The Gunslinger

"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye."

Twelve.

They say that you will be judged by the company you keep. The problem with that saying was that sometimes, you had little choice in who you would be associated with. Or be forced to be associated with.

Merilee Doe, as she might have been called in other times, Merilee Velt as she was recorded on some records, the name of her first foster home, now just Merilee, having discarded last names as none really belonged to her, having thought she was already pretty tough, she'd live through the Blue Hills Disaster where so many hadn't, had survived for months before she'd been absorbed back into the system, had handled the less than optimal new circumstances which could have been so much worse, but they weren't for her, so she'd gone off on her own, she'd handled living on the streets, she thought she was ready, she had some friends and she thought she knew...

She knew nothing.

She wasn't really sure how it had come to this. They'd been told to be a lookout for some older, rougher folks. Easy job. Then said folks had gotten into a scuffle with others. Others who were far rougher than them. They hadn't survived it. And as Merilee and her friends, Cecilia and Rudolf, and Manny, swift little Manny, the only one to get away, the only one of them who might see another sunrise...

He called himself Fast. He certainly looked like he lived it in every way. He was nearly skeletal, grim in stance and visage, fingers like long, twisting sticks as he aimed with the gun. An uncommon weapon in her world, rarely seen outside of Hemel-based clusters and intense war zones. They could be difficult to repair and keep operational, something more traditional weapons like swords and bows were easier to handle. Fast wore a filthy dark yellow coat, pants, and hat, or maybe it was some odd shade of brown, but not as brown as his teeth, long uncared for and doing their best to exit such neglected territory as his mouth was. But there was a spark in his eye, a flicker of something truly awful that both the good and the bad would take note of...

"Now look at me...see something worse."

Blood running down his chin, Rudolf stood on the barrel, the rope loosely knotted around his neck. Cecilia was on the ground, crying, held by Fast's lackies, the usual gaggle of scum and nogoodniks that gathered around his like. Merilee was the same, but while Cecilia couldn't bear to look, she couldn't look away as Fast lazily took aim.

The gunshot was like thunder.

The bullet chipped a bit off the barrel, and the men gathered around chortled and cackled, one wheezing like the effort of laughter was something notable. Fast just smirked briefly, before he gestured and Merilee was yanked up. She thought she was next on the barrel.

Instead, the gun was tossed down to her.

"Well, I had my three shots. So tell you what, kid. You cut down the rope, your friend can live."

Merilee stared at the gun.

"Come on now! I'm not a patient man!"

Merilee scrambled to the gun. It didn't just feel heavy in her hands, it felt hot, too hot, a low burning pain that echoed behind her eyes and began running up her arms. She'd never fired a gun. Hell, she'd barely held a weapon at all. She could barely hold this one, her hands shaking so hard...

"Verne, give her a little motivation, could you?"

Verne let out one more cackle, and then he drew out a knife, yanked Cecilee back by her hair as she screamed, placed the keen edge of the blade on her forehead, and started cutting.

Her agonized scream sang in twin with Merilee as she raised the gun and fired. The shots became her world.

And Rudolf tumbled off the barrel.

As the tree branch the rope was tied to let out a weird low almost whining sound and broke, badly damaged by Merilee's wild shots. She hadn't hit the rope, but she'd managed a booby prize, of sorts. There was a dark silence.

And then the laughter returned, a roar that seemed deeper than the gunshots. Merilee was vaguely aware of the gun being taken away from her, and Cecilee being released, she was grabbing at her head, she was alive, but there was so much blood.

"Well, let it not be said that you didn't get it done!" Fast said, pressing his spurs into his horse as he trotted it around. "Let's blow this one wheel town, boys. Before something else pisses me off."

He rode past Merilee, who managed to look up.

"But problem, little worm. I said three shots. That was five. Now I just have one shot left and I hate wasting good ammo."

And he aimed at Rudolf.

"So he'll just live."

The gunshot swallowed her scream.

---

Fourteen.

And rang into the sound of the door as she was thrown out of the tavern, crashing down onto the copplestones, and it hurt but it also felt good, and her head rang but in turn her senses sang back. A certain crazy assassin would have seen, in that moment, a kindred spirit, before she was followed out by the nearly seven foot mass of ropey muscle who had slammed her upside the head and tossed her out. Her fault. She'd made fun of him for losing the die roll. Not gentle enough, she'd lost the gentle touch somewhere these last years, and he'd objected.

"Now. Considering your age and your clear lack of ANYTHING rattling around that clay bowl you have for a skull...why don't you just..." He reached down, picking her up by the head, his fellows having followed him out to see what happened. Ihmensel’jk were not all sadistic, violent brutes as propaganda, prejudice, and general misinformation would present them as, but they did have a bend towards aggression and dominance, even the good ones. If you mocked an Ihmensel’jk, you'd better be ready to get back their retort. Merilee hadn't, and Hagu, "The Stone" to his battle fellows and enemies that survived him, hadn't held back because of her size, age, or gender.

"Give back the money."

"Wonitsquare."

"How little that matters. Now." His hand squeezed. "I know this hurts. I also know what hurts a great deal more."

Merilee mumbled something.

"Pardon?"

Another mumble. Hagu leaned in.

"IHAVEYOURWEAPON."

And so she did. He had a large dagger on his belt, and now Merilee had it, drawn out with its keen edge right up against his codpiece, ready to cut deep.

A standoff.

And then Hagu released her, as he roared with laughter. But this wasn't an ugly cacophony. This was general, genuine amusement. Hagu had a score of scars of a score of people of all stripes who had never had him at a disadvantage, and this young girl has sussed out an opening even in her badly disadvantaged state. A folly on his part, but not entirely, and he was not so proud that he couldn't laugh at himself for it. Not having been subjected to an amateur gelding probably helped with that.

"I do hope you live beyond the next twist or so of these lands, girl! You could be quite something if you don't get yourself killed first. My weapon, please."

Merilee gave it back. She knew, somehow, deep down, that this was not a bad idea. That she was safe, that he would not turn on her for her success. And he didn't. He went back into the tavern to continue his dice game.

The surprise came when she, a touch unsteady but with her head mostly all the way to clear, followed him back in.

"I wasn't done winning yet."

The laughter was a little quieter this time, an undertone of warning, don't push it child. But as dumb as Merilee was, she wasn't that dumb.

She'd never be that dumb again. And not really by her choice.

----

Fifteen.

She was going to die. Three years spent heading towards this only to trip and fall on her face at the last step.

Fast had nicer clothes this time, most anyone looked good in black, but the rest of him seemed as decayed and as rotten as ever. Surprisingly, he remembered her. She'd grown in many ways, but when he'd looked into her eyes when she'd tried to walk over to his table, disguised as his waitress, and he'd stood up and knocked his food away before she could draw her weapon and plant it right between his eyes, kicking her in the stomach before his men stomped her into unconsciousness, and now here she was, tied to this chair, as he sat in another one behind a table, slowly turning his gun over and over in his hand. No normal gun. A Remnant, a Malison, the curse of the Godslayer's victory over Xaxargas, dozens of pieces, each with a foul power to do harm wherever it went, whether it was driving wars to kill countless people or just shooting a harmless boy in the gut...

"The boy lived, didn't he?"

"Fuck you."

"Young fool, don't think you know what bad living is." Fast got up, walking over to her and kneeling down to look in her eye. "Maybe he was never the same, but don't think you understand things that are lost."

She spat at him. He somehow managed to dodge it, leaning back up.

"When the Twilight happened, my father decreed that he would not let his family be forced to see the end of the world. What he meant, of course, was that nothing was going to crush what was in his iron fist except him. So he pulled us all into one room, and told us to watch, so we'd understand, as he strangled my mother in front of me. Then my older sister. Then my older brother. Then my other older brother, my best friend...and he was the one who fought, who smashed a window and carved open his throat, but my father's grip was truly strong and his throat had been crushed, and he still gasped and wheezed out his last breath. That left just me and the baby sister of the family, and I lost her too, in the end, to the world, anyway. And while my sister and brother fought, just not as hard, my mother just sort of...let it happen. Like she'd been so long resigned to such a thing that she was already dead.

"THAT is loss, little worm. After that, there is NOTHING you could do to try and kill the likes of me. To truly kill a man, you need them to fear you, in one way or another. And after watching my father kill us all so a god couldn't, there is nothing in this world that can scare me. Not any more."

He turned around.

"But I suspect you won't stop..."

He turned and fired. He'd heard it. The sound of Merilee getting up, tied to the chair but not by her legs against its own, but she wasn't lunging at him, she was going to the side, the bullet going wide, the deadly shot of the Malison, which Fast called the Willow's Wail, missing as Merilee dove out of the window, glass shattering as she fell, her chair and body breaking as she landed, and oh it hurt, but she could run, she was ALIVE, and she ran, she ran...

---

"I do not shoot with my hand. He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind."

---

Sixteen.

She couldn't run, not this time. She was tied more securely and why, why...

Rudolf had never been quite the same after being shot by Fast, shot in the stomach, a cruel shot but one that had allowed her to drag him to medical help, but help was as expensive as life was cheap, and the repairs had kept him alive and not much else. He'd never really healed right. Pain followed him everywhere. It made him leave her side, like Cecilia had, having entered herself back into another foster home. She and Merilee had professed the same dislike of them, that they would be better off by themselves, free, but she had been badly disabused of that notion. She was still there, her head had healed and her heart was healing, but scabbed over and no longer one to beat in twin with Merilee's...

And Rudolf...

He'd come back into her life. He'd made it better. He'd sparked something in her she'd never have expected. And now she was tied on this slab, his captive.

She'd find out all the details later. How the pain simply never stopped. How it had soured his soul. What he'd ultimately turned to to stop it. And what else he wanted by the time he'd gone that far down the road. Anger. Resentment. That ever-shrill call that it wasn't fair to suffer, so share it for having the gall to not be suffering. All she knew was she was more shocked and terrified than she'd been since...well, since he'd been set down this path. Ever since then, she'd mostly been angry.

And despite it all...she'd never been hurt. In pain, in many kinds of pain. But never hurt.

But as he took the curved knife, as she tried at the last second to yell around her gag that he could stop, they could fix this, don't do this, don't...

Then he hurt her.

And she screamed, connecting with herself back down the years, all the good things washed away under that tidal wave, she was sixteen and he was cutting out a piece of her SOUL, she was twelve and they were killing Cecilia by scalping her, she was eight and some asshole had gotten his hand on another Malison and was wrecking everything including the only home she had because damn it, the world owed them, and when the world had told them otherwise they had thrown a temper tantrum and kicked over everyone's blocks, if they couldn't have them NO ONE COULD...

There were good things to come. Damn good things. They'd need to be, to balance this out.

And even with all of them, things would never be the same.

----

Ash Marsello was poorly equipped. He'd brought the proverbial knife to the proverbial gunfight. Worse, he hadn't brought any friends.

And he wasn't as young as he used to be. He'd weathered the duress like a well-tanned hide did, well but with inevitable cracks. Fast was not dumb enough to get lost in the rush of the idea that he might be the one where a fair number of others had failed. The slayer of the Godslayer. But even if he could manage a pseudo win, a bad wound, a retreat, it would be something, the weight of Willow's Wail was bearing down on him too, it had turned a thin scarecrow of a man into a semblance of a grim reaper, the cost of a weapon that pierced any armor, brooked no defense.

"The TALE, is in the telling." He'd gone through a fair number of people in his life, none of the ones at his side during that hanging, or dinner, still with him. This one was called Bernt, which he insisted wasn't because he misspelled Brent on something important and went with it, and he was a poor fighter but he could talk the birds down from the trees, and talk up the people he kissed ass for something fierce, so Fast kept him around. "This man, this godslayer...he's not invincible! He's not always destined to win, like he's made the world his storybook! He's just like me. A good hype man. Oh I'm not saying there's nothing to back it up. Maybe ten, hell, five years ago he was one of the most dangerous men on the planet...but he had to keep proving that. Time and tide waits for no man. Not even him. He's not as good a man as he was five, three, one, a week ago. And while some may say Fast looks far closer to the grave than him, believe me...he has far more pages on his storybook left than the man in front of him."

"You're not wrong." Ash said.

Not many had remained in the town to watch this showdown. Probably best. Fast had dug in like the proverbial tick, and trying to run him down for his crimes had had more obstacles and potholes than it was healthy for innocents caught in the crossfire to have. And so now he was here. He wasn't winning this. If he outdrew Fast, his people would just gun him down. They were all in the best position for it. Maybe he'd survive it, but that Bernt fellow wasn't wrong. Time waited for no one, and eventually, his checks in the win column would stop.

It was silent. With Bernt done and off 'the stage, all that was left was the signalman. He'd toss a ball into the air, and when it landed, it was draw time, in any way the user wished. Unfortunately, high noon was five hours ago. Well, can't have ALL the dramatic touches.

The rat-faced signalman stepped forward. He held out the ball. Normal ball? Rigged for Fast's benefit? Who knew. Fast was confident enough to not cheat. And he might be totally on the ball-that-may-or-may-not-have-been-rigged to be so.

Then it was in the air.

It soared up, a decent upward arc. It paused, and then gravity embraced it.

One hand flexed onto a hilt, as another eagerly squeezed his own.

The ball landed.

And Fast recoiled as he drew his gun and the town exploded, every building going up like a volcano had spontaneously appeared beneath each of them. Men flew, screamed, and burned. Debris cut others down, including Bernt, who caught a door to the face to his detriment. Fast didn't escape unharmed, pelted with shrapnel, but he kept his feet, unlike Ash, who'd immediately gone to a knee and, as the smoke and dust filled the street, ran away.

The buildings burned. A flame that danced in Fast's own eye as he settled back down, looking around at the ruins. He idly wondered if his hostages had been taken or if Ash Marsello had finally gotten so far up his own butt he'd rather blow up innocents than lose. It was the former, of course. Ash was alone in the street, but not alone.

Never alone. The lone wolf was a myth. Strength was in a pack.

But sometimes, you did have to stand by yourself, as the sound of clinking spurs reached through the smoke, before wind finally blew enough of it away to clear Fast's vision.

Eighteen.

"...like a poor coin, always." Fast said, looking at Merilee. No longer a scared young girl, nor a ragged scrapper with bits and pieces mashed together to make herself as tough as possible. It had been as greasy as poorly cooked food, but the potential seen in her years ago had finally been fully seized and made her own. That was the secret of achievement, the one few talked about. Potential, hard work...and networking. The hands that guided you.

"He wasn't right, either." Ash said, off to the side now. "That speaker of yours. But this is a fight that my claim is a distinct second to. But don't worry. Had to REALLY drive the point home..." He gestured to the destruction, having had to literally blow all of Fast's men out of their ambush sites and murder holes. "But from now on, all fights are fair."

"Liar." Fast said.

"Speak for yourself. I won't."

"...your speed still won't surpass mine, young girl! And even if you try and peacock, there's nothing you can wear that can stop death from coming for you!"

"I don't hear death today." Merilee said, as she slid aside her coat. This was a nice gun. She'd need to give it a nice name.

Fast put his hand on his own weapon. Dust swirled around them.

No signalling here. Just the eyes of two killers, eyeing, assessing, listening.

The sound of metal clearing leather seemed as loud as the bullets that followed.

Fast fired, and Merilee jerked as she was hit. Once, twice, three times, four times, he was right, his bullets from the piece of a dark god just went through her armor, five times, six. He stopped.

She slumped...but stood. Blood ran from her wounds. Pain. Such pain. But it didn't dim the fire as she looked up.

"...impossible." Fast said. Ash wished he could tell him. Yeah, no armor could stand against Willow's Wail...but the human body was an impressive engine in and of itself. You could shoot it six times without fatal results, if you hit the right places. And if the shots, if they couldn't be blocked, could be...nudged to go in the right places. If you could handle the pain.

Joy slowly drew what would become Hazardous. Yeah, he'd outdrawn her. She suspected he would have if she'd actually tried to match him. But now he was out, and she wasn't.

The only shot that mattered was the one that killed you.

"Are you afraid now?" Merilee said.

And she blew the answer, along with his face, out the back of his head as she took the aim she'd endured for and made it count.

Then she collapsed, blood spilling from her mouth, weakness settling on her. She was vaguely aware of a form running for her, Christine emerging as she knelt down to tend to her blunted, but still immensely severe, injuries. Merilee faded away for a time, something that would have once terrified her. Would she come back?

But now, if she was drifting away...

A hand reached out, pulling her back, Merilee retching as she coughed clotted blood up, Christine finally getting her specialized armor chestplate off to make sure she fully got the wounds closed. There was silence, save their breathing, as she worked.

She couldn't call this woman her mother. It almost seemed like an insult. But you don't rub off all the rough edges in one day, or deed. But it helped when she finally felt strong enough to stand up, with Christine's help, and Ash stepped forward, holding Willow's Wail.

"Would you like to do the honors."

Ash tossed it into the air.

And while never the most amazing shot, this time Merilee was as dead-on a fresh corpse bleeding into the dirt...

---

Into the sound of a door as he was smashed through it, falling down the stairs and into the mud, rain pouring down onto him as he gagged and spat, trying to claw up from the filth and what lay behind him, trying to get up and run and losing his balance and falling down again, the rainfall covering up the sound of the spurs as she walked out.

Nineteen.

"It wasn't PERSONAL!" Verne Whateverhislastnamewas had never seen good days, but he sure as hell had seen a long stretch of bad ones, his face pocked with craters from an old wound that had never really healed, his main arm withered from a similar wound, his breath smelling fouler than most of what came out the other end of a person. If anything, the mud was an improvement to his looks.

"You think that matters?"

"I'M NOT ARMED-!"

"Well, shoulda done somethin' about that. Too late now."

"PLEASE-!"

Hagu was dead three years gone, having finally found a foe that he couldn't slay. Much like Fast, the group had cycled its people over those years, but there was still one or two of them who'd been there at the start, and bled into the cup along with those that had come after. And as Merilee added her own, boiled the blood in the flame, and then hoisted the cup, she knew that if he'd moved on somewhere else, he was watching, in some way.

Then she drank.

It didn't really matter what happened after the person being honored drank. If you spat it out, if you got sick, there was no pride or sense of strength and weakness in this. Merilee was hardly stoic, gagging horribly, her gorge rising, but she kept it down. That got some extra hoots and applause.

"What am I?" She asked. And was told, that even if her name had been anything in the world, there was only one title for her.

"Please and thank you are long in the dust, rotter." The Joy said. She found herself already tired of this, but when she sped up and stamped on his wounded leg to pin him down, she found herself feeling oddly bad. It didn't last long, as she kicked the man over onto his back.

"I didn't kill her!"

"No. But you made her live with you. Maybe she can stand that, but that's a bridge too far for me."

She raised her gun.

"This is MURDER!"

"Nope. Had a fresh bounty drafted up. Ink's still wet, but it's still valid. You should have hid worse, rotter. There's less dignity in slowly wasting away here away from good doctors and a longer, better life, even if it's in a large cage, until someone who couldn't stands no more put you down."

"...please." Was all Verne could say.

She looked down at him.

At the little fried dough cake, the only thing Sunny could make with any degree of accuracy, the frosting a mess and her name misspelled as MARY-LEE. But the last name was spelled right. It should have been: Sunny knew it well.

And like the cake, it was hers now. It had been a long hard path, and she'd fallen and gotten hurt a lot. Some things she'd lost for good. But you had to take the bad with the good. The bad helped measure the good, really.

No real room for candles. So Athena had just jokingly lit two normal ones and was waving them around the cake in a "OHHHHH LOOK AT THE CANDLES" faux-fancy nonsense. In years past, she'd have waved them off. Snuffed the flames between her fingers. Rolled her eyes.

They went out in a quiet, genuine breath.

Merilee raised the gun. Tilted her head away a bit. Thinking, as the rain poured down the brim of her hat, down the shoulders of her coat, glistened on the spurs of her boot.

"...my dad said something once. To men who represented something. He considered mercy, and he considered possibility based on what he'd seen...

"He said, I value their tomorrows more than your todays."

And she put the gun back down and aimed.

"Nothing personal."

"I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.

"I kill with my heart."

BLAM.

 

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

-Somewhere Between A Pair of Wheres-

The water fell down into oblivion, but Joy had seen it before, and she wasn't the type to be scared of heights. She was more wary of the fact that she was alone.

She'd expected to be met at the per-arranged spot, that had been the plan when the mechanical golem had dropped by a month or so ago, but she'd arrived two hours before and been alone ever since. When the air had cracked open like it had before, she'd been even more surprised when no one came out of it except a waterfall of otherworld sea water. And there was no one inside it either.

Joy had never been a hesitant sort. You couldn't just ACCIDENTALLY break open a dimensional furrow, well, at least in a specific place at a specific rough time with said gateway being stable. So, she'd re-clinched her numerous supply packs onto Riotous and headed through. Like the first time, there and back, it was a bridge of water over a crimson void and under a seething black mass of a sky, but as long as she stayed on the path she'd be fine. And as much as Joy loved a challenge and a good scrap, she had enough sense of her skin to not go diving off into the unknown at a whim.

But when she arrived on the other end and found just a long expanse of sea water under some night stars, she started getting really confused. No ship. No undersea base. Not even a buoy or something. She was completely alone.

She didn't much care for it. But after establishing she wasn't being set up for an ambush, and consulting an Intricacy that confirmed that yes, she was at the correct location and time, she finally decided enough was enough; she'd made her own way for years and she wasn't about to stop now. So, running on the waves as easily as he would run upon the sandy beaches she headed for, Joy headed for where she was FAIRLY sure the bar was.

She was right...to an extent. There was no one there. In the sense of 'no one she recognized'. The bartender wasn't Keahi, but some stranger. And when asked if she'd arrived too early...

"What do you mean the Kobbers have moved on and aren't here any more?"

----

-The Teapot, Some Time Ago-

"Oh bugger."

A crescendo of alarms echoed through the base, along with the sound of slamming doors.

"Oh bugger oh bugger oh bugger..." Dawn recited as she tried to get the unexpected error under control.

She failed. In the less important sense, anyway.

-A Little Less Time Ago-

"How long are you going to be in there, mommy?" Veronica said.

"I'm working on a solution, Ronnie. But until we can get Utsuho to swing by here, there's far too much radiation for myself to do much else." That was an understatement. Dawn's accident had unleashed so much radiation that if she hadn't immediately activated her sealing mechanisms with the super-dense metal tralphium cores she'd had a great deal of difficulty attaining, she might have permanently irradiated half the Pacific Ocean. Well, if the Teapot was still down there. But she'd sealed the chamber and herself off, and she thankfully wasn't as prone to 'sickening and dying' under the gaze of the invisible doom as an organic being. No, she was just now putting out so much radiation that she'd probably give anything in a mile radius of her cancer. For the next eight thousand or so years.

Thank the gods for Utsuho, but she wasn't at Dawn's beck and call. And the Kobbers were due to arrive at the new bar very very soon, and she knew her children were chomping at the bit to be there. But she wasn't helpless, oh no...

She was working on a solution.

It almost made her forget that she had to pick up Merilee Marsello. And she was in no position to actually 'pick her up'.

Bad time for a mistake, but she could fix this, she could fix it all...

----

-The Edge of the Undercity-

Some people would protest that some parts of the Undercity really weren't that bad, that its reputation as the latest version of the Wild-West-of-fiction was exaggerated. They weren't wholly wrong. There were places in the Undercity where if you minded your own business and kept good locks on your doors and to yourself, the dark side wouldn't much touch you. There were more than a few buildings and sub-spaces where you could open a scuffed door and find a perfectly nice and warmly lit apartment that wouldn't be out of place in a catalogue. Unfortunately, not everyone who lived in the Undercity could make such a claim.

And if you lived on Decade Mile, well...it was a whole different kettle of fish.

The Curse' tendrils pierced the deepest into the Undercity, but it wasn't the only crime and corruption that lurked there. And then there was Decade Mile. There was virtually no crime there. No criminals to threaten more normal folks who just wanted to live their life and weren't in a good position for one reason or another to do so elsewhere. Any of the sort of types who made life harder for such other types rapidly left Decade Mile, usually in a body bag. Decade Mile was the Silvers' turf. They had zero tolerance and almost as much mercy.

But the downside to that area, edging up on the unlivable-by-anything-remotely-normal Green Hell zone, was that Decade Mile had more...unconventional problems. Lesser in number, but often greater in danger. It was a coin flip of a choice: no one was disallowed from the Mile as long as they didn't cause trouble, and everyone was defended and looked after. But the Silvers couldn't be everywhere at once, and the things that walked there, stalked there, lurked in the dark cracks and sometimes reached out...

There are worse things than crime.

It said a lot that the latest Malfested could be said to be a 'very good one'. In the sense it was a ten foot tall humanoid alligator beast that could generate electricity between its front incisors and had only killed one person before the Geruvians, or the Silvers, depending on who you asked, had chased it from Decade Mile. It had proven to be good at running, and they'd had to chase it much further than most of the Malfested. But it had finally reached some territory that had confused it and slowed it down a bit.

As far as Lyall Curr was concerned though, it had gone too far about five or so 'fars' back, and as soon as it stopped to sniff the air he threw caution to the wind and charged in, leaping onto its back and ramming the dagger blade into its thick, resilient hide as hard as he could. He was strong, and practiced in such motions. It still barely penetrated, the Malfested howling, electrical energy crackling from its jaw and zapping out, lighting up the tunnel even as more electricity coursed through its body, electrifying Lyall before he could drive in another dagger and throwing him clear. The Malfested turned to him as he slapped at his wrist, and the dagger's length suddenly turned cold, than freezing, then impossibility frigid. There weren't any Therians here, with a need to hunt through materials until you found their 'silver', so Lyall had adapted his dagger array as needed. Mutant akin to a cold blooded reptile, so magically enchanted ice dagger, to put it simply. At the very least, it hurt, and the Malfested howled its rage and pain...

Its inner mouth was more vulnerable. Lacking eyes, Maeve Curr put her arrows there, the hardened stone tips impaling deep. As soon as the Malfested snapped its jaw shut the third figure flashed by, Malachi Dalca leaping up and smashing a knee across the beast's extended maw, the electrical power not bothering him at all. Unable to focus, the Malfested fell prey to the fourth attack, as claws that were fiercer than its head lashed out and ripped across its back and side, finally drawing blood...

And the blood was yanked out of the beast, dark blue-green liquid becoming gummy ropes that anchored themselves to the ground, pinning the beast down as it roared again, only for another blood-rope to spiral out of its mouth to serve as another anchor. Lyall was back up by then, drawing a new dagger...

And then the Malfested was lit up. Not by bullets, as the saying went, but by traditional light. The creature's roars had covered up the incoming metal sound until the subway car had rounded the corner.

Too far. It had gone too far. It had gotten all the way up into Olympia's subway tunnels.

But that worked for Lyall, as he signaled, and Malachi ran in and smashed the Malfested with a powerful punch, knocking the beast into the path of the train. It was tough, but hundreds of tons of metal going at thirty miles an hour was tougher.

What the impact didn't accomplish, the wheels did, the Malfested splattering like a bug and spraying the front of the subway with foul greenish ichor, bits of what had been something once and was now something else entirely, sparks erupting from the wheels as the driver immediately hit the brakes, the cars slowly shrieking to a stop.

The nerves of the passengers probably weren't helped when Chariton Swift forced one of the doors open.

"Be quiet. QUIET!" Charlie roared. "I'm checking for injured? Anyone injured? Yes? No?" Yeah, when it came to bedside manner, Charlie made a good vampire monster hunter. Which was probably why he was yanked out of the door frame by the shoulder and replaced with Pipa.

"You hit a bad thing. It's dead. We just want to make sure no one got hurt."

A very quick once over just showed a few bumps and bruises and a lot of frayed nerves. The Silvers didn't really have anything in their kit that could help the wounded anyway, but it seemed...rude to just run off into the darkness after using these normal people's normal trip back and forth to deal with the Malfested. Once more lights started showing up, waving like flashlights did, the five withdrew, back into the dark and the depths.

The subway car's front was dented up and thoroughly slimed with mess, but otherwise undamaged. Still, it was likely somebody, or more than one somebody, was going to pitch a fit.

---

-The Old King of Beasts-

And speaking of pitching a fit, Joy felt the urge to. She was at the right place and right time, except she wasn't. The bartender-who-was-not-Keahi had asked her to take some paper off the bulletin board that had been left there months ago, but it had nothing to do with the Kobbers, in fact it seemed it was inviting the Kobbers to something. It didn't help her get where she needed to go.

At least Not-Keahi had some information. And Joy had herself a telescope-esque Intricacy she was using, peering up into the night sky.

Dawn didn't, or couldn't, bring her directly to this new place, this Olympia?

Fine by her.

She'd go to it.

Belly Of The Beast

-Deep Space-

The main issue with classifying the ship-creations of the Maw was that they didn't follow the systematic construction that virtually all organized groups utilized when building any sort of vehicle in numbers. It didn't help if every plane flew differently, every car needed one's driving to be re-learned, and a well-practiced mariner could just as easily sink a boat as a drunk amateur. So you had organizational groups. This ship was a schooner, and this one a galleon. This wheeled vehicle was a sports car, and this was an all-terrain vehicle. This was a tank, this was an APC, and this was a jet, and in sub-groups, this was an M-1 Abrams Tank, this was a ZTZ-99A Tank, this was an M47 Patton Tank, and so on.

Not so for the Maw. Every ship creation was like a fingerprint, and an oddly terrifying mix of pick-up and incomprehensible depending on the whats, whens, and whys of their construction. It would have been troublesome if the Ravage, the fleet of the Maw, was the size of a traditional navy, but it wasn't. It was a smaller collection of highly unusual and many times, highly unusually competent beings. Perhaps this was best demonstrated in the fact that while the Maw could launch in excess of 1500 'space fighter ships', in the vein of the X-Wings and Arwings of other fictional stripes, only about 60 of them had pilots. The rest were smaller drone ships, operating on a semi-hive mind and a semi remote control mechanism. Even the Maw ships had a classification system, though theirs was far more basic. The ships were either Drones or Piloted. After that it was just sub-categories of the two. Drone fighter ships, drone carrier ships, piloted carrier ships, drone support ships, etc etc.

Some people might think having so many remote piloted 'vehicles' was a mistake. A constant refrain in the Star Wars universe that expanded greatly on the spaceship battles was that while drone AI brains could be churned out faster and cheaper than living pilots, they were simply too rigid in their design. They lacked the creativity, and in some cases stupidity and insanity, of living brains and could be fooled far more often than even a halfway competent living pilot. More than one battle had been lost when a lone drone had been hacked and made to fire on its own forces, and the remaining ships had identified said own forces as the enemy and ended up more or less doing the space battle equivilant of falling on their swords.

But the Maw defied most traditional problems. That likely lead to more unusual and unique problems, but those were tales for another time. For now, at least in terms of spaceship battles, the main spear of the Maw was a mastermind ship linked with a swarm of drones that acted like fictional piranhas, swarming and overwhelming, drones sacrificing themselves if needed. The Maw had faced down serious opposing threats a total of six times since Requiem Rose had begun forging her path, and those tactics had proven highly effective five of those times, and hadn't done too badly in the lone exception either. The Ravage had numerous skilled pilots and a larger group of just 'good' and 'passable' pilots, but when it came to battle amongst the stars like the clashing of blades and armor in days of yore, one stood above the rest. His personal drone legion, the Scour.

And his personal battle ship, the cancer to the Maw's viruses, the pandemic to their infection. The Maw's ace of aces, and his trump card. The Black Death.

His real name was mostly unknown, and those who did know it thought it was something like "Cignurd" or "Siegnerd". It seemed he preferred to keep his past and family life private. And considering the sheer number of tallies stamped onto the side of his ship, that seemed like the best idea. And it looked like he was going to need a few more notches on that belt, as his ship was damaged and still smoking as he flew it into the Maw's main hanger equivalent.

"Oh no oh no!"

If one looked in a mirror and projected his idealized self, it would probably look a bit like this for the robotic being known as Dubble.

Because he sure as heck wasn't that clean. Life on the Maw brought with it all sorts of stains, marks, and traces of a hundred different weirdness; anyone who lived there would end up a patchwork of faded and fresh disfigurements to their clothes and bodies. As for the rest, well...Dubble wasn't much of a big dreamer. He'd be happy being completely clean and shiny. He probably wouldn't think to try and improve on some other things.

Like the fact that when he started running for the ship, he tripped over some wires and did several tumbles before ending up upside down. He righted himself with the skill of much practice as the central orb of the Black Death cracked open, the pilot not waiting for any sort of ladder or stairs, instead just hopping down to the ground as Dubble ran up to him.

"Are you okay Mr. Storm? Okay?"

"I'm fine. Nothing that I couldn't handle." His voice was a metallic rasp, which was more a side effect of his combat uniform than any deliberate attempt to be menacing. The Maw had crafted his outfit, after all, and the Maw's creations pretty much all came in 'menace to society' designs.

His name, though...THAT he'd picked himself.

Cytokine Storm.

Which was a bit of a mouthful, and not everyone, like Dubble, deemed to call him something like "Mr. Storm". Most people just called him "Sickle" or "Sicko", relating to his ability to cut through enemies like the oft-used allegory of wheat under a blade, or as part of his disease theme. Which ironically had begun due to a typo: someone had written his name as "Cykotine", and by the time it had been corrected, it had mutated further into a bad mispronunciation of the messed up word as "SICK-KULL-TINE" (it would have more accurately been "SIGH-KO-TINE", as the actual word as "SIGH-TO-KINE"). He generally preferred Sickle if someone didn't want to trip over his nom de plume. Which funnily, Dubble never did. He just tripped over most everything else.

Hell, Dubble himself was going by a name that wasn't his. His actual name was something like DW-88BL, being from a sapient robot species that seemingly had no need for anything resembling traditional names. He'd taken the mondegreen of "Dubble' eagerly, though more than a few called him "Dumbbell" behind his back.

It wasn't really his fault. From what Sickle had grasped, the mechanical beings on his planet were supposed to be immensely skilled in one task and one task alone. Dubble was an anomaly: he had some skills in a variety of areas instead of one specialty. And he was, half the time, REALLY BAD AT IT: his clumsiness and constant pratfalls had led to the mean joke that the Maw didn't eat him because it would make it sick and Requiem wouldn't expel him because she thought he'd destroy her whole ship by accident by trying to leave while extremely upset. And so Dubble, however he'd come to be on the Maw, served as a general go-fer and menial task doer, as well as someone for Syde to yell at and smack upside the head when she was feeling frustrated. Dubble seemed to take it in stride, being good natured to the point of passive madness. If Sickle was a philosopher, he may have suspected that Dubble was so desperate to belong somewhere that he'd put up with mostly anything.

Then again, he was hardly the only misfit reject on board.

"Your mask, Sicko."

There was also Syde Yummel, the ship's main designer and engineer.

There were a lot of 'close to humans but not quite' species out in the wide world of existence. Sickle was one, Requiem herself was another, her boyfriend Abel was yet another, and Syde was as well. And like Dubble, she was an anomaly. Her species, the Kaons, were born with four arms normally. Syde was born with two, condemning her to be seen as a lesser, worthy of basic labor at best, as the Kaons had a societal bent based on building and crafting. Despite lacking those arms though, Syde definitely had a mind for her species' talents, and had built herself what she lacked. The cruel irony was that she lived down in the equivalent of the slums, or Olympia's undercity, and after she'd made herself some extra arms to replace what a quirk of genetics had taken from her, said slums had actually accepted her after that, some even beginning to think the idea of less arms being lesser was wrong...and then high Kaon society, which had a different set of priorities, had gotten wind of the mutant who'd tried to make herself one of them. Syde didn't know the finer points of the religious and sociological factors that had prompted so much RAGE from her and what she'd done. All she knew was that they'd come to murder her, she'd lost one of her real arms in fleeing and been left abandoned in space to slowly die until Requiem had come along. And oh, had the Kaons regretted their decision.

It was why she snapped and smacked Dubble. It was force of habit, and usually not serious. Usually. Worlds knew she treated him better than some of the others on the ship.

"Thank you." Sickle had begin removing his pilot outfit, laying it out on a greasy table before he snapped the breathing mask on.

He didn't need the mask, truth be told. He liked clean air, but he could breathe without it: his lungs weren't damaged to any high degree. But he preferred the impression that he did need it. A false weakness to know who your true friends were. Requiem demanded, if not camaraderie, for the members of her crew to not bother each other if they didn't like each other, and any sort of betrayal or backstabbing or general interference with others of any stripe was grounds for severe punishment if not outright execution on the spot, the black mark of how she'd come to be captain of this ship. But the Maw and the Ravage were, no matter how you dressed it up, pirates. It didn't attract the best sorts, and some simply had too much desire and too little inhibition, if not common sense.

"Help, sir?"

Ah yes. If Dubble was around, then it was almost certain that Duty'd be there as well.

Duty was...

Well, it was very hard to describe in traditional relationship terms. Duty could be considered Dubble's son, defining achievement, brother, or distant relative depending on just what sort of familial or group structure you tried to apply to his species. Whatever he specifically was, he was attached to Dubble's hip, and Dubble building him (to put it super simply) had apparently been the last straw for his society, for...some stupid reason. Probably the equivalent of the so-called blasphemy that had tried to kill Syde and cost her one of her real arms, though she'd quickly made a superior replacement. Stupid is as stupid was...

And in his own way, Duty was 'stupid'. Dubble could do a lot of things but he'd fumble and screw up a fair chunk of them. Duty could do tasks without issue, and often quite well...but he would do what he was asked right down to the letter. Like a certain destroyer, and also a certain maid of children's books, wordplay, metaphor, and the like simply didn't process in his head. If you didn't give him ultra-precise instructions, he was liable to go put something 'away' by putting it in the possessions of a crew member whose named sounded like 'Away', or 'get you a bite to eat' by finding food, biting a chunk out of it, and returning to try and put it in your mouth personally. Troublesome, but not insurmountable...but Duty also had some issues remember extended lists of instructions. If he forgot one, he'd proceed to the next without trying to recall it. Needless to say, removing steps in a process rarely ended well.

Even his name was an insult over that. He'd taken the name 'Duty' as he did a lot of duties, much like his friend Dubble, but it was suspected that whoever had used that name first had meant another word for feces, and that said word had been hononymed by kinder sorts.

"Place my clothing in my locker by opening it, then close my locker and use the lock to lock it closed, when I am done placing everything on this table, which I will confirm I am when I raise my two fingers like this."

"Understood!" Yeah, annoying, but like Dubble, Duty was so good natured, almost 'simple', that you had to be a bad sort to look down on him. Then again, they were space pirates. Bad sort was a constant resume line.

"What did you run into out there?"

"Frogs."

"Frogs?" Syde raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah. They had an interesting ejection system. When I destroyed their ships, they were left in these clear bubble spheres that just sort of floated around. And all their ships were frog themed. It was ridiculous. Like I was fighting a mass of avatar-types, except these ships were not very high quality. Numbers game. Enough to score some lucky hits."

"Did they give a name?"

"My translator just gave me a general 'surrender or die'. When I said no, they started shooting."

"Frog-esque aliens...there's the Incurseans, but they operate three galaxies over. It could be a scouting force, but it sounds too large."

"Whatever it was, they're all dead in the void now. Well, dead as in with no ships and in little bubbles. I thought about shooting them one last time, but I hate fish in a barrel. If they don't have immediate rescue or some way to move, well...that'll teach their people to build better."

"The wheels of progress are often oiled in blood." Syde said. "You should report to Captain Rose anyway. She always wants to know about possible threats. Especially since we're heading to take leave."

"That was the plan. Later Dubble, Duty. Don't get underfoot."

"Of course not! Course not!" Dubble did a salute, which knocked him backwards as he accidentally smacked himself in the head. Oh yes, and he tended to repeat short sentences. A lot. Quirk in his programming? Adapted habit for his name? Who knew. Sickle wasn't the type to care. He lived for two things. Improving the Black Death, and turning equally skilled foes into brilliant flashes in the dark, signals of his glorious talent. His frog attackers had proven deeply dissatisfying.

Oh well. Couldn't win 'em all.

Including when it came to talking to the boss. After a long trek through the tunnels and levels of the Maw, including a stop off at the Site, Sickle arrived to find someone else waiting to talk to Rose as well.

"Well well. You ain't gonna be chased off by some mean looks. I can tell."

McCulloch. One of the more recent joinings of the Maw's crew. Whether that was his first or last name, no one knew. McCulloch, like Sickle, much preferred his job title.

Wild Dog.

And unlike Sickle, nee Cytokine Storm, he was as human as he looked. He'd been a mercenary on Earth who had headed into space to seek his fortunes when things had gotten too hot for him there. Being a 'normal man' didn't seem to slow him down much; he could shoot like a terror and blow things up better than a volcano. He also had some mild ambitions to take a place by Requiem's side, though Sickle only vaguely knew that and once again, didn't care. As long as he had access to the Maw's crafting, Syde's brilliance, and fellow aces to battle across the black seas with, he was fine.

"I need to talk to the captain."

"So do I."

"And you were here first?"

"Technically yes, but we're not children now, are we? What are you here to tell her?"

"That's for her ears first, McCulloch."

"As you will, Psycho."

"Sickle."

"Sickle." Wild Dog 'corrected'. "It's not about where we're going, are we? Because I believe that I know that possibility moreso than you. I come from that planet, and I know what could cause us trouble."

"We'll deal with the trouble the same way we deal with all trouble that decides to come our way."

A new speaking voice. The door had slid open silently, and Abel Gunner had stepped out. Rose's sword-peer, almost as good with a gun as Wild Dog, and her lover, though they kept that quiet.

"We'll chew it up and spit it out. Okay come on, Wrecks needs to take the wheel so you can both come in. Make it quick, if you can."

Wild Dog just nodded, heading in. Sickle was behind him, though he was a little slower, turning the master mercenary's words over in his head. What sort of trouble could come their way that he'd feel the need to mention?

...maybe it would actually bring something interesting. Because as a child's book Sickle had once scanned boredly in a stack of plunder, the Maw and the Ravage had a lot of very, very big sticks.

And they would make sure their troubles had trouble with them.

Family Matters

(Partly co-written with Rubychao)

-Elsewhere-

It was actually pretty poor gun discipline. Safety off with no obvious threat. Finger on the trigger instead of the trigger guard. And the trigger was pretty sensitive. But as the woman who called herself, amongst other things, the Joy, knew, sometimes you had to learn the rules to know when to best bend them or break them.

And from the faint whistling woosh she heard, she didn't have time to practice proper gun safety.

She didn't have time for anything as the blue line lanced out from the trees, Joy turning around into a smashing elbow strike that threw her backwards, slamming into another tree. Leaves, kicked up from the ground and knocked from the branches, swirled around as Joy exhaled, all the air knocked from her lungs...

Which didn't stop her from coming off the tree immediately, hands crackling with electrical power. Her foe dodged, but she expected that, she just had to keep her occupied, let her get her breath back, she still had her gun and...

Then with a crunch, the hooksword came down on her wrist, and she didn't have the gun any more. It fell from dead fingers. Her lone response was a snarling hiss of pained air through her teeth before she kicked out, leg crackling with electricity. Take a hit to give a hit, and she was pretty sure she gave it better, the blue fury staggering back before taking off again.

Joy held her wrist, sticking a foot under her gun to kick it back up to...

"Pathetic."

"You're no daughter of mine."

Joy hesitated as the words hit her.

...strange.

They really did feel like they HIT her.

And then the hitting was literal. The blue was back, the hookswords flashing as their ends smashed repeatedly against Joy's torso, ending with one swinging up beneath her chin and the other slamming across her face, sending the woman pitching to the ground in a spray of blood.

The grim look on the man immediately broke, replaced by concern.

"....Athena...I said don't pull your punches. Not 'do your best to half-murder your sister'."

The blue flash stopped.

"Dad, with Merry, there's no difference."

 "...Clash is rubbing off on you more than I thought."

"You just told her she wasn't family!"

"Yes, well, we're training and it's getting difficult to...come up with...fresh tactics to try and learn from..."

Joy, nee Merry, nee Merrilee Marsello, was back up.

"That the best you got, pansy? You should stick to puzzles, because your punches are..."

Slamming into Joy's face. Not full on though, the woman trading blows with her adopted sister for nearly fifteen seconds before her injuries caught up to her and Athena "Aggie" Marsello literally beat her into the ground, Ash wincing at the last few seconds of it.

"Medic." Ash said.

----

-Another Elsewhere-

Some people trained through near-psychotic levels of physical combat.

And some actually did things the hard way.

Bernard had gotten about halfway through with Kaede’s face when she started shaking her head and trying to paw at her eyes.

“Careful. You’ll smear more of it.” Bernard produced a rag and wiped it away. “We can always paint around your eyes raccoon style. Getting your face fully covered is important. Eyes stand out enough.”

Bernard collected more mud before he crushed some mold into it, spitting in the mess before mashing it together.

“Especially since you’ll have to apply this yourself. Possibly at speed.”

“You’re sure it’ll help, though?” Kaede reaches up again. “If this gets in my eyes, won’t that just make it worse?”

“The trick is learning to apply it so it WON’T get in your eyes.” And doing it at speed, and doing it in the heat of intense battle, but one thing at a time, Bernard mused. “Since we don’t know what sort of field this fight will take place on, I need to try and get you to learn what to use on hand on said battlefield.”

“I think we can make a couple conclusions, at least! The battlefield’s always generally circular, probably to prevent any corners from being created for easy traps, so we know I can’t rely on anything but in-arena terrain-” Ohhhh dear. She was off on one of her rambles again. As part of preparing, Kaede was intently studying every previous Brawl, start to finish, top to bottom, and it was… occasionally exhausting for those around her.

“Close your eyes.” Bernard just kept trying to apply the makeshift camo. “So, it’s always total chaos. Some advantages there. You know why I keep finding you so easily? I can smell you. But in something like that, there’s probably too many smells to zero in on you. Which is good, because, well...fear is a beacon, and only a lunatic wouldn’t be afraid in a mess like that.” This was Subtle Attempt No #814 or so to talk Kaede out of her plan, at least as she defined it at the moment.

Between Bernard, Peko, and even Kiibo, the number of times people had tried to explicitly prevent Kaede from brawling was almost too many to be counted. So, the subtle approach… which was almost completely ineffective. “It’s true, it is going to be scary… but all I have to do is study the other entrants beforehand! Single out who I have to avoid, let them take each other down, team up with Peko to fight the easy ones, and we’ll win!”

“I thought there was only a singular winner.”

“Peko’s my assistant! I’m the only person who’s the official entrant, so as long as I’m left, I can win with her! It’s like Miu and Kiibo did last time! Assistants winning with their entrant has happened twice, in the fifth and sixth Brawls, with Silence and Blade and then Zeldoten and Nibbles.”

“Did they avoid all the fighting and pick the bones when everyone left was exhausted as well? It doesn’t sound like it would be a popular decision.”
---
Across universes, Sine Cosineau suddenly felt very annoyed, and didn’t know why.
---
-Weaveworld-

"Merry? You are okay, right?" Aggie said.

"Mrgbitmuton." Blood was starting to leak heavily from within Joy's mouth. Fortunately, Ash hadn't called for a medic ironically.

"Hold still." Christine said. She didn't like this, any more than when her husband had done it years ago by her reckoning, but nothing she said or did was going to talk her adopted daughter out of this. Best she be around to supervise the heaviest duty stuff.

"Yes m'm." Christine couldn't tell if Joy had called her "ma'am" or 'mom'. The latter might make this worth it, but everything in its time. "Athena, smack your father upside the head for me."

"What?" Ash said, before Aggie did just that, with one of her (dulled for training) hookswords. "Ow."

"Your father didn't mean it."

"Of course I didn't. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel to try and figure out ways to keep her on her toes. Decided to play dirty, because I'm sure there will be those in the Brawl that could, and would, say worse."

Christine still gave her husband a dull, dirty-in-turn look.

"You don't need t'act like I'm gonna run away the second you two aren't falling over yourselves to tell me we're kin despite th'lack of blood. I know I belong because you didn't dress me up like an aquarium threw up on me."

"Hey! This BlueStreak Tapestry layout is GREAT!"

"A great target. You stand out like Oriam's seedy backstreets."

"I still have more hits on you than you on me!" Aggie crossed her arms, pouting.

"That's just b'cause I like you, Ags."

"Speaking of counting, congradulations. You've crossed the thousand hour mark in preparing for this." Ash said, looking at a stopwatch before putting it away.

"...really?" Joy was more or less healed by now, retriving her hat and gun before she did some stretching. "You sure you didn't attach an extra z?"

"You've been doing this more or less every day since you returned, Merilee. It adds up." Christine walked over to her again, giving her one last check-over.

"Well...best not let it be wasted!"

"I fear even if it was a million hours, it would be."

"Gee, thanks MOM." That was not a 'mom' Christine would have liked, laden with sarcasm.

"It has nothing to do with you, Merilee. I watched that battle chew up and spit out the finest elites from every stripe of existence. I really just don't want that for you."

"Ash entered! Dad did." Joy said, pointing. "He even got in the top 3!"

"Also beaten by a magical soft drink but I'd rather forget that time..."

"And so you seek to improve on his accomplishment."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Because I don't think you should enter the Brawl at all."

That wasn't Christine speaking.

That was Ash.

----

-Kobberworld-

Back to the original negative statement...

“Not really? I mean, they didn’t get that many eliminations because there’s just so much going on in the Brawl, but they did get a few in before the finish!”

“Mmmm. And you want to win this.”

That was a fine ambition; Bernard was not so cut off from his human side to think all ambition was bad. But…

But… Kaede wasn’t really willing to put in the work for it. Whenever they tried to give her physical conditioning, or have her join Peko for a long jog, or something like that? She’d always find a way to wiggle out of doing the full thing, if she did it at all. Training her in tactics or planning, at least, had her put in the effort when she was interested, but it was nearly impossible to make her work for things she didn’t like doing.

And yet she wanted to win this massive death tournament, that attracted more and bigger threats every year. She almost seemed on the verge of thinking it was her destiny. And considering what Bernard had picked up about the girl…

But...it wasn’t his place to tell her no, or criticize her. She didn’t respond well to such overt harshness, as the V3 incident showed. Animals had instincts, and he was closer to animals than most. He couldn’t let that cloud his judgement. Humans had to wing it. At least she had a larger safety net that virtually anyone else if her wings immediately failed and she fell back to Earth. Hard.

It was also why he hadn’t offered to join her as an entrant. He’d floated the possibility to Peko, but she’d shot it down, mainly on the basis that she didn't think they'd be able to get the collective group of three past Jumpropeman's criteria. The Fitemaster WAS notorious for being flexible, but on the other side of the coin, she didn't think they could make it work based on his whims. She’d thought it'd be better if she stuck with Kaede due to years of knowing Kaede and how best to protect her. And if Bernard entered as a separate entrant, well...that meant he was just another obstacle, more or less.
“If only either of us could protect her from herself.” He’d said.

Peko had commiserated, but… Kaede just needed to be disabused of a notion forcibly sometimes. Ever since Kamen Rider V3, she had given up on the idea of getting superpowers with any kind of a shortcut. If she entered the Brawl and lost, it was the only way to knock the idea out of her once and for all.

So, then, might as well play to her strengths. The nature of life was either kill and eat, or run and hide, and he knew a fair bit about both mixed with the learnings of man. So he’d been trying to teach her some stealth, the tactics of avoiding danger. Mainly by letting her run off into various places like forests and cities and then tracking her like a hungry predator. She’d yet to make it five minutes, usually it was less than a minute, but there was some small improvement. And he WAS using the fact he was intimately familiar with her scent.

Not that way. Peko had sort of given him a look when he’d first started popping around, a sort of “You’re too damn far on the power balance scale, you either wait for her to get a clue or turn you down, or you’ll answer to me and the line of people gathering behind me.” Still drove Miu nuts that she couldn’t tempt him to ‘her dark side’, but sadly, the master scientist’s appealing looks couldn’t overcome the fact that she smelled god-awful to Bernard. Like burning plastic and open pits of chemical waste, he’d said. Not her fault. It was just her calling. It’d worked its way into all aspects of her. Normal men wouldn’t notice. But he wasn’t normal.

So his familiarity was just one of constant exposure. An advantage that wouldn’t exist in the Brawl, most likely. If she got better at hiding and avoiding him, it could only help. He REALLY wished he could get her to work on her cardio as well, but Kaede hated extended effort with a passion. She prefered slow and steady, or brief bursts. Otherwise she got winded very fast and weakened arguably even faster. Bernard had seen her weave around after running up a single flight of stairs to grab something before it fell off a table. He’d later commented to Peko that if she wasn’t so averse to physical labour and long-term hard work, she’d have promise in a stagger-type martial art, like drunken boxing.

Otherwise...yeah. Run and hide. At least she didn’t express disgust at the mess that was being applied all over her face, being cold and slimy and equally parts blinding and foul tasting. And that didn’t even get into the lessons of trying to teach her to whip up camouflage based on available supplies. Or what would happen when she sweated. Which she did. A lot.

It let him find her even if he used a technique to wholly block out her unique scent. She reeked of fear. Probably better than being in denial of it though.

“All right. Press yourself up against this tree now.”

“Okay!” With that, Kaede flattened herself up against the tree. Her body shape may not be the best for hiding, but… it could work, if she was careful and was able to focus. She tries to hold her breath, to look as invisible and unnoticeable as possible…

Bernard backed up, before pulling out a large mirror from somewhere, allowing Kaede (who had pressed against the tree back first) to see how she fared…

...he was right. The eyes really did stand out. Otherwise, well, it wasn’t perfect, but she did blend in a bit.

“As you can see...camouflage isn’t perfect. But in a fight like this one, focus is at a premium. The main issue at the moment is your stance. And breathing. You’re breathing far too hard.”

“Eyes still sting!”

“Trust me, the motion is notable.” Bernard didn’t realize what he’d said until he’d said it. Well at least the scientist wasn’t around…

“Hmmmph..” It might have been hard to handle, but at least Kaede’s reaction, after sighing… is to try again. It really all was in how you showed her how to do things. Now… hopefully this would get her at least somewhere in the brawl. Sure, she’d need to fight in it to get the sense knocked into her, but placing last or thereabouts would be just mean.

“...do you have a plan if Peko becomes...incapacitated?”

“Ummm… well, it depends on how far I am in the Brawl, and how many people are left that I can trust or ally with! If I can easily join an alliance, I’ll just do that and try to get far enough that I can make the rest of the distance on my own. Especially if I can scavenge some weapons. If I can’t make an alliance… that’s where all this hiding training comes in. I’ll just lurk around and wait for my chance to seize victory!

There was that glean again. Charming in one way, but...so regrettable in others.

---

-Weaveworld-

There were worse looks to see in an eye.

Like one that mixed surprise with a sudden growing anger and, under that, pain. Joy had grown up with zero support, handling everything by herself. She'd been told over and over that those days were over, that she was family now, but she still thought that deep down, one day, they'd wake up to reality and tell her it was all a pipe dream, or worse, too much effort to be worth it.

Fortunately, Christine was good at yanking her husband's foot out of his mouth.

"AND?" Christine said, interrupting Joy's feelings with a note of hey, pay attention, he's not done.

"Bad wording. Better said...there's no real way to win the Brawl, Merry. No matter how much you train, no matter how much we and our friends find new ways to fight you...there's no winning that fight. There's just survivors of it. Some surviving more than others. Even at the very end. I don't think you should be like me. I entered those Brawls to win. You? Not needed."

Joy crossed her arms, snorting through her nose. In THAT, she showed that she and Athena may as well have been sisters in the traditional sense; the two stances mirrored each other near perfectly, though Joy wasn't one for pouting. "You don't want me succeedin' where you failed?"

"No, I'd rather you succeed no matter what."

"And how, praytell, do I do that?" Joy said.

"Don't enter to win. Don't even enter to place. Just enter because that's who you are, and what you do. What you thrive on in life."

"...I'm not followin'."

"Just..........be yourself?" Ash was reaching so hard, Joy was surprised his hand hadn't stretched across the forest floor to grip her shoulder.

"...that's th' dumbest thing I've heard from you in the last...thirteen days." Joy motioned like she was checking a calendar.

"Think that's a new record!" Aggie said.

"But...yeah. Okay. I get it. I think. It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." It was strange. Coming from anyone else, she would have felt contempt for the seemingly blase and cliche suggestion. But for all the poking of his tonsils with his toes Ash did, he meant well.

"I think I can do that." Joy said, tipping her hat to her adopted father. It was a very casual gesture, but when it came to family, baby steps were always first. "But you don't get to complain when I bring back th'gold."

Ash sighed as he drew his sword.

"Since you're so confident...Athena?"

"Think fast sis." Athena said. And they both went for Joy at the same time. Unfortunately, THIS time she was ready. She even had time for a one-liner.

"FILL YOUR HAND, YOU-!"

Christine sighed herself, getting off the field of battle and sitting down as more leaves, tree bark, blows, and taunts flew all around her. The Brawl and its many dangers were nothing compared to the complications of family. It was, quite literally, all relative.

---

-Kobberworld-

“Kaede, can I tell you a story?” Bernard crouched down, looking at the dirt, seeing if he could make some different makeshift camouflage. Moreso to teach the girl how to do it on the spot than a need to find something else for her to hide in.

“Huh? Sure, go ahead!”

“My father…”

Offff. This must be important. Bernard’s relationship with his dad was highly strained, at best. If he was willingly bringing him up…

“To skip a lot of complicated nonsense, he entered the world I’m from with a certain...ambition. He wanted to be a ladykiller. Oh, he wanted to be a powerful warrior too...he wanted to emulate some fictional character, I don’t recall the name...James Long?”

“James Bond? I’ve heard of him! In our world he wasn’t fictional, and he was a member of the Kobbers in the very first year for a short time! Unfortunately he was killed by one of the minions of the Lord of the Night and-

...Er, sorry. Go ahead.”

Bernard stared for a moment before he mentally shrugged. It fit the pattern of Kobber insanity.

“This James Bond was apparently a very skilled gunsmith and fighter, and he had exceptional luck with women. My father wanted that. Badly. He never got it. He laughs about it now, but I still get the impression that back then, when he set out all cocky and ready to mount the world...each failure was more humiliating than the last. And my mother? She doled out the worst one. He was already rather bitter, and then, well...she more or less exposed him as a fraud. Or rather, a fraud of the image he wanted so dearly to present. He hated her for that.

“But, well...it wasn’t that true a hate. He had esteem problems rather than a bloated ego...well, a bit of a bloated ego. Circumstances threw them together. His rancor manifested in a deep desire to one up her. His essential character came through in that he didn’t want to cheat to do it. Only doing it for real would count. She was too damn good to make that remotely easy...and there lies the other half of the coin. My mother came from a tribe...well, sort of a tribe and organization, well, it was trying to claw its way out of some very nasty traditions. Namely that if you cut away the double-speak, her being the leader’s daughter meant that if someone could kill her without there being clear proof they’d done it, they’d get her spot and be sitting pretty. That, or wed her. Consent was...not wholly required. I’m simplifying, but that’s how it was. Too many people had too many ambitions to let the old ways go. When the war against Xaxargas entered its final days, well...they became a liability. And when they were gone, the traditions died. But that’s a side track. My father, well, he was the only one my mother could trust. He was too...wary, to be kind, to try any sort of violence, even if you considered it within his anger, and since he was so mad at her, he sure as hell didn’t see her as any sort of desirable other. Due to that she stuck close to him. Eventually he grew up a bit and they became friends. And once he’d stopped hating and hadn’t yet betrayed her trust...things progressed from there. He didn’t get what he wanted, but in the end, he got what he needed. Especially since I’m only here because of that fact. At least, as is.

“Could have gone a lot worse. Like I said, he laughs about it now, but even so...he wanted that something, so very badly. And all he did by trying to get it was...well, not it. The opposite of it.”

Bernard left the story there.

Kaede listened the whole way, and didn’t tune out! But she’s pondering the meaning, and nods along… “...Are you trying to talk me out of the Brawl again?”

“More just asking if you can’t see the forest for the trees. Like my father. But no one with any sense or heart tries to talk a person out of their dreams. If you shoot for the moon, you may yet hit a star.”

“I know I probably won’t win, because there’ve been over three hundred people in the Brawls, but only eight winners. But for me, a lot of this is just… the experience! Being in the Brawl! Actually fighting in the huge Kobber death spectacle! I don’t need to win, really, but I need to at least TRY to win, rather than always just watching!”

“...fair enough.” And he meant it. At least she wasn’t COMPLETELY in the grip of delusion. He hoped. “Go fetch Miss Pekoyama. Let’s see if the pair of you can evade me any better than just by your lonesome. You can wipe the camo off now.”

“...YEOOWWWWW!”

“...not down into your eyes, of course…”

---

Family. It could be the best, and the worst, thing in the world. It had a lot of pitfalls and failings. But it wasn't inherent. Choice and chance defined most of it. And the dice didn't always roll snake eyes.

Sometimes, you were on your own.

And sometimes, you were never alone.

But when it came to the Brawl...

Kaede Akamatsu sure wasn't alone.

The Joy wouldn't have it any other way. Like she'd said, in the words of another cowboy.

Fill your hand, you sonavabitch.

Dead Men Tell No Tales

-Somewhere In The Great Voids of Space-

You'd think it would be easier to grasp the size of 'space', the emptiness between the solid jewels and burning lights that dotted the barest fraction of an unfathomable canvas. It was in the name. 'Space'. But problems with exact comprehensions were hardly the sole domain of subpar minds.

Space was big. Really, really, big. One could attach dozens of more uses of the word 'really', and it still would undersell the reality. Mapping it took far, far more than the metaphorical boots on the ground and some tools on a blank piece of paper to draw a map. If you didn't know where you were going, nor did you know how to slip from the bounds of basic physics, you could wander until every star burned out and never see more than the void.

Maybe it was a safety measure, being unable to really grasp it. Maybe it was just better not to understand, or filter it solely through massive numerical calculations that computers put into effect.

Some had called it the final frontier, but others had discovered that even its vastness was but a subset of even greater ones, and greater ones beyond that. But such concepts were best left to the philosophers and the insane. The pragmatic had enough trouble with just how BIG the 'here and now' was when it came to space.

Like, for example, how hard it was to just FIND things. Oh, you could just stumble over planets, stars, and whatnot, but you were just as likely to keep going and going and just finding more nothing. In the bounds of what was basically known, scanners had their work cut out for them. Endless vacuum in every direction was not as easy to investigate as planes in the air, as submersibles in the water, as motion on the land, as it innately was on a planet, and as plenty of workers in many arts, including war, would tell you, getting an idea of what and where on those fields could be hard enough. In space, in the void...

It required more, a lot more, than a scaled up GPS. It required you to slip the bounds of what you conceived of as absolute. Not that thinking minds were not up to that task. Men fell from the sky and drowned underwater. They found workarounds there.

You couldn't exactly 'smell-track' in space. Oh, space had been assessed to have some sort of odor, mostly in the vein of burning hydrocarbons, not that many species could actually step out into the hard vacuum and check firsthand. The idea of something tracking 'a scent' across space was simply impossible.

In what was known. In what was done, well...

Space was often compared to a body of water, an ocean of another stripe. One could track scents through water, if you had the right tools. And if you had the right tools, even if those tools defied the basic concepts of how such tools should have worked and how they shouldn't have worked in the environment they existed in...

Then again, it wasn't a 'smell-track' in the same way a bloodhound might seek a missing person after checking an item of their clothing. It was the closest approximation of a process that would crack the average brain in two before they understood it. Sometimes, you had to feel more than think.

And so through space, the Maw drifted.

No. Not drifted.

Hunted.

----

-Galactic Federation Base Pallas-14. Operation: Deep Core Mining And Smelting-

If you'd asked Jac Archer, he'd have told you there was nothing worth stealing here.

Really, who broke into basically a giant hole slash furnace?

There was so much more valuable locations that were out there, across space. Lush planets. Clusters of vice and pleasure. A thousand thousand locations with a thousand thousand treasures. This was a place of raw material, a place of basic hard work, countless generations of evolution into building houses out of stones and wood, but still the same at its prime core. At best, some nasty folks might have wanted to use it as a secret base of operations. But ever since the Space Pirates had finally, FINALLY (by any and all hopes) been rendered extinct as an organization, there wasn't really anyone that someone like Jac could think of that would mean harm for his place of work and more or less home, for now. And even if something bad came stumbling around with less than kind attentions, well...that was why the Cinyras was in orbit. One Olympus-class would be more than enough to handle any random trouble.

Oh yes, there was always the possibility of something coming out of the void. Perhaps in other realms the question of life beyond the sky of what one saw was an ever-present question, fear, hope, and dream, but here, the vastness of space meant vastness of scope in what could be found. The Galactic Federation was barely a dot on a canvass that stretched from horizon to horizon. And if space could be said to be a sea, it had its sailors. And old sailor tales, stories of monsters from the dark and impossible discoveries, told by old, broken down men and women who'd be happy to share their amazing experience if you paid for another drink, or a dozen other rough equivalents. So yes, something COULD show up. But someone like Jac never expected anything to come of it except some brief moments of entertainment.

So when his workplace began shaking, and then violently quaking, which was impossible because this was an asteroid, it was large but not large enough to have tectonic plates, and as he went out to see the Encompass-Ment Shield rippling like someone was dropping the mother of all pebbles into the mildly sky-simulating pond the shield presented itself as, and the ship finally coming in from the right angle so the nearby star caught it, he was surprised that he knew what it was.

Maybe it was just some buried primal instinct, an animal confronted with the most apex of predators.

"Holy fuck, it's the Maw."

----

"Begin conversion. Go for the main generator complex first."

And the Maw unfolded, a mass of knives that could pierce atmospheres and hard rock to reach the sweet molten heat beneath, both horns and teeth that drove into Pallas-14, tearing through the constructs of man and space like it was rotten cheese. Buildings shattered. Voids cracked open as mines were torn asunder. Hundreds upon hundreds of tendrils extended out, seeking the smaller targets, the moving targets that pulsed with air and blood instead of fire, rock, and steel, the Maw opening up like a nightmare starfish as the primary power and forging complexes were ripped free and brought to crushing teeth the size of Kuwahawi islands.

Behind the Maw, the Cinvras burned in the void, breaking apart as it finished its destruction, dozens upon dozens of fighter ships, no two alike, picking off the last possible defenses, even as others fired off tractor beams, gathering up desirable parts of the debris...and the many escape pods. The powerful ship hadn't stood a chance, sliced to pieces even before the Maw had finished passing by to latch onto and consume Pallas-14.

"Getting more clingwork than expected."

"Compensate. Let's not lose the primary kinetic eruption."

---

"THE SHIPS! GET TO THE SHIPS! IT'S OUR ONLY CHANCE!"

Maybe it was fate that the main escape ships were in a position that could actually get around the Maw's clutching knives, that the tendrils hadn't seized them or the ships themselves, and Jac could hear the screams as those who were not so lucky were carried off into the nightmare above that was eating Pallas-14 like it was a finely ripe piece of fruit.

Jac kept expecting to be seized up. When he made it to the pair of ships and boarded one, he expected it to suddenly lurch and then be torn apart, or drawn up into whatever black fate had awaited those already caught. And when the ships launched, he expected to be caught up by the arms slash teeth that were closing in tighter, consuming the base whole, like a snake unhinging its jaw to swallow prey.

He finally had some hope when they were clear.

And then it sank as the ship behind them, caught in a sudden gravity well, yells and screams coming over a coms link that was unfortunately stuck open, stopped its escape, and then was carried back into the consuming black that was swallowing up the last of Pallas-14.

It distracted him long enough so that when he turned and saw the secondary wall of fighters waiting for them, more dozens, maybe even more hundreds, he really had no more shock to feel. Just numb inevitbility.

It was true. The Maw was real. Its fleet of 'teeth' were real.

And they were just another meal.

----

And so the caught escape ship spun into the roiling maelstrom of the consumption. Like a tiny seed dancing amongst a greater morsel, it somehow avoided blazing white pits of impossible heat, massive crunching mechanisms that smashed material into compact masses to feed into the pits, spiraling THINGS flying around and seizing choice unbroken bits; a large generator there, a mostly intact ship here. But they were not unnoticed, no. Sooner or later, the Maw wasted nothing.

"We can probably get another score of fighters out of this haul, Ms. Rose. Or, if you wish to take my suggestion into account...

"We can probably put together three quality freighters."

"Mmmmm. What say you, Abel?"

"We should...put guns on them...anyway. I dunno, Wreck, unless it's how to shoot I'm not so good at it. You got an opinion, big guy?"

The face barely changed, but the slight tilt of the head of the utterly massive form sitting next to the captain's chair was enough.

"Okay! Glad we had this talk!"

"Knock it off, Abel. DO you have any opinion, Nibiru?"

The giant shook his head.

"Ma'am? We're just about finished rounding up the clingers. Quite a few."

"Well, you know the process. See if any of them would rather seek their fortunes with us. Dispose of the rest in the usual fashion."

"Affirmative, ma'am. Do you wish to define the future schedule?"

"Actually, yes. I do, for once."

Abel made a gesture that comically indicated that this blew his mind. A white blade poked him in response, having previously been over the lap of the woman in the captain's chair, the black twin of said blade at the side of the semi-throne.

"We've been out here a while. I think we're overdue for some shore leave."

"It MAY be difficult to find a location that would accommodate both our numbers, our types, and well..." Syde gestured with one of her mechanical apparatus arms at the drifting debris that was still being gathered up. "Our reputation."

"Not to worry. I've heard of a new location that's due to have its own dose of madness injected directly into it. We'll fit right in. Raise a little hell, have a little fun, spend some coin. We'll behave."

"And what's this place called?"

"Olympia."

And so, when all was said and done, the Maw and its teeth, the Ravage, growing by the day, turned to once again sail the blackness, leaving naught but traces of what once was in its wake.

And tales.

The daughter of the sea, Requiem Rose.

----

It wasn't until a few days later that her good mood was dampened, as she looked at the alarm and the message from the incoming ship that had triggered it.

"...Who in all the colors of hell is Samus Aran?"