Three ways to end a stalemate, from three sessions working the same file. A shield now trades rather than absorbs. It eats exactly one hit and drops, stunning the hitter for 140ms to 300ms depending on what it ate, and the shielder is free to swing back without releasing block -- the break is the opening. Shielded bullets go home with their ownership flipped, so a returned shot hurts whoever fired it. Back-blocking still only shoves, because holding a direction costs nothing. Ground pound and the wall tree land alongside it: the tree returns a body and fifteen seconds. Social preview re-burned -- deploy.fish restores the previous HEAD when it is stale, and it had already gone stale before today.