign by opening with the entire cumbersome 50 item menu. This is a staggering amount of menu items which is too much to ask new staffers to perfect all at once. After a few months expanding the menu by approximately ten items is catching to customers who haven’t returned after a single visit or infrequently stop into KK. There are ten new food items that might appeal to them. Just like it appears KK doesn’t know what it’s looking for in a good commercial spot, this company doesn’t appear to recognize a talented from an untalented worker until it’s too late.
It is my understanding that KK had a headhunter to find Icus, the first Bikini Bottom kitchen manager. If it were up to me I’d hire someone to break the legs of that headhunter for bringing in a subpar kitchen lead. We are still attempting to recover from the lousy choices she made in the floor plan. If anybody responsible for Bikini Bottom’s floor plan is still giving input, stop them immediately. Once the doors were open to the public Icus had his head in the clouds to a point where I questioned if he saw the writing on the walls of an imminent demotion and stopped trying as a result. I had a full deck of 3x5 cards in an archaic powerpoint presentation bringing numerous concerns to light that he kept putting off listening to until he was fired. Those same cards were broken out for this essay. The second kitchen manager, Krumm, is a good lesson in honesty. According to Heffer, Krumm was given a bill of goods about how smoothly KK Bikini Bottom was running. Since Krumm stepped into a latrine pit which he was led to believe was a heated pool, he left in short time. Krumm also had plans to modify the menu but when his bosses told him to be a rodeo clown rather than a cowboy Krumm didn’t take too kindly to that. Meanwhile Heffer was the savior of the Bikini Bottom kitchen. I didn’t agree with every single decision he made, but I did with a majority of them. Heffer’s overhaul was such a blessing so I didn’t have to fiddle with the organization of 60% of the equipment anymore, only about 20% now. Too bad Heffer’s crippling depression came back after bashing his head into the wall out of frustration with the shackles KK restrained him with.
The current management team is enthusiastic but inexperienced. I see an accumulation of small infractions that might bring down Bikini Bottom’s health department rating significantly. I see the entire management team being inattentive or unaware about organizational issues. Whatever bureaucratic nonsense corporate tasks everyone with from the original sous chef Skeeter to Patty Mayonnaise that makes them walk away from the line between 11am and 1pm especially is infuriating. I have never been left alone on a multi-person line during peak hours so regularly, and I won’t tolerate it anymore. As much as I believe in his drive, I imagine our current kitchen manager SpongeBob will be let go after a disastrous service during the Dimmadome concert season that someone has to take the fall for. Chef Ren and I could help bring experience in management and dealing with festival traffic...if corporate does not force us to follow a failing strategy.
After working nearly a year at KK you may ask why I’m not proficient on more than one station. Excellent question. First, when I move over to another station the squeeze bottles are never labeled (until Stu Pickles was hired, now they’re sometimes labeled), so I always looked at the glut of unlabeled sauces and I’d go back to my station because the basic information is missing (also a health department violation for having numerous unlabeled, unchilled bottles). In his first week the new general manager Stu Pickles pulled out 90% of the containers under the grill station because they were lacking labels despite an expected health department visit. The second reason for my menu ignorance is the mountain of prep for my own and upcoming shifts I have piled up on my station throughout service. My attention to detail appears to be next level with my ability to anticipate stocking all items for all shifts including the weeknd. The third reason I wouldn’t learn multiple stations is a defense against the afternoon conference calls. In [month] the Bikini Bottom line was unprepared for a busy post lunch because one cook was cut and our expo person was busy with a conference call. The two of us remaining on the line had a miserable slog through an unexpectedly busy afternoon. When I brought this up to Krabs he disregarded me, being a good bean counter he quoted the cost percentage. What he didn’t take into account was the missing expo person who could have jumped on the line and expo to help the understaffed two man team. That person was stuck on a conference call. Just recently I saw the company actively lose money because of this poorly thought-out meeting during business hours. A customer wanted to order a dessert that was 86ed but had been restocked by our prep cook an hour before. The server was unable to sell them their dessert because the only person in the building who could help un-86 an item was on a conference call. This conference call calamity is another bone-headed choice that speaks to a larger decision-making problem within the corporate structure. Finish the conference calls by 10:45 am eastern.
In conclusion, I quit my position as a lowly grunt for this company because of its unwarranted perplexing dance steps and below average management. I don’t care how much varnish and lacquer is supplied, I refuse to polish this Bikini Bottom turd as a manager or full-time employee under the current circumstances. You would have to take a pickaxe to the floor, possibly relocate the bathrooms to add a door to the dishpit, get rid of the cheap low boy that doesn’t properly drain excess water, and Mr Gorbachov knock down that wall in the middle of the kitchen to give the proper amount of space to work. Or simply reduce the menu to 36 items (including sides) because that’s the amount of space this dreadful design can comfortably output. Would Gordon Ramsay compliment KK for all the unnecessary convoluted complications abound, or would Chef Ramsay yell about keeping it simple and demand KK chuck it in the flip? Thanks to the numerous pop up restaurants I have been a part of and the hectic world of trade shows/conventions, I may have more experience than anyone else employed by KK in smoothly opening a new location. I would enjoy being part of the opening team to ensure new locations have an efficiency Bikini Bottom lacks, and to keep upper management away from their worst instincts. Work with me and Chef Ren and we will help you become a well oiled machine like Chokey Chicken instead of the Chum Bucket cesspit Bikini Bottom currently embodies.

Previous.
Admiral Shane stood in the room usually used for training, but had been cleared out so he could make the conference over holophone, and a larger room helped with the scale when they were addressing the entire Federation Council.
It had taken only about 2 ½ days to get to the Golden Egg’s position, as with their progress in the uplifting process - and the fact that they had access to FTL technology - they had been allowed to send a ship out into the Federation, albeit supervised. As such, they decided on sending a military ship, seeing as there was a much smaller chance of an interstellar incident happening with disciplined Marines.
The chamber was a semicircle, with the Chairperson’s seat at ground level, in the center of the floor, with each next row elevated slightly, so that the gathered Representatives were situated in a step-pattern, ascending to the top row of the chamber. He noticed that the ‘insectoid’ species all were situated to his right of the chamber, if he was looking out at them.
Beside him stood Admiral Ree’Scote, being his ‘escort’ into the Federation; Kyle, as the boots-on-ground witness; Officer Kit’Ahnj, being the Federation’s liaison officer; and Captain Vohr’Doe, as the commander of the vessel that found the planet. But of course, it was him that was currently the center of attention.
He had reviewed the team's video logs, and he agreed that whatever was on that planet was likely hostile; the sounds that came from that darkness - not to mention the fear he felt when looking into it - were so… wrong, he didn't feel any other classification would be right. And - after the testimony of Officer Kit’Ahnj, backing up Kyle’s report, and the video - the Council felt the same way; however, they were less inclined to destroy the planet. He was currently being addressed by the Council Chairwoman, a bipedal crocodile, whose title was Chairwoman Hahss’Chom, (which - when she pronounced it - was little more than a hiss, followed by her snapping her jaws shut.)
“We have ways to prevent… whatever this is - from ever being able to exit their system, even if they were to develop FTL technology.”
“With all due respect, ma’am,” he said, keeping his focus on her, and not the - obviously - judging races that surrounded him, all of whom represented different animals from Earth, each one the Speaker for their respective races, “We’ve dealt with a mindless force of nature that was only intent on killing…
“Europa was one of Jupiter’s moons, and was roughly 90% the size of Luna. When we began spreading out from Earth, the question of drinkable water became a problem. And while it's - relatively - easy to make it from its base components, Europa was almost entirely water, though not all of it was liquid.
“Once we had developed the technology to land there, we set out drilling to the ocean, which was located beneath a shell of ice that was estimated to be between 10-15 miles deep… We made it four miles before we lost all resistance. The drills were shut down, and new readings were taken; but by the time they realized what was happening, it was too late.
“At first, the teams thought that it was a geyser, which are - were - a fairly common thing, though there had been no signs that one was building up there. Well, they managed to get far enough away before… The ice where they had been working melted, but there was no geyser. What came out of the hole resembled, well, it most resembled a machine AI that humanity dreamed up as a monster in a movie. The one I reference here was basically a metal ball with countless metal tentacles from its ‘back’, and what came out of that hole looked remarkably similar.
“And it wasn't alone. About a dozen of those [‘squids’] came out, and made straight for our people. It was… a massacre; our weapons had no effect on them whatsoever. And after they were done killing everyone, they began dismantling and consuming the ships and equipment. And afterwards, they turned their gazes upwards, launching themselves from the surface of the moon with the force of their limbs, alone.
“Judging from the fragments of their bodies we were able to recover after encounters with them in space, we determined that they were iron of the Fe oxidized variety, so the metal of their bodies didn't interact with the water. They were also incredibly light, especially for how dense they were; it took several missiles to destroy each, and we had no other choice, as they were heading directly at the ships in orbit.
“We retreated to a tactical distance, and while we tried so many different ways to communicate, we found nothing. We even captured one alive, and still, there was no way to communicate. Every attempt was met with the utmost hostility. And throughout this process, they continuously sent out others from beneath the ice, most of them sent towards our ships, yet others were sent out towards the asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun. We had no idea what they were doing with the asteroids, whether they were mining them for food, or using them as places to reproduce - or both - so we eventually decided to bombard them with munitions until they crashed into the planet. But this was after we had exhausted every possible avenue of communication.
“We eventually came to a decision - as a people - to destroy the moon, but we had to be smart about it. The Europans had already proven they didn't need to breathe, as they could survive the cold, irradiated vacuum of space without any external protection, which took blowing Europa up off the table.. So - after much deliberation - it was decided to create a ship that could use tractor beams to move the planet. For this, we converted another of Jupiter’s moons - Ganymede - into a ship, and once the construction was complete, we renamed it the Europa Contingency.
“From there, we caught Europa, and towed it to Sol, where we cast it in, to destroy the Europans, down to the last one… It's not something that we’re proud of - as a people - but it was what we needed to do, in order to survive.”
There was a resounding silence after he finished with his speech, and he allowed them the time to process what he'd just told them. He was suddenly very self-conscious, and he felt as if he hadn't explained their plight sufficiently. They were already classified as the most aggressive that their measurement system could register, what must they think of humanity after this. Finally, the Chairwoman broke the silence.
“Though it sounds as if you may have committed genocide on a sapient species… This Council can claim no better. While we have ways to contain FTL travel, this was only put forth as a possible avenue to explore after our predecessors had glassed multiple planets who had turned out to be too hostile to conduct civil interactions with. To have that threat in the same system as you, with no real barrier between your peoples, well, I don't believe any here could truly blame your people for coming to this decision… However, we can't be sure that we face the same threat. Nor can we order anyone to go into the darkness to find out.”
The suul’mahr representative, Grol’Rosh - a solid white coloration to his fur - spoke up, his voice playing out over the speakers, as he was sitting in the topmost row.
“We could send a probe into the midst of it; that could tell us what we're dealing with. And if they are entirely hostile, we could take a specimen up to the atmosphere, to see if it survives.”
He heard a strangled sound of protest, and he didn't need to look around to see the fearful look on Kyle’s face; he gently held up a hand to assuage the Ambassador, as he knew full well what his concern was.
“We believe that the contents of the darkness are… harmful to the generally accepted term of ‘sanity’. And not in the sense of ‘it would be dangerous to any non-human’; as in, to anyone. If - however - you should need a volunteer, then-”
“I will watch it,” Grol’Rosh cut him off. Admiral Shane merely looked at him, sighing lightly as he nodded once in acknowledgment to the suul'mahr. Captain Vohr'Doe stepped up at that point, calling to the hangar to release the drone, and to program it to enter the darkness just beyond the leading edge. A small communication satellite was set out after it to retain contact with the drone when the curve of the planet would render it beyond their scope of reach.
It took several minutes, during which Grol’Rosh inserted earbuds into his ears, and had his personal screen connected to the probe's camera. While he was watching the drone's progress, it was also taking its own readings, and sending them back as text. Which is how they knew when it was breaching the atmosphere, and when it encountered the darkness; Kyle had been right: it wasn't natural.
The reports coming back from the drone were confusing, to say the least; firstly because ‘the darkness’ was actually solid material, though ‘solid’ was used loosely here, as it was more like a ‘dust storm’. Except that it wasn't just dust - as there were readings of sand, and soil in the mess - because nanoscanners inside the drone determined that each grain of soil was coated in a thick, viscous material that absorbed all light that hit it.
The material was what caused the confusion, as when it was analyzed, it was determined to be… everything. There were traces of all genus of races, from canines, to felines, insects, to pachyderms; there was even all manner of aquatic animals, as well. There was no plant life detected in the sludge.
As imagined with readings like that, the drone had more difficulty descending to the surface of the planet than it normally would have, but strangely, not as much as one might expect; it was only when the craft sped up that they realized it was being pulled. The altitude of the drone continued to drop at a steady rate, until it was about 50’ from the ground, according to the readings from the expedition team, as it was heading for the exact location they had originally made camp. However, the drone was sending even more confusing information, as it was now reading the ground to be 25’ away, and moving quickly.
The drone was about 10’ from the ‘ground’ when Grol’Rosh began howling like he’d been stabbed. Looking up in his direction, everyone gasped in horror as he began clawing at his eyes, quickly rending his face, and entirely destroying the delicate orbs within. He wasn't done, however, as he then began clawing at his ears, his Gift obviously activated, as he tore straight to his skull in only a single swipe, the unnerving sound of claw scraping bone filling the room.
Two suul'mahr guards rushed towards him as soon as he'd begun clawing his eyes, and were almost to him when he reached his hands out to the sides, and brought them together - with his head still between them - with obviously tremendous force.
One of the guards - a dark gray specimen - leapt forward at the last second, tackling him by leverage of his left arm. That still left his right arm free, though it had only succeeded in a glancing blow, which still knocked him unconscious with a sickening /thud**. There was a stunned silence that followed that ordeal, until Chairwoman Hahss’Chom shakily gave an order for medics, who soon arrived, two kanfi’doe that - after stabilizing his wounds - quickly carried Grol’Rosh down the stairs, and loaded him onto a stretcher they had brought with them.
The silence reigned for a long minute after they’d wheeled him out, broken finally by the Chairwoman’s subdued voice.
“I call a vote: all in favor of allowing the humans to bring their ‘Europa's Contingency’...?” She tapped a few commands into the datapad in front of her, and there was a quiet flurry of movement as the rest of the Council cast their votes.
“It's unanimous: Admiral Shane, we hereby give the Europa’s Contingency permission to travel to this system, and then to return to Sol when the job here is done. Are we clear on this?”
“Crystal, ma’am. I can have the orders dispat-”
He was cut off as a keen'yohng appeared by his side.

Commodore Vah’Rin came out of subspace, his prey already in his sights. The eight other captains under his command confirmed lock-on status, and his communications officer informed him that they had an opening into their link, though it was protected by an unusually strong defense system.
“Well,” he replied, “We did intercept the report on humans; they have artificial intelligences. They probably have one with that cylindrical ship that has too many guns to not be military. Well, this certainly changes things: an a.i. would be by far more valuable than an entire hold of drahk'mihn. If we can capture it, and reprogram it to obey us, we could drop down far enough into subspace that we could make a trip of several months cut down to as many weeks… Patch me into their communication; I’m done hiding…”
He let a cruel smile play across his face as his entire bridge turned into the Federation Council Hall; his ship would project his image into their conversation, but not those of his crew around him. And there in front of him were the objects of his focus, as he was certain he appeared before them, wearing his black Commodore’s jacket.
“How nice of you to join us, Commodore.”
He turned to the owner of the cold voice that ‘greeted’ him.
“Ah, Council Member Toss’Vah,” he replied cheerily to her, “Good to see you again. How are things back home?”
She regarded him coldly, then almost spat,
“It was widely believed that you were still alive; I regret to have that theory confirmed.”
“What can I say?” he asked, smiling, “This ship was just too good to not take it. Give my regards to the president; this ship truly is state-of-the-art… But, I didn't break into this conversation to speak with you.” He turned to the humans, who regarded him with wary expressions, if his experience with the suun'mahs and kanfi’doe was anything to judge by.
“Greetings,” he began jovially - no reason not to be civilized, “I - as you may have gathered - am Commodore Vah’Rin, and I regret to inform you that you are under the guns of 9 ships, all of which are heavily armed. Now, this is normally the part where I tell you that if you cooperate, then we can get through this with a minimal amount of casualties - someone always has to try to be the hero, don’t they? - but I have a different proposition for you, today: give me you a.i., and we’ll leave this system - and your ships - without any hostilities. Refuse, and… Well, I think you get the idea.” He smiled a predatory smile that was more of a leer than anything.
“This is outrageous;” the current Councilwoman stated, righteous anger evident in every syllable, “We not stand for-” but he cut her off.
“We’re too far away from any Federation outposts, and the nearest suun’mahs patrol is… well, right here.” He gestured to Admiral Ree’Scote.
“So, no matter how this plays out, there’s really nothing that this council can do about the goings-on here. So - as I said earlier - I’m not speaking to you; this has nothing to do with any of you.” He turned his attention back to the humans.
“So, what is your answer? And might I remind you, while you may - or may not - be able to take on our ships at 3-1 odds, one of your ships is not only not made to fight, but is also filled with civilians; are you willing to risk all of their lives?”
“How about this,” the human who was obviously military began, “You choose six of your ships, and use those to square off against us; the other three can hang back, and guard the Golden Egg from leaving. If you win that battle, you can take the A.I. stationed there. If not, then your other ships have to leave us in peace.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name and rank.”
“Admiral Shane of the Sol Defense Force.”
“Ah,” he continued, “Well, Admiral Shane, I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. It’s all, or nothing, which means that even if you feel comfortable taking on all of our ships at once, we will still target the civilian vessel. There is no other option; sometimes you only have bad paths to choose from, and you must take the lesser of the evils.”
Admiral Shane stood taller, and defiantly responded with,
“We of the Sol Defense Force cannot - in good conscience - hand over a single soul to slav-”
But he was cut off by the other human behind him, the one he actually recognized. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a small blue cube, which he held out as he angrily stated,
“You can have mine.”
“Ah,” he replied jovially, turning to the smaller human, “Mr. Redding, I believe?”
“It’s Ambassador.” The defiant little monkey at least seemed pretty fearless in the face of life-or-death negotiations, so he figured that he deserved at least that recognition; he certainly seemed to realize the value of diplomacy over fighting.
“Ambassador, then; good to see someone here has a level head on their shoulders.”
The cube reformed into a small human, as the Admiral rounded on his civilian counterpart; they both started talking at the same time.
“Excuse me?! You have no right to auction me off like some-
“... hell do you think you’re doing?! How dare you offer up a Sollian to a slaver?! I ought to knock the sh-”
But they were both cut off as Ambassador Redding simply stated, talking louder than both of them,
“Artificial Intelligence Override Code: JKJKLOL69!”
The small android stiffened up, and remained rigid, as if it were a simple robot, while the Admiral recoiled, raising an arm slightly as if to defend himself.
“How dare you?” he said with disgust to the Ambassador, “That’s only to be used in the event of a rogue A.I., this-!”
“This,’ the Ambassador interjected angrily, “Is bigger than all of us! I know what I’m doing.” He turned to address the Commodore,
“You will take it, and you’ll leave. In peace. Give me… 12 Standard minutes - I have to collect the memory core - and we’ll meet halfway between the 'civilian’ ship, and your group, ‘cause you sure as hell aren't coming aboard either of our ships.”
“That sounds acceptable; however, once the transfer is made, you will keep your shuttle in position until we have determined that the package is authentic, at which point, we will leave. If it is a fake, then I won't hesitate to blow your little shuttle to dust, and then I’ll take everyone I can get my hands on; and with 9 ships, we have more than enough space to hold you all. And we will both come unarmed.”
“I’ll be accompanying you,” the Admiral said sternly to the Ambassador, “I need to document everything that happens so I can send it back as evidence in your hearing.”
“Yeah,” the smaller primate answered testily, “You do that…”
With a vindictive smile, Commodore Vah’Rin motioned to end the transmission.

Kahv’Hosh sat in the pilot’s seat, having been chosen to transport the humans out to the meeting spot. They were both currently silent, and the air was so thick with emotion that you could cut it with a knife. They were already in place, and were currently waiting on the pirate ‘commodore’ to reach their shuttle, with an estimated thirty seconds until they made contact. With a solid /thud/, they were connected, and Kahv’Hosh equalized the pressure in the sleeve, and soon heard a slight knock on their door. Kyle and the Admiral had already moved to the door - the large metal cube with the interface screen sitting beside it - and Kyle reached forward to open it.
The keen’yhong walked onto their shuttle, and his eyes immediately fell to Kyle’s waist.
“I thought we agreed no weapons.” The man’s voice wasn’t as hostile as he would have expected, as he stared at the big gun on Kyle’s waist, and the smaller - but still obviously deadly - pistol on the Admiral’s.
“Yeah,” Kyle replied sarcastically, “Because you don’t have some hidden weapon on you…”
The ‘commodore’ simply smiled, and turned to the box.
“This is my a.i., I take it?” he asked, still smiling.
Kyle’s mood seemed to darken further as he reached into his pocket, pulling out the cube that became Kay’Eighty at his command.
“Begin downloading into the core, and commence factory reset.”
He set the cube down on top of an open slot beside the monitor, and a loading screen immediately came up. It only took a few seconds, but it was still a tense few seconds; soon, the box chimed, and Kyle removed the cube.
“I’ll be taking that, as well,” the ‘commodore’ replied, reaching a hand into his jacket; Kyle simply scoffed.
“No, you want to make your own mithril, then you figure out how to make it, yourself. You’ve already got the core, that’s all you need. And that’s all we agreed on. If you wanted the mithril, too, then you should’ve said so; not my fault you failed to specify that point.” There was no amusement as he said it, though it was obvious that he enjoyed that little stunt. And while the ‘commodore’ obviously had his hand on the handle of his gun, he wouldn’t be able to move faster than two humans; the two suul’mahr lurking just beyond the airlock wouldn’t be much help after he was already riddled with bullets.
The ‘commodore’ regarded him for a few moments, then began laughing a cruel, calculated laugh. He gestured behind him, and one of the suul’mahr - all-brown fur - came aboard, carrying the large box onto their shuttle. After he’d observed its successful transfer of the package onto his shuttle, the ‘commodore’ turned back to Kyle.
“As stated before: you will hold this position until either my flotilla leaves, or destroys you for trying to trick me. And this time, I expect you to follow my directions, because you’re already targeted by my lead ship… Well, until next time.” With that, he exited the shuttle, their airlock door closing behind him, both humans remaining staring at the door.
They finally turned away when the shuttle disconnected, moving to look out the viewport to watch the other shuttle go back to its ship. Finally, his nerves got the better of him, and he asked to no one in particular,
“Do you think he will truly spare us?”
“There’s a chance,” Admiral Shane replied, “Depending on what kind of pirate he is; they can have varying codes of honor. He does - however - self-admittedly sell people into slavery, so I don’t know how strong his sense of ‘honor’ may be.”
They were all quiet for a while as he considered this, until Kyle’s soft voice - filled with sorrow - broke the silence.
“I’ve never killed anyone before. I mean, the mahn’ewe were all in a fit of rage; and while I’d fantasized about it, I didn’t exactly plan it. Now, though - with all this time to stop and think about it…” He fell silent at that, watching the shuttle go, though Kahv’Hosh wasn’t sure he was actually seeing it. To his surprise, Admiral Shane reached up and grasped Kyle’s shoulder, his voice gentle as he replied,
“It’s never easy. And while the mahn’ewe can probably be overlooked by your conscience, this is - obviously - a different situation entirely. There’s a chance that you never truly recover from this, but just always remember the innocent lives you’re saving by doing this; they’re what’s going to get you through the low points.”
Kyle nodded in acceptance, and then his face contorted, and a predatory smirk lit up his countenance.
“Have you ever seen one go off?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the viewport.
“Well,” the Admiral replied, a mischievous note in his voice, “I have seen a number of tests; of course, there was that pirate faction that we traced to their base in an asteroid. One on each side, and it was history.”
Kyle let out a cruel snort of laughter, and - not taking his eyes off of the viewport - said,
“Kahv’Hosh, did you ever get around to reading about the women of Weinsberg?”
He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he decided to play along.
“I did," he replied slowly.
“And if you knew nothing else about humans,” Kyle began, a cruel smile on his face, “Would you have accepted that deal?”
He managed to take a breath in before something in his mind clicked. Something had seemed off from the beginning, but he couldn’t place exactly what it was. He’d been given clearance to review the transmission from the part where the ‘commodore’ broke in, and he had been replaying it in his mind ever since then, trying to figure out what was gnawing at his mind like a pup with a bone.
But nothing came out at first, as his mind struggled to form words; he managed simply to point out the viewport to the shuttle - that was almost to its ‘mothership’ - and to look back and forth between him and it, before he finally managed to spit out,
“Wh-... you-... why would the arti-... the ‘override code’: why would it be in Galactic Standard?!”
The smile on his face widened, and he was suddenly aware that he was on a small shuttle with two Class 12 aggressors. Kyle - however - merely pulled the cube from his pocket, and said,
“Kay’Eighty?”
The cube began to dissolve, reforming into the humanoid shape that was her android form.
“Yes, Ambassador Redding?” she replied in a distinctly… robotic voice. Kyle merely scoffed, however, and rebutted with,
“Aw, come on; it’s not like he gave us ample opportunity to talk: I had to think of something on the fly…”
She suddenly became much more ‘sapient’ crossing her arms, and looking off to the side as she sighed.
“Fine,” she replied, “Whatever; what do you want?”
Kyle snorted in laughter, and asked,
“Has he made it to the optimal range, yet?”
Kay’Eighty sighed again, and looked out the viewport.
“Just about, yeah.”
“Then I leave the honors to you,” he finished, holding her up for a better view of the viewport.
“Detonation in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”
Kahv’Hosh found that though he was sure this was going to be on par with their aggression level, he also couldn’t look away; like watching an asteroid impact a planet: he knew something bad was coming, but he just couldn’t bring himself to break eye-contact with the nine ships in formation, the middlemost one having already received the shuttle. And even as he watched, the ships seemed to draw closer together.
At first he thought that it must be his eyes playing tricks on him, but soon enough, not only were they drawing closer together, but they began to spin around the central ship, as if caught in the gravity-well of some insanely dense celestial body. He saw small explosions issuing from the sides. with little bits breaking off into the void of space, only for the expanding singularity - for that was obviously what it was - to suck the life-pods back into its center, where everything seemingly disappeared into nothingness. Soon, the ships themselves began breaking apart, still doing their destructive, tumbling dance around the spot where the ‘commodore’s ship used to be.
Piece by piece, the ships began to break apart, ‘falling’ into the center, where they were obviously compressed beyond what physics would normally allow. He tried not to think about the fate of the people aboard the ships, gravity increasing to the point that you were crushed under the weight of your own skin, having to watch - if they could even survive - as the ship around them broke apart, exposing them to the blackness of space.
He managed a quick look back at the humans, and was granted some small consolation in that the evil smiles had left their faces, and both had looks of somber determination gracing their features. And at that moment, he believed he knew what it was that set them so high on the aggression scale; even they were appalled by their actions - by their own weapons - and yet not even the prospect of becoming a monster would stop them from removing a perceived threat.
Soon, all pieces of the ships were gone, and about a Standard minute after that, the anomalous gravity readings disappeared. And suddenly space had returned to ‘normal’, as if nothing unnatural had just happened. Kyle broke the silence in a neutral voice as he said,
“Well, let’s get back to the ship; Cap’m’s gonna tear me a new one for this…”
[Next.] Patreon

Hey, everyone! Since I imagine the entire Sato community is scrambling to play the recently-dumped Rolypolys 2, I figured I might as well help some of you out by posting this mini-guide on how to get the game running, as well as some other info.

Getting The Game

Head on over to the sidebar of this subreddit (you might have to switch to old Reddit) and click the link for Rolypolys 2. On that page, scroll down to the Download Options section. You should see a few links on the right side of the page; click the one that says "ISO IMAGE". Give it a little bit to download, it's 500MB and Archive downloads tend to be quite slow.
Despite what the page says, the file in question is actually a .img file, which won't be accepted by most programs out of the box. To convert it into a more usable .iso format, I would recommend using WinCDEmu for Windows, but other CD-related tools should be able to do the job as well. I don't know of any solutions for MacOS or Linux; comments for those platforms would be appreciated!

• Install WinCDEmu.
• Right-click the IMG file and mount it. The default mounting settings should be fine.
• Once it's mounted, right-click the newly-mounted disc and click "Convert to ISO".
• WinCDEmu might tell you there were corrupted sectors. Click "Ignore and save"; the corrupted sectors don't appear to affect anything.

If all went well, you should now have an ISO file of Rolypolys 2, ready to be used!

Running The Game

As Rolypolys 2 is a hybrid disc like the first game, it is simultaneously a Windows 9x game and a MacOS game. Therefore, emulators/virtual machines of both should be able to run it.

• SheepShaver is a virtual machine program for running macOS, particularly the early PowerPC-era ones. It can run Rolypolys 2 just fine, although setting it up can take a bit of doin'.
  
• VirtualBox and VMWare Player are both virtual machine programs that can run a variety of OSes, including old versions of Windows. Rolypolys 2 should run just fine in both of them, although you may have to change the game's compatiability mode settings. I've tested the game in VirtualBox running Windows XP and have had zero issues so far.
  
• Believe it or not, modern versions of Windows (tested on Windows 10) should be able to run the game as well, so long as you set the game's compatiability mode settings to force 256 colors and 640x480 resolution. I haven't played the game for very long under Win10, but it doesn't appear to have any issues.
  

Known Issues / Doesn't Work

• Notably, unlike Rolypolys 1, you cannot run it in DOSbox. This is because the game is a 32-bit executable, and 32-bit support was simply not present in Windows 3.1, the latest stable Windows version that can be run in DOSbox.
  
• Basilisk II, at least for me, had issues when it came to loading game saves. It also had an issue where sound cut out entirely about an hour into the game, so I cannot personally recommend it for this particular game. I was recommended SheepShaver as an alternative.
  
• ScummVM, which has been working on Adobe Director support, can detect the game (thank you @mistydemeo <3), but trying to run it will softlock you on the game's title screen, unable to click anything. It's likely this will be fixed in the future, but for now I can't recommend it for this particular game.
  

Some Notes

• The game is entirely in Japanese, with no English translation currently in existence. However, I was able to brunt my way through the game (so far anyways) without reading anything aside from some numbers used to solve puzzles, so it's not strictly necessary to progress. Still, if you can read Japanese, you'll very likely have an easier time than I did.
  
• Since the UI is also in Japanese, I made this cheat sheet for it. It's not particularly difficult to memorize or figure it out yourself through trial-and-error, but having the cheat sheet does help a bit!
  
• Without spoiling much, this game seems to be considerably longer than Rolypolys 1. Don't be afraid to take breaks and save often!
  

That should be about all you need to get going. Thanks for your time, and have fun!

<3

I know quitting your job as a cook usually simply comes with two weeks notice or a ragequit walkout, but for eleven months I worked at a new franchise that had such potential which was being squandered by the incompetence of upper management. I present the nearly 6000 word thesis I turned in on my last day. Locations and names have been changed to cartoon references. Brackets represent ambiguous information in place of specific details.
Krusty Krab Careers Jobs
Opening in [Month/Year], Krusty Krab (KK) Bikini Bottom is on its 4th kitchen manager in less than a year. Krusty Krab O-Town has recently let go its inaugural kitchen manager and sous chef. Almost no member of the Bikini Bottom opening management team remains employed by KK. There is a pattern developing where one must question both the choice of employee and the directive given to new franchises. These lingering issues I brought concerns about in the first weeks of opening but was disregarded at every turn despite my experience with festival traffic. As a result I decided this was not a place I wanted to advance, but with a good-enough paycheck I’d be a lowly grunt in the kitchen four days a week, at five days a week I would have quit or been fired over a public outburst long ago. If Krusty Krab alters course slightly while being true to the brand this could be a successful chain.
My unique employment history in brick and mortar restaurants, food trucks, pop up culinary concepts, trade shows/conventions, and the film industry make me an ideal candidate to be on the opening team for new KK locations. My outgoing nature and foresight are valuable assets. For example, on training week before opening when I was standing around idly without a task I took it upon myself to organize the disarray that was dry storage. Overhearing Krabs tell another manager where he wanted the cleaning products placed, I had a jumping off point and the organization I created nine months ago is still largely in place. Since returning from my vacation in early February I have made it my mission to keep the storage area organized because it was again starting to resemble a hoarder’s house rather than a commercial kitchen. This is now part of my weekly routines because every time I turn my back there is more product being placed haphazardly just anywhere with little regard. I also recently reorganized the walk-in cooler because of problematic stocking with items being placed on the same shelf or below raw proteins. I also simply put all the like products together such as cheeses or fruits that were scattered amongst several shelves. With recent overordering I cannot keep up with the organization of the walk in cooler. The pattern recognition of food types and even simple shapes appears to be lost on the Bikini Bottom crew. My daily reorganization of containers is proof of this. Most days I’ll take a few minutes to put all cylinders together, all cambros together in descending volume, all deep and shallow pans next to each other rather than intermixed. My decision to be a kitchen manager at age 19 from 2005 thru 2008 and rarely enter restaurant management since is very calculated.
With my prior knowledge of professional kitchens I was becoming Bikini Bottom’s resident nag to coworkers as I made note of health department violations on a daily basis. I stopped after being largely ignored for two weeks. My regular health department nags include; a battle with jackets and hats being placed only in the designated area (a designated area that did not exist until I created a place for personal items a in January by neatly organizing the dry storage area again), waiting until prepped items are cooled before a cover is placed on top, placement of raw seafood, open containers (very often sugar, flour, and pancake mix bags ripped open and left), and dirty dishes/containers placed back in rotation. The dirty dishes and containers in rotation with the clean ones are at an atrociously high number. I have given up on making the 4th fryer seafood allergy safe too. With the low volume of seafood allergy safe items Bikini Bottom should purchase smaller baskets to visually discourage cross contamination with the other fryers and baskets. My skills to organize the kitchen do not end with simply where to store products to meet minimal health department standards.
Half of the space in the Bikini Bottom kitchen is completely wasted on an ill-advised walkway to the dishpit. An intelligent design would place a second doorway directly to the dishpit connected to the bar or where the bathrooms reside. Numerous times during the opening week of KK Bikini Bottom I said, yelled, sang, and muttered that we have too many food items for the amount of space we have. Icus stated that there was more space than Bluffington. Is Bluffington intelligently designed? Because Bikini Bottom most certainly isn’t. So Bikini Bottom actually has less space even if there is more square footage. See the attached diagram for an intelligent design that could potentially house a menu of this size. Bikini Bottom forces a line design on this kitchen when an open concept is needed for this menu. It’s as if this floorplan was created by a person who had only ever seen one commercial kitchen previously and couldn’t think 4th dimensionally to understand the needs of the workers to smoothly serve customers.
There is not enough counter space for pizzas without getting off the line, the microwave is placed completely out of the way, the freezer’s curved design is a waste of potential counter space and a falling hazard for containers stored on top of it, the toaster is an overcomplicated and overexpensive piece of machinery that serves exactly one purpose when a flat top could be used to toast bread and other purposes like a quesadilla special, sautee was designed without an overhang for spices, the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter for seafood allergies, there are no Frialator fryers which I have worked with at every single kitchen job previously instead we got the cheap Vulcan model (is that logical), the cheap low boy in pantry that doesn’t drain excess water anywhere it’s just supposed to evaporate somehow but doesn’t, the grill and fryer should be placed next to each other (with a higher volume of crossover than other stations), the floors are flat instead on having a mild decline towards the drains (just look at the standing water residing behind the oven right now), in the dishpit the spraying area and the filled sinks are backwards of a logical dipshit, the ramp to the back door is on the wrong side, there is no refrigerated place downstairs to stage extra food for busy shifts (the beer cooler is once again used for such food items because of this massive oversight), the prep station is an afterthought and miniscule, the dishes on the line are difficult to grab for anyone under 5’11” and inaccessible for anyone under 5’6” (instead of putting them underneath tables that also give that desperately needed counterspace I spoke of), there is not enough space to store to-go containers or boats behind the line, expo is lacking a low boy for the numerous items that are supposed to be cold but are instead kept at room temperature all day long, no one in management thought about buying shelves until right before Bikini Bottom opened as a result the clean full sheets sat on the floor for days, we had only the exact amount of 1⁄6 pans for an absurd amount of time making it impossible to rotate and clean them when necessary (which is daily), we still struggle with 1/9 pan supply. And just when I thought I documented all the poor design choices possible I stumbled upon a person whose office holiday party was booked at KK Bikini Bottom. The deck space works just fine as a deck. It does not double well as a gathering space. The space is too long and narrow for parties, it promotes little splitoff groups rather than a coming together of a larger gathering. It may be advantageous to contact a social psychologist for help designing a private party space that promotes intermingling rather than enforcing small pockets to form. The reorganization of the physical kitchen isn’t all that screams for an overhaul.
There are six positions on the line at the Krusty Krab; expo, oven, grill, sautee, fryer, and pantry. But the pantry and fryer positions are forced together like a bad remix. Everyone who mainly works pantry deserves a $6 raise immediately because it is a station and a half. Both Icus and Krumm, while kitchen manager, kind of acknowledged the pantry is too big for one station without outright mentioning the lopsided distribution of work. I imagine in the only location where this works, Bluffington, a second person joins the pantry at noon because of the unreasonable amount of items one person is tasked with. Bikini Bottom only has one person in this position at all times, maybe modify it for one person? The excess of items on the pantry position largely resembles a position I would call “set-up” or “build” at a previous job that made sensible choices. This build position should have tostadas, tacos, butcher’s blocks, toast, salads, lettuce wrap set ups, and preparing plating for whichever station is most bogged down. I have absolutely lost my mind yelling about salads at least once a month, ranting that they do not belong on the fryer position because of how illogical it is that five salads are included on the mountain of other items the pantry has. I have always considered working in a kitchen a kind of dance, and the pantry station demands an unnecessarily convoluted dance to keep up with the demand. Without the salads, tostadas, and tacos the station is already the busiest. Do we really need to combine ballet and swing by including these extra awkward dance steps in this single station? For a kitchen designed this poorly I suppose it is. Again, see attached document for an intelligently designed kitchen that might be able to accommodate this menu. Unless Bikini Bottom is going to close for a month to fix the baffling floor plan design the menu is shouting to be reduced to 30-36 items.
The menu is too big. Krusty Krab is the jack of all foods, master of none. In general I believe individual locations should be allowed 18% omissions, and 18% unique items to this wildly unwieldy menu sitting around 50 food items including sides. The insistence on keeping menu items that don’t sell at Bikini Bottom because of Bluffington is mind boggling. Chicken tenders do not sell at Bikini Bottom. fried sushi does not sell at Bikini Bottom, not enough to justify their place on the line. I don’t care how well these items work in Bluffinton. They. Do. Not. Work. At. Bikini. Bottom. If the KK location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sells an incredible amount of live krill does that mean Bikini Bottom and O-Town must sell live krill too? Take the fried sushi off the menu. I had a complete meltdown about this during a Dimmadome service and my valid point was met with indifference. Replace the kid’s tenders with a kid’s fish sticks. We already have the tilapia fish sticks on the line for tacos. Or make the kid’s fish sticks cod. We cut cod to order for fish tacos in spite of health code violations because it is too rare of an order to make beforehand. Saffron in mashed potatoes? If you must. Why are green tomatoes only on the menu during lunch? Bikini Bottom throws away a sizable amount of spoiled green tomatoes each week. Have green tomatoes on the menu all day long or don’t have them at all. The smoked salmon could go on salads or a special taco to justify its place on the line. The corn pico’s place on the line is unjustified. It only goes on one item, tostadas, which are not particularly popular. If we had a taco salad we could throw the corn pico on there. We also have unreasonable waste from unusable taco shells, smash up those imperfect taco shells and throw them on said taco salad. But before we add salads, let's get rid of the pear and kale salads. The pears' position on the line are unjustified, if we threw them on a taco variation maybe their place on the Bikini Bottom line could be argued but for now they only go on a salad that isn’t particularly popular. The kale salad is an issue of space for a 4th green for salads is too much. The krusty salad is my most hated house salad of all time. And it comes down to the toast with goat cheese. This ancillary step of spreading goat cheese on a cracker is an unnecessary step for an overly complicated dance and should be part of the expo dance if expo wasn’t a shoddily designed afterthought lacking a low boy.
There are a plethora of squeeze bottles on the pantry station that have no place on the overloaded station. They belong to an expo station with a low boy to keep them cold. Pantry has an overwhelming ten squeeze bottles: chipotle crema, sweet chili vinaigrette, buffalo, korean bbq, ranch, caesar, wine vinaigrette, lemon vinaigrette, honey mustard, and lemon aioli. Only the first four are justified on an intelligently designed fryer section, the second four belong on the build station, the last two have no place anywhere but expo. With this extra space sautee could keep their bottles and two purees cold in the fryer's lowboy instead of leaving them at room temperature all day inviting a pathogen party. This theorized intelligently designed expo would have room to keep these four squeeze bottles and a double of every sauce chilled to pour them into ramekins, a move that is highly common in the expo dance. The fact that expo doesn’t have a double of all squeeze bottles is foolish. Expo has to bother an overloaded station to pour these side sauces instead.
How many gallons of basil aioli has Bikini Bottom thrown away in 11 months? Four aiolis in general is way too many and most go on a single item; basil aioli on the incredibly unpopular veggie burger, lemon aioli for calamari, sweet chili aioli for the BLT that is only served half of the day, and garlic aioli actually goes on two items…I believe. What a colossal waste of precious little space, lose two aiolis and then you can sing the logical song with me. Perhaps we can put garlic aioli and sweet chili vinaigrette on the BLT separately and accomplish the exact same thing the sweet chili aioli does. The wings too have unneeded complications. Having worked at a sports bar specializing in wings for the better part of a decade I find KK’s plating of wings to be overly pretentious. The carrots, celery, and blue cheese have lost function. Heffer Wolf always said no one eats the carrot/celery julienne with blue cheese. It’s a complete waste of all the ingredients because you’ve gone too far with the presentation. Wings aren’t fancy. Wings are supposed to have a small pool of sauce and be sloppy. It’s like a sloppy joe that’s not sloppy, an unsloppy joe is a failure to sloppy joes just as the KK presentation of wings is a disparagement to the dish. Ever since training week back in 2022 I have used a scale to give Bikini Bottom a passing or failing grade.
Chokey Chicken to Chum Bucket is the scale I use to judge efficiency and sanity at Bikini Bottom. Both establishments are upscale casual dining experiences in Capitol City in the same vein as KK. Chokey had high employee retention and relatively smooth openings for new locations. Chum Bucket’s employee turnover was high and every location opening was chaotic. Which one sounds closer to KK? Chokey Chicken was filled with chefs I respect including Chef Ren Hoek who remains a close friend to this day. Ren lost his lifelong passion for kitchen work after working management at Chum Bucket. He’s actually seeking work in Bikini Bottom. Call him up at [phone number], but KK will give him Nam’ flashbacks of why he chose driving for a living rather than cooking for five years. The pair of us together helming Bikini Bottom with the ability to omit and create 18% of the overloaded menu can bring success to this franchise. We have worked well numerous times in the past on various concepts in the past including creating The Attack of the Pickled Tomatoes Burger for [Promotional live performance of a TV show] at the Capitol City Theater. We served 100 people in 60 at the [sitcom filming] lunch. That’s physically impossible but somehow we did it quite a few times.
A fun anecdote about Ren Hoek’s KK experience from the soft launch; on training week numerous times I brought concerns about being seafood allergy safe that were dismissed. As mentioned earlier the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter, one each of which seafood never touches. Before the soft launch Chef Stimpy from Bluffington insisted all customers just kind of know everything is prone to be seafood contaminated. Well, chef Ren was a customer that night and this absolutely was not communicated to customers. He claimed to have a slight seafood allergy and was not informed of what the crab soup was. In reality he does not have a seafood allergy. I didn’t discuss the seafood issue with Ren, separately we noticed egregious violations of food safety standards and we each responded in our own way. The soft launch service was so awful that night Chef Ren walked out of a free meal to pay for some ramen, never to return to Bikini Bottom. I attribute this oversight, and many of Bikini Bottom’s (and probably O-Town’s) problems to hubris over the Bluffington location.
Chef Chokey would also be hesitant to join the KK team. It will cost a finder’s fee just for me to reveal Chef Chokey’s name. Chef Chokey was a lead in the rapid expansion of Chokey Chicken restaurants. He opened numerous restaurants and was big on the philosophy that each restaurant must have its own personality in order to fit the unique local culture and the variety of working spaces. This is in direct conflict with the KK way that everything must be exactly like the Bluffington location no matter what. There was only one Chokey Chicken location that had the full menu, Chokey Springfield. Chokey Springfield had a large space which was intelligently designed to accommodate such a large menu. The KK menu is all over the place, closing in on 50 menu items which comes up as a failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale. This is not the only area KK comes up as a major failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale.
Has anyone in this company ever worked festival traffic before? Does anyone have the experience of working next to a major venue with 8000 seats before this one? The way Bikini Bottom handles Dimmadome services it certainly appears that the decision-makers fall on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Having all 50 items available during such massive traffic is completely asinine. An unwillingness to serve a partial menu is hindering the Bikini Bottom kitchen staff. I have worked festival traffic before, and Dimmadome events bring in festival traffic. I’ve worked inside a festival whose line never ended but every customer got their order in 5 minutes or less because the line kept flowing with only four items on the menu as that’s what was warranted at the B-Sharps Music Festival. I refuse to be set up for failure the way Bikini Bottom sets up Dimmadome services for failure. The entire week of concerts in [summer] 2022 I was set up for failure every day (it was after this I modified my availability to keep my sanity and my paycheck). When I brought my concerns about running efficiently during Dimmadome services I was labeled a B-worker for the first time in my employment history by Icus and Krabs. It is that moment which I was either going to holler at them both for being 2-dimensional thinkers who were obviously unqualified for the positions they accepted in this company, or just put my head down. If Bikini Bottom has a successful concert day service, hail your team because they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They swam with concrete shoes. I often wonder how many customers had bad experiences and never returned after concert days. A Dimmadome service should have no more than 25 items and have one or two specials to divert traffic towards an area the kitchen can keep moving. An Open Cup Open Plate (OCOP) special for foot traffic is absolutely needed. When I suggested OCOP special, Heffer was intrigued by this idea and immediately named burgers as the special to keep foot traffic flowing. Smithers wouldn’t hear this idea, babbling on about what’s advertised instead of hearing out a sound idea. This prattle despite radio commercials having inaccurate hours and social media promoting Bikini Bottom’s steak tacos to this day. I always found Smithers to be a better fit as a middle management office pencil pusher than as a hands-on restaurant manager. Overall I find KK managers are selected to be automatons not to question their orders rather than critical thinkers who could take the restaurant to the next level. During brunch service is another period of time that must be modified to lessen the heft of items. Having a full menu that barely works plus brunch is so deep into Chum Bucket territory, in my opinion we now have to use the Tropic Thunder scale of full retard to describe a 60-plus-item brunch. Chef Ren hired back a Chum Bucket cook who had a mental breakdown and stormed out during brunch (plus full menu) service because Ren knew the employee was justified and upper management was completely unreasonable in their brunch requests. It’s not just questionable decisions that hinder KK staff but improper equipment as well.
This is the first restaurant I have worked at which uses a touch screen on the line rather than tickets. From day one I found this to be technology for technology’s sake inferior to tickets. Chef Ren forced a new Chum Bucket location to rip out touch screens from the line and bring in ticket printers because of the higher efficiency. The touch screen is a great idea for expo, not the entire line. My biggest gripe is that each station does not get all the information. Early on I was regularly yelled at for not staggering my items, well I can’t see the rest of the order; a problem I have never had with a ticket system. Touchscreen software is also much more prone to errors and glitches. When I reported an error during a heavy service Icus and Krabs blamed my skills on the line without looking into the malfunctioning screen further. It was glitchy for weeks before the two finally investigated and corrected the issue I brought to their attention long before. Those two gave me an immense amount of ammunition to dislike them in the opening weeks until I stopped caring. The issue I had with being unable to scroll beyond the bottom of a completely filled screen has returned and is still there as of [my last day]. There are also important details that get buried. A frequent meltdown I have is that sauce on side requests and other important modifications are not capitalized or in red to catch the eye as they have been at jobs with tickets. These details get lost on Bikini Bottom’s touchscreens. A sauce on side salad made by me will be wrong 50% of the time because of the instructions being camouflaged in a word salad. This goes for coleslaw on the side and drizzle on the side too. Drizzle in general I dislike because of the pretentiousness, but whatever, drizzle it on top rather than putting it in a ramekin if you must. There are numerous places where Bikini Bottom overcomplicates matters for reasons I cannot ascertain.
Why is there such a large variety of plates? Why do we have a medium circular plate for salads and a large bowl for salads with protein? This just confuses the simplest of matters. I was told this is done because of the high price hike with protein, a larger presentation was desired. But that price hike is the price of protein in 2023. Bikini Bottom should put all salads in the large bowls and use all the circular salad plates in a skeet shooting promotion. I understand why we have both a circular platter plate and a pizza plate but in my restaurant the circular platter plates must go...or maybe the large platter plate instead. Is the large platter used for anything besides fish and chips? That extra space on fish and chips plates are only used for side sauces which can easily be delivered to customers on small circular plates. What is the medium oval plate doing that the medium rectangular plate isn’t? And vice versa. Why do they both exist when they are approximately the same size? Let me write an internet commercial where we break a lot of plates so we can get some logical use out of the superfluous plates. I don’t care which one is destroyed, the ovals or the rectangles but one of them is an unnecessary redundancy in excess done again. Speaking of commercials, the unimaginative radio advertisements for Bikini Bottom are doing little to lure new customers to the restaurant.
The three radio spots I have heard on KBBL all sound like they were produced by a marketing 101 student who wasn’t a natural in the field. The voiceover actor was so uncharismatic I was certain someone from the office was chosen at random to read the copy. Then I heard that same voiceover actor selling pool supplies on another radio station so I concluded that Bikini Bottom must have hired the cheapest guy in town to produce the most basic of commercials. Perhaps there is someone else you could hire more qualified to voiceover these commercials, an actor with experience on an Emmy award winning cable program whose unique place in the film industry was written about on [website] would be a much wiser choice to be the voice of the KK? (See external link). In the ad there was no catchphrase, no jingle, no music whatsoever. This simple approach to commercials lacks the pizazz to catch the attention of radio listeners. The first two commercials I heard would get a C in marketing 101 as they were nearly the exact same and accomplished the bare minimum to sell wares, the third one would maybe get a B- because there was some sort of attempted gimmick with the voiceover whispering to represent thinking inside his head about what he was going to eat later at KK. Not only does this commercial give no reason for the man to think inside his head, the outside world still and unpopulated. To see what a creative person would do with this concept see the attached script. There is an attempted slogan that could become part of an ad campaign. Commercials aren’t the only lost opportunities in promotions.
There are numerous promotional celebrity tie-ins at Bikini Bottom’s fingertips with Dimmadome performers. The restaurant could have a Phish sandwich as a OCOP special on [Phish performance dates], or a pretentious Jelly Roll on [Jelly Roll performance date]. Has anyone reached out to the Dimmadome theater or talent management for approved special menu items to be promoted inside the dome? Perhaps a special 20% discount to ticket holders? Is Bikini Bottom capable of getting permits to extend Open Container hours beyond [cutoff time] for an afterparty or block party throughout a Dimmadome concert? I see additional marketing opportunities left on the table for all new locations.
I believe new KK locations are missing out on a marketing campaign by opening with the entire cumbersome 50 item menu. This is a staggering amount of menu items which is too much to ask new staffers to perfect all at once. After a few months expanding the menu by approximately ten items is catching to customers who haven’t returned after a single visit or infrequently stop into KK. There are ten new food items that might appeal to them. Just like it appears KK doesn’t know what it’s looking for in a good commercial spot, this company doesn’t appear to recognize a talented from an untalented worker until it’s too late.
It is my understanding that KK had a headhunter to find Icus, the first Bikini Bottom kitchen manager. If it were up to me I’d hire someone to break the legs of that headhunter for bringing in a subpar kitchen lead. We are still attempting to recover from the lousy choices she made in the floor plan. If anybody responsible for Bikini Bottom’s floor plan is still giving input, stop them immediately. Once the doors were open to the public Icus had his head in the clouds to a point where I questioned if he saw the writing on the walls of an imminent demotion and stopped trying as a result. I had a full deck of 3x5 cards in an archaic powerpoint presentation bringing numerous concerns to light that he kept putting off listening to until he was fired. Those same cards were broken out for this essay. The second kitchen manager, Krumm, is a good lesson in honesty. According to Heffer, Krumm was given a bill of goods about how smoothly KK Bikini Bottom was running. Since Krumm stepped into a latrine pit which he was led to believe was a heated pool, he left in short time. Krumm also had plans to modify the menu but when his bosses told him to be a rodeo clown rather than a cowboy Krumm didn’t take too kindly to that. Meanwhile Heffer was the savior of the Bikini Bottom kitchen. I didn’t agree with every single decision he made, but I did with a majority of them. Heffer’s overhaul was such a blessing so I didn’t have to fiddle with the organization of 60% of the equipment anymore, only about 20% now. Too bad Heffer’s crippling depression came back after bashing his head into the wall out of frustration with the shackles KK restrained him with.
The current management team is enthusiastic but inexperienced. I see an accumulation of small infractions that might bring down Bikini Bottom’s health department rating significantly. I see the entire management team being inattentive or unaware about organizational issues. Whatever bureaucratic nonsense corporate tasks everyone with from the original sous chef Skeeter to Patty Mayonnaise that makes them walk away from the line between 11am and 1pm especially is infuriating. I have never been left alone on a multi-person line during peak hours so regularly, and I won’t tolerate it anymore. As much as I believe in his drive, I imagine our current kitchen manager SpongeBob will be let go after a disastrous service during the Dimmadome concert season that someone has to take the fall for. Chef Ren and I could help bring experience in management and dealing with festival traffic...if corporate does not force us to follow a failing strategy.
After working nearly a year at KK you may ask why I’m not proficient on more than one station. Excellent question. First, when I move over to another station the squeeze bottles are never labeled (until Stu Pickles was hired, now they’re sometimes labeled), so I always looked at the glut of unlabeled sauces and I’d go back to my station because the basic information is missing (also a health department violation for having numerous unlabeled, unchilled bottles). In his first week the new general manager Stu Pickles pulled out 90% of the containers under the grill station because they were lacking labels despite an expected health department visit. The second reason for my menu ignorance is the mountain of prep for my own and upcoming shifts I have piled up on my station throughout service. My attention to detail appears to be next level with my ability to anticipate stocking all items for all shifts including the weeknd. The third reason I wouldn’t learn multiple stations is a defense against the afternoon conference calls. In [month] the Bikini Bottom line was unprepared for a busy post lunch because one cook was cut and our expo person was busy with a conference call. The two of us remaining on the line had a miserable slog through an unexpectedly busy afternoon. When I brought this up to Krabs he disregarded me, being a good bean counter he quoted the cost percentage. What he didn’t take into account was the missing expo person who could have jumped on the line and expo to help the understaffed two man team. That person was stuck on a conference call. Just recently I saw the company actively lose money because of this poorly thought-out meeting during business hours. A customer wanted to order a dessert that was 86ed but had been restocked by our prep cook an hour before. The server was unable to sell them their dessert because the only person in the building who could help un-86 an item was on a conference call. This conference call calamity is another bone-headed choice that speaks to a larger decision-making problem within the corporate structure. Finish the conference calls by 10:45 am eastern.
In conclusion, I quit my position as a lowly grunt for this company because of its unwarranted perplexing dance steps and below average management. I don’t care how much varnish and lacquer is supplied, I refuse to polish this Bikini Bottom turd as a manager or full-time employee under the current circumstances. You would have to take a pickaxe to the floor, possibly relocate the bathrooms to add a door to the dishpit, get rid of the cheap low boy that doesn’t properly drain excess water, and Mr Gorbachov knock down that wall in the middle of the kitchen to give the proper amount of space to work. Or simply reduce the menu to 36 items (including sides) because that’s the amount of space this dreadful design can comfortably output. Would Gordon Ramsay compliment KK for all the unnecessary convoluted complications abound, or would Chef Ramsay yell about keeping it simple and demand KK chuck it in the flip? Thanks to the numerous pop up restaurants I have been a part of and the hectic world of trade shows/conventions, I may have more experience than anyone else employed by KK in smoothly opening a new location. I would enjoy being part of the opening team to ensure new locations have an efficiency Bikini Bottom lacks, and to keep upper management away from their worst instincts. Work with me and Chef Ren and we will help you become a well oiled machine like Chokey Chicken instead of the Chum Bucket cesspit Bikini Bottom currently embodies.

Cardano is perhaps one of the more controversial cryptocurrencies in the space. Many people absolutely adore it and believe it’s the future. Many completely despise it. In this post I will go over the advantages and disadvantages of Cardano
If you prefer to read on substack, here is the link

Advantages

Parallel processing from the UTXO model

There are 2 ways to store users’ balances. The simpler and more intuitive model is the account model. This model is like how you have an account with a balance at a bank account. It’s very simple and easy to understand.
The other model is the UTXO model which is what Cardano uses. This model is more like a list of coins with the current owner of the coins. When users want to spend a coin, they will destroy the coin(s) they own and create new coin(s) with new owner(s). The new coin(s) need to have the same value as the destroyed coin(s).
This model is more complicated to understand at first, but when it comes to parallel processing, the UTXO model is much simpler. If you have 2 transactions trying to spend different coins, you can easily have different cores of a processor process each transaction. It’s only in cases where two transactions are trying to spend the same coin that you need to have agreement between the nodes on the order they came in.
With the account model it is more complicated to parallelize transactions but newer chains like Algorand and Solana have done it which makes the UTXO model less of an advantage compared to before.

UXTO’s and state bloat

The UTXO model also seems like the easier model to prevent state bloat. Cardano has set it up so that the more data you want to store in the UTXO set, the more ADA is required in the UTXO. This sets a limit on the maximum state size so prevents the state from growing too large. State bloat is a big issue with EVM based chains so this is a big advantage.

Native assets

Compared to the typical ERC20 style smart contract for managing secondary tokens in the network, native assets are a nicer solution.
Native assets have a much better UX as they are treated as first class citizens of the chain and don’t need things like setting approvals which is an annoyance with ERC20 tokens.
They are also much cheaper to use than ERC20 tokens as they are just a field in the UTXO instead of a smart contract that you need to interact with.

Easy to verify (Good decentralisation)

It’s very easy to verify the Cardano blockchain. Block sizes are small and occur roughly every 20 seconds. To verify the correct staker posted the block, you just have to verify a simple verifiable random function. This means you can run a Cardano node on lightweight and accessible hardware which allows for high decentralisation.
Currently the node specs might actually be too low. One of Cardano’s main selling points is using the UTXO model so it can do parallel transactions however nodes only require a 2 core CPU. Parallel processing is not much of an advantage with only 2 cores so I’d expect node specs to increase a bit in the future.

Low to zero inflation rate

Cardano’s current inflation rate is only 3% and is expected to slowly drop to 0% by around the year 2050. This inflation rate is already pretty low so gives Cardano good tokenomics for potentially being a store of value.

Fairly good distribution

It’s not as well distributed as Bitcoin or Ethereum but compared to the vast majority of cryptocurrencies, Cardano tokens are well distributed. Distribution tends to get better over time and generally more distribution happens when the price goes up. ADA is now a fairly old token and has gone through multiple hype cycles so should be fairly well distributed.
The initial distribution of tokens is not bad either. Again, not as good as Bitcoin or Ethereum who mainly distributed via mining but compared to most cryptocurrencies, not too many tokens went to the founders and VC’s. Most tokens were distributed via a public ICO which is the second best way after mining.

Large development fund

If you are not the first mover who already has the majority of developers, having the funds to develop the protocol and ecosystem is important.
Network effects are incredibly important for blockchains. Dapps and users attract more dapps and users to a chain. However it’s incredibly difficult to attract developers and users away from the status quo in the first place so being able to tempt them with money to bootstrap the ecosystem is a valid strategy. Cardano has a sustainable source of funds to do this through its treasury which gets built up through fees.

Designed for robustness

Cardano uses a consensus method called Ouroboros which is based on the longest chain style of consensus methods. Longest chain methods tend to be more robust than BFT based methods as they don’t need to receive a vote from every single participant to stay live and instead just use probabilistic finality based on how the recent participants have voted with their blocks. BFT style methods will shut down if more than 34% of the participants are offline but longest chain methods will keep going even if 99% are offline, albeit at a much slower speed.

Disadvantages

Slow

When you use the longest chain model for consensus, you get improved liveness but generally sacrifice speed. However, even taking that into account, Cardano is slow to reach a solid level of finality.
Consensus methods are voting models. With longest chain models, every time there is a fork, each validator votes on the chain they want to win by adding a block to the chain they prefer. Whichever chain ends up longest will have had the most votes so will be the winner.
The problem for Cardano is that only 1 validator votes every ~20 seconds and each vote doesn’t have much voting weight behind it. Ethereum also uses the longest chain model but each block added has many validators attesting to it so has much more voting weight behind it.
With Cardano, every epoch, a random set of validators, based on their stake, are selected to produce blocks/votes. These chosen validators will have 100% of the voting power within this epoch. For Cardano, an epoch 21,600 blocks. This means there are 21,600 votes over the epoch, each one represents 1/21600 or 0.0046% of the voting power for the epoch.
Ethereum has 100% of validators split into 32 equal committees every epoch and each committee is responsible for producing a block/vote. For Ethereum, an epoch is 32 blocks. This means each block represents 1/32 or 3.1% of the voting power.
It would take almost 4 hours for Cardano to have the same amount of voting weight on a block as Ethereum does after one 12 second block making it 1200x slower.
This method of comparison probably isn’t the best but it’s very hard to find a good way to model the voting weight for each Cardano block.

Low Throughput

Cardano is currently not scalable at all and is in fact one of the lowest throughput chains in the space being only able to handle around 7tps of basic transactions and more like 1-4tps when smart contract transactions are mixed in. Bitcoin which is known for low throughput does 7tps.
Increasing the node specs and future updates like Input Endorsers should increase the throughput significantly so it should get better over time. However, it’s unlikely to compete with high throughput chains like Algorand or Solana unless it makes the same sacrifices to decentralisation as them.

Lack of actual finality

Longest chain models do come with the major advantage of being robust but this comes at the cost of only having probabilistic finality.
More modern PoS longest chain models such as the ones used in Ethereum, Polkadot and Near, tend to use an Ebb and Flow model where they use the longest chain model to produce blocks but also have a BFT finality gadget running on top of it to provide finality. These models get the benefits of the longest chain model whilst also being able to provide finality.
Cardano does not have this and should think about adding a finality gadget on top of Ouroboros. There’s little to no downside of the Ebb and Flow model compared to a pure longest chain model.

No priority mechanism

Cardano has static fees. If there are more transactions than the network can handle then people don’t pay higher fees but instead join a queue and just have to wait. The mempool for Cardano is not that big so the queue gets full quickly. This means people have to keep posting their transaction over and over until there is room in the mempool again. There is no in-built method to guarantee your transaction reaches the blockchain during times of congestion.
If this scenario were to play out for a significant length of time, you will end up with users contacting stake pools directly and giving them a fee to guarantee their transactions will be included in blocks. If there is demand for block space, people will be willing to pay extra to get it, even if it’s outside of the protocol.
Fee markets are inescapable if there is not enough supply to match demand so whilst Cardano may not have an on-chain fee market, an off-chain fee market would develop if people actually used the chain. If a fee market is inevitable, it’s better to have it on chain where it’s transparent and fair.

Concurrency issue

Every block, each UTXO can only be spent by 1 person as when they are spent, they get destroyed. For simple transactions this is fine. If you own the UTXO then being the only person who can spend it is not an issue.
However smart contract UTXO’s are UTXO’s that can be spent by anyone. If more than one person within a block wants to interact with a DEX to buy a token, they can’t. The first person will spend the UTXO destroying it so the second person can no longer interact with it. This means you can’t have multiple people concurrently interacting with a smart contract per block.
To get around this limitation, apps have had to force users to interact with them off chain using centralised services. Here they are more prone to censorship or things like sandwich attacks.
The concurrency problem is not something that is unavoidable with the UTXO model. FuelLabs have created a smart contract language using UTXO’s that don’t suffer from the same issue but they sacrificed being completely deterministic to do it. Cardano could go in the same direction to get rid of this issue. The current situation where users are forced off chain already sacrifices determinism for users so FuelLabs’ UTXO model seems like the better option.

Hydra as the main scaling method

If you are unfamiliar with Hydra, I have a video explaining how it works here: https://youtu.be/Mx79j_-HRmk
Hydra can give potentially unlimited scaling between a small group of users as long as they are all online, have powerful enough computers to do it and are in complete agreement with each other. However the use cases for this are limited.
It’s very difficult to keep a large group of people in complete agreement over something for long periods of time and you are always prone to trolls who just like to disagree for no reason. This limits the number of people per Hydra head to around 10 people which limits its use cases.
Many dapps have community owned assets like liquidity pools which users interact with for things like trading or taking loans from. You can’t move these pools to hydra heads so the heads are limited to whatever assets the group of users bring with them. This means that the majority of defi is not possible on Hydra.
State channels like the lightning network (BTC) and Raiden (ETH) have largely been a failure but it looks like Cardano is still pursuing them heavily with Hydra. It’s hard to see why Cardano has so much confidence in a technology that doesn’t have a good track record.
Hydra is meant to be made up of two parts, Hydra heads and Hydra tails. Very little information has been revealed on Hydra tails so maybe they have something up their sleeve that will solve the problems with Hydra heads but we will have to wait and see.

Sidechains for scaling

Sidechains also seem like a big part of Cardano’s scaling roadmap. Sidechains don’t share security with Cardano and each sidechain needs to find its own security. This is incredibly difficult. Not only do side chains need a token with a large market cap, they need it to be well distributed as well if they want a good level of security. This is not an easy problem so the number of secure side chains will be limited.
Again, this is another technology that the rest of the crypto ecosystem has tried and deemed not good enough but Cardano seems to be spending a lot of resources pursuing them.

No slashing

If you are a staker then no slashing will be an advantage for UX but staking is meant to be about security first and foremost. and slashing brings added security to the protocol. Proof of stake protocols that don’t implement slashing are more open to bribe attacks or collusion between validators. In Cardano, if a validator adds a block to 2 conflicting forks there is no punishment.
If consensus methods are voting models and validators are being paid to choose a side, shouldn't there be a punishment if they vote for both sides?

Delegated stake being more prone to bribery attacks

If I am running a staking pool I may have staked with just 1 ADA out of my own tokens and have 64,000,000 ADA delegated to my validator node. In this scenario, I will have little alignment with keeping Cardano secure and yet I will have quite a bit of power within the ecosystem.
If an attacker came along with a large bribe for helping with an attack, it would be rational behaviour for me to accept the bribe. I don’t have a lot of tokens locked up that can be slashed and I don’t care if my 1 ADA loses some value.
No slashing combined with the majority of stake being delegated and not owned by the validators makes Cardano more prone to bribe attacks than other proof of stake protocols that do have slashing and don’t have delegation.

Untested by actual users

Cardano may spend a significant amount of time researching the best ways to do things but this has meant it doesn’t really have real world experience on what is needed. When I look at Ethereum or Solana’s roadmaps I see things addressing MEV and fee markets due to the unpredicted ways in which users used their chains.
For Cardano there’s nothing on MEV. Barely anyone is using Cardano so they don’t have a problem with it but if they ever start to get an active DeFi economy they will realise it’s inevitable and something that will need to be researched. We’ll then have to wait years for a solution to be researched and built.
When I look at Ethereum L2’s, I can see they already tried building state channel solutions and plasma chains which failed. Them failing with these experiments completely changed their roadmap and was one of the best things that happened because these failures eventually developed into rollups.
Cardano decided it wanted to use state channels with Hydra years ago and is only trying it now. The ideas it is developing haven’t actually been tested in the real world.

Conclusion

Despite listing a lot of disadvantages here, I actually like Cardano. The tokens are fairly well distributed, they prioritise keeping node specs modest and they value robustness. Their core values are great.
They also actually try different things. They aren’t trying to recreate Ethereum with slight improvements. They have their own methods for trying to achieve the same goals.
Unfortunately, different is not always better and they have been very slow to implement their ideas. To me when I look at Cardano I see a chain that is trying to become the ideal cryptocurrency from the ideas available in 2015. The rest of the space has largely moved on from experimenting with side chains and state channels but Cardano has not.
So whilst the core values may be good, they are too slow at implementing them. The rest of the space is racing ahead. By the time Cardano will have completed its roadmap and realised it’s not good enough, other projects will already be far ahead.
Looking at it as an investment, Cardano has largely lived on hype. Reality will never match the hype so when it launched smart contracts that didn’t solve all the world’s problems, it was seen as a disappointment.
I struggle to see Cardano being able to generate as much hype as it did in previous bull cycles. It can no longer live on the promise of smart contracts and Hydra solving everything as these both now exist on main net and neither have lived up to the hype. For this reason, I see it struggling to reach the same heights in the next bull cycle unless it gains significant adoption.
If you enjoyed this post, check out my previous posts for other cryptocurrencies. I’m planning to create posts like this for all the major layer 1 cryptocurrencies so subscribe to my substack if you don’t want to miss them.

I made a character and this sotry for star wars (i made this story for my English finals, i had a month to make it and got an A on it), the characters name is Saya Eban and is a character I have been thinking of for over a decade now (im not in my 2nd decade so since i was super young). Saya at this time is 13-14 years old and was given inspiration by almost all the other jedi and also star killer. He is human and with reliance on the force he can live up to 1000 years with hi peak being between 35, 40 ish to around 800 years of age. In terms of prime power level and potential, in my canon he is 3rd most powerful character just underneath luke and anikan Skywalkers, but could contend with them at some points. Little background: he was a prodigy in school before he became a padawan, he always had an intrest in a character named Ahsoka Tano but never became more than friends because of the Jedi teachings. He was a fast learning youngling and became a padawan earlier than most other younglings, becaming a padawan at the age of 11 - 12. He was in the first battle of Genesis but his troop transport ship was blasted out of the air, landing behind enemy lines leaving him the sole surviver, and scarring him, making him want to never see uneeded bloodshed ever again. He met Count Dooku before he had met Obi-Wan and Anikan on geonosis, he locked blades with him once... once, before he was thrown aside like a house fly, not worth his time, he was out until the retreat of the battle was initiated. This gave him night terrors and nightmares, after this day he could never sleep more than an hour, if that, before he woke up feeling the dark side creeping in. So he had learned to use sleep meditation. Sleep meditation allowed him to accelerate his trainings and connect greater to the force, he had unlocked 1/3 of his life now, the force helping his cells heal his body while he sat and meditated.
This story is of how he lived through one of the bloodiest battles and worst losses of the Republic, the battle of Sarrish, and of how he had obtained his later main star ship, a Kom'rk Mark 1 class star fightetransport, aka the Puro (i made this story before I have watched the 3rd season of the Mandalorian, as of right now i still haven't so Idk if thats in season 3 or not).
There is about 11,340 words in the story, and I don't 100% know of what I should make him look like so have your imaginations run wild.
Ok here we go:
Tales of Saya Eban's Puro
Chapter 1

 The battle of Sarrish was one of the worst battles of the Clone Wars, it was a great devastating loss to the Republic and the Jedi, and I was in the middle of it all. Before the battle I was doing some touch-ups on my A-wing Fighter. I had managed to get my hands on a hyperdrive that would fit in my small fighter, although being able to enter hyperspace without an external hyperdrive wing is very convenient, fast, and easy, it does slow my fighter and hinder some mobility, but not an uncontrollable amount of loss. Little did I know it'd save my life later that week. After I had finished my work, gotten it restocked for my next battle, I was called to the Jedi command center for a briefing by Master Yoda, saying it was an urgent mission and I was needed now, with his backwards way of speaking annoying me slightly. In a flash, I had gathered my battle ready loadout and headed off to the command center. When I entered the command center with the center planning table showing starships from both Confederate and Republic sides, One chasing another. I look and see Masters Yoda and Windu and a holoprojected Obi-Wan Kenobi surrounding the Table, with deeply serious thoughts in their eyes, fingers on their concentrating chins. When I swiftly strolled in, I was greeted with Master Windu's cheerful, but serious voice: "Ah, Padawan Eban, good you're here, come quick, we must act with persistence if we want to gain an upper hand in this war." "Master Windu, good to see you, you too Master Yoda, Master Kenobi, what's the situation?" Master Obi-Wan states, "We are currently chasing Separatist forces to the planet Sarrish and we will need some back up, could you bring your part of the 104th battalion right away, we have heavy casualties and they're going to have reinforcements when they reach the planet." "Is there not anyone closer than me, it may take a few days for me to get there, yall mabe finished by the time I get there!" I said with hope in my eyes. "I'm afraid that you're the only one that is available with the most minimal time of arrival, you'll have to be quick though, it will be anytime now they will reach the planet and have reinforcements. we need this win, it will be a great victory for the Republic if we are able to capture the planet." Stated Obi-Wan with certainty. "All other generals are on missions right as we speak, you are the only one that can provide back up at this current time." Master Windu added "Closer to Knight after this mission you will be, great padawan you are, your great swift improvements, Master Plo is pleased with, believe in you I do." Master Yoda said with a jolly old-man voice. "Now go, there's not much time to waste, gather your men and go help Obi-Wan!" Rushedly said by Master Windu. "With determination in my voice, I yell "Yes Masters, right away!" And like a flash, I was gone. As I'm running off, I catch a glimpse of a green swoosh and the sound of a bolt deflection. I stumble to a stop and put my legs in reverse to give curiosity the wheel. When I peer in, I see Master Skywalker and Ahsoka, along with roughly 8 clone troopers all in a circle around Ahsoka and her one blade ignited. Master Skywalker had her eyes welded to her as he walked around the trooper. I could see Captain Rex standing and watching as well, although he seems to be the only one who spotted me poking in my head. He motioned his finger to his lips as to tell me to shush and not interfere, so I watched with anticipation. And after a lifetime stillness ending in a second after Master Skywalker yelled "START!" And stun doughnuts fire from the blasters of the troopers, sending a volley of blue twords Ahsoka from all directions. With great flexibility I pair with, she jumps into the air, spinning like skates on a skate rink in mid air deflecting all incoming plasmic projectiles landing with swift grace ready for more, And more came, she stands in the center blade moving almost faster than what my eyes could keep up with, until that one bolt punches her right in the back, knocking her to the ground, diminishing the blade back into the hilt. I spring into the room, speaking with worry in my voice when I squeak out "Ahsoka! Master Skywalker, what was that!?" 

"She was just training deflecting blaster fire, she's going to be outmatched a lot in this war, and clones are better than droids to practice with." Anakin said with pride that she was able to last little over a minute, thats improvement.
"Well I guess you're not completely wrong, but your going to give her a brain injury at this rate! Could you not go a bit easier on her?"
"She'll never learn if I go easy on her." Master Skywalker said with little arrogance in his voice.
"W- well, here, l-let me wake her then." I stuttered as I walked up to Rex holding Ahsoka like he's a pillow.
"Rex, do you mind if I-"
"Not at all General, here." Rex said as I sat next to him holding Ahsoka's top half of her body.

 As he caringly sets Ahsoka's rhythmically beating top half in my lap, head facing the heavens, I softly lay my hand over her forehead, close my eyes, and concentrate. A few suspenseful seconds later, I take my hand off and observe Ahsoka's hand softly glide to her now curling forehead, eyes fluttering open. 

With a smile I voiced"Wakey Wakey warrior princess, have a good nap?" Smirking the whole time.
"Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes Nicksters." She groaned with fading pain.
"What are you doing here?" She leisurely grumbled as she started to lie propped up by her desirable, fluorescent orange arms made of flexible muscle.
"I was walking by, and saw a 'damsel in distress', I HAD to come and 'save the day'." I joked, smirking the whole time, annoying her little bit more.
"You know I have been dying to use my force heal on you since I had learned it. I bet you don't even feel bad at all right now hm?" I said leaning in
Ahsoka starts to stand as to get a feel for her own body.
"You're right, I feel better than I did before, not bad for someone named Nicks." Ahsoka said smirking right back at me.
"Oh come on, that was one time, that was even before we became patiwans!" I said with little dramatics in my vocal verberations.
"Ok Master, I'm ready to try again." Ahsoka said to Master Skywalker
"Not now Ahsoka, we have a mission from the Jedi council we have to attend to while Obi-Wan is on his own mission." Anikan said to Ahsoka, elongating his 'not' like he usually does
"I'm actually about to go give help to Obi-Wan right now… WHICH I NEED TO GET PREPARED FOR NOW!! Karabast, got to go! See yah Ahsoka, Master, Rex." And like a ship entering hyperspace, I was gone.
Chapter 2

 After 2 boring days traveling in hyperspace, me and my 5 Veneter class Cruisers are nearing our destination, this would make 12 Cruisers for the Republic side. A new commander CT'-4112 or Zerek, debriefs on the battle situation. As I had sensed, Obi-Wan was outmatched seeing as backup was on planet Sarrish for the fleeing Separatist ships, now it's 11 Munificent class Cruisers and 2 command stations blockading the planet. Kenobi was starting to be pushed back, relying on our Cruisers longer ranged cannons to hope the Sepies didn't get too close. Our Cruisers have longer ranged main canons and toms of fighter room, while the Sepies Cruisers have more fire power at closer ranges with more fighters than our Vendor class Cruisers, at closer ranges, the Sepies would completely destroy a Venetor class Cruiser, but we have strategies and will power. 

"Glad to see a friendly face Saya." Kenobi said exhaustingly.
"Well, it looked like you needed help. You know I need to be the one to save everyone. I'll move into position to fortify our defenses to push the Sepies back and for us to make a plan. What is your fleet's condition?"
"We have 2 Venetors heavily damaged and the rest either have mild to no damage. And we have lost half our fighters as of now." Urgently said by Kenobi.
"Ok, I'm sending men and supplies to you right now, let me take the front so I can take the damage if they send another attack." I calmly said to Kenobi.
"Men battle positions and set all power to front cannons and shields. Venators get into pincer position and get ready for an attack. Fighters get ready to launch." I commanded to all my Cruisers
"Master, if you could, could you add in your undamaged Venetors? " I wandered and directed with much mastery, I even made Obi-Wan himself visually impressed considering my inexperienced mind in life, and especially war. I even managed to make him smile.
"Getting in position now." Obi-Wan stated, still smiling.
"Understood, While you get everything fixed, I'll see if I can weaken their defenses, it seems as if they're in attack positions so we gotta be ready for anything." I said in deep thought.
"Ok, 10 to 13, I like those odds, makes it even, more so for the Sepies." I grinned.
"Now Saya, remember this is still a battle, don't be too cocky, you're starting to remind me of Anakin." Obi-Wan said with conviction.
"Yes Master, sorry about that." I answered to Obi-Wan, pulling back a little.

 Just then, many starfighters come from the enemy Cruisers, hundreds of them lightning fast, closing distance fast. 

"All right men, time for some fun. Obi-Wan, if you want to take command of my control center, I'll lead this fight." I said before Obi-Wan could respond.
"Ok- but Saya! Blast, maybe he's too much like Anikan." Obi-Wan said defeatedly.
As I get into the hangar I yell "Alright Wolfpack, let's get goin!" Then I hop into my modified Jedi A-wing.
We rush out from the center roof door along the Cruiser with my squadron aka The Wolfpack, with me leading my 23 fighters into battle and many more friendly's following from the hangars.
"Ok Wolfpack, let's make a break for them Cruisers, get as many of them gone as possible. 411 you ready?" I asked R2-411. R2-411 bleeps with readiness.
"Ok, time to blow them out of the sky, remember, stay in formation" I commanded.
"Yes sir!" The Clones bellowed.

 Then we hit the swarm with a mighty thundering sound of lasers flying through the emptiness of space seeing one after one of enemy fighter droids dropping all over the place. Me and my Wolfpack fly through all the 2 winged Vulture droids that look like each wing was sideways and has 2 prongs each side for wings. They were way more quick and maneuverable than us, but we had a duty to win, and we won't lose today. It's like a firework show, but you're dodging all the fireworks, and they're aiming right at you. While we are defending the Venator Cruisers, they're mostly firing at the Sepies Cruisers, slowly dwindling their energy shields down. 

"Boys, I have a plan, but I'll need yall to get back to the Cruisers." I urged
"Obi-Wan, how's the 2 heavily damaged Cruisers? We've been out for a long while. They should be good by now right?" I questioned Master Kenobi.
"They're about to come back into the fight, but one of our Cruisers is at a quarter shield, few good hits or bombing runs and it's gone, what's your plan Saya?" Obi-Wan said, perplexed.
"Just give me an opening to the left Separatist control center, that's all I need to get on that ship." I stated with confidence.
"I'll try my best, but don't be stupid Saya, we can't afford to lose you."
"Yeah yeah I know, just get me an opening please Master!" I begged.

 After the words fleeted from my mouth, all the Cruisers fired a hole through the droid fleet with friendly fighters also making way for me to get through. I blast the afterburners straight through the enemy swarm that's been lesson by the commotion, just barely being hidden by smoke from a just destroyed fighter straight into the leftmost control ship hanger landing with an explosive entry. And immediately I jump out, igniting both, my straight emerald green saber in my left, and my yellow saber with a curved hilt similar to the Count's hilt himself in my right. I'll face him again one day, it's inevitable, like me. I land and immediately cut a group of B1 battle droids heads off with my yellow saber facing out, giving me more reach, but as I start to take fire from the army that quickly form from my landing, I swiftly doge left to right almost able to doge the sight of a human eye. Left, pop goes the heads of 3, right, pop goes 5, jump through the air on an almost straight path through the thick of the army, spinning with a light show if one were to be an onlooker at this chaotic organization of flying red plasmic bolts going to a mix of yellow and green, then proceeding to fly straight back at the shooter with twice the velocity. I land on my feet with a thunderous "BOOM" with what seems like an explosion that incinerates half of the whole hanger with an electric yellow glow seeming like yellow lighting exploded from the epicenter of the explosion. When the smoke cleared, it seemed that everything within a 5 meter radius was completely incinerated, and everything within 40 meter radius was heavily damaged, and any technology within eye shot was either scrape or short-circuiting, but all B1 battle droids and super battle droids were out. 

I sighed with relief with little heavy breathing when I looked around me, but with no time to rest, 6 Vulture droid fighters came through the hanger's magnetic shield door, transforming to walk on its pronged wings like they were legs. They scanned me and started raining a flurry of red down onto me, but with my lightning fast reflexes, I raised my sabers to block the incoming hellfire from all six fighter's. Then came the flurry being deflected in any direction possible, and I could just barely see the 6 droids started to surround me by going behind my back, but I ain't done yet. As I'm blocking, jumping, spinning, twisting on a micrometer, I stomp with a mighty force, launching through the air, slowly spinning straight for a Vulture that has became the prey. Bolts whizzing by me, inches, centimeters near my skin, singeing my arm hairs to their roots. I land on top of the droid with a thunderous boom crunching where my foot had landed, driving my sabers straight through the brain of the story high droid, with a counterclockwise rotation around my back, dragging my sabers across the metal of the droid, I leap off the droid landing with the feathers and fly forward with a flashing dash slicing through 2 other droids legs, leaving gravity do its magical job. 3 down, 3 to go, but with little time left. I launch forward running on hairs dipping and dodging blots, I leap up slicing through one leg of a droid and pushing off of its gravity taken hull, coming down on another droid's leg, cutting with ease. I land like a leaf in the autumn skies, and launch with a swift leap, flying my yellow saber straight down the middle of the 6th and final droid with no time to spare.

 I land with caution, ready to fend off another foe, but none came at that second, so I took the opportunity and ran with it straight to where the main reactors should lie. I swiftly sprint with force leaps through the air to get to the reactor, the ship is 270th of a circle with a ball where the command center is, the middle is the only connected between the back of the ball and the inner back of the circle, that's where the reactor is, im at the left most side, may take me a minute to reach it, but I can get there without being seen. My plan was to quickly fix and rewrite a Vulture droid's code to go with my command, not going to be the best work but it will work, hopefully. I had to act fast because I knew there were going to be hundreds more droids to come to see the commotion, I'd say within the minute. The codes used on the droids are not the best, because of mass production, so It was an easy fix, I just needed it to fly a small bit. It comes back to life with a putt to its movement, I directed it to start flying while I'm on its back, putting the whole time with smoke, just what I needed. I start to move forward as fast as possible. As we get around the hundreds of battle droids below, I'm starting to speed up, and as I see the reactor room, I could hear B1's yell " HEY! STOP! YOUR GOING TO FAST" in their robotic voice. Before I hit the Shield covering the reactor room, I jump off to the left where the blast door is for the room. With the distraction of the droid smashing into the shield, I use this time to slowly cut through the blast doors with both sabers starting at the bottom of the door, going up and around to form a circle I can fit through. I was through within a Minute, unnoticed, or so I was led to believe. When I get into the reactor room, I throw explosives all over the reactors, with a detonation in T minus 1 minute. I fly out of the room, calling for 411 to bring my ship as fast as possible, 55. Running across the hanger, I'm spotted by the hundreds of battle droids, which immediately start firing right as they see me 50. The explosion of the fighter droid caused a chain to nearby explosive barrels, exploding more Vulture droids causing tons of smoke and fires to spread around the hangar area, 45. As I'm running, my yellow saber is blocking multiple bolts flying at me while I'm jumping, spinning, performing acrobatic movements while being shot by hundreds of droids, from B1's, to super's, to droideka's, all firing at me, adding to the smoke, 35. Running with young blood in my veins, I perform 1, 2, 3 long jumps and leap onto the side of a slanted destroyed Vulture droid, 30. I jump up, reaching for the cloudy sky just as 411 swoops in predictively shoving my hand into the side of the sharp A-wing hull, 25. I grab the side of the hull and pull myself up into the cockpit, grabbing the controls, 20. I spin to the exit with roughly 67° of the hanger I need to shoot out of, I fire the afterburners using the circumference of the circle and my fighters movment to my advantage, 15. Pushing forward, I am drifting an A-wing around the hangar of a Separatist capital ship skimming the walls centimeters away from an explosive fiery death, 10. I barely screamed out of the hanger, to be able to see a view of the capital ship flying stright for the other Sepie capital ship, 5. Im still firing the afterburners to try and attempt to get a safe distance away from the soon to be collision sight, 4. I let 411 take the control's, 3. I turn my head to look back, 2. I see the collision of the 2 270° hangers, 1. I watch as i get the view of a star being formed right infront of my eyes, and seeing many Sepie Cruisers being absolutely engulfed by the flames, and a blast wave decimating the Vulture droids… blast wave…. BLAST WAVE! Just then I'm thrown far, along with the debri. I manged to gain control of the craft and start performing advanced monuvers to avoid being hit by debrie that will demolishe me and my tiny fighter. 

"Saya, can you hear me? Saya?" Master Obi-Wan Kenobi pleaded.
"Yeah, yeah master, I'm good, I'm fine. Woo…!" I said with a sigh of relief.
Chapter 3

 The explosion had decimated the Separatist forces leaving 4 Cruisers sustaining heavy or mild damages, but with an opening, Obi-Wan and I travel to the ground along with Captain Cody to go for a large ground assault. Master Obi-Wan's plan was to drop in and gather our troops and split them between Obi-Wan and commander Cody. We were west, they were east. The Separatists had the high ground seeing as they had a cliff to their advantage. Flying in on gunships, we were taking heavy fire from their anti aircraft cannons. Commander Cody and I are debriefing the squad on the way to the rally point, seeing gunships after gunship falling to the rocky ground in a fiery explosive ball of red hot metal, and screams, with no plants in sight, just rocks, gunships, and red streaks flying by. Explosions booming right next to us with our doors right open. We have been ordered and ordering troops to stay far away from the mountain top gun fortifying the mountain top of the cliff, leaving that gun for the gunships and the best of the clone troopers, or ARC (Advanced Recon Commandos) troopers to deal with that later, seeing as a ground assault is too dangerous for us. As some of the clones have said, it's not an easy mission, but hops are high. 

"30 seconds until landing." A clone trooper yelled to me and Cody.
Cody starts with "All right, listen up! Maintain squad formations, 'A' squad, You're on me-" ZZZZZEEEROW- BOOOM!
"Where hit!" I yell "Everyone! Hold on!"
Before we hit the ground I leap out of the gunship with a backwards somersault, force pulling all the troops out of the burning fireball heading for the ground, grabbing all of the men, including the 2 pilots at the front, breaking through the windows. I land like rain from the sky, catching the troops I just pulled out with my powers and have them roughly land on the fluffy rocks next to our now downed gunship, no casualties yet. I rush over to take cover under our gunship on its left side behind enemy lines. I sit and meditate as they come up with a plan.
"What's the status lieutenant?" Cody asked
"5 injured thanks to General Saya, but that's not that bad news… Does that Rock look familiar?" The lieutenant asked.
"Yea, the mountain, right where we're not supposed to be." Said Cody
"General Kenobi ordered us not to try taking this section from the ground." The lieutenant regenerated back again with what was already established.
"That's what he said…but what would the general do if he were here?" Cody rhetorically asked.
"Saya sir, what do you think?" A trooper asked me somewhat desperately.
"I think Cody should take this one, I've got your back Cody." I answered with my legs crossed, eyes closed, slightly levitating over the rocks.
"Eight-Eight-Six-Seven through Eight-Eight-Six-Nine and Saya, fix your grapples and come with me. Everybody, prepare for covering fire." Cody ordered.
I get up, eyes still shut, ready to block anything coming our way.
"NOW!" Cody yells, sprinting across what is our no-man's-land
I open my eyes, ignite my Sabers, Green in left, yellow in right, and dash towards the now incoming blaster fire. I sense it, left side, block, right side, deflect, one for Cody, deflected. We get to some stalagmites at the bottom of the mountain, sustaining heavy fire, I pose as a distraction for all the fire, deflecting as many blots as I can back at the metal men. One troop trips and falls, pow, bolt straight through the head. Cody and the men shoot the grappling hooks up towards the top of the mountain and start climbing. I jump from my spot reigniting my sabers, driving them through the mountain side, helping me grab hold with my feet. And when I look up, I see a grapple fall behind me. I tried to grab the rope but I was too late. When I managed to obtain it, he had already hit the ground. Another tragedy, one that never had to happen, life being wasted away. I look up, a droid stairs emotionlessly down into my emotion filled eyes. A blue bolt shoots past me, impacting the droid's head, sending the body backwards.
Cody and the other clone rises from the cliff side as I leap up from the side, landing in front of the clones and immediately start deflecting with my 2 sabers having nothing pass. Cody takes this opportunity to run around my defense and attacks the droids head on, bashing one droid with the butt of his rifle and swinging his rifle at another, destroying both of them. The droid manning the anti aircraft gun turns and aims at Cody. Instinctively I jump in front of the cannon as it fires, I deflect the large bolt away with my right yellow saber, knocking my body to the right, making me stumble. But with the motion throwing me to the right, I use the momentum to throw my green saber with my left hand, impaling the droid in the metal chest. Cody then hops onto the turret, points the gun at the droids firing at our men, and lets loose, destroying all in its reticle.
"Thanks General, I owe you one, ill getcha next time." Cody said slowly getting off the turret.
"You're alright my friend, just pay it forward, let's go see how Obi-Wan did." I slightly worried, staring off to the north.

 We group up at the randevu, where we have set base camp on the planet in a small raven a bit away from where we captured the cliff with some makeshift scouting towers dotted around our position. Obi-Wan had more resistance than what he had anticipated, he was a little banged up, but he was fine in the end. This was a huge victory seeing as we have been able to set base on a planet that allows us to get resources through this hyperspace route and onto parts of the army past this point. Before, General Grievous snipped our route to where we couldn't get resources to our army on the other side from Coruscant. 

Chapter 4

 12 hours later, we have rested and have managed to build up a good base incase of a surprise attack. We are still fighting a few fronts of Separatist holdouts with a fortress a few klicks west, or about 4 miles west. 

I sit in my tent meditating, reflecting back on the weeks events, and what Ahsoka was doing back at the temple, training hard. I recite what I did with an almost overwhelming amount of blaster fire attempting to fly into me, how I was just mostly averting the blots away from me and not in a direction that would benefit me most.
'RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE'

 The ground started to shake out of nowhere, breaking my peace. I rush out of my tent, only to be met with a face full of B2 battle droid. I jump back over my tent flipping onto my feet as I see my tent being lit into flames from heavy bolt fire flying at me. Igniting both my sabers, I deflect the incoming fire away from me up into the sky as much as I physically could. I took a glance around, it was becoming more sunlit as we fought. It was a slaughter, clones dying left and right, Kenobi was on the Command ship getting patched, so it was just me, and the clones down here, being manicured. With a swift right step, I change lightsaber form, combining my form 3, (defensive form blocking anything coming way, and either making, or waiting for an opening to strike) with a combination of form 2 (saber to saber form, putting least amount or saber movement and preferring precise efficient movements) and form 4 (saber from using the force to enhance physical abilities, and heavily utilizing fast acrobatic movements to move around and disorient the opponents, using wide sweeping saber movements to block and hit targets) I use the power if the many bolts to propel my body onto my right leg, crouching down and taking a huge lead in to the air. Looking around like it is moving in stop motion, I see thousands of droids around, completely outnumbering my men. Glancing down where I had jumped from, there seems to be a super battle droid rising from the ground, looking as if it has been there for at least a few days. Time seems to start like normal again, immediately I have to block bolts coming for my body, twisting, turning, deflecting every. single. bolt. right to another droid. I can't have any more unneeded deaths in my hands. I land with an impactful explosion of yellow lighting, rendering half of the electronics on the field obsolete. Shots fire over the wall, exploding near me. 

"Everyone, Retreat!" I yelled into the comms.
I ran towards the lieutenant that I had survived the crash with, he was running for a troop transport.
"Get to the ships, return to the Venators! Get Kenobi and relay what has happened!" Urgency blowing through my voice.

 I push him into the ship as it takes off. As it's doing so, I force push it away from the field as to be in less danger of being shot down. But rockets fly through the air, I reach through the force and grab onto the hurdling death traps, I grab 1, 2, crash them into one another, 3, grab, 4, grab, 5, miss. ERRROW… BOOOM! With a hopeless explosion, the ship bursts into an explosive ball of fire, right in front of my eyes, out of my grasp. Shots fly past my head from behind me, I ignite my sunlit yellow saber to block incoming bolts. No men, only metal remains, and it wants me dead. I dash for my ship on the other side of the airstrip, luckily barely touched from this horrible surprise party that invited everyone I very much dislike. Hopping into my A-wing, I lift-off dogging left, right, up, down, roll left, roll right, barely being passed by on all sides by cannon fire. When I reach the point past the clouds, there's a whole war above. Separatist forces have surprised Kenobi with an overwhelming number of ships, putting our war torn 12 Venators against 16 Munificent class Cruisers. We were greatly out matched. But the time I was in space we had lost 3 Vectors compared to there 1 lost. Droids noticed me coming from the planet and started to verge onto my position. 

"Obi-Wan! You there? Can you hear me?" I yelled, pulling evasive maneuvers.
"Saya, is that you?" Kenobi asked.
"Yes, we got surprised on the ground, seems the same happened here." I rushingly said.
"Yes, they came out of nowh-" Kenobi is cut off by a blaring siren from my cockpit.
"Wait, my ship is damaged, it's starting up my hyperdrive, 411 can you fix it?" I said dipping left and right while trying to stop the hyperdrive activation.
With a few bleeps of fear, I understand what's happening.
"When I was thrown from the capital ship explosive wave, I must have been hit near the hyperdrive, and explosions from my escape, along with the maneuvers I have been pulling, it may have caused damage that is registering a hyperdrive activation. Master Obi-Wan, I don't know, I-I don't know what to do!" I claimed with fear in my eyes.
"Can you deactivate the hyperdrive at all 411?" Kenobi asked
411 bleeps with a sad toon.
"Blast, Saya, does it say where you're going?"
"N- No, my council just says ERROR." I stated, now with much fear in my voice.

 I managed to steer my craft into the position of the hyperspace lane. 

"Tell Ahsoka good bye if I don't-" I get cut off when the the hyperdrive powered up woth a vvvvvvvvvvvVVVVERRRRRRR PEEOW, and just like that, me, my A-wing, and R2-411, are gone.
Chapter 5

 It's been days since the battle, mabe 2 or 3 days. Luckily I always keep many ration bars in my fighter to last me a good few days, along with my extra water and my ability to go into a deep meditative state, conserving food and water. Keeping me company is my meditation and 411. We have almost hit some unknown objects, could have been planets, asteroids, other ships, but we seem to be staying in hyperspace lanes luckily, or I would have been dead a long time ago. My class 2 hyperdrive could have taken me all over the galaxy by now, I could be heading towards Coruscant right now for all I know. 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
My hyperdrive warning kicked on, showing that there is a massive gravity force in my path. The console flashed with big red dangerous letters "Exiting Hyperdrive" on the screen.
"YES! FINALLY!" I yelled with excitement.

 I watch through the glass to see a barren looking planet, and a similar looking moon, a moon I was heading to. I was moving fast, as I entered the moon's atmosphere, Im grabbing the controls, barely anything. My craft is red hot from the rate at which I'm coming in on. I'm grabbing the stick, pulling back as much as I can, as to try and save myself and 411 from a fiery death. I scraped by a big rocky mountain dealing more damage to my A-wing. 

"HOLD ON 411!"
"Come ooooon. Pull pull pullllll…. Ahhhhhhhhh!!!-" VERRROW BOOOOSH!!! The crash landing sounded like a bomb flying through the air, then landing on its target. I try to get from my seat just to find my strap and window will not open. Using my saber I cut off my seat strap and broke the window from the hinges and leaped out, taking 411 from the craft, swiftly landing on a tall mountainous rock. The craft seemed to have pushed through the land 50 meters from the initial impact spot. The area I was in seemed to be very rocky terrain with many rocky canyons and huge rocks that are almost mountainous. The sun was close to setting down for the night but was still a good hour away from sleeping.

 With the force by my side, I felt a very uneasy sensation telling me to stay out of sight. I duck down on the tall skinny rock taking 411 down with me. 411 confusingly bleeps when I do so. "Hey, I have a feeling right now, just keep quiet real quick, there's somebody coming. Trust me." Me and 411 peer over the edge looming over my crashed ship just as a group of 6 men in full armor covering their whole body fly in with jetpacks strapped to their backs, blasters in hand. As they land, they search around my wreckage, presumably looking for survivors. One seems to be ordering the others around, pointing at one to look in one direction, another a different direction, and scanning around for the unexpected visitor. I look down at my Wrist link, my distress signal wasn't sent, I guess that was damaged from entering the planet at such high speed with no deflector shields surrounding the ship like a protective blanket. 

"Blast, 411, what's your S.O.S signal situation, did it go through?" 411 beeps with a little drama like I should know it didn't go through.
"Well sorry for busting your rusty bolts you rowdy rancor, better to try than to just give up mister sassy pants. Maybe I should wipe your memory for a change, see how you like it."
"Now shush, don't want them to find us spying on them, won't look too good." I demand. "Now here, in case we get caught, I don't want them to know I'm a Jedi, so here, take my sabers, I'm not gonna need them anyways." I said shoving my lightsabers into 411's storage compartment and looking towards the crash again.

 Just then the suit of armor that had been commanding his squad bursts up into my view right on my face out of hyperspace blue. 

"Ah, found ya trespassers, you 2 are coming with me." Demanded the Mandalorian with a snickering sound in his voice as the others rise from the portal of the abyss from down below.

 It was a good thing my ropes where in the tent back on Sarrish, or this may have been an even worse situation, Mangalorians like them hate Jedi with a passion, and it's a good thing I always have a broken blaster in 411 for any cases where I need to blend in with a crowd or pose as a normal civilian; although, the ability to become a civilian at any point is great, I've had little need to do so much. I'm quite popular with the people for being one who tries to connect with the population as a fellow citizen. So I rarely stay in the temple for too long. I love being with the people and learning skills without the force, like being a mechanic, electrician, public speaker, security guard, an all around great person to talk with about anything. I'm quite known on all levels of Coruscant for being one of the most friendly Jedi to be around. Right now though, I need to focus on not being caught, at least That's what my gut is telling me. After they searched my character for any weapons and found the broken blaster that 411 had put in my holster where my lightsaber usually is, they were satisfied and pushed us into one of their big Kom'rk Mark 1 class Mandalorian starfightetransport ship. 

(Look in comments for 6th)

I know quitting your job as a cook usually simply comes with two weeks notice or a ragequit walkout, but for eleven months I worked at a new franchise that had such potential which was being squandered by the incompetence of upper management. I present the nearly 6000 word thesis I turned in on my last day. Locations and names have been changed to cartoon references. Brackets represent ambiguous information in place of specific details.
Krusty Krab Careers Jobs
Opening in [Month/Year], Krusty Krab (KK) Bikini Bottom is on its 4th kitchen manager in less than a year. Krusty Krab O-Town has recently let go its inaugural kitchen manager and sous chef. Almost no member of the Bikini Bottom opening management team remains employed by KK. There is a pattern developing where one must question both the choice of employee and the directive given to new franchises. These lingering issues I brought concerns about in the first weeks of opening but was disregarded at every turn despite my experience with festival traffic. As a result I decided this was not a place I wanted to advance, but with a good-enough paycheck I’d be a lowly grunt in the kitchen four days a week, at five days a week I would have quit or been fired over a public outburst long ago. If Krusty Krab alters course slightly while being true to the brand this could be a successful chain.
My unique employment history in brick and mortar restaurants, food trucks, pop up culinary concepts, trade shows/conventions, and the film industry make me an ideal candidate to be on the opening team for new KK locations. My outgoing nature and foresight are valuable assets. For example, on training week before opening when I was standing around idly without a task I took it upon myself to organize the disarray that was dry storage. Overhearing Krabs tell another manager where he wanted the cleaning products placed, I had a jumping off point and the organization I created nine months ago is still largely in place. Since returning from my vacation in early February I have made it my mission to keep the storage area organized because it was again starting to resemble a hoarder’s house rather than a commercial kitchen. This is now part of my weekly routines because every time I turn my back there is more product being placed haphazardly just anywhere with little regard. I also recently reorganized the walk-in cooler because of problematic stocking with items being placed on the same shelf or below raw proteins. I also simply put all the like products together such as cheeses or fruits that were scattered amongst several shelves. With recent overordering I cannot keep up with the organization of the walk in cooler. The pattern recognition of food types and even simple shapes appears to be lost on the Bikini Bottom crew. My daily reorganization of containers is proof of this. Most days I’ll take a few minutes to put all cylinders together, all cambros together in descending volume, all deep and shallow pans next to each other rather than intermixed. My decision to be a kitchen manager at age 19 from 2005 thru 2008 and rarely enter restaurant management since is very calculated.
With my prior knowledge of professional kitchens I was becoming Bikini Bottom’s resident nag to coworkers as I made note of health department violations on a daily basis. I stopped after being largely ignored for two weeks. My regular health department nags include; a battle with jackets and hats being placed only in the designated area (a designated area that did not exist until I created a place for personal items a in January by neatly organizing the dry storage area again), waiting until prepped items are cooled before a cover is placed on top, placement of raw seafood, open containers (very often sugar, flour, and pancake mix bags ripped open and left), and dirty dishes/containers placed back in rotation. The dirty dishes and containers in rotation with the clean ones are at an atrociously high number. I have given up on making the 4th fryer seafood allergy safe too. With the low volume of seafood allergy safe items Bikini Bottom should purchase smaller baskets to visually discourage cross contamination with the other fryers and baskets. My skills to organize the kitchen do not end with simply where to store products to meet minimal health department standards.
Half of the space in the Bikini Bottom kitchen is completely wasted on an ill-advised walkway to the dishpit. An intelligent design would place a second doorway directly to the dishpit connected to the bar or where the bathrooms reside. Numerous times during the opening week of KK Bikini Bottom I said, yelled, sang, and muttered that we have too many food items for the amount of space we have. Icus stated that there was more space than Bluffington. Is Bluffington intelligently designed? Because Bikini Bottom most certainly isn’t. So Bikini Bottom actually has less space even if there is more square footage. See the attached diagram for an intelligent design that could potentially house a menu of this size. Bikini Bottom forces a line design on this kitchen when an open concept is needed for this menu. It’s as if this floorplan was created by a person who had only ever seen one commercial kitchen previously and couldn’t think 4th dimensionally to understand the needs of the workers to smoothly serve customers.
There is not enough counter space for pizzas without getting off the line, the microwave is placed completely out of the way, the freezer’s curved design is a waste of potential counter space and a falling hazard for containers stored on top of it, the toaster is an overcomplicated and overexpensive piece of machinery that serves exactly one purpose when a flat top could be used to toast bread and other purposes like a quesadilla special, sautee was designed without an overhang for spices, the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter for seafood allergies, there are no Frialator fryers which I have worked with at every single kitchen job previously instead we got the cheap Vulcan model (is that logical), the cheap low boy in pantry that doesn’t drain excess water anywhere it’s just supposed to evaporate somehow but doesn’t, the grill and fryer should be placed next to each other (with a higher volume of crossover than other stations), the floors are flat instead on having a mild decline towards the drains (just look at the standing water residing behind the oven right now), in the dishpit the spraying area and the filled sinks are backwards of a logical dipshit, the ramp to the back door is on the wrong side, there is no refrigerated place downstairs to stage extra food for busy shifts (the beer cooler is once again used for such food items because of this massive oversight), the prep station is an afterthought and miniscule, the dishes on the line are difficult to grab for anyone under 5’11” and inaccessible for anyone under 5’6” (instead of putting them underneath tables that also give that desperately needed counterspace I spoke of), there is not enough space to store to-go containers or boats behind the line, expo is lacking a low boy for the numerous items that are supposed to be cold but are instead kept at room temperature all day long, no one in management thought about buying shelves until right before Bikini Bottom opened as a result the clean full sheets sat on the floor for days, we had only the exact amount of 1⁄6 pans for an absurd amount of time making it impossible to rotate and clean them when necessary (which is daily), we still struggle with 1/9 pan supply. And just when I thought I documented all the poor design choices possible I stumbled upon a person whose office holiday party was booked at KK Bikini Bottom. The deck space works just fine as a deck. It does not double well as a gathering space. The space is too long and narrow for parties, it promotes little splitoff groups rather than a coming together of a larger gathering. It may be advantageous to contact a social psychologist for help designing a private party space that promotes intermingling rather than enforcing small pockets to form. The reorganization of the physical kitchen isn’t all that screams for an overhaul.
There are six positions on the line at the Krusty Krab; expo, oven, grill, sautee, fryer, and pantry. But the pantry and fryer positions are forced together like a bad remix. Everyone who mainly works pantry deserves a $6 raise immediately because it is a station and a half. Both Icus and Krumm, while kitchen manager, kind of acknowledged the pantry is too big for one station without outright mentioning the lopsided distribution of work. I imagine in the only location where this works, Bluffington, a second person joins the pantry at noon because of the unreasonable amount of items one person is tasked with. Bikini Bottom only has one person in this position at all times, maybe modify it for one person? The excess of items on the pantry position largely resembles a position I would call “set-up” or “build” at a previous job that made sensible choices. This build position should have tostadas, tacos, butcher’s blocks, toast, salads, lettuce wrap set ups, and preparing plating for whichever station is most bogged down. I have absolutely lost my mind yelling about salads at least once a month, ranting that they do not belong on the fryer position because of how illogical it is that five salads are included on the mountain of other items the pantry has. I have always considered working in a kitchen a kind of dance, and the pantry station demands an unnecessarily convoluted dance to keep up with the demand. Without the salads, tostadas, and tacos the station is already the busiest. Do we really need to combine ballet and swing by including these extra awkward dance steps in this single station? For a kitchen designed this poorly I suppose it is. Again, see attached document for an intelligently designed kitchen that might be able to accommodate this menu. Unless Bikini Bottom is going to close for a month to fix the baffling floor plan design the menu is shouting to be reduced to 30-36 items.
The menu is too big. Krusty Krab is the jack of all foods, master of none. In general I believe individual locations should be allowed 18% omissions, and 18% unique items to this wildly unwieldy menu sitting around 50 food items including sides. The insistence on keeping menu items that don’t sell at Bikini Bottom because of Bluffington is mind boggling. Chicken tenders do not sell at Bikini Bottom. fried sushi does not sell at Bikini Bottom, not enough to justify their place on the line. I don’t care how well these items work in Bluffinton. They. Do. Not. Work. At. Bikini. Bottom. If the KK location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sells an incredible amount of live krill does that mean Bikini Bottom and O-Town must sell live krill too? Take the fried sushi off the menu. I had a complete meltdown about this during a Dimmadome service and my valid point was met with indifference. Replace the kid’s tenders with a kid’s fish sticks. We already have the tilapia fish sticks on the line for tacos. Or make the kid’s fish sticks cod. We cut cod to order for fish tacos in spite of health code violations because it is too rare of an order to make beforehand. Saffron in mashed potatoes? If you must. Why are green tomatoes only on the menu during lunch? Bikini Bottom throws away a sizable amount of spoiled green tomatoes each week. Have green tomatoes on the menu all day long or don’t have them at all. The smoked salmon could go on salads or a special taco to justify its place on the line. The corn pico’s place on the line is unjustified. It only goes on one item, tostadas, which are not particularly popular. If we had a taco salad we could throw the corn pico on there. We also have unreasonable waste from unusable taco shells, smash up those imperfect taco shells and throw them on said taco salad. But before we add salads, let's get rid of the pear and kale salads. The pears' position on the line are unjustified, if we threw them on a taco variation maybe their place on the Bikini Bottom line could be argued but for now they only go on a salad that isn’t particularly popular. The kale salad is an issue of space for a 4th green for salads is too much. The krusty salad is my most hated house salad of all time. And it comes down to the toast with goat cheese. This ancillary step of spreading goat cheese on a cracker is an unnecessary step for an overly complicated dance and should be part of the expo dance if expo wasn’t a shoddily designed afterthought lacking a low boy.
There are a plethora of squeeze bottles on the pantry station that have no place on the overloaded station. They belong to an expo station with a low boy to keep them cold. Pantry has an overwhelming ten squeeze bottles: chipotle crema, sweet chili vinaigrette, buffalo, korean bbq, ranch, caesar, wine vinaigrette, lemon vinaigrette, honey mustard, and lemon aioli. Only the first four are justified on an intelligently designed fryer section, the second four belong on the build station, the last two have no place anywhere but expo. With this extra space sautee could keep their bottles and two purees cold in the fryer's lowboy instead of leaving them at room temperature all day inviting a pathogen party. This theorized intelligently designed expo would have room to keep these four squeeze bottles and a double of every sauce chilled to pour them into ramekins, a move that is highly common in the expo dance. The fact that expo doesn’t have a double of all squeeze bottles is foolish. Expo has to bother an overloaded station to pour these side sauces instead.
How many gallons of basil aioli has Bikini Bottom thrown away in 11 months? Four aiolis in general is way too many and most go on a single item; basil aioli on the incredibly unpopular veggie burger, lemon aioli for calamari, sweet chili aioli for the BLT that is only served half of the day, and garlic aioli actually goes on two items…I believe. What a colossal waste of precious little space, lose two aiolis and then you can sing the logical song with me. Perhaps we can put garlic aioli and sweet chili vinaigrette on the BLT separately and accomplish the exact same thing the sweet chili aioli does. The wings too have unneeded complications. Having worked at a sports bar specializing in wings for the better part of a decade I find KK’s plating of wings to be overly pretentious. The carrots, celery, and blue cheese have lost function. Heffer Wolf always said no one eats the carrot/celery julienne with blue cheese. It’s a complete waste of all the ingredients because you’ve gone too far with the presentation. Wings aren’t fancy. Wings are supposed to have a small pool of sauce and be sloppy. It’s like a sloppy joe that’s not sloppy, an unsloppy joe is a failure to sloppy joes just as the KK presentation of wings is a disparagement to the dish. Ever since training week back in 2022 I have used a scale to give Bikini Bottom a passing or failing grade.
Chokey Chicken to Chum Bucket is the scale I use to judge efficiency and sanity at Bikini Bottom. Both establishments are upscale casual dining experiences in Capitol City in the same vein as KK. Chokey had high employee retention and relatively smooth openings for new locations. Chum Bucket’s employee turnover was high and every location opening was chaotic. Which one sounds closer to KK? Chokey Chicken was filled with chefs I respect including Chef Ren Hoek who remains a close friend to this day. Ren lost his lifelong passion for kitchen work after working management at Chum Bucket. He’s actually seeking work in Bikini Bottom. Call him up at [phone number], but KK will give him Nam’ flashbacks of why he chose driving for a living rather than cooking for five years. The pair of us together helming Bikini Bottom with the ability to omit and create 18% of the overloaded menu can bring success to this franchise. We have worked well numerous times in the past on various concepts in the past including creating The Attack of the Pickled Tomatoes Burger for [Promotional live performance of a TV show] at the Capitol City Theater. We served 100 people in 60 at the [sitcom filming] lunch. That’s physically impossible but somehow we did it quite a few times.
A fun anecdote about Ren Hoek’s KK experience from the soft launch; on training week numerous times I brought concerns about being seafood allergy safe that were dismissed. As mentioned earlier the pantry station lacks the counter space to have two containers of flour and two containers of batter, one each of which seafood never touches. Before the soft launch Chef Stimpy from Bluffington insisted all customers just kind of know everything is prone to be seafood contaminated. Well, chef Ren was a customer that night and this absolutely was not communicated to customers. He claimed to have a slight seafood allergy and was not informed of what the crab soup was. In reality he does not have a seafood allergy. I didn’t discuss the seafood issue with Ren, separately we noticed egregious violations of food safety standards and we each responded in our own way. The soft launch service was so awful that night Chef Ren walked out of a free meal to pay for some ramen, never to return to Bikini Bottom. I attribute this oversight, and many of Bikini Bottom’s (and probably O-Town’s) problems to hubris over the Bluffington location.
Chef Chokey would also be hesitant to join the KK team. It will cost a finder’s fee just for me to reveal Chef Chokey’s name. Chef Chokey was a lead in the rapid expansion of Chokey Chicken restaurants. He opened numerous restaurants and was big on the philosophy that each restaurant must have its own personality in order to fit the unique local culture and the variety of working spaces. This is in direct conflict with the KK way that everything must be exactly like the Bluffington location no matter what. There was only one Chokey Chicken location that had the full menu, Chokey Springfield. Chokey Springfield had a large space which was intelligently designed to accommodate such a large menu. The KK menu is all over the place, closing in on 50 menu items which comes up as a failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale. This is not the only area KK comes up as a major failure on the Chokey Chicken/Chum Bucket scale.
Has anyone in this company ever worked festival traffic before? Does anyone have the experience of working next to a major venue with 8000 seats before this one? The way Bikini Bottom handles Dimmadome services it certainly appears that the decision-makers fall on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Having all 50 items available during such massive traffic is completely asinine. An unwillingness to serve a partial menu is hindering the Bikini Bottom kitchen staff. I have worked festival traffic before, and Dimmadome events bring in festival traffic. I’ve worked inside a festival whose line never ended but every customer got their order in 5 minutes or less because the line kept flowing with only four items on the menu as that’s what was warranted at the B-Sharps Music Festival. I refuse to be set up for failure the way Bikini Bottom sets up Dimmadome services for failure. The entire week of concerts in [summer] 2022 I was set up for failure every day (it was after this I modified my availability to keep my sanity and my paycheck). When I brought my concerns about running efficiently during Dimmadome services I was labeled a B-worker for the first time in my employment history by Icus and Krabs. It is that moment which I was either going to holler at them both for being 2-dimensional thinkers who were obviously unqualified for the positions they accepted in this company, or just put my head down. If Bikini Bottom has a successful concert day service, hail your team because they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They swam with concrete shoes. I often wonder how many customers had bad experiences and never returned after concert days. A Dimmadome service should have no more than 25 items and have one or two specials to divert traffic towards an area the kitchen can keep moving. An Open Cup Open Plate (OCOP) special for foot traffic is absolutely needed. When I suggested OCOP special, Heffer was intrigued by this idea and immediately named burgers as the special to keep foot traffic flowing. Smithers wouldn’t hear this idea, babbling on about what’s advertised instead of hearing out a sound idea. This prattle despite radio commercials having inaccurate hours and social media promoting Bikini Bottom’s steak tacos to this day. I always found Smithers to be a better fit as a middle management office pencil pusher than as a hands-on restaurant manager. Overall I find KK managers are selected to be automatons not to question their orders rather than critical thinkers who could take the restaurant to the next level. During brunch service is another period of time that must be modified to lessen the heft of items. Having a full menu that barely works plus brunch is so deep into Chum Bucket territory, in my opinion we now have to use the Tropic Thunder scale of full retard to describe a 60-plus-item brunch. Chef Ren hired back a Chum Bucket cook who had a mental breakdown and stormed out during brunch (plus full menu) service because Ren knew the employee was justified and upper management was completely unreasonable in their brunch requests. It’s not just questionable decisions that hinder KK staff but improper equipment as well.
This is the first restaurant I have worked at which uses a touch screen on the line rather than tickets. From day one I found this to be technology for technology’s sake inferior to tickets. Chef Ren forced a new Chum Bucket location to rip out touch screens from the line and bring in ticket printers because of the higher efficiency. The touch screen is a great idea for expo, not the entire line. My biggest gripe is that each station does not get all the information. Early on I was regularly yelled at for not staggering my items, well I can’t see the rest of the order; a problem I have never had with a ticket system. Touchscreen software is also much more prone to errors and glitches. When I reported an error during a heavy service Icus and Krabs blamed my skills on the line without looking into the malfunctioning screen further. It was glitchy for weeks before the two finally investigated and corrected the issue I brought to their attention long before. Those two gave me an immense amount of ammunition to dislike them in the opening weeks until I stopped caring. The issue I had with being unable to scroll beyond the bottom of a completely filled screen has returned and is still there as of [my last day]. There are also important details that get buried. A frequent meltdown I have is that sauce on side requests and other important modifications are not capitalized or in red to catch the eye as they have been at jobs with tickets. These details get lost on Bikini Bottom’s touchscreens. A sauce on side salad made by me will be wrong 50% of the time because of the instructions being camouflaged in a word salad. This goes for coleslaw on the side and drizzle on the side too. Drizzle in general I dislike because of the pretentiousness, but whatever, drizzle it on top rather than putting it in a ramekin if you must. There are numerous places where Bikini Bottom overcomplicates matters for reasons I cannot ascertain.
Why is there such a large variety of plates? Why do we have a medium circular plate for salads and a large bowl for salads with protein? This just confuses the simplest of matters. I was told this is done because of the high price hike with protein, a larger presentation was desired. But that price hike is the price of protein in 2023. Bikini Bottom should put all salads in the large bowls and use all the circular salad plates in a skeet shooting promotion. I understand why we have both a circular platter plate and a pizza plate but in my restaurant the circular platter plates must go...or maybe the large platter plate instead. Is the large platter used for anything besides fish and chips? That extra space on fish and chips plates are only used for side sauces which can easily be delivered to customers on small circular plates. What is the medium oval plate doing that the medium rectangular plate isn’t? And vice versa. Why do they both exist when they are approximately the same size? Let me write an internet commercial where we break a lot of plates so we can get some logical use out of the superfluous plates. I don’t care which one is destroyed, the ovals or the rectangles but one of them is an unnecessary redundancy in excess done again. Speaking of commercials, the unimaginative radio advertisements for Bikini Bottom are doing little to lure new customers to the restaurant.
The three radio spots I have heard on KBBL all sound like they were produced by a marketing 101 student who wasn’t a natural in the field. The voiceover actor was so uncharismatic I was certain someone from the office was chosen at random to read the copy. Then I heard that same voiceover actor selling pool supplies on another radio station so I concluded that Bikini Bottom must have hired the cheapest guy in town to produce the most basic of commercials. Perhaps there is someone else you could hire more qualified to voiceover these commercials, an actor with experience on an Emmy award winning cable program whose unique place in the film industry was written about on [website] would be a much wiser choice to be the voice of the KK? (See external link). In the ad there was no catchphrase, no jingle, no music whatsoever. This simple approach to commercials lacks the pizazz to catch the attention of radio listeners. The first two commercials I heard would get a C in marketing 101 as they were nearly the exact same and accomplished the bare minimum to sell wares, the third one would maybe get a B- because there was some sort of attempted gimmick with the voiceover whispering to represent thinking inside his head about what he was going to eat later at KK. Not only does this commercial give no reason for the man to think inside his head, the outside world still and unpopulated. To see what a creative person would do with this concept see the attached script. There is an attempted slogan that could become part of an ad campaign. Commercials aren’t the only lost opportunities in promotions.
There are numerous promotional celebrity tie-ins at Bikini Bottom’s fingertips with Dimmadome performers. The restaurant could have a Phish sandwich as a OCOP special on [Phish performance dates], or a pretentious Jelly Roll on [Jelly Roll performance date]. Has anyone reached out to the Dimmadome theater or talent management for approved special menu items to be promoted inside the dome? Perhaps a special 20% discount to ticket holders? Is Bikini Bottom capable of getting permits to extend Open Container hours beyond [cutoff time] for an afterparty or block party throughout a Dimmadome concert? I see additional marketing opportunities left on the table for all new locations.
I believe new KK locations are missing out on a marketing campaign by opening with the entire cumbersome 50 item menu. This is a staggering amount of menu items which is too much to ask new staffers to perfect all at once. After a few months expanding the menu by approximately ten items is catching to customers who haven’t returned after a single visit or infrequently stop into KK. There are ten new food items that might appeal to them. Just like it appears KK doesn’t know what it’s looking for in a good commercial spot, this company doesn’t appear to recognize a talented from an untalented worker until it’s too late.
It is my understanding that KK had a headhunter to find Icus, the first Bikini Bottom kitchen manager. If it were up to me I’d hire someone to break the legs of that headhunter for bringing in a subpar kitchen lead. We are still attempting to recover from the lousy choices she made in the floor plan. If anybody responsible for Bikini Bottom’s floor plan is still giving input, stop them immediately. Once the doors were open to the public Icus had his head in the clouds to a point where I questioned if he saw the writing on the walls of an imminent demotion and stopped trying as a result. I had a full deck of 3x5 cards in an archaic powerpoint presentation bringing numerous concerns to light that he kept putting off listening to until he was fired. Those same cards were broken out for this essay. The second kitchen manager, Krumm, is a good lesson in honesty. According to Heffer, Krumm was given a bill of goods about how smoothly KK Bikini Bottom was running. Since Krumm stepped into a latrine pit which he was led to believe was a heated pool, he left in short time. Krumm also had plans to modify the menu but when his bosses told him to be a rodeo clown rather than a cowboy Krumm didn’t take too kindly to that. Meanwhile Heffer was the savior of the Bikini Bottom kitchen. I didn’t agree with every single decision he made, but I did with a majority of them. Heffer’s overhaul was such a blessing so I didn’t have to fiddle with the organization of 60% of the equipment anymore, only about 20% now. Too bad Heffer’s crippling depression came back after bashing his head into the wall out of frustration with the shackles KK restrained him with.
The current management team is enthusiastic but inexperienced. I see an accumulation of small infractions that might bring down Bikini Bottom’s health department rating significantly. I see the entire management team being inattentive or unaware about organizational issues. Whatever bureaucratic nonsense corporate tasks everyone with from the original sous chef Skeeter to Patty Mayonnaise that makes them walk away from the line between 11am and 1pm especially is infuriating. I have never been left alone on a multi-person line during peak hours so regularly, and I won’t tolerate it anymore. As much as I believe in his drive, I imagine our current kitchen manager SpongeBob will be let go after a disastrous service during the Dimmadome concert season that someone has to take the fall for. Chef Ren and I could help bring experience in management and dealing with festival traffic...if corporate does not force us to follow a failing strategy.
After working nearly a year at KK you may ask why I’m not proficient on more than one station. Excellent question. First, when I move over to another station the squeeze bottles are never labeled (until Stu Pickles was hired, now they’re sometimes labeled), so I always looked at the glut of unlabeled sauces and I’d go back to my station because the basic information is missing (also a health department violation for having numerous unlabeled, unchilled bottles). In his first week the new general manager Stu Pickles pulled out 90% of the containers under the grill station because they were lacking labels despite an expected health department visit. The second reason for my menu ignorance is the mountain of prep for my own and upcoming shifts I have piled up on my station throughout service. My attention to detail appears to be next level with my ability to anticipate stocking all items for all shifts including the weeknd. The third reason I wouldn’t learn multiple stations is a defense against the afternoon conference calls. In [month] the Bikini Bottom line was unprepared for a busy post lunch because one cook was cut and our expo person was busy with a conference call. The two of us remaining on the line had a miserable slog through an unexpectedly busy afternoon. When I brought this up to Krabs he disregarded me, being a good bean counter he quoted the cost percentage. What he didn’t take into account was the missing expo person who could have jumped on the line and expo to help the understaffed two man team. That person was stuck on a conference call. Just recently I saw the company actively lose money because of this poorly thought-out meeting during business hours. A customer wanted to order a dessert that was 86ed but had been restocked by our prep cook an hour before. The server was unable to sell them their dessert because the only person in the building who could help un-86 an item was on a conference call. This conference call calamity is another bone-headed choice that speaks to a larger decision-making problem within the corporate structure. Finish the conference calls by 10:45 am eastern.
In conclusion, I quit my position as a lowly grunt for this company because of its unwarranted perplexing dance steps and below average management. I don’t care how much varnish and lacquer is supplied, I refuse to polish this Bikini Bottom turd as a manager or full-time employee under the current circumstances. You would have to take a pickaxe to the floor, possibly relocate the bathrooms to add a door to the dishpit, get rid of the cheap low boy that doesn’t properly drain excess water, and Mr Gorbachov knock down that wall in the middle of the kitchen to give the proper amount of space to work. Or simply reduce the menu to 36 items (including sides) because that’s the amount of space this dreadful design can comfortably output. Would Gordon Ramsay compliment KK for all the unnecessary convoluted complications abound, or would Chef Ramsay yell about keeping it simple and demand KK chuck it in the flip? Thanks to the numerous pop up restaurants I have been a part of and the hectic world of trade shows/conventions, I may have more experience than anyone else employed by KK in smoothly opening a new location. I would enjoy being part of the opening team to ensure new locations have an efficiency Bikini Bottom lacks, and to keep upper management away from their worst instincts. Work with me and Chef Ren and we will help you become a well oiled machine like Chokey Chicken instead of the Chum Bucket cesspit Bikini Bottom currently embodies.

Do not get hung up on the points/LP. That is a distraction. You will start to focus on those dumb numbers more than learning and improving, which is just going to stall your growth as a player.
Its ok to set a specific goal, but as corny as it sounds no matter where you set that goal you have to experience the journey of getting to it.
Those numbers going up and down after every set? They're nothing. If you can keep yourself from putting value into them you will have more fun win or lose.
If you can do that you won't get frustrated when you inevitably lose them, and you can continue playing with a clear mindset and not tilted because you lost 50 points of LP that mean nothing.
Go in ranked with the intention of gaining experience and learning rather than just winning and you'll be better off in the long run.

I made a character and this sotry for star wars (i made this story for my English finals, i had a month to make it and got an A on it), the characters name is Saya Eban and is a character I have been thinking of for over a decade now (im not in my 2nd decade so since i was super young). Saya at this time is 13-14 years old and was given inspiration by almost all the other jedi and also star killer. He is human and with reliance on the force he can live up to 1000 years with hi peak being between 35, 40 ish to around 800 years of age. In terms of prime power level and potential, in my canon he is 3rd most powerful character just underneath luke and anikan Skywalkers, but could contend with them at some points. Little background: he was a prodigy in school before he became a padawan, he always had an intrest in a character named Ahsoka Tano but never became more than friends because of the Jedi teachings. He was a fast learning youngling and became a padawan earlier than most other younglings, becaming a padawan at the age of 11 - 12. He was in the first battle of Genesis but his troop transport ship was blasted out of the air, landing behind enemy lines leaving him the sole surviver, and scarring him, making him want to never see uneeded bloodshed ever again. He met Count Dooku before he had met Obi-Wan and Anikan on geonosis, he locked blades with him once... once, before he was thrown aside like a house fly, not worth his time, he was out until the retreat of the battle was initiated. This gave him night terrors and nightmares, after this day he could never sleep more than an hour, if that, before he woke up feeling the dark side creeping in. So he had learned to use sleep meditation. Sleep meditation allowed him to accelerate his trainings and connect greater to the force, he had unlocked 1/3 of his life now, the force helping his cells heal his body while he sat and meditated.
This story is of how he lived through one of the bloodiest battles and worst losses of the Republic, the battle of Sarrish, and of how he had obtained his later main star ship, a Kom'rk Mark 1 class star fightetransport, aka the Puro (i made this story before I have watched the 3rd season of the Mandalorian, as of right now i still haven't so Idk if thats in season 3 or not).
There is about 11,340 words in the story, and I don't 100% know of what I should make him look like so have your imaginations run wild.
Ok here we go:
Tales of Saya Eban's Puro
Chapter 1

 The battle of Sarrish was one of the worst battles of the Clone Wars, it was a great devastating loss to the Republic and the Jedi, and I was in the middle of it all. Before the battle I was doing some touch-ups on my A-wing Fighter. I had managed to get my hands on a hyperdrive that would fit in my small fighter, although being able to enter hyperspace without an external hyperdrive wing is very convenient, fast, and easy, it does slow my fighter and hinder some mobility, but not an uncontrollable amount of loss. Little did I know it'd save my life later that week. After I had finished my work, gotten it restocked for my next battle, I was called to the Jedi command center for a briefing by Master Yoda, saying it was an urgent mission and I was needed now, with his backwards way of speaking annoying me slightly. In a flash, I had gathered my battle ready loadout and headed off to the command center. When I entered the command center with the center planning table showing starships from both Confederate and Republic sides, One chasing another. I look and see Masters Yoda and Windu and a holoprojected Obi-Wan Kenobi surrounding the Table, with deeply serious thoughts in their eyes, fingers on their concentrating chins. When I swiftly strolled in, I was greeted with Master Windu's cheerful, but serious voice: "Ah, Padawan Eban, good you're here, come quick, we must act with persistence if we want to gain an upper hand in this war." "Master Windu, good to see you, you too Master Yoda, Master Kenobi, what's the situation?" Master Obi-Wan states, "We are currently chasing Separatist forces to the planet Sarrish and we will need some back up, could you bring your part of the 104th battalion right away, we have heavy casualties and they're going to have reinforcements when they reach the planet." "Is there not anyone closer than me, it may take a few days for me to get there, yall mabe finished by the time I get there!" I said with hope in my eyes. "I'm afraid that you're the only one that is available with the most minimal time of arrival, you'll have to be quick though, it will be anytime now they will reach the planet and have reinforcements. we need this win, it will be a great victory for the Republic if we are able to capture the planet." Stated Obi-Wan with certainty. "All other generals are on missions right as we speak, you are the only one that can provide back up at this current time." Master Windu added "Closer to Knight after this mission you will be, great padawan you are, your great swift improvements, Master Plo is pleased with, believe in you I do." Master Yoda said with a jolly old-man voice. "Now go, there's not much time to waste, gather your men and go help Obi-Wan!" Rushedly said by Master Windu. "With determination in my voice, I yell "Yes Masters, right away!" And like a flash, I was gone. As I'm running off, I catch a glimpse of a green swoosh and the sound of a bolt deflection. I stumble to a stop and put my legs in reverse to give curiosity the wheel. When I peer in, I see Master Skywalker and Ahsoka, along with roughly 8 clone troopers all in a circle around Ahsoka and her one blade ignited. Master Skywalker had her eyes welded to her as he walked around the trooper. I could see Captain Rex standing and watching as well, although he seems to be the only one who spotted me poking in my head. He motioned his finger to his lips as to tell me to shush and not interfere, so I watched with anticipation. And after a lifetime stillness ending in a second after Master Skywalker yelled "START!" And stun doughnuts fire from the blasters of the troopers, sending a volley of blue twords Ahsoka from all directions. With great flexibility I pair with, she jumps into the air, spinning like skates on a skate rink in mid air deflecting all incoming plasmic projectiles landing with swift grace ready for more, And more came, she stands in the center blade moving almost faster than what my eyes could keep up with, until that one bolt punches her right in the back, knocking her to the ground, diminishing the blade back into the hilt. I spring into the room, speaking with worry in my voice when I squeak out "Ahsoka! Master Skywalker, what was that!?" 

"She was just training deflecting blaster fire, she's going to be outmatched a lot in this war, and clones are better than droids to practice with." Anakin said with pride that she was able to last little over a minute, thats improvement.
"Well I guess you're not completely wrong, but your going to give her a brain injury at this rate! Could you not go a bit easier on her?"
"She'll never learn if I go easy on her." Master Skywalker said with little arrogance in his voice.
"W- well, here, l-let me wake her then." I stuttered as I walked up to Rex holding Ahsoka like he's a pillow.
"Rex, do you mind if I-"
"Not at all General, here." Rex said as I sat next to him holding Ahsoka's top half of her body.

 As he caringly sets Ahsoka's rhythmically beating top half in my lap, head facing the heavens, I softly lay my hand over her forehead, close my eyes, and concentrate. A few suspenseful seconds later, I take my hand off and observe Ahsoka's hand softly glide to her now curling forehead, eyes fluttering open. 

With a smile I voiced"Wakey Wakey warrior princess, have a good nap?" Smirking the whole time.
"Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes Nicksters." She groaned with fading pain.
"What are you doing here?" She leisurely grumbled as she started to lie propped up by her desirable, fluorescent orange arms made of flexible muscle.
"I was walking by, and saw a 'damsel in distress', I HAD to come and 'save the day'." I joked, smirking the whole time, annoying her little bit more.
"You know I have been dying to use my force heal on you since I had learned it. I bet you don't even feel bad at all right now hm?" I said leaning in
Ahsoka starts to stand as to get a feel for her own body.
"You're right, I feel better than I did before, not bad for someone named Nicks." Ahsoka said smirking right back at me.
"Oh come on, that was one time, that was even before we became patiwans!" I said with little dramatics in my vocal verberations.
"Ok Master, I'm ready to try again." Ahsoka said to Master Skywalker
"Not now Ahsoka, we have a mission from the Jedi council we have to attend to while Obi-Wan is on his own mission." Anikan said to Ahsoka, elongating his 'not' like he usually does
"I'm actually about to go give help to Obi-Wan right now… WHICH I NEED TO GET PREPARED FOR NOW!! Karabast, got to go! See yah Ahsoka, Master, Rex." And like a ship entering hyperspace, I was gone.
Chapter 2

 After 2 boring days traveling in hyperspace, me and my 5 Veneter class Cruisers are nearing our destination, this would make 12 Cruisers for the Republic side. A new commander CT'-4112 or Zerek, debriefs on the battle situation. As I had sensed, Obi-Wan was outmatched seeing as backup was on planet Sarrish for the fleeing Separatist ships, now it's 11 Munificent class Cruisers and 2 command stations blockading the planet. Kenobi was starting to be pushed back, relying on our Cruisers longer ranged cannons to hope the Sepies didn't get too close. Our Cruisers have longer ranged main canons and toms of fighter room, while the Sepies Cruisers have more fire power at closer ranges with more fighters than our Vendor class Cruisers, at closer ranges, the Sepies would completely destroy a Venetor class Cruiser, but we have strategies and will power. 

"Glad to see a friendly face Saya." Kenobi said exhaustingly.
"Well, it looked like you needed help. You know I need to be the one to save everyone. I'll move into position to fortify our defenses to push the Sepies back and for us to make a plan. What is your fleet's condition?"
"We have 2 Venetors heavily damaged and the rest either have mild to no damage. And we have lost half our fighters as of now." Urgently said by Kenobi.
"Ok, I'm sending men and supplies to you right now, let me take the front so I can take the damage if they send another attack." I calmly said to Kenobi.
"Men battle positions and set all power to front cannons and shields. Venators get into pincer position and get ready for an attack. Fighters get ready to launch." I commanded to all my Cruisers
"Master, if you could, could you add in your undamaged Venetors? " I wandered and directed with much mastery, I even made Obi-Wan himself visually impressed considering my inexperienced mind in life, and especially war. I even managed to make him smile.
"Getting in position now." Obi-Wan stated, still smiling.
"Understood, While you get everything fixed, I'll see if I can weaken their defenses, it seems as if they're in attack positions so we gotta be ready for anything." I said in deep thought.
"Ok, 10 to 13, I like those odds, makes it even, more so for the Sepies." I grinned.
"Now Saya, remember this is still a battle, don't be too cocky, you're starting to remind me of Anakin." Obi-Wan said with conviction.
"Yes Master, sorry about that." I answered to Obi-Wan, pulling back a little.

 Just then, many starfighters come from the enemy Cruisers, hundreds of them lightning fast, closing distance fast. 

"All right men, time for some fun. Obi-Wan, if you want to take command of my control center, I'll lead this fight." I said before Obi-Wan could respond.
"Ok- but Saya! Blast, maybe he's too much like Anikan." Obi-Wan said defeatedly.
As I get into the hangar I yell "Alright Wolfpack, let's get goin!" Then I hop into my modified Jedi A-wing.
We rush out from the center roof door along the Cruiser with my squadron aka The Wolfpack, with me leading my 23 fighters into battle and many more friendly's following from the hangars.
"Ok Wolfpack, let's make a break for them Cruisers, get as many of them gone as possible. 411 you ready?" I asked R2-411. R2-411 bleeps with readiness.
"Ok, time to blow them out of the sky, remember, stay in formation" I commanded.
"Yes sir!" The Clones bellowed.

 Then we hit the swarm with a mighty thundering sound of lasers flying through the emptiness of space seeing one after one of enemy fighter droids dropping all over the place. Me and my Wolfpack fly through all the 2 winged Vulture droids that look like each wing was sideways and has 2 prongs each side for wings. They were way more quick and maneuverable than us, but we had a duty to win, and we won't lose today. It's like a firework show, but you're dodging all the fireworks, and they're aiming right at you. While we are defending the Venator Cruisers, they're mostly firing at the Sepies Cruisers, slowly dwindling their energy shields down. 

"Boys, I have a plan, but I'll need yall to get back to the Cruisers." I urged
"Obi-Wan, how's the 2 heavily damaged Cruisers? We've been out for a long while. They should be good by now right?" I questioned Master Kenobi.
"They're about to come back into the fight, but one of our Cruisers is at a quarter shield, few good hits or bombing runs and it's gone, what's your plan Saya?" Obi-Wan said, perplexed.
"Just give me an opening to the left Separatist control center, that's all I need to get on that ship." I stated with confidence.
"I'll try my best, but don't be stupid Saya, we can't afford to lose you."
"Yeah yeah I know, just get me an opening please Master!" I begged.

 After the words fleeted from my mouth, all the Cruisers fired a hole through the droid fleet with friendly fighters also making way for me to get through. I blast the afterburners straight through the enemy swarm that's been lesson by the commotion, just barely being hidden by smoke from a just destroyed fighter straight into the leftmost control ship hanger landing with an explosive entry. And immediately I jump out, igniting both, my straight emerald green saber in my left, and my yellow saber with a curved hilt similar to the Count's hilt himself in my right. I'll face him again one day, it's inevitable, like me. I land and immediately cut a group of B1 battle droids heads off with my yellow saber facing out, giving me more reach, but as I start to take fire from the army that quickly form from my landing, I swiftly doge left to right almost able to doge the sight of a human eye. Left, pop goes the heads of 3, right, pop goes 5, jump through the air on an almost straight path through the thick of the army, spinning with a light show if one were to be an onlooker at this chaotic organization of flying red plasmic bolts going to a mix of yellow and green, then proceeding to fly straight back at the shooter with twice the velocity. I land on my feet with a thunderous "BOOM" with what seems like an explosion that incinerates half of the whole hanger with an electric yellow glow seeming like yellow lighting exploded from the epicenter of the explosion. When the smoke cleared, it seemed that everything within a 5 meter radius was completely incinerated, and everything within 40 meter radius was heavily damaged, and any technology within eye shot was either scrape or short-circuiting, but all B1 battle droids and super battle droids were out. 

I sighed with relief with little heavy breathing when I looked around me, but with no time to rest, 6 Vulture droid fighters came through the hanger's magnetic shield door, transforming to walk on its pronged wings like they were legs. They scanned me and started raining a flurry of red down onto me, but with my lightning fast reflexes, I raised my sabers to block the incoming hellfire from all six fighter's. Then came the flurry being deflected in any direction possible, and I could just barely see the 6 droids started to surround me by going behind my back, but I ain't done yet. As I'm blocking, jumping, spinning, twisting on a micrometer, I stomp with a mighty force, launching through the air, slowly spinning straight for a Vulture that has became the prey. Bolts whizzing by me, inches, centimeters near my skin, singeing my arm hairs to their roots. I land on top of the droid with a thunderous boom crunching where my foot had landed, driving my sabers straight through the brain of the story high droid, with a counterclockwise rotation around my back, dragging my sabers across the metal of the droid, I leap off the droid landing with the feathers and fly forward with a flashing dash slicing through 2 other droids legs, leaving gravity do its magical job. 3 down, 3 to go, but with little time left. I launch forward running on hairs dipping and dodging blots, I leap up slicing through one leg of a droid and pushing off of its gravity taken hull, coming down on another droid's leg, cutting with ease. I land like a leaf in the autumn skies, and launch with a swift leap, flying my yellow saber straight down the middle of the 6th and final droid with no time to spare.

 I land with caution, ready to fend off another foe, but none came at that second, so I took the opportunity and ran with it straight to where the main reactors should lie. I swiftly sprint with force leaps through the air to get to the reactor, the ship is 270th of a circle with a ball where the command center is, the middle is the only connected between the back of the ball and the inner back of the circle, that's where the reactor is, im at the left most side, may take me a minute to reach it, but I can get there without being seen. My plan was to quickly fix and rewrite a Vulture droid's code to go with my command, not going to be the best work but it will work, hopefully. I had to act fast because I knew there were going to be hundreds more droids to come to see the commotion, I'd say within the minute. The codes used on the droids are not the best, because of mass production, so It was an easy fix, I just needed it to fly a small bit. It comes back to life with a putt to its movement, I directed it to start flying while I'm on its back, putting the whole time with smoke, just what I needed. I start to move forward as fast as possible. As we get around the hundreds of battle droids below, I'm starting to speed up, and as I see the reactor room, I could hear B1's yell " HEY! STOP! YOUR GOING TO FAST" in their robotic voice. Before I hit the Shield covering the reactor room, I jump off to the left where the blast door is for the room. With the distraction of the droid smashing into the shield, I use this time to slowly cut through the blast doors with both sabers starting at the bottom of the door, going up and around to form a circle I can fit through. I was through within a Minute, unnoticed, or so I was led to believe. When I get into the reactor room, I throw explosives all over the reactors, with a detonation in T minus 1 minute. I fly out of the room, calling for 411 to bring my ship as fast as possible, 55. Running across the hanger, I'm spotted by the hundreds of battle droids, which immediately start firing right as they see me 50. The explosion of the fighter droid caused a chain to nearby explosive barrels, exploding more Vulture droids causing tons of smoke and fires to spread around the hangar area, 45. As I'm running, my yellow saber is blocking multiple bolts flying at me while I'm jumping, spinning, performing acrobatic movements while being shot by hundreds of droids, from B1's, to super's, to droideka's, all firing at me, adding to the smoke, 35. Running with young blood in my veins, I perform 1, 2, 3 long jumps and leap onto the side of a slanted destroyed Vulture droid, 30. I jump up, reaching for the cloudy sky just as 411 swoops in predictively shoving my hand into the side of the sharp A-wing hull, 25. I grab the side of the hull and pull myself up into the cockpit, grabbing the controls, 20. I spin to the exit with roughly 67° of the hanger I need to shoot out of, I fire the afterburners using the circumference of the circle and my fighters movment to my advantage, 15. Pushing forward, I am drifting an A-wing around the hangar of a Separatist capital ship skimming the walls centimeters away from an explosive fiery death, 10. I barely screamed out of the hanger, to be able to see a view of the capital ship flying stright for the other Sepie capital ship, 5. Im still firing the afterburners to try and attempt to get a safe distance away from the soon to be collision sight, 4. I let 411 take the control's, 3. I turn my head to look back, 2. I see the collision of the 2 270° hangers, 1. I watch as i get the view of a star being formed right infront of my eyes, and seeing many Sepie Cruisers being absolutely engulfed by the flames, and a blast wave decimating the Vulture droids… blast wave…. BLAST WAVE! Just then I'm thrown far, along with the debri. I manged to gain control of the craft and start performing advanced monuvers to avoid being hit by debrie that will demolishe me and my tiny fighter. 

"Saya, can you hear me? Saya?" Master Obi-Wan Kenobi pleaded.
"Yeah, yeah master, I'm good, I'm fine. Woo…!" I said with a sigh of relief.
Chapter 3

 The explosion had decimated the Separatist forces leaving 4 Cruisers sustaining heavy or mild damages, but with an opening, Obi-Wan and I travel to the ground along with Captain Cody to go for a large ground assault. Master Obi-Wan's plan was to drop in and gather our troops and split them between Obi-Wan and commander Cody. We were west, they were east. The Separatists had the high ground seeing as they had a cliff to their advantage. Flying in on gunships, we were taking heavy fire from their anti aircraft cannons. Commander Cody and I are debriefing the squad on the way to the rally point, seeing gunships after gunship falling to the rocky ground in a fiery explosive ball of red hot metal, and screams, with no plants in sight, just rocks, gunships, and red streaks flying by. Explosions booming right next to us with our doors right open. We have been ordered and ordering troops to stay far away from the mountain top gun fortifying the mountain top of the cliff, leaving that gun for the gunships and the best of the clone troopers, or ARC (Advanced Recon Commandos) troopers to deal with that later, seeing as a ground assault is too dangerous for us. As some of the clones have said, it's not an easy mission, but hops are high. 

"30 seconds until landing." A clone trooper yelled to me and Cody.
Cody starts with "All right, listen up! Maintain squad formations, 'A' squad, You're on me-" ZZZZZEEEROW- BOOOM!
"Where hit!" I yell "Everyone! Hold on!"
Before we hit the ground I leap out of the gunship with a backwards somersault, force pulling all the troops out of the burning fireball heading for the ground, grabbing all of the men, including the 2 pilots at the front, breaking through the windows. I land like rain from the sky, catching the troops I just pulled out with my powers and have them roughly land on the fluffy rocks next to our now downed gunship, no casualties yet. I rush over to take cover under our gunship on its left side behind enemy lines. I sit and meditate as they come up with a plan.
"What's the status lieutenant?" Cody asked
"5 injured thanks to General Saya, but that's not that bad news… Does that Rock look familiar?" The lieutenant asked.
"Yea, the mountain, right where we're not supposed to be." Said Cody
"General Kenobi ordered us not to try taking this section from the ground." The lieutenant regenerated back again with what was already established.
"That's what he said…but what would the general do if he were here?" Cody rhetorically asked.
"Saya sir, what do you think?" A trooper asked me somewhat desperately.
"I think Cody should take this one, I've got your back Cody." I answered with my legs crossed, eyes closed, slightly levitating over the rocks.
"Eight-Eight-Six-Seven through Eight-Eight-Six-Nine and Saya, fix your grapples and come with me. Everybody, prepare for covering fire." Cody ordered.
I get up, eyes still shut, ready to block anything coming our way.
"NOW!" Cody yells, sprinting across what is our no-man's-land
I open my eyes, ignite my Sabers, Green in left, yellow in right, and dash towards the now incoming blaster fire. I sense it, left side, block, right side, deflect, one for Cody, deflected. We get to some stalagmites at the bottom of the mountain, sustaining heavy fire, I pose as a distraction for all the fire, deflecting as many blots as I can back at the metal men. One troop trips and falls, pow, bolt straight through the head. Cody and the men shoot the grappling hooks up towards the top of the mountain and start climbing. I jump from my spot reigniting my sabers, driving them through the mountain side, helping me grab hold with my feet. And when I look up, I see a grapple fall behind me. I tried to grab the rope but I was too late. When I managed to obtain it, he had already hit the ground. Another tragedy, one that never had to happen, life being wasted away. I look up, a droid stairs emotionlessly down into my emotion filled eyes. A blue bolt shoots past me, impacting the droid's head, sending the body backwards.
Cody and the other clone rises from the cliff side as I leap up from the side, landing in front of the clones and immediately start deflecting with my 2 sabers having nothing pass. Cody takes this opportunity to run around my defense and attacks the droids head on, bashing one droid with the butt of his rifle and swinging his rifle at another, destroying both of them. The droid manning the anti aircraft gun turns and aims at Cody. Instinctively I jump in front of the cannon as it fires, I deflect the large bolt away with my right yellow saber, knocking my body to the right, making me stumble. But with the motion throwing me to the right, I use the momentum to throw my green saber with my left hand, impaling the droid in the metal chest. Cody then hops onto the turret, points the gun at the droids firing at our men, and lets loose, destroying all in its reticle.
"Thanks General, I owe you one, ill getcha next time." Cody said slowly getting off the turret.
"You're alright my friend, just pay it forward, let's go see how Obi-Wan did." I slightly worried, staring off to the north.

 We group up at the randevu, where we have set base camp on the planet in a small raven a bit away from where we captured the cliff with some makeshift scouting towers dotted around our position. Obi-Wan had more resistance than what he had anticipated, he was a little banged up, but he was fine in the end. This was a huge victory seeing as we have been able to set base on a planet that allows us to get resources through this hyperspace route and onto parts of the army past this point. Before, General Grievous snipped our route to where we couldn't get resources to our army on the other side from Coruscant. 

Chapter 4

 12 hours later, we have rested and have managed to build up a good base incase of a surprise attack. We are still fighting a few fronts of Separatist holdouts with a fortress a few klicks west, or about 4 miles west. 

I sit in my tent meditating, reflecting back on the weeks events, and what Ahsoka was doing back at the temple, training hard. I recite what I did with an almost overwhelming amount of blaster fire attempting to fly into me, how I was just mostly averting the blots away from me and not in a direction that would benefit me most.
'RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE'

 The ground started to shake out of nowhere, breaking my peace. I rush out of my tent, only to be met with a face full of B2 battle droid. I jump back over my tent flipping onto my feet as I see my tent being lit into flames from heavy bolt fire flying at me. Igniting both my sabers, I deflect the incoming fire away from me up into the sky as much as I physically could. I took a glance around, it was becoming more sunlit as we fought. It was a slaughter, clones dying left and right, Kenobi was on the Command ship getting patched, so it was just me, and the clones down here, being manicured. With a swift right step, I change lightsaber form, combining my form 3, (defensive form blocking anything coming way, and either making, or waiting for an opening to strike) with a combination of form 2 (saber to saber form, putting least amount or saber movement and preferring precise efficient movements) and form 4 (saber from using the force to enhance physical abilities, and heavily utilizing fast acrobatic movements to move around and disorient the opponents, using wide sweeping saber movements to block and hit targets) I use the power if the many bolts to propel my body onto my right leg, crouching down and taking a huge lead in to the air. Looking around like it is moving in stop motion, I see thousands of droids around, completely outnumbering my men. Glancing down where I had jumped from, there seems to be a super battle droid rising from the ground, looking as if it has been there for at least a few days. Time seems to start like normal again, immediately I have to block bolts coming for my body, twisting, turning, deflecting every. single. bolt. right to another droid. I can't have any more unneeded deaths in my hands. I land with an impactful explosion of yellow lighting, rendering half of the electronics on the field obsolete. Shots fire over the wall, exploding near me. 

"Everyone, Retreat!" I yelled into the comms.
I ran towards the lieutenant that I had survived the crash with, he was running for a troop transport.
"Get to the ships, return to the Venators! Get Kenobi and relay what has happened!" Urgency blowing through my voice.

 I push him into the ship as it takes off. As it's doing so, I force push it away from the field as to be in less danger of being shot down. But rockets fly through the air, I reach through the force and grab onto the hurdling death traps, I grab 1, 2, crash them into one another, 3, grab, 4, grab, 5, miss. ERRROW… BOOOM! With a hopeless explosion, the ship bursts into an explosive ball of fire, right in front of my eyes, out of my grasp. Shots fly past my head from behind me, I ignite my sunlit yellow saber to block incoming bolts. No men, only metal remains, and it wants me dead. I dash for my ship on the other side of the airstrip, luckily barely touched from this horrible surprise party that invited everyone I very much dislike. Hopping into my A-wing, I lift-off dogging left, right, up, down, roll left, roll right, barely being passed by on all sides by cannon fire. When I reach the point past the clouds, there's a whole war above. Separatist forces have surprised Kenobi with an overwhelming number of ships, putting our war torn 12 Venators against 16 Munificent class Cruisers. We were greatly out matched. But the time I was in space we had lost 3 Vectors compared to there 1 lost. Droids noticed me coming from the planet and started to verge onto my position. 

"Obi-Wan! You there? Can you hear me?" I yelled, pulling evasive maneuvers.
"Saya, is that you?" Kenobi asked.
"Yes, we got surprised on the ground, seems the same happened here." I rushingly said.
"Yes, they came out of nowh-" Kenobi is cut off by a blaring siren from my cockpit.
"Wait, my ship is damaged, it's starting up my hyperdrive, 411 can you fix it?" I said dipping left and right while trying to stop the hyperdrive activation.
With a few bleeps of fear, I understand what's happening.
"When I was thrown from the capital ship explosive wave, I must have been hit near the hyperdrive, and explosions from my escape, along with the maneuvers I have been pulling, it may have caused damage that is registering a hyperdrive activation. Master Obi-Wan, I don't know, I-I don't know what to do!" I claimed with fear in my eyes.
"Can you deactivate the hyperdrive at all 411?" Kenobi asked
411 bleeps with a sad toon.
"Blast, Saya, does it say where you're going?"
"N- No, my council just says ERROR." I stated, now with much fear in my voice.

 I managed to steer my craft into the position of the hyperspace lane. 

"Tell Ahsoka good bye if I don't-" I get cut off when the the hyperdrive powered up woth a vvvvvvvvvvvVVVVERRRRRRR PEEOW, and just like that, me, my A-wing, and R2-411, are gone.
Chapter 5

 It's been days since the battle, mabe 2 or 3 days. Luckily I always keep many ration bars in my fighter to last me a good few days, along with my extra water and my ability to go into a deep meditative state, conserving food and water. Keeping me company is my meditation and 411. We have almost hit some unknown objects, could have been planets, asteroids, other ships, but we seem to be staying in hyperspace lanes luckily, or I would have been dead a long time ago. My class 2 hyperdrive could have taken me all over the galaxy by now, I could be heading towards Coruscant right now for all I know. 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
My hyperdrive warning kicked on, showing that there is a massive gravity force in my path. The console flashed with big red dangerous letters "Exiting Hyperdrive" on the screen.
"YES! FINALLY!" I yelled with excitement.

 I watch through the glass to see a barren looking planet, and a similar looking moon, a moon I was heading to. I was moving fast, as I entered the moon's atmosphere, Im grabbing the controls, barely anything. My craft is red hot from the rate at which I'm coming in on. I'm grabbing the stick, pulling back as much as I can, as to try and save myself and 411 from a fiery death. I scraped by a big rocky mountain dealing more damage to my A-wing. 

"HOLD ON 411!"
"Come ooooon. Pull pull pullllll…. Ahhhhhhhhh!!!-" VERRROW BOOOOSH!!! The crash landing sounded like a bomb flying through the air, then landing on its target. I try to get from my seat just to find my strap and window will not open. Using my saber I cut off my seat strap and broke the window from the hinges and leaped out, taking 411 from the craft, swiftly landing on a tall mountainous rock. The craft seemed to have pushed through the land 50 meters from the initial impact spot. The area I was in seemed to be very rocky terrain with many rocky canyons and huge rocks that are almost mountainous. The sun was close to setting down for the night but was still a good hour away from sleeping.

 With the force by my side, I felt a very uneasy sensation telling me to stay out of sight. I duck down on the tall skinny rock taking 411 down with me. 411 confusingly bleeps when I do so. "Hey, I have a feeling right now, just keep quiet real quick, there's somebody coming. Trust me." Me and 411 peer over the edge looming over my crashed ship just as a group of 6 men in full armor covering their whole body fly in with jetpacks strapped to their backs, blasters in hand. As they land, they search around my wreckage, presumably looking for survivors. One seems to be ordering the others around, pointing at one to look in one direction, another a different direction, and scanning around for the unexpected visitor. I look down at my Wrist link, my distress signal wasn't sent, I guess that was damaged from entering the planet at such high speed with no deflector shields surrounding the ship like a protective blanket. 

"Blast, 411, what's your S.O.S signal situation, did it go through?" 411 beeps with a little drama like I should know it didn't go through.
"Well sorry for busting your rusty bolts you rowdy rancor, better to try than to just give up mister sassy pants. Maybe I should wipe your memory for a change, see how you like it."
"Now shush, don't want them to find us spying on them, won't look too good." I demand. "Now here, in case we get caught, I don't want them to know I'm a Jedi, so here, take my sabers, I'm not gonna need them anyways." I said shoving my lightsabers into 411's storage compartment and looking towards the crash again.

 Just then the suit of armor that had been commanding his squad bursts up into my view right on my face out of hyperspace blue. 

"Ah, found ya trespassers, you 2 are coming with me." Demanded the Mandalorian with a snickering sound in his voice as the others rise from the portal of the abyss from down below.

 It was a good thing my ropes where in the tent back on Sarrish, or this may have been an even worse situation, Mangalorians like them hate Jedi with a passion, and it's a good thing I always have a broken blaster in 411 for any cases where I need to blend in with a crowd or pose as a normal civilian; although, the ability to become a civilian at any point is great, I've had little need to do so much. I'm quite popular with the people for being one who tries to connect with the population as a fellow citizen. So I rarely stay in the temple for too long. I love being with the people and learning skills without the force, like being a mechanic, electrician, public speaker, security guard, an all around great person to talk with about anything. I'm quite known on all levels of Coruscant for being one of the most friendly Jedi to be around. Right now though, I need to focus on not being caught, at least That's what my gut is telling me. After they searched my character for any weapons and found the broken blaster that 411 had put in my holster where my lightsaber usually is, they were satisfied and pushed us into one of their big Kom'rk Mark 1 class Mandalorian starfightetransport ship. 

(Look in comments for 6th)

I made a character and this sotry for star wars (i made this story for my English finals, i had a month to make it and got an A on it), the characters name is Saya Eban and is a character I have been thinking of for over a decade now (im not in my 2nd decade so since i was super young). Saya at this time is 13-14 years old and was given inspiration by almost all the other jedi and also star killer. He is human and with reliance on the force he can live up to 1000 years with hi peak being between 35, 40 ish to around 800 years of age. In terms of prime power level and potential, in my canon he is 3rd most powerful character just underneath luke and anikan Skywalkers, but could contend with them at some points. Little background: he was a prodigy in school before he became a padawan, he always had an intrest in a character named Ahsoka Tano but never became more than friends because of the Jedi teachings. He was a fast learning youngling and became a padawan earlier than most other younglings, becaming a padawan at the age of 11 - 12. He was in the first battle of Genesis but his troop transport ship was blasted out of the air, landing behind enemy lines leaving him the sole surviver, and scarring him, making him want to never see uneeded bloodshed ever again. He met Count Dooku before he had met Obi-Wan and Anikan on geonosis, he locked blades with him once... once, before he was thrown aside like a house fly, not worth his time, he was out until the retreat of the battle was initiated. This gave him night terrors and nightmares, after this day he could never sleep more than an hour, if that, before he woke up feeling the dark side creeping in. So he had learned to use sleep meditation. Sleep meditation allowed him to accelerate his trainings and connect greater to the force, he had unlocked 1/3 of his life now, the force helping his cells heal his body while he sat and meditated.
This story is of how he lived through one of the bloodiest battles and worst losses of the Republic, the battle of Sarrish, and of how he had obtained his later main star ship, a Kom'rk Mark 1 class star fightetransport, aka the Puro (i made this story before I have watched the 3rd season of the Mandalorian, as of right now i still haven't so Idk if thats in season 3 or not).
There is about 11,340 words in the story, and I don't 100% know of what I should make him look like so have your imaginations run wild.
Ok here we go:
Tales of Saya Eban's Puro
Chapter 1

 The battle of Sarrish was one of the worst battles of the Clone Wars, it was a great devastating loss to the Republic and the Jedi, and I was in the middle of it all. Before the battle I was doing some touch-ups on my A-wing Fighter. I had managed to get my hands on a hyperdrive that would fit in my small fighter, although being able to enter hyperspace without an external hyperdrive wing is very convenient, fast, and easy, it does slow my fighter and hinder some mobility, but not an uncontrollable amount of loss. Little did I know it'd save my life later that week. After I had finished my work, gotten it restocked for my next battle, I was called to the Jedi command center for a briefing by Master Yoda, saying it was an urgent mission and I was needed now, with his backwards way of speaking annoying me slightly. In a flash, I had gathered my battle ready loadout and headed off to the command center. When I entered the command center with the center planning table showing starships from both Confederate and Republic sides, One chasing another. I look and see Masters Yoda and Windu and a holoprojected Obi-Wan Kenobi surrounding the Table, with deeply serious thoughts in their eyes, fingers on their concentrating chins. When I swiftly strolled in, I was greeted with Master Windu's cheerful, but serious voice: "Ah, Padawan Eban, good you're here, come quick, we must act with persistence if we want to gain an upper hand in this war." "Master Windu, good to see you, you too Master Yoda, Master Kenobi, what's the situation?" Master Obi-Wan states, "We are currently chasing Separatist forces to the planet Sarrish and we will need some back up, could you bring your part of the 104th battalion right away, we have heavy casualties and they're going to have reinforcements when they reach the planet." "Is there not anyone closer than me, it may take a few days for me to get there, yall mabe finished by the time I get there!" I said with hope in my eyes. "I'm afraid that you're the only one that is available with the most minimal time of arrival, you'll have to be quick though, it will be anytime now they will reach the planet and have reinforcements. we need this win, it will be a great victory for the Republic if we are able to capture the planet." Stated Obi-Wan with certainty. "All other generals are on missions right as we speak, you are the only one that can provide back up at this current time." Master Windu added "Closer to Knight after this mission you will be, great padawan you are, your great swift improvements, Master Plo is pleased with, believe in you I do." Master Yoda said with a jolly old-man voice. "Now go, there's not much time to waste, gather your men and go help Obi-Wan!" Rushedly said by Master Windu. "With determination in my voice, I yell "Yes Masters, right away!" And like a flash, I was gone. As I'm running off, I catch a glimpse of a green swoosh and the sound of a bolt deflection. I stumble to a stop and put my legs in reverse to give curiosity the wheel. When I peer in, I see Master Skywalker and Ahsoka, along with roughly 8 clone troopers all in a circle around Ahsoka and her one blade ignited. Master Skywalker had her eyes welded to her as he walked around the trooper. I could see Captain Rex standing and watching as well, although he seems to be the only one who spotted me poking in my head. He motioned his finger to his lips as to tell me to shush and not interfere, so I watched with anticipation. And after a lifetime stillness ending in a second after Master Skywalker yelled "START!" And stun doughnuts fire from the blasters of the troopers, sending a volley of blue twords Ahsoka from all directions. With great flexibility I pair with, she jumps into the air, spinning like skates on a skate rink in mid air deflecting all incoming plasmic projectiles landing with swift grace ready for more, And more came, she stands in the center blade moving almost faster than what my eyes could keep up with, until that one bolt punches her right in the back, knocking her to the ground, diminishing the blade back into the hilt. I spring into the room, speaking with worry in my voice when I squeak out "Ahsoka! Master Skywalker, what was that!?" 

"She was just training deflecting blaster fire, she's going to be outmatched a lot in this war, and clones are better than droids to practice with." Anakin said with pride that she was able to last little over a minute, thats improvement.
"Well I guess you're not completely wrong, but your going to give her a brain injury at this rate! Could you not go a bit easier on her?"
"She'll never learn if I go easy on her." Master Skywalker said with little arrogance in his voice.
"W- well, here, l-let me wake her then." I stuttered as I walked up to Rex holding Ahsoka like he's a pillow.
"Rex, do you mind if I-"
"Not at all General, here." Rex said as I sat next to him holding Ahsoka's top half of her body.

 As he caringly sets Ahsoka's rhythmically beating top half in my lap, head facing the heavens, I softly lay my hand over her forehead, close my eyes, and concentrate. A few suspenseful seconds later, I take my hand off and observe Ahsoka's hand softly glide to her now curling forehead, eyes fluttering open. 

With a smile I voiced"Wakey Wakey warrior princess, have a good nap?" Smirking the whole time.
"Well aren't you a sight for sore eyes Nicksters." She groaned with fading pain.
"What are you doing here?" She leisurely grumbled as she started to lie propped up by her desirable, fluorescent orange arms made of flexible muscle.
"I was walking by, and saw a 'damsel in distress', I HAD to come and 'save the day'." I joked, smirking the whole time, annoying her little bit more.
"You know I have been dying to use my force heal on you since I had learned it. I bet you don't even feel bad at all right now hm?" I said leaning in
Ahsoka starts to stand as to get a feel for her own body.
"You're right, I feel better than I did before, not bad for someone named Nicks." Ahsoka said smirking right back at me.
"Oh come on, that was one time, that was even before we became patiwans!" I said with little dramatics in my vocal verberations.
"Ok Master, I'm ready to try again." Ahsoka said to Master Skywalker
"Not now Ahsoka, we have a mission from the Jedi council we have to attend to while Obi-Wan is on his own mission." Anikan said to Ahsoka, elongating his 'not' like he usually does
"I'm actually about to go give help to Obi-Wan right now… WHICH I NEED TO GET PREPARED FOR NOW!! Karabast, got to go! See yah Ahsoka, Master, Rex." And like a ship entering hyperspace, I was gone.
Chapter 2

 After 2 boring days traveling in hyperspace, me and my 5 Veneter class Cruisers are nearing our destination, this would make 12 Cruisers for the Republic side. A new commander CT'-4112 or Zerek, debriefs on the battle situation. As I had sensed, Obi-Wan was outmatched seeing as backup was on planet Sarrish for the fleeing Separatist ships, now it's 11 Munificent class Cruisers and 2 command stations blockading the planet. Kenobi was starting to be pushed back, relying on our Cruisers longer ranged cannons to hope the Sepies didn't get too close. Our Cruisers have longer ranged main canons and toms of fighter room, while the Sepies Cruisers have more fire power at closer ranges with more fighters than our Vendor class Cruisers, at closer ranges, the Sepies would completely destroy a Venetor class Cruiser, but we have strategies and will power. 

"Glad to see a friendly face Saya." Kenobi said exhaustingly.
"Well, it looked like you needed help. You know I need to be the one to save everyone. I'll move into position to fortify our defenses to push the Sepies back and for us to make a plan. What is your fleet's condition?"
"We have 2 Venetors heavily damaged and the rest either have mild to no damage. And we have lost half our fighters as of now." Urgently said by Kenobi.
"Ok, I'm sending men and supplies to you right now, let me take the front so I can take the damage if they send another attack." I calmly said to Kenobi.
"Men battle positions and set all power to front cannons and shields. Venators get into pincer position and get ready for an attack. Fighters get ready to launch." I commanded to all my Cruisers
"Master, if you could, could you add in your undamaged Venetors? " I wandered and directed with much mastery, I even made Obi-Wan himself visually impressed considering my inexperienced mind in life, and especially war. I even managed to make him smile.
"Getting in position now." Obi-Wan stated, still smiling.
"Understood, While you get everything fixed, I'll see if I can weaken their defenses, it seems as if they're in attack positions so we gotta be ready for anything." I said in deep thought.
"Ok, 10 to 13, I like those odds, makes it even, more so for the Sepies." I grinned.
"Now Saya, remember this is still a battle, don't be too cocky, you're starting to remind me of Anakin." Obi-Wan said with conviction.
"Yes Master, sorry about that." I answered to Obi-Wan, pulling back a little.

 Just then, many starfighters come from the enemy Cruisers, hundreds of them lightning fast, closing distance fast. 

"All right men, time for some fun. Obi-Wan, if you want to take command of my control center, I'll lead this fight." I said before Obi-Wan could respond.
"Ok- but Saya! Blast, maybe he's too much like Anikan." Obi-Wan said defeatedly.
As I get into the hangar I yell "Alright Wolfpack, let's get goin!" Then I hop into my modified Jedi A-wing.
We rush out from the center roof door along the Cruiser with my squadron aka The Wolfpack, with me leading my 23 fighters into battle and many more friendly's following from the hangars.
"Ok Wolfpack, let's make a break for them Cruisers, get as many of them gone as possible. 411 you ready?" I asked R2-411. R2-411 bleeps with readiness.
"Ok, time to blow them out of the sky, remember, stay in formation" I commanded.
"Yes sir!" The Clones bellowed.

 Then we hit the swarm with a mighty thundering sound of lasers flying through the emptiness of space seeing one after one of enemy fighter droids dropping all over the place. Me and my Wolfpack fly through all the 2 winged Vulture droids that look like each wing was sideways and has 2 prongs each side for wings. They were way more quick and maneuverable than us, but we had a duty to win, and we won't lose today. It's like a firework show, but you're dodging all the fireworks, and they're aiming right at you. While we are defending the Venator Cruisers, they're mostly firing at the Sepies Cruisers, slowly dwindling their energy shields down. 

"Boys, I have a plan, but I'll need yall to get back to the Cruisers." I urged
"Obi-Wan, how's the 2 heavily damaged Cruisers? We've been out for a long while. They should be good by now right?" I questioned Master Kenobi.
"They're about to come back into the fight, but one of our Cruisers is at a quarter shield, few good hits or bombing runs and it's gone, what's your plan Saya?" Obi-Wan said, perplexed.
"Just give me an opening to the left Separatist control center, that's all I need to get on that ship." I stated with confidence.
"I'll try my best, but don't be stupid Saya, we can't afford to lose you."
"Yeah yeah I know, just get me an opening please Master!" I begged.

 After the words fleeted from my mouth, all the Cruisers fired a hole through the droid fleet with friendly fighters also making way for me to get through. I blast the afterburners straight through the enemy swarm that's been lesson by the commotion, just barely being hidden by smoke from a just destroyed fighter straight into the leftmost control ship hanger landing with an explosive entry. And immediately I jump out, igniting both, my straight emerald green saber in my left, and my yellow saber with a curved hilt similar to the Count's hilt himself in my right. I'll face him again one day, it's inevitable, like me. I land and immediately cut a group of B1 battle droids heads off with my yellow saber facing out, giving me more reach, but as I start to take fire from the army that quickly form from my landing, I swiftly doge left to right almost able to doge the sight of a human eye. Left, pop goes the heads of 3, right, pop goes 5, jump through the air on an almost straight path through the thick of the army, spinning with a light show if one were to be an onlooker at this chaotic organization of flying red plasmic bolts going to a mix of yellow and green, then proceeding to fly straight back at the shooter with twice the velocity. I land on my feet with a thunderous "BOOM" with what seems like an explosion that incinerates half of the whole hanger with an electric yellow glow seeming like yellow lighting exploded from the epicenter of the explosion. When the smoke cleared, it seemed that everything within a 5 meter radius was completely incinerated, and everything within 40 meter radius was heavily damaged, and any technology within eye shot was either scrape or short-circuiting, but all B1 battle droids and super battle droids were out. 

I sighed with relief with little heavy breathing when I looked around me, but with no time to rest, 6 Vulture droid fighters came through the hanger's magnetic shield door, transforming to walk on its pronged wings like they were legs. They scanned me and started raining a flurry of red down onto me, but with my lightning fast reflexes, I raised my sabers to block the incoming hellfire from all six fighter's. Then came the flurry being deflected in any direction possible, and I could just barely see the 6 droids started to surround me by going behind my back, but I ain't done yet. As I'm blocking, jumping, spinning, twisting on a micrometer, I stomp with a mighty force, launching through the air, slowly spinning straight for a Vulture that has became the prey. Bolts whizzing by me, inches, centimeters near my skin, singeing my arm hairs to their roots. I land on top of the droid with a thunderous boom crunching where my foot had landed, driving my sabers straight through the brain of the story high droid, with a counterclockwise rotation around my back, dragging my sabers across the metal of the droid, I leap off the droid landing with the feathers and fly forward with a flashing dash slicing through 2 other droids legs, leaving gravity do its magical job. 3 down, 3 to go, but with little time left. I launch forward running on hairs dipping and dodging blots, I leap up slicing through one leg of a droid and pushing off of its gravity taken hull, coming down on another droid's leg, cutting with ease. I land like a leaf in the autumn skies, and launch with a swift leap, flying my yellow saber straight down the middle of the 6th and final droid with no time to spare.

 I land with caution, ready to fend off another foe, but none came at that second, so I took the opportunity and ran with it straight to where the main reactors should lie. I swiftly sprint with force leaps through the air to get to the reactor, the ship is 270th of a circle with a ball where the command center is, the middle is the only connected between the back of the ball and the inner back of the circle, that's where the reactor is, im at the left most side, may take me a minute to reach it, but I can get there without being seen. My plan was to quickly fix and rewrite a Vulture droid's code to go with my command, not going to be the best work but it will work, hopefully. I had to act fast because I knew there were going to be hundreds more droids to come to see the commotion, I'd say within the minute. The codes used on the droids are not the best, because of mass production, so It was an easy fix, I just needed it to fly a small bit. It comes back to life with a putt to its movement, I directed it to start flying while I'm on its back, putting the whole time with smoke, just what I needed. I start to move forward as fast as possible. As we get around the hundreds of battle droids below, I'm starting to speed up, and as I see the reactor room, I could hear B1's yell " HEY! STOP! YOUR GOING TO FAST" in their robotic voice. Before I hit the Shield covering the reactor room, I jump off to the left where the blast door is for the room. With the distraction of the droid smashing into the shield, I use this time to slowly cut through the blast doors with both sabers starting at the bottom of the door, going up and around to form a circle I can fit through. I was through within a Minute, unnoticed, or so I was led to believe. When I get into the reactor room, I throw explosives all over the reactors, with a detonation in T minus 1 minute. I fly out of the room, calling for 411 to bring my ship as fast as possible, 55. Running across the hanger, I'm spotted by the hundreds of battle droids, which immediately start firing right as they see me 50. The explosion of the fighter droid caused a chain to nearby explosive barrels, exploding more Vulture droids causing tons of smoke and fires to spread around the hangar area, 45. As I'm running, my yellow saber is blocking multiple bolts flying at me while I'm jumping, spinning, performing acrobatic movements while being shot by hundreds of droids, from B1's, to super's, to droideka's, all firing at me, adding to the smoke, 35. Running with young blood in my veins, I perform 1, 2, 3 long jumps and leap onto the side of a slanted destroyed Vulture droid, 30. I jump up, reaching for the cloudy sky just as 411 swoops in predictively shoving my hand into the side of the sharp A-wing hull, 25. I grab the side of the hull and pull myself up into the cockpit, grabbing the controls, 20. I spin to the exit with roughly 67° of the hanger I need to shoot out of, I fire the afterburners using the circumference of the circle and my fighters movment to my advantage, 15. Pushing forward, I am drifting an A-wing around the hangar of a Separatist capital ship skimming the walls centimeters away from an explosive fiery death, 10. I barely screamed out of the hanger, to be able to see a view of the capital ship flying stright for the other Sepie capital ship, 5. Im still firing the afterburners to try and attempt to get a safe distance away from the soon to be collision sight, 4. I let 411 take the control's, 3. I turn my head to look back, 2. I see the collision of the 2 270° hangers, 1. I watch as i get the view of a star being formed right infront of my eyes, and seeing many Sepie Cruisers being absolutely engulfed by the flames, and a blast wave decimating the Vulture droids… blast wave…. BLAST WAVE! Just then I'm thrown far, along with the debri. I manged to gain control of the craft and start performing advanced monuvers to avoid being hit by debrie that will demolishe me and my tiny fighter. 

"Saya, can you hear me? Saya?" Master Obi-Wan Kenobi pleaded.
"Yeah, yeah master, I'm good, I'm fine. Woo…!" I said with a sigh of relief.
Chapter 3

 The explosion had decimated the Separatist forces leaving 4 Cruisers sustaining heavy or mild damages, but with an opening, Obi-Wan and I travel to the ground along with Captain Cody to go for a large ground assault. Master Obi-Wan's plan was to drop in and gather our troops and split them between Obi-Wan and commander Cody. We were west, they were east. The Separatists had the high ground seeing as they had a cliff to their advantage. Flying in on gunships, we were taking heavy fire from their anti aircraft cannons. Commander Cody and I are debriefing the squad on the way to the rally point, seeing gunships after gunship falling to the rocky ground in a fiery explosive ball of red hot metal, and screams, with no plants in sight, just rocks, gunships, and red streaks flying by. Explosions booming right next to us with our doors right open. We have been ordered and ordering troops to stay far away from the mountain top gun fortifying the mountain top of the cliff, leaving that gun for the gunships and the best of the clone troopers, or ARC (Advanced Recon Commandos) troopers to deal with that later, seeing as a ground assault is too dangerous for us. As some of the clones have said, it's not an easy mission, but hops are high. 

"30 seconds until landing." A clone trooper yelled to me and Cody.
Cody starts with "All right, listen up! Maintain squad formations, 'A' squad, You're on me-" ZZZZZEEEROW- BOOOM!
"Where hit!" I yell "Everyone! Hold on!"
Before we hit the ground I leap out of the gunship with a backwards somersault, force pulling all the troops out of the burning fireball heading for the ground, grabbing all of the men, including the 2 pilots at the front, breaking through the windows. I land like rain from the sky, catching the troops I just pulled out with my powers and have them roughly land on the fluffy rocks next to our now downed gunship, no casualties yet. I rush over to take cover under our gunship on its left side behind enemy lines. I sit and meditate as they come up with a plan.
"What's the status lieutenant?" Cody asked
"5 injured thanks to General Saya, but that's not that bad news… Does that Rock look familiar?" The lieutenant asked.
"Yea, the mountain, right where we're not supposed to be." Said Cody
"General Kenobi ordered us not to try taking this section from the ground." The lieutenant regenerated back again with what was already established.
"That's what he said…but what would the general do if he were here?" Cody rhetorically asked.
"Saya sir, what do you think?" A trooper asked me somewhat desperately.
"I think Cody should take this one, I've got your back Cody." I answered with my legs crossed, eyes closed, slightly levitating over the rocks.
"Eight-Eight-Six-Seven through Eight-Eight-Six-Nine and Saya, fix your grapples and come with me. Everybody, prepare for covering fire." Cody ordered.
I get up, eyes still shut, ready to block anything coming our way.
"NOW!" Cody yells, sprinting across what is our no-man's-land
I open my eyes, ignite my Sabers, Green in left, yellow in right, and dash towards the now incoming blaster fire. I sense it, left side, block, right side, deflect, one for Cody, deflected. We get to some stalagmites at the bottom of the mountain, sustaining heavy fire, I pose as a distraction for all the fire, deflecting as many blots as I can back at the metal men. One troop trips and falls, pow, bolt straight through the head. Cody and the men shoot the grappling hooks up towards the top of the mountain and start climbing. I jump from my spot reigniting my sabers, driving them through the mountain side, helping me grab hold with my feet. And when I look up, I see a grapple fall behind me. I tried to grab the rope but I was too late. When I managed to obtain it, he had already hit the ground. Another tragedy, one that never had to happen, life being wasted away. I look up, a droid stairs emotionlessly down into my emotion filled eyes. A blue bolt shoots past me, impacting the droid's head, sending the body backwards.
Cody and the other clone rises from the cliff side as I leap up from the side, landing in front of the clones and immediately start deflecting with my 2 sabers having nothing pass. Cody takes this opportunity to run around my defense and attacks the droids head on, bashing one droid with the butt of his rifle and swinging his rifle at another, destroying both of them. The droid manning the anti aircraft gun turns and aims at Cody. Instinctively I jump in front of the cannon as it fires, I deflect the large bolt away with my right yellow saber, knocking my body to the right, making me stumble. But with the motion throwing me to the right, I use the momentum to throw my green saber with my left hand, impaling the droid in the metal chest. Cody then hops onto the turret, points the gun at the droids firing at our men, and lets loose, destroying all in its reticle.
"Thanks General, I owe you one, ill getcha next time." Cody said slowly getting off the turret.
"You're alright my friend, just pay it forward, let's go see how Obi-Wan did." I slightly worried, staring off to the north.

 We group up at the randevu, where we have set base camp on the planet in a small raven a bit away from where we captured the cliff with some makeshift scouting towers dotted around our position. Obi-Wan had more resistance than what he had anticipated, he was a little banged up, but he was fine in the end. This was a huge victory seeing as we have been able to set base on a planet that allows us to get resources through this hyperspace route and onto parts of the army past this point. Before, General Grievous snipped our route to where we couldn't get resources to our army on the other side from Coruscant. 

Chapter 4

 12 hours later, we have rested and have managed to build up a good base incase of a surprise attack. We are still fighting a few fronts of Separatist holdouts with a fortress a few klicks west, or about 4 miles west. 

I sit in my tent meditating, reflecting back on the weeks events, and what Ahsoka was doing back at the temple, training hard. I recite what I did with an almost overwhelming amount of blaster fire attempting to fly into me, how I was just mostly averting the blots away from me and not in a direction that would benefit me most.
'RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE'

 The ground started to shake out of nowhere, breaking my peace. I rush out of my tent, only to be met with a face full of B2 battle droid. I jump back over my tent flipping onto my feet as I see my tent being lit into flames from heavy bolt fire flying at me. Igniting both my sabers, I deflect the incoming fire away from me up into the sky as much as I physically could. I took a glance around, it was becoming more sunlit as we fought. It was a slaughter, clones dying left and right, Kenobi was on the Command ship getting patched, so it was just me, and the clones down here, being manicured. With a swift right step, I change lightsaber form, combining my form 3, (defensive form blocking anything coming way, and either making, or waiting for an opening to strike) with a combination of form 2 (saber to saber form, putting least amount or saber movement and preferring precise efficient movements) and form 4 (saber from using the force to enhance physical abilities, and heavily utilizing fast acrobatic movements to move around and disorient the opponents, using wide sweeping saber movements to block and hit targets) I use the power if the many bolts to propel my body onto my right leg, crouching down and taking a huge lead in to the air. Looking around like it is moving in stop motion, I see thousands of droids around, completely outnumbering my men. Glancing down where I had jumped from, there seems to be a super battle droid rising from the ground, looking as if it has been there for at least a few days. Time seems to start like normal again, immediately I have to block bolts coming for my body, twisting, turning, deflecting every. single. bolt. right to another droid. I can't have any more unneeded deaths in my hands. I land with an impactful explosion of yellow lighting, rendering half of the electronics on the field obsolete. Shots fire over the wall, exploding near me. 

"Everyone, Retreat!" I yelled into the comms.
I ran towards the lieutenant that I had survived the crash with, he was running for a troop transport.
"Get to the ships, return to the Venators! Get Kenobi and relay what has happened!" Urgency blowing through my voice.

 I push him into the ship as it takes off. As it's doing so, I force push it away from the field as to be in less danger of being shot down. But rockets fly through the air, I reach through the force and grab onto the hurdling death traps, I grab 1, 2, crash them into one another, 3, grab, 4, grab, 5, miss. ERRROW… BOOOM! With a hopeless explosion, the ship bursts into an explosive ball of fire, right in front of my eyes, out of my grasp. Shots fly past my head from behind me, I ignite my sunlit yellow saber to block incoming bolts. No men, only metal remains, and it wants me dead. I dash for my ship on the other side of the airstrip, luckily barely touched from this horrible surprise party that invited everyone I very much dislike. Hopping into my A-wing, I lift-off dogging left, right, up, down, roll left, roll right, barely being passed by on all sides by cannon fire. When I reach the point past the clouds, there's a whole war above. Separatist forces have surprised Kenobi with an overwhelming number of ships, putting our war torn 12 Venators against 16 Munificent class Cruisers. We were greatly out matched. But the time I was in space we had lost 3 Vectors compared to there 1 lost. Droids noticed me coming from the planet and started to verge onto my position. 

"Obi-Wan! You there? Can you hear me?" I yelled, pulling evasive maneuvers.
"Saya, is that you?" Kenobi asked.
"Yes, we got surprised on the ground, seems the same happened here." I rushingly said.
"Yes, they came out of nowh-" Kenobi is cut off by a blaring siren from my cockpit.
"Wait, my ship is damaged, it's starting up my hyperdrive, 411 can you fix it?" I said dipping left and right while trying to stop the hyperdrive activation.
With a few bleeps of fear, I understand what's happening.
"When I was thrown from the capital ship explosive wave, I must have been hit near the hyperdrive, and explosions from my escape, along with the maneuvers I have been pulling, it may have caused damage that is registering a hyperdrive activation. Master Obi-Wan, I don't know, I-I don't know what to do!" I claimed with fear in my eyes.
"Can you deactivate the hyperdrive at all 411?" Kenobi asked
411 bleeps with a sad toon.
"Blast, Saya, does it say where you're going?"
"N- No, my council just says ERROR." I stated, now with much fear in my voice.

 I managed to steer my craft into the position of the hyperspace lane. 

"Tell Ahsoka good bye if I don't-" I get cut off when the the hyperdrive powered up woth a vvvvvvvvvvvVVVVERRRRRRR PEEOW, and just like that, me, my A-wing, and R2-411, are gone.
Chapter 5

 It's been days since the battle, mabe 2 or 3 days. Luckily I always keep many ration bars in my fighter to last me a good few days, along with my extra water and my ability to go into a deep meditative state, conserving food and water. Keeping me company is my meditation and 411. We have almost hit some unknown objects, could have been planets, asteroids, other ships, but we seem to be staying in hyperspace lanes luckily, or I would have been dead a long time ago. My class 2 hyperdrive could have taken me all over the galaxy by now, I could be heading towards Coruscant right now for all I know. 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
My hyperdrive warning kicked on, showing that there is a massive gravity force in my path. The console flashed with big red dangerous letters "Exiting Hyperdrive" on the screen.
"YES! FINALLY!" I yelled with excitement.

 I watch through the glass to see a barren looking planet, and a similar looking moon, a moon I was heading to. I was moving fast, as I entered the moon's atmosphere, Im grabbing the controls, barely anything. My craft is red hot from the rate at which I'm coming in on. I'm grabbing the stick, pulling back as much as I can, as to try and save myself and 411 from a fiery death. I scraped by a big rocky mountain dealing more damage to my A-wing. 

"HOLD ON 411!"
"Come ooooon. Pull pull pullllll…. Ahhhhhhhhh!!!-" VERRROW BOOOOSH!!! The crash landing sounded like a bomb flying through the air, then landing on its target. I try to get from my seat just to find my strap and window will not open. Using my saber I cut off my seat strap and broke the window from the hinges and leaped out, taking 411 from the craft, swiftly landing on a tall mountainous rock. The craft seemed to have pushed through the land 50 meters from the initial impact spot. The area I was in seemed to be very rocky terrain with many rocky canyons and huge rocks that are almost mountainous. The sun was close to setting down for the night but was still a good hour away from sleeping.

 With the force by my side, I felt a very uneasy sensation telling me to stay out of sight. I duck down on the tall skinny rock taking 411 down with me. 411 confusingly bleeps when I do so. "Hey, I have a feeling right now, just keep quiet real quick, there's somebody coming. Trust me." Me and 411 peer over the edge looming over my crashed ship just as a group of 6 men in full armor covering their whole body fly in with jetpacks strapped to their backs, blasters in hand. As they land, they search around my wreckage, presumably looking for survivors. One seems to be ordering the others around, pointing at one to look in one direction, another a different direction, and scanning around for the unexpected visitor. I look down at my Wrist link, my distress signal wasn't sent, I guess that was damaged from entering the planet at such high speed with no deflector shields surrounding the ship like a protective blanket. 

"Blast, 411, what's your S.O.S signal situation, did it go through?" 411 beeps with a little drama like I should know it didn't go through.
"Well sorry for busting your rusty bolts you rowdy rancor, better to try than to just give up mister sassy pants. Maybe I should wipe your memory for a change, see how you like it."
"Now shush, don't want them to find us spying on them, won't look too good." I demand. "Now here, in case we get caught, I don't want them to know I'm a Jedi, so here, take my sabers, I'm not gonna need them anyways." I said shoving my lightsabers into 411's storage compartment and looking towards the crash again.

 Just then the suit of armor that had been commanding his squad bursts up into my view right on my face out of hyperspace blue. 

"Ah, found ya trespassers, you 2 are coming with me." Demanded the Mandalorian with a snickering sound in his voice as the others rise from the portal of the abyss from down below.

 It was a good thing my ropes where in the tent back on Sarrish, or this may have been an even worse situation, Mangalorians like them hate Jedi with a passion, and it's a good thing I always have a broken blaster in 411 for any cases where I need to blend in with a crowd or pose as a normal civilian; although, the ability to become a civilian at any point is great, I've had little need to do so much. I'm quite popular with the people for being one who tries to connect with the population as a fellow citizen. So I rarely stay in the temple for too long. I love being with the people and learning skills without the force, like being a mechanic, electrician, public speaker, security guard, an all around great person to talk with about anything. I'm quite known on all levels of Coruscant for being one of the most friendly Jedi to be around. Right now though, I need to focus on not being caught, at least That's what my gut is telling me. After they searched my character for any weapons and found the broken blaster that 411 had put in my holster where my lightsaber usually is, they were satisfied and pushed us into one of their big Kom'rk Mark 1 class Mandalorian starfightetransport ship. 

(Look in comments for 6th paragraph)

Finished writing my personal statement, and wanted some feedback before I try to submit my MD only app this month.
Profile:
cGPA: 3.81 (upward trend)
sGPA: 3.95
MCAT: 518
State of Residence: NY
ORM, white male
T100 state school, Biochemistry major, anthropology minor
Taking CASPER early June, no PREview.
ECs:
50 hrs Research Award-winning poster
Acknowledgment in publication, no author credits
170 hrs Shadowing immunology/dermatology
200 hrs hospital transport/emergency department volunteering (not sure if I should count this but I started working at the same hospital I did in high school after hiatus due to COVID. Should I carry high school hours over?)
40 hrs non-clinical volunteering (H4H, school club affiliated)
500 hrs Lead school-affiliated tutor
225 hrs Intro bio TA
400 hrs camp counselor Treasurer for medical and chemistry clubs
LORs: 1 from science professor I TA'd for 1 from major dept prof 1 from minor dept prof 3 from doctors I shadowed/did research with
School List:
Reach
Boston University
Brown Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
NYU Grossman
University of Pittsburgh
Yale
Target
Albert Einstein
Hofstra
Mount Sinai
NYMC
Stony Brook
Thomas Jefferson University
University of Miami
University of Rochester
Tufts
"Safer"
Albany Medical College
Buffalo
Cooper Medical School of Rowan University
Drexel
Eastern Virginia Medical School
FAU
Geisinger
George Washington
Georgetown
Hackensack Meridian
Quinnipiac
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Penn State
SUNY Downstate
SUNY Upstate
Temple
UConn
University of Vermont
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Tech

Some days ago (like two weeks) I posted I would use here as accountability and just sort of forgot abt it lol. But here I am with great news: I kept the streak. It's been actually tiring not because of all the temptations but because I just feel exhausted all the time. But giving away sinful and bad habits is definitely worth it. I thought it would be nice to share something that has worked for me so far too.
Praying that God delivers from this sin a lot everyday has been extremely important to me, besides the "normal prayers". I pray when I wake up, in the afternoon and before sleeping and in two of this prayer times I specifically pray about winning the battle against temptation. Of course, u should pray when temptation arrives, but I found it difficult to do in the heat of the moment, so doing it continually throughout the day has had great impact. Of course, if as Christians we should do that already, but reading Scripture, praying and confessing to God my ungodly desires has been so good, almost as if someone took a weight off my shoulders and told me I shouldn't be ashamed to come to God if I disappoint Him. I'd like to point out that throughout this days I have had a day or two that maybe should have counted as a relapse, but I didn't restart the counter because, remember, it's not about the number, but maintaining healthy habits (physically and spiritually) in the long term.
Thank you all for the prayers and I'm praying for u guys too.

Hey guys, a friend of mine bought this awesome game, and we now played it 4 times in a group of 4-6 people (depending on how many people have time), so I collected already close to 40 game hours (planning on increasing this number by a lot)
​
First of all, we only have the "vanilla game". No add ons.
And to us, Agendas feel super useless. Are we playing / using them completely wrong?
This is how we play them. After the first round, in which someone hits 5 game winning points, and after each following "big round" one agenda card is revealed. Then, depending on how much influence on does still have (so only from the unused planets) one can vote on this agenda. However, this agendas feel so useless, that nobody tries to save some influence. Why would you not use every influence (for example for the secondary of leadership) instead of voting on something way more useless like "this planet has +2 influence from now on)

The Quell
On all quells, tributes from the same District were tied together, and only a District pair could win.
President Zenia Heavensbee stood on the stage with the quell envelope in her hand. She used a small knife to slit the sealing on the envelope, taking out a pink slip of paper, as pink was the Capitol’s color.
She read aloud the quell “in order to show that the smartest minds helped build a rebellion and must be punished, this quell will contain the smartest youths with the best IQ ages 12 to 18.”
Many in the Capitol were excited for this quell, and prepared for it happily.
District 7
Terra Pruitt (victor of the 4th Hunger Games) was given a tour of the lumber mills and a bit of the forest. She was then taken to the reaping square, where the ten best IQ youths of each age from 12 to 18 was lined up, five males and five females.
Terra took a deep breath, before reaching into the female bowl. She removed the name of seventeen year old Cedaria Smithins. A scream of horror was heard as a girl with ginger hair and brown eyes walked to the stage, tears streaming down her face. Cedaria turned and shook Terra’s hand. Cedaria attended a collegiate level of school in District 7 only available for the most intelligent and most skilled. Each District had a college like this.
Terra then reached into the male bowl, and picked a slip of paper from the very bottom. She read aloud the name of eighteen year old Javor Kucera. Javor formerly lived in Slovakia, but his family had been forced to move to District 7. Javor had curly brown hair, and brown eyes.
Cedaria was visited by her mother and two older brothers, Piney and Oaken. She cried in their arms as they held her.
Javor visited with his older brother Havel, and younger sister Jarka, and promised to try and return.
Upon entering the train, the two tributes met their mentor, a 38 year old young man named Mahogany Weaver. He taught both tributes how to throw axes, and took his time giving them both tips.
Upon arrival at the apartment, Cedaria and Javor had their belts put on them. There would be no parade quell years, so they went to bed early, sharing a large bed. Several tribute relationships started from sharing a bed, and from the 10th Games forward, belts would be taken off at night in the apartments.
The next day, Mahogany showed the reaping for District 3, claiming that these tributes would be the smartest.
District 3
Terra now was in District 3, and seemed rather tired. She seemed to dread the next three reapings, including the final reaping in her home District of 11.
She reached into the female bowl, and removed the name of eighteen year old Minerva Sharpe. A pretty girl with long dirty blonde hair and blue eyes covered by glasses walked to the stage, and removed her glasses as she walked. Minerva worked as a school teacher, while still attending District 3’s college. Minerva was a married mother of two.
Terra then reached into the male bowl, selecting the name of seventeen year old Sparky Danger. A boy with light ebony skin, hazel eyes, and freckles walked to the stage, and shook Terra’s hand. Sparky was also in college, and was pursuing a career in coding.
In the town hall, Minerva visited with her husband and two year old daughter, Melinda, she also kissed her six month old son, Bartholomew, before being taken to the train.
Sparky was visited by his girlfriend, Melody, and his younger brother, Zach. He told them that he would try to return, before being taken to the train.
Once on the train, Minerva and Sparky met their mentor, former peacekeeper from District 3, 33 year old Olympus Packard. Olympus seemed happy with his tributes, quickly teaching them how to use tasers.
Their stylist, Mariah Copernicus, chose to dress them in black outfits covered in the numbers zero and three together in yellow.
Olympus then turned on the television to show District 2’s reaping, claiming that this District contained the biggest physical threats.
District 2
Terra stood in District 2’s reaping square, with a group of non muscular youths standing before her. She reached into the female bowl, and removed the name of seventeen year old Emiliana Lombard. A girl with curly blonde hair and blue eyes walked to the stage, seeming shocked by her reaping. Emiliana was taking college classes, and was often ridiculed and bullied by other youths her age.
Terra then selected the name of seventeen year old Derrick Barton. A young man with ebony skin, a dark afro of hair, and brown eyes walked to the stage. Derrick shook Terra’s hand, and also removed his glasses. Derrick was also often bullied.
Emiliana was visited by her mother and twin brother Emiliano. She embraced both of them, and promised to return and prove her bullies wrong.
Derrick was visited by his two older brothers, DeWayne and Desmond. Derrick promised to try and return, and told his brothers to care for their children.
On the train, Emiliana and Derrick met their mentor, Horus Greenstaff (Game 1). Horus discussed with the two about their past of being bullied, and then taught both of them how to throw knives.
At the apartment, Emiliana and Derrick met their stylist, Panorama Vickers. She chose to dress them in gold outfits with long gold wings at their backs.

who's ready for year 6
 
First, the reveal of our next ranking event!

• The next event will be a Platinum Star Tour Bingo! It will feature Hibiki, Nao, Umi, Mizuki and Miya!
• The event song is titled Yumemigachi Bride (夢みがちBride)! Watch the PV here! This will be the 4th song of the NEW SONGS campaign.
• Hibiki is rank and Nao is points.
• Here is the full event artwork!
• As a reminder to how Tour Bingo works, you will be given a set of bingo cards, for which you can collect numbers for from either Lives or Work. You'll get rewards for get bingos on the various cards.

 
Second, news on the next gacha, SONG FOR YOU! Gacha Vol. 41!

• While we have no confirmation on what the next Commu will be yet, the following unawakened SSRs were previewed:
  • Tamaki Ogami
  • Iku Nakatani

 
Third, news on the 6th Anniversary event!

• First, we have the reveal of the outfit name: it will be called Future Signature (フューチャー・シグネチャー)!
• We also have the reveal of the Anniversary song: it is titled Good Sign (グッドサイン)! Watch the PV here!
• Just like last year, there will be a 6th Anniversary Event Eve Campaign held on the Anniversary day itself, 29th June! The actual event will start on 30th June, and will last until 12th July.
• There will also be a number of unique features for this iteration of the Anniversary event:
  • By completing the special Event Missions, you will be able to earn special Acrylic Stands for each idol! These Stands can change to Gold, then Rainbow-colored depending on your Idol Ranking with that idol, with the top 10 getting their rank number on the Stands!
  • These Acrylic Stands can be found here, on the Event page. By tapping on each stand, you will also get a special Comment from that idol!
  • There is one last thing you can do with these stands: you can put them on Display! You can adjust the number and position of the Stands, and use the Share (シェア) function to showcase your unique Displays!
• Also, this iteration of the event will introduce a Checklist! You can use the Checklist to keep track of all the tasks that need to be performed on any given day!
• Lastly, to commemorate the 6th Anniversary, we have special message from [Art Director Kiyotaka Tamiya])(https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/611101345797373953/1113827429086154752/image.png?width=1000&height=562) and Sound Director Takafumi Sato!

 
Fourth, there will be a special 6th Anniversary Livestream on 28th June, 1800 JST! The guest list will be as follows:

• Nao Tamura (Hinata)
• Shiina Natsukawa (Anna)
• Kanako Nomura (Chizuru)
• Emi Hirayama (Reika)
• Rikako Yamaguchi (Rio Momose)
• WakachikoP (Herself)

Here are the links to the livestream:

• NND
• YouTube

 
Fifth, news regarding the annual Akihabara collab!

• Here is the Key Visual for the collab! More information regarding the collaboration with the Summer Akihabara Electric Town Festival will come soon when their webpage goes up, so stay tuned!
• Million Live! will be collaborating with 6 different locations in Akihabara! You can refer to this image for the list of locations covered.
• There will also be various types of goods sold during the collab! More infomation can be found here.
• To cover some of the collaborations in more detail:
  • Starting on 27th June, Million Live will be collaborating with atre Akihabara! For every 500 yen spent, you can get special gifts, and special original food items will also be sold!
  • Starting on 20th June, Million Live will be collaborating with STELLAMAP Cafe, located on the 7th floor of Sofmap Akihabara! The collab theme will be "American Diner", featuring new artwork for Tsubasa, Subaru, Momoko and Julia!
  • Starting on 27th June, Million Live will be collaborating with Karaoke no Tetsujin! During the collaboration, special goods featuring chibi versions of the idols in their MILLION LIVE CONFERENCE! Pajama outfits will be made available!

 
Sixth, news about Act-2 of 10th Live Tour, "5 TO [email protected]!!

• WEB2 lottery for the Live will begin tommorow at 1200 JST, 2nd June!
• Also, Yuu Kahara (Emily) will be added as an additional performer on Day 2!

 
Seventh, some anime news!

• A new PV has been released! This PV features the opening theme for the anime, titled Rat A Tat!!! The song is composed by Takafumi Sato, arranged by Tsubasa Handa and lyrics written by Eiji Momoki.
• The movie tickets for the early screenings are still on sale, for those who want to go watch the anime early!
• There will also be a special movie ticket set sold at Act-2 of 10th Live Tour, which will come with a special bromide and album set!
• To celebrate the advance movie screenings, Million Live! will be collaborating with [email protected]! They will be selling special movie ticket sets with either an acrylic smartphone stand of calendar set! Orders begin on 24th June.

 
Eighth, Million Live! will be collaborating with Itotsune! They will be selling special collab fan designs based on Hanasakuya! For more info, you can refer to their Twitter account.
 
Ninth, Million Live! will be collaborating with COTORIDO a crepe brand! During the collaboration period, special crepes with the featured 6 idols' designs will be sold, along with special novelty goods! For more info, you can refer to their Twitter and Instagram.
 
Tenth, as announced earlier, Million Live! will be collaborating with the Rakuten Eagles! Subaru, Julia and Megumi will be the featured idols for this collab, where they will appear in a baseball game against the Seibu Lions on August 30th! More news, including the key visual, to come soon.
 
Eleventh, Round 3 of the dinos collaboration is ongoing! This round features Haruka, Yukiho and Minako promoting kitchen tools!
 
Twelfth, MILLION [email protected] VARIETY 03 is now currently on sale! It features "Shunpuu Manpan Starting" and "LiberaSing/Along", along with their instrumental versions!
 
Thirteenth, a reminder that pre-orders for the SUNRICH COLORFUL BD are currently ongoing until 4th June!
 
Fourteenth, the Onkiyo collab's 2nd wave has begun! It features new voice lines from Mirai, Shizuka and Tsubasa for the ANIMA Studio app. There will also be special wireless earphones released to celebrate this soon; refer to their official social media for updates.
 
Fifteenth, a reminder that these figures of Makoto and Ayumu will be released on October and November 2023 respectively. You can also get special items by pre-ordering the items from either Tamashii-Web or AsobiStore.
 
Sixteenth, a reminder that the webcomic "Ama-iro no Asterism" will be getting its first physical volume printed on 27th July!
 
Seventeenth, to recap all of the above, here is the schedule for this summer:

• June 2023
• July 2023
• August 2023
• All 3 months

 
Eighteenth, those in Japan can retweet the given hashtag for the chance to win these special illustrations.
 
Nineteenth and lastly, 390 FREE Jewels!

Last Saturday I played a 4 quarter game. I coach a group of u9s and they took part in 2 quarters, us u15s did the other 2.
We played against the rudest and most physical team in the u15s league. They are roughly the top of the 2nd half of the league. My team, hell, we are smack bang at the bottom of the 2nd half. We suck. Never won any games before, never had any draws before.
The funniest part of this game was how easy it was to frustrate a very specific girl. She was number 10 and her dad just so happened to be reffing. During the last quarter, I made a scramble for the ball, and I expected it to go in the goal. But I decided out of pure instinct to throw myself in front of her foot, she fell over and the words I heard her say were “god you fcking f4gg0t” and when I tell you I laughed. I laughed.
The ref refused to stand up against his daughter with the slurs, the racist comments and the punching. But he did send off another girl for shouting across the pitch to me, when I saved a penalty calling me another homophobic comment. May I add these don’t hurt or offend me. It makes me even more excited to play because it’s their clear frustration, they can’t comment on my ability so they lick something else. It’s funny.
But it was a great game, unfortunately one of the u9s broke her wrist. But the u15s won 2-0. I had a clean sheet. The u9s drew 1-1. I was so proud of them.
In the end, it was a friendly but my manager gave me man of the match, I’ve had it 4 times this season. I’ve had it more then anyone else this season and last season.
I enjoyed it, I was so happy and I can’t wait to start winning league games.

TLDR to start: AMD therefore ICUE therefore Windows therefore AMD therefore Samsung.
I have an AM4 PC, 5900x, with a 6900xt and a Samsung G7. For those who pay attention all of these products have had some issues over the years with driver conflicts. Today I got to experience a bit of everything.
I decided to update to ICUE 5 after seeing a popup in ICUE. This is what happened.

1. Installed ICUE 5, restarted as requested.
2. Fails to post.
3. Flash bios.
4. Posts, but windows corrupted.
5. windows repair.
6. Works. . . So I do 1-5 again to verify issue.
7. Issue verified.
8. Restart after updating windows.
9. Posts, windows login, Freezes within seconds of login. Multiple attempts.
10. Reinstall windows. Freezes during setup after update portion. Multiple attempts.
11. Research. Switch to HDMI from DP on Samsung G7, Disable Freesync in monitor.
12. Finish setup and login. Freezes within seconds of login.
13. Research. Use an old 60hz monitor. Reinstall windows.
14. Login. Disable auto updates for devices. Install AMD adrenaline latest drivers.
15. Restart. . .
16. Posts, Login, and doesn't freeze.
17. Repeated EVERYTHING you see here to verify I am not crazy and found the issue and solution.
18. Everything works now. Samsung back on DP1.4. Windows is updated (device updates still disabled), icue 4 installed again instead of 5. Downloaded all my programs again. Restarted several times and benchmarked. Fixed.

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ICUE 5 has major issues with some AM4 systems.
Windows currently has a flaw that is installing outdated drivers for AMD.
The outdated drivers' windows installing has known issues with my Samsung G7 when using 6000 series cards.
TLDR again: AMD therefore ICUE therefore Windows therefore AMD therefore Samsung.
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I ordered a 4090 Strix today and new QD-OLED monitor. I am going to have suffer with a AM4 platform however until the next Intel refresh or platform launches. This isn't my first driver issue with AMD. Or my first issue with my Samsung monitor. But it will be the last at least for GPU and Monitor.
I am just over it now. I am done with AMD.

Maybe I’m being too uptight and hypocritical or I just want to vent and get this off my chest as I don’t live with my family (parents and 2 younger brothers). I’m moving back into my family’s home soon. I would like to hear people’s thoughts on whether any of the things mentioned below are normal, if you’re going through something like this, and what can be done about it?
Mom refuses to wax the floors and stresses about the wooden floor boards getting scratched. The exposed soft wood keeps attracting dust, whereas the dust would stick to the wax and not keep getting blown up in the air by the AC. Something that causes me to get congested and have difficulty breathing. It triggers my allergies.
She refuses to get rid of the carpets. I told her to get rid of them because they’re dusty and it’s summer! She wants to use the carpets to protect the wooden floor, and instead of removing them like she told me she would, she sends me a picture of her washing them out in the backyard.
It took forever to convince her to put a dining room table for eating. She told me to eat outside on the deck. For every single meal? That doesn’t make any sense.
I’m still trying to tell her to get curtains. None of the windows in the house have curtains! It’s a madhouse. She won’t let me and my friend install curtain rods because she doesn’t want us drilling in the walls. She wants specific curtains that drop down from the top window frame and she claims Walmart sells them but she won’t get them. It’s been 2 years!
She’s using dish towels as floor mats for the kitchen and bathroom, and getting them mixed up in the wash. You could be cleaning the counters and drying dishes with a toilet rug for all I know.
She’s investing $6000 on a factory machine for her catering business without taking into account her revenue, budget, etc., just throwing money blindly without even having a financial manager or even knowing if it’s worth investing in. She wants it, she’s got it. She also wants to furnish the basement and complains about not having money for it. Why get the machine then?
She keeps hoarding furniture. The number of couch sets and coffee tables we have. Won’t give it away. Too much stuff taking up all the space.
My 16 year old brother makes $300 every 2 weeks from his part time job, blowing it all on Amazon prime, Spotify, $100 phone bill for 15G??! take-out food and brand clothes and shoes. He keeps buying shoes and clothes (Jordan and others). He has too much already and he’s always broke. I asked him what he needs the 15G for when he could use wifi, he said he has a lot of friends? What does that mean? It’s so wasteful. He has asthma and is eating meat, fried food, and sugar, with almost every meal every day. He’s supposed to be on a diet because asthma affects BP, cholesterol, and the heart in the long run.
My 26 year old brother has had 3-5 year history of on-and-off gambling (a lot of it is done online). He wins big (claiming he made as much as 100k) and then loses it all. He’s also eating take-out and unhealthy foods.
My dad has digestive issues and while he’s working and unable to make his own special food, no one has been catering to his dietary needs at home.