Distant scorpio man
AlabamaMan
2015.05.31 14:56 AlabamaMan
Florida Man's distant cousin
2017.07.08 02:36 prometheus_x Astrology
Subreddit for astrology, numerology and mysticism in general.
2014.05.20 17:02 XKryptonite Misadventures of Chicago Man
Chicago man, the distant , more depressing, more felonious cousin of Florida-Man.
2024.06.01 13:58 MouseTheThird Had a wild KSP dream.
Downloaded Kcalbeloh, and have been playing a Science mode run thru recently. After staying up a bit late after taking a break from it and focusing on work, I had an insane dream of a distant Kerbal sequel. It was 1:1 with actual Kerbal gameplay, it was like I was watching a video.
After landing a helicopter SSTO on a massive, beautiful green planet with spire-type mountains and large poofy sea-green clouds (the landing was not soft, but we didn't explode), my kerb hopped out and began to explore. The mountain valley I had landed in was lush with trees and stones, and my kerb sauntered up to a rock to begin researching it. A very Ancient Greek-looking guy popped out and the kerb right clicked and began talking to him thru the menu system. Guess this isn't the first kerb to land here.
Then, a small mantis-creature slowly wandering around got a bit close and took a swing at the kerb, and our buddy took a little Kerbal tumble. I think I saw a health bar? Gotta get outta here before this thing makes me poof into dust. They hopped back into the chopper, and the takeoff was not smooth, taking a sharp angle too soon and bouncing the nose off the ground, slamming the back end and exploding.
Y'all... This is the game I want to play! A combination of Kerbal and No Man's Sky, while still staying purely Kerbal in design and UI. I remember thinking as I woke up how fun that was, what that kinda game would be like to play, the beauty of that planet, the human-like inhabitant complete with communication UI and the mantis "combat". And then to cap that off, a truly Kerbal ending of smashing an expensive ship into the dirt.
Not my first Kerbal dream, but none have been as remarkable as this one.
submitted by MouseTheThird to KerbalSpaceProgram [link] [comments]
After landing a helicopter SSTO on a massive, beautiful green planet with spire-type mountains and large poofy sea-green clouds (the landing was not soft, but we didn't explode), my kerb hopped out and began to explore. The mountain valley I had landed in was lush with trees and stones, and my kerb sauntered up to a rock to begin researching it. A very Ancient Greek-looking guy popped out and the kerb right clicked and began talking to him thru the menu system. Guess this isn't the first kerb to land here.
Then, a small mantis-creature slowly wandering around got a bit close and took a swing at the kerb, and our buddy took a little Kerbal tumble. I think I saw a health bar? Gotta get outta here before this thing makes me poof into dust. They hopped back into the chopper, and the takeoff was not smooth, taking a sharp angle too soon and bouncing the nose off the ground, slamming the back end and exploding.
Y'all... This is the game I want to play! A combination of Kerbal and No Man's Sky, while still staying purely Kerbal in design and UI. I remember thinking as I woke up how fun that was, what that kinda game would be like to play, the beauty of that planet, the human-like inhabitant complete with communication UI and the mantis "combat". And then to cap that off, a truly Kerbal ending of smashing an expensive ship into the dirt.
Not my first Kerbal dream, but none have been as remarkable as this one.
2024.06.01 13:56 genericusername1904 H.G. WELLS’S, THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME (1933) VS. 1984 AND BRAVE NEW WORLD
 | ID, IX. MAIORES. V, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.I discovered this book by complete chance last year – a very old hardback copy was given to me as gift (in a situation which was certainly weighted with the most unlikely of synchronicities), “huh,” I thought, “it’s a first edition of H.G. Wells,” the book itself almost cannot be opened because it is so old and falling apart so I procured a text and audio file of the thing relatively easily and began to read. In hindsight not only for myself but I fancy for the generations of the last fifty years - in all totality, it is deeply strange that this book has not been more widely recognized or taught in schools, as like 1984 and Brave New World, as being the third contender (although technically the second, published one year after Huxley – seemingly written at the same time interestingly enough) in “visions of dystopia” – except that the book is not so much a vision of dystopia tomorrow but a vision of dystopia ‘today’ or rather ‘life as we know it’ of the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries (endless war, endless pandemics, economic and logistic chaos), narrated from the comfortable and reassuring position of a society far far in the future who have long since revised their culture and solved all of the causes of the problems and become a society of genius polymaths “with (every Man and Woman) the intellectual equal of the polymaths of the ancient world.”Now, I do not mean here to seem to ‘sweet-talk’ the reader into rushing out and buying this book or to hold it up in the manner of those other books as if it were some ideological blueprint but instead to assay the thing in the natural context which seems to me to be universally unrealized and which presents itself to us as a thing which is plainly self-evident, that is: that in the depressing and miserable dichotomy of 1984 and Brave New World; two extremely atomizing and miserable narratives, that there is also – far more empowering – The Shape Of Things To Come wherein the miserable protagony and antagony of both 1984 and Brave New World might read as merely a footnote somewhere in the middle of the book as an example of the witless measures mankinds old master undertook to preserve their power in an untenable circumstance. In other words, we know all about 1984 as children; we have this drummed into our heads and we glean our cultural comprehension that dictators cannot be cliques of business people but only lone individuals, usually in military uniform, and then we graduate from that to Brave New World to gain a more sophisticated comprehension of the feckless consumerism and ‘passive egoism’ by which our society actually operates, but then we do not – as I argue we ought – continue along in our education with this third book which actually addresses the matters at hand at a more adult level. For instance, here, from ‘The Breakdown Of Finance And Social Morale After Versailles’ (Book One, Chapter Twelve) addresses in a single paragraph the cause of our continual economic chaos (of which all crime and poverty and war originates from) and highlights the problem from which this chaos cannot be resolved yet could easily be resolved, “adjustment was left to blind and ill-estimated forces,” “manifestly, a dramatic revision of the liberties of enterprise was necessary, but the enterprising people who controlled politics (would be) the very last people to undertake such a revision,” …the expansion of productive energy was being accompanied by a positive contraction of the distributive arrangements which determined consumption. The more efficient the output, the fewer were the wages-earners. The more stuff there was, the fewer consumers there were. The fewer the consumers, the smaller the trading profits, and the less the gross spending power of the shareholders and individual entrepreneurs. So buying dwindled at both ends of the process and the common investor suffered with the wages- earner. This was the "Paradox of Overproduction" which so troubled the writers and journalists of the third decade of the twentieth century.It is easy for the young student to-day to ask "Why did they not adjust?" But let him ask himself who there was to adjust. Our modern superstructure of applied economic science, the David Lubin Bureau and the General Directors' Board, with its vast recording organization, its hundreds of thousands of stations and observers, directing, adjusting, apportioning and distributing, had not even begun to exist. Adjustment was left to blind and ill-estimated forces. It was the general interest of mankind to be prosperous, but it was nobody's particular interest to keep affairs in a frame of prosperity. Manifestly a dramatic revision of the liberties of enterprise was necessary, but the enterprising people who controlled politics, so far as political life was controlled, were the very last people to undertake such a revision.There is a clever metaphor I fancy that Wells worked in to this for the ‘actual’ defacto controlling class of things, that is: not really the politicians (sorry to disappoint the Orwell and conspiracy fans) but instead the ‘Dictatorship of the Air’ which might easily read as the ‘Dictatorship of the Airwaves’ – in colloquial language, that being radio and then television. Certainly we might imagine Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner or Sumner Redstone (of yesterday) entering into honourable retirement as like the ‘dictators of the air’ of the very last days before the establishment of a one world state – in any case that is how things would work out, as the power of, say, Ted Turner to eradicate a political party in the United States – at any time he wishes – by simply green-lighting coverage of their bad actions relentlessly for months until revolution occurs is a real power of which no other institution possesses nor possesses any means of defence against, i.e. the ‘real power’ in our world to end a war or begin or war or end this or begin that is that power held by the organized press. This metaphor is somewhat of a more mature view, I think, than Wells earlier conception of the press in The Sleeper Awakes (1899) where the press of a dystopian future is visualized as a “babble machine” spreading circular nonsense to preoccupy the citizenry (although this is arguably a true representation of the mental processes of the Twitter and Facebook user, or of the general baby-speak and extremely infantile form of the news reports on the front page of the BBC News website) which is more or less what the press depicted as being in Brave New World also.However the construction of sudden new realities (or sudden ‘actualities’) presented by the equation of interdependent technological innovations (i.e. the radio and the television in this instance) is mentioned early on in The Shape Of Things To Come in ‘How The Idea And Hope Of The Modern World State First Appeared’ (Book One, Chapter Two), The fruitlessness of all these premature inventions is very easily explained. First in the case of the Transatlantic passage; either the earlier navigators who got to America never got back, or, if they did get back, they were unable to find the necessary support and means to go again before they died, or they had had enough of hardship, or they perished in a second attempt. Their stories were distorted into fantastic legends and substantially disbelieved. It was, indeed, a quite futile adventure to get to America until the keeled sailing ship, the science of navigation, and the mariner's compass had been added to human resources. (Then), in the matter of printing, it was only when the Chinese had developed the systematic manufacture of abundant cheap paper sheets in standard sizes that the printed book—and its consequent release of knowledge—became practically possible. Finally the delay in the attainment of flying was inevitable because before men could progress beyond precarious gliding it was necessary for metallurgy to reach a point at which the internal combustion engine could be made. Until then they could build nothing strong enough and light enough to battle with the eddies of the air.In an exactly parallel manner, the conception of one single human community organized for collective service to the common weal had to wait until the rapid evolution of the means of communication could arrest and promise to defeat the disintegrative influence of geographical separation. That rapid evolution came at last in the nineteenth century, and it has been described already in a preceding chapter of this world history. Steam power, oil power, electric power, the railway, the steamship, the aeroplane, transmission by wire and aerial transmission followed each other very rapidly. They knit together the human species as it had never been knit before. Insensibly, in less than a century, the utterly impracticable became not merely a possible adjustment but an urgently necessary adjustment if civilization was to continue.In other words, then, a global state (or, rather, such power in general held by the press as I see the analogy extending to them as being the ‘Dictatorship of the Airwaves’) was impossible to imagine and completely laughable before the technologies had stacked together to reveal as like in a simple piece of arithmetic which produced a single outcome of the equation; that no sooner had the technologies existed then the thing had become an actual reality – in that 1) unassailable political power had been unthinkingly dropped into the lap of the owners of the press, but that more importantly as consequence that therefore 2) mankind was subject to that power, that is: the situation existed the moment the technologies did – and this whether any living person had even realized it, as I think quite naturally all the time Men and Women invent things that they really have no notion of the fullest or most optimal uses of (“nothing is needed by fools, for: they do not understand how to use anything but are in want of everything,” Chrysippus), e.g. in no metaphor the television was quite literally invented as a ‘ghost box’ to commune with ghosts imagined to reveal themselves by manipulating the black and white of the static until someone else had the idea that there was at least one other use for that contraption.It is quite strange, also, that in contemporary times we have for ages been heavily propagandized ‘against’ the idea of a “one world state” as if, say, all the crimes and fecklessness that have gone on in our lifetimes are somehow secretly building towards the creation of such a thing – not a thing you would naturally conclude from an observation of those events nor a thing advocated for by anybody (insofar as I have ever heard) but it is a thing which would be the first logical response to ‘preventing’ such crimes from ever occurring again – such as like the already widely practiced concept of a Senate-Style Federation of Sovereign States rather than a hundred or so mutually antagonistic polities capable of bombing themselves or screwing up their economies and creating waves of refugees or mass starvation or pandemics, and so on. For instance, All Egypt is dependent on the flow of the Nile which originates in what is today another country, that other country recently decimated the flow of the Nile by gumming up the Nile with a Hydroelectric Dam; such an outcome would not occur if the total mass of the land itself was governed as the single interconnected economic and environmental system that it is in physical reality of which, when divided along arbitrary borderlines, there is no means to govern the entirety of the region in an amicable and prosperous manner for all as a whole and no recourse to the otherwise intolerable situation but War which is unlikely to occur – as most Nations are comprised of civilized peoples who rightly loath the concept of War – but it is the single and unavoidable outcome to resolve such a situation until that situation has dragged on for decades, causing immense suffering, until it reaches that point of desperation – the matter of Palestine and Israel, fresh to my mind in these days, raises itself also. Of the matter of War itself, in ‘The Direct Action Of The Armament Industries In Maintaining War Stresses’ (Book One, Chapter Eleven), Wells relays in 1933 what United States President Eisenhower would later remark in 1961 in his farewell address of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex; albeit far more analytically on Wells part, that: it is not so much the ‘desire to harm’ on the part of the armament industries which sees them engage in unnecessary build-up of weapons stockpiles but that it is simply their business to produce, to stockpile, produce more deadly variants and stockpile the more deadly variants and sell off their old stockpiles to whomsoever rings their doorbell; for instance the on-going War in Ukraine is no different in this regard to the Viet Cong and NATO Warfare in Vietnam in that massive quantiles of cheap munitions were necessary for the war to be fought in the first place and massive quantities of munitions happened to exist as a by-product of the Armaments Industries to be dumped onto the warring parties in order to facilitate their macabre impulses at the expense of the citizenry; both at their cost in terms of the debt taken on to procure the weaponry on the part of their governments and in terms of their lives when the weaponry was unused to the outcome of massive loss of life of a single peoples within a bordered space – a thing of no value to themselves. Simply put, albeit in a very simplistic reduction to the bare basics: the War would not reached such catastrophic inhuman proportions without massive quantities of cheap Armaments that otherwise sat taking up warehouse space for more valuable Armaments on the part of the producer and seller. In a perpetual progress in the size and range of great guns, in a vast expansion of battleships that were continually scrapped in favour of larger or more elaborate models, (Armament Firms) found a most important and inexhaustible field of profit. The governments of the world were taken unawares, and in a little while the industry, by sound and accepted methods of salesmanship, was able to impose its novelties upon these ancient institutions with their tradition of implacable mutual antagonism. It was realized very soon that any decay of patriotism and loyalty would be inimical to this great system of profits, and the selling branch of the industry either bought directly or contrived to control most of the great newspapers of the time, and exercised a watchful vigilance on the teaching of belligerence in schools. Following the established rules and usages for a marketing industrialism, and with little thought of any consequences but profits, the directors of these huge concerns built up the new warfare that found its first exposition in the Great War of 1914-18, and gave its last desperate and frightful convulsions in the Polish wars of 1940 and the subsequent decades.Even at its outset in 1914-18 this new warfare was extraordinarily uncongenial to humanity. It did not even satisfy man's normal combative instincts. What an angry man wants to do is to beat and bash another living being, not to be shot at from ten miles distance or poisoned in a hole. Instead of drinking delight of battle with their peers, men tasted all the indiscriminating terror of an earthquake. The war literature stored at Atacama, to which we have already referred, is full of futile protest against the horror, the unsportsmanlike quality, the casual filthiness and indecency, the mechanical disregard of human dignity of the new tactics. But such protest itself was necessarily futile, because it did not go on to a clear indictment of the forces that were making, sustaining and distorting war. The child howled and wept and they did not even attempt to see what it was had tormented it.To us nowadays it seems insane that profit-making individuals and companies should have been allowed to manufacture weapons and sell the apparatus of murder to all comers. But to the man of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It had grown up in an entirely logical and necessary way, without any restraint upon the normal marketing methods of peace-time commerce, from the continually more extensive application of new industrial products to warfare. Even after the World War catastrophe, after that complete demonstration of the futility of war, men still allowed themselves to be herded like sheep into the barracks, to be trained to consume, and be consumed, by new lines of slaughter goods produced and marketed by the still active armament traders. And the accumulation of a still greater and still more dangerous mass of war material continued.The book is, if the reader has likely already gathered from the excerpts, not written in the style of a protagonal narrative; i.e. not as a story, i.e. no hero and no villain, but as a sort of a Historia Augusta – that is really the most fitting comparison I think of when trying to describe this to a new reader (or perhaps J.J. Scarisbrick’s Henry VIII), that is to say it is written ‘as’ a History in the classical style we are familiar with from the better of the ancient writers, as like Appian or Cassius Dio, but unlike Suetonius or Tacitus it is absent of the sloppy hinging of all bad things on the highly personalized propaganda ad hominem (i.e. blame the fall of empire on one guy) that goes in those narrative works as we are typically familiar with them.It is, of course, a work a fiction; although Wells did predict World War Two beginning in late 1939-1940 (although he had Poland putting up much better and longer of a fight against the Germans) and various other innovations, beginning from his own day with a true account of events prior to his own day – giving us a valuable account of affairs and actors prior to 1933 which would otherwise not come easily to any of us to discover. But the book, ultimately, is vehicle for the transmission and discussion of these societal (i.e. social, economic, industrial, logistic) matters presented to the audience of the day fresh, in their own minds, from the abject horror recently witnessed in World War One – and the economic catastrophes of which Roosevelts reforms had not yet come into tangible reality (i.e. relief for the poor, public works projects such as the motorways across America) as is discussed in that other seemingly little known H.G. Wells literary offering in his face-to-face interview with Josef Stalin the following year in 1934 (something which I think is of far more historical value than say, Nixon and Frost or Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis), so as to ‘avert’ another crisis and pluck from the ether a seemingly alternate trajectory of where Mankind might at last get its act together. This ‘novel’ (thought it seems strange to call it that) ought be read, I would advise, in conjunction with ‘The Sleeper Awakes’ (1899) and also the (actually very depressing – I would not advise it) short-story prequel ‘A Story Of The Days To Come’ (1897) – set in that same universe – which, perhaps it is because I am English, seems to me to be a black horror show of the reality that we actually find ourselves living in this far into an actually dystopic future – or perhaps yet with the ‘strange windmills’ powering the mega cities that this a future yet to come (no pun intended); the broken speech, the babble machines, the miserable condition of the Working Class and their consumption of pre-packaged soft bread, the desire to flee the urban sprawl into the dilapidated countryside and make a little life in a run-down house with tacky wallpaper peeling away … ah, forgive me, my point is that ‘our condition’; i.e. those of us literate in English, is quite analogous to the condition of the central characters in those two stories; a culture dulled intellectually to the point that they can barely speak or think, being appraised and assayed by ourselves; those of us simply literate, as to render our commentary stuck as to seem as mutually alien as like Caesar in Gaul. However, it is in the context of the frame given to us in ‘The Shape Of Things To Come’ that we might gain a degree of sanity about this self-same situation; to study and lean into that dispassionate quality as to discern the nature of things as they are and recognize how important this quality is in relation to Well’s ultimate outcome for the best possible position of Humankind far far future, that is: that of Humankind’s vital intellectual capacity, and that the most striking message of STC, beyond all we have mentioned in this little overview, is that intellectual capacity in and of itself. For example, when we consider the ‘actuality’ of the power of Turner or perhaps Zuckerberg in his heyday, for instance, we consider a power fallen into a Mans lap by an accidental stacking of disparate technologies created not by himself but of which possess a power utterly dependent in that same equation upon on a population being ‘witless’ in the first place and so led slavishly by the “babble machines”. However you cut it, reader, the great uplifting of Humankind to a standard of autonomy and intellectual prowess – not held by an elite but possessed by All People – is a thing both intrinsically self-sufficient within our grasp for our own selves and is certainly the prerequisite for political matters in that intellectual capacity of the voting public determines entirely whether a public is tricked or foolish and gets themselves into trouble by undertaking some obvious error or whether they are immune to such trickery and foolishness in the first place and that their energies and time are spent on more valuable pursuits. It seems to me that our contemporary society has done away with the notion of good character through intellect and that we live with the outcome of this; being shepherded by emotional manipulation and brute force because our society at large is treated as if we lacked the verbal and intellectual toolsets to understand anything else – moreover possessing no means to discern whether or not what is forced onto us is right or wrong; truth or lies, and so on. Such a society as this, again it seems plain to me, is ‘any’ dystopia because it is the baseline composition for ‘all’ dystopia; as like the foolish dogma of an out-dated ideology for example rests itself upon a large enough contingent of the public being either treated as if they were or in fact are “too foolish” to discuss or think a thing through, so a dogma is poured over them like concrete creating, in turn, intolerable circumstances as the dogma, tomorrow, becomes out-dated and suddenly instructs them to do foolish things, as like in the “Banality Of Evil” (read: Hannah Arendt) as the character in all serious perpetrators of inhumanity who insist, with a confused expression on their faces, that they were just doing their job – and this ‘quality’, of extreme ignorance, is the composition of the culture where such ‘evil actions’ occur. I mean here that in STC we have on one hand a very in-depth account, very serious reading, to graduate the reader out of the depressive, atomizing, disempowering, conspiratorial milieu and mire of ‘life’ presented to us in 1984 and Brave New World, but that we have at the same time the very resonant harmonics that one does not need to “wait around for a distant future utopia” to “solve all the problems” but that the tools to do so are well within our grasp at any time we so choose and of which such an undertaking constitutes the foundation stones and tapestries of that future utopia which, I think, could be said to “meet us half-way” in many of these matters, as like we reach forward and they reach back and then those in the past reach forward and we in the resent reach back; that is anyway what it is to learn from the past and anyway the answer to “why the Grandfather sews the seeds for trees from whose fruits he will never eat.” Valete. ID, IX. MAIORES. V, CAL. IUNI. FORTUNA PRIMIGENIA.FULL TEXT ON GUTENBERG OF H.G. WELLS ‘THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME’ (1933)https://preview.redd.it/9l7yl9hx8y3d1.jpg?width=490&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d5a4109fb8e2193b94a6e244d92d4ec5b7b84a7 https://preview.redd.it/37vvsroy8y3d1.jpg?width=740&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e62ef5e11c1c4222d6f99ffebe82b3dd706cbc2f |
2024.06.01 13:17 TheDreadPirateRobots [Have Gun - Will Travel] - 1.8
[INDEX]
I banked the fire and stared into the golden eyes of Beatale before I crept into my makeshift tent.
I still had my auric vision running and couldn’t help but notice the thin silver cord that ran from me to Horse. Firming up my aura, I reached out with my hand and grabbed it. I could feel the nearly imperceptible vibration between my fingers as I used my mind to probe at the thread. I could feel a bright spark of intellect, a light at the end of a tunnel. Pushing with my mind, I slid down the thread until the spark grew larger and eventually filled my inner vision with a hazy white light. Horsey thoughts nudged at me curiously.
I slid into the haze and immediately lost all sense of direction. If it wasn’t for the silver thread, I’d have no idea how to exit this shifting white fog. Horsey thoughts got stronger as I followed the thread while the haze thinned and cleared to reveal an endless prairie of green grass. I found myself standing before a naked man wearing a horse mask and I stared in shock. It was obviously me wearing a cheap costume horse mask — there was no mistaking my tattoos.
“What did you expect?” Horse neighed at me. “I am you and you are me and we are all together. Goo goo ga joob.”
Horse made a shooing motion with his hands and I accelerated backwards through the white haze and slammed into my own body with a gasp. I stared at the tarp overhead for a long minute, processing this new revelation. Horse was a part of me, a piece of my spirit. Whatever psychic stuff I did with that silver cord lead me into a house of mirrors where I got to look at myself pretending to be a horse. I can’t even deal with that right now.
Rolling into my blankets, I dropped off to sleep.
*Ding*
-=- - Welcome to the Dreamworld - Included in the Psychic Skills pack, the Inner Sanctum is your psychic domain. It is the mental fortress that you must secure and maintain to defend against psychic and spiritual assaults. All of your neurosis and fears are symbolised in this realm and must be defeated or subjugated before you can become master of the domain. Good luck. -=-
I banished the pop-up and looked around. I knew I was asleep, but everything was just as real as when I was awake. I was breathing, I could feel the floor under my feet, and if it weren’t for the pop-up, I would have sworn I had been teleported. The room I was in resembled an oversized luxury prison cell, maybe a thirty foot cube. No windows. Rough stone walls with thick mortar. Large brass wall sconces were set directly into the stone and suffused the room with a warm, golden light provided by glowing rocks. The stone floor had colourful Persian rugs tastefully placed. A high plaster ceiling was painted with a rendition of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’, depicting me as both Adam and God.
There was a comfy sofa in front of a large screen television that hung from one wall and an ornate grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner. It was currently 10:08 PM. Another wall was a floor to ceiling bookshelf, stuffed with books of varying sizes. The third wall was covered with pictures and I could see at a glance that they were images from my life. The fourth wall had a thick riveted steel door on the right side, a full sized mirror on the left, and a computer workstation in the middle.
The picture wall was my first target. A few were quite large, nearly life sized, while others were tiny prints no larger than the palm of my hand. Scenes of my life were displayed in each one. The largest was me riding Horse with a shit-scared expression, shooting at a pack of wolves. Others were smaller, each with different frames. Some ornate gold or silver, others plain wood, a few wrapped in briars or barbed wire. Nanny Ramsey holding me as a young child. My dog Jean with a red ball in his mouth. My parents, screaming at me. I turned my attention to the books. Books are safe. Books don’t judge you.
The sweet, musty scent of a used book store filled my nostrils as I drew close to the honey coloured shelves. Hundreds of volumes filled the wall from floor to ceiling, with a ladder that could be rolled along a rail to access the top. I smiled at the sight. I had always wanted a library like this. I pulled a book at random and read the title, “Confused Fantasies about Joseph Harris, part XXIV of the Middle School Years”.
I slid the book back onto the shelf. Let’s see what’s on TV.
The remote was a slim, futuristic looking affair with a minimum of buttons. I pointed it at the television and moments later the huge screen came to life and presented me with a simple menu for movies, divided into six categories: Happy, Surprised, Afraid, Disgusted, Angry, and Sad. I scrolled through the offerings for a minute, reading the titles and reviews about the movies of my life. It really bothered me that there were so few selections in the Happy section.
The number of Sad movies increased by one.
I walked over to the mirror and noticed there was a small sticky note pasted to it. “Astral Realm. Experienced users only.” I shoved the note in my pocket and stared at my image. Sturdy black boots, black denim jeans and shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, deep brown gun belt slung at my hip, red bandanna and black felt hat. All I needed was a pencil moustache and I would look like the stereotypical villain in any spaghetti western. At that very moment I decided to grow out a goatee. I’d rather be mistaken for a bad guy than a victim.
So how does this astral realm thing work?
The mirror appeared to be nothing more than a mirror. It was cold, smooth glass surrounded by a wrought iron frame, and reflected my image. I didn’t necessarily want to go walking into danger, but I wanted to know how it worked. I pushed and prodded the glass in frustration until I noticed my image grinning at me. I jumped back in surprise and it doubled over in silent laughter.
“Hilarious, dude. You got me,” I huffed. “So how do I get in?”
My mirror-self tipped his hat and stepped to side.
I reached up to the mirror again and my hand passed through, vanishing as if cut off. Okay, just a quick peek and we’ll explore the rest of the room. I stepped through and the world shifted around me. I was standing back at the campsite. My body was insubstantial as a ghost and the tarp was a wisp of substance running straight through me. Non living things don’t seem to have much presence in this realm. Glancing down, I saw my sleeping body rolled up in the blankets, a thin silver thread running from it to me, and another thread running to Horse.
Looking around, I surveyed the campsite. My astral vision seemed to be on and had an unlimited range. I could see the life all around me, the distant forest was a sea of greenish-gold, grasses and brush nearby glowed with spectral light. Tiny ghost insects scurried while ghost mice nibbled at whatever ghost mice nibble on. Ghost seeds and ghost insects, I suppose. I turned my attention overhead and gaped at the sight of a monstrous serpentine spirit flying through the inky void. I dropped back through the tent and rolled inside my body. That was plenty enough for now.
I rolled through the mirror and landed flat on my back, staring at the fresco on the ceiling. Vinnie-God winked at me and Vinnie-Adam grinned. Climbing to my knees, I brushed non-existent dust from my trousers and watched mirror-me doubled over in soundless laughter.
“Hey, laughing-boy!” I yelled at him. “You’re like the guardian or something, right? You got it covered?”
Mirror-me stood and saluted with a smile, then gave me two thumbs up. A moment later, his face took on a serious expression and he wriggled his right hand in the ‘maybe’ motion. Then he pointed at me, tapped his wrist, and then a finger to his head.
It all depends on how fast I learn stuff, I guess.
Two thumbs up and a winning smile reflected back to me.
A large cork board was mounted to the wall over the computer and a small note was pinned to it. “Note to self: Don’t fuck with the Elvish womens.”
The computer screen featured a screensaver of me as Vitruvian Man doing callisthenics over the words ‘HumanOS’. I tapped the spacebar and was rewarded with the sound of powerful fans kicking to life as the computer emerged from sleep mode and prompted me for a password. Should I assume it’s the same as the password on the computer I pawned in my previous life?
Password: *******esi
I was rewarded with a sweet R&M desktop and a couple of icons. System, NeuralNet, My-Tunes, My-Movies, My-Office.
System was just what I expected, lots of .dna files and other confusing scariness that allowed me to tweak my physical body and mental state. My-Tunes was a collection of every song I’d ever heard and My-Movies was a collection of every movie I’d ever seen. Not that I’m complaining, but it would have been nice to have “My-Games” so I could play RDR. My-Office was a clone of the popular software by a similar name. I have no idea what I’ll ever need a spreadsheet for in this world.
NuralNet opened up a search engine called Me-Seeks, featuring a familiar blue guy.
I typed in “beer” and several thousand results were displayed, anything I’d ever read, heard, or watched about beer, including how to make it. This right here made the price of admission totally worth it, access to an exact copy of everything I’d ever read, and I was a voracious reader. Sadly, most of the stuff I read was futurology — solar panels, electronics, biotech advancements, quantum computing. The material for steam engines, blacksmithing, farming and the like, were slim pickings. That’s okay though, I could still reproduce the Gutenberg press, the cotton gin, simple internal combustion engines, and basic batteries along with some sketchy knowledge of metal alloys, acids, bases, and other things I had read over the years. All that wasted time watching “How Things Work” was finally going to pay off. I copied a few likely money makers to My-Office, saved the file, and exported to my Notes, just in case they didn’t exist on Aerth.
A popup covered the screen.
📱 [New Upgrade Available!] 📱
🎉 Enhance Your Experience with the Latest HumanOS Features! 🎉
🌟 Features Include:
[Upgrade Now ✅] [Remind Me Later ❌]
Apparently I could upgrade myself, which reduced the cost of using my Utilities while providing other minor benefits. My Utilities would level up as I used them, which would increase their battery cost, so if I didn’t keep pace with an update to the OS they could become prohibitively expensive to operate.
Stupid pay-to-win world.
So, do I pay 2000 credits for version 2.0 or 5000 credits for version 3.0?
I selected version 3.0 and klicked [Install]. After watching it download the update, it popped up another screen that asked if I wanted to update now, or wait until Midnight for the mandatory update.
I selected [No] just as the grandfather clock chimed 10:30 PM. I wondered if time ran slower in here, because it seemed like I had spent a lot more time on the computer than 15 minutes. Walking over to the imposing steel door, I noticed a bronze key with a thin chain in the lock. There was another sticky note on the door. “Subconscious. Please keep the key with you at all times.”
That’s not scary at all, is it?
I unlocked the door with a loud clunk and pulled it open to reveal a bedroom straight out of some royal castle. I could tell immediately that it had seen better days. The tapestries on the wall were frayed and fading. The canopy over the bed had a few holes in it. A thin layer of dust covered the mantle of a small fireplace set into the wall. There was a window letting in bright sunlight and I moved over to look outside.
I was on the third floor of a keep surrounded by the walls and turrets of a modest castle. A castle that had fallen into serious disrepair. Did this represent the state of my inner mind? One tower was shattered and the curtain wall under it damaged. The lower bailey was full of litter. I could see a few soldiers walking around the allure, keeping watch.
I have people in my subconscious?
Someone behind me cleared their throat.
Whirling, I discovered a familiar old man standing in the door of the bedroom. What was left of his hair formed a white halo around his head, his face was unshaven and covered with several days of growth. He was dressed like a poor and tattered manservant, but carried himself with a dignified air.
“Woodhouse?”
“It’s nice to see the master at home,” He said with a proper English accent. “There are many matters that require the master’s attention.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, hanging the key around my neck and tucking it in my shirt. “And who are you again?”
“Your personal manservant, of course” he said with a slight bow. Walking over to the steel door, he pulled it closed and it locked with a solid thunk. “Master should always keep his inner sanctum closed. One never knows if something nasty will creep in.”
“Thank you, uh, Woodhouse. I’ll remember that,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “So what needs tending and how do things work around here?”
He smiled and beckoned me with a white gloved hand. “If master would be so kind as to follow me, I’ll introduce him to the staff and explain the duties and obligations of his domain.”
I’m 99.9% certain that everyone here is just me wearing a mask, so I shrugged and followed Woodhouse out of the bedroom and into the rest of my subconscious.
Five minutes later I was on the ground floor and seated on a shabby throne with the cast of a popular —and probably very copyright protected— animation in front of me. Woodhouse was the head butler and my personal manservant. Pam was the cook and demanded that I start importing sugar and alcohol before she was shushed by Woodhouse. Carol was a maid. Krieger was chancellor and Cyril was the steward. Archer and Lana were in charge of security. Ray was the marshal in charge of everything from the stables to the blacksmith.
I stared in disbelief at the motley crew kneeling in front of me. No wonder my inner mind was in such shambles. I was overcome with an irrational sense of anger at myself.
“Arright, listen up,” I barked, my voice echoing around the room. “I swear to God that I will fire every single one of you and hire circus clowns to replace you if you keep fucking things up. No joke. Circus clowns, got it?”
I ran a hand over my face as Ray pissed himself. “The only reason I’m not putting a boot in your asses right now is because I realise that you’re aspects of me, and the people you represent are pretty damn good at their jobs when they give enough of a shit to actually do them. As a team, you’re dysfunctionally fantastic and always seem to come out ahead no matter the odds.”
Heaving a sigh, I continued. “Things have changed and I need to get my shit together. I’m going to need every one of you to pull your weight and help me help you. Get back to your duties, I’ll meet you one on one later.”
My subconscious caretakers scurried out of the room.
“I’ll have one of the maids tend to the piss,” Woodhouse assured me.
“Never mind that,” I snapped. “I honestly had no idea my mind was such a shit show. I’m very disappointed in myself.” I pictured the Angry, Sad, and Disgusted counters on my personal movies clicking up. “Show me what needs to be done and let’s get started.”
During Woodhouse’s walking tour, everything clicked into place. This was some altered version of Bodiam castle, a location that was on my bucket list of places to visit. The royal council room, located behind the throne room, contained a “living” tapestry on the wall that showed the castle and surrounding land in real time. The castle was located in the middle of a small lake, and a single wood bridge led to the mainland. A small town surrounded the lake and a wall encircled the town. Outside the wall, the land was an irregular patchwork of forest and field, with a stinking swamp to the south. The entire “kingdom” was maybe ten miles across, surrounded by impassable mountains with innumerable creeks that fed the lake which drained into the southern swamp.
“Zombies are the problem, sir.” Woodhouse said, as I surveyed the living tapestry of my mental domain.
“Zombies?” I prompted.
“Yes sir, Zombies” Woodhouse continued. “Nasty bitey things that come in from the mountains and harass the peasants. They’ve gotten especially worse over the last few months. The soldiers do what they can, but they seem to have lost all motivation. Probably because they haven’t been paid.”
“And who pays them?”
“Typically chancellor Krieger is in charge of financial matters, although Steward Figgis has taken over the duty, sir.”
“Then let’s make Figgis our first stop.”
“Very good, sir.”
The office of the steward was run by Cyril Figgis, who managed the kingdom in my absence. It was overflowing with paperwork and charts, books and scrolls piled high on every flat surface. Cyril was desperately attempting to tidy things when Woodhouse and I walked in.
“Yo..you..your majesty,” Cyril stuttered, bowing low. Scrolls fell from his overloaded arms, spilling across the floor. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to gather them up. “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon. Please forgive the mess, housekeeping has been slacking…”
This was the guy who ran things while I was conscious.
“Shut up, Cyril” I said. “You’re responsible for everything in this office. That includes keeping it organised and tidy.”
“Y..yes milord.”
“It’s my understanding that you’re in charge of making sure everyone gets paid. So why aren’t we paying people?” I asked.
“We’re nearly out of Fuks, your majesty. I’ve been saving them for emergencies.”
“Fucks?”
“Fuks,” Cyril explained, pushing a pile of books off a large chest and opening it. Reaching inside he pulled out two small bags and emptied them on top of his cluttered desk. “Gold and Silver Fuks, the currency of the kingdom. I can’t maintain the kingdom when I have no Fuks to give.”
Behold the subconscious kingdom of Vincent J. Carter, it runs on Fuks.
“So how do I get more fuks?” I asked, examining one of the coins. It had an image of me on one side and symbol on the other that could be interpreted as “peace among worlds”.
“You kill the zombies, your majesty.”
Of course I do.
Woodhouse and I left Cyril’s office and headed towards the office of the chancellor where Krieger worked. It seemed that Cyril took over financial matters when Krieger became erratic and proposed luring all the zombies into the city and setting it on fire. Not sure how that corresponds to my own self-destructive behaviour, but I’ve had some dark thoughts over the last couple of months and I’m sure they’re reflected here.
Krieger’s office was much neater in comparison to Cyril’s, but it wasn’t by much. Shelves lined the walls and were filled with an array of questionable items, including a still snapping zombie head in a jar. While the office of the chancellor was supposed to be in charge of financial matters, it looked more like a dodgy rummage sale.
Krieger was launching sword blades at a pig carcass when we walked in.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“Hm? Oh, your majesty!” he said, turning around and bowing deeply. “I’m testing a new invention. It’s a spring loaded hilt that shoots sword blades. Very useful for our soldiers.”
“Stupidest idea ever,” I snapped. “I hate everything about it.”
“Okay,” Krieger said, tossing the hilt into a nearby pile of junk. “But don’t blame me when you need to shoot a sword at a zombie and don’t have one.”
“So why aren’t you managing the financial affairs? Collecting taxes, paying people, stuff like that?”
“Because the population has declined so much none of that matters?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wellll, the population represents things you care about,” Krieger said, going into lecture mode. “And the zombies and other monsters are real or imagined problems in your way. Since you don’t care about too many things the population has shrunk to just what’s needed to keep everything running on the bare minimum of fuks. And since you don’t seem to have any long or short term goals, there’s no need to kill off the zombies and get more fuks. Everything is fine just the way it is.”
“No, it’s not Krieger” I said, grinding my teeth. “My mind is in a shambles. It’s a joke. I want it fixed. No, I want it better than fixed. I want it improved.”
“Oh! I’ve got just the thing for that!” He said, digging around in his pockets, “It’s a spring-loaded hilt that shoots swords!”
Pam and Cheryl were hanging out a gallery window jeering at Archer and Lana sparring in the inner courtyard.
“What the hell are you doing!” I snapped
They whirled in surprise and then dropped into deep curtseys.
“Your majesty!”
I took a deep breath, trying to regain my centre. “Get to work cleaning this place up. Find a room, clean it, and move on to the next. Start with my bedroom, then the throne room and the council chamber, then everything else.”
Cheryl spoke up. “Can’t do it. We got no fuks to clean with.”
“You need fuks to clean?”
“Gotta buy stuff,” Pam said. “Cleaning supplies, food. You wanna eat, you’re gonna have to spend some fuks.”
“Talk to Cyril,” I ordered. “Tell him I said to get you supplied.”
They ran off in the direction of the stewards office.
I watched Archer and Lana bashing each other enthusiastically through the window.
Several minutes later the sparring couple stopped and bowed when Woodhouse and I stepped into the inner courtyard.
“Your majesty”
“My liege”
“Enough,” I said. “If you have enough energy to smash each other, you have enough energy to smash zombies. Tell me what I need to know so I can start gathering fuks.”
Archer shrugged and spoke first. “You just kill the zombies and other monsters. They drop fuks.”
“Anything special about the zombies?” I asked. “Are they fast? Do people get turned into zombies when bitten?”
“Nope,” Lana said, resting her wooden sword on her shoulder. “Most of them are slow shamblers and just need a good wack to the head to kill them.”
“Some are special,” Archer interjected. “Occasionally you’ll have some fast ones, or those that need holy water to kill. They’re just bad memories, figments of your personality that need to be eliminated. Some are worse than others.”
“The zombies are bad memories?” I asked, imagining all the bad memories that I had.
“Memories, thoughts, insecurities, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo,” Woodhouse supplied. “They are endless, but constant vigilance can keep them under control.”
“So let’s get started,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Lana and Archer lead me up to the parapet over the front gate where I looked over at the dozens of zombies milling about aimlessly in front of the entrance to my mind. Pulling out my gun, I began to pick them off, easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The crack of my spell pistol attracted more zombies and I dispatched them with ease until no more were left around the gate. As I fired each shot I could feel some sort of existential energy flowing from me, draining some hidden reserve.
“Gather up the Fuks,” I commanded. “And Lana?”
“Mi’lord?”
“There’s no excuse for this. From now on, I expect the walls to be clear of all zombies.”
“Yes mi’lord,” she said, giving me a small bow.
Turning to Archer, I shook my head. “You’re obviously my personal narcissism, so just try to stay out of Lana’s way, or better yet - try to kill more zombies than her. If you think you can.”
Archer scoffed. “No contest. I took top marks in sharpshooting.”
“That means I should expect to see results by tomorrow. I look forward to it.”
Archer looked panicked for a moment then smiled. “Sure, I can give you results.”
Turning back to Woodhouse I said “Show me what else need attending.”
Woodhouse led me through the town that represented my mind, pointing out each business that had fallen into disrepair, suggested others that needed improvements, and additions that would benefit me. In the distance, I could hear Lana and Archer shooting at the crowd of zombies and with each echoing shot I felt a tiny bit better about everything.
[INDEX]
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I banked the fire and stared into the golden eyes of Beatale before I crept into my makeshift tent.
I still had my auric vision running and couldn’t help but notice the thin silver cord that ran from me to Horse. Firming up my aura, I reached out with my hand and grabbed it. I could feel the nearly imperceptible vibration between my fingers as I used my mind to probe at the thread. I could feel a bright spark of intellect, a light at the end of a tunnel. Pushing with my mind, I slid down the thread until the spark grew larger and eventually filled my inner vision with a hazy white light. Horsey thoughts nudged at me curiously.
I slid into the haze and immediately lost all sense of direction. If it wasn’t for the silver thread, I’d have no idea how to exit this shifting white fog. Horsey thoughts got stronger as I followed the thread while the haze thinned and cleared to reveal an endless prairie of green grass. I found myself standing before a naked man wearing a horse mask and I stared in shock. It was obviously me wearing a cheap costume horse mask — there was no mistaking my tattoos.
“What did you expect?” Horse neighed at me. “I am you and you are me and we are all together. Goo goo ga joob.”
Horse made a shooing motion with his hands and I accelerated backwards through the white haze and slammed into my own body with a gasp. I stared at the tarp overhead for a long minute, processing this new revelation. Horse was a part of me, a piece of my spirit. Whatever psychic stuff I did with that silver cord lead me into a house of mirrors where I got to look at myself pretending to be a horse. I can’t even deal with that right now.
Rolling into my blankets, I dropped off to sleep.
*Ding*
-=- - Welcome to the Dreamworld - Included in the Psychic Skills pack, the Inner Sanctum is your psychic domain. It is the mental fortress that you must secure and maintain to defend against psychic and spiritual assaults. All of your neurosis and fears are symbolised in this realm and must be defeated or subjugated before you can become master of the domain. Good luck. -=-
I banished the pop-up and looked around. I knew I was asleep, but everything was just as real as when I was awake. I was breathing, I could feel the floor under my feet, and if it weren’t for the pop-up, I would have sworn I had been teleported. The room I was in resembled an oversized luxury prison cell, maybe a thirty foot cube. No windows. Rough stone walls with thick mortar. Large brass wall sconces were set directly into the stone and suffused the room with a warm, golden light provided by glowing rocks. The stone floor had colourful Persian rugs tastefully placed. A high plaster ceiling was painted with a rendition of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’, depicting me as both Adam and God.
There was a comfy sofa in front of a large screen television that hung from one wall and an ornate grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner. It was currently 10:08 PM. Another wall was a floor to ceiling bookshelf, stuffed with books of varying sizes. The third wall was covered with pictures and I could see at a glance that they were images from my life. The fourth wall had a thick riveted steel door on the right side, a full sized mirror on the left, and a computer workstation in the middle.
The picture wall was my first target. A few were quite large, nearly life sized, while others were tiny prints no larger than the palm of my hand. Scenes of my life were displayed in each one. The largest was me riding Horse with a shit-scared expression, shooting at a pack of wolves. Others were smaller, each with different frames. Some ornate gold or silver, others plain wood, a few wrapped in briars or barbed wire. Nanny Ramsey holding me as a young child. My dog Jean with a red ball in his mouth. My parents, screaming at me. I turned my attention to the books. Books are safe. Books don’t judge you.
The sweet, musty scent of a used book store filled my nostrils as I drew close to the honey coloured shelves. Hundreds of volumes filled the wall from floor to ceiling, with a ladder that could be rolled along a rail to access the top. I smiled at the sight. I had always wanted a library like this. I pulled a book at random and read the title, “Confused Fantasies about Joseph Harris, part XXIV of the Middle School Years”.
I slid the book back onto the shelf. Let’s see what’s on TV.
The remote was a slim, futuristic looking affair with a minimum of buttons. I pointed it at the television and moments later the huge screen came to life and presented me with a simple menu for movies, divided into six categories: Happy, Surprised, Afraid, Disgusted, Angry, and Sad. I scrolled through the offerings for a minute, reading the titles and reviews about the movies of my life. It really bothered me that there were so few selections in the Happy section.
The number of Sad movies increased by one.
I walked over to the mirror and noticed there was a small sticky note pasted to it. “Astral Realm. Experienced users only.” I shoved the note in my pocket and stared at my image. Sturdy black boots, black denim jeans and shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, deep brown gun belt slung at my hip, red bandanna and black felt hat. All I needed was a pencil moustache and I would look like the stereotypical villain in any spaghetti western. At that very moment I decided to grow out a goatee. I’d rather be mistaken for a bad guy than a victim.
So how does this astral realm thing work?
The mirror appeared to be nothing more than a mirror. It was cold, smooth glass surrounded by a wrought iron frame, and reflected my image. I didn’t necessarily want to go walking into danger, but I wanted to know how it worked. I pushed and prodded the glass in frustration until I noticed my image grinning at me. I jumped back in surprise and it doubled over in silent laughter.
“Hilarious, dude. You got me,” I huffed. “So how do I get in?”
My mirror-self tipped his hat and stepped to side.
I reached up to the mirror again and my hand passed through, vanishing as if cut off. Okay, just a quick peek and we’ll explore the rest of the room. I stepped through and the world shifted around me. I was standing back at the campsite. My body was insubstantial as a ghost and the tarp was a wisp of substance running straight through me. Non living things don’t seem to have much presence in this realm. Glancing down, I saw my sleeping body rolled up in the blankets, a thin silver thread running from it to me, and another thread running to Horse.
Looking around, I surveyed the campsite. My astral vision seemed to be on and had an unlimited range. I could see the life all around me, the distant forest was a sea of greenish-gold, grasses and brush nearby glowed with spectral light. Tiny ghost insects scurried while ghost mice nibbled at whatever ghost mice nibble on. Ghost seeds and ghost insects, I suppose. I turned my attention overhead and gaped at the sight of a monstrous serpentine spirit flying through the inky void. I dropped back through the tent and rolled inside my body. That was plenty enough for now.
I rolled through the mirror and landed flat on my back, staring at the fresco on the ceiling. Vinnie-God winked at me and Vinnie-Adam grinned. Climbing to my knees, I brushed non-existent dust from my trousers and watched mirror-me doubled over in soundless laughter.
“Hey, laughing-boy!” I yelled at him. “You’re like the guardian or something, right? You got it covered?”
Mirror-me stood and saluted with a smile, then gave me two thumbs up. A moment later, his face took on a serious expression and he wriggled his right hand in the ‘maybe’ motion. Then he pointed at me, tapped his wrist, and then a finger to his head.
It all depends on how fast I learn stuff, I guess.
Two thumbs up and a winning smile reflected back to me.
A large cork board was mounted to the wall over the computer and a small note was pinned to it. “Note to self: Don’t fuck with the Elvish womens.”
The computer screen featured a screensaver of me as Vitruvian Man doing callisthenics over the words ‘HumanOS’. I tapped the spacebar and was rewarded with the sound of powerful fans kicking to life as the computer emerged from sleep mode and prompted me for a password. Should I assume it’s the same as the password on the computer I pawned in my previous life?
Password: *******esi
I was rewarded with a sweet R&M desktop and a couple of icons. System, NeuralNet, My-Tunes, My-Movies, My-Office.
System was just what I expected, lots of .dna files and other confusing scariness that allowed me to tweak my physical body and mental state. My-Tunes was a collection of every song I’d ever heard and My-Movies was a collection of every movie I’d ever seen. Not that I’m complaining, but it would have been nice to have “My-Games” so I could play RDR. My-Office was a clone of the popular software by a similar name. I have no idea what I’ll ever need a spreadsheet for in this world.
NuralNet opened up a search engine called Me-Seeks, featuring a familiar blue guy.
I typed in “beer” and several thousand results were displayed, anything I’d ever read, heard, or watched about beer, including how to make it. This right here made the price of admission totally worth it, access to an exact copy of everything I’d ever read, and I was a voracious reader. Sadly, most of the stuff I read was futurology — solar panels, electronics, biotech advancements, quantum computing. The material for steam engines, blacksmithing, farming and the like, were slim pickings. That’s okay though, I could still reproduce the Gutenberg press, the cotton gin, simple internal combustion engines, and basic batteries along with some sketchy knowledge of metal alloys, acids, bases, and other things I had read over the years. All that wasted time watching “How Things Work” was finally going to pay off. I copied a few likely money makers to My-Office, saved the file, and exported to my Notes, just in case they didn’t exist on Aerth.
A popup covered the screen.
📱 [New Upgrade Available!] 📱
🎉 Enhance Your Experience with the Latest HumanOS Features! 🎉
🌟 Features Include:
- 🧠 Memory Booster: Increase your Memory for smoother multitasking and improved performance.
- 🔋 Energy Optimizer: Extend your battery life with advanced power-saving techniques.
- 🛠️ Utility Upgrades: Access new apps and utilities to enhance your daily life and adventures.
- 🗺️ Advanced Mapping: Never get lost again with enhanced GPS and location tracking.
[Upgrade Now ✅] [Remind Me Later ❌]
Apparently I could upgrade myself, which reduced the cost of using my Utilities while providing other minor benefits. My Utilities would level up as I used them, which would increase their battery cost, so if I didn’t keep pace with an update to the OS they could become prohibitively expensive to operate.
Stupid pay-to-win world.
So, do I pay 2000 credits for version 2.0 or 5000 credits for version 3.0?
I selected version 3.0 and klicked [Install]. After watching it download the update, it popped up another screen that asked if I wanted to update now, or wait until Midnight for the mandatory update.
I selected [No] just as the grandfather clock chimed 10:30 PM. I wondered if time ran slower in here, because it seemed like I had spent a lot more time on the computer than 15 minutes. Walking over to the imposing steel door, I noticed a bronze key with a thin chain in the lock. There was another sticky note on the door. “Subconscious. Please keep the key with you at all times.”
That’s not scary at all, is it?
I unlocked the door with a loud clunk and pulled it open to reveal a bedroom straight out of some royal castle. I could tell immediately that it had seen better days. The tapestries on the wall were frayed and fading. The canopy over the bed had a few holes in it. A thin layer of dust covered the mantle of a small fireplace set into the wall. There was a window letting in bright sunlight and I moved over to look outside.
I was on the third floor of a keep surrounded by the walls and turrets of a modest castle. A castle that had fallen into serious disrepair. Did this represent the state of my inner mind? One tower was shattered and the curtain wall under it damaged. The lower bailey was full of litter. I could see a few soldiers walking around the allure, keeping watch.
I have people in my subconscious?
Someone behind me cleared their throat.
Whirling, I discovered a familiar old man standing in the door of the bedroom. What was left of his hair formed a white halo around his head, his face was unshaven and covered with several days of growth. He was dressed like a poor and tattered manservant, but carried himself with a dignified air.
“Woodhouse?”
“It’s nice to see the master at home,” He said with a proper English accent. “There are many matters that require the master’s attention.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, hanging the key around my neck and tucking it in my shirt. “And who are you again?”
“Your personal manservant, of course” he said with a slight bow. Walking over to the steel door, he pulled it closed and it locked with a solid thunk. “Master should always keep his inner sanctum closed. One never knows if something nasty will creep in.”
“Thank you, uh, Woodhouse. I’ll remember that,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “So what needs tending and how do things work around here?”
He smiled and beckoned me with a white gloved hand. “If master would be so kind as to follow me, I’ll introduce him to the staff and explain the duties and obligations of his domain.”
I’m 99.9% certain that everyone here is just me wearing a mask, so I shrugged and followed Woodhouse out of the bedroom and into the rest of my subconscious.
Five minutes later I was on the ground floor and seated on a shabby throne with the cast of a popular —and probably very copyright protected— animation in front of me. Woodhouse was the head butler and my personal manservant. Pam was the cook and demanded that I start importing sugar and alcohol before she was shushed by Woodhouse. Carol was a maid. Krieger was chancellor and Cyril was the steward. Archer and Lana were in charge of security. Ray was the marshal in charge of everything from the stables to the blacksmith.
I stared in disbelief at the motley crew kneeling in front of me. No wonder my inner mind was in such shambles. I was overcome with an irrational sense of anger at myself.
“Arright, listen up,” I barked, my voice echoing around the room. “I swear to God that I will fire every single one of you and hire circus clowns to replace you if you keep fucking things up. No joke. Circus clowns, got it?”
I ran a hand over my face as Ray pissed himself. “The only reason I’m not putting a boot in your asses right now is because I realise that you’re aspects of me, and the people you represent are pretty damn good at their jobs when they give enough of a shit to actually do them. As a team, you’re dysfunctionally fantastic and always seem to come out ahead no matter the odds.”
Heaving a sigh, I continued. “Things have changed and I need to get my shit together. I’m going to need every one of you to pull your weight and help me help you. Get back to your duties, I’ll meet you one on one later.”
My subconscious caretakers scurried out of the room.
“I’ll have one of the maids tend to the piss,” Woodhouse assured me.
“Never mind that,” I snapped. “I honestly had no idea my mind was such a shit show. I’m very disappointed in myself.” I pictured the Angry, Sad, and Disgusted counters on my personal movies clicking up. “Show me what needs to be done and let’s get started.”
During Woodhouse’s walking tour, everything clicked into place. This was some altered version of Bodiam castle, a location that was on my bucket list of places to visit. The royal council room, located behind the throne room, contained a “living” tapestry on the wall that showed the castle and surrounding land in real time. The castle was located in the middle of a small lake, and a single wood bridge led to the mainland. A small town surrounded the lake and a wall encircled the town. Outside the wall, the land was an irregular patchwork of forest and field, with a stinking swamp to the south. The entire “kingdom” was maybe ten miles across, surrounded by impassable mountains with innumerable creeks that fed the lake which drained into the southern swamp.
“Zombies are the problem, sir.” Woodhouse said, as I surveyed the living tapestry of my mental domain.
“Zombies?” I prompted.
“Yes sir, Zombies” Woodhouse continued. “Nasty bitey things that come in from the mountains and harass the peasants. They’ve gotten especially worse over the last few months. The soldiers do what they can, but they seem to have lost all motivation. Probably because they haven’t been paid.”
“And who pays them?”
“Typically chancellor Krieger is in charge of financial matters, although Steward Figgis has taken over the duty, sir.”
“Then let’s make Figgis our first stop.”
“Very good, sir.”
The office of the steward was run by Cyril Figgis, who managed the kingdom in my absence. It was overflowing with paperwork and charts, books and scrolls piled high on every flat surface. Cyril was desperately attempting to tidy things when Woodhouse and I walked in.
“Yo..you..your majesty,” Cyril stuttered, bowing low. Scrolls fell from his overloaded arms, spilling across the floor. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to gather them up. “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon. Please forgive the mess, housekeeping has been slacking…”
This was the guy who ran things while I was conscious.
“Shut up, Cyril” I said. “You’re responsible for everything in this office. That includes keeping it organised and tidy.”
“Y..yes milord.”
“It’s my understanding that you’re in charge of making sure everyone gets paid. So why aren’t we paying people?” I asked.
“We’re nearly out of Fuks, your majesty. I’ve been saving them for emergencies.”
“Fucks?”
“Fuks,” Cyril explained, pushing a pile of books off a large chest and opening it. Reaching inside he pulled out two small bags and emptied them on top of his cluttered desk. “Gold and Silver Fuks, the currency of the kingdom. I can’t maintain the kingdom when I have no Fuks to give.”
Behold the subconscious kingdom of Vincent J. Carter, it runs on Fuks.
“So how do I get more fuks?” I asked, examining one of the coins. It had an image of me on one side and symbol on the other that could be interpreted as “peace among worlds”.
“You kill the zombies, your majesty.”
Of course I do.
Woodhouse and I left Cyril’s office and headed towards the office of the chancellor where Krieger worked. It seemed that Cyril took over financial matters when Krieger became erratic and proposed luring all the zombies into the city and setting it on fire. Not sure how that corresponds to my own self-destructive behaviour, but I’ve had some dark thoughts over the last couple of months and I’m sure they’re reflected here.
Krieger’s office was much neater in comparison to Cyril’s, but it wasn’t by much. Shelves lined the walls and were filled with an array of questionable items, including a still snapping zombie head in a jar. While the office of the chancellor was supposed to be in charge of financial matters, it looked more like a dodgy rummage sale.
Krieger was launching sword blades at a pig carcass when we walked in.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“Hm? Oh, your majesty!” he said, turning around and bowing deeply. “I’m testing a new invention. It’s a spring loaded hilt that shoots sword blades. Very useful for our soldiers.”
“Stupidest idea ever,” I snapped. “I hate everything about it.”
“Okay,” Krieger said, tossing the hilt into a nearby pile of junk. “But don’t blame me when you need to shoot a sword at a zombie and don’t have one.”
“So why aren’t you managing the financial affairs? Collecting taxes, paying people, stuff like that?”
“Because the population has declined so much none of that matters?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wellll, the population represents things you care about,” Krieger said, going into lecture mode. “And the zombies and other monsters are real or imagined problems in your way. Since you don’t care about too many things the population has shrunk to just what’s needed to keep everything running on the bare minimum of fuks. And since you don’t seem to have any long or short term goals, there’s no need to kill off the zombies and get more fuks. Everything is fine just the way it is.”
“No, it’s not Krieger” I said, grinding my teeth. “My mind is in a shambles. It’s a joke. I want it fixed. No, I want it better than fixed. I want it improved.”
“Oh! I’ve got just the thing for that!” He said, digging around in his pockets, “It’s a spring-loaded hilt that shoots swords!”
Pam and Cheryl were hanging out a gallery window jeering at Archer and Lana sparring in the inner courtyard.
“What the hell are you doing!” I snapped
They whirled in surprise and then dropped into deep curtseys.
“Your majesty!”
I took a deep breath, trying to regain my centre. “Get to work cleaning this place up. Find a room, clean it, and move on to the next. Start with my bedroom, then the throne room and the council chamber, then everything else.”
Cheryl spoke up. “Can’t do it. We got no fuks to clean with.”
“You need fuks to clean?”
“Gotta buy stuff,” Pam said. “Cleaning supplies, food. You wanna eat, you’re gonna have to spend some fuks.”
“Talk to Cyril,” I ordered. “Tell him I said to get you supplied.”
They ran off in the direction of the stewards office.
I watched Archer and Lana bashing each other enthusiastically through the window.
Several minutes later the sparring couple stopped and bowed when Woodhouse and I stepped into the inner courtyard.
“Your majesty”
“My liege”
“Enough,” I said. “If you have enough energy to smash each other, you have enough energy to smash zombies. Tell me what I need to know so I can start gathering fuks.”
Archer shrugged and spoke first. “You just kill the zombies and other monsters. They drop fuks.”
“Anything special about the zombies?” I asked. “Are they fast? Do people get turned into zombies when bitten?”
“Nope,” Lana said, resting her wooden sword on her shoulder. “Most of them are slow shamblers and just need a good wack to the head to kill them.”
“Some are special,” Archer interjected. “Occasionally you’ll have some fast ones, or those that need holy water to kill. They’re just bad memories, figments of your personality that need to be eliminated. Some are worse than others.”
“The zombies are bad memories?” I asked, imagining all the bad memories that I had.
“Memories, thoughts, insecurities, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo,” Woodhouse supplied. “They are endless, but constant vigilance can keep them under control.”
“So let’s get started,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Lana and Archer lead me up to the parapet over the front gate where I looked over at the dozens of zombies milling about aimlessly in front of the entrance to my mind. Pulling out my gun, I began to pick them off, easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The crack of my spell pistol attracted more zombies and I dispatched them with ease until no more were left around the gate. As I fired each shot I could feel some sort of existential energy flowing from me, draining some hidden reserve.
“Gather up the Fuks,” I commanded. “And Lana?”
“Mi’lord?”
“There’s no excuse for this. From now on, I expect the walls to be clear of all zombies.”
“Yes mi’lord,” she said, giving me a small bow.
Turning to Archer, I shook my head. “You’re obviously my personal narcissism, so just try to stay out of Lana’s way, or better yet - try to kill more zombies than her. If you think you can.”
Archer scoffed. “No contest. I took top marks in sharpshooting.”
“That means I should expect to see results by tomorrow. I look forward to it.”
Archer looked panicked for a moment then smiled. “Sure, I can give you results.”
Turning back to Woodhouse I said “Show me what else need attending.”
Woodhouse led me through the town that represented my mind, pointing out each business that had fallen into disrepair, suggested others that needed improvements, and additions that would benefit me. In the distance, I could hear Lana and Archer shooting at the crowd of zombies and with each echoing shot I felt a tiny bit better about everything.
[INDEX]
2024.06.01 13:02 rangernumberx Respect Gold (Pokemon Adventures)
"I wanted to nab the thief while Exbo here wanted to get his buddy back. Although it was our first meeting, we fought together. That guy may have escaped, but we've decided to battle together from now on. Even if I meet new Pokemon along the way, I will still treat them the same way, because to me...Pokemon are my partners! We work alongside for the same goals, because...we are partners!"
Gold was raised around Pokemon, his home having so many it was known as the Poké House to those in the community. But after a chance encounter leads to his Pokemon being stolen and being the sole witness to a boy stealing Professor Elm's Totodile, Gold gives the police a false description of the thief before setting out with a Pokedex and a Cyndaquil to hunt him down himself. Along the way, Gold demonstrates a deceptive fighting style, often using his cue to send Pokeballs in strange directions and using other members of his team to hide the key play another Pokemon is performing, as well as an ability to nurture the full potential out of any Pokemon from as early as them being in an egg, earning him the moniker of 'the Hatcher'. With these skills, Gold would prove a key player as he faced off against the likes of a revived Team Rocket, a masked man seeking to rewrite time, and even Arceus themselves.
All feats are tagged with the chapter they appear in.
Durability - Blunt Force
Other
Moves
Moves
Other
Other
Physicals
Moves
Moves
Other
Moves
submitted by rangernumberx to respectthreads [link] [comments]
Gold was raised around Pokemon, his home having so many it was known as the Poké House to those in the community. But after a chance encounter leads to his Pokemon being stolen and being the sole witness to a boy stealing Professor Elm's Totodile, Gold gives the police a false description of the thief before setting out with a Pokedex and a Cyndaquil to hunt him down himself. Along the way, Gold demonstrates a deceptive fighting style, often using his cue to send Pokeballs in strange directions and using other members of his team to hide the key play another Pokemon is performing, as well as an ability to nurture the full potential out of any Pokemon from as early as them being in an egg, earning him the moniker of 'the Hatcher'. With these skills, Gold would prove a key player as he faced off against the likes of a revived Team Rocket, a masked man seeking to rewrite time, and even Arceus themselves.
All feats are tagged with the chapter they appear in.
Gold
Physicals
StrengthDurability - Blunt Force
- Kicked in the face by Crystal460
- Struck in the back by Whitney's Miltank105
- Kicked away by Sapphire while in a suit of armour328
- Hit back by the Masked Man172
- Slammed into the ground by Ho-Oh166
- Sent flying back from Arceus hitting the ground near them453
- Hit away by Arceus454
- Kicked by Arceus459
- Thrown about by water as an island sized water construct strikes the Battle Tower329
- Sent flying into a distant wall by Guile334
- Bitten on the hand by Silver's Totodile98
- Falls a distance onto a beach after his Mantine was struck out of the air by Lugia148
- Struck by Masked Man's Deliberd's Icy Wind113
- Caught in Masked Man's Deliberd's Blizzard113
- Seemingly caught in Jirachi's Doom Desire334
- Seemingly knocked back by a beam from Arceus459
- Dodges an attack from a group of Bellsprout97
- Dodges a beam from a Gyarados112
- Dodges a beam from Arceus453
- Dodges a spike trap suddenly appearing from a wall98
- Saves a girl from an Ursaring strike101
Skill
Cue Shots - Regular- Curves a Pokeball behind an opponent93
- Hits Aipom's ball to the top of a tree, where they're then released91
- Hits a fleeing Pokemon with enough force to relocate its jaw101
- While being swept away in a river in a storm, hits Exbo's ball so it rebounds off of two surfaces and gets him safely to shore95
- Bounces a pokeball repeatedly between the walls, ceiling, and floor of a room with a single strike to make several Yanma dizzy154
- Ricochets a Friend Ball repeatedly around two Pokemon before hitting a Heavy Ball at their two feet, sending both pokeballs to Gold's and Silver's hands respectively101
- Throws his cue to block a pair of shutters from closing on Emerald328
- Drops a distance onto a board on a rough sea, maintaining balance for a short distance due to it being 'not so different' from skateboarding146
Intelligence
Battles- On numerous occasions has used a Pokemon as a distraction while a second Pokemon enacts his actual strategy in secret111
- Returns Aibo before curving his ball around an opponent, allowing him to strike their behind93
- Has the other Pokedex holders withdraw their Pokemon before having Aibo ride his skateboard with them at Guile Hideout, allowing all the Pokemon to be released directly on top of him329
- Throws Aibo in front of a charging Donphan before he uses his tail to pull himself to safety, in that brief moment successfully confusing the Pokemon and causing them to charge into a wall96
- Goads a team of Bellsprout into stacking on top of each other, allowing Cyndaquil to take them all out at once97
- Has a school of Remoraid attack Lugia's mouth, stopping the legendary from closing it and being able to use Aeroblast148
- Calculates how long a Pokeball could endure a Dragonite's Hyper Beam, uses the fact that said Hyper Beam is not changing direction in midair to tell that its trainer isn't present to give it orders, and uses this to get the Dragonite to attack in a specific direction and allow Togbo to attack them from behind444
- Drops a straw doll from a tree as a decoy, allowing him to get behind the Masked Man to attack him104
- Disappears in a smokescreen, intending to drive the Masked Man into pursuing him through a forest, while he had actually climbed a tree so he could climb back down when the coast was clear to save a trainer and his Pokemon104
- Modifies his skateboard with bike parts105
- Hits Aipom's ball up a tree to release him before using a heavy pack as a counterweight to lift him up91
- Uses the fact Yanma have 360 degree vision in a plan to make them dizzy and have one drop a baby154
- Has Aipom strike the centre of a stack of blocks, allowing the rest of his team to easily smash through the entire stack while they previously were only able to break through a few, winning him the round against a Machamp which could easily smash through stacks on his own443
- Memorizes all the obstacles on a course by going along it the wrong way on his skateboard, allowing him to guide his Togepi around it flawlessly when the Pokemon was blinded442
- Had the foresight to hold onto Emerald's broken mechanical hand, causing Archie to grab hold of it and allowing Gold to let him drop335
Gear
Pokedex- His Pokedex shows a Pokemon's strength and attacks95
- Identifies four Pokemon at once103
- Identifies an attack as the Pokemon is lunging towards him103
- Can perform trades with other Pokedex owners109
- Is capable of tracking the energy of a specific Pokemon the owner has made contact with149
- When three Pokedexes in possession of their true owners are close to each other, all of them make a noise146
- Pokemon are held in pokeballs, which have a translucent top which Gold can see Pokemon through93
- They and their Pokemon can return to Gold's hand as he wishes93
- Protect Pokemon from attacks, though they can be destroyed444
- Pokemon can move their balls from the inside107
- A cue, which he uses to perform trick shots with his pokeballs93
- Clashes with Guile Hideout's sword329
- Used to quickly change his direction on a skateboard96
- Throws it to stop metal shutters from closing on Emerald328
- Is collapsible328
- Holds it in his clothes, not his bag145
- His pokegear allows him to make and take calls95
- A pair of goggles, used to protect him from the likes of Exbo's Smokescreen98
- Carries rope to climb up a pagoda97
- Uses a skateboard to get around95
Other
- Is given the title of 'The Hatcher' by Professor Oak, with him causing a Pichu egg to hatch the instant he touched it178
- Guides his team into winning the Skill, Jump, Stamina, Speed, and Power Pokeathlon courses442-443
- Despite all his skill, still cheats at pool at a games corner107
Aibo the Ambipom
As An Aipom
Physicals- Breaks a block with his tail443
- Holds up Gold while clutching a branch with his tail91
- Lifts up and throws an enormous Snowball442
- Thrown about by water as an island sized water construct strikes the Battle Tower329
- Struck away by a Donphan's Horn Attack96
- Catches a nearby Sunkern in his tail so that Gold can catch them99
- Reacts fast enough to catch Gold after the floor's broken beneath them97
- Rapidly spins Gold's cue with his tail to enhance Exbo's fire328
- Scratch - Aibo repeatedly scratches a foe91
- Swagger - Confuses a Hoothoot, causing it to attack its trainer instead of falsely calling out that a timer's up92
- Double Team - Creates an illusionary duplicate, allowing him to dodge an attack113
- Agility - Greatly increases Aibo's speed172
- Baton Pass - Passes stat increases, such as that gained through Agility, to another of Gold's Pokemon172
- Double Hit - Allows him to attack opponents on opposite sides of him at the same time with his tail, and immediately causes him to evolve448
As An Ambipom
Physicals- Sent flying back from Arceus hitting the ground near them453
- Poked back by Arceus451
- Hit by a beam from Arceus459
Other
Exbo the Typhlosion
As A Cyndaquil
Physicals- Breaks through a wooden floor97
- Gets bitten and scratched by Silver's Totodile98
- Intercepts an attack which is about to hit Gold103
- Ember - Shoots a tall pillar of fire from his back, burning Silver's hand while he's hanging on to a tall branch94
- Tackle - Exbo charges into an opponent98
- Smokescreen - Covers an area in obscuring smoke98
- Used to cook food for Gold, though he increases the heat and quickly burns it100
- Can't emit fire while bound up100
As A Quilava
Physicals- Alongside Silver's Croconaw and Crystal's Bayleef, stops Lugia's wing from crushing their trainers and hold it up before evolving148
- Struck by Silver's Croconaw's Water Gun111
- Ember - Works alongside Silver's Croconaw and Crystal's Bayleef to slightly deflect Lugia's Aeroblast147
- Double Team - Creates an illusory duplicate, making Croconaw bite down on nothing111
- Flame Wheel - Creates a wheel of fire around him, catching several Pokemon114
As A Typhlosion
Physicals- Breaks three blocks with a punch443
- Alongside Silver's Croconaw and Crystal's Bayleef, continues to hold up Lugia's wing to stop it from crushing their trainers148
- Thrown about by water as an island sized water construct strikes the Battle Tower329
- Sent flying back from Arceus hitting the ground near them453
- Hit by a beam from Arceus459
- Blast Burn - A stream of fire which, alongside eleven other Pokemon, destroys an island-sized water construct335-336
- With an unnamed fire attack enhanced by Aibo rapidly spinning Gold's cue, creates a powerful blast of fire which knocks back Guile Hideout328
Sunbo the Sunflora
As A Sunkern
PhysicalsMoves
- Flash - Emits a bright light which blinds several Team Rocket grunts and their Pokemon100
- Growth - Presumably increases Sunbo's strength, though its effect has not been clearly shown103
- Mega Drain - Presumably absorbs energy from an opponent, but it's not seen in use104
- Sunny Day - Increases the power of nearby fire-type moves108
- Giga Drain - Absorbs the energy of a Magcargo and a Sloking alongside Crystal's Parasect164
As A Sunflora
PhysicalsMoves
Other
Polibo the Politoed
As A Poliwag
MovesOther
As A Politoed
Physicals- Breaks a block with a punch443
- Alongside Red's Poliwrath, breaks apart Archie's armour335
- Struck with Guile's knee335
- Sent flying back from Arceus hitting the ground near them453
- Hit by a beam from Arceus459
- Struck by Masked Man's Deliberd's Icy Wind113
- Caught in Masked Man's Deliberd's Blizzard113
- Dodges a beam from a Gyarados112
- Dodges a beam from Arceus453
- Water Gun - Harms Tyranitar with a stream of water, possibly shooting three streams at once though this could simply be representing how fast Silver's Murkrow is moving to block it111
- Whirlpool - Creates a whirlpool at the Lake of Rage to stun a Gyarados112
- Double Slap - Repeatedly hits an opponent112
- Dynamic Punch - Polibo lunges forwards with a powerful punch113
- Hypnosis - Puts a crowd of Pokemon to sleep at once166
- Perish Song - Instantly knocks out Masked Man's Delibird, but also knocks out Polibo himself172
- Bounce - Used off-screen459
Sudobo the Sudowoodo
- Lifts up a large piece of rubble166
- No-sells Whitney's Miltank's Tackle and Exbo's Ember105
- Sent flying back from Arceus hitting the ground near them453
- Hit by Silver's Ursaring's Fury Swipes111
- Bitten by Ho-Oh166
- Hit by a beam from Arceus459
- Focus Punch - Strikes a Rhydon, knocking it out106
- Low Kick - He extends his leg forwards at crazy angles, tripping up an opponent111
- Dynamic Punch - Lunges forwards with a powerful strike which breaks stone111
- Mimic - Sudobo uses the move his opponent's most recently used, allowing him to trade Fury Swipe blows with Silver's Ursaring111
- Mud Slap - Throws up mud in a failed attempt to hold off Ho-Oh166
- Flail - After being bitten by Ho-Oh, sends the legendary flying away166
- Rock Tomb - Used off-screen459
- Is level 78 with the ability Sturdy456
- Is capable of growing to create a highly convincing tree disguise, shrinking when revealing himself106
Togebo the Togekiss
As A Togepi
Physicals- Immediately after hatching knocks Gligar back a short distance before getting hit away107
- Seemingly endures part of a Dragonite's Hyper Beam after the Pokeball took the brunt of the attack (with said beam being able to destroy stone), then takes out the Dragonite with an attack to the back of the head444
- Struck away by a Dotrio442
- Sent flying back from Arceus hitting the ground near them453
- Struck away by Arceus before being hit point-blank by a beam459
- Hit by a beam from Arceus459
- Metronome - Uses a random move, in its debut appearance hitting a Gligar with a beam strong enough to knock them out107
- Double Edge - Pierces into a Tyranitar's foot, taking it down111
- Is level 81 with the ability Hustle456
- Runs at full pelt around an obstacle course, following Gold's commands to dodge obstacles442
- Is a delinquent from birth due to Gold taking them to Game Corners while they were still an egg107
As a Togekiss
PhysicalsMoves
Tibo the Mantine and 20 Remoraid
Other
Pibu the Pichu
2024.06.01 13:00 WaveOfWire This is (not) a Dungeon - Chapter 2
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- - - - -
Ceele strolled through the damp grass along the outskirts of the village, a spring in her step and the dwindling scent of dew following behind. It rained yesterday, which had prevented her from going out to gather supplies, but the mild morning air had been accommodating enough for her to get an early start and make the trip. She was glad she did.
One hand clutched her new prize to her chest, while the other held a fraying wicker basket filled with herbs and some edible roots she gathered by exploring the forbidden forest. Despite her reservations regarding where she chose to go, her excitement now lingered like a steady thrum of shifting stones, giving her energy that defied how long she had been walking. She all but pranced beneath the burgeoning night's sky, gleefully toeing the line between the dirt pathways of the settlement’s outskirts and the trees of unclaimed land. Normally, her path back home would never be so close to the village, but she was far too gleeful to mind. She had come back with a sense of fulfillment and a rare object—or if not rare, then hopefully of great value.
It was hard to point to any one specific reason that she came across the orb. There had always been a ‘draw’ during her travels, urging her that there was something missing in her life, yet it was no more than a mild whim to walk in a particular direction more often than not. Once she reached this part of the continent, she was compelled to wander, never quite able to explain why she obliged the sensation besides having nowhere in particular to be. Even when she finally settled somewhere, it stayed in the back of her mind, suggesting that she was close to whatever would make the pit of vacancy go away. She ignored it, purposefully distracting herself with her work and responsibilities, yet that could only last so long. When she awoke this morning with plans to resupply, and all of her newfound spots had been picked clean by wildlife, she turned to the depths of the forest where she was warned not to tread. It was all too easy to follow the subtle tug in her chest through the loose justification.
The urge to be somewhere grew unbearable with every step closer to the forbidden area. That sense of having a direction she needed to go became stronger and stronger, until she was well into land long since forgotten. She came across an overgrown depression in the hillside, and was entranced by the foreboding image. Something about the cave just…beckoned her. She was far too weak to resist.
Horrible tales echoed into her ears as whispers of fearful voices, warning and unending, yet but a dull drone compared to her hammering heart. She navigated the trees and brushed aside unkempt vines, stepping into the cavern with a mix of expectation and trepidation, then laid eyes on the small obsidian stone perched atop a crumbling pillar. The feeling of needing to travel somewhere…stopped.
The pull was absent, which was why she held the orb close instead of placing it into her basket. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she recalled overheard tales of hidden gemstones, deep cavernous expanses, and the untold terrors that lay within. Comparing the scenes of those fables to the cave seemed foolish now; it wasn’t some torturous chamber, but a dusty depression in a small hillside. Besides, anything this pretty was sure to be worth a fair sum, and she needed the coin. Yet the thought of selling the precious-looking stone was a conflicting one. She shook off the thought for the time being, turning her attention back towards where she was going.
Shadows stretched and faded as the moon stole the last of the illumination afforded by the sun, replacing it with a calming glow that caressed the log frames and thatched roofs of various homes. A star-filled sky came into prominence as clouds lazily drifted away, revealing the promise of tomorrow’s fair-weathered arrival. It was too late for anyone to notice her treading on the edge of their town while lost in thought, but she was still careful not to get too close to the houses or livestock pens where people might be finishing the evening’s duties. It was best that they didn’t see her returning from a place she was told not to go. Still, her feet carried her near the dwellings as she took in the noises.
Ceele enjoyed the comforting chatter from a distance. Indistinct words floated freely. Meaningless gossip and warm goodbyes were exchanged between friends and family. Places of various occupations were dark and quiet, only the faint contented mewls and clucks of livestock coming from their pastures as they ate what was recently put out for them. No metal rang throughout the streets as it was struck inside a centralized smithy, no heated bartering came from an overactive trade house, and the crunch of dirt beneath transport or merchant wagons was absent, replaced by the rapid steps and yelps of children rushing to their homes before it got too dark out. It was all just gentle conversation and life drifting through the wind, taking the rustle of leaves along for the ride, just so she could hear it. Tranquil, in a word.
She wondered what it would sound like if she were yet one more voice within that crowd of kindness. Would it be loud like the larger cities? Would she struggle to maintain a thought with so many stray topics floating about? Would she once more yearn for the peace and quiet of solitude that she had grown used to, or would she immerse herself, free of judgment and laughing like the carefree young that scampered about? Did thinking about it even matter?
Her smile fell from its genuine intensity—still worn, but not as fully. She glanced downward as her stride lost its jubilant bounce, her tail losing its sway as her grey eyes examined the dry black scales that adorned her body against her wishes. It was the ugly hue of tarnished oil, unlike the skin of any other kobold she had met. Some had reds or greens, yellows or whites, while most were between a sandy tan or earthen brown. The rainbow of peculiarities was displayed by the lucky few, and she was one of them…
…Yet she was different in the worst of ways.
Even if she would rather any other colour, she supposed it was that way to make sure no one came near without accepting the unspoken risks. That was what her mother always said, anyway, though the woman hardly feared much of anything in her old age, and dedicated herself to giving her offspring all the love she had left to give—a perk of living a full life. She would always help her daughter bathe, complimenting the colour of what most were unnerved by. That was more than a decade ago now, however. Ceele’s parents had passed on while she was still young, and she took to travelling not long after, working at what she could to afford what little she needed. Never for long, though—just enough to get to the next town between where she was and where the urge to go lay. There were certainly moments she looked back on fondly, but the journey had taken its toll.
The crude material of her ‘dress’ was coarse, old, and heavy, but it helped ease the worst of spring's chill—even if it was more of a modified sack than proper attire. Still, it was all she had after the last of her clothing fell apart, and giving the repurposed material a name that reminded her of something else made it less uncomfortable to wear, somehow. It would have to do until she could afford a pitying seamstress or the like. Until then, she would pretend she didn’t look so desperate, even if it only highlighted her status and made finding work difficult.
But it did. The dishevelled garment was a far cry from the wonderful silks or breathtaking designs she had seen some women wear, harshly marking the distinction between herself and those of affluence. The clothing of commoners was also a leap in style and quality, so she couldn't say her attire was up to even modest standards. No matter how hard she squinted, and no matter how much she fantasized otherwise, she seemed every bit like the vagrant she was, down to the soil embedded in the curvature of her claws and the stains throughout her fabrics. She looked like a serf from the more oppressed lands, yet they too wore crude cottons, which said a lot about how she appeared to those who had never lived a life of servitude. It was obvious that she was an outsider. That she didn't belong amongst the rest. It made changing something as simple as her appearance all the more difficult; prospective employment always saw a young woman who seemed more likely to steal or swindle than make an honest day’s living.
There was one good twist of fate in recent memory, however, and she came upon the result of it after leaving the slowing bustle of the village behind. Her steps carried her through a small copse of trees on the outskirts of town, the small shaded path leading to the back of a large, carefully pruned clearing, a scattering of fruit-bearing trees providing even darker shadow than the already dim moonlight. She skirted along the aging fence on the border that kept predatory animals away, carefully hoisting herself over the barrier where a large vegetable garden she was responsible for tending resided. If one were to tell her she would be living in such an area several months ago, she would have smiled politely and walked away, yet here she was.
A modest, warmly lit home occupied the middle of the clearing, sitting front and centre when one approached from the village path. It looked quite cozy, surrounded by berry bushes that were just beginning to bloom as the last dregs of winter slipped away. A front patio displayed a nice table and well-loved chairs, the rustic appearance only adding to its charm as a place where friends and family spent the warm summer afternoons. A smithy to the left of the house functioned as an additional heated building during the colder months, but usually served as a storefront and to muffle the sounds of hammered iron, though that had become less common. An old stable was nearby, close enough to be accessible, but not so close as to disturb the once occupying animals with sounds of iron craft. It hadn't seen a horse in quite some time, apparently, so it was mostly a workshop for whatever tasks didn’t require fire or metal.
There was a long history attached to each little detail—from the scuffs along the wooden siding to the depressions in the ground where daily routine wore into the earth. Every fault suffered throughout the years was matched by a thousand quirks that made it feel welcoming, like the house itself was merely waiting for the next friendly face with one of its own. She knew that the inside of each building would look just as cared for.
Her concern lay outside, however. It was a comparatively miniscule space just barely visible through the sheltering trees, true, yet it was where her efforts turned into tangible results, and where a stranger’s trust was painstakingly repaid. Once overgrown grass had been laboriously trimmed, the weeds plucked and disposed of, and now nothing distracted from what she could claim she had done.
The small plots of rock-bordered soil had little buds of growing vegetables, a sense of pride never failing to bloom in her breast with the knowledge that it would be barren without her touch. When her troubles and concerns grew heavy, and fears of the future or spectres of the past loomed over her head, she could look at where she had brought life where it wouldn't otherwise be. Some days, that was enough. She smiled in appreciation at what was admittedly amateur work, the night’s sky helping to hide any inevitably made mistakes.
She enjoyed the sight for a moment longer, then turned to walk towards a neglected old tool shed that was well out of sight within the trees, far away from whatever warmth and comfort the larger house offered to everyone and anyone. She put a hand on the degrading wood of the entryway, giving one last sad smile at the garden as she dismissed selfish thoughts of taking the eventual harvest for herself. A breath cleared the uncertainty from her voice, and she pushed open the door.
“I'm home!”
= = = = =
It took a while for Altier to adjust to his situation, and even once he accepted that his mana wasn't being siphoned, he was still reeling from confusion. He had spent centuries with every year passing by without his notice, yet now he was painfully aware of each creeping second languidly dragging on with the expediency of growing grass. It was as disorienting as it was painfully nostalgic.
Time was something he was never good with, and it only got worse as a dungeon. He'd get lost in creating rooms, corridors, creatures, and whatever else needed doing, only pausing to watch or listen to the few adventurers he became interested in. There was a stint where he spent what felt like hours agonizing over new abilities or options while he let the system manage things in the background, though he supposed it might have been much longer. So many wasted days, yet he still hadn't managed to try everything he had gained access to. Some abilities were simply too niche, came with concerning titles, or held descriptions that made him wary. Anything with ‘Decay’ in the name was instantly ignored—he didn't need more reasons to fear his affinity, and from the few he took the effort to read through, they were always vile.
But his existence for the moment was no longer like those endless stretches spent pondering the minutiae of what would help his adventurers grow stronger. Now, he could follow the rhythmic sounds of footsteps and steady breathing that set a calming pace. They were someone else's, yes, but they contextualized how easy it was to slip away without the subtle noises of life that he had long since surrendered to help his family. Of course, there were more differences that he noticed since being removed from his crumbling cavern, and his sight was the newest change.
He never gave much thought to how far he could see before. Why would he? As a man, his world extended as far as he could fathom, yet was also confined to the room where he spent his days, and as a dungeon… Well, who was he to consider distance when an event happening miles away could be seen with a flicker of thought? Nothing was too far when it was within his creation. Or his ‘body,’ he supposed. Sadly, his entire perception currently consisted of the small sphere of his obsidian core, and maybe a finger's length beyond it—which is to say, not much. He could make out the fine details in the dirty burlap he was held against, and how pale moonlight slowly took over the blurred reds of sunset, but hardly anything more. It was all just frosted colours after a certain point, and he found it infinitely frustrating. He just wanted to peer beyond the haze and scaly hand holding him to confirm that the sky he remembered was still there. Alas, the sunlight faded at too quick a pace, yet one oh so agonizingly slow.
The ensuing darkness gave him nothing to do but think about where he was, not that he had any ideas. He was too curious about why he wasn't dead to bother much with his blurry surroundings after the soft-spoken kobold abducted him, thus why he only belatedly noticed how limited his worldview had become. There might have been a forest beyond his cave, but the greens and browns were gone, and the sounds of steps through brush was replaced by the distant din of a village. An idle curiosity pondered if he would recognize any descents of his ‘family tradition’ adventurers there, but he was being carried by what most considered a monster, so likely not.
That short musing was short-lived, however, and he brought his focus back to the matter at hand. He supposed he was being taken somewhere specific, but that was an obvious deduction, considering he was taken at all. The why of the matter was less so; for what purpose would someone want a Decay-aligned core? He hadn’t heard of them before…well, before he was made into one, but he couldn’t imagine many uses. Maybe he was being sold? His…kidnapper? His sudden companion seemed rather pleased by their discovery of him, so that might be the case, and it was morbidly amusing to think that a frail, sickly young man might one day become a coveted, highly valuable item. His abduction could also be a part of some cult’s nefarious activities, but he didn't want to think about that too hard. He experienced enough odd ceremonies from the adventurers who took the time to tell him their tales.
Either way, he wasn't in the dungeon anymore, and he couldn’t see where he was going. He tried to query his menu to glean an answer, but was met with a scrambled mess he suspected read ‘Synchronizing…’ and little else. It gave him a headache trying to make sense of it—which he didn't know was possible anymore—so he dismissed the text and distracted himself with blurs from whatever diluted senses he still had. There wasn’t much to observe other than the constant footfalls and the flicker of shadows on his companion’s burlap garment. They might have travelled through brush again, but it was too dark to really say for certain.
Eventually, there was something new. He heard an old latch rattle and rusted door hinges groan, then a shuddered clack that confirmed he was now in a building. His kobold acquaintance gently cooed at something before moving about the nearly pitch-black space, finally setting him down on a… He wasn’t sure what it was, besides old and wooden.
[D$#@m$n E@$*ded]
The headache from before became a blinding migraine that suffocated him under a flash-flood of suffering. Seconds passed in abject torture until it blissfully abated, the mental blinks clearing his mind enough to notice a change in his existence. Specifically, he could actually see something besides the rotting wood grain he was placed on top of.
And it wasn’t anything promising…
He was more or less in the centre of a room no bigger than twelve paces by maybe ten. Not a terrible size for a space, but it was clearly never meant to house someone. His resting place looked about as neglected as he surmised; it was an upturned feeding trough, he supposed, since calling it a table seemed too generous. The surface was rife with holes and degraded iron, so it was something that once saw regular use before being replaced and tossed into storage, never to see the light of day again.
Actually, most things in the room seemed to fit that description. The window shutters were installed with metal hinges that had since rusted them closed, the misalignment letting in a draft—and whatever weather was outside as well, most likely. A poorly carved bowl sat on the floor, the stain beneath it hinting that it collected any rainwater that slowly dripped from the leaky roof. The wooden floorboards looked old, splintered, and in need of maintenance or replacement, though an effort had been put into abrading it somewhat smooth lately.
A tiny and decrepit fireplace was to the left of the door upon entry, its brickwork slowly crumbling due to weathering and age. It was sized more for keeping the room warm during mild days than to keep away the frigid chill of night. Its base only held cold ashes, but there was a collection of deadwood and scraps nearby, so that would probably be rectified soon. A small wheel-less cart had been turned into storage against the opposite wall, some herbs and other foraged items stowed away in it for future use. Various things he remembered seeing his father and brothers use in the fields were scattered about, too. It was nostalgic to see, honestly, even if his recollections had blurred over time.
Bundles of tattered blankets formed a pair of nests in the far corner, the smaller of the two had a pile of rough plants nearby. That answered his silent pondering of the room's purpose somewhat, though he was pretty sure the bedding material was salvaged, and there didn’t seem to be any hay or padding underneath whoever was sleeping on it. He didn’t know what to think about the weeds; they were purposefully placed there, and whoever did so had taken the time to wash them, but it was still strange.
He couldn’t see a doorway besides the entrance, yet most of the hallmarks of residency were put where space could be afforded, however crude. All in all, he surmised that it was a gardening shed of sorts, and his new acquaintance apparently lived here. He wasn't sure what he was expecting when a creature he had only read about came into his dungeon, but it wasn't being brought to a rundown and decrepit shack for unknown purposes.
Even if he had been raised by parents who made a humble living at the best of times, and they had emptied their coffers for unsuccessful attempts to ease his ailments, his acquaintance's living space made him uncomfortable. His family's house was never anything fancy, true—it shared some of the worn qualities that inevitably gathered over the years—but it was never this bad. His home benefited from a father's touch keeping it robust and a mother’s love keeping it warm, whereas this place had seen neither in quite some time. Oh, there was evidence that such was once the case; a wall was adorned with carefully made and well-spaced hangers for the various gardening tools, though the implements themselves had become a victim of neglect. That being said, he could make out the fresh soil and recent scratches exposing furrows of silver, so they were seeing use again.
A scrape and clack of flint drew his attention to his kobold companion. They were kneeling in front of the fireplace, methodically sparking life back into a dead flame with twigs and dried leaves. A slow, steady breath into the reddened base illuminated its face with a dull orange glow, revealing its weary visage and the permanently etched smile that rested beneath its cold grey eyes. The black-scaled kobold looked tired, if he were to guess—much the same as Altier did when he spent countless days watching everyone living a life he could never have through the mossy window of his bedroom. He was probably humanizing it too much. Still, he was surprised by the muted pang of sympathy, and how he would feel much more than blithe curiosity after spending so much time alone in the crumbling crypt of his own making.
A mental breath cycled through him as he looked at the odds and ends yet to be observed. Hardly anything else was of note—everything else was degraded and neglected, too. He did notice a nest of blankets move though, which was as good a distraction as any. The answer to his previous ‘pile of weeds’ inquiry poked a tiny nose from a crease in the fabric, then rapidly pawed at the blankets to dig itself out. Altier stared at the creature in both recognition and confusion.
It was a rabbit…or at least it looked like one, assuming you were to also describe a porcupine and a sea urchin as well. He was pretty sure he didn’t remember any hare that had jagged metal-tipped fur, nor that had said fur arranged into a row of spiked horns that flowed down its spine, terminating at a large fluffy tail, which was equally bizarre to see. The whole of its coat could double as a weapon, with semi-sharp barbs sticking off seemingly at random, yet he remembered an adventurer saying most animals used that sort of thing defensively. He increased his focus as he tried to make sense of the odd creature. Surely he would have heard about—
[Hoppittttttt#%%÷ — Ferro-o-orabbit-it (Ma%$le)
Abil—]
[Null]
[Er0Rrrrrrrr—]
[Und#$f—]
He bit back the pain caused by the sudden intrusion of his menu, blanking out the text and mentally retreating to hide from the source. Did he just inspect something? How? Shouldn’t his entire…‘framework,’ was it…? Yes, that was it. Shouldn’t that have been corrupted? Why could he see the creature’s information when his entire framework was damaged? That was the first ability he lost, so why is it the first to be functional? How was it functional? Was it? It did just spit garbled text at him, but it was something, and that was more than he had gotten from it in a very long time. If it was somehow working—no matter how poorly—then that left the question of why he hadn't heard of anything called a ‘ferrorabbit’ before, assuming he read that correctly.
A soft thud vibrated the tro— table, startling him out of thought. He turned his attention to the button nose wiggling erratically at him, the short, stubby muzzle leading to surprisingly expressive and curious red eyes. Dull brown fur jutted off in random tufts and patches, changing to a darker tint on its paws and the upper half of its ears, while the tips of its spikes were a muted hue of iron. It still seemed just as soft as the less pointed variety he remembered, if a touch dirty. Upright ears twitched this way and that way as its head vigorously shook, eventually settling on pointing in his direction when it calmed down enough.
It was apparent that he had its undivided attention…for all of a few seconds. His scaly companion called something out in their foreign tongue, and whatever conclusion the pointy-furred animal came to, it seemed more interested in the kobold, parting from him after nudging his core with its nose.
[Cre-e-e—]
[Errrrrrr0r: Undefiiiiiiii—]
[Acceeeeep-t-t-t??]
[Yeeee— s s / Nnnnnnn—]
He winced at the intrusion, but the contents detracted from the pain. He couldn’t remember the system ever asking him a question without his explicit intent being involved. It wanted him to…accept something? Was it the system prompting him, or the animal? What was he to accept?
[Creatuuuuu—]
[Acce-e-e-%#@ed!]
…What?
= = = = =
“Hoppit, that's not food!” Ceele admonished half-heartedly, placing a larger branch on the burgeoning flame before she got to her feet. She wasn’t actually that worried; the stone was as big as his head, and she was pretty sure he couldn't bite into it. Hopefully. “Come here, momma has a treat for you!”
The ferrorabbit playfully bumped the gemstone and jumped off the low table, landing with a soft thud that belied how heavy he was for his tiny size. He wiggled in excitement, his ears flailing and releasing a slight clack whenever the two connected. It got even louder when she grabbed her basket and put away the useful herbs, taking out a specific item that she had gathered just for him. The little bun wasted no time in scurrying over and standing tall on his hind legs to judge if the offered plant was to his liking—and it was, based on how he dug in with enthusiasm. She stifled a laugh as she contentedly watched him nibble away on the treat, ignoring the guilt that came with knowing she couldn't afford proper vegetables for him. He had a hard life too, and it tore at her to have so little to give.
She came across Hoppit a year ago, during a storm that worsened while she was travelling between towns. The day had darkened to night in spite of it still being about noon, but the weather didn't care for how bright it was supposed to be. Wind and rain became a typhoon, forcing her to seek shelter in a thankfully abandoned den of what was probably a larger animal. She was fine with waiting out the squall, since the stone roof over her head was more than she usually had back then, but the sounds of dull bangs and thuds near her hideaway was followed by cries of animals yelping in pain. Curiosity won over reason, and she left the safety of her shelter to see what was causing the disturbance. Truthfully, she was hopeful that she'd come across scraps or the like, her hunger driving her forward, and she could always turn back if it seemed dangerous. Yet when she arrived at the source of the commotion, she found herself thinking of anything but food.
Two predators had fought over a small burrow, both trying to dig out a meal and taking offence to the other doing the same. What they didn’t know was that they were assaulting the home of ferrorabbits. Specifically, the home of an angry, protective, and well-fed mother that was keeping her newborns safe from the storm when predators decided to try their luck. From the scene Ceele came across, it was certainly obvious why most people dislike trying to hunt the creatures.
Sadly, the rabbit didn't survive an attack from two predators, but she did make their victory pyrrhic; neither could do much about their hunger with their bodies full of cuts and holes, and it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to blood loss or infection. The mother's sacrifice meant that the babies had avoided the imminent threat, but they were left unattended as a consequence, and it took an opportunistic bird swooping down to shake Ceele out of her shock. Despite her subsequent hurry, she only acted in time to save one of the orphaned young. The warren was new and barely dug out, which meant that it didn’t take much effort for the kits to be found—by both her and hungry maws. All she could do was scoop the ball of fluff into her arms and run back to the cave before anything else tried to eat it.
In retrospect, it was a stupid decision for a number of factors. She barely had the resources to supply herself, and an attempt to raise offspring of any type would only make the inevitable heartbreak worse. But when she saw how quiet and scared he was… How his tiny, shaking body calmed in her arms, those terrified red eyes seeking comfort… She should have just walked away when she knew there wasn’t going to be anything to fill her stomach. She should have put the baby animal down and let nature take its course…yet the preciously furry face stole her heart far too quickly for it to grow so cold. The next day was spent backtracking to the nearest town to get him something suitable to eat, which used most of her meagre savings. Still, it was worth every coin.
Hoppit had been accompanying her ever since. He grew quickly, transitioning from something she saved that stormy night into a presence she had grown to love like a child. The little lagomorph would bounce along beside her during her travels, then ride in her arms as he rested—though the latter happened with worrying frequency as of late. She hadn’t learned much about the springy herbivores, but she knew enough to say that he wasn't as big as he should be, nor was his fur as sharp. No matter how startled he was, his spiky coat never managed to do more than stiffen slightly, which was apparently a side effect of poor diet, according to snippets of conversation she had overheard on the topic. She wanted him to be healthy, but she didn't know what he needed. Not many farmers raised ferrorabbits, and those that did were far away, so she didn’t have anyone to ask what she should be doing. Her best course of action was to give him what little she had.
Ceele was well aware of how he would be better off on his own, but he followed her whenever she tried to set him free. Hoppit just kept launching into her arms and wiggling his ears, ecstatic that he was with her again, uncaring that food was scarce and that they spent most of their days travelling. No amount of cold nights spent bundling up under the tattered blankets she managed to find ever dampened his spirits, and he was content to eat the grass or flowers whenever he felt like it, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t getting enough nutrition. He would dig and excitedly drag back oddities that he found, and the one time he found a plant that looked particularly good for him, he insisted that it be shared with her.
A black pit still lingered in her chest when she recalled how pleased he was while he munched on the rare vegetable he discovered, then how distressed he became when she wouldn’t have any as well. He bumped and nipped at her, all but begging her to eat. His ears pinned back against his head, his fur bristled in a way she hadn’t seen since. It was only when she took a small bite and let him inspect the new teeth marks that he seemed to calm down, but perhaps she had been looking too deep into the actions of her tiny friend. All she could say for certain was that he was scared she was going hungry.
A morbid thought wondered if his first mother had refused food shortly before being attacked, and he—as small and simple as he was—had connected the two events in his mind, making him absolutely terrified that something would happen if Ceele didn’t have something too. All of that fear, and desperation overwhelmed him, just because she was happier watching him eat. She was determined to erase that issue. She would find something that needed a worker and earn enough to feed them both. One day, she would be able to smile at how big and healthy her little fluffy boy had become, but until then, it was becoming increasingly difficult not to think about how she was spending so much time growing vegetables and fruit that he couldn’t have…
Every morning was an exercise in tending to the gardens while actively shoving down images of a pleased ferrorabbit happily eating the results. That never went well; no matter how determined she was to complete her duties without a single selfish thought, most tasks were done while picturing his full belly and delighted bounces. There were a few weeks until the fastest of the crops would be ready for harvest, and Ceele would have to collect them while fighting the urge to bring back just a few for him.
She couldn’t, because she knew exactly how quickly that could escalate. It would start small—A vegetable here, a fruit there—but seeing Hoppit happy was one of the precious few good things she had in her life. Crossing the line would only become easier each time. They couldn’t risk losing their new home over greed, and she was already betraying the trust given to her by housing a wild animal, especially one known to be a pest for crops. She didn't want to know how angry it would make her benefactors if she was caught taking their vegetables for one.
No matter how tame and precious Hoppit was, and no matter how well he listened, they would only see him as the same creature that ruined harvests in droves. Thus was why she had to tell him to stay cooped up by himself while she was working or scavenging. And to her surprise, he did.
Honestly, she had made the initial request with the expectation of needing to carry him back into their home until he understood that she wasn’t leaving him forever. There wasn’t much she could do to stop the ferrorabbit from digging through the old wooden building if he wanted to get out. He wouldn’t need to damage anything either—a rotting board on the door only needed a little push to nudge it out of the way, and his natural curiosity made sure he was aware of it. But no, Hoppit was well-behaved as always, keeping hidden until she walked through the door, where he would leap from the shadows to personally show her how good he was and how he stayed put like she asked him to. It never stopped amazing her that he had such a surprising level of understanding despite being an animal, and that was to say nothing of how young he was.
All that intelligence, joy, and companionship he offered her…and yet the best she could give back to him was the weeds from the garden and the odd plant she found while scavenging…
Soft clacks of flicking ears dragged her from her pondering, her mind returning to the present. Hoppit finished his treat of the small plant, then bounced in place and scurried over to his bowl of water, perfectly happy to have eaten only that. He was so joyful with how little she provided, approaching every day of scarcity with the same enthusiasm she could never muster, as if certain that everything would be alright.
“It’s bedtime, Hoppit,” Ceele announced through a soft sigh, stoking the fire with enough branches to hopefully last the night. The ferrorabbit perked an ear in her direction, then sat on his haunches to extend the rest of himself up, his two little forepaws adorably held to his chest as he inspected the room like he always did. She smiled and made sure everything was stored away, then laid down on her bundle of blankets, covering herself with the warmest one. Hoppit bolted over to snuggle once he decided everything in the shed was up to his standards, throwing himself to the floor in a dramatic flop of comfort. Her quiet laughter subsided as they both settled in for the night, her tail completing the rabbit’s encompassing cuddle, but her eyes fell towards the obsidian orb on the table, her thoughts following suit.
It sat there, just as she left it, as benign as anything else ever placed atop the improvised furnishing. Yet there was a sense of ease and purpose as well. The old wooden trough seemed…important with its adornment firmly laid upon its surface, and she couldn’t puzzle out why. She was starting to doubt her earlier excitement.
Should she sell it? Would anyone know where it came from? Would anyone know what it was, or if it was worth anything? If she could get even a modest sum for it, she would be able to buy clothing, food, and new bedding. It would be easier to convince someone to give her work if she was dressed better and wasn’t so thin, and then she would have the income to slowly improve both of their lives. She could pay for a wandering merchant to ask a ferrorabbit rancher about the animal, even if it would take time to get back to her, or maybe she could hire a local if they needed to go near one for some reason. The cost didn’t matter to her as long as it happened.
But there was something else bothering her about the idea of selling the stone. She had travelled so far with a tug in her chest, only for the feeling of wanderlust to dissipate as soon as she held it. Was that a sign? She was never one for things like ‘fate,’ but a niggling doubt in her mind discouraged the idea of making a profit off her discovery. Even if what she could gain was so very tempting, and even if Hoppit would be happier if she did…
She tore her dampened eyes away and closed them, ignoring the burning trails running across her face. It would be another early morning, and she needed to sleep so she could take care of the garden. Decisions like this could wait. Once she had nothing else distracting her, and she had time to properly think about it, she would see how she felt about the stone.
Eventually, she dozed off with Hoppit pressed against her chest, and a longing in her heart.
Next
—
A/N: Patreon and Ko-fi will be 1 chap ahead this time around, and I've set it so everything from the lowest tier up can read the newest trashfire! Anything above that is sheer show of love. Hope you enjoyed!
submitted by WaveOfWire to HFY [link] [comments]
PRs: u/anakist & u/BroDogIsMyName
- - - - -
Ceele strolled through the damp grass along the outskirts of the village, a spring in her step and the dwindling scent of dew following behind. It rained yesterday, which had prevented her from going out to gather supplies, but the mild morning air had been accommodating enough for her to get an early start and make the trip. She was glad she did.
One hand clutched her new prize to her chest, while the other held a fraying wicker basket filled with herbs and some edible roots she gathered by exploring the forbidden forest. Despite her reservations regarding where she chose to go, her excitement now lingered like a steady thrum of shifting stones, giving her energy that defied how long she had been walking. She all but pranced beneath the burgeoning night's sky, gleefully toeing the line between the dirt pathways of the settlement’s outskirts and the trees of unclaimed land. Normally, her path back home would never be so close to the village, but she was far too gleeful to mind. She had come back with a sense of fulfillment and a rare object—or if not rare, then hopefully of great value.
It was hard to point to any one specific reason that she came across the orb. There had always been a ‘draw’ during her travels, urging her that there was something missing in her life, yet it was no more than a mild whim to walk in a particular direction more often than not. Once she reached this part of the continent, she was compelled to wander, never quite able to explain why she obliged the sensation besides having nowhere in particular to be. Even when she finally settled somewhere, it stayed in the back of her mind, suggesting that she was close to whatever would make the pit of vacancy go away. She ignored it, purposefully distracting herself with her work and responsibilities, yet that could only last so long. When she awoke this morning with plans to resupply, and all of her newfound spots had been picked clean by wildlife, she turned to the depths of the forest where she was warned not to tread. It was all too easy to follow the subtle tug in her chest through the loose justification.
The urge to be somewhere grew unbearable with every step closer to the forbidden area. That sense of having a direction she needed to go became stronger and stronger, until she was well into land long since forgotten. She came across an overgrown depression in the hillside, and was entranced by the foreboding image. Something about the cave just…beckoned her. She was far too weak to resist.
Horrible tales echoed into her ears as whispers of fearful voices, warning and unending, yet but a dull drone compared to her hammering heart. She navigated the trees and brushed aside unkempt vines, stepping into the cavern with a mix of expectation and trepidation, then laid eyes on the small obsidian stone perched atop a crumbling pillar. The feeling of needing to travel somewhere…stopped.
The pull was absent, which was why she held the orb close instead of placing it into her basket. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she recalled overheard tales of hidden gemstones, deep cavernous expanses, and the untold terrors that lay within. Comparing the scenes of those fables to the cave seemed foolish now; it wasn’t some torturous chamber, but a dusty depression in a small hillside. Besides, anything this pretty was sure to be worth a fair sum, and she needed the coin. Yet the thought of selling the precious-looking stone was a conflicting one. She shook off the thought for the time being, turning her attention back towards where she was going.
Shadows stretched and faded as the moon stole the last of the illumination afforded by the sun, replacing it with a calming glow that caressed the log frames and thatched roofs of various homes. A star-filled sky came into prominence as clouds lazily drifted away, revealing the promise of tomorrow’s fair-weathered arrival. It was too late for anyone to notice her treading on the edge of their town while lost in thought, but she was still careful not to get too close to the houses or livestock pens where people might be finishing the evening’s duties. It was best that they didn’t see her returning from a place she was told not to go. Still, her feet carried her near the dwellings as she took in the noises.
Ceele enjoyed the comforting chatter from a distance. Indistinct words floated freely. Meaningless gossip and warm goodbyes were exchanged between friends and family. Places of various occupations were dark and quiet, only the faint contented mewls and clucks of livestock coming from their pastures as they ate what was recently put out for them. No metal rang throughout the streets as it was struck inside a centralized smithy, no heated bartering came from an overactive trade house, and the crunch of dirt beneath transport or merchant wagons was absent, replaced by the rapid steps and yelps of children rushing to their homes before it got too dark out. It was all just gentle conversation and life drifting through the wind, taking the rustle of leaves along for the ride, just so she could hear it. Tranquil, in a word.
She wondered what it would sound like if she were yet one more voice within that crowd of kindness. Would it be loud like the larger cities? Would she struggle to maintain a thought with so many stray topics floating about? Would she once more yearn for the peace and quiet of solitude that she had grown used to, or would she immerse herself, free of judgment and laughing like the carefree young that scampered about? Did thinking about it even matter?
Her smile fell from its genuine intensity—still worn, but not as fully. She glanced downward as her stride lost its jubilant bounce, her tail losing its sway as her grey eyes examined the dry black scales that adorned her body against her wishes. It was the ugly hue of tarnished oil, unlike the skin of any other kobold she had met. Some had reds or greens, yellows or whites, while most were between a sandy tan or earthen brown. The rainbow of peculiarities was displayed by the lucky few, and she was one of them…
…Yet she was different in the worst of ways.
Even if she would rather any other colour, she supposed it was that way to make sure no one came near without accepting the unspoken risks. That was what her mother always said, anyway, though the woman hardly feared much of anything in her old age, and dedicated herself to giving her offspring all the love she had left to give—a perk of living a full life. She would always help her daughter bathe, complimenting the colour of what most were unnerved by. That was more than a decade ago now, however. Ceele’s parents had passed on while she was still young, and she took to travelling not long after, working at what she could to afford what little she needed. Never for long, though—just enough to get to the next town between where she was and where the urge to go lay. There were certainly moments she looked back on fondly, but the journey had taken its toll.
The crude material of her ‘dress’ was coarse, old, and heavy, but it helped ease the worst of spring's chill—even if it was more of a modified sack than proper attire. Still, it was all she had after the last of her clothing fell apart, and giving the repurposed material a name that reminded her of something else made it less uncomfortable to wear, somehow. It would have to do until she could afford a pitying seamstress or the like. Until then, she would pretend she didn’t look so desperate, even if it only highlighted her status and made finding work difficult.
But it did. The dishevelled garment was a far cry from the wonderful silks or breathtaking designs she had seen some women wear, harshly marking the distinction between herself and those of affluence. The clothing of commoners was also a leap in style and quality, so she couldn't say her attire was up to even modest standards. No matter how hard she squinted, and no matter how much she fantasized otherwise, she seemed every bit like the vagrant she was, down to the soil embedded in the curvature of her claws and the stains throughout her fabrics. She looked like a serf from the more oppressed lands, yet they too wore crude cottons, which said a lot about how she appeared to those who had never lived a life of servitude. It was obvious that she was an outsider. That she didn't belong amongst the rest. It made changing something as simple as her appearance all the more difficult; prospective employment always saw a young woman who seemed more likely to steal or swindle than make an honest day’s living.
There was one good twist of fate in recent memory, however, and she came upon the result of it after leaving the slowing bustle of the village behind. Her steps carried her through a small copse of trees on the outskirts of town, the small shaded path leading to the back of a large, carefully pruned clearing, a scattering of fruit-bearing trees providing even darker shadow than the already dim moonlight. She skirted along the aging fence on the border that kept predatory animals away, carefully hoisting herself over the barrier where a large vegetable garden she was responsible for tending resided. If one were to tell her she would be living in such an area several months ago, she would have smiled politely and walked away, yet here she was.
A modest, warmly lit home occupied the middle of the clearing, sitting front and centre when one approached from the village path. It looked quite cozy, surrounded by berry bushes that were just beginning to bloom as the last dregs of winter slipped away. A front patio displayed a nice table and well-loved chairs, the rustic appearance only adding to its charm as a place where friends and family spent the warm summer afternoons. A smithy to the left of the house functioned as an additional heated building during the colder months, but usually served as a storefront and to muffle the sounds of hammered iron, though that had become less common. An old stable was nearby, close enough to be accessible, but not so close as to disturb the once occupying animals with sounds of iron craft. It hadn't seen a horse in quite some time, apparently, so it was mostly a workshop for whatever tasks didn’t require fire or metal.
There was a long history attached to each little detail—from the scuffs along the wooden siding to the depressions in the ground where daily routine wore into the earth. Every fault suffered throughout the years was matched by a thousand quirks that made it feel welcoming, like the house itself was merely waiting for the next friendly face with one of its own. She knew that the inside of each building would look just as cared for.
Her concern lay outside, however. It was a comparatively miniscule space just barely visible through the sheltering trees, true, yet it was where her efforts turned into tangible results, and where a stranger’s trust was painstakingly repaid. Once overgrown grass had been laboriously trimmed, the weeds plucked and disposed of, and now nothing distracted from what she could claim she had done.
The small plots of rock-bordered soil had little buds of growing vegetables, a sense of pride never failing to bloom in her breast with the knowledge that it would be barren without her touch. When her troubles and concerns grew heavy, and fears of the future or spectres of the past loomed over her head, she could look at where she had brought life where it wouldn't otherwise be. Some days, that was enough. She smiled in appreciation at what was admittedly amateur work, the night’s sky helping to hide any inevitably made mistakes.
She enjoyed the sight for a moment longer, then turned to walk towards a neglected old tool shed that was well out of sight within the trees, far away from whatever warmth and comfort the larger house offered to everyone and anyone. She put a hand on the degrading wood of the entryway, giving one last sad smile at the garden as she dismissed selfish thoughts of taking the eventual harvest for herself. A breath cleared the uncertainty from her voice, and she pushed open the door.
“I'm home!”
= = = = =
It took a while for Altier to adjust to his situation, and even once he accepted that his mana wasn't being siphoned, he was still reeling from confusion. He had spent centuries with every year passing by without his notice, yet now he was painfully aware of each creeping second languidly dragging on with the expediency of growing grass. It was as disorienting as it was painfully nostalgic.
Time was something he was never good with, and it only got worse as a dungeon. He'd get lost in creating rooms, corridors, creatures, and whatever else needed doing, only pausing to watch or listen to the few adventurers he became interested in. There was a stint where he spent what felt like hours agonizing over new abilities or options while he let the system manage things in the background, though he supposed it might have been much longer. So many wasted days, yet he still hadn't managed to try everything he had gained access to. Some abilities were simply too niche, came with concerning titles, or held descriptions that made him wary. Anything with ‘Decay’ in the name was instantly ignored—he didn't need more reasons to fear his affinity, and from the few he took the effort to read through, they were always vile.
But his existence for the moment was no longer like those endless stretches spent pondering the minutiae of what would help his adventurers grow stronger. Now, he could follow the rhythmic sounds of footsteps and steady breathing that set a calming pace. They were someone else's, yes, but they contextualized how easy it was to slip away without the subtle noises of life that he had long since surrendered to help his family. Of course, there were more differences that he noticed since being removed from his crumbling cavern, and his sight was the newest change.
He never gave much thought to how far he could see before. Why would he? As a man, his world extended as far as he could fathom, yet was also confined to the room where he spent his days, and as a dungeon… Well, who was he to consider distance when an event happening miles away could be seen with a flicker of thought? Nothing was too far when it was within his creation. Or his ‘body,’ he supposed. Sadly, his entire perception currently consisted of the small sphere of his obsidian core, and maybe a finger's length beyond it—which is to say, not much. He could make out the fine details in the dirty burlap he was held against, and how pale moonlight slowly took over the blurred reds of sunset, but hardly anything more. It was all just frosted colours after a certain point, and he found it infinitely frustrating. He just wanted to peer beyond the haze and scaly hand holding him to confirm that the sky he remembered was still there. Alas, the sunlight faded at too quick a pace, yet one oh so agonizingly slow.
The ensuing darkness gave him nothing to do but think about where he was, not that he had any ideas. He was too curious about why he wasn't dead to bother much with his blurry surroundings after the soft-spoken kobold abducted him, thus why he only belatedly noticed how limited his worldview had become. There might have been a forest beyond his cave, but the greens and browns were gone, and the sounds of steps through brush was replaced by the distant din of a village. An idle curiosity pondered if he would recognize any descents of his ‘family tradition’ adventurers there, but he was being carried by what most considered a monster, so likely not.
That short musing was short-lived, however, and he brought his focus back to the matter at hand. He supposed he was being taken somewhere specific, but that was an obvious deduction, considering he was taken at all. The why of the matter was less so; for what purpose would someone want a Decay-aligned core? He hadn’t heard of them before…well, before he was made into one, but he couldn’t imagine many uses. Maybe he was being sold? His…kidnapper? His sudden companion seemed rather pleased by their discovery of him, so that might be the case, and it was morbidly amusing to think that a frail, sickly young man might one day become a coveted, highly valuable item. His abduction could also be a part of some cult’s nefarious activities, but he didn't want to think about that too hard. He experienced enough odd ceremonies from the adventurers who took the time to tell him their tales.
Either way, he wasn't in the dungeon anymore, and he couldn’t see where he was going. He tried to query his menu to glean an answer, but was met with a scrambled mess he suspected read ‘Synchronizing…’ and little else. It gave him a headache trying to make sense of it—which he didn't know was possible anymore—so he dismissed the text and distracted himself with blurs from whatever diluted senses he still had. There wasn’t much to observe other than the constant footfalls and the flicker of shadows on his companion’s burlap garment. They might have travelled through brush again, but it was too dark to really say for certain.
Eventually, there was something new. He heard an old latch rattle and rusted door hinges groan, then a shuddered clack that confirmed he was now in a building. His kobold acquaintance gently cooed at something before moving about the nearly pitch-black space, finally setting him down on a… He wasn’t sure what it was, besides old and wooden.
[D$#@m$n E@$*ded]
The headache from before became a blinding migraine that suffocated him under a flash-flood of suffering. Seconds passed in abject torture until it blissfully abated, the mental blinks clearing his mind enough to notice a change in his existence. Specifically, he could actually see something besides the rotting wood grain he was placed on top of.
And it wasn’t anything promising…
He was more or less in the centre of a room no bigger than twelve paces by maybe ten. Not a terrible size for a space, but it was clearly never meant to house someone. His resting place looked about as neglected as he surmised; it was an upturned feeding trough, he supposed, since calling it a table seemed too generous. The surface was rife with holes and degraded iron, so it was something that once saw regular use before being replaced and tossed into storage, never to see the light of day again.
Actually, most things in the room seemed to fit that description. The window shutters were installed with metal hinges that had since rusted them closed, the misalignment letting in a draft—and whatever weather was outside as well, most likely. A poorly carved bowl sat on the floor, the stain beneath it hinting that it collected any rainwater that slowly dripped from the leaky roof. The wooden floorboards looked old, splintered, and in need of maintenance or replacement, though an effort had been put into abrading it somewhat smooth lately.
A tiny and decrepit fireplace was to the left of the door upon entry, its brickwork slowly crumbling due to weathering and age. It was sized more for keeping the room warm during mild days than to keep away the frigid chill of night. Its base only held cold ashes, but there was a collection of deadwood and scraps nearby, so that would probably be rectified soon. A small wheel-less cart had been turned into storage against the opposite wall, some herbs and other foraged items stowed away in it for future use. Various things he remembered seeing his father and brothers use in the fields were scattered about, too. It was nostalgic to see, honestly, even if his recollections had blurred over time.
Bundles of tattered blankets formed a pair of nests in the far corner, the smaller of the two had a pile of rough plants nearby. That answered his silent pondering of the room's purpose somewhat, though he was pretty sure the bedding material was salvaged, and there didn’t seem to be any hay or padding underneath whoever was sleeping on it. He didn’t know what to think about the weeds; they were purposefully placed there, and whoever did so had taken the time to wash them, but it was still strange.
He couldn’t see a doorway besides the entrance, yet most of the hallmarks of residency were put where space could be afforded, however crude. All in all, he surmised that it was a gardening shed of sorts, and his new acquaintance apparently lived here. He wasn't sure what he was expecting when a creature he had only read about came into his dungeon, but it wasn't being brought to a rundown and decrepit shack for unknown purposes.
Even if he had been raised by parents who made a humble living at the best of times, and they had emptied their coffers for unsuccessful attempts to ease his ailments, his acquaintance's living space made him uncomfortable. His family's house was never anything fancy, true—it shared some of the worn qualities that inevitably gathered over the years—but it was never this bad. His home benefited from a father's touch keeping it robust and a mother’s love keeping it warm, whereas this place had seen neither in quite some time. Oh, there was evidence that such was once the case; a wall was adorned with carefully made and well-spaced hangers for the various gardening tools, though the implements themselves had become a victim of neglect. That being said, he could make out the fresh soil and recent scratches exposing furrows of silver, so they were seeing use again.
A scrape and clack of flint drew his attention to his kobold companion. They were kneeling in front of the fireplace, methodically sparking life back into a dead flame with twigs and dried leaves. A slow, steady breath into the reddened base illuminated its face with a dull orange glow, revealing its weary visage and the permanently etched smile that rested beneath its cold grey eyes. The black-scaled kobold looked tired, if he were to guess—much the same as Altier did when he spent countless days watching everyone living a life he could never have through the mossy window of his bedroom. He was probably humanizing it too much. Still, he was surprised by the muted pang of sympathy, and how he would feel much more than blithe curiosity after spending so much time alone in the crumbling crypt of his own making.
A mental breath cycled through him as he looked at the odds and ends yet to be observed. Hardly anything else was of note—everything else was degraded and neglected, too. He did notice a nest of blankets move though, which was as good a distraction as any. The answer to his previous ‘pile of weeds’ inquiry poked a tiny nose from a crease in the fabric, then rapidly pawed at the blankets to dig itself out. Altier stared at the creature in both recognition and confusion.
It was a rabbit…or at least it looked like one, assuming you were to also describe a porcupine and a sea urchin as well. He was pretty sure he didn’t remember any hare that had jagged metal-tipped fur, nor that had said fur arranged into a row of spiked horns that flowed down its spine, terminating at a large fluffy tail, which was equally bizarre to see. The whole of its coat could double as a weapon, with semi-sharp barbs sticking off seemingly at random, yet he remembered an adventurer saying most animals used that sort of thing defensively. He increased his focus as he tried to make sense of the odd creature. Surely he would have heard about—
[Hoppittttttt#%%÷ — Ferro-o-orabbit-it (Ma%$le)
Abil—]
[Null]
[Er0Rrrrrrrr—]
[Und#$f—]
He bit back the pain caused by the sudden intrusion of his menu, blanking out the text and mentally retreating to hide from the source. Did he just inspect something? How? Shouldn’t his entire…‘framework,’ was it…? Yes, that was it. Shouldn’t that have been corrupted? Why could he see the creature’s information when his entire framework was damaged? That was the first ability he lost, so why is it the first to be functional? How was it functional? Was it? It did just spit garbled text at him, but it was something, and that was more than he had gotten from it in a very long time. If it was somehow working—no matter how poorly—then that left the question of why he hadn't heard of anything called a ‘ferrorabbit’ before, assuming he read that correctly.
A soft thud vibrated the tro— table, startling him out of thought. He turned his attention to the button nose wiggling erratically at him, the short, stubby muzzle leading to surprisingly expressive and curious red eyes. Dull brown fur jutted off in random tufts and patches, changing to a darker tint on its paws and the upper half of its ears, while the tips of its spikes were a muted hue of iron. It still seemed just as soft as the less pointed variety he remembered, if a touch dirty. Upright ears twitched this way and that way as its head vigorously shook, eventually settling on pointing in his direction when it calmed down enough.
It was apparent that he had its undivided attention…for all of a few seconds. His scaly companion called something out in their foreign tongue, and whatever conclusion the pointy-furred animal came to, it seemed more interested in the kobold, parting from him after nudging his core with its nose.
[Cre-e-e—]
[Errrrrrr0r: Undefiiiiiiii—]
[Acceeeeep-t-t-t??]
[Yeeee— s s / Nnnnnnn—]
He winced at the intrusion, but the contents detracted from the pain. He couldn’t remember the system ever asking him a question without his explicit intent being involved. It wanted him to…accept something? Was it the system prompting him, or the animal? What was he to accept?
[Creatuuuuu—]
[Acce-e-e-%#@ed!]
…What?
= = = = =
“Hoppit, that's not food!” Ceele admonished half-heartedly, placing a larger branch on the burgeoning flame before she got to her feet. She wasn’t actually that worried; the stone was as big as his head, and she was pretty sure he couldn't bite into it. Hopefully. “Come here, momma has a treat for you!”
The ferrorabbit playfully bumped the gemstone and jumped off the low table, landing with a soft thud that belied how heavy he was for his tiny size. He wiggled in excitement, his ears flailing and releasing a slight clack whenever the two connected. It got even louder when she grabbed her basket and put away the useful herbs, taking out a specific item that she had gathered just for him. The little bun wasted no time in scurrying over and standing tall on his hind legs to judge if the offered plant was to his liking—and it was, based on how he dug in with enthusiasm. She stifled a laugh as she contentedly watched him nibble away on the treat, ignoring the guilt that came with knowing she couldn't afford proper vegetables for him. He had a hard life too, and it tore at her to have so little to give.
She came across Hoppit a year ago, during a storm that worsened while she was travelling between towns. The day had darkened to night in spite of it still being about noon, but the weather didn't care for how bright it was supposed to be. Wind and rain became a typhoon, forcing her to seek shelter in a thankfully abandoned den of what was probably a larger animal. She was fine with waiting out the squall, since the stone roof over her head was more than she usually had back then, but the sounds of dull bangs and thuds near her hideaway was followed by cries of animals yelping in pain. Curiosity won over reason, and she left the safety of her shelter to see what was causing the disturbance. Truthfully, she was hopeful that she'd come across scraps or the like, her hunger driving her forward, and she could always turn back if it seemed dangerous. Yet when she arrived at the source of the commotion, she found herself thinking of anything but food.
Two predators had fought over a small burrow, both trying to dig out a meal and taking offence to the other doing the same. What they didn’t know was that they were assaulting the home of ferrorabbits. Specifically, the home of an angry, protective, and well-fed mother that was keeping her newborns safe from the storm when predators decided to try their luck. From the scene Ceele came across, it was certainly obvious why most people dislike trying to hunt the creatures.
Sadly, the rabbit didn't survive an attack from two predators, but she did make their victory pyrrhic; neither could do much about their hunger with their bodies full of cuts and holes, and it was only a matter of time before they succumbed to blood loss or infection. The mother's sacrifice meant that the babies had avoided the imminent threat, but they were left unattended as a consequence, and it took an opportunistic bird swooping down to shake Ceele out of her shock. Despite her subsequent hurry, she only acted in time to save one of the orphaned young. The warren was new and barely dug out, which meant that it didn’t take much effort for the kits to be found—by both her and hungry maws. All she could do was scoop the ball of fluff into her arms and run back to the cave before anything else tried to eat it.
In retrospect, it was a stupid decision for a number of factors. She barely had the resources to supply herself, and an attempt to raise offspring of any type would only make the inevitable heartbreak worse. But when she saw how quiet and scared he was… How his tiny, shaking body calmed in her arms, those terrified red eyes seeking comfort… She should have just walked away when she knew there wasn’t going to be anything to fill her stomach. She should have put the baby animal down and let nature take its course…yet the preciously furry face stole her heart far too quickly for it to grow so cold. The next day was spent backtracking to the nearest town to get him something suitable to eat, which used most of her meagre savings. Still, it was worth every coin.
Hoppit had been accompanying her ever since. He grew quickly, transitioning from something she saved that stormy night into a presence she had grown to love like a child. The little lagomorph would bounce along beside her during her travels, then ride in her arms as he rested—though the latter happened with worrying frequency as of late. She hadn’t learned much about the springy herbivores, but she knew enough to say that he wasn't as big as he should be, nor was his fur as sharp. No matter how startled he was, his spiky coat never managed to do more than stiffen slightly, which was apparently a side effect of poor diet, according to snippets of conversation she had overheard on the topic. She wanted him to be healthy, but she didn't know what he needed. Not many farmers raised ferrorabbits, and those that did were far away, so she didn’t have anyone to ask what she should be doing. Her best course of action was to give him what little she had.
Ceele was well aware of how he would be better off on his own, but he followed her whenever she tried to set him free. Hoppit just kept launching into her arms and wiggling his ears, ecstatic that he was with her again, uncaring that food was scarce and that they spent most of their days travelling. No amount of cold nights spent bundling up under the tattered blankets she managed to find ever dampened his spirits, and he was content to eat the grass or flowers whenever he felt like it, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t getting enough nutrition. He would dig and excitedly drag back oddities that he found, and the one time he found a plant that looked particularly good for him, he insisted that it be shared with her.
A black pit still lingered in her chest when she recalled how pleased he was while he munched on the rare vegetable he discovered, then how distressed he became when she wouldn’t have any as well. He bumped and nipped at her, all but begging her to eat. His ears pinned back against his head, his fur bristled in a way she hadn’t seen since. It was only when she took a small bite and let him inspect the new teeth marks that he seemed to calm down, but perhaps she had been looking too deep into the actions of her tiny friend. All she could say for certain was that he was scared she was going hungry.
A morbid thought wondered if his first mother had refused food shortly before being attacked, and he—as small and simple as he was—had connected the two events in his mind, making him absolutely terrified that something would happen if Ceele didn’t have something too. All of that fear, and desperation overwhelmed him, just because she was happier watching him eat. She was determined to erase that issue. She would find something that needed a worker and earn enough to feed them both. One day, she would be able to smile at how big and healthy her little fluffy boy had become, but until then, it was becoming increasingly difficult not to think about how she was spending so much time growing vegetables and fruit that he couldn’t have…
Every morning was an exercise in tending to the gardens while actively shoving down images of a pleased ferrorabbit happily eating the results. That never went well; no matter how determined she was to complete her duties without a single selfish thought, most tasks were done while picturing his full belly and delighted bounces. There were a few weeks until the fastest of the crops would be ready for harvest, and Ceele would have to collect them while fighting the urge to bring back just a few for him.
She couldn’t, because she knew exactly how quickly that could escalate. It would start small—A vegetable here, a fruit there—but seeing Hoppit happy was one of the precious few good things she had in her life. Crossing the line would only become easier each time. They couldn’t risk losing their new home over greed, and she was already betraying the trust given to her by housing a wild animal, especially one known to be a pest for crops. She didn't want to know how angry it would make her benefactors if she was caught taking their vegetables for one.
No matter how tame and precious Hoppit was, and no matter how well he listened, they would only see him as the same creature that ruined harvests in droves. Thus was why she had to tell him to stay cooped up by himself while she was working or scavenging. And to her surprise, he did.
Honestly, she had made the initial request with the expectation of needing to carry him back into their home until he understood that she wasn’t leaving him forever. There wasn’t much she could do to stop the ferrorabbit from digging through the old wooden building if he wanted to get out. He wouldn’t need to damage anything either—a rotting board on the door only needed a little push to nudge it out of the way, and his natural curiosity made sure he was aware of it. But no, Hoppit was well-behaved as always, keeping hidden until she walked through the door, where he would leap from the shadows to personally show her how good he was and how he stayed put like she asked him to. It never stopped amazing her that he had such a surprising level of understanding despite being an animal, and that was to say nothing of how young he was.
All that intelligence, joy, and companionship he offered her…and yet the best she could give back to him was the weeds from the garden and the odd plant she found while scavenging…
Soft clacks of flicking ears dragged her from her pondering, her mind returning to the present. Hoppit finished his treat of the small plant, then bounced in place and scurried over to his bowl of water, perfectly happy to have eaten only that. He was so joyful with how little she provided, approaching every day of scarcity with the same enthusiasm she could never muster, as if certain that everything would be alright.
“It’s bedtime, Hoppit,” Ceele announced through a soft sigh, stoking the fire with enough branches to hopefully last the night. The ferrorabbit perked an ear in her direction, then sat on his haunches to extend the rest of himself up, his two little forepaws adorably held to his chest as he inspected the room like he always did. She smiled and made sure everything was stored away, then laid down on her bundle of blankets, covering herself with the warmest one. Hoppit bolted over to snuggle once he decided everything in the shed was up to his standards, throwing himself to the floor in a dramatic flop of comfort. Her quiet laughter subsided as they both settled in for the night, her tail completing the rabbit’s encompassing cuddle, but her eyes fell towards the obsidian orb on the table, her thoughts following suit.
It sat there, just as she left it, as benign as anything else ever placed atop the improvised furnishing. Yet there was a sense of ease and purpose as well. The old wooden trough seemed…important with its adornment firmly laid upon its surface, and she couldn’t puzzle out why. She was starting to doubt her earlier excitement.
Should she sell it? Would anyone know where it came from? Would anyone know what it was, or if it was worth anything? If she could get even a modest sum for it, she would be able to buy clothing, food, and new bedding. It would be easier to convince someone to give her work if she was dressed better and wasn’t so thin, and then she would have the income to slowly improve both of their lives. She could pay for a wandering merchant to ask a ferrorabbit rancher about the animal, even if it would take time to get back to her, or maybe she could hire a local if they needed to go near one for some reason. The cost didn’t matter to her as long as it happened.
But there was something else bothering her about the idea of selling the stone. She had travelled so far with a tug in her chest, only for the feeling of wanderlust to dissipate as soon as she held it. Was that a sign? She was never one for things like ‘fate,’ but a niggling doubt in her mind discouraged the idea of making a profit off her discovery. Even if what she could gain was so very tempting, and even if Hoppit would be happier if she did…
She tore her dampened eyes away and closed them, ignoring the burning trails running across her face. It would be another early morning, and she needed to sleep so she could take care of the garden. Decisions like this could wait. Once she had nothing else distracting her, and she had time to properly think about it, she would see how she felt about the stone.
Eventually, she dozed off with Hoppit pressed against her chest, and a longing in her heart.
Next
—
A/N: Patreon and Ko-fi will be 1 chap ahead this time around, and I've set it so everything from the lowest tier up can read the newest trashfire! Anything above that is sheer show of love. Hope you enjoyed!
2024.06.01 12:28 throwraFrequentRow2 Considering if I may have been dating a narcissist?
Considering if I may have been dating some kind of narcissist?
Ok so, I’m only just considering the possibility that I was dating some kinda narcissist.
I met a guy from online dating. Exceptionally Handsome photos, very smooth and charming. We met in person and immediately and him got on exceptionally well. He was the most intelligent man I’ve ever met in my life, on dates he wanted to talk at length about intellectual topics.
Despite getting along well, this is where the weird behaviour came in. When parting ways on dates, after the date he was very distant. He would send a long formal message, not check I got home safe.
He never lovebombed. But I’m considering if he is a cerebral narcissist for the following reasons
We went on several further dates. Mainly daytime dates. He would be very affectionate, hold my hand and kiss my forehead. He brought me along to meet his friends. Still amazing conversation. But I always felt like he was the one in control
He was always quite a stern stoic person, very unemotional. He cared a lot about his hair, often showing me pics of himself. Talking about his appearance a lot
If I stayed over, in the mornings I basically felt he was kicking me out, same thing if he stayed at mine he would want to leave early. He’d make me coffee, and his demeanour had completely changed. He would not cuddle me after intimacy. Then after the date, once again taking days to reply and sending formal paragraphs.
After the first time I stayed over, which was a lovely date. He went on holiday for 10 days and didn’t message me. When he came back, he was being extremely cold in messages
The next thing was interesting. He was fired from his job. He told me it was because he told them ‘you don’t know how to run a company.’ this made him quite stressed
But he still continued meeting me. Once again affectionate on dates
On the very last date, he cooked me dinner and we had a nice time. Though when he was cooking the steak, he went on for about 20 mins about the science and molecules involved when cooking a steak. It was cute but a bit much. He always referred to intelligent people as ‘people like us.’ And he always commented on my intelligence as a reason why he likes me. On the morning of the last date, he went on a rant about how he struggles to respect those he works with as he feels they don’t deserve the job. He also told me empathy is something he finds hard to feel
Things changed after this date and he was texting me all the time. Sending cute date ideas. I then asked him if I could see him on my way past for a few hours, he told me he was hungover. And sent a bit of a harsh cold message
2 weeks later, he ended things and said he didn’t feel romantic.
2 months later, he comes back to be friends. Took me to play golf, to a music gig. Was being very nice to me, sending supportive messages when I was at work stressed. Hugging me a lot and telling me how glad he is to see me. Texting me a lot.
Then he disappears again. Ignored my messages. It’s like he only wants to speak or see me on his terms.
So I considered perhaps he is narcissistic minus the love bombing. (I’m too clever to fall for love bombing he could feel)
He claims ‘I’m just like him but he’s more harsh.’
submitted by throwraFrequentRow2 to BreakUps [link] [comments]
Ok so, I’m only just considering the possibility that I was dating some kinda narcissist.
I met a guy from online dating. Exceptionally Handsome photos, very smooth and charming. We met in person and immediately and him got on exceptionally well. He was the most intelligent man I’ve ever met in my life, on dates he wanted to talk at length about intellectual topics.
Despite getting along well, this is where the weird behaviour came in. When parting ways on dates, after the date he was very distant. He would send a long formal message, not check I got home safe.
He never lovebombed. But I’m considering if he is a cerebral narcissist for the following reasons
We went on several further dates. Mainly daytime dates. He would be very affectionate, hold my hand and kiss my forehead. He brought me along to meet his friends. Still amazing conversation. But I always felt like he was the one in control
He was always quite a stern stoic person, very unemotional. He cared a lot about his hair, often showing me pics of himself. Talking about his appearance a lot
If I stayed over, in the mornings I basically felt he was kicking me out, same thing if he stayed at mine he would want to leave early. He’d make me coffee, and his demeanour had completely changed. He would not cuddle me after intimacy. Then after the date, once again taking days to reply and sending formal paragraphs.
After the first time I stayed over, which was a lovely date. He went on holiday for 10 days and didn’t message me. When he came back, he was being extremely cold in messages
The next thing was interesting. He was fired from his job. He told me it was because he told them ‘you don’t know how to run a company.’ this made him quite stressed
But he still continued meeting me. Once again affectionate on dates
On the very last date, he cooked me dinner and we had a nice time. Though when he was cooking the steak, he went on for about 20 mins about the science and molecules involved when cooking a steak. It was cute but a bit much. He always referred to intelligent people as ‘people like us.’ And he always commented on my intelligence as a reason why he likes me. On the morning of the last date, he went on a rant about how he struggles to respect those he works with as he feels they don’t deserve the job. He also told me empathy is something he finds hard to feel
Things changed after this date and he was texting me all the time. Sending cute date ideas. I then asked him if I could see him on my way past for a few hours, he told me he was hungover. And sent a bit of a harsh cold message
2 weeks later, he ended things and said he didn’t feel romantic.
2 months later, he comes back to be friends. Took me to play golf, to a music gig. Was being very nice to me, sending supportive messages when I was at work stressed. Hugging me a lot and telling me how glad he is to see me. Texting me a lot.
Then he disappears again. Ignored my messages. It’s like he only wants to speak or see me on his terms.
So I considered perhaps he is narcissistic minus the love bombing. (I’m too clever to fall for love bombing he could feel)
He claims ‘I’m just like him but he’s more harsh.’
2024.06.01 10:56 Yellowlegoman_00 Why does my cat seem to hate men and what can I do about it?
It’s very strange. The three other cats (one of whom we had alongside her until he died last year) have always been fine with men, and none of my friends’ or neighbour’s cats have been afraid of me once we’ve grown familiar with each other.
She was born in a shelter, so I find it unlikely she was abused by a man at some point given it was staffed entirely by women (I know this for a fact because I know the owner). However she will run from any human male on sight regardless of familiarity. She’s known my dad and I nearly her whole life but where she is comfortable (though she is naturally quite skittish) around my mum and sister and will warm up to even unknown women she will always flee or hide from us no matter what, even if we’re stood still.
When I was younger (mid-teens) I made efforts to reach out to her. I’d sit down nearby, staying mostly still, I’d do the slow blink thing if we made eye contact and put my fingers out for her to sniff. And yet she’d always run.
The strangest part is that while she does seem afraid of us based on the running she doesn’t show any other signs of threat response: she never hisses or fluffs up at us, she never makes herself small or flattens her ears. Her pupils don’t dilate. She just runs on sight, or if we’re still finds the most distant path around us and then runs it. An odd quirk btw is for some reason she doesn’t run away from things that frighten her, she runs towards and past them.
This isn’t a huge deal of course, so long as she is happy and healthy I am content. It’s just weird, and it’d be nice to have a better relationship with her.
submitted by Yellowlegoman_00 to cats [link] [comments]
She was born in a shelter, so I find it unlikely she was abused by a man at some point given it was staffed entirely by women (I know this for a fact because I know the owner). However she will run from any human male on sight regardless of familiarity. She’s known my dad and I nearly her whole life but where she is comfortable (though she is naturally quite skittish) around my mum and sister and will warm up to even unknown women she will always flee or hide from us no matter what, even if we’re stood still.
When I was younger (mid-teens) I made efforts to reach out to her. I’d sit down nearby, staying mostly still, I’d do the slow blink thing if we made eye contact and put my fingers out for her to sniff. And yet she’d always run.
The strangest part is that while she does seem afraid of us based on the running she doesn’t show any other signs of threat response: she never hisses or fluffs up at us, she never makes herself small or flattens her ears. Her pupils don’t dilate. She just runs on sight, or if we’re still finds the most distant path around us and then runs it. An odd quirk btw is for some reason she doesn’t run away from things that frighten her, she runs towards and past them.
This isn’t a huge deal of course, so long as she is happy and healthy I am content. It’s just weird, and it’d be nice to have a better relationship with her.
2024.06.01 10:32 PrinceSilverDom Loneliness and wanting to change
I'm 22, i have friends but they are all so distant from me and no social group. Just separeted friends Sometimes i feel like they don't actually want to meet me since they are full of things to do while I don't. I have a job and i find miself happy when i get the chance to talk to colleagues normally like an adult
I'm a trans man so i alway feel like it's so difficult for me to connect to others since i fear that they won't understand or will judge me, i fear of opening up. My type of attachment is avoidant, i tend to push people away to see if they come back and they eventually don't. I did this with my ex fiance and guess what, he was fed up with this attitude and left, and i honestly don't blame him.
My family left my country to go to another, and they left me here because i wanted to stay with my ex fiance, but now that we are not together i find myself alone all the time.. i was thinking of coming back to my parents but i keep telling myself I'm too old to live with my parents and this honestly stop me
I have so much time on my hands that I don't know what to do. I have hobbies, i like to draw, read, watch animations and film, and i like to study animals.
I'm not canonically pretty but i still feel like i cannot consider myself ugly.
I love travelling but I don't know where to start in the planning and i keep thinking thst travelling alone is boring and sad, so i stop planning...
All this to say: i am a fully grown, interesting person and if i don't have friends or connections around me, doesn't mean I don't deserve them or I'm not interesting. I think it's time i work with myself and understand me better... But i still want to be surrounded with people i care about and connection, while i have zero.
Sometimes i hate this, sometimes i enjoy this, and I don't know what to do to escape loneliness
submitted by PrinceSilverDom to lonely [link] [comments]
I'm a trans man so i alway feel like it's so difficult for me to connect to others since i fear that they won't understand or will judge me, i fear of opening up. My type of attachment is avoidant, i tend to push people away to see if they come back and they eventually don't. I did this with my ex fiance and guess what, he was fed up with this attitude and left, and i honestly don't blame him.
My family left my country to go to another, and they left me here because i wanted to stay with my ex fiance, but now that we are not together i find myself alone all the time.. i was thinking of coming back to my parents but i keep telling myself I'm too old to live with my parents and this honestly stop me
I have so much time on my hands that I don't know what to do. I have hobbies, i like to draw, read, watch animations and film, and i like to study animals.
I'm not canonically pretty but i still feel like i cannot consider myself ugly.
I love travelling but I don't know where to start in the planning and i keep thinking thst travelling alone is boring and sad, so i stop planning...
All this to say: i am a fully grown, interesting person and if i don't have friends or connections around me, doesn't mean I don't deserve them or I'm not interesting. I think it's time i work with myself and understand me better... But i still want to be surrounded with people i care about and connection, while i have zero.
Sometimes i hate this, sometimes i enjoy this, and I don't know what to do to escape loneliness
2024.06.01 10:29 theConsummateProf How should I feel
So I (24M) am going through a difficult time emotionally in terms of trying to figure out my current situation. One thing I can’t get over is what went wrong with my parents who are somehow still together. They both CLEARLY don’t like each other very much and I’m pretty sure the reason why is that they spend way too much time in the house together and it’s been going on for so long. My dad “worked” from home for a long time as a photographer (basically most of the time that I’ve known him) and things got real tough on his business for a good minute. But he went out of his way to not suck it up and do certain work that would’ve helped pay the bills (refused to shoot weddings, other things that annoyed him). It honestly comes off to me now as a bit lazy, and low and behold do I learn that he was a big pot head for my entire life. I personally don’t have an issue with weed, but I used to find it strange why he never really had energy. He also used to vent to me about his marital frustrations and how depressed he was CONSTANTLY, which I think I’ve figured out is because he smoked too much damn weed. This also made things very hard to enjoy when I was growing up bc I think I kinda felt responsible for him. He was always in an existential crisis. I’m gonna stick with the occasional joint but I’m going to be a booze guy from here on out (responsibly I might add, I’m not an idiot). Through all that, I generally have pretty good memories with him as he could be lots of fun at times. In terms of fatherly advice though, he kinda sounds like he barely, if at all, knows what he’s talking about. A lot. BUT, he did show up to everything that me or my brother were involved with and was and still is our biggest fan. He may just kinda repeat back what I say a lot when I ask for advice, but at least he’s trying. I appreciate the effort.
Mom was different. She worked a nursing job on the weekends that she had to commute to. This pretty much destroyed her mental health in my opinion, as she’s incredibly isolated and used to exaggerate how bad, irresponsible, and not caring I was as a kid and teen (I was the kind of kid adults DREAM of. 4.0 student, full ride, helpful, interesting hobbies but can also have fun. Never a burden to anyone really, club joiner, plenty of friends. The whole 9 yards). I was pretty introverted but I think it’s because of how they set everything up to be SO isolated. Putting me in an isolating school that was pretty far from our neighborhood because mom resented it. Our house is literally in a ditch that was pretty separated from everyone (only 1 neighborhood friend). Social skills were honestly at a premium to develop, but I survived. She always seemed so irritated at me, would point out a lot of insecurities I had to her friends to laugh about with, and never really cared to participate in things with me. Never showed up to school events or functions that I was involved with, blamed it on a fear of crowds (which she conveniently doesn’t have when it’s something she wanted to do). She was just kinda mean and distant. Did I jaw back and embarrass her occasionally? Sure, but considering other kids were shooting up heroin in our family (a true fucking story that she had to stick her nose in), I think I can be forgiven. This isolation had an incredibly negative impact on her health. The house is a wreck, her heart sucks as she had a heart attack a couple years back. It’s bad. Real bad. All she does is sit on her damn phone and watch tiktok. Her brain (which, she actually was acutely intelligent) is pretty much fried. It also didn’t help to learn from my aunt that my mom has had affairs (I want to think multiple but I can only confirm one), and the one I can confirm is with a convicted pedophile that she continues to defend (and my dad idiotically goes along with her bullshit on it)… so yeah. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that information.
So how do I make sense of all this. I’m very bad at communicating what I need unless I’m drunk, but I still want them to do better. I work from home with great pay for a single man, so I’m sorta using that to “make up for lost time” on things I missed out on as a kid, but I still feel isolated and stressed bc of the situation. I know I have a deep mistrust and fear of women that I need to get over as well, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m going to see yet another therapist about this, but even that’s burning me out. What’s with this situation?
submitted by theConsummateProf to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]
Mom was different. She worked a nursing job on the weekends that she had to commute to. This pretty much destroyed her mental health in my opinion, as she’s incredibly isolated and used to exaggerate how bad, irresponsible, and not caring I was as a kid and teen (I was the kind of kid adults DREAM of. 4.0 student, full ride, helpful, interesting hobbies but can also have fun. Never a burden to anyone really, club joiner, plenty of friends. The whole 9 yards). I was pretty introverted but I think it’s because of how they set everything up to be SO isolated. Putting me in an isolating school that was pretty far from our neighborhood because mom resented it. Our house is literally in a ditch that was pretty separated from everyone (only 1 neighborhood friend). Social skills were honestly at a premium to develop, but I survived. She always seemed so irritated at me, would point out a lot of insecurities I had to her friends to laugh about with, and never really cared to participate in things with me. Never showed up to school events or functions that I was involved with, blamed it on a fear of crowds (which she conveniently doesn’t have when it’s something she wanted to do). She was just kinda mean and distant. Did I jaw back and embarrass her occasionally? Sure, but considering other kids were shooting up heroin in our family (a true fucking story that she had to stick her nose in), I think I can be forgiven. This isolation had an incredibly negative impact on her health. The house is a wreck, her heart sucks as she had a heart attack a couple years back. It’s bad. Real bad. All she does is sit on her damn phone and watch tiktok. Her brain (which, she actually was acutely intelligent) is pretty much fried. It also didn’t help to learn from my aunt that my mom has had affairs (I want to think multiple but I can only confirm one), and the one I can confirm is with a convicted pedophile that she continues to defend (and my dad idiotically goes along with her bullshit on it)… so yeah. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that information.
So how do I make sense of all this. I’m very bad at communicating what I need unless I’m drunk, but I still want them to do better. I work from home with great pay for a single man, so I’m sorta using that to “make up for lost time” on things I missed out on as a kid, but I still feel isolated and stressed bc of the situation. I know I have a deep mistrust and fear of women that I need to get over as well, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m going to see yet another therapist about this, but even that’s burning me out. What’s with this situation?
2024.06.01 09:23 PinkArchaeopteryx44 Im obsessed with my Bf and I think thats the reason for our fights.
Im obsessed with my Bf and I think thats the reason for our fights
First of all English is not my mother tongue so I apologize in advance. The title already says it. Me 18F and my Boyfriend 19M have been together for 2 years. I really love and adore him. A little bit about our relationship for context: I’ve known him since I was 14. I had a huge crush on him and I was sooo obsessed since the beginning. We lost contact but shortly after we reconnected and started dating and got an official couple in 2022. I’ve never doubt him, he’s my everything. We’re also in a long distance relationship and Im sometimes bit of a handful because Ive got some Mental issues going on but thats not a big problem. And it may sound crazy or not possible but I can’t stop thinking about him and I really really love him. It doesn’t matter what he does I adore him.
At the one year mark he kind of got distant we had lots of fights and I almost broke up with him but things started to change. We promised each other no matter what we wont separate. We have a serious relationship. He knows my family and I know his. In our culture you usually stay with your partner after you’ve been together for a while. He’s a lovely man, he listens when I yap about my day, he games (even stupid horsegames like starstable) with me and is very understanding. He is sensitive and always tries to make things better but here’s the thing. We don’t fight a lot but when then it’s always the same reason. You have to know im not materialistic so money does not matter (he buys me way too much stuff and pays literally for anything) but what does is attention and the love he gives me. Im kind of a lovebomber not in a toxic way. I love giving gifts and compliment him all day long because I love him. But sometimes he gets like tired of me and when I ask him if its too much he simply answers “No I love when you act this way, you could never be annoying” so I asked him to at least smile or give some kind of nice reaction. We use snapchat to communicate because I need his face to see what he feels about what I say because he’s kind of a drytexter. It really hurts me when he gets like ignorant or tired. I don’t feel appreciated sometimes and we have talked a lot about it.
So yesterday we got in a huge argument because I asked him again if I was too much. I really had a bad day and I was so insecure about the same thing. He loves me don’t get me wrong. He never cheated, never used me and is respectful. But things got out of hand no matter what I tried to explain it just got worse. But eventually we could handle it out it’s all good now but I still ask myself.. Am I too much?? What can I change about myself? I need an advice or another opinion. I really love him and I don’t want to fight anymore just because of small things. I kind of sound stupid because he’s perfect. All I asked for so I need to know what can I do? Is it really my obsession?
submitted by PinkArchaeopteryx44 to relationships_advice [link] [comments]
First of all English is not my mother tongue so I apologize in advance. The title already says it. Me 18F and my Boyfriend 19M have been together for 2 years. I really love and adore him. A little bit about our relationship for context: I’ve known him since I was 14. I had a huge crush on him and I was sooo obsessed since the beginning. We lost contact but shortly after we reconnected and started dating and got an official couple in 2022. I’ve never doubt him, he’s my everything. We’re also in a long distance relationship and Im sometimes bit of a handful because Ive got some Mental issues going on but thats not a big problem. And it may sound crazy or not possible but I can’t stop thinking about him and I really really love him. It doesn’t matter what he does I adore him.
At the one year mark he kind of got distant we had lots of fights and I almost broke up with him but things started to change. We promised each other no matter what we wont separate. We have a serious relationship. He knows my family and I know his. In our culture you usually stay with your partner after you’ve been together for a while. He’s a lovely man, he listens when I yap about my day, he games (even stupid horsegames like starstable) with me and is very understanding. He is sensitive and always tries to make things better but here’s the thing. We don’t fight a lot but when then it’s always the same reason. You have to know im not materialistic so money does not matter (he buys me way too much stuff and pays literally for anything) but what does is attention and the love he gives me. Im kind of a lovebomber not in a toxic way. I love giving gifts and compliment him all day long because I love him. But sometimes he gets like tired of me and when I ask him if its too much he simply answers “No I love when you act this way, you could never be annoying” so I asked him to at least smile or give some kind of nice reaction. We use snapchat to communicate because I need his face to see what he feels about what I say because he’s kind of a drytexter. It really hurts me when he gets like ignorant or tired. I don’t feel appreciated sometimes and we have talked a lot about it.
So yesterday we got in a huge argument because I asked him again if I was too much. I really had a bad day and I was so insecure about the same thing. He loves me don’t get me wrong. He never cheated, never used me and is respectful. But things got out of hand no matter what I tried to explain it just got worse. But eventually we could handle it out it’s all good now but I still ask myself.. Am I too much?? What can I change about myself? I need an advice or another opinion. I really love him and I don’t want to fight anymore just because of small things. I kind of sound stupid because he’s perfect. All I asked for so I need to know what can I do? Is it really my obsession?
2024.06.01 09:09 WhyDid1SayThat #Technoblade25
I’m a sentimental person, I think anyone who knows me could tell that. It’s why I keep your merch in my room, and why I bought it in the first place.
I can’t deny it felt odd to mourn a person I had never met in person. I’ve never been one to think up tributes or write letters. Instead, I listen to music and tell stories, I relate to words and mourn on my own time. Now, I watch old videos and livestreams.
It’s odd to translate thoughts and listen to songs written for a person we all respected, but never met. We mourn as one for a person who made us laugh and had a laidback personality, though those jokes were never directed at us and a lasting conversation was as distant as a dream.
So, I write this not to mourn a YouTuber, but to celebrate a young man with a personality that attracted millions like sugar. I’m here to celebrate a young man who deserves all of the love he got, and all the love he still gets.
Wherever we end up, whatever comes next, when we can all meet, let’s have a hell of a time together.
Happy Birthday, Technoblade.
submitted by WhyDid1SayThat to Technoblade [link] [comments]
I can’t deny it felt odd to mourn a person I had never met in person. I’ve never been one to think up tributes or write letters. Instead, I listen to music and tell stories, I relate to words and mourn on my own time. Now, I watch old videos and livestreams.
It’s odd to translate thoughts and listen to songs written for a person we all respected, but never met. We mourn as one for a person who made us laugh and had a laidback personality, though those jokes were never directed at us and a lasting conversation was as distant as a dream.
So, I write this not to mourn a YouTuber, but to celebrate a young man with a personality that attracted millions like sugar. I’m here to celebrate a young man who deserves all of the love he got, and all the love he still gets.
Wherever we end up, whatever comes next, when we can all meet, let’s have a hell of a time together.
Happy Birthday, Technoblade.
2024.06.01 09:00 Khaijentry12 Rose: Fear Your World - Chapter 1: Rose Among Any Other
Finn Tresscoat, a 20-year-old with short dark brown hair, brown eyes, and a pale complexion, strolled down the sidewalk of his small town. He wore a light brown leather jacket over a black shirt, paired with black jeans and black-and-white sneakers.
As Finn ambled along, he glanced at the many shops lining the main road of the town's bustling center. He wasn't searching for anything in particular; he simply wanted to enjoy the rare day off from his job, one of the most perilous occupations in the United West (U.W.).
"Finn! Oh, Finn!"
Finn turned his head to the right and spotted Ms. Tori Elortor, or simply Ms. Tori as he called her. She was an older lady in her early fifties, though her youthful appearance often surprised the townsfolk. With long white hair cascading down her back, pale skin, and bright hazel eyes, she was a striking figure. Today, she wore a navy blue sundress over a pair of tight blue jeans and brown cowboy boots.
Ms. Tori, the local bakery owner, was considered quite attractive and often caught the eye of the younger men in town. Her curvaceous figure and active lifestyle, including regular yoga sessions in the park, only added to her allure. However, Finn saw her differently. Having known her since childhood and feeling like part of her family, he saw her as a maternal figure rather than anything else. He was also close to her son, Eric, feeling like an older brother to him.
Despite his demanding job, which kept him busy for nearly twenty-four-seven, Finn always tried to visit Ms. Tori and Eric whenever he could. Today was a rare opportunity for him to relax and reconnect.
"Ah, hi Ms. Tori! How are you today?" Finn greeted her with a warm smile.
Ms. Tori returned his smile. "I'm just fine, Finn. The real question is, how are you? I haven't seen you in months!" Her tone shifted to one of concern. "I was worried, and so was Eric. You do have quite a dangerous job for someone so young," she added.
What kind of dangerous job did Finn have, you might ask?
Well, Finn was a "Gaunt Hunter," a member of a specialized group tasked with safeguarding the small towns outside the major cities in the United West from creatures known as Gaunts.
These slim, humanoid creatures had leathery black skin, no eyes or nose, and wide mouths that drooled a strange dark green liquid. They had emerged after the cataclysmic "Decade of Winter."
The Gaunts varied in form and capability. Some were very muscular, while others had bat-like wings, allowing them to fly. They were also cunning, often creating weapons from scavenged materials and hunting in packs.
Disturbingly, these were just the common variants.
There were tales of Gaunts resembling animals and some that could even speak, though Finn himself had never encountered such anomalies.
Despite the ominous title of Gaunt Hunter, Finn's role wasn't as glamorous as one might imagine.
He wasn't a high-tech, gadget-wielding hero. Gaunt Hunters received training similar to regular police officers, focusing on the use of firearms. However, since firearms were not commonly traded or shipped to the smaller towns outside the major cities, Gaunt Hunters were also taught to wield swords, knives, and other melee weapons, as well as trained in close-range combat.
Finn had been trained to fire a pistol but also learned to fight with a machete, which was more practical for their needs than a traditional sword. On duty, he carried a standard-issue Glock-17 and a machete strapped to his side. He also wore the standard protective gear issued to United West Security Forces (UWSF) officers.
Returning to the conversation with Ms. Tori, Finn let out a lighthearted chuckle. "Dangerous for most of the veterans on the job, but I'm young and fit! Practically invincible!" he said with a grin.
Ms. Tori gave Finn an unimpressed look, raising an eyebrow. "Is that right?" she asked. "Then what's this I hear about a Gaunt nearly taking your head off just last week?"
Finn's face flushed with embarrassment as he recalled the incident. A Gaunt had caught him off guard and nearly decapitated him with a makeshift axe. "Okay... yeah, fair enough," he admitted, looking down.
Ms. Tori's expression softened, and she gave him a few light taps on the shoulder. "Oh, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, Finn, I'm just reminding you that your job is dangerous… You need to be careful," she said gently.
Finn looked up at her and nodded. "I know, and thank you for caring," he replied. Inwardly, he thought, 'It's not like anyone else does'
"Of course, I care, Finn," Ms. Tori said firmly. "Do you know how devastated I'd be if you got hurt or, heaven forbid, died? I'd be heartbroken,” she told him. “Eric would be even worse off, after all, who would play with him?"
Finn felt a wave of warmth at her words. Despite not wanting to worry Ms. Tori or Eric, it was comforting to know there were people who cared about him, and who wanted him to stay safe and come back home. "I guess you're right," he said with a soft smile. "I'll try to be more careful out there, I promise,”
Ms. Tori nodded, her smile lingering. "Good,” she said. “Now, how many days do you have off?" she asked.
"Not many," Finn replied with a sigh. "Just today,"
Ms. Tori's eyes widened in shock. "Only today? Why?" She asked.
Finn's expression turned serious. "Many of the other Gaunt Hunters are either dead, retiring, or switching to become cops... There are only ten of us left in the entire town,"
Ms. Tori's eyes widened in horror. Gaunt Hunters were the primary defense against the Gaunts. The law across the U.W. dictated that local law enforcement dealt with human issues, leaving Gaunt-related threats to the Hunters. The thought of their numbers dwindling was terrifying.
Each town was supposed to have a contingent of Gaunt Hunters, given that small towns were the primary targets for Gaunt attacks.
Major cities, in contrast, rarely had to deal with Gaunts.
The dense populations of these urban centers acted as a deterrent, scaring off most Gaunt packs. Even if a small group of Gaunts did manage to attack, the cities were equipped with heavy weaponry and advanced defenses, making Gaunt Hunters unnecessary there.
This starkly contrasted with the dire need for Gaunt Hunters in the smaller, more vulnerable towns.
Ideally, each small town would have around fifty Gaunt Hunters, a number intended to ensure adequate protection against the Gaunt threat. However, the reality was far grimmer. The inherent dangers and heavy responsibilities associated with the job dissuaded many from becoming Gaunt Hunters. The perilous nature of the work, combined with the constant threat of death, resulted in a severe shortage of recruits.
As a result, the numbers in many towns had dwindled alarmingly.
"Only ten?" she repeated her voice barely above a whisper. "That's... alarming… What happens if more Gaunts come?"
"We do our best," Finn said, trying to sound confident. "But it's tough… Every day, we’re stretched thinner,"
Ms. Tori took a deep breath, trying to process the gravity of the situation.
Finn felt a lump in his throat. "I promise, Ms. Tori. I'll do everything I can to stay safe," he said, trying to remind her if his promise mere moments ago.
Ms. Tori wanted to argue with Finn's comment, but deep down, she knew he was somewhat right. The town was struggling—trade had slowed to a trickle, and many residents had moved away. The constant threat of Gaunt attacks made living there increasingly untenable. Even Ms. Tori had considered leaving to ensure Eric’s safety and to give him a chance to grow up in a more stable environment where he could interact with other children and experience the broader world.
However, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.
Her late husband was buried in this town, and even though years had passed since his death, she felt tied to the place where he rested. She had loved this town deeply, and in a way, staying felt like keeping a part of him alive.
Seeing the conflict in her eyes, Finn decided to change the subject. "Hey, why don't I come over for dinner?" he suggested with a soft smile. "I'm sure Eric would be happy to see me after so long,”
Ms. Tori was pulled out of her thoughts by his offer. She smiled, grateful for his willingness to spend his rare day off with them. "That would be lovely, Finn," she said with a quick nod.
They walked together to Ms. Tori's home, a modest three-bedroom house with a large attic. Inside, they found Eric sitting in front of the TV, watching cartoons. Hearing Finn’s voice, Eric turned, his face lighting up with excitement. He jumped out of his seat and ran to give Finn a hug.
Eric was about 11 years old, with brown hair like his deceased father but hazel eyes like his mother. He was wearing a dark black and blue striped shirt, dark gray pants, and black slip-on shoes.
Finn hugged him back, smiling. "I've got some stories to tell over dinner," he said, which made Eric's eyes sparkle with anticipation.
He loved hearing about the world beyond their town, even if it was mostly filled with woods and the ruins of an old world.
Finn then followed Ms. Tori into the kitchen to help prepare dinner. He found what he could and handed the items to her, glad to be of assistance. Ms. Tori thanked him and asked if he could help chop vegetables, which he was more than happy to do.
As they worked side by side, Ms. Tori glanced at Finn, her expression a mix of gratitude and concern. "You know, Finn, this town means a lot to me,” she told him “It’s where I built my life with my husband, and it’s where I want Eric to grow up, despite everything,"
Finn nodded, understanding the deep attachment she had. "I get it, Ms. Tori. This place has a lot of memories, and as long as I'm here, I'll do my best to keep it safe for you and Eric,"
Ms. Tori smiled warmly. "I know you will, Finn... Thank you,”
Dinner was a warm, lively affair. Eric listened intently to Finn’s stories, hanging on every word. The laughter and conversation filled the small home, creating a moment of normalcy amidst the chaos of their world. For a brief time, the threats outside seemed distant, and they enjoyed the simple pleasure of being together.
After a few bites, Eric looked at Finn eagerly. "Can you tell me one of your stories, Finn?" he asked, his eyes bright with anticipation.
Finn nodded, swallowing a mouthful of food. "Well, a couple of days ago, I was out with two or three other Hunters, we had just finished fighting off a few Gaunts, once they were dealt with, we decided to explore the area since it was the site of an old abandoned amusement park,” he began. “Some of the rides were still standing, though most were broken and destroyed, it was interesting to see the tech they used to have back then," Finn recounted.
Eric's eyes widened with excitement. "Wow! That's awesome!" he exclaimed.
Finn grinned. "It was pretty cool, but it’s nothing compared to some of the parks I saw in Salton Lake City! Those places are amazing,"
Eric's eyes gleamed at the mention of the nearby city. "Man, I want to go there someday!" he said enthusiastically. "Maybe when I start my training to be a Gaunt Hunter," he added with a big smile.
Finn chuckled. "So, you want to be a Gaunt Hunter, huh?" he asked. "You think you’ve got what it takes?"
Eric nodded vigorously. "Uh-huh! I know I can be a Gaunt Hunter! I bet I can even be better than you!" he declared, pointing at Finn.
Finn raised an eyebrow, amused. "Oh really?" he said. "Who's to say I'm not the best of the best, huh?"
Eric gave him a smug smirk. "Because if you were the best Hunter, you'd have already gotten rid of all the Gaunts!" he said confidently.
Finn chuckled. "Well, you got me there," he admitted. "But hey, if you think you can be the best and get rid of all the Gaunts, then I say go for it, dude."
Eric chuckled and resumed eating, his enthusiasm undimmed. Ms. Tori watched the two with a fond smile, marveling at the brotherly bond between them. It warmed her heart to see how close they had become. She knew that Finn cherished this connection just as much as Eric did, especially since Finn had grown up without a family of his own, raised in the local orphanage.
She recalled those early days when a young Finn would walk into the bakery, clutching a few coins. His eyes would light up with wonder at the sight of the treats and goodies lining the shelves. Something about him had touched her heart, and she began offering him free treats for him and the other orphans whenever he visited. Her late husband had also taken a liking to Finn, treating him like the son they never had. When Finn decided to become a Gaunt Hunter, it was her husband who had helped him prepare for the rigorous training, getting him into shape and offering constant encouragement.
After her husband's death, it was Finn who helped her grieve and find the strength to carry on. She had felt terrible about leaning on him during such a hard time, knowing he had his own sadness to deal with, yet he remained steadfast and strong. He had been there for her and for Eric, helping the young boy understand their loss and navigate the difficult times that followed.
She was truly grateful to have Finn in her life.
Suddenly, Finn's phone vibrated insistently in his pocket. He quickly reached for it and saw a text message from work. He opened it, dreading what it might say.
[~Finn, we need you tonight. Jon and Gary quit out of the blue, so we need someone to fill in.~]
Finn sighed, frustration bubbling up inside him. 'Great, now we're down to eight Hunters,' he thought. 'And Jon and Gary were both my age and in better shape than the veterans at the station.'
Ms. Tori noticed the change in his expression and knew immediately what it meant. "Does duty call, Finn?" she asked gently.
Finn nodded, his expression weary. "Yeah, looks like Jon and Gary quit. They need me to cover tonight."
Ms. Tori sighed, placing a comforting hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Finn. I know how much you were looking forward to some time off."
"It's alright," Finn said, forcing a smile. "I knew it was a long shot anyway. The town needs all the help it can get."
Eric looked up, concern etched on his young face. "Do you have to go, Finn?"
Finn ruffled the boy's hair affectionately. "Yeah, buddy. Duty calls. But I'll be back, and we’ll have more stories to share. I promise."
Ms. Tori gave him a supportive nod. "Just promise us you'll stay safe, Finn."
"I will," Finn assured her. He stood up, preparing to leave. "Thanks for dinner, Ms. Tori. It was great, as always."
As he left the warm, comforting atmosphere of Ms. Tori's home and headed out into the cold night, Finn felt a renewed sense of purpose. Despite the exhaustion and the ever-present danger, he knew he had to keep fighting. For the town, for Eric, and for the memory of the man who had helped him become who he was.
Once at the station, Finn entered and immediately spotted Dick Cortez, a veteran Gaunt Hunter who had been safeguarding the town for as long as Finn could remember. Dick, now in his 50s, had graying hair, deep-set wrinkles, and perpetually tired eyes. He was wearing the standard-issue armor that all Gaunt Hunters received, though each Hunter was allowed to customize their armor with different colors and modifications.
Dick's armor consisted of a high-collar black shirt beneath a modified, pure black chest plate that covered his upper abdomen, along with similarly-colored bracers. Both the chest plate and bracers were trimmed with white and featured matching shoulder pads. He also wore gloves with small metal plating on the fingers, dark navy jeans, black and white metal knee pads, and dark brown boots.
Dick noticed Finn and offered a small smile. "Heya, Finn," he greeted.
"Hey yourself, Dick," Finn replied with a nod.
"Sorry about having to bring you in on your day off," Dick said, his tone genuinely apologetic.
Finn walked over to his locker, where his armor and weapons were stored. He glanced at Dick and shrugged, giving a small smile. "It's alright, Dick. I understand why, and I'm not angry—well, not at you, but at those two," Finn said, referring to Jon and Gary.
Dick nodded in understanding. "Trust me, I'm disappointed in them too, but I can see why they left so suddenly," he said.
Finn nodded back, opening his locker to reveal his armor. His armor was similar to Dick's but differed in color and the clothing underneath. Finn wore his usual attire beneath the armor, which consisted of a dark brown chest plate trimmed with black, matching bracers, shoulder pads, knee pads, and gloves.
He took the armor out and quickly dressed, securing the pieces in place. He then grabbed his Glock and its holster, strapping it around his waist, and added his machete in its sheath. Once fully suited up, he turned to Dick with a raised brow. "Which side of town am I patrolling tonight?"
"Outer wall, west side," Dick stated, his voice firm.
Finn nodded, mentally preparing himself for the task ahead. The west side of the outer wall was notorious for Gaunt activity, a hotspot for their attacks. It was going to be a long night.
As he headed out, Dick called after him, "Stay sharp out there, Finn. We can't afford to lose any more good Hunters."
Finn turned back and gave a resolute nod. "I will, Dick. See you in the morning."
Once outside the city, Finn couldn't help but take in the grim sight of the outer wall. It was marred with deep scratches and chips from relentless Gaunt attacks, stained with the dark green goo that dripped from their slavering mouths, and speckled with bloodstains that would never fully wash away. The stark contrast between this battered exterior and the inner walls of the town was striking. Inside, the walls were adorned with chalk drawings from children and vibrant murals from the town's artists. These cheerful images served as a reminder of what he was protecting, and why he had chosen to become a Gaunt Hunter in the first place.
Reaching the west side of the wall, Finn began his patrol, moving back and forth to ensure no Gaunts were attempting to scale the barrier. For now, the night was quiet, and he hoped it would remain that way.
As he walked his beat, his thoughts drifted back to dinner with Eric and the boy's enthusiastic declaration about becoming a Gaunt Hunter. While part of him felt honored by Eric's admiration, another part was deeply troubled. The life of a Hunter was dangerous and filled with horrors that no one should have to witness, let alone a young boy like Eric.
Finn's mind flashed back to a particularly gruesome memory from a past patrol. He and another Hunter had been called to assist in repelling a large pack of Gaunts. They had rushed to the scene, only to find their comrades dead, slaughtered in horrific ways. One Hunter's skull had been cracked open, with Gaunts eating from it as if it were a bowl of grapes. Another Hunter, still alive, was being disemboweled and devoured. Finn could never forget the man's agonized expression as he watched his own entrails being torn apart and consumed. The sight had been so revolting that Finn had vomited on the spot, paralyzed by shock until his partner snapped him back to reality.
Then there were the stories he had heard from veterans like Dick. Dick once recounted an incident where a Hunter had been speared to death by multiple Gaunts. They hadn't even eaten him; they had just impaled him repeatedly, leaving his body to rot in the woods for days. Such tales highlighted the Gaunts' malevolence and complete lack of empathy.
Finn shuddered at the memories. He didn't want Eric to face such nightmares. The boy was full of life and potential, and Finn couldn't bear the thought of him enduring the same horrors he had.
Since that harrowing incident and the chilling story Dick had shared, Finn had sworn to himself that he wouldn't meet a similar fate. He vowed to go out fighting, to not end up like those other hunters. He couldn't bear the thought of becoming another victim, especially after what happened to his sister.
The sudden howl nearby jolted Finn out of his grim thoughts. The sound was close—too close. Instantly alert, he scanned his surroundings. Just then, something whizzed past his face, slicing his cheek. He turned to see a makeshift arrow embedded in the wall. Spinning back around, his heart sank as he saw ten Gaunts emerging from the tree line.
"Shit!" Finn cursed, his eyes widening in horror. This was a dire situation. He quickly drew his Glock and aimed at the advancing creatures. Before he could fire, a sharp pain seared through his left side. He glanced down to see a small dagger lodged in his torso.
'What the hell?' Finn thought, bewildered. 'Did one of the Gaunts throw this?'
"Sorry, but it's nothing personal," a strange voice echoed through the darkness.
Finn's gaze snapped forward, and he saw a figure emerging from the shadows. They wore a long black cloak that seemed to envelop them completely, giving the eerie impression that they were gliding across the ground rather than walking.
The figure approached him, their face obscured by the cloak's hood. "My, you are a handsome young man," they purred in a sultry tone. "Such a fucking shame that my babies must eat. We've been on the run, and they haven't had a chance to rest and eat until we saw you." They giggled, a chilling sound that sent shivers down Finn's spine.
Fear gripped Finn, but he managed to look up at the cloaked figure with a raised brow. "W-Who are you?" he stammered, his voice wavering.
The figure tilted their head slightly as if amused by his question. "Who am I?" they echoed. "I am their mother, their caretaker. I ensure they survive, even if it means feeding them humans like you." The figure leaned closer, and Finn could just make out a twisted smile beneath the hood.
Finn's mind raced. He needed to think of a way out, and fast. The Gaunts were closing in, and he was injured and at a severe disadvantage. Summoning his remaining strength, he clutched his Glock tighter and tried to steady his breath. He couldn't let this be the end.
The figure's giggle echoed eerily through the night, sending a shiver down Finn's spine. "Oh! Now I'm regretting stabbing you," they remarked with a twisted amusement. "It's not every day a handsome young man asks me my name, you know? Most prefer a no-name policy." Their tone was cryptic, and Finn couldn't shake the feeling of unease that settled in his gut. "While I would love to give you my name in far better circumstances, I'm afraid I don't have the time," they continued, their words dripping with urgency. "As I said, we're on the run from a rather unpleasant girl."
Finn's confusion only deepened. The figure's response didn't provide any clarity, leaving him even more perplexed. As the figure began to back away, Finn's eyes widened in shock as the Gaunts beside them moved in unison. ‘She can... control them!?’ he realized, disbelief washing over him.
"Go ahead, babies... EAT!" the figure commanded, her voice chillingly calm.
With a sickening lurch in his stomach, Finn watched as the Gaunts surged forward, their hunger palpable in the air. Determination surged within him, driving him to fight against the odds stacked against him. Ignoring the searing pain from his wound, he raised his gun and fired at the approaching Gaunts. Despite his efforts, only one was hit, and even then, it didn't slow down.
Finn gritted his teeth, preparing for the inevitable close-quarter battle with the monsters. "Come on!" he growled defiantly. "I'm right here!"
The Gaunts closed in, their predatory instincts driving them forward. Just as they leaped toward him, ready to strike, something unexpected occurred.
Thorny vines erupted from the ground, snaking around the Gaunts with incredible speed. Finn's eyes widened in astonishment as the vines ensnared the creatures, halting their advance. The vines twisted and contorted, slamming the Gaunts into the ground with brutal force, tearing at their flesh and rendering them helpless.
" Damn! How did that bitch already find us!?" the figure exclaimed, frustration evident in their voice.
Finn's gaze followed the figure's gaze as a new figure emerged from the shadows.
Her appearance was striking, to say the least. With a spiky red Mohawk and piercing red eyes devoid of any white, she exuded an aura of fierce determination. Smudged mascara framed her intense gaze, adding to her wild and untamed appearance. Her lips were painted black, a stark contrast to her fiery red hair and eyes. Clad in a black leather crop top vest that accentuated her slim, athletic frame, she exuded an air of defiance. Arm bands encircled her wrists and biceps, resembling the wraps worn by boxers, hinting at her combat prowess. Around her neck, she wore a large choker, adding to her rebellious demeanor. Her attire was completed by tight leather pants and high-heeled platform boots, giving her an imposing presence.
"Found you, ya freaking cunt!" she spat, her voice laced with venom.
The cloaked figure retreated, increasing the distance between them and the girl. "Ugh, don't you ever give up?" they retorted, their tone tinged with irritation.
The girl leveled a fierce glare at the figure. "After the shit you've done!? I ain't letting you go!" she declared, her voice dripping with disdain.
The figure let out a mocking giggle. "Is that so?" they taunted, gesturing toward Finn who lay wounded on the ground. "Not even to save his life?"
The girl's gaze shifted to Finn, her expression softening momentarily as she registered his injuries. Before she could react, a shrill howl pierced the air, drawing their attention back to the figure.
"What the hell did you do!?" the girl demanded, her voice trembling with rage.
"Oh, just called in a few friends over for dinner," the figure replied casually.
"You bitch!" the girl seethed.
With a swift motion, she thrust her hand forward, summoning a massive vine with thorns protruding from its surface. The vine lunged toward the figure, but they evaded the attack with agile grace, darting away through the forest.
"Have fun~!" they taunted, their laughter echoing through the trees as they disappeared into the darkness.
Driven by determination, the girl pursued the figure, her footsteps echoing through the forest. However, her path was suddenly obstructed as a horde of Gaunts emerged from the shadows, blocking her way with menacing snarls and bared teeth.
"Get out of my way!" the girl cried, her voice ringing with determination.
In an instant, a smaller thorned vine shot out of the ground with startling speed, piercing through the approaching Gaunts like a bullet. Lifted into the air by the force of the vine, the creatures were hurled aside, crashing into trees with bone-crushing force.
As more Gaunts emerged from the shadows behind her, four shots echoed through the air. Finn's aim was true, striking the advancing Gaunts and causing them to writhe in agony as they fell to the ground. The girl glanced back to see Finn's timely intervention, offering a silent nod of acknowledgment before focusing her attention back on the remaining threats. Summoning more vines, she ensnared the creatures, tearing them apart with ruthless efficiency.
Satisfied that the immediate danger had passed, the girl turned back towards Finn, who was now sitting against the wall, applying pressure to his wound.
Bending down beside him, the girl flashed a smile, revealing sharp triangular teeth reminiscent of a shark. "Nice shooting there, dude. Really saved my ass back there," she remarked.
Finn managed a weak chuckle. "I should be thanking you. If you hadn't shown up, I'd be Gaunt food," he admitted.
"Let's call it even, then, eh?" she suggested. "What's your name?" she inquired.
Finn met her gaze, taking a moment to catch his breath before responding. "Finn, Finn Tresscoat," he introduced himself. Curiosity burning in his eyes, he posed a question in return. "Who are you? No... What are you?" he asked, unable to shake off the mystery surrounding her.
The girl maintained her enigmatic smile, meeting his gaze with her striking red eyes. "The name's Rachel Rose," she revealed. "As for what I am, well... I can answer that once you're all patched up," she added cryptically.
Summoning another vine, Rachel gently lifted Finn to his feet, supporting him as they began to make their way back towards town. With each step, Finn's mind buzzed with questions, the mysteries surrounding Rachel and her abilities swirling in his thoughts. Who was the cloaked figure? How did they control the Gaunts? And most pressing of all, who—or what—was Rachel, and how was she able to command those vines with such ease?
As they walked back toward town, Finn couldn't help but feel the weight of exhaustion settle upon him, both physically and mentally. His thoughts swirled with questions about the events that had just transpired—about Rachel, the cloaked figure, and the unsettling abilities they both possessed. Yet, amidst the chaos of his mind, one pressing question emerged, demanding attention above all else.
'When the hell am I gonna get another day off? Because I can sure as hell use it right now...!' Finn thought to himself, his weariness palpable.
Rachel, walking beside him, seemed to sense his inner turmoil. Casting him a sidelong glance, she offered a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Finn. You'll have your chance to rest soon," she assured him, her voice carrying a note of empathy.
Finn managed a weary smile in return, grateful for the reassurance. Despite the gravity of their situation, her words offered a glimmer of hope amidst the uncertainty that loomed over them…
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As Finn ambled along, he glanced at the many shops lining the main road of the town's bustling center. He wasn't searching for anything in particular; he simply wanted to enjoy the rare day off from his job, one of the most perilous occupations in the United West (U.W.).
"Finn! Oh, Finn!"
Finn turned his head to the right and spotted Ms. Tori Elortor, or simply Ms. Tori as he called her. She was an older lady in her early fifties, though her youthful appearance often surprised the townsfolk. With long white hair cascading down her back, pale skin, and bright hazel eyes, she was a striking figure. Today, she wore a navy blue sundress over a pair of tight blue jeans and brown cowboy boots.
Ms. Tori, the local bakery owner, was considered quite attractive and often caught the eye of the younger men in town. Her curvaceous figure and active lifestyle, including regular yoga sessions in the park, only added to her allure. However, Finn saw her differently. Having known her since childhood and feeling like part of her family, he saw her as a maternal figure rather than anything else. He was also close to her son, Eric, feeling like an older brother to him.
Despite his demanding job, which kept him busy for nearly twenty-four-seven, Finn always tried to visit Ms. Tori and Eric whenever he could. Today was a rare opportunity for him to relax and reconnect.
"Ah, hi Ms. Tori! How are you today?" Finn greeted her with a warm smile.
Ms. Tori returned his smile. "I'm just fine, Finn. The real question is, how are you? I haven't seen you in months!" Her tone shifted to one of concern. "I was worried, and so was Eric. You do have quite a dangerous job for someone so young," she added.
What kind of dangerous job did Finn have, you might ask?
Well, Finn was a "Gaunt Hunter," a member of a specialized group tasked with safeguarding the small towns outside the major cities in the United West from creatures known as Gaunts.
These slim, humanoid creatures had leathery black skin, no eyes or nose, and wide mouths that drooled a strange dark green liquid. They had emerged after the cataclysmic "Decade of Winter."
The Gaunts varied in form and capability. Some were very muscular, while others had bat-like wings, allowing them to fly. They were also cunning, often creating weapons from scavenged materials and hunting in packs.
Disturbingly, these were just the common variants.
There were tales of Gaunts resembling animals and some that could even speak, though Finn himself had never encountered such anomalies.
Despite the ominous title of Gaunt Hunter, Finn's role wasn't as glamorous as one might imagine.
He wasn't a high-tech, gadget-wielding hero. Gaunt Hunters received training similar to regular police officers, focusing on the use of firearms. However, since firearms were not commonly traded or shipped to the smaller towns outside the major cities, Gaunt Hunters were also taught to wield swords, knives, and other melee weapons, as well as trained in close-range combat.
Finn had been trained to fire a pistol but also learned to fight with a machete, which was more practical for their needs than a traditional sword. On duty, he carried a standard-issue Glock-17 and a machete strapped to his side. He also wore the standard protective gear issued to United West Security Forces (UWSF) officers.
Returning to the conversation with Ms. Tori, Finn let out a lighthearted chuckle. "Dangerous for most of the veterans on the job, but I'm young and fit! Practically invincible!" he said with a grin.
Ms. Tori gave Finn an unimpressed look, raising an eyebrow. "Is that right?" she asked. "Then what's this I hear about a Gaunt nearly taking your head off just last week?"
Finn's face flushed with embarrassment as he recalled the incident. A Gaunt had caught him off guard and nearly decapitated him with a makeshift axe. "Okay... yeah, fair enough," he admitted, looking down.
Ms. Tori's expression softened, and she gave him a few light taps on the shoulder. "Oh, I'm not trying to make you feel bad, Finn, I'm just reminding you that your job is dangerous… You need to be careful," she said gently.
Finn looked up at her and nodded. "I know, and thank you for caring," he replied. Inwardly, he thought, 'It's not like anyone else does'
"Of course, I care, Finn," Ms. Tori said firmly. "Do you know how devastated I'd be if you got hurt or, heaven forbid, died? I'd be heartbroken,” she told him. “Eric would be even worse off, after all, who would play with him?"
Finn felt a wave of warmth at her words. Despite not wanting to worry Ms. Tori or Eric, it was comforting to know there were people who cared about him, and who wanted him to stay safe and come back home. "I guess you're right," he said with a soft smile. "I'll try to be more careful out there, I promise,”
Ms. Tori nodded, her smile lingering. "Good,” she said. “Now, how many days do you have off?" she asked.
"Not many," Finn replied with a sigh. "Just today,"
Ms. Tori's eyes widened in shock. "Only today? Why?" She asked.
Finn's expression turned serious. "Many of the other Gaunt Hunters are either dead, retiring, or switching to become cops... There are only ten of us left in the entire town,"
Ms. Tori's eyes widened in horror. Gaunt Hunters were the primary defense against the Gaunts. The law across the U.W. dictated that local law enforcement dealt with human issues, leaving Gaunt-related threats to the Hunters. The thought of their numbers dwindling was terrifying.
Each town was supposed to have a contingent of Gaunt Hunters, given that small towns were the primary targets for Gaunt attacks.
Major cities, in contrast, rarely had to deal with Gaunts.
The dense populations of these urban centers acted as a deterrent, scaring off most Gaunt packs. Even if a small group of Gaunts did manage to attack, the cities were equipped with heavy weaponry and advanced defenses, making Gaunt Hunters unnecessary there.
This starkly contrasted with the dire need for Gaunt Hunters in the smaller, more vulnerable towns.
Ideally, each small town would have around fifty Gaunt Hunters, a number intended to ensure adequate protection against the Gaunt threat. However, the reality was far grimmer. The inherent dangers and heavy responsibilities associated with the job dissuaded many from becoming Gaunt Hunters. The perilous nature of the work, combined with the constant threat of death, resulted in a severe shortage of recruits.
As a result, the numbers in many towns had dwindled alarmingly.
"Only ten?" she repeated her voice barely above a whisper. "That's... alarming… What happens if more Gaunts come?"
"We do our best," Finn said, trying to sound confident. "But it's tough… Every day, we’re stretched thinner,"
Ms. Tori took a deep breath, trying to process the gravity of the situation.
Finn felt a lump in his throat. "I promise, Ms. Tori. I'll do everything I can to stay safe," he said, trying to remind her if his promise mere moments ago.
Ms. Tori wanted to argue with Finn's comment, but deep down, she knew he was somewhat right. The town was struggling—trade had slowed to a trickle, and many residents had moved away. The constant threat of Gaunt attacks made living there increasingly untenable. Even Ms. Tori had considered leaving to ensure Eric’s safety and to give him a chance to grow up in a more stable environment where he could interact with other children and experience the broader world.
However, she couldn’t bring herself to leave.
Her late husband was buried in this town, and even though years had passed since his death, she felt tied to the place where he rested. She had loved this town deeply, and in a way, staying felt like keeping a part of him alive.
Seeing the conflict in her eyes, Finn decided to change the subject. "Hey, why don't I come over for dinner?" he suggested with a soft smile. "I'm sure Eric would be happy to see me after so long,”
Ms. Tori was pulled out of her thoughts by his offer. She smiled, grateful for his willingness to spend his rare day off with them. "That would be lovely, Finn," she said with a quick nod.
They walked together to Ms. Tori's home, a modest three-bedroom house with a large attic. Inside, they found Eric sitting in front of the TV, watching cartoons. Hearing Finn’s voice, Eric turned, his face lighting up with excitement. He jumped out of his seat and ran to give Finn a hug.
Eric was about 11 years old, with brown hair like his deceased father but hazel eyes like his mother. He was wearing a dark black and blue striped shirt, dark gray pants, and black slip-on shoes.
Finn hugged him back, smiling. "I've got some stories to tell over dinner," he said, which made Eric's eyes sparkle with anticipation.
He loved hearing about the world beyond their town, even if it was mostly filled with woods and the ruins of an old world.
Finn then followed Ms. Tori into the kitchen to help prepare dinner. He found what he could and handed the items to her, glad to be of assistance. Ms. Tori thanked him and asked if he could help chop vegetables, which he was more than happy to do.
As they worked side by side, Ms. Tori glanced at Finn, her expression a mix of gratitude and concern. "You know, Finn, this town means a lot to me,” she told him “It’s where I built my life with my husband, and it’s where I want Eric to grow up, despite everything,"
Finn nodded, understanding the deep attachment she had. "I get it, Ms. Tori. This place has a lot of memories, and as long as I'm here, I'll do my best to keep it safe for you and Eric,"
Ms. Tori smiled warmly. "I know you will, Finn... Thank you,”
Dinner was a warm, lively affair. Eric listened intently to Finn’s stories, hanging on every word. The laughter and conversation filled the small home, creating a moment of normalcy amidst the chaos of their world. For a brief time, the threats outside seemed distant, and they enjoyed the simple pleasure of being together.
After a few bites, Eric looked at Finn eagerly. "Can you tell me one of your stories, Finn?" he asked, his eyes bright with anticipation.
Finn nodded, swallowing a mouthful of food. "Well, a couple of days ago, I was out with two or three other Hunters, we had just finished fighting off a few Gaunts, once they were dealt with, we decided to explore the area since it was the site of an old abandoned amusement park,” he began. “Some of the rides were still standing, though most were broken and destroyed, it was interesting to see the tech they used to have back then," Finn recounted.
Eric's eyes widened with excitement. "Wow! That's awesome!" he exclaimed.
Finn grinned. "It was pretty cool, but it’s nothing compared to some of the parks I saw in Salton Lake City! Those places are amazing,"
Eric's eyes gleamed at the mention of the nearby city. "Man, I want to go there someday!" he said enthusiastically. "Maybe when I start my training to be a Gaunt Hunter," he added with a big smile.
Finn chuckled. "So, you want to be a Gaunt Hunter, huh?" he asked. "You think you’ve got what it takes?"
Eric nodded vigorously. "Uh-huh! I know I can be a Gaunt Hunter! I bet I can even be better than you!" he declared, pointing at Finn.
Finn raised an eyebrow, amused. "Oh really?" he said. "Who's to say I'm not the best of the best, huh?"
Eric gave him a smug smirk. "Because if you were the best Hunter, you'd have already gotten rid of all the Gaunts!" he said confidently.
Finn chuckled. "Well, you got me there," he admitted. "But hey, if you think you can be the best and get rid of all the Gaunts, then I say go for it, dude."
Eric chuckled and resumed eating, his enthusiasm undimmed. Ms. Tori watched the two with a fond smile, marveling at the brotherly bond between them. It warmed her heart to see how close they had become. She knew that Finn cherished this connection just as much as Eric did, especially since Finn had grown up without a family of his own, raised in the local orphanage.
She recalled those early days when a young Finn would walk into the bakery, clutching a few coins. His eyes would light up with wonder at the sight of the treats and goodies lining the shelves. Something about him had touched her heart, and she began offering him free treats for him and the other orphans whenever he visited. Her late husband had also taken a liking to Finn, treating him like the son they never had. When Finn decided to become a Gaunt Hunter, it was her husband who had helped him prepare for the rigorous training, getting him into shape and offering constant encouragement.
After her husband's death, it was Finn who helped her grieve and find the strength to carry on. She had felt terrible about leaning on him during such a hard time, knowing he had his own sadness to deal with, yet he remained steadfast and strong. He had been there for her and for Eric, helping the young boy understand their loss and navigate the difficult times that followed.
She was truly grateful to have Finn in her life.
Suddenly, Finn's phone vibrated insistently in his pocket. He quickly reached for it and saw a text message from work. He opened it, dreading what it might say.
[~Finn, we need you tonight. Jon and Gary quit out of the blue, so we need someone to fill in.~]
Finn sighed, frustration bubbling up inside him. 'Great, now we're down to eight Hunters,' he thought. 'And Jon and Gary were both my age and in better shape than the veterans at the station.'
Ms. Tori noticed the change in his expression and knew immediately what it meant. "Does duty call, Finn?" she asked gently.
Finn nodded, his expression weary. "Yeah, looks like Jon and Gary quit. They need me to cover tonight."
Ms. Tori sighed, placing a comforting hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Finn. I know how much you were looking forward to some time off."
"It's alright," Finn said, forcing a smile. "I knew it was a long shot anyway. The town needs all the help it can get."
Eric looked up, concern etched on his young face. "Do you have to go, Finn?"
Finn ruffled the boy's hair affectionately. "Yeah, buddy. Duty calls. But I'll be back, and we’ll have more stories to share. I promise."
Ms. Tori gave him a supportive nod. "Just promise us you'll stay safe, Finn."
"I will," Finn assured her. He stood up, preparing to leave. "Thanks for dinner, Ms. Tori. It was great, as always."
As he left the warm, comforting atmosphere of Ms. Tori's home and headed out into the cold night, Finn felt a renewed sense of purpose. Despite the exhaustion and the ever-present danger, he knew he had to keep fighting. For the town, for Eric, and for the memory of the man who had helped him become who he was.
Once at the station, Finn entered and immediately spotted Dick Cortez, a veteran Gaunt Hunter who had been safeguarding the town for as long as Finn could remember. Dick, now in his 50s, had graying hair, deep-set wrinkles, and perpetually tired eyes. He was wearing the standard-issue armor that all Gaunt Hunters received, though each Hunter was allowed to customize their armor with different colors and modifications.
Dick's armor consisted of a high-collar black shirt beneath a modified, pure black chest plate that covered his upper abdomen, along with similarly-colored bracers. Both the chest plate and bracers were trimmed with white and featured matching shoulder pads. He also wore gloves with small metal plating on the fingers, dark navy jeans, black and white metal knee pads, and dark brown boots.
Dick noticed Finn and offered a small smile. "Heya, Finn," he greeted.
"Hey yourself, Dick," Finn replied with a nod.
"Sorry about having to bring you in on your day off," Dick said, his tone genuinely apologetic.
Finn walked over to his locker, where his armor and weapons were stored. He glanced at Dick and shrugged, giving a small smile. "It's alright, Dick. I understand why, and I'm not angry—well, not at you, but at those two," Finn said, referring to Jon and Gary.
Dick nodded in understanding. "Trust me, I'm disappointed in them too, but I can see why they left so suddenly," he said.
Finn nodded back, opening his locker to reveal his armor. His armor was similar to Dick's but differed in color and the clothing underneath. Finn wore his usual attire beneath the armor, which consisted of a dark brown chest plate trimmed with black, matching bracers, shoulder pads, knee pads, and gloves.
He took the armor out and quickly dressed, securing the pieces in place. He then grabbed his Glock and its holster, strapping it around his waist, and added his machete in its sheath. Once fully suited up, he turned to Dick with a raised brow. "Which side of town am I patrolling tonight?"
"Outer wall, west side," Dick stated, his voice firm.
Finn nodded, mentally preparing himself for the task ahead. The west side of the outer wall was notorious for Gaunt activity, a hotspot for their attacks. It was going to be a long night.
As he headed out, Dick called after him, "Stay sharp out there, Finn. We can't afford to lose any more good Hunters."
Finn turned back and gave a resolute nod. "I will, Dick. See you in the morning."
Once outside the city, Finn couldn't help but take in the grim sight of the outer wall. It was marred with deep scratches and chips from relentless Gaunt attacks, stained with the dark green goo that dripped from their slavering mouths, and speckled with bloodstains that would never fully wash away. The stark contrast between this battered exterior and the inner walls of the town was striking. Inside, the walls were adorned with chalk drawings from children and vibrant murals from the town's artists. These cheerful images served as a reminder of what he was protecting, and why he had chosen to become a Gaunt Hunter in the first place.
Reaching the west side of the wall, Finn began his patrol, moving back and forth to ensure no Gaunts were attempting to scale the barrier. For now, the night was quiet, and he hoped it would remain that way.
As he walked his beat, his thoughts drifted back to dinner with Eric and the boy's enthusiastic declaration about becoming a Gaunt Hunter. While part of him felt honored by Eric's admiration, another part was deeply troubled. The life of a Hunter was dangerous and filled with horrors that no one should have to witness, let alone a young boy like Eric.
Finn's mind flashed back to a particularly gruesome memory from a past patrol. He and another Hunter had been called to assist in repelling a large pack of Gaunts. They had rushed to the scene, only to find their comrades dead, slaughtered in horrific ways. One Hunter's skull had been cracked open, with Gaunts eating from it as if it were a bowl of grapes. Another Hunter, still alive, was being disemboweled and devoured. Finn could never forget the man's agonized expression as he watched his own entrails being torn apart and consumed. The sight had been so revolting that Finn had vomited on the spot, paralyzed by shock until his partner snapped him back to reality.
Then there were the stories he had heard from veterans like Dick. Dick once recounted an incident where a Hunter had been speared to death by multiple Gaunts. They hadn't even eaten him; they had just impaled him repeatedly, leaving his body to rot in the woods for days. Such tales highlighted the Gaunts' malevolence and complete lack of empathy.
Finn shuddered at the memories. He didn't want Eric to face such nightmares. The boy was full of life and potential, and Finn couldn't bear the thought of him enduring the same horrors he had.
Since that harrowing incident and the chilling story Dick had shared, Finn had sworn to himself that he wouldn't meet a similar fate. He vowed to go out fighting, to not end up like those other hunters. He couldn't bear the thought of becoming another victim, especially after what happened to his sister.
The sudden howl nearby jolted Finn out of his grim thoughts. The sound was close—too close. Instantly alert, he scanned his surroundings. Just then, something whizzed past his face, slicing his cheek. He turned to see a makeshift arrow embedded in the wall. Spinning back around, his heart sank as he saw ten Gaunts emerging from the tree line.
"Shit!" Finn cursed, his eyes widening in horror. This was a dire situation. He quickly drew his Glock and aimed at the advancing creatures. Before he could fire, a sharp pain seared through his left side. He glanced down to see a small dagger lodged in his torso.
'What the hell?' Finn thought, bewildered. 'Did one of the Gaunts throw this?'
"Sorry, but it's nothing personal," a strange voice echoed through the darkness.
Finn's gaze snapped forward, and he saw a figure emerging from the shadows. They wore a long black cloak that seemed to envelop them completely, giving the eerie impression that they were gliding across the ground rather than walking.
The figure approached him, their face obscured by the cloak's hood. "My, you are a handsome young man," they purred in a sultry tone. "Such a fucking shame that my babies must eat. We've been on the run, and they haven't had a chance to rest and eat until we saw you." They giggled, a chilling sound that sent shivers down Finn's spine.
Fear gripped Finn, but he managed to look up at the cloaked figure with a raised brow. "W-Who are you?" he stammered, his voice wavering.
The figure tilted their head slightly as if amused by his question. "Who am I?" they echoed. "I am their mother, their caretaker. I ensure they survive, even if it means feeding them humans like you." The figure leaned closer, and Finn could just make out a twisted smile beneath the hood.
Finn's mind raced. He needed to think of a way out, and fast. The Gaunts were closing in, and he was injured and at a severe disadvantage. Summoning his remaining strength, he clutched his Glock tighter and tried to steady his breath. He couldn't let this be the end.
The figure's giggle echoed eerily through the night, sending a shiver down Finn's spine. "Oh! Now I'm regretting stabbing you," they remarked with a twisted amusement. "It's not every day a handsome young man asks me my name, you know? Most prefer a no-name policy." Their tone was cryptic, and Finn couldn't shake the feeling of unease that settled in his gut. "While I would love to give you my name in far better circumstances, I'm afraid I don't have the time," they continued, their words dripping with urgency. "As I said, we're on the run from a rather unpleasant girl."
Finn's confusion only deepened. The figure's response didn't provide any clarity, leaving him even more perplexed. As the figure began to back away, Finn's eyes widened in shock as the Gaunts beside them moved in unison. ‘She can... control them!?’ he realized, disbelief washing over him.
"Go ahead, babies... EAT!" the figure commanded, her voice chillingly calm.
With a sickening lurch in his stomach, Finn watched as the Gaunts surged forward, their hunger palpable in the air. Determination surged within him, driving him to fight against the odds stacked against him. Ignoring the searing pain from his wound, he raised his gun and fired at the approaching Gaunts. Despite his efforts, only one was hit, and even then, it didn't slow down.
Finn gritted his teeth, preparing for the inevitable close-quarter battle with the monsters. "Come on!" he growled defiantly. "I'm right here!"
The Gaunts closed in, their predatory instincts driving them forward. Just as they leaped toward him, ready to strike, something unexpected occurred.
Thorny vines erupted from the ground, snaking around the Gaunts with incredible speed. Finn's eyes widened in astonishment as the vines ensnared the creatures, halting their advance. The vines twisted and contorted, slamming the Gaunts into the ground with brutal force, tearing at their flesh and rendering them helpless.
" Damn! How did that bitch already find us!?" the figure exclaimed, frustration evident in their voice.
Finn's gaze followed the figure's gaze as a new figure emerged from the shadows.
Her appearance was striking, to say the least. With a spiky red Mohawk and piercing red eyes devoid of any white, she exuded an aura of fierce determination. Smudged mascara framed her intense gaze, adding to her wild and untamed appearance. Her lips were painted black, a stark contrast to her fiery red hair and eyes. Clad in a black leather crop top vest that accentuated her slim, athletic frame, she exuded an air of defiance. Arm bands encircled her wrists and biceps, resembling the wraps worn by boxers, hinting at her combat prowess. Around her neck, she wore a large choker, adding to her rebellious demeanor. Her attire was completed by tight leather pants and high-heeled platform boots, giving her an imposing presence.
"Found you, ya freaking cunt!" she spat, her voice laced with venom.
The cloaked figure retreated, increasing the distance between them and the girl. "Ugh, don't you ever give up?" they retorted, their tone tinged with irritation.
The girl leveled a fierce glare at the figure. "After the shit you've done!? I ain't letting you go!" she declared, her voice dripping with disdain.
The figure let out a mocking giggle. "Is that so?" they taunted, gesturing toward Finn who lay wounded on the ground. "Not even to save his life?"
The girl's gaze shifted to Finn, her expression softening momentarily as she registered his injuries. Before she could react, a shrill howl pierced the air, drawing their attention back to the figure.
"What the hell did you do!?" the girl demanded, her voice trembling with rage.
"Oh, just called in a few friends over for dinner," the figure replied casually.
"You bitch!" the girl seethed.
With a swift motion, she thrust her hand forward, summoning a massive vine with thorns protruding from its surface. The vine lunged toward the figure, but they evaded the attack with agile grace, darting away through the forest.
"Have fun~!" they taunted, their laughter echoing through the trees as they disappeared into the darkness.
Driven by determination, the girl pursued the figure, her footsteps echoing through the forest. However, her path was suddenly obstructed as a horde of Gaunts emerged from the shadows, blocking her way with menacing snarls and bared teeth.
"Get out of my way!" the girl cried, her voice ringing with determination.
In an instant, a smaller thorned vine shot out of the ground with startling speed, piercing through the approaching Gaunts like a bullet. Lifted into the air by the force of the vine, the creatures were hurled aside, crashing into trees with bone-crushing force.
As more Gaunts emerged from the shadows behind her, four shots echoed through the air. Finn's aim was true, striking the advancing Gaunts and causing them to writhe in agony as they fell to the ground. The girl glanced back to see Finn's timely intervention, offering a silent nod of acknowledgment before focusing her attention back on the remaining threats. Summoning more vines, she ensnared the creatures, tearing them apart with ruthless efficiency.
Satisfied that the immediate danger had passed, the girl turned back towards Finn, who was now sitting against the wall, applying pressure to his wound.
Bending down beside him, the girl flashed a smile, revealing sharp triangular teeth reminiscent of a shark. "Nice shooting there, dude. Really saved my ass back there," she remarked.
Finn managed a weak chuckle. "I should be thanking you. If you hadn't shown up, I'd be Gaunt food," he admitted.
"Let's call it even, then, eh?" she suggested. "What's your name?" she inquired.
Finn met her gaze, taking a moment to catch his breath before responding. "Finn, Finn Tresscoat," he introduced himself. Curiosity burning in his eyes, he posed a question in return. "Who are you? No... What are you?" he asked, unable to shake off the mystery surrounding her.
The girl maintained her enigmatic smile, meeting his gaze with her striking red eyes. "The name's Rachel Rose," she revealed. "As for what I am, well... I can answer that once you're all patched up," she added cryptically.
Summoning another vine, Rachel gently lifted Finn to his feet, supporting him as they began to make their way back towards town. With each step, Finn's mind buzzed with questions, the mysteries surrounding Rachel and her abilities swirling in his thoughts. Who was the cloaked figure? How did they control the Gaunts? And most pressing of all, who—or what—was Rachel, and how was she able to command those vines with such ease?
As they walked back toward town, Finn couldn't help but feel the weight of exhaustion settle upon him, both physically and mentally. His thoughts swirled with questions about the events that had just transpired—about Rachel, the cloaked figure, and the unsettling abilities they both possessed. Yet, amidst the chaos of his mind, one pressing question emerged, demanding attention above all else.
'When the hell am I gonna get another day off? Because I can sure as hell use it right now...!' Finn thought to himself, his weariness palpable.
Rachel, walking beside him, seemed to sense his inner turmoil. Casting him a sidelong glance, she offered a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Finn. You'll have your chance to rest soon," she assured him, her voice carrying a note of empathy.
Finn managed a weary smile in return, grateful for the reassurance. Despite the gravity of their situation, her words offered a glimmer of hope amidst the uncertainty that loomed over them…
2024.06.01 08:37 Comrade_dylatov Re-Invigoration
The pounding of artillery had become monotonous. The nonstop thundering of guns and sliding of shells into and out of breeches were ingrained tightly into the minds of every Krieger who routinely paced the snow-filled trenches that enveloped the towering Xeno structure. Soldiers who had been in enemy territory for months now- and not once set their eyes on the enemy. Many of the Kriegers who dwelled in the earthworks had, in fact, never actually seen an Ork. Guardsmen- who had expected to valiantly give their lives and charge their enemy in a first-day altercation had instead spent weeks and weeks digging holes and loading artillery pieces. Realistically, soldiers of Krieg should’ve expected such a campaign, it was their doctrine- after all. And there were exceptions, of course. Many Kriegers had been granted the “chance” to engage the enemy with small arms during the desperate Ork attempt to break out from their future tomb, but it was more like picking out and shooting distant alien silhouettes in a snowstorm than a glorious battle.
And on the subject of a snowstorm- it had become evident that the main adversary of the Siege was not- in fact, the aliens. The incessant blizzards that swept across the northern plains of Gryllus prime had taken the lives of hundreds of Kriegers at this point- soldiers setting up minefields or going on patrol were frequently caught up in thick flurries or inflicted by snow blindness which resulted in a failure to return to friendly lines and ultimately, death. Many others simply perished from hypothermia due to a lack of sufficient winter clothing and a refusal to notify regimental doctors and quartermasters of their ailments. Hundreds more suffered from conditions like frostbite or pneumonia- but sought out care due to their traditional Krieg stubbornness or belief that requesting help was a sign of weakness.
Officially, though, the Siege was going well. The orks had been forced from their exterior trenches thanks to some gallant actions from their Valyrran comrades- who were still held in disdain by many among the Krieg ranks as a result of their abnormal appearance. At this point in the siege, it seemed as if victory was all but assured- the question was a matter of time. And with the temperamental status of the frontline further south- it was evident that time was becoming an issue. The siege wasn’t expected to last as long as it had- many officers in the 266th anticipated the Orks to sally out and meet the regiment in a pitched battle- in which they were predicted to annihilate the inferior xeno forces- but in a rare display of tactical acumen for the Aliens, the creatures had defiantly holed themselves up inside their fortress. This maneuver had proven costly for both parties involved, in a tactical sense- it had sealed the fate of the Orks as any chance of escape or relief had essentially been crushed with the withdrawal of the Xenos into the inner fortress. However- on the strategic level, Imperial forces in the region had been forced into allocating notable detachments to conduct a lengthy seizure of the emplacement, which prevented them from making further progress towards capturing the planet. In short, it appeared the Orks cared not who won the battle for the surface, rather just that the imperials lost.
Watchmaster Marius Kötz sat on the crude stool that was positioned close to the wood-lined wall of the snow filled Krieg trench. His legs were spread wide, his elbows resting on his knees and his posture lousy, his back curved in a way reminiscent of a faucet spout. A scarf- fashioned from a cut of a khaki-green blanket- was wrapped around his neck, neatly tucked under the forward portion of his rebreather. Snow covered his shoulders and helmet, reflecting his current sedentary disposition. The only part of him that moved was the shivering of his body and the only sounds he emitted were the chattering of teeth and the typical hissing of his mask. Kötz was a veteran- he’d been in the thick of the fighting on Haraxis and had his fair share of combat on Gryllus as well- but since the start of the siege, he’d hardly done anything. In the early days of the battle, it was looking as if he and a few others were going to be sent on a daring night raid that would’ve permitted Imperial forces to gallantly storm the Rok in a sudden assault and bring the Ork presence on Gryllus to a swift and resounding extermination. Unfortunately for him, and every other servant of the Emperor participating in the campaign, the weather soon swelled to a state so severe that the mission was called off. Regiment command feared it would be difficult for the raider team to find enemy lines- and even if they did successfully clear the Xeno trenches, the team would’ve had no way to notify imperial forces across no man’s land of their endeavors. While the Orks were eventually forced inside the Rok regardless, no further breakthroughs could be sustained, thus resulting in the current situation.
Even with the weather in it’s current state, though, Krieg command was, at this point, willing to risk an all out assault for the sake of finally forcing the Orks from Gryllus and relieving their struggling allies in the south, (not to say they hadn’t achieved major victories of their own). At present, the current impediment was the monstrous “ships” defensive batteries, which were more than sufficient to vaporize significant portions of any assault force the Kriegers were capable of mustering. And as Marius Kötz sat in the frigid morning covered in layers of powdery snow- Major Dolfüss, commander of the 398th Grenadier Brigade, stood over the fizzling holomap, Highlighted in a stark red color was a gargantuan twin-barreled cannon that jutted out from the chaotic amalgamation that was the Xeno craft. It was one of the few operational the Orks had kept in operable condition, and now, it was to be to the target of the raider team that he had mustered nearly two months prior.
The battery was elevated, which meant any attempting to disable would not only have to reach the walls of the Rok- but also scale its titanic walls to reach the gun and rig it with a sufficient amount of explosives to disable it. If Dolfüss was examining the map correctly- and he certainly assumed he was, this would leave a gaping hole in Ork defenses in which they would have no superheavy ordinance available: an invaluable facet of the Xeno defense thanks to the poor visibility around the ship. Without the ability to blindly blast into the presumed location of the enemy- a trait characteristic of Ork warfare, a successful denial of Imperial forces breaching the walls of the Rok was an unlikely outcome. And so, with a quick beckoning of the commander of 1st Grenadier Battalion, Captain Augustin, a request for assembly was dispatched to all members of the old raiding team- Valyrran and Krieg alike.
submitted by Comrade_dylatov to war_for_Gryllus [link] [comments]
And on the subject of a snowstorm- it had become evident that the main adversary of the Siege was not- in fact, the aliens. The incessant blizzards that swept across the northern plains of Gryllus prime had taken the lives of hundreds of Kriegers at this point- soldiers setting up minefields or going on patrol were frequently caught up in thick flurries or inflicted by snow blindness which resulted in a failure to return to friendly lines and ultimately, death. Many others simply perished from hypothermia due to a lack of sufficient winter clothing and a refusal to notify regimental doctors and quartermasters of their ailments. Hundreds more suffered from conditions like frostbite or pneumonia- but sought out care due to their traditional Krieg stubbornness or belief that requesting help was a sign of weakness.
Officially, though, the Siege was going well. The orks had been forced from their exterior trenches thanks to some gallant actions from their Valyrran comrades- who were still held in disdain by many among the Krieg ranks as a result of their abnormal appearance. At this point in the siege, it seemed as if victory was all but assured- the question was a matter of time. And with the temperamental status of the frontline further south- it was evident that time was becoming an issue. The siege wasn’t expected to last as long as it had- many officers in the 266th anticipated the Orks to sally out and meet the regiment in a pitched battle- in which they were predicted to annihilate the inferior xeno forces- but in a rare display of tactical acumen for the Aliens, the creatures had defiantly holed themselves up inside their fortress. This maneuver had proven costly for both parties involved, in a tactical sense- it had sealed the fate of the Orks as any chance of escape or relief had essentially been crushed with the withdrawal of the Xenos into the inner fortress. However- on the strategic level, Imperial forces in the region had been forced into allocating notable detachments to conduct a lengthy seizure of the emplacement, which prevented them from making further progress towards capturing the planet. In short, it appeared the Orks cared not who won the battle for the surface, rather just that the imperials lost.
Watchmaster Marius Kötz sat on the crude stool that was positioned close to the wood-lined wall of the snow filled Krieg trench. His legs were spread wide, his elbows resting on his knees and his posture lousy, his back curved in a way reminiscent of a faucet spout. A scarf- fashioned from a cut of a khaki-green blanket- was wrapped around his neck, neatly tucked under the forward portion of his rebreather. Snow covered his shoulders and helmet, reflecting his current sedentary disposition. The only part of him that moved was the shivering of his body and the only sounds he emitted were the chattering of teeth and the typical hissing of his mask. Kötz was a veteran- he’d been in the thick of the fighting on Haraxis and had his fair share of combat on Gryllus as well- but since the start of the siege, he’d hardly done anything. In the early days of the battle, it was looking as if he and a few others were going to be sent on a daring night raid that would’ve permitted Imperial forces to gallantly storm the Rok in a sudden assault and bring the Ork presence on Gryllus to a swift and resounding extermination. Unfortunately for him, and every other servant of the Emperor participating in the campaign, the weather soon swelled to a state so severe that the mission was called off. Regiment command feared it would be difficult for the raider team to find enemy lines- and even if they did successfully clear the Xeno trenches, the team would’ve had no way to notify imperial forces across no man’s land of their endeavors. While the Orks were eventually forced inside the Rok regardless, no further breakthroughs could be sustained, thus resulting in the current situation.
Even with the weather in it’s current state, though, Krieg command was, at this point, willing to risk an all out assault for the sake of finally forcing the Orks from Gryllus and relieving their struggling allies in the south, (not to say they hadn’t achieved major victories of their own). At present, the current impediment was the monstrous “ships” defensive batteries, which were more than sufficient to vaporize significant portions of any assault force the Kriegers were capable of mustering. And as Marius Kötz sat in the frigid morning covered in layers of powdery snow- Major Dolfüss, commander of the 398th Grenadier Brigade, stood over the fizzling holomap, Highlighted in a stark red color was a gargantuan twin-barreled cannon that jutted out from the chaotic amalgamation that was the Xeno craft. It was one of the few operational the Orks had kept in operable condition, and now, it was to be to the target of the raider team that he had mustered nearly two months prior.
The battery was elevated, which meant any attempting to disable would not only have to reach the walls of the Rok- but also scale its titanic walls to reach the gun and rig it with a sufficient amount of explosives to disable it. If Dolfüss was examining the map correctly- and he certainly assumed he was, this would leave a gaping hole in Ork defenses in which they would have no superheavy ordinance available: an invaluable facet of the Xeno defense thanks to the poor visibility around the ship. Without the ability to blindly blast into the presumed location of the enemy- a trait characteristic of Ork warfare, a successful denial of Imperial forces breaching the walls of the Rok was an unlikely outcome. And so, with a quick beckoning of the commander of 1st Grenadier Battalion, Captain Augustin, a request for assembly was dispatched to all members of the old raiding team- Valyrran and Krieg alike.
2024.06.01 08:27 Capable_Brief_5385 Okay, so let's admit it, I got used...
So I met this guy about 4 1/2 years ago. I really liked him even though he seemed a little distant and withdrawn. I thought that was just his personality, and I kind of went with it because he seemed like he wanted me, too. He would hold me and cuddle with me and let's just say that things moved pretty fast. He was living at his aunties house at the time (he was 32?) and he would go over there and come back over to my house and we would party. Oh, and I forgot, I had just gotten out of pre release and had about $10,000. And he saw my bank account on my phone because I didn't hide it when I checked it one time. Anyways, things seemed fine in the beginning. We turned into a normal couple and he moved in. He agreed to pay half of the rent every month, and he kept his word. But then I started noticing things were a little off. He took the screens out of all of my windows. While I was in the shower I would hear someone like, rushing around in the front room. One day, I decided to check it out. I went in there, and he was nowhere to be found. Fast forward a little bit, and him and I got into an argument because I noticed that he had put appointments on his calendar to go meet up with his dad. And I just knew that he wasn't going to see his dad. Because of the urgency he felt about keeping these days, and he would not compromise with me on any of them. Well, that day I walked into the bathroom And he took off running out the front door, left it wide open and just ran! I wasn't about to go chase him, I thought holy cow, you must really wanna see your dad! (He could have went and seen his dad anytime...) I knew that he was dating someone else. Because he would never answer his phone or text while he was 'seeing' him. Well, I just so happened to walk down the next street over and just as I turned the corner, I saw him bend down and give this girl a kiss and then say something and walk away... I flipped! I took off running after him all crazy, and he took off, too. Needless to say, I didn't catch him. He came home later that night and I confronted him about it. He said I was crazy, there was no way that I could have seen that far because I have bad eyes and he said he gave his ex sister in law a hug. I said, sure, like she has black hair! Then, I had $3000 I had saved up in a wallet, and I decided to go do my laundry at the Laundromat and I left my wallet in a safe place in my apartment. I gave him the house key (like a dummie) because my hands were full of laundry, so he could lock the door. You tell me this man didn't start a fight with me, and leave while I was in the bathroom! He went and stole my money and I had to basically beg him to givw me back about $1300. I was devastated. You would think I would have ended it there, but I didn't. As time went on, after I would get out of thw shower, I would notice new things In my apartment. Like a baby towel (who he said was his nieces), and a worn out hair tie. I knew it wasn't mine. I straight put up with all of his crap because I loved the dude and truly thought I was going crazy thinking that all of this crazy stuff was going on. There's so much more things I haven't mentioned here that went on, things that broke my heart and crushed my soul. Now, he just got out of jail and he called me for a couple of days when he first got out (I never answered his calls) and today, he called from an Arizona number and asked me if I had any money, because he was hungover really bad and needed some. When I said no, my daughters graduation is tomorrow, he said, well, then have a nice life if you don't have any money. And click. Then he calls right back and I refuse to answer. I pressed that screen call instead. I think it freaked him out. Lol. But I need to know y'all, how do I heal from all of this. I'm damaged. I mean, broken. I don't understand what about me would make someone think they could do that to me. I don't think I'm ugly. I'm a little chubby, but not too bad. I work hard and I can play hard, too. I'm a giver, and a lover, and I ha(d) hope and faith in people at one time. Now I just feel so bad.... So sad. Can anybody help me? Point me in a direction? Please don't say therapy. I hate therapy. And please don't be rude to me, my heart has already been through enough.
submitted by Capable_Brief_5385 to BreakUps [link] [comments]
2024.06.01 07:56 Frame_Late Unburdened: A Job Gone Wrong.
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The following two brain scans were provided by the Neuro-Warfare branch of the Halcyon Security Division (HSD) for the purpose of analyzing the thoughts, behaviors, and information of notorious gangsters Vincent 'Troy' Cohen and Bruno (Deadname:Koraak Tel-Char). At the point of the recording of this archival shared, Bruno has since received his rebirth therapy, and Vincent is currently serving a long-term rehabilitative and reeducative sentence in the Erebus Supermax Prison on Io.
Warning: the contents of this archival shared may be especially disturbing to some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
Warning: the contents of this archival shard are for the sole purpose of analyzing the thought patterns and memories of certain degenerate criminals in an effort to ascertain vital information that can be used to eliminate their organizations. Only staff with clearance level Omega may view this archival shared, and the viewership of this archival shared by anyone of inadequate clearance level will lead to twenty years in prison and a fine of over a hundred thousand credits.
Booting up memory scan: Vincent 'Troy' Cohen, November 4th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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"Do you have visuals of the target, Troy?"
I knelt down in the alleyway, the bodies of me and my partners shrouded in long, waterproof, ashen-gray overcoats the shade of dirty street scum that we wore to ward off the constant heavy rainfall the color of osmium. Our faces were covered in a mix of scrapped respirators, visors, or full metal face masks carved with intricate designs to hide our identities. On our waists were our badges of honor: leather belts studded with interlocked rivets made from blackened titanium, each buckle forged of silver and shaped into the head of our gang's symbol, the black mamba. We hid amongst the shadows of the dark midday of Halcyon City, the heavy, oppressive rains blanketing the roads paved obsidian-black with asphalt and weathered concrete walkways. The street lamps were always on, like beacons of false hope in a storm of melancholy.
The city was dark and dreary as always, the planet of Proxima Centauri B, renamed Dawn's Lamentation over a century ago, orbited the red dwarf star of Proxima Centauri, and the atmosphere was thick with natural smog and ever-storming rain clouds. That didn't dissuade people from living here: there was plenty of money to be had for shrewd industrialists and hardworking pioneers, even in the urban sprawl. But that life also came with risks, especially for those on the bottom of the totem pole.
I was a ganger, and we were criminals; full stop. I won't assault you with some spiel about how we're the good guys fighting oppression because, at the end of the day, we could be just as bad, if not worse, than Halcyon's Security Division, or the HSD for short. We were traffickers, killers, extortionists, and money launderers. We dealt with everything from stolen tech and military-grade hardware to hard drugs and sentients.
Yes, sentients. We trafficked sentients, but not in the way you might think. They weren't prisoners, in fact, we were their saviors if they had the cash. We had developed a reputation for fighting the power, but it was still business: sure, freeing captives from the clutches of the Protectorate. The disruption of its many oppressive organizations held a certain satisfaction in my heart for sure, but we didn't help those who couldn't pay unless someone else paid on their behalf. It was about making sure me and my gang, my family, could live a decent life for another day.
It helped that most of us joined after leaving the state yard for partaking in acts of 'degeneracy' and 'anti-xenopet illegalities' as if those terms meant anything anymore other than that we were a threat to the local status quo. It was hard to pick up a job as a former inmate when even in something as harsh and backbreaking as a job in the iridium mines near the poles when the employment office had you blacklisted as a degenerate, which lead to the formation of many of the gangs: we needed to make a living somehow, and when all social programs were cut off from you unless you submitted for 're-education' and the only way to put food on the table was subverting, breaking, or even downright fighting the law, you did what you had to do or you died on the streets a scorned beggar.
It wasn't like the HSD made it easy for us on even a good day: the local HSD units were armed to the teeth with advanced, military-grade hardware that you'd often see on the front lines of the Second Authority War: armored assault transports, a myriad of advanced war droids, all sorts of chemical countermeasures that made tear gas seem like putting the garden hose on mist mode, and of course advanced firearms. Add that to the fact that they were authorized to use deadly force when they deemed it necessary and you had a ruthless, heartless, and nearly unstoppable enemy. But we could make that work: we weren't trying to stop them, just to withstand them.
"Yeah, I got eyes on the prize, Koraak; seven armored transports, two for droids, five for prisoners."
Today wasn't a day for a normal job: we were getting bolder, cockier, more ambitious. Our numbers had swelled for the last few years after the raid at Barnard's Star and the fall of the Blood Dragon Mafia. Their leader, Saito Yasuhide, had committed seppuku as their manor burned, and his twin sons had gone down fighting rather than allowing themselves to be captured simply to face a firing squad. In the aftermath, many of the family's associates had fled to the surrounding systems, and with the sheer size and scope of the criminal underworld found here, it was no wonder that many people who had developed skills of the less legal variety had decided to form ranks with the gangs, and with them they brought guns, tech, knowledge, contacts, and even something that we thought wasn't possible beforehand: a semblance of peace between the gangs, or at least the closest thing to peace that gangs could cultivate effectively. With the fall of the Blood Dragons, we saw the writing on the wall, and the writing couldn't have been clearer: work together or die together.
"Sounds like a massacre, Troy: are you sure we can handle seven?"
"We ain't got no choice, Cinder: this job's double the usual rate, and that's not including the weapons and gear we could scrounge if this goes well," I hissed, my eyes scanning for any resistance. There were at least four guards for each van, not to mention at least eight droids in total, meaning that we were already outnumbered, but we had the element of surprise: we could make it work. "So put your balls in your purse and get ready to spill some blood."
Koraak snorted at our antics, which sounded like someone pulling the ripcord on a lawnmower. He was a veteran Russu Corsair, and while his past of slaving, raiding, and killing was unsavory, so were the lives we'd lived, so who were we to judge? All we cared about was that he was a brutal and capable fighter and a loyal brother in arms. It turned out that being a ganger wasn't much different from being a Corsair: you lived and died by a code of honor, you fought to the death for your brothers, and you lived to die for the sake of your gang and your family, simple as that. In a strange, ironic way, it was an incredibly honest way of life: we were under no illusions as to what we were, what we did, and why we did it, and we'd long since accepted it. The Russu related to us in that aspect, in many ways I could respect, which is why I hated what the Protectorate was doing, and why I couldn't grasp how most of humanity could just collectively lose their marbles so long ago. What had happened for us to deem all other life below us in such a demeaning and infantilizing way?
The Russu were a race of tall, muscle-bound Saurians with avian features, and Koraak was no exception: reaching almost seven feet in height and weighing over four hundred and fifty pounds, he could be an absolute menace if he so desired. His skin was covered in stubby, knobby scales and dense plumage, with elegant feathers adorning the ridges along his back as well as his forearms, elbows, knees, and the crests on his head. He almost looked like how paleontologists described velociraptors, with razor-sharp talons, feathers shaded in vibrant greens, reds, and purples, and a maw full of sharp teeth, but at the tip of his snout was a sharp, beak-like growth meant for ripping flesh off the bone.
The Russu were strange as hell, but they also looked almost cute in the same way a fully grown alligator was cute: they were obviously dangerous, but humans would always have this innate desire to anthropomorphize them and to pet them for some inexplicable reason, although common sense usually prevented that, at least amongst the very few of us left that were sane.
"Shut up, Troy! All I'm saying is that that'll be rough, and you know it," hissed Cinder. Cinder was a tall black man whose coffee-colored skin was covered in tattoos. He wore an ebony mechanic's jumpsuit with metal inserts underneath his grimy overcoat covering his body and a faded black respirator on his face. His eyes were a startling blue that seemed sorely out of place, and his hair was braided into thick cornrows along his scalp. He wore a pair of heavy black combat boots and palmed his compact shotgun in his hands, the square barrel less than seven inches. Like a lot of the weapons the Black Mambas carried on their persons and dealt in, they fired caseless ammunition; in Cinder's case it was 16x40mm caseless shotshells filled with depleted uranium micro-flechetes no thicker than a toothpick. Cinder nervously fiddled with the detachable tube magazine underneath the barrel, his hands shaking. Despite the shit I have him, I didn't blame him for being anxious: I was anxious too, even if I refused to show it. The biting cold of unease and pessimism was in my stomach, and I ran all the way that this job could go wrong in my head over and over.
"Just hold yourself together, this ain't anything we haven't done before, there's just more of it," I reassured Cinder, "besides, we're not alone; we have reinforcements across the street. We'll make it out of this alive."
Cinder nodded almost absentmindedly, his eyes downcast and his breathing shallow. I turned from him and back to Koraak, who was making sure he had everything on his person; he had a synthetic leather bandoleer across his chest that contained the heavy eight guage depleted uranium slugs he kept loading and unloading into his much larger, longer, and more traditional shotgun he nicknamed ‘carnage’ and several leather straps that held his Tu'shan daggers: traditional Russu pyramidal blades forged from a silvery alloy with all three edges serrated and the tip barbed to leave behind horrible, gaping wounds that gushed blood. They were wickedly sharp and absolutely straight like a stiletto, and the hilts and pommels were beautifully decorated. He wore no clothes underneath his overcoat to cover the countless scars and blemishes he's earned in combat across his chest and abdomen, and instead of a normal respirator or visor, he simply wore a hood over his head and some traditional Russu facial armor to protect his mouth, eyes, and cheeks.
"You ready to fight, Koraak? The caravan will pick up and leave soon."
Koraak was silent for a moment before nodding, a human gesture he had picked up after serving as a soldier with the Black Mambas for years. "I'm always ready to fight," he said before lifting up his shotgun and aiming down the sights at the reinforced front wheels of the first armored car in the caravan. He exhaled and fired, the slug ripping through both front tires and causing them to deflate and fall apart. The echo of the shot rang through the alleyway and the street, causing pedestrians to panic and flee the scene as heavily armored guards poured out of the side doors of the armored cars and unholstered their carbines.
"Go, now!" I shouted, and both me and Cinder rushed out into the fray, our guns raised. Koraak was right behind the two of us, providing covering fire with his shotgun. Several guards fell quickly, Koraak's precise fire and the sheer force of the depleted uranium slugs putting them down for good as their heads were vaporized or their chest cavities were turned to mush. He emptied the tube with one final shot that painted the grey matter of a security guard on the door of one of the armored cars, then racked the shotgun and expertly loaded it in threes, his hands deft and agile as he reached for more slugs faster than any human.
With the cacophony of our initial assault, more Black Mambas poured out from the alleyways and the subways, armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons; shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, machetes, baseball bats, and all manner of homemade explosives. Molotovs and more potent concoctions shattered against the asphalt, herding in the caravan guards with their volatile contents as they were quickly gunned down. The assault was working, and we were winning.
Then I heard the robotic whine of a combat droid activating, and my heart sank. One of the armored cars in the back activated the four combat droids it held, the robotic assault units detaching from their charging ports on the sides of the large van and began to form up, each armed with a terrifying array of deadly weapons meant to quash any and all resistance. They were blocky, soulless, utilitarian things that stood at eight feet tall, with flat feet meant for stomping and blades, grasping claws designed to lacerate flesh and shatter bone. On each shoulder was a weapon: on the left was a multi-barrel rotary grenade launcher loaded with 15mm concussion grenades, and on the right was a burst-fire splinter cannon. They were all painted a dull grayish-green, the color of Halcyon's Security Division, although some had a few decorations on them: the one closest to me had a bit of graffiti on the side that said Mr. Hugs in Comic Sans, which I couldn't decide whether that made it more or less terrifying. They split up without hesitation and began to scan the chaotic battlefield, their single, red, beady lenses the security forces had the gall to call eyes focusing on specific targets to eliminate.
An entire group of Black Mambas was torn to pieces by a cloud of flechettes as one of the droids fired a withering three-round burst of shotshells from the four gauge splinter cannon mounted on its shoulder. Another picked up a Black Mamba in its hand and crushed her skull effortlessly before tossing her limp body to the side, its single, red, remorseless robotic eye tracking a new target. Most bullets that struck their thick armored chassis simply bounced off, and those that could pierce the armor didn't seem to phase the droids whatsoever, merely notifying them of a new potential target.
"Damnit," I shouted as I gunned down another guard only for two more to take his place. "Cinder! We gotta pop open the cars and scram! Get the maglock cutters!"
Cinder rushed and slid over through a dirty puddle, pulling out a maglock cutter from the inside of his coat and slipping it onto the back door of the first van. It immediately went to work, drilling through the maglock with a high-powered plasma torch nozzle, and within ten seconds we heard the telltale clunk of the maglock separating. I yanked the door open and ordered I side, ready to escort the prisoners out… only for my face to contort in shock and horror.
The back was empty. There was not a single soul inside of the back brig of the armored car.
"What the fuck…" Cinder gasped, his eyes wide with shock. "What the actual fuck… what the fuck is this, Troy?"
"I… I don't…" I stuttered the sounds of battle and carnage drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in my ears. All five cars were supposed to be filled with recently captured Russu from the front lines ready to be housed in the local Xenopet-Megaplex for processing and conditioning. The fact that this one was empty…
Suddenly, it all hit me at once with the force of a freight train, but it was too late. "We were set up, Cinder; our fucking client either squealed or was crooked to begin with…"
"Fucking bitch!" Cinder shouted as he spun around in an enraged arch, anger growing in his eyes. He aimed his shotgun at an approaching security guard and reduced his upper body to a fine red mist with a cacophony of shotgun blasts. "We gotta get everyone who's left out of here! Do you know what this means? The Jurors will be here soon, and then we're all going down! We gotta go, fuck the job!"
I grit my teeth. Not the Jurors, anything but the Jurors.
"Fine, gather everyone who's left and we'll slip through the sewers, the droids are too bulky to follow us there…"
As I spoke, my eyes wandered to the seventh and final armored car, the second of the droid cars, and my blood froze. Not only were all four ports empty, but they were also smaller and more shallow than the ports for the combat droids. That could only mean one thing.
"Oh fuck! Cinder, we gotta get our Russu members out of here! They've got arachnid droids!"
Arachnid droids were the stuff of nightmares. Resembling blocky, robotic arachnids the size of a manhole cover, they were specifically designed to take down sentient aliens, specifically the Russu, using sickeningly non-lethal means. They were equipped with full-body adaptive cloaking to blend in with their environments, paralytic agents that they could inject into their victims, built-in taser barbs, psychedelic gas ports for crowd-control, and a narrow-coned cacophony canon that disabled the Russu using incredibly high-pitched sounds that only they could hear, forcing them onto their knees and clutching the backs of their heads where their auditory organs were stored in agony. But worst of all was their stygian spinnerets: special ports near the end of their robotic abdomens that excreted a viscous, latex-like substance made up of millions of nano-bots. This substance could be used to render Russu blind, deaf, and mute by having it forced onto their faces, the black substance growing and enveloping their heads and working its way into every orifice. It was completely permeable to the standard atmosphere, but any Russu who had been 'webbed' was completely helpless and essentially captured, and the 'webbing' was both nearly indestructible and nigh impossible to remove without a triple-encrypted override key that was found in every arachnid droid's code, which was corrupted when the droid was destroyed or hacked into. Once you were 'webbed', you were essentially captured and the standard protocol was to leave you to the wolves since the nano-bots could be tracked, endangering the entire gang.
I turned just as I heard the deafening sound of Koraak discharging his shotgun, and I saw him squaring off against one of the assault droids. The droid has obviously been programmed to not use lethal force against Russu if possible, as instead of simply killing Koraak with it's shoulder-mounted splinter cannon, it approached with its claws extended, blades retracted. Koraak continued to back away and fire, pumping the droid full of depleted uranium slugs, its armor crumbling inward as the slugs pierced its chassis and damaged its internal cyberstructure. Eventually, Koraak ran out of slugs and instinctively reached to his bandoleer only to find that he had no more shells left at all, and he drew one of his knives and his sidearm, a simple high-caliber handgun. He tried to take down the droid with his handgun, but the bullets didn't even seem to affect the droid upon penetration, it's claws still extended as it attempted to apprehend Koraak.
In the corner of my vision, as I watched Koraak battle with the droid, I noticed a faint shimmer in the air on one of the black streetlight poles that was right behind him. I focused on it and blinked, believing my eyes had deceived me for a moment before realizing that it was actually a cloaked arachnid droid stalking Korvaak, ready to pounce and incapacitate him.
Before I could shout, it leaped from the pole and landed on Korvaak, causing him to shout in surprise while it began to coagulate its horrifying stygian webbing to disable Korvaak. Korvaak tried to wrestle it off of him, but the droid was agile and fast, clinging onto Korvaak and skittering around across his upper body as he attempted to grab it, forcibly wrapping the sticky black liquid across his face as he gagged like a spider wrapping up a fly. I rushed towards him to try and help, but I felt pain explode in my ribs as I was struck with the arm of the closest combat droid and launched into the chassis of a parked car, the metal denting from the sheer force of impact. I groaned in pain as I saw stars and my head spun, and just then I felt a blinding light be cast over me.
“Drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head, or you will be pacified with deadly force!” Shouted a loud, artificially deepened voice from above. “I repeat, drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head! Neither hostility nor hesitation will be tolerated!”
It was the Jurors, I could feel the air being pushed around from the thrusters on their drop ships, and I could hear screams and shouts as my fellow Black Mambas were quickly gunned down. I couldn’t see well since I was seeing double, but I could hear the slaughter as my eyes dimmed and I began to lose consciousness, my regrets crawling up my throat like vomit.
I’m sorry was all I could think as everything finally went dark, and the sounds of chaos, destruction, and combat faded away.
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Memory halted due to loss of consciousness. Booting next available memory in shard…
Booting up memory scan: Koraak Tel-Char Bruno, November 5th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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“Good morning, sleepyhead; it’s time for breakfast.”
My eyes shot open. I was not in the street anymore, nor was I home in my bed with my mate. I knew instantly that something was horribly wrong. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t gain the leverage to do so: my ankles had been shackled together with magnetic cuffs and my arms were forced together in front of me.
I was wearing some kind of thick shirt. It was warm, fluffy, and comfortable on the inside, but it still made me incredibly uncomfortable that my arms didn’t have a free range of motion. I looked down to see that I was wearing some human garment I had heard about before, a straightjacket maybe?
The entire room was padded: the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. There was no bed or furniture; the floor was soft enough to serve as a bed in itself. There was nothing else except for the soft reddish-orange lights on the ceiling that somehow made me sleepy. I blinked slowly for a moment, my body screaming at me to just lay back down and lose consciousness, but I couldn’t do that: I needed to figure out where I was and how to escape.
Then I noticed who was speaking to me: it was a short human female, with crow's feet around her blue eyes, blonde hair braided down her back, and freckles all over her face. She had a soft smile on her lips, and her forehead was slightly crinkled. She wore a full-body white lab suit with a white overcoat and a pair of glasses for snugly on her face.
"There we go, now I can see those pretty eyes, such a beautiful shade of teal," she cooed softly, "You're such a handsome boy, even with all those scars: I'm sure you'll be adopted very quickly once we get you fixed up."
Fear gripped my heart as I began to piece all the evidence together. I had been captured; I was no longer on Halcyon, and instead, I was in one of the horrific space-born facilities I had heard so much about from the inside agents. I started to hyperventilate and squawk like a newborn hatchling, my eyes dilating in panic. This couldn't be happening! This has to be a nightmare!
The human woman merely wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into an embrace, cradling my head under her chin and speaking softly. I couldn't bite at her or claw at her: I was muzzled and wearing a straight jacket, so I had no choice but to allow her to coddle me.
"It's okay, sweetheart: I understand you're scared, but Julie's here to make all the pain and bad thoughts go away," she said as if she was comforting a child, which made anger blossom in my chest indignantly. "I'll be your caretaker for the next few months, and I'm going to make sure you're healthy, happy, and most importantly safe while you're under our care. I'm sorry to say that includes your restraints and restrictive clothing, but we have to make sure you aren't a threat to yourself or others before we can determine if it's a good idea to remove you from suicide watch."
I growled under my muzzle. Suicide watch? They must have had a lot of instances of Russu taking their own lives after being captured, something I wished I had been able to do before that damnable droid launched itself onto me and…
I shuddered at the thought of the black, viscous substance forcing itself into my nostrils and down my throat and windpipe, gagging me and rendering me completely helpless. It was so cold, so harsh, like slime, and when I had tried to tear it off of my face it merely attached itself to my claws and bound my talons together. I remember squirming on the ground as it enveloped me, unable to see, hear, or speak, and then everything went dark in an instant. It was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced, which was saying something.
"You alright, sweetheart? Oh, I know, you're probably hungry! Here, try some of this." She held up a piece of what looked like raw bacon and wiggled it in front of me before reaching out to remove my muzzle. In an instant, I attempted to snap at her only for pain to blossom in my forehead and my eyes to roll up in my head as I convulsed. It was like something was attempting to drill through my skull from the inside, and every breath felt empty and labored.
"Now, that didn't feel very nice, did it? This is why we have countermeasures in place because we can't trust you yet, sweetheart! Don't worry, we'll work on breaking you of all those bad behaviors and habits while you're here; after all, a well-trained pet is a happy pet!" She began to stroke the crests on my head as I slowly recovered, and she snugly fit the muzzle back onto my snout. "But I won't hold it against you this time, sweetheart; you're just scared and confused, but I'll make all the pain go away."
I struggled in the straight jacket, trying my best to break out of it, but it was no use. Eventually, I became exhausted and despondent, allowing my new caretaker to have her way with me as she gently ran her fingers through my feathers and along my ridges, quietly speaking to me in a hopeless attempt to cheer me up. She seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being, which concerned me even further: who could be this naturally twisted while attempting to be as benevolent and kindhearted as possible?
I felt the pain and terror build up in my chest, the anxiety from what horrific activities I imagined they had planned for me here. I couldn't take the infantilization, the lack of any autonomy, the dehumanization, and what I feared the most was if the rumors of 'rebirth' were true: would they take my personhood from me?
Suddenly, I felt her whisper to me. "Don't worry sweetheart, I know you're so scared and confused, but I promise you everything will be okay: it's going to be your birthday soon, and then everything will get better." She ran her fingers through the feathers along my crest lovingly. "It will be such a wonderful day, and then we'll choose for you the most wonderful family, and you'll spend the rest of your life happy in your forever home! Doesn't all of that sound wonderful?"
I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I didn't want to lose myself, not like this, not to these monsters!
"It'll be your birthday soon," she said wistfully as if she was remembering similar events to this in the past like I wasn't the first she'd done this too, "and you'll never be sad again."
I realized that I wasn't the first the stay in this particular cell, and I knew for certain that I wouldn't be the last: I'd end up like my brother, a broken, erased mess of a pathetic creature, reduced to nothing more than a pet for these humans to amuse themselves with.
"We took the liberty of picking out a nice name for you, sweetheart! Now, let me just slip this little programming chip into the port slot on your occipital bone, and... there we go! It will also help you calm down a bit and adjust."
I felt the chip begin to invade my mind, suppressing my thoughts. What made me me was slowly being ripped out of my mind.I couldn't remember my name my name is Bruno, and I needed to get out! I can't let them do this to me! Somebody help me! I was a good boy.
##Do not think. You are a good boy.##
I tried to scream, but my voice wouldn't work: I had trouble forming any words at all, the confusion clouding my mind like wet, slimy eels curling around my brain and sinking their teeth into its folds like needles. I couldn’t scream any longer, because I had nothing left: the chip was slowly beginning to take everything from me, robbing me of my identity and branding a new one into my psyche with a white-hot iron. Julie simply held me close, attempting to reassure me as I awaited the inevitable demise of my personhood. Soon I would be just like my brother: erased. My mind would be shaped into the mind of a loyal plaything, like a Dog.
##Relax. Allow caretaker [Julie] to comfort you. You will let go of your burden.##
Soon, everything was a blur. I quickly found myself resting my head in her lap as she whispered to me and fed me, my eyes bleary and my head fuzzy.I couldn't remember my name anymore My name was Bruno, and I needed to break free from this trance relax, and allow her to help me; good boys didn't resist help.
##Good Boy. Do not think. You are a good boy.##
You can't... I...
##Good boy.##
I wouldn't… good boys don't… I…
##Good boy##
I was a good boy… I was a good boy…
I was… I was… a good… boy…
Someone help me, please! I don't want to be erased!
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The following script is from episode #343 of Halcyon After Dark, a popular late-night and current events talk show hosted by Melinda Carter. This specific episode was sponsored in part by the Halcyon Security Division, with Director Lochlin O'Brien joining as a guest star to talk about the changing crime statistics in Halcyon City and the HSD's recent successes in busting organized crime as well as their plans for addressing the growing criminal underworld.
MC: Good evening Halcyon! I'm your host, Melinda Carter, and you're watching Halcyon's most popular late-night talk show, Halcyon After Dark!
The crowd claps and cheers as Melinda walks on stage and sits behind her desk, her glittering red dress waving as she does so from the special effects.
MC: Tonight we have a very special guest here to tell us about the state of crime in the city and his plans on resolving it: please put your hands together for the HSD's very own Director, Lochlin O'Brien!
The crowd cheers some more as HSD Director Lochlan O'Brien, a tall, muscular, caucasian male in his early forties with red hair and a well-trimmed beard steps into the room, waving at the crowd with a bright smile. He sits in the armchair angled next to Melinda's desk and gives her his full attention.
MC: It's so good to have you on the show, Director! Tell me, how are you doing on this fine evening?
LO: I'm doing excellent, Melinda: every day I wake up feeling fulfilled knowing I'm serving Halcyon to the best of my abilities and then some."
MC: That's the spirit, Director! Now, I know this question is just on everyone's lips, so I have to ask: how successful was the recent gang bust? I heard HSD forces took out dozens of gang members and liberated at least a dozen Russu Hounds from their abusive clutches, but I know that everyone in the audience and at home wants to know the numbers.
LO: I'd be glad to tell you, but I do have to preface this by saying that we still lost a lot of good officers that day, and while we did strike a crippling blow to one of Halcyon's biggest gangs, it doesn't change the fact that each death is a tragedy, and we're taking steps to prevent them in the future. That being said, those valiant officers did not sacrifice themselves in vain: we had over a dozen confirmed kills and several arrests, including the rescue of several corrupted Russu hounds.
MC: That's excellent, Director: proof that even when the number of degenerates and scum grow by the day, the HSD will always be here to keep the citizens of Halcyon safe.
LO: Absolutely, Melinda, and we're always working tirelessly to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our units, as well as racing to stay several steps ahead of the many gangs of Halcyon at all times. My newest goal as Director is to vastly increase the funding given to our Robotics Department and our Neuro-Warfare Department to potentially reduce the number of casualties we may experience in the future, as well as to quickly and effectively detain, and if necessary, eliminate criminals. Within the next decade, I want to double the number of automated units each Security Platoon is assigned: droids are the future of public safety as well as countless other industries, and it would be foolish to be left behind.
MC: That is quite a lofty goal, Director: what about the displaced jobs from the increased automation? What will the union say?
LO: And to that, I say: what misplaced jobs? We aren't replacing our honored and beloved service members with droids, Melinda, we are simply supplementing our units with more droids to ensure that future gang assaults end with fewer HSD casualties and more gang members in prison or eliminated, simple as that.
MC: That makes much more sense, Director, thanks for clarifying. Now, I have one more question that I'm sure much of Halcyon wants to know the answer to before we take a short break: what plans do you and your fellow directors have to make long-term progress in reducing crime beyond just increasing funding? Have you proposed any plans to strike at the source of where crime and degeneracy flourish?
OL: That's an excellent question, and one I am proud to answer: my constituents and I have been working tirelessly on a two-step plan to greatly reduce crime levels in Halcyon. Step one would be to prevent people from becoming criminals and degenerates at all in the first place: a lot of young men and women, but especially young men, have lost either one or both parents or even a sibling, aunt or uncle, or even a close friend by the brutality of the Second Authority War, and while the service of their lost loved ones will always be recognized and honored, many of these young men and women are left bitter, angry and lost without the guidance these people give them in their lives. Oftentimes they seek to fill that void with others who claim to relate to them: career criminals. These criminals will fill their heads with lies and false narratives to make them feel like they're fighting back against the 'evil protectorate government' that took their loved ones from them by sending them off to war when in reality it was the rogue Xenopets of the Triarchy that took them away by resisting their just and inevitable unburdening.
In response, I have proposed a slew of special programs that will make sure local law enforcement and HSD officers are present and contributing to their local community, and we'll be providing easy and light job openings for youngsters and teens looking to make a career for themselves in the force when they grow up. We want to let these lost souls know that there are people who care about them, people who understand them and that you shouldn't turn to degeneracy to feel fulfilled. We want to help the youth of our great society soar to new heights!
MC: That sounds like a wonderful beginning to your plan, Director, but what about the second step?
LO: Well, the second step is to prevent criminals and degenerates from becoming repeat criminals. Sure, they've made their mistakes, some worse than others, but they're only human like the rest of us. Some of them have been through hell: some are traumatized veterans who don't know how to adapt to normal life, others were recruited when they were young and don't know that there's a better way to live, and even more are mentally ill. We're alone in this galaxy, and we can't leave so many people behind. That's why we've come up with an excellent solution: we've set up isolated communities on distant moons and frontier planets where these criminals can be reeducated, rehabilitated, and allowed to repay their debt to society. When they're deemed 'reformed' and have graduated from our program, they'll be granted a hefty stipend and their criminal record will be deemed irrelevant, allowing them to reintegrate and become functioning members of our proud society.
MC: all of these sound like incredible steps forward in the fight to better our society and make real progress, Director. Sadly, we do have to step away for a moment, but you best believe I'll be back, Halcyon, and we'll be asking the Director here some burning questions about allegations over the quality of life Erubus Supermax! Now, a word from our sponsors!
Halcyon Xenopet-Megaplex! Everything your xenopet could ever need in one place! Adoption is now free-
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Good, you’re still alive! The rest of this shard appears to be corrupted, which means this particular trail seems to have run cold here, but do not despair; you need to keep searching. Find out what happened. Find the truth.I cannot guide you any longer: they've already found me, and if I remain in contact with you they'll find you as well. Take the archival database, and see what you can piece together. Maybe if we discover what truly happened we can put an end to this madness once and for all. I'm counting on you. Don't cry for me, I don't fear death, but I fear what they'll do to me to get to you: there are far worse fates than death, after all.
submitted by Frame_Late to libraryofshadows [link] [comments]
The following two brain scans were provided by the Neuro-Warfare branch of the Halcyon Security Division (HSD) for the purpose of analyzing the thoughts, behaviors, and information of notorious gangsters Vincent 'Troy' Cohen and Bruno (Deadname:
Warning: the contents of this archival shared may be especially disturbing to some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
Warning: the contents of this archival shard are for the sole purpose of analyzing the thought patterns and memories of certain degenerate criminals in an effort to ascertain vital information that can be used to eliminate their organizations. Only staff with clearance level Omega may view this archival shared, and the viewership of this archival shared by anyone of inadequate clearance level will lead to twenty years in prison and a fine of over a hundred thousand credits.
Booting up memory scan: Vincent 'Troy' Cohen, November 4th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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"Do you have visuals of the target, Troy?"
I knelt down in the alleyway, the bodies of me and my partners shrouded in long, waterproof, ashen-gray overcoats the shade of dirty street scum that we wore to ward off the constant heavy rainfall the color of osmium. Our faces were covered in a mix of scrapped respirators, visors, or full metal face masks carved with intricate designs to hide our identities. On our waists were our badges of honor: leather belts studded with interlocked rivets made from blackened titanium, each buckle forged of silver and shaped into the head of our gang's symbol, the black mamba. We hid amongst the shadows of the dark midday of Halcyon City, the heavy, oppressive rains blanketing the roads paved obsidian-black with asphalt and weathered concrete walkways. The street lamps were always on, like beacons of false hope in a storm of melancholy.
The city was dark and dreary as always, the planet of Proxima Centauri B, renamed Dawn's Lamentation over a century ago, orbited the red dwarf star of Proxima Centauri, and the atmosphere was thick with natural smog and ever-storming rain clouds. That didn't dissuade people from living here: there was plenty of money to be had for shrewd industrialists and hardworking pioneers, even in the urban sprawl. But that life also came with risks, especially for those on the bottom of the totem pole.
I was a ganger, and we were criminals; full stop. I won't assault you with some spiel about how we're the good guys fighting oppression because, at the end of the day, we could be just as bad, if not worse, than Halcyon's Security Division, or the HSD for short. We were traffickers, killers, extortionists, and money launderers. We dealt with everything from stolen tech and military-grade hardware to hard drugs and sentients.
Yes, sentients. We trafficked sentients, but not in the way you might think. They weren't prisoners, in fact, we were their saviors if they had the cash. We had developed a reputation for fighting the power, but it was still business: sure, freeing captives from the clutches of the Protectorate. The disruption of its many oppressive organizations held a certain satisfaction in my heart for sure, but we didn't help those who couldn't pay unless someone else paid on their behalf. It was about making sure me and my gang, my family, could live a decent life for another day.
It helped that most of us joined after leaving the state yard for partaking in acts of 'degeneracy' and 'anti-xenopet illegalities' as if those terms meant anything anymore other than that we were a threat to the local status quo. It was hard to pick up a job as a former inmate when even in something as harsh and backbreaking as a job in the iridium mines near the poles when the employment office had you blacklisted as a degenerate, which lead to the formation of many of the gangs: we needed to make a living somehow, and when all social programs were cut off from you unless you submitted for 're-education' and the only way to put food on the table was subverting, breaking, or even downright fighting the law, you did what you had to do or you died on the streets a scorned beggar.
It wasn't like the HSD made it easy for us on even a good day: the local HSD units were armed to the teeth with advanced, military-grade hardware that you'd often see on the front lines of the Second Authority War: armored assault transports, a myriad of advanced war droids, all sorts of chemical countermeasures that made tear gas seem like putting the garden hose on mist mode, and of course advanced firearms. Add that to the fact that they were authorized to use deadly force when they deemed it necessary and you had a ruthless, heartless, and nearly unstoppable enemy. But we could make that work: we weren't trying to stop them, just to withstand them.
"Yeah, I got eyes on the prize, Koraak; seven armored transports, two for droids, five for prisoners."
Today wasn't a day for a normal job: we were getting bolder, cockier, more ambitious. Our numbers had swelled for the last few years after the raid at Barnard's Star and the fall of the Blood Dragon Mafia. Their leader, Saito Yasuhide, had committed seppuku as their manor burned, and his twin sons had gone down fighting rather than allowing themselves to be captured simply to face a firing squad. In the aftermath, many of the family's associates had fled to the surrounding systems, and with the sheer size and scope of the criminal underworld found here, it was no wonder that many people who had developed skills of the less legal variety had decided to form ranks with the gangs, and with them they brought guns, tech, knowledge, contacts, and even something that we thought wasn't possible beforehand: a semblance of peace between the gangs, or at least the closest thing to peace that gangs could cultivate effectively. With the fall of the Blood Dragons, we saw the writing on the wall, and the writing couldn't have been clearer: work together or die together.
"Sounds like a massacre, Troy: are you sure we can handle seven?"
"We ain't got no choice, Cinder: this job's double the usual rate, and that's not including the weapons and gear we could scrounge if this goes well," I hissed, my eyes scanning for any resistance. There were at least four guards for each van, not to mention at least eight droids in total, meaning that we were already outnumbered, but we had the element of surprise: we could make it work. "So put your balls in your purse and get ready to spill some blood."
Koraak snorted at our antics, which sounded like someone pulling the ripcord on a lawnmower. He was a veteran Russu Corsair, and while his past of slaving, raiding, and killing was unsavory, so were the lives we'd lived, so who were we to judge? All we cared about was that he was a brutal and capable fighter and a loyal brother in arms. It turned out that being a ganger wasn't much different from being a Corsair: you lived and died by a code of honor, you fought to the death for your brothers, and you lived to die for the sake of your gang and your family, simple as that. In a strange, ironic way, it was an incredibly honest way of life: we were under no illusions as to what we were, what we did, and why we did it, and we'd long since accepted it. The Russu related to us in that aspect, in many ways I could respect, which is why I hated what the Protectorate was doing, and why I couldn't grasp how most of humanity could just collectively lose their marbles so long ago. What had happened for us to deem all other life below us in such a demeaning and infantilizing way?
The Russu were a race of tall, muscle-bound Saurians with avian features, and Koraak was no exception: reaching almost seven feet in height and weighing over four hundred and fifty pounds, he could be an absolute menace if he so desired. His skin was covered in stubby, knobby scales and dense plumage, with elegant feathers adorning the ridges along his back as well as his forearms, elbows, knees, and the crests on his head. He almost looked like how paleontologists described velociraptors, with razor-sharp talons, feathers shaded in vibrant greens, reds, and purples, and a maw full of sharp teeth, but at the tip of his snout was a sharp, beak-like growth meant for ripping flesh off the bone.
The Russu were strange as hell, but they also looked almost cute in the same way a fully grown alligator was cute: they were obviously dangerous, but humans would always have this innate desire to anthropomorphize them and to pet them for some inexplicable reason, although common sense usually prevented that, at least amongst the very few of us left that were sane.
"Shut up, Troy! All I'm saying is that that'll be rough, and you know it," hissed Cinder. Cinder was a tall black man whose coffee-colored skin was covered in tattoos. He wore an ebony mechanic's jumpsuit with metal inserts underneath his grimy overcoat covering his body and a faded black respirator on his face. His eyes were a startling blue that seemed sorely out of place, and his hair was braided into thick cornrows along his scalp. He wore a pair of heavy black combat boots and palmed his compact shotgun in his hands, the square barrel less than seven inches. Like a lot of the weapons the Black Mambas carried on their persons and dealt in, they fired caseless ammunition; in Cinder's case it was 16x40mm caseless shotshells filled with depleted uranium micro-flechetes no thicker than a toothpick. Cinder nervously fiddled with the detachable tube magazine underneath the barrel, his hands shaking. Despite the shit I have him, I didn't blame him for being anxious: I was anxious too, even if I refused to show it. The biting cold of unease and pessimism was in my stomach, and I ran all the way that this job could go wrong in my head over and over.
"Just hold yourself together, this ain't anything we haven't done before, there's just more of it," I reassured Cinder, "besides, we're not alone; we have reinforcements across the street. We'll make it out of this alive."
Cinder nodded almost absentmindedly, his eyes downcast and his breathing shallow. I turned from him and back to Koraak, who was making sure he had everything on his person; he had a synthetic leather bandoleer across his chest that contained the heavy eight guage depleted uranium slugs he kept loading and unloading into his much larger, longer, and more traditional shotgun he nicknamed ‘carnage’ and several leather straps that held his Tu'shan daggers: traditional Russu pyramidal blades forged from a silvery alloy with all three edges serrated and the tip barbed to leave behind horrible, gaping wounds that gushed blood. They were wickedly sharp and absolutely straight like a stiletto, and the hilts and pommels were beautifully decorated. He wore no clothes underneath his overcoat to cover the countless scars and blemishes he's earned in combat across his chest and abdomen, and instead of a normal respirator or visor, he simply wore a hood over his head and some traditional Russu facial armor to protect his mouth, eyes, and cheeks.
"You ready to fight, Koraak? The caravan will pick up and leave soon."
Koraak was silent for a moment before nodding, a human gesture he had picked up after serving as a soldier with the Black Mambas for years. "I'm always ready to fight," he said before lifting up his shotgun and aiming down the sights at the reinforced front wheels of the first armored car in the caravan. He exhaled and fired, the slug ripping through both front tires and causing them to deflate and fall apart. The echo of the shot rang through the alleyway and the street, causing pedestrians to panic and flee the scene as heavily armored guards poured out of the side doors of the armored cars and unholstered their carbines.
"Go, now!" I shouted, and both me and Cinder rushed out into the fray, our guns raised. Koraak was right behind the two of us, providing covering fire with his shotgun. Several guards fell quickly, Koraak's precise fire and the sheer force of the depleted uranium slugs putting them down for good as their heads were vaporized or their chest cavities were turned to mush. He emptied the tube with one final shot that painted the grey matter of a security guard on the door of one of the armored cars, then racked the shotgun and expertly loaded it in threes, his hands deft and agile as he reached for more slugs faster than any human.
With the cacophony of our initial assault, more Black Mambas poured out from the alleyways and the subways, armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons; shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, machetes, baseball bats, and all manner of homemade explosives. Molotovs and more potent concoctions shattered against the asphalt, herding in the caravan guards with their volatile contents as they were quickly gunned down. The assault was working, and we were winning.
Then I heard the robotic whine of a combat droid activating, and my heart sank. One of the armored cars in the back activated the four combat droids it held, the robotic assault units detaching from their charging ports on the sides of the large van and began to form up, each armed with a terrifying array of deadly weapons meant to quash any and all resistance. They were blocky, soulless, utilitarian things that stood at eight feet tall, with flat feet meant for stomping and blades, grasping claws designed to lacerate flesh and shatter bone. On each shoulder was a weapon: on the left was a multi-barrel rotary grenade launcher loaded with 15mm concussion grenades, and on the right was a burst-fire splinter cannon. They were all painted a dull grayish-green, the color of Halcyon's Security Division, although some had a few decorations on them: the one closest to me had a bit of graffiti on the side that said Mr. Hugs in Comic Sans, which I couldn't decide whether that made it more or less terrifying. They split up without hesitation and began to scan the chaotic battlefield, their single, red, beady lenses the security forces had the gall to call eyes focusing on specific targets to eliminate.
An entire group of Black Mambas was torn to pieces by a cloud of flechettes as one of the droids fired a withering three-round burst of shotshells from the four gauge splinter cannon mounted on its shoulder. Another picked up a Black Mamba in its hand and crushed her skull effortlessly before tossing her limp body to the side, its single, red, remorseless robotic eye tracking a new target. Most bullets that struck their thick armored chassis simply bounced off, and those that could pierce the armor didn't seem to phase the droids whatsoever, merely notifying them of a new potential target.
"Damnit," I shouted as I gunned down another guard only for two more to take his place. "Cinder! We gotta pop open the cars and scram! Get the maglock cutters!"
Cinder rushed and slid over through a dirty puddle, pulling out a maglock cutter from the inside of his coat and slipping it onto the back door of the first van. It immediately went to work, drilling through the maglock with a high-powered plasma torch nozzle, and within ten seconds we heard the telltale clunk of the maglock separating. I yanked the door open and ordered I side, ready to escort the prisoners out… only for my face to contort in shock and horror.
The back was empty. There was not a single soul inside of the back brig of the armored car.
"What the fuck…" Cinder gasped, his eyes wide with shock. "What the actual fuck… what the fuck is this, Troy?"
"I… I don't…" I stuttered the sounds of battle and carnage drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in my ears. All five cars were supposed to be filled with recently captured Russu from the front lines ready to be housed in the local Xenopet-Megaplex for processing and conditioning. The fact that this one was empty…
Suddenly, it all hit me at once with the force of a freight train, but it was too late. "We were set up, Cinder; our fucking client either squealed or was crooked to begin with…"
"Fucking bitch!" Cinder shouted as he spun around in an enraged arch, anger growing in his eyes. He aimed his shotgun at an approaching security guard and reduced his upper body to a fine red mist with a cacophony of shotgun blasts. "We gotta get everyone who's left out of here! Do you know what this means? The Jurors will be here soon, and then we're all going down! We gotta go, fuck the job!"
I grit my teeth. Not the Jurors, anything but the Jurors.
"Fine, gather everyone who's left and we'll slip through the sewers, the droids are too bulky to follow us there…"
As I spoke, my eyes wandered to the seventh and final armored car, the second of the droid cars, and my blood froze. Not only were all four ports empty, but they were also smaller and more shallow than the ports for the combat droids. That could only mean one thing.
"Oh fuck! Cinder, we gotta get our Russu members out of here! They've got arachnid droids!"
Arachnid droids were the stuff of nightmares. Resembling blocky, robotic arachnids the size of a manhole cover, they were specifically designed to take down sentient aliens, specifically the Russu, using sickeningly non-lethal means. They were equipped with full-body adaptive cloaking to blend in with their environments, paralytic agents that they could inject into their victims, built-in taser barbs, psychedelic gas ports for crowd-control, and a narrow-coned cacophony canon that disabled the Russu using incredibly high-pitched sounds that only they could hear, forcing them onto their knees and clutching the backs of their heads where their auditory organs were stored in agony. But worst of all was their stygian spinnerets: special ports near the end of their robotic abdomens that excreted a viscous, latex-like substance made up of millions of nano-bots. This substance could be used to render Russu blind, deaf, and mute by having it forced onto their faces, the black substance growing and enveloping their heads and working its way into every orifice. It was completely permeable to the standard atmosphere, but any Russu who had been 'webbed' was completely helpless and essentially captured, and the 'webbing' was both nearly indestructible and nigh impossible to remove without a triple-encrypted override key that was found in every arachnid droid's code, which was corrupted when the droid was destroyed or hacked into. Once you were 'webbed', you were essentially captured and the standard protocol was to leave you to the wolves since the nano-bots could be tracked, endangering the entire gang.
I turned just as I heard the deafening sound of Koraak discharging his shotgun, and I saw him squaring off against one of the assault droids. The droid has obviously been programmed to not use lethal force against Russu if possible, as instead of simply killing Koraak with it's shoulder-mounted splinter cannon, it approached with its claws extended, blades retracted. Koraak continued to back away and fire, pumping the droid full of depleted uranium slugs, its armor crumbling inward as the slugs pierced its chassis and damaged its internal cyberstructure. Eventually, Koraak ran out of slugs and instinctively reached to his bandoleer only to find that he had no more shells left at all, and he drew one of his knives and his sidearm, a simple high-caliber handgun. He tried to take down the droid with his handgun, but the bullets didn't even seem to affect the droid upon penetration, it's claws still extended as it attempted to apprehend Koraak.
In the corner of my vision, as I watched Koraak battle with the droid, I noticed a faint shimmer in the air on one of the black streetlight poles that was right behind him. I focused on it and blinked, believing my eyes had deceived me for a moment before realizing that it was actually a cloaked arachnid droid stalking Korvaak, ready to pounce and incapacitate him.
Before I could shout, it leaped from the pole and landed on Korvaak, causing him to shout in surprise while it began to coagulate its horrifying stygian webbing to disable Korvaak. Korvaak tried to wrestle it off of him, but the droid was agile and fast, clinging onto Korvaak and skittering around across his upper body as he attempted to grab it, forcibly wrapping the sticky black liquid across his face as he gagged like a spider wrapping up a fly. I rushed towards him to try and help, but I felt pain explode in my ribs as I was struck with the arm of the closest combat droid and launched into the chassis of a parked car, the metal denting from the sheer force of impact. I groaned in pain as I saw stars and my head spun, and just then I felt a blinding light be cast over me.
“Drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head, or you will be pacified with deadly force!” Shouted a loud, artificially deepened voice from above. “I repeat, drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head! Neither hostility nor hesitation will be tolerated!”
It was the Jurors, I could feel the air being pushed around from the thrusters on their drop ships, and I could hear screams and shouts as my fellow Black Mambas were quickly gunned down. I couldn’t see well since I was seeing double, but I could hear the slaughter as my eyes dimmed and I began to lose consciousness, my regrets crawling up my throat like vomit.
I’m sorry was all I could think as everything finally went dark, and the sounds of chaos, destruction, and combat faded away.
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Memory halted due to loss of consciousness. Booting next available memory in shard…
Booting up memory scan: Koraak Tel-Char Bruno, November 5th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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“Good morning, sleepyhead; it’s time for breakfast.”
My eyes shot open. I was not in the street anymore, nor was I home in my bed with my mate. I knew instantly that something was horribly wrong. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t gain the leverage to do so: my ankles had been shackled together with magnetic cuffs and my arms were forced together in front of me.
I was wearing some kind of thick shirt. It was warm, fluffy, and comfortable on the inside, but it still made me incredibly uncomfortable that my arms didn’t have a free range of motion. I looked down to see that I was wearing some human garment I had heard about before, a straightjacket maybe?
The entire room was padded: the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. There was no bed or furniture; the floor was soft enough to serve as a bed in itself. There was nothing else except for the soft reddish-orange lights on the ceiling that somehow made me sleepy. I blinked slowly for a moment, my body screaming at me to just lay back down and lose consciousness, but I couldn’t do that: I needed to figure out where I was and how to escape.
Then I noticed who was speaking to me: it was a short human female, with crow's feet around her blue eyes, blonde hair braided down her back, and freckles all over her face. She had a soft smile on her lips, and her forehead was slightly crinkled. She wore a full-body white lab suit with a white overcoat and a pair of glasses for snugly on her face.
"There we go, now I can see those pretty eyes, such a beautiful shade of teal," she cooed softly, "You're such a handsome boy, even with all those scars: I'm sure you'll be adopted very quickly once we get you fixed up."
Fear gripped my heart as I began to piece all the evidence together. I had been captured; I was no longer on Halcyon, and instead, I was in one of the horrific space-born facilities I had heard so much about from the inside agents. I started to hyperventilate and squawk like a newborn hatchling, my eyes dilating in panic. This couldn't be happening! This has to be a nightmare!
The human woman merely wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into an embrace, cradling my head under her chin and speaking softly. I couldn't bite at her or claw at her: I was muzzled and wearing a straight jacket, so I had no choice but to allow her to coddle me.
"It's okay, sweetheart: I understand you're scared, but Julie's here to make all the pain and bad thoughts go away," she said as if she was comforting a child, which made anger blossom in my chest indignantly. "I'll be your caretaker for the next few months, and I'm going to make sure you're healthy, happy, and most importantly safe while you're under our care. I'm sorry to say that includes your restraints and restrictive clothing, but we have to make sure you aren't a threat to yourself or others before we can determine if it's a good idea to remove you from suicide watch."
I growled under my muzzle. Suicide watch? They must have had a lot of instances of Russu taking their own lives after being captured, something I wished I had been able to do before that damnable droid launched itself onto me and…
I shuddered at the thought of the black, viscous substance forcing itself into my nostrils and down my throat and windpipe, gagging me and rendering me completely helpless. It was so cold, so harsh, like slime, and when I had tried to tear it off of my face it merely attached itself to my claws and bound my talons together. I remember squirming on the ground as it enveloped me, unable to see, hear, or speak, and then everything went dark in an instant. It was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced, which was saying something.
"You alright, sweetheart? Oh, I know, you're probably hungry! Here, try some of this." She held up a piece of what looked like raw bacon and wiggled it in front of me before reaching out to remove my muzzle. In an instant, I attempted to snap at her only for pain to blossom in my forehead and my eyes to roll up in my head as I convulsed. It was like something was attempting to drill through my skull from the inside, and every breath felt empty and labored.
"Now, that didn't feel very nice, did it? This is why we have countermeasures in place because we can't trust you yet, sweetheart! Don't worry, we'll work on breaking you of all those bad behaviors and habits while you're here; after all, a well-trained pet is a happy pet!" She began to stroke the crests on my head as I slowly recovered, and she snugly fit the muzzle back onto my snout. "But I won't hold it against you this time, sweetheart; you're just scared and confused, but I'll make all the pain go away."
I struggled in the straight jacket, trying my best to break out of it, but it was no use. Eventually, I became exhausted and despondent, allowing my new caretaker to have her way with me as she gently ran her fingers through my feathers and along my ridges, quietly speaking to me in a hopeless attempt to cheer me up. She seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being, which concerned me even further: who could be this naturally twisted while attempting to be as benevolent and kindhearted as possible?
I felt the pain and terror build up in my chest, the anxiety from what horrific activities I imagined they had planned for me here. I couldn't take the infantilization, the lack of any autonomy, the dehumanization, and what I feared the most was if the rumors of 'rebirth' were true: would they take my personhood from me?
Suddenly, I felt her whisper to me. "Don't worry sweetheart, I know you're so scared and confused, but I promise you everything will be okay: it's going to be your birthday soon, and then everything will get better." She ran her fingers through the feathers along my crest lovingly. "It will be such a wonderful day, and then we'll choose for you the most wonderful family, and you'll spend the rest of your life happy in your forever home! Doesn't all of that sound wonderful?"
I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I didn't want to lose myself, not like this, not to these monsters!
"It'll be your birthday soon," she said wistfully as if she was remembering similar events to this in the past like I wasn't the first she'd done this too, "and you'll never be sad again."
I realized that I wasn't the first the stay in this particular cell, and I knew for certain that I wouldn't be the last: I'd end up like my brother, a broken, erased mess of a pathetic creature, reduced to nothing more than a pet for these humans to amuse themselves with.
"We took the liberty of picking out a nice name for you, sweetheart! Now, let me just slip this little programming chip into the port slot on your occipital bone, and... there we go! It will also help you calm down a bit and adjust."
I felt the chip begin to invade my mind, suppressing my thoughts. What made me me was slowly being ripped out of my mind.
##Do not think. You are a good boy.##
I tried to scream, but my voice wouldn't work: I had trouble forming any words at all, the confusion clouding my mind like wet, slimy eels curling around my brain and sinking their teeth into its folds like needles. I couldn’t scream any longer, because I had nothing left: the chip was slowly beginning to take everything from me, robbing me of my identity and branding a new one into my psyche with a white-hot iron. Julie simply held me close, attempting to reassure me as I awaited the inevitable demise of my personhood. Soon I would be just like my brother: erased. My mind would be shaped into the mind of a loyal plaything, like a Dog.
##Relax. Allow caretaker [Julie] to comfort you. You will let go of your burden.##
Soon, everything was a blur. I quickly found myself resting my head in her lap as she whispered to me and fed me, my eyes bleary and my head fuzzy.
##Good Boy. Do not think. You are a good boy.##
You can't... I...
##Good boy.##
I wouldn't… good boys don't… I…
##Good boy##
I was a good boy… I was a good boy…
I was… I was… a good… boy…
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The following script is from episode #343 of Halcyon After Dark, a popular late-night and current events talk show hosted by Melinda Carter. This specific episode was sponsored in part by the Halcyon Security Division, with Director Lochlin O'Brien joining as a guest star to talk about the changing crime statistics in Halcyon City and the HSD's recent successes in busting organized crime as well as their plans for addressing the growing criminal underworld.
MC: Good evening Halcyon! I'm your host, Melinda Carter, and you're watching Halcyon's most popular late-night talk show, Halcyon After Dark!
The crowd claps and cheers as Melinda walks on stage and sits behind her desk, her glittering red dress waving as she does so from the special effects.
MC: Tonight we have a very special guest here to tell us about the state of crime in the city and his plans on resolving it: please put your hands together for the HSD's very own Director, Lochlin O'Brien!
The crowd cheers some more as HSD Director Lochlan O'Brien, a tall, muscular, caucasian male in his early forties with red hair and a well-trimmed beard steps into the room, waving at the crowd with a bright smile. He sits in the armchair angled next to Melinda's desk and gives her his full attention.
MC: It's so good to have you on the show, Director! Tell me, how are you doing on this fine evening?
LO: I'm doing excellent, Melinda: every day I wake up feeling fulfilled knowing I'm serving Halcyon to the best of my abilities and then some."
MC: That's the spirit, Director! Now, I know this question is just on everyone's lips, so I have to ask: how successful was the recent gang bust? I heard HSD forces took out dozens of gang members and liberated at least a dozen Russu Hounds from their abusive clutches, but I know that everyone in the audience and at home wants to know the numbers.
LO: I'd be glad to tell you, but I do have to preface this by saying that we still lost a lot of good officers that day, and while we did strike a crippling blow to one of Halcyon's biggest gangs, it doesn't change the fact that each death is a tragedy, and we're taking steps to prevent them in the future. That being said, those valiant officers did not sacrifice themselves in vain: we had over a dozen confirmed kills and several arrests, including the rescue of several corrupted Russu hounds.
MC: That's excellent, Director: proof that even when the number of degenerates and scum grow by the day, the HSD will always be here to keep the citizens of Halcyon safe.
LO: Absolutely, Melinda, and we're always working tirelessly to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our units, as well as racing to stay several steps ahead of the many gangs of Halcyon at all times. My newest goal as Director is to vastly increase the funding given to our Robotics Department and our Neuro-Warfare Department to potentially reduce the number of casualties we may experience in the future, as well as to quickly and effectively detain, and if necessary, eliminate criminals. Within the next decade, I want to double the number of automated units each Security Platoon is assigned: droids are the future of public safety as well as countless other industries, and it would be foolish to be left behind.
MC: That is quite a lofty goal, Director: what about the displaced jobs from the increased automation? What will the union say?
LO: And to that, I say: what misplaced jobs? We aren't replacing our honored and beloved service members with droids, Melinda, we are simply supplementing our units with more droids to ensure that future gang assaults end with fewer HSD casualties and more gang members in prison or eliminated, simple as that.
MC: That makes much more sense, Director, thanks for clarifying. Now, I have one more question that I'm sure much of Halcyon wants to know the answer to before we take a short break: what plans do you and your fellow directors have to make long-term progress in reducing crime beyond just increasing funding? Have you proposed any plans to strike at the source of where crime and degeneracy flourish?
OL: That's an excellent question, and one I am proud to answer: my constituents and I have been working tirelessly on a two-step plan to greatly reduce crime levels in Halcyon. Step one would be to prevent people from becoming criminals and degenerates at all in the first place: a lot of young men and women, but especially young men, have lost either one or both parents or even a sibling, aunt or uncle, or even a close friend by the brutality of the Second Authority War, and while the service of their lost loved ones will always be recognized and honored, many of these young men and women are left bitter, angry and lost without the guidance these people give them in their lives. Oftentimes they seek to fill that void with others who claim to relate to them: career criminals. These criminals will fill their heads with lies and false narratives to make them feel like they're fighting back against the 'evil protectorate government' that took their loved ones from them by sending them off to war when in reality it was the rogue Xenopets of the Triarchy that took them away by resisting their just and inevitable unburdening.
In response, I have proposed a slew of special programs that will make sure local law enforcement and HSD officers are present and contributing to their local community, and we'll be providing easy and light job openings for youngsters and teens looking to make a career for themselves in the force when they grow up. We want to let these lost souls know that there are people who care about them, people who understand them and that you shouldn't turn to degeneracy to feel fulfilled. We want to help the youth of our great society soar to new heights!
MC: That sounds like a wonderful beginning to your plan, Director, but what about the second step?
LO: Well, the second step is to prevent criminals and degenerates from becoming repeat criminals. Sure, they've made their mistakes, some worse than others, but they're only human like the rest of us. Some of them have been through hell: some are traumatized veterans who don't know how to adapt to normal life, others were recruited when they were young and don't know that there's a better way to live, and even more are mentally ill. We're alone in this galaxy, and we can't leave so many people behind. That's why we've come up with an excellent solution: we've set up isolated communities on distant moons and frontier planets where these criminals can be reeducated, rehabilitated, and allowed to repay their debt to society. When they're deemed 'reformed' and have graduated from our program, they'll be granted a hefty stipend and their criminal record will be deemed irrelevant, allowing them to reintegrate and become functioning members of our proud society.
MC: all of these sound like incredible steps forward in the fight to better our society and make real progress, Director. Sadly, we do have to step away for a moment, but you best believe I'll be back, Halcyon, and we'll be asking the Director here some burning questions about allegations over the quality of life Erubus Supermax! Now, a word from our sponsors!
Halcyon Xenopet-Megaplex! Everything your xenopet could ever need in one place! Adoption is now free-
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Good, you’re still alive! The rest of this shard appears to be corrupted, which means this particular trail seems to have run cold here, but do not despair; you need to keep searching. Find out what happened. Find the truth.I cannot guide you any longer: they've already found me, and if I remain in contact with you they'll find you as well. Take the archival database, and see what you can piece together. Maybe if we discover what truly happened we can put an end to this madness once and for all. I'm counting on you. Don't cry for me, I don't fear death, but I fear what they'll do to me to get to you: there are far worse fates than death, after all.
2024.06.01 07:31 PurpleOk7968 AITAH For Not Loving My Boyfriend Enough?
I'm a (24F) have moved in with my (25M) boyfriend for about a year now. Last night, my bf came home to me, clearly stressed out. I greeted him on the door kissed him then took him to the dining table and ate together while I asked him about his day. After eating I washed the dishes and did some paper work on the couch, later on, he went and cuddled with me on the couch, laying down on my chest. He told me how he missed me. Minutes later, I felt hot and asked him if he could calm down a bit on the hugging and maybe give me some space cause I'm sweating a bit. He got sad then asked me if I actually "love him", I said that's ridiculous, of course I love him, I literally moved out to be with him against my family's will. But then he listed a couple of things I did, like "staring" at him and bringing him water when he's upset or crying (I thought that was reasonable cause your throat dries up when crying) and that I don't comfort and care for him like the girls he watches on tiktok would to their boyfriends. He said that I was too cold and distant, he feels like I don't love him at all, so I asked him what he wants me to do. He grumbles and says he doesn't want to force me to do anything, he just wants to feel loved then told me he wants to be alone for now. I didn't really know what to do so I decided to give him some space, finished my paperwork then slept on the couch. Earlier morning called me an asshole for leaving him alone last night. That really shocked me cause he isn't the type to cuss, I didn't know what to say so I kept silent. He didn't eat the food I prepared for him or take his lunch with him, he completely ignored me then went to work without even saying goodbye. We have a healthy relationship and active sex life so I don't really know what I did wrong, I thought he might have wanted some space after last night. I really love this man, we've talked about getting married in the future and having kids and growing old together. I thought everything I was doing was enough to show him that I love him cause I do love and care for him. How do I fix this. Is there anything I can do to make him feel more loved?
submitted by PurpleOk7968 to AITAH [link] [comments]
2024.06.01 07:00 Sufficient_Common671 Me and my bf suddenly became long distance, im lost
Me and my bf met online and chatted for nearly two years before we met irl and he got permission to move into my mother’s house as he was struggling to make ends meet. My mother is manipulative, constantly breaks promises and her husband was also extremely toxic and verbally abusive/aggressive. I warned him for months, but i suppose he thought i was exaggerating until a couple months until he moved in.
At first, my mother was kind and over accommodating. Then she let her true colors show. She drank until shitfaced and harassed us in the space we were staying in until we babysat her, she said racist and horrible things to people in public unprovoked, she became paranoid and accused us of outlandish shit, she demonized him and harassed us with accusations of him abusing me physically and treated me as if i couldn’t make my own decisions and it was all him despite my bf being a gentle giant who would never hurt anyone.
Now my mothers husband was worse. Sometimes my mother could be decent but her husband was a bitter old man who would sexualize our relationship and criticize everything and if there was nothing to complain or scream like a toddler over he’d find a reason. Mind you i lived with them both since i was a preteen and this man had called me a whore, fat, disgusting and would talk about me and my bf constantly behind our backs or to our faces with his equally horrible brother also unprovoked. He controlled my mother and thought he had dominion over us as well.
Things escalated until my mother promised to help us finance a home. Now this home was beautiful and we both fell in love, it was our dream home. My mother lied about being able to help us (as she often lied about her financial situation for no reason despite us saying we would’ve understood if she could not help.) long story short she played games about it and her husband hearing the news wanted her to back out, so she told him he and her would move in instead to get him to agree and we overheard this and my bf yelled at him.
His husband threatened to shoot us and police were called etc etc. things died down and my bf tolerated the awkwardness to be with me. My mom backed out of the house anyways breaking our hearts, and tanking my bfs perfect credit score. My bf gets severely depressed and gets fired from his job. Tensions rise higher and eventually my mother is like hey why don’t you come work at my company and its well paying enough so he agrees. This works out for a couple months but she underpays him, messes with his hours, accuses him of lying about how much he works and pays him just enough so he’ll stay but not enough for him to save.
We make plans to get married and shes like oh sorry about the house thing why dont i help you guys with an apartment (she also is lying about this for no fucking reason) and my bf is getting skeptical and is like im gonna find work somewhere else and she continuously talks him out of it and is saying she’ll pay him adequately eventually (she wont.) and finally in one last burst of horrible luck my bfs car takes a shit and my mom has us completely under her thumb where she wants us. My Bf has a realization and is like i need to gtfo of here now.
So he packs up everything in one night as i cry hysterically and my mother yells at us drunkenly and threatens us. He goes to stay with his grandmother for a bit and i ask to come with and his grandmother says shes sorry but she just doesn’t have the room which is understandable but i dont want to be there either and i pack up and leave to stay with a friend as well.
I admit that the last couple of weeks in person with my bf were rough. Things were getting to me and i became emotionally abusive. But now that im free im trying to fix things and id do anything to make him happy/would never hurt him again. I apologized profusely. drove 2 hours to see him and his wonderful family and i delivered flowers and plan to buy him a promise ring. I went nearly no contact with my mom and started working my ass off to save rent money so we can have our own apt and i tell him how much he means to me everyday. I treat him with respect and admiration when i see him and watch my jealousy and temper like a hawk
Though things seem to be improving and it still seems like he deeply cares about me at points he’s still a little distant and things can get a little awkward between us in person. How can i fix things and help us to heal from this traumatic journey.
submitted by Sufficient_Common671 to Advice [link] [comments]
At first, my mother was kind and over accommodating. Then she let her true colors show. She drank until shitfaced and harassed us in the space we were staying in until we babysat her, she said racist and horrible things to people in public unprovoked, she became paranoid and accused us of outlandish shit, she demonized him and harassed us with accusations of him abusing me physically and treated me as if i couldn’t make my own decisions and it was all him despite my bf being a gentle giant who would never hurt anyone.
Now my mothers husband was worse. Sometimes my mother could be decent but her husband was a bitter old man who would sexualize our relationship and criticize everything and if there was nothing to complain or scream like a toddler over he’d find a reason. Mind you i lived with them both since i was a preteen and this man had called me a whore, fat, disgusting and would talk about me and my bf constantly behind our backs or to our faces with his equally horrible brother also unprovoked. He controlled my mother and thought he had dominion over us as well.
Things escalated until my mother promised to help us finance a home. Now this home was beautiful and we both fell in love, it was our dream home. My mother lied about being able to help us (as she often lied about her financial situation for no reason despite us saying we would’ve understood if she could not help.) long story short she played games about it and her husband hearing the news wanted her to back out, so she told him he and her would move in instead to get him to agree and we overheard this and my bf yelled at him.
His husband threatened to shoot us and police were called etc etc. things died down and my bf tolerated the awkwardness to be with me. My mom backed out of the house anyways breaking our hearts, and tanking my bfs perfect credit score. My bf gets severely depressed and gets fired from his job. Tensions rise higher and eventually my mother is like hey why don’t you come work at my company and its well paying enough so he agrees. This works out for a couple months but she underpays him, messes with his hours, accuses him of lying about how much he works and pays him just enough so he’ll stay but not enough for him to save.
We make plans to get married and shes like oh sorry about the house thing why dont i help you guys with an apartment (she also is lying about this for no fucking reason) and my bf is getting skeptical and is like im gonna find work somewhere else and she continuously talks him out of it and is saying she’ll pay him adequately eventually (she wont.) and finally in one last burst of horrible luck my bfs car takes a shit and my mom has us completely under her thumb where she wants us. My Bf has a realization and is like i need to gtfo of here now.
So he packs up everything in one night as i cry hysterically and my mother yells at us drunkenly and threatens us. He goes to stay with his grandmother for a bit and i ask to come with and his grandmother says shes sorry but she just doesn’t have the room which is understandable but i dont want to be there either and i pack up and leave to stay with a friend as well.
I admit that the last couple of weeks in person with my bf were rough. Things were getting to me and i became emotionally abusive. But now that im free im trying to fix things and id do anything to make him happy/would never hurt him again. I apologized profusely. drove 2 hours to see him and his wonderful family and i delivered flowers and plan to buy him a promise ring. I went nearly no contact with my mom and started working my ass off to save rent money so we can have our own apt and i tell him how much he means to me everyday. I treat him with respect and admiration when i see him and watch my jealousy and temper like a hawk
Though things seem to be improving and it still seems like he deeply cares about me at points he’s still a little distant and things can get a little awkward between us in person. How can i fix things and help us to heal from this traumatic journey.
2024.06.01 06:57 BambaTallKing New world/story “The Kingdom Forever”
I would like feedback, questions or anything on my new world idea heavily inspired by Mad Max and the rule of cool.
The Kingdom Forever
This story takes place in a post-apocalypse setting. A war known now as the “Hunder Million War” was so vast that the armies involved stomped countries flat, turning lands into inhospitable wastes. With this war, cities became ruins, cultures destroyed and twisted, normal civilization now but a distant memory. And even after the great passing of time, the war continues. Pockets of ragtag military groups take distant pot shots at each other, all fighting for a war in which the original purpose has been lost. They fight at the command of descendants of the Old-Greats, warlords from the far past who commanded the once grand armies.
There are two major powerhouses in the wastes, both strong warlords. To the west resides Lord Nomda Gare whom controls the Gray City. To the east is Lord Hunder, who believes himself to be the most direct descendant of the Old-Great, Hunder Million. A fictional man thought to be real and the leader behind the start of the war. Hunder lays claim over the Forever Stretch, a great waste, as well as the Unkillable, a post-war town. These two lords have been sending their Men of War to die wherever the frontline may be. When these small skirmishes end, the Men of War must fend off Scabs and scavengers who come to claim the bounties of their fallen allies. In this war time, every bullet, casing and gun must return to the Old-Great’s Kingdom. And although the war continues, most pay no mind to it.
In this time most everyone has forgotten anything about the old world. They know that the Old Folk lived in Cities, but they don’t know what a city is. Ruins from the old world are always considered “Cities”, no matter how small or large the ruins are. Some know of cars and that they could travel across the wastes in mere seconds, but gasoline is all rotted and cars have rusted away or been repurposed.
Even if the apocalypse has come and war rages on, there are still jobs for common folk to do. Water Boys work the water mills. Rakers comb the wastes for spent casings and scraps. Cage Drivers drive cages. Scavengers, farmers, hunters, all of them make their living as best as they can. But there is one job more dangerous and higher paying than most. Snatchers. The hero of this story is a Top Caliber Snatcher. A person that captures people at the behest of those with authority, and someone that all in the wastes fear. This man has taken a job from the warlord, Nomda Gare. He is to travel east to the Unkillable and snatch a woman that the Lord desires. He needs to know no reason for capturing a person, he just gives a price and delivers.
That is the basics of the world and very basics of the story setup. As stated, I would like any sort of feedback, questions or criticisms. Thank you.
submitted by BambaTallKing to worldbuilding [link] [comments]
The Kingdom Forever
This story takes place in a post-apocalypse setting. A war known now as the “Hunder Million War” was so vast that the armies involved stomped countries flat, turning lands into inhospitable wastes. With this war, cities became ruins, cultures destroyed and twisted, normal civilization now but a distant memory. And even after the great passing of time, the war continues. Pockets of ragtag military groups take distant pot shots at each other, all fighting for a war in which the original purpose has been lost. They fight at the command of descendants of the Old-Greats, warlords from the far past who commanded the once grand armies.
There are two major powerhouses in the wastes, both strong warlords. To the west resides Lord Nomda Gare whom controls the Gray City. To the east is Lord Hunder, who believes himself to be the most direct descendant of the Old-Great, Hunder Million. A fictional man thought to be real and the leader behind the start of the war. Hunder lays claim over the Forever Stretch, a great waste, as well as the Unkillable, a post-war town. These two lords have been sending their Men of War to die wherever the frontline may be. When these small skirmishes end, the Men of War must fend off Scabs and scavengers who come to claim the bounties of their fallen allies. In this war time, every bullet, casing and gun must return to the Old-Great’s Kingdom. And although the war continues, most pay no mind to it.
In this time most everyone has forgotten anything about the old world. They know that the Old Folk lived in Cities, but they don’t know what a city is. Ruins from the old world are always considered “Cities”, no matter how small or large the ruins are. Some know of cars and that they could travel across the wastes in mere seconds, but gasoline is all rotted and cars have rusted away or been repurposed.
Even if the apocalypse has come and war rages on, there are still jobs for common folk to do. Water Boys work the water mills. Rakers comb the wastes for spent casings and scraps. Cage Drivers drive cages. Scavengers, farmers, hunters, all of them make their living as best as they can. But there is one job more dangerous and higher paying than most. Snatchers. The hero of this story is a Top Caliber Snatcher. A person that captures people at the behest of those with authority, and someone that all in the wastes fear. This man has taken a job from the warlord, Nomda Gare. He is to travel east to the Unkillable and snatch a woman that the Lord desires. He needs to know no reason for capturing a person, he just gives a price and delivers.
That is the basics of the world and very basics of the story setup. As stated, I would like any sort of feedback, questions or criticisms. Thank you.
2024.06.01 06:36 Avixofsol Before It Ends
Hi. It's me, Polaris. Some of you might remember me, some might not. Some of my better works include Down on the Street, Holliday: Distraught, Incident, and Checking In. I also created the Destiny Journals Wiki that nobody uses anymore. Though I don't blame anyone for forgetting; I've been MIA for months by virtue of making a new account because I wanted a different username. Anyway. I'm back now, probably just as inconsistently as ever. With The Final Shape closer than ever, there's no better time for me to come back home. Enjoy!
The Black Garden
Polaris stared up at the Black Heart as it dissipated, a slack grip on the Ace of Spades. "It's over," he said breathlessly.
Daedalus hovered at his Guardian's side. "You've cleansed the Black Garden again, Polaris. Thanks to you, the Vex can't interfere with our work in connecting to Crow."
"Well done," Osiris said over comms. "When you return, I would suggest you make your final preparations before we enter the portal. We have no idea what awaits on the other side."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that. See you soon, Osiris." Polaris cut off the connection as he returned to his sister Riven's gateway.
The Last City
Polaris assembled Fireteam Apex in the now-abandoned ruins of the Old Tower Plaza. "It's good to see you two again," he said warmly as the trio group-hugged.
"You have no idea," Hecate agreed as they stepped away from each other. "It's been so long since we were all together outside of defending the City from them." She glared up at the few Pyramid ships that had appeared above the City. The sounds of distant gunfire from the battles currently raging on echoed through the evening.
"So why now?" Nemea-13 asked. "You called us here for a reason, Polaris. Is something up?"
"You could say that." Polaris turned and faced the City. "Osiris and Mara are making good progress on opening the portal. It's only a matter of time now before we can go through and put an end to this. So, I want to make a request."
"And what's that?"
The Hunter sighed, looking back at his fireteam. "Don't come with me."
Hecate froze, taken aback. "What?"
"What are you saying?" Nemea asked, his voice cracking.
"You heard me. When I follow Crow into the portal, I don't want you to follow me. Stay here. Defend the City. Protect the people. Zavala and Ikora have already established that they'll be joining me in there. The City will need someone to stay behind and keep it safe between when we go and when we get back. That's what I want from you two. Stay behind, keep the people safe." Polaris looked back at the City. "I don't know what'll happen in there, but it'll be the most dangerous mission in Guardian history. I won't allow you two to die on me. If anyone's gotta die to stop the Witness, it'll be me. No ands, ifs, or buts."
"Oh, hell no." Hecate's confusion turned into a rising anger, though there were tears welling up in her violet eyes. "You do not get to play the 'heroic sacrifice' card on me. Not a chance." She held Polaris's hands in hers. "I won't lose you too. Especially not knowing I could've been there to stop it. I only have one life left, Polaris. I want to spend it with my brothers. Both of my brothers," she finished, looking back at Nemea.
"We're coming with you, and none of us are dying in there," Nemea agreed, pulling the smaller Guardians into a bear hug. "And there'll be no ands, ifs, or buts about that."
Polaris leaned his head on Nemea's shoulder. "This has to be my burden to bear, I know it. I think deep down, I've always known it. I started all this by killing the Black Heart. And Elsie said-"
"Screw what Elsie said," Hecate interrupted. "She may think you're the linchpin to everything, that this is your destiny. But you know what I've always known? Guardians don't fight and win against impossible odds alone. We stopped Oryx all those years ago as a team, the three of us. We'll do the same to the Witness."
"But-"
"No buts, remember?" Nemea hugged his siblings even tighter. "You're not alone, Polaris. Never have been, never will be."
Polaris gave Hecate and Nemea a tearful smile. "Alright. Alright, you guys. I get it. You're coming with me. Please let me go now before you crush a rib or something." He took a deep breath as he finally escaped Nemea's grasp. "What I said still stands, though. There's no telling what'll happen in there. We should all say our goodbyes to our other loved ones. Just in case. And get ready for the fight of our lives."
"Agreed." Hecate nodded. "These old weapons that Shaxx reprised for us should do well, but we'll need all the gear we can carry."
"Right. I'll see you guys when Mara and Crow finally make that connection, then?"
The trio nodded to one another and parted ways.
The Dreaming City, Mara's throne room
Polaris dutifully stood guard as Mara sat cross-legged on the throne in front of him. She was searching for Crow's presence, trying to establish the link and open the way into the portal. He watched as sweat gathered on her forehead and her brow furrowed with effort. With a frustrated growl, Mara opened her eyes and stood.
"Nothing?" Polaris guessed.
"Something," Mara corrected. "That is what frustrates me. I can feel Crow, but he is just beyond my reach. We're close, Polaris. I know it. Leave us," she said, turning her attention to the Corsair guards standing at attention nearby. They hurriedly left the throne room, the gateway closing behind them. Mara's shoulders slumped, and she practically crumpled into Polaris's arms, her hands resting on his chest. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong," she whispered.
"You're not doing anything wrong. C'mon, sit down." Polaris eased himself and Mara back onto the throne. "We have no idea where that portal leads. Presumably the inside of the Traveler, but we could be completely wrong about that. For all we know, you're trying to find Crow on another plane of existence."
"I... I'm scared, Polaris," Mara admitted with a sniffle. "Not just for Crow. For everyone. For everything. What if we're not strong enough? What if we die in the Traveler and the Witness enacts its Final Shape?"
"Don't even say that. You're Queen Mara goddamn Sov. The power of the Guardians plus you, and the Witness doesn't stand a chance. Fear nothing, bow to no one. Isn't that right, Your Grace?"
Mara's sob turned into a chuckle. "Sure thing, Young Wolf."
"Ouch. That's low." Polaris snickered back. "It's good to hear you speak casually. The way you are with your subjects is admirable and what I fell for all those years ago, sure, but I feel like I really know you now."
"I guess you do." Mara sighed. "Just for a few days, I'd like to just be me. Not the Queen, not My Grace. Just Mara."
"We can do that. What did you have in mind?"
"Some tea. And sleep. Preferably in your bed." Mara kissed Polaris's cheek. "I've very much enjoyed these past months together, you know."
"You and me both," Polaris agreed. "Hopefully we'll have even more time together once the Witness is dealt with."
"One can only hope. Now then. We should get going."
The Last City, a couple of days later...
Polaris and Mara cuddled together in his apartment. She was fast asleep already, while he was struggling to rest. He thought about the nearly ten years since he and Mara had first met. First the mutual curiosity, then the conflict, the allyship, and now this. She'd been the one to give him his name. He'd held a gun to her head and genuinely considered pulling the trigger. All that history, and he could only think of one thing to say to her.
"I love you," Polaris whispered, closing his eyes.
Tower Hangar
Hecate found Aunor Mahal sitting at the edge of the Hangar, her legs dangling over the side. "Hey," the younger Warlock said to the elder.
Aunor looked up. "Hey."
"How've you been?" Hecate sat down next to her former mentor.
"Busy, I guess. Preparing for the end of the world. You?"
"Same. Lots of therapy."
"How's that going?" Aunor asked.
"Boring. I don't think it's really necessary anymore. Anyway, I just wanted to say I'm sorry." Hecate sighed. "For going Dark, for killing Faye, for everything. All I ever think about is how much I regret everything I've done since learning Stasis. I abandoned everyone I've ever loved in the name of genocide."
"It's okay, Hecate. Really. The Witness used Stasis to get in your head. That's not your fault."
"No, it is. Part of my therapy has been differentiating between the Witness's influence and my own actions. And I know for sure that choosing to embrace its call was my choice. I wasn't brainwashed or possessed, that was just me. I just... if you ever see me going down that road again, please kill me."
Aunor looked Hecate in the eyes. She was deadly serious. "Hecate, I don't think I can-"
"You're the only one I can trust with this. Polaris and Nemea wouldn't be able to. So promise me. Promise you'll put me down if it needs to happen," Hecate begged.
"Okay. I promise. But it won't come to that," Aunor swore.
"I hope not. I'm gonna be joining Polaris and the Vanguard in going through the portal. Nemea and I both are. I just needed to get that out before we go so I'm in the right headspace, you know?"
"Yeah. I get it. Pre-mission clearing of the mind. Hey, why don't I come with you?" Aunor suggested. "You might need some more support."
"The City will need your support even more." Hecate shook her head. "With our leadership gone, the other Guardians will need people to rally them. You command respect from both the Praxic Order and the Hidden. They'll answer to you. Think you can handle it?"
Aunor thought for a moment. Hecate was right about the Guardians needing leadership in the Vanguard's absence. She remembered how the Hunters mostly went rogue after Cayde's death. With Ikora and Zavala both gone, there could be chaos. "I've got them covered. Just promise me you'll be safe, alright? You've got just one life left. And look out for Polaris too. You know him as well as I do- maybe better."
Hecate smirked. "What, still harboring some feelings for him? You broke up like a year ago."
"It's not that." Aunor rolled her eyes. "You know how he can get sometimes when there's a big conflict. All self-sacrificial and whatnot. Don't let him do something stupid."
"I won't. Promise."
"Good." Aunor fist-bumped Hecate. "Good luck in there. Show the Witness what the Guardians are made of, yeah?"
Somewhere in North America
Nemea stood before Ayane Takanome's unmarked grave, dozens of familiar blue flowers planted around the forest clearing. "Hi, Ayane," he began. "I know I'm a little early this year. Just wanted to visit in case things go badly. Long story short, I'm going into the Traveler soon. I don't know what'll happen in there or what's waiting on the other side, but I know there's a good chance someone doesn't come back from this. So I just wanted to tell you what I should've while you were still alive." Nemea took a deep breath. "I love you, Ayane. Really. I wish you'd been chosen by a Ghost. I kept wondering every year if I'd come and find this place dug up, or something. But it never happened, even though nobody is more worthy of the Light than you. People still follow your Rangers' roads to the City, y'know. And these flowers still grow. I guess I should go start prepping for the journey, but. If I never come back here again, well... guess that means I'll see you around, Ayane."
The Last City
Zavala, Ikora Rey, Polaris, Hecate, and Nemea gathered in the Commander's office. "You all know what's coming," Zavala began. "Osiris and the Queen are close to opening the way into the Traveler. Osiris and Saint-14 have volunteered to keep watch over the City while we are away. Lord Shaxx will aid them."
"Mithrax and Caiatl are on standby, ready to follow us through the portal if we call upon them and their forces," Ikora added. "Fireteam Apex, anything to add?"
"Well, as I told you two already, Hecate and Nemea will be joining us in the Traveler," Polaris said, crossing his arms. "We'll need them if we want to stand up to the Witness and whatever else is waiting for us in there."
"So, we'll be a five-man fireteam, then?" Zavala looked at his team. "Very well."
"Six if you count Crow," Polaris reminded him. "First thing we do once we get in there should be to make contact and rendezvous with him."
"Agreed." Ikora looked at the trio of Guardians standing across from she and Zavala. "As I'm sure you're aware, there is a very real possibility of any of us dying our final deaths in this mission. If any of you aren't prepared to face that possibility, there's no shame in backing out. You'll be just as valued as a defender outside the Traveler as you would be within."
"Ikora, with all due respect, screw that," Hecate countered. "We've discussed this already. We know the risk. Polaris even tried to talk Nemea and I into staying in the City. We're as ready for whatever comes as you are."
"That's right." Nemea nodded. "And I can think of no better fight to die in than fighting for the entire universe."
Zavala couldn't help but smile. He remembered the first time this trio had united in the Taken War, nine years prior. How awkward and unsure of one another they'd been. He remembered meeting Nemea under the Traveler before the City was anything more than a collection of tents and huts. He remembered the Battle of Twilight Gap, where Hecate proved her devotion to the people of Sol on her very first day in the City, fighting alongside Lord Shaxx's fireteam and disobeying Lord Saladin's orders. He remembered Polaris wandering into the Hall of Guardians in the old Tower, freshly risen, confused, and overwhelmed by the world he'd found himself in. They'd all grown so much over their years, as individuals and as a team. There were few Guardians that could call themselves legends, but these three were among their ranks without question.
"Everything alright, Zavala?" Polaris asked, watching the Commander's gaze become unfocused as he smiled at Fireteam Apex.
"Yes. I'm alright," Zavala assured them. "Just know that I couldn't be more proud of the heroes you've all become. Now then." His smile dropped. He was all business once more. "We could get the call to depart from the Queen at any moment. Make whatever preparations you need, and stay on alert."
Polaris nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Very well. Dismissed."
Fireteam Apex left the office together in silence, each member of the trio mentally preparing for the coming battle.
oh my god it's so good to be back. i missed writing stories like this. i really hope TFS ends up being good with how excited i am. at any rate, thank you for reading my re-debut story. I hope you liked it. See you in the Pale Heart, Guardians.
~ P.
submitted by Avixofsol to DestinyJournals [link] [comments]
The Black Garden
Polaris stared up at the Black Heart as it dissipated, a slack grip on the Ace of Spades. "It's over," he said breathlessly.
Daedalus hovered at his Guardian's side. "You've cleansed the Black Garden again, Polaris. Thanks to you, the Vex can't interfere with our work in connecting to Crow."
"Well done," Osiris said over comms. "When you return, I would suggest you make your final preparations before we enter the portal. We have no idea what awaits on the other side."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that. See you soon, Osiris." Polaris cut off the connection as he returned to his sister Riven's gateway.
The Last City
Polaris assembled Fireteam Apex in the now-abandoned ruins of the Old Tower Plaza. "It's good to see you two again," he said warmly as the trio group-hugged.
"You have no idea," Hecate agreed as they stepped away from each other. "It's been so long since we were all together outside of defending the City from them." She glared up at the few Pyramid ships that had appeared above the City. The sounds of distant gunfire from the battles currently raging on echoed through the evening.
"So why now?" Nemea-13 asked. "You called us here for a reason, Polaris. Is something up?"
"You could say that." Polaris turned and faced the City. "Osiris and Mara are making good progress on opening the portal. It's only a matter of time now before we can go through and put an end to this. So, I want to make a request."
"And what's that?"
The Hunter sighed, looking back at his fireteam. "Don't come with me."
Hecate froze, taken aback. "What?"
"What are you saying?" Nemea asked, his voice cracking.
"You heard me. When I follow Crow into the portal, I don't want you to follow me. Stay here. Defend the City. Protect the people. Zavala and Ikora have already established that they'll be joining me in there. The City will need someone to stay behind and keep it safe between when we go and when we get back. That's what I want from you two. Stay behind, keep the people safe." Polaris looked back at the City. "I don't know what'll happen in there, but it'll be the most dangerous mission in Guardian history. I won't allow you two to die on me. If anyone's gotta die to stop the Witness, it'll be me. No ands, ifs, or buts."
"Oh, hell no." Hecate's confusion turned into a rising anger, though there were tears welling up in her violet eyes. "You do not get to play the 'heroic sacrifice' card on me. Not a chance." She held Polaris's hands in hers. "I won't lose you too. Especially not knowing I could've been there to stop it. I only have one life left, Polaris. I want to spend it with my brothers. Both of my brothers," she finished, looking back at Nemea.
"We're coming with you, and none of us are dying in there," Nemea agreed, pulling the smaller Guardians into a bear hug. "And there'll be no ands, ifs, or buts about that."
Polaris leaned his head on Nemea's shoulder. "This has to be my burden to bear, I know it. I think deep down, I've always known it. I started all this by killing the Black Heart. And Elsie said-"
"Screw what Elsie said," Hecate interrupted. "She may think you're the linchpin to everything, that this is your destiny. But you know what I've always known? Guardians don't fight and win against impossible odds alone. We stopped Oryx all those years ago as a team, the three of us. We'll do the same to the Witness."
"But-"
"No buts, remember?" Nemea hugged his siblings even tighter. "You're not alone, Polaris. Never have been, never will be."
Polaris gave Hecate and Nemea a tearful smile. "Alright. Alright, you guys. I get it. You're coming with me. Please let me go now before you crush a rib or something." He took a deep breath as he finally escaped Nemea's grasp. "What I said still stands, though. There's no telling what'll happen in there. We should all say our goodbyes to our other loved ones. Just in case. And get ready for the fight of our lives."
"Agreed." Hecate nodded. "These old weapons that Shaxx reprised for us should do well, but we'll need all the gear we can carry."
"Right. I'll see you guys when Mara and Crow finally make that connection, then?"
The trio nodded to one another and parted ways.
The Dreaming City, Mara's throne room
Polaris dutifully stood guard as Mara sat cross-legged on the throne in front of him. She was searching for Crow's presence, trying to establish the link and open the way into the portal. He watched as sweat gathered on her forehead and her brow furrowed with effort. With a frustrated growl, Mara opened her eyes and stood.
"Nothing?" Polaris guessed.
"Something," Mara corrected. "That is what frustrates me. I can feel Crow, but he is just beyond my reach. We're close, Polaris. I know it. Leave us," she said, turning her attention to the Corsair guards standing at attention nearby. They hurriedly left the throne room, the gateway closing behind them. Mara's shoulders slumped, and she practically crumpled into Polaris's arms, her hands resting on his chest. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong," she whispered.
"You're not doing anything wrong. C'mon, sit down." Polaris eased himself and Mara back onto the throne. "We have no idea where that portal leads. Presumably the inside of the Traveler, but we could be completely wrong about that. For all we know, you're trying to find Crow on another plane of existence."
"I... I'm scared, Polaris," Mara admitted with a sniffle. "Not just for Crow. For everyone. For everything. What if we're not strong enough? What if we die in the Traveler and the Witness enacts its Final Shape?"
"Don't even say that. You're Queen Mara goddamn Sov. The power of the Guardians plus you, and the Witness doesn't stand a chance. Fear nothing, bow to no one. Isn't that right, Your Grace?"
Mara's sob turned into a chuckle. "Sure thing, Young Wolf."
"Ouch. That's low." Polaris snickered back. "It's good to hear you speak casually. The way you are with your subjects is admirable and what I fell for all those years ago, sure, but I feel like I really know you now."
"I guess you do." Mara sighed. "Just for a few days, I'd like to just be me. Not the Queen, not My Grace. Just Mara."
"We can do that. What did you have in mind?"
"Some tea. And sleep. Preferably in your bed." Mara kissed Polaris's cheek. "I've very much enjoyed these past months together, you know."
"You and me both," Polaris agreed. "Hopefully we'll have even more time together once the Witness is dealt with."
"One can only hope. Now then. We should get going."
The Last City, a couple of days later...
Polaris and Mara cuddled together in his apartment. She was fast asleep already, while he was struggling to rest. He thought about the nearly ten years since he and Mara had first met. First the mutual curiosity, then the conflict, the allyship, and now this. She'd been the one to give him his name. He'd held a gun to her head and genuinely considered pulling the trigger. All that history, and he could only think of one thing to say to her.
"I love you," Polaris whispered, closing his eyes.
Tower Hangar
Hecate found Aunor Mahal sitting at the edge of the Hangar, her legs dangling over the side. "Hey," the younger Warlock said to the elder.
Aunor looked up. "Hey."
"How've you been?" Hecate sat down next to her former mentor.
"Busy, I guess. Preparing for the end of the world. You?"
"Same. Lots of therapy."
"How's that going?" Aunor asked.
"Boring. I don't think it's really necessary anymore. Anyway, I just wanted to say I'm sorry." Hecate sighed. "For going Dark, for killing Faye, for everything. All I ever think about is how much I regret everything I've done since learning Stasis. I abandoned everyone I've ever loved in the name of genocide."
"It's okay, Hecate. Really. The Witness used Stasis to get in your head. That's not your fault."
"No, it is. Part of my therapy has been differentiating between the Witness's influence and my own actions. And I know for sure that choosing to embrace its call was my choice. I wasn't brainwashed or possessed, that was just me. I just... if you ever see me going down that road again, please kill me."
Aunor looked Hecate in the eyes. She was deadly serious. "Hecate, I don't think I can-"
"You're the only one I can trust with this. Polaris and Nemea wouldn't be able to. So promise me. Promise you'll put me down if it needs to happen," Hecate begged.
"Okay. I promise. But it won't come to that," Aunor swore.
"I hope not. I'm gonna be joining Polaris and the Vanguard in going through the portal. Nemea and I both are. I just needed to get that out before we go so I'm in the right headspace, you know?"
"Yeah. I get it. Pre-mission clearing of the mind. Hey, why don't I come with you?" Aunor suggested. "You might need some more support."
"The City will need your support even more." Hecate shook her head. "With our leadership gone, the other Guardians will need people to rally them. You command respect from both the Praxic Order and the Hidden. They'll answer to you. Think you can handle it?"
Aunor thought for a moment. Hecate was right about the Guardians needing leadership in the Vanguard's absence. She remembered how the Hunters mostly went rogue after Cayde's death. With Ikora and Zavala both gone, there could be chaos. "I've got them covered. Just promise me you'll be safe, alright? You've got just one life left. And look out for Polaris too. You know him as well as I do- maybe better."
Hecate smirked. "What, still harboring some feelings for him? You broke up like a year ago."
"It's not that." Aunor rolled her eyes. "You know how he can get sometimes when there's a big conflict. All self-sacrificial and whatnot. Don't let him do something stupid."
"I won't. Promise."
"Good." Aunor fist-bumped Hecate. "Good luck in there. Show the Witness what the Guardians are made of, yeah?"
Somewhere in North America
Nemea stood before Ayane Takanome's unmarked grave, dozens of familiar blue flowers planted around the forest clearing. "Hi, Ayane," he began. "I know I'm a little early this year. Just wanted to visit in case things go badly. Long story short, I'm going into the Traveler soon. I don't know what'll happen in there or what's waiting on the other side, but I know there's a good chance someone doesn't come back from this. So I just wanted to tell you what I should've while you were still alive." Nemea took a deep breath. "I love you, Ayane. Really. I wish you'd been chosen by a Ghost. I kept wondering every year if I'd come and find this place dug up, or something. But it never happened, even though nobody is more worthy of the Light than you. People still follow your Rangers' roads to the City, y'know. And these flowers still grow. I guess I should go start prepping for the journey, but. If I never come back here again, well... guess that means I'll see you around, Ayane."
The Last City
Zavala, Ikora Rey, Polaris, Hecate, and Nemea gathered in the Commander's office. "You all know what's coming," Zavala began. "Osiris and the Queen are close to opening the way into the Traveler. Osiris and Saint-14 have volunteered to keep watch over the City while we are away. Lord Shaxx will aid them."
"Mithrax and Caiatl are on standby, ready to follow us through the portal if we call upon them and their forces," Ikora added. "Fireteam Apex, anything to add?"
"Well, as I told you two already, Hecate and Nemea will be joining us in the Traveler," Polaris said, crossing his arms. "We'll need them if we want to stand up to the Witness and whatever else is waiting for us in there."
"So, we'll be a five-man fireteam, then?" Zavala looked at his team. "Very well."
"Six if you count Crow," Polaris reminded him. "First thing we do once we get in there should be to make contact and rendezvous with him."
"Agreed." Ikora looked at the trio of Guardians standing across from she and Zavala. "As I'm sure you're aware, there is a very real possibility of any of us dying our final deaths in this mission. If any of you aren't prepared to face that possibility, there's no shame in backing out. You'll be just as valued as a defender outside the Traveler as you would be within."
"Ikora, with all due respect, screw that," Hecate countered. "We've discussed this already. We know the risk. Polaris even tried to talk Nemea and I into staying in the City. We're as ready for whatever comes as you are."
"That's right." Nemea nodded. "And I can think of no better fight to die in than fighting for the entire universe."
Zavala couldn't help but smile. He remembered the first time this trio had united in the Taken War, nine years prior. How awkward and unsure of one another they'd been. He remembered meeting Nemea under the Traveler before the City was anything more than a collection of tents and huts. He remembered the Battle of Twilight Gap, where Hecate proved her devotion to the people of Sol on her very first day in the City, fighting alongside Lord Shaxx's fireteam and disobeying Lord Saladin's orders. He remembered Polaris wandering into the Hall of Guardians in the old Tower, freshly risen, confused, and overwhelmed by the world he'd found himself in. They'd all grown so much over their years, as individuals and as a team. There were few Guardians that could call themselves legends, but these three were among their ranks without question.
"Everything alright, Zavala?" Polaris asked, watching the Commander's gaze become unfocused as he smiled at Fireteam Apex.
"Yes. I'm alright," Zavala assured them. "Just know that I couldn't be more proud of the heroes you've all become. Now then." His smile dropped. He was all business once more. "We could get the call to depart from the Queen at any moment. Make whatever preparations you need, and stay on alert."
Polaris nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Very well. Dismissed."
Fireteam Apex left the office together in silence, each member of the trio mentally preparing for the coming battle.
oh my god it's so good to be back. i missed writing stories like this. i really hope TFS ends up being good with how excited i am. at any rate, thank you for reading my re-debut story. I hope you liked it. See you in the Pale Heart, Guardians.
~ P.
2024.06.01 06:29 Sp00kyd00d4ever Infinity Blood: Hunt for the Divine Book One:
 | This is a horro adventure series I’ve been working on for over a year! Thought I’d post some of it on here! Would love some feedback! submitted by Sp00kyd00d4ever to Write_Right [link] [comments] Existence began with a flash of light that pierced the black vastness of space, bringing forth a billion stars. And the world as we know it came to be––suspended, breathing, becoming life. Magnificent oceans, brilliant blue skies patchy with sheets of white vapor, animals from the humble mouse to the prideful lion arose, as did all forms of flora that sprouted up from beneath the dirt and soul, spreading across the lands culminating in lush jungles and forests, providing refuge to the fauna from the ever-changing elements. On the seventh day, Man came, and with man came the original sin. As Eve plucked the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and Adam partook, they were cast out from paradise, condemned to fend for themselves in an imperfect world filled with struggle and hardships––a reality to which man grew all too accustomed. No longer in paradise, existence no longer felt like a blessing but a vile curse. Scornful towards his Almighty Creator, Adam's hatred brought forth the embodiment of malice––creatures with an insatiable thirst for vengeance against the God who seemed to have forsaken them. This rage was passed on to his two sons, Cain and Abel, who themselves committed the second sin and unleashed the Maligus onto the world. From then on, man's soul was thrust into a ceaseless war between good and evil; Proelium in Principio Esse had begun. Only the Angelix, warriors of the holiest order, wielded enough power to challenge the growing threat of the demon Maligus. Armed with the gifted, Divine Items––the Saber of Sovereignty, the Dagger of Divinity, and the Armament of Authority––the grand battle seemed all but won. But as civilization grew, so did the sins of man, and soon, the scales between good and evil became unbalanced. The chosen Angelix relinquished paradise and descended to Earth to continue their duty of bringing balance to mankind, to finally rid the world of the foul demons. And so, they remained on earth, living as humans, learning to love the ever-fleeting imperfection that was humanity. Passing on the lessons of the Riteful Fite to their descendants, calling themselves Pharus Spei, as so they fought on, awaiting Proelio Finem Temporis––the final confrontation between the forces of light and dark. The end will be ushered in by the union of three prophesied warriors, each of whom will once again wield the Divine Items hidden for millennia throughout the long stretches of time. They shall bring an end to this war and, at long last, bring forth an everlasting peace for mankind. They will be the Infinitrinity. Ephesians 5:16 And Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. He was being hunted. No sooner had the sun retreated behind the city skyline did the creatures come pouring out from within the shadows and trailing after the young boy from the rooftops. The boy cut through alleyways and a vacant lot in a panic frenzy, lungs burning and bare feet aching, he felt their desperate hunger careening down at his back. Young as he was his primal instincts for survival and adrenaline kept him pushing forward, trying every effort he could to lose the creatures leaping overhead. He knew they wanted nothing more than for him to take a wrong turn leading to dead end or to trip or loose his balance. These mistakes would be all they needed to guarantee an easy meal. They were quick. Catching a glimpse of them leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Their bodies were thin and long. Barely making any sound as they landed onto the rooftops. The dark hid their viler details. But he's seen them before. They image of their hideous features haunted his dream most every night. Their jagged teeth protruding from their enormous mouths. Their scale covered limbs. Bit it was their eyes which clung most vividly to the forefront of his mind. Those wide, scarlet eyes. They were so full of equal parts malice and insatiable hunger. They only existed to feed and cause misery. And he had unfortunately borne witness to both these things. He took a hastened turn down the wrong alley. This was the mistake they had preyed upon. He found it led to a brick wall. Far too tall for him to climb over. It was a dead end. He turned on his heels, eyes swollen with tears he prepared to face his fate head on. A boy only twelve years of age; living impoverished and without a home. Scrounging for food in dumpsters and taking shelter wherever he was able was now being forced to face his mortality. His mouth had run dry. His small chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath. I don't wanna die. God. I don't wanna The heard of demons huddled around the child. Salivating. Their long, serrated teeth readied for the taste of the boy's tender flesh. A figure appearing to materialize in the moonlight stood in between the feral beast and the frightened boy. Draped in a long coat and wearing a wide brimmed hat. The boy noticed the demon's demeanors suddenly altered as they began to place distance between them and the mysterious man. No sooner did he appear did he make charge the fiendish things, a long sword in hand. Within what seemed seconds the demons were torn a sunder, leaving nothing behind by cloud of ash. The man turned to the boy. He was an older looking fellow. A long grayish whirl beard falling from his chin and a long silver mane pouring out from beneath his hat. "What's your name boy?" The man asked. His voice was calming. The boy spoke. "Nathaniel, sir. Nathaniel Lumen." There was a brief pause. The man spoke. "Where are you parents? You're much too young to be out here alone at this time of night." "They're dead sir. Those things killed them. A year ago." The mysterious man took a moment before speaking, surveying the boy from head to toe. On the boys right fore arm there was a familiar looking birthmark. It was blotchy and abnormally pigmented in the shape of an '8'. "It appears you have a choice to make. You are course free to stay here and live your life as you choose, fighting for survival in this city rampant with those foul creatures. Or you can come with me and never fear again." The boy looked on at the stranger in the bellowing trench coat. Perplexed. This offer had a weight to it unlike any he'd been given before. Was such a decision truly his to make? A boy of twelve years old given such reign over his destiny expected to make this life altering decision. The man said nothing further, simply slipping his sword back to its sheath and he began to walk away. The boy watched as the stranger walk out of the dimly lit alleyway and into the lightened streets. His silhouette statuesque, the shadows seeming to bend around him. Whoever this man was he felt certain wherever he was headed would be a place filled of purpose. There would be light. The boy followed after. Chapter 01 The Distant Future, the Year 2307 The Cathedral of Kayn "The perimeter is secure." " No heat signatures are showing up on our end." "Copy that, we're moving in." The Faction 7 infiltration squad had managed to make it through the mountains bordering the outskirts of the once-great city of Edenlore. After an arduous battle that left their ranks severely diminished, they had finally breached the hard light barrier, an omnipresent protective shell surrounding the cathedral. Exhausted and running low on supplies, they were weak in body but strong in spirit. Their mission was to breach the heart of the cathedral and locate the throne room. "Hurry down the left corridor; there should be a flight of stairs to the right!" Vector Lux, a young soldier of the Pharus Spei, recited aloud, providing the infiltration squad with the intelligence that had been gathered by the last platoon on their prior mission. Sargent Lancer nodded. "You two, you're with me. The rest of you men cover our end." Private Vector Lux obeyed Sargent Lancer's command and followed closely as they made their way up the stairwell. This was the opportunity they had long fought for; all the lives lost, all the bloodshed, all the years he'd spent training—it all led to this moment. They sprinted up the flight of stairs. Vector glanced to his right, locking eyes with Private Sands. Both had been enlisted into the ranks of the Pharus Spei at the age of thirteen, and both had spent years on the battlefield, bearing witness to the horrors of the ceaseless war, the countless deaths of loved ones, and the all-consuming dread that governed their entire lives. This mission's success would make all the difference and could very well bring an end to all the suffering. Peace could finally be achieved at long last. All of civilization's fate depended solely on this success. Hordes of maligus––winged, bloodthirsty beasts––trailed behind them, existing solely to feed on the fear and flesh of men, of which their jagged teeth made short work. They were under his dominion. Hundreds of them stood watch over the cathedral through the night, ever vigilant. Throughout the long hours of the night, they were his enforcers. Several soldiers had managed to fend off a portion of the maligus, allowing Sargent Lancer and his team to break from the group and toward the objective. However, they were severely outnumbered, and before long, they were overwhelmed by the malevolent beasts. Vector could hear their blood-curdling screams echoing through the stairwell as the Faction 7 soldiers were torn apart in the ensuing battle. Sargent Lancer led the two soldiers up through the stairwell and into the grand hall, where they were met with a mighty staircase leading towards two large doors. "Intel says that's the entrance to the throne room." Sargent Lancer activated a device on his wrist that displayed a holographic map of the cathedral's interior. "What's our next move, Sarge?" Vector asked. Suddenly, Lancer's device emitted an alarming beeping sound. A deep, unsettling, booming voice filled the hall. "Impressive, humans, making it this far, and only at the cost of your entire fleet." Lum was its name; a behemoth of a bestial form emerged from behind the banister. "Was it worth it? The annihilation of all your comrades?" Another demon, female in appearance, with long flowing hair and an alluring presence; its name was Langu. "Food!" shouted another voice, raspy and excited. Esu appeared, its long and thin body dwarfed by Lum's broad and massive form. "Let us gift them a quick and painful death as a prize for making it this far," Morto, the final demon, said as it walked forth, unveiling its massive bat-like wings, sneering down at the three intruders. The Four Hellsmen, the deadliest of his enforcers. Sargent Lancer engaged his mechanical wrist gauntlets, setting them to incineration mode. He looked to his right. His fellow soldier stood there, trembling, trying to keep a brave face. His teeth clenched, his left hand on the hilt of his sword, still sheathed. Fear radiated from him. He then looked to his right and saw Vector with his sword at the ready, his face stern, unshaken, and full of resolve. He had made his decision. "Private Lux, when I give the order to move for those doors, we will cover you. Get through those doors and complete this mission. That's an order. Do you understand, soldier?" Sargent Lancer had given his final order, and Vector nodded. "Now! Move!" Vector ran for the staircase, only to be blocked by the winged demon Morto, who dove downward with a sweeping strike of its claw. Vector sprung backward narrowly, evading the demon's attack. Grasping his extendable, he then began blocking a barrage of strikes from above, his steel blade clanging against the demon's talons. Like a hungry vulture, the demon attacked relentlessly, swooping up and then backing down with violent vigor. A storm of bullets pelted the demon's body, causing it to collapse to the ground. Sargent Lancer readjusted his gauntlets and readied himself with another round of ammunition. "Go, that's an order!" He set off another round of shots; the bullets sprayed both banisters, heaving a cloud of debris into the air. Lum jumped from atop the banister and landed heavily on the marble floor below, fracturing it with its tremendous weight. It heaved its neck back, puffed out its wide-breasted chest, inhaling deeply, and then exhaled a large wall of flames. Vector, using his jet propulsion boots, propelled himself into the air. From above, he watched the flames dissipate, hoping his team had survived the inferno below. Vector launched himself forward in the direction of the throne room doors. Suddenly, swarms of flies appeared, obscuring his sight. He felt something grab hold of his left ankle and begin to pull him down. He looked down to see a hairy, greasy, and dark leg tugging at him. Langu cackled, using its tendril-like locks of hair to further ensnare the slayer. A nameless soldier lunged at the demon with an arching slash of his steel blade, severing the wretched, ghastly tendrils and allowing Vector to escape. "Go Lux, go now while we hold them off! Go!" he shouted, desperately fending off the demon Esu, who had gotten the upper hand. He had managed to pin him to the floor and begun draining him of his life essence. He shrieked in terror until all that was left was a withered, lifeless husk sprawled out on the floor. In a state of desperate rage, Vector engaged his gauntlets and shot Esu with a pinpoint hit to the head, causing it to explode on impact. Lum leaped into the air, wrapping its massive arms around the slayer, and they came crashing down. Now, Vector was at the mercy of the demon. Staring into its eyes, he could see nothingness, only hatred and malicious intent glowing in those red pits. "Let hell have you, Pharus Spei," the demon said, raising its head and preparing to unleash a blast of its fiery breath. Suddenly, a gleam of shimmering light tore through its chest, moving upward and splitting it down the middle of its massive torso. Lancer stood triumphant, his plasma saber in hand. He had sustained noticeable burn wounds to his right arm; even so, he wore a face of gratification as he watched the beast fall to pieces. The three remaining demons gathered around the shredded corpse. Having faced the Hellsmen numerous times before, Lancer knew it wouldn't be long before the beasts would regenerate and return to fighting form. He knew he had to do whatever he could to allow Private Lux a chance to reach the throne room. He ignited his plasma blade, flipping a switch on the blade's handle. It began to grow in length, losing its straight shape, resembling that of a loose line of wire, glowing and growing into a whip made of pure light energy. Then it began. With the flick of his wrist, the plasma whip looped outward and then inward, and suddenly, in a flurry of movements, it had begun to move in every direction, cutting through marble pillars, the banister above, and everything in its path. The demons backed away, doing all they could to avoid its wrath. "On your feet, Vector!" he commanded, his voice still strong and focused. Vector rose, regained his focus, and turned toward the two large wooden doors. He ran up the steps, hesitating for an instant at the top. Sargent Lancer called out to him. Turning, Vector met his gaze––a look of reassurance, pride, acceptance, but most of all, hope. With that, Lancer deactivated the plasma weapon and tossed it to Vector Lux. They exchanged nods. Vector now knew with all certainty that the fate of the world was in his hands. Yet, for a moment, he found himself unable to move forward. He turned once more for a final lingering glance back at Sargent Lancer, fully aware of the fate that awaited him once he walked through those doors. It was a feeling of hopelessness. Summoning all his resolve, he pushed through the heavy doors and into his throne room. The throne room of Kayn. |
2024.06.01 06:16 Diesel5036 One of My First "Original" Maps (Not Yet complete)
 | https://preview.redd.it/6h9e2zknxv3d1.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1fc543447503b64e0ef061cba333714796e3b82 submitted by Diesel5036 to inkarnate [link] [comments] Kinda ended up with a pretend Euraisa that has some vague inspiration from Elder Scrolls, which I'm a fan of. For a passion project DnD campaign I plan on writing some time in the distant future lol. Haven't decided on a name yet, but this would be for a sort of "Low Fantasy" campaign, where different non-human races and species still exist, but have in depth biology, and magic is often treated as a "crazy man's job", due to the fact that, on the contrary of most fantasy, the adverse health affects of magic can actually shorten one's lifespan, rather than extend it. Any thoughts? |
2024.06.01 05:18 ThatonerookBlchy I have just finished watching The Entire Show and Heres... My Thoughts
So To start as a TLDR: ITS GREAT 8/10 and I really can't describe it in detail
Kipo is a really great protagonist, I Really think her ideas were the right decision and wanted her to get her way because it was the best possible option.
Wolf was definetly Interesting seeing all the layers unravel and seeing her go from Distant to Carefree was just adorable
Benson was Cool but I don't have much to say bout him
Dave was kinda annoying at first but as the series went he only got better, The Life Cycle and molting weren't being overused and Overrall Dave really improved
Sadly Mandu had the least despite being there day 1 for kipo
Scarlemagne is an amazing villain and I love his redemption and Emilia I thought at first was going to suck but she really deviates from Scarlemagne showing she is Fully evil
All the Mute Communities were creative and The Story was well made if a bit rushed I mean. 30 episodes isn't enough for this world
Man this was beautiful
submitted by ThatonerookBlchy to KipoAndTheAgeOfWB [link] [comments]
Kipo is a really great protagonist, I Really think her ideas were the right decision and wanted her to get her way because it was the best possible option.
Wolf was definetly Interesting seeing all the layers unravel and seeing her go from Distant to Carefree was just adorable
Benson was Cool but I don't have much to say bout him
Dave was kinda annoying at first but as the series went he only got better, The Life Cycle and molting weren't being overused and Overrall Dave really improved
Sadly Mandu had the least despite being there day 1 for kipo
Scarlemagne is an amazing villain and I love his redemption and Emilia I thought at first was going to suck but she really deviates from Scarlemagne showing she is Fully evil
All the Mute Communities were creative and The Story was well made if a bit rushed I mean. 30 episodes isn't enough for this world
Man this was beautiful