Things like this, I try and make sense of these kind of people, and I stumbled over this and wanted to both share it and put it somewhere so I can pull it up later. It likely doesn't help much, if at all...but I'd rather some kind of explanation than none.
"Amok is a Malay word for the homicidal sprees occasionally undertaken
by lonely, Indochinese men who have suffered a loss of love, a loss of
money, or a loss of face. The syndrome has been described in a culture
even more remote from the West: the stone-age foragers of Papua New
Guinea.
The amok man is patently out of his mind, an automaton oblivious to his
surroundings and unreachable by appeals or threats. But his rampage is
preceded by lengthy brooding over failure, and is carefully planned as a
means of deliverance from an unbearable situation. The amok state is
chillingly cognitive. It is triggered not by a stimulus, not by a tumor,
not by a random spurt of brain chemicals, but by an idea. The idea is
so standard that the following summary of the amok mind-set, composed in
1968 by a psychiatrist who had interviewed seven hospitalized amoks in
Papua New Guinea, is an apt description of the the thoughts of mass
murderers continents and decades away:
"I am not an important man... I possess only my personal sense of
dignity. My life has been reduced to nothing by an intolerable insult.
Therefore, I have nothing to lose except my life, which is nothing, so I
trade my life for yours, as your life is favored. The exchange is in
my favor, so I shall not only kill you, but I shall kill many of you,
and at the same time rehabilitate myself in the eyes of the group of
which I am a member, even though I might be killed in the process."
The amok syndrome is an extreme instance of the puzzle of human
emotions. Exotic at first glance, upon scrutiny they turn out to be
universal; quintessentially irrational, they are tightly interwoven with
abstract thought and have a cold logic of their own."
-From How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker
Saturday, 21 July 2012
Saturday, 23 June 2012
Run, Part 5: Ash
Please select destination.
Where to go? Do more work? Gamble some of that money she didn't have anywhere to spend now? Forget dimension jumping and go back and work on something else, like that new surveillance system she'd had an idea for? No...none of them had any appeal.
After ten seconds or so, Sine began putting in coordinates randomly. Once she was finished, she locked in the destination and activated a safety scan.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
Sine punched in new numbers and letters.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
Sine had a vague recollection of some old device one could hook up to a video game, and via inputting number and letter codes, hack into the game's programs and twist stuff around. However, just putting in random numbers and letters would usually just cause the game to crash, erase save files, cause glitches, and so on. You needed to know exactly what to plug in, or you'd get nowhere. In the case of her Sifter, you could end up in a lot of worse places than nowhere. Sine, more to see if she could find a working combination at random than any real interest to go there.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES ACCEPTED. PERFORM FURTHER SCANS?
"Hmmmm." Sine said, as she plugged in the usual safety parameters. Was the gravity and radiation present within acceptable, if not safe parameters? Was there breathable air? If not, would she require an air supply or a fully vacuum sealed suit? Was there stable ground? If no, how unstable was it? Was there life around? What kind? And of course, details like making sure she didn't warp into a planet's core or a black hole or something.
The warning signs she got back was a lack of breathable air and a requirement for a vacuum sealed suit. Sine got her helmet on and adjusted her armor to perfectly connect with it before she procured an air canister and inserted it into her helm. Adjusting her boots and slipping on gloves, Sine sealed every crevice in her outfit and then expelled the air from it, her helmet sealing itself and inserting a breathing apparatus into her mouth.
COORDINATES SET.
VROP.
-----
It was like the Sifter knew how she was feeling.
Sine wasn't wholly sure just what she was standing on. It was too small to be a planet, heck it was too small to be a moon, but it was too unnaturally designed to be an asteroid. It had, at least once, the smooth carved edges of something constructed, and its color had been too perfect a white, though age had caused it to fade to a sickly grey. Something had made this place, carved by thinking hands, hands that were long gone and unlikely to return. What had this place been? A small palace, floating through the vo...
Stars.
There were virtually no stars.
"...Computer, measure the stability of this universe. Level of the fundamental interactions, entropy, the works." Sine said, as she looked around. "Scan for life forms too, as far as you can in a minute...just in case."
While her systems did their jobs, Sine began poking her way across the faded remnants of whatever this floating structure had been. The fact that she didn't just float off the small object despite no efforts from her own self to stay on it, now that she thought about it, was damn disturbing. It was doubtful this little speck in the universe could naturally generate its own gravity, and any artificial means would have likely long ceased to work with how worn and ancient the place seemed. Yet she was able to step on and off the rock like she was taking a stroll on...well, not Earth. The gravity was weaker than there. The moon, perhaps? But still...what could imbue something so small with its own gravitational pull? One that persisted even now?
Then she stepped on it, feeling the dry, dusty pressure give way beneath her boot, and she had a new question. She knew what she'd just stepped on. She'd put her foot through a ribcage more than once.
Just what it was a ribcage OF, Sine didn't know. The bones were crumbling into a cloud of dust as she looked down, the dead grey mist painting itself on her boots and lower legs. Sine knelt down, trying to find any remaining pieces, but it seemed like her touch had been all that was needed to reduce whatever she had stepped on to the dust of the ages.
Which was even more wrong than the gravity. Space was a vacuum; without protection, the bacteria in an organic body that led to decomposition would die long before they finished their work, and barring outside factors like space debris or the heat of a star, bodies could last in a more or less preserved state for millions of years. Sine didn't see any impact craters, and as she'd already noted, there was virtually no stars left. She should have stepped on a corpse so fresh she could have identified facial features, not bones so worn by age that they crumbled apart. Unless...
"Computer, scan this dust. It IS osseous, right?" Sine said. She was given an answer in the affirmative. "And my other requests?"
No life forms detected. Remaining stars primarily white dwarf type. Fundamental interactions...disrupted.
"Disrupted?" Sine said. How the hell did you 'disrupt' the four fundamental forces of the universe and still have something resembling a universe?
Entropy also...disrupted. Exact classification unknown at this time.
"Am I in danger?" Sine said, standing back up.
Remaining in current location for extended periods of time unadvised. Momentary period, however, likely safe.
"Says you." Sine said, looking around. A white battered rock that once wasn't, with gravity, with corpses that had rotted in a vacuum, admist a sky of dying stars and disrupted aspects of basic existence. She'd found herself a universe of ash.
Hell of a place for a vacation. Sine mused. Well, if she wanted to sit around and sulk, she could find better places to do it than here...
White. Dark. Among it all, she barely noticed the brief hint of another color. For a few moments, Sine debated leaving things well enough alone, but curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought him back, as the saying went. Sine slowly and carefully walked towards when she'd seen the color, taking some time to make her way up a crumbling incline that might have once been some stairs. She did not step on any more inexplicable corpses, though her eyes glimpsed a few more, skeletons left in repose so long they virtually blended into the dull greyish stone. That was a mystery to solve later, though, as she approached the trace of color, partially concealed beneath a crumbling wave of stone. Her scans detected no danger, and her touch of the item, whatever it was, provoked no response. After more consideration, Sine gripped her fingers on the golden-brown item and tugged.
She wasn't sure what she expected to find, but a large glove was not it. Sine slowly stood back up, holding the folded bit of clothing in both her hands. This made no sense. Whatever had been built here, whatever had caused these corpses to become what they'd become...how had some GLOVE survived all that? Survived it and sat here, for who knows how long? What made it so special?
"Computer, run the scans again." Sine said. She got back the same results. As far as her systems could tell, it was a glove. Sine turned it over in her hand. However it had survived, it was clearly made for someone larger than her...
Why would that be a consideration? Why would she want to put it on? It was just...a glove...
"Helmet, enable synapse routers." Sine said. She'd had some experience with mind control before, and she wasn't going to just leave her brain open so another maleficent force could walk in and turn her reputation to even greater shit. Now, if something tried to control her brain or nervous system, it'd get re-routed for a few seconds, just long enough to take the glove off...
Hopefully...
It slipped over her left hand. Despite its larger size, it did not feel loose.
It also promptly did...nothing. Sine turned her hand over, wondering if there was some missing piece of the puzzle she didn't have. She had a feeling that if that was the case, she wouldn't be finding it here. Well, if all this universe had to offer her was an inexplicable glove...
Sine put her right hand on top of it, trying to draw it off. She vaguely felt the impressions beneath her palm.
She did not exactly SEE what happened next, so much as KNOW. Sine's eyes jerked wide open, her pupils dilating to a pinprick, her helmet's psychic defenses not even registering a threat. When it was over, Sine's breath exploded from her lungs so fiercely she almost spat out her miniturized breathing apparatus.
The glove remained on her hand. Sine turned her arm over again, looking at it.
"...that would be something to do."
Where to go? Do more work? Gamble some of that money she didn't have anywhere to spend now? Forget dimension jumping and go back and work on something else, like that new surveillance system she'd had an idea for? No...none of them had any appeal.
After ten seconds or so, Sine began putting in coordinates randomly. Once she was finished, she locked in the destination and activated a safety scan.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
Sine punched in new numbers and letters.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
Sine had a vague recollection of some old device one could hook up to a video game, and via inputting number and letter codes, hack into the game's programs and twist stuff around. However, just putting in random numbers and letters would usually just cause the game to crash, erase save files, cause glitches, and so on. You needed to know exactly what to plug in, or you'd get nowhere. In the case of her Sifter, you could end up in a lot of worse places than nowhere. Sine, more to see if she could find a working combination at random than any real interest to go there.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES HAVE NO SAFE LOCATION. PLEASE REWORK.
COORDINATES ACCEPTED. PERFORM FURTHER SCANS?
"Hmmmm." Sine said, as she plugged in the usual safety parameters. Was the gravity and radiation present within acceptable, if not safe parameters? Was there breathable air? If not, would she require an air supply or a fully vacuum sealed suit? Was there stable ground? If no, how unstable was it? Was there life around? What kind? And of course, details like making sure she didn't warp into a planet's core or a black hole or something.
The warning signs she got back was a lack of breathable air and a requirement for a vacuum sealed suit. Sine got her helmet on and adjusted her armor to perfectly connect with it before she procured an air canister and inserted it into her helm. Adjusting her boots and slipping on gloves, Sine sealed every crevice in her outfit and then expelled the air from it, her helmet sealing itself and inserting a breathing apparatus into her mouth.
COORDINATES SET.
VROP.
-----
It was like the Sifter knew how she was feeling.
Sine wasn't wholly sure just what she was standing on. It was too small to be a planet, heck it was too small to be a moon, but it was too unnaturally designed to be an asteroid. It had, at least once, the smooth carved edges of something constructed, and its color had been too perfect a white, though age had caused it to fade to a sickly grey. Something had made this place, carved by thinking hands, hands that were long gone and unlikely to return. What had this place been? A small palace, floating through the vo...
Stars.
There were virtually no stars.
"...Computer, measure the stability of this universe. Level of the fundamental interactions, entropy, the works." Sine said, as she looked around. "Scan for life forms too, as far as you can in a minute...just in case."
While her systems did their jobs, Sine began poking her way across the faded remnants of whatever this floating structure had been. The fact that she didn't just float off the small object despite no efforts from her own self to stay on it, now that she thought about it, was damn disturbing. It was doubtful this little speck in the universe could naturally generate its own gravity, and any artificial means would have likely long ceased to work with how worn and ancient the place seemed. Yet she was able to step on and off the rock like she was taking a stroll on...well, not Earth. The gravity was weaker than there. The moon, perhaps? But still...what could imbue something so small with its own gravitational pull? One that persisted even now?
Then she stepped on it, feeling the dry, dusty pressure give way beneath her boot, and she had a new question. She knew what she'd just stepped on. She'd put her foot through a ribcage more than once.
Just what it was a ribcage OF, Sine didn't know. The bones were crumbling into a cloud of dust as she looked down, the dead grey mist painting itself on her boots and lower legs. Sine knelt down, trying to find any remaining pieces, but it seemed like her touch had been all that was needed to reduce whatever she had stepped on to the dust of the ages.
Which was even more wrong than the gravity. Space was a vacuum; without protection, the bacteria in an organic body that led to decomposition would die long before they finished their work, and barring outside factors like space debris or the heat of a star, bodies could last in a more or less preserved state for millions of years. Sine didn't see any impact craters, and as she'd already noted, there was virtually no stars left. She should have stepped on a corpse so fresh she could have identified facial features, not bones so worn by age that they crumbled apart. Unless...
"Computer, scan this dust. It IS osseous, right?" Sine said. She was given an answer in the affirmative. "And my other requests?"
No life forms detected. Remaining stars primarily white dwarf type. Fundamental interactions...disrupted.
"Disrupted?" Sine said. How the hell did you 'disrupt' the four fundamental forces of the universe and still have something resembling a universe?
Entropy also...disrupted. Exact classification unknown at this time.
"Am I in danger?" Sine said, standing back up.
Remaining in current location for extended periods of time unadvised. Momentary period, however, likely safe.
"Says you." Sine said, looking around. A white battered rock that once wasn't, with gravity, with corpses that had rotted in a vacuum, admist a sky of dying stars and disrupted aspects of basic existence. She'd found herself a universe of ash.
Hell of a place for a vacation. Sine mused. Well, if she wanted to sit around and sulk, she could find better places to do it than here...
White. Dark. Among it all, she barely noticed the brief hint of another color. For a few moments, Sine debated leaving things well enough alone, but curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought him back, as the saying went. Sine slowly and carefully walked towards when she'd seen the color, taking some time to make her way up a crumbling incline that might have once been some stairs. She did not step on any more inexplicable corpses, though her eyes glimpsed a few more, skeletons left in repose so long they virtually blended into the dull greyish stone. That was a mystery to solve later, though, as she approached the trace of color, partially concealed beneath a crumbling wave of stone. Her scans detected no danger, and her touch of the item, whatever it was, provoked no response. After more consideration, Sine gripped her fingers on the golden-brown item and tugged.
She wasn't sure what she expected to find, but a large glove was not it. Sine slowly stood back up, holding the folded bit of clothing in both her hands. This made no sense. Whatever had been built here, whatever had caused these corpses to become what they'd become...how had some GLOVE survived all that? Survived it and sat here, for who knows how long? What made it so special?
"Computer, run the scans again." Sine said. She got back the same results. As far as her systems could tell, it was a glove. Sine turned it over in her hand. However it had survived, it was clearly made for someone larger than her...
Why would that be a consideration? Why would she want to put it on? It was just...a glove...
"Helmet, enable synapse routers." Sine said. She'd had some experience with mind control before, and she wasn't going to just leave her brain open so another maleficent force could walk in and turn her reputation to even greater shit. Now, if something tried to control her brain or nervous system, it'd get re-routed for a few seconds, just long enough to take the glove off...
Hopefully...
It slipped over her left hand. Despite its larger size, it did not feel loose.
It also promptly did...nothing. Sine turned her hand over, wondering if there was some missing piece of the puzzle she didn't have. She had a feeling that if that was the case, she wouldn't be finding it here. Well, if all this universe had to offer her was an inexplicable glove...
Sine put her right hand on top of it, trying to draw it off. She vaguely felt the impressions beneath her palm.
She did not exactly SEE what happened next, so much as KNOW. Sine's eyes jerked wide open, her pupils dilating to a pinprick, her helmet's psychic defenses not even registering a threat. When it was over, Sine's breath exploded from her lungs so fiercely she almost spat out her miniturized breathing apparatus.
The glove remained on her hand. Sine turned her arm over again, looking at it.
"...that would be something to do."
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Run, Part 4: Wanted
"...Des...ah ha...aren't you supposed to be at an art show?" Sine said.
"There was a rodent problem. It got moved back two weeks at the last minute. Oh, by the way Sine, you made a promise that you'd be there with me. I put it on your schedule." Desdemona said. From the looks of her, she clearly hadn't been painting, and Sine couldn't see a muted television or put-aside book that indicated she had been reading when Sine had showed up. Based on that, the fact that she was standing up, one arm leaning on her kitchen counter, it seemed like she'd been expecting Sine, and just waiting for her warning signal to go off. Sine wet her lips, the flesh suddenly appalling dry.
"Oh yes...you're right...I did." Sine said. "Uh...well um..."
"I told you about it the last two times I saw you. The last one being two weeks ago." Desdemona said, her tone calm, but firm. "You've been something of a ghost, Sine."
Sine swallowed, considering her options. Maybe she could...
Yes...go ahead. Lie to her. Maybe she'll even buy it.
Des' eyes widened a bit with alarm when Sine grimaced.
"Sine, are you all right?" Desdemona said, walking forward.
"Fine...fine." Sine said, waving her girlfriend off.
"Sine, the last time you tried to shrug off an illness, you ended up-"
"I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME THE LAST TIME!" Sine found herself roaring, causing Desdemona to step back. "Sorry, sorry...that was too harsh. Desdemona, I'm not suffering any sort of possession relapse. The Lord is dead."
Pity. That would provide the perfect excuse for the rest of them, wouldn't it? But she won't need a perfect excuse. She cares for you. Just toss something half-decent out and she'll gladly take you back. Lonely girl with the dead parents...
Sine raised her arm, slowly clenching her fist.
"Are you just suffering from a headache then? Do you want some aspirin?"
"No, it's just..."
Get to lying! It's what you're good at!
NO. Desdemona had nothing to do with any of this. If anyone deserved the truth, it was her.
"You're right, Des. I completely forgot about your art show. I was...busy with my jobs. Had some...trouble, if you missed the scuffed outfit with the facial expressions. And in truth...if it had been this weekend, I probably wouldn't have gone looking for you. I've had some troubles, I wanted to be alone...that gave you a raw deal, and I'm sorry." Sine said. "But...it worked out, right? My last job was a motherlode. I can completely stop my trips for a few months, at the very least. I can attend your art shows, we can go on more trips...or hell, we can just hang around here..."
Desdemona said nothing.
"...what do you know that you're not telling me?" Sine said.
Desdemona's laptop was a huge, bulky thing, but not so much that it couldn't be hidden behind some cookie jars. Sine already knew what she was going to show her when she pulled it out.
"What's this, Sine?"
Sine bit back the bile. Desdemona's tone was neutral. Don't fall into the outrage trap again...the outrage trap had gotten her chased halfway across the Auspex city where she'd left a few pounds of skin behind.
"It's...a misunderstanding...that I mean to correct..."
"They sound pretty damn angry-"
"THEY'RE A BUNCH OF FUCKING MORONS!" Sine erupted. She'd tried, she really had...but the second Desdemona had talked about their anger, Sine hadn't been able to keep reign on her own. Des took another step back, though she was less alarmed by this outburst, it seemed. "I mean...Zephyrus...it didn't happen that way! It's a fucking misunderstanding and...FUCK!"
"Zephyrus isn't the one posting the bad things."
"You're missing the POINT, Desdemona. Look at the overall issue here. I did shit wrong, yeah. Probably REALLY wrong. You got some of it too. But look what happened. Look at what a little lack of communication..."
"Three months is not a little-"
"We can argue semantics later! It's not GOOD, yes, but it's not UNFORGIVABLE. And this crap about using Zephyrus as bait, nearly letting him DIE, THAT IS ALL WRONG...some of that's my fault, I tried to take the path of least resistance...but look at this, Des. LOOK AT THIS." Sine said, jabbing her finger into the screen. "Calling me a monster? Telling me I'm no better than the LORD? That drug-addled insecure...you think where she's right EXCUSES this? This isn't her sticking up for a friend. This is her OPPORTUNITY. She NEVER liked me, for some good reasons but for more bad, STUPID reasons, and in her mind, THIS JUSTIFIES EVERYTHING! I mean, shit, maybe I brought this on myself by borrowing her flamethrower...but even WITH THAT, HOW IS THIS HER BUSINESS?"
"Isn't she Zephyrus' friend too?"
Sine grimaced so hard her teeth creaked, before she sat down at the kitchen counter, hands in her head.
"She's right...I have such bad habits...but it's not enough, Des." Sine said, lowering her hands, her eyes becoming as hard as flint. "Not enough to put me under this kind of moral microscope. Because she DAMN well can't stand up to it herself. I never talked about the bar people in depth, Des, because it's not my place...but look at this. LOOK. AT. THIS. Pech is swearing murderous revenge. So is Doomrider, and Jaxx is just sitting back and clapping his hands and going 'See? I told you so, the worthless ginger'. Jonesy had taken a bad situation and made it a thousand times worse, and WHY? So she can feel better about herself. That's what this is, in the end, Desdemona. It's a damn character assassination by an insecure little girl."
"...is that what you've been telling yourself since you read it?"
"DON'T start, Des."
"You're angry."
"Am I in the wrong to be so?"
"You're not in the right..."
"Like I said, Des. It's not enough." Sine said, flipping the computer around. "Friendships have rough patches, sometimes worse that rough patches, sometimes you let people down, sometimes you can't fix it...but am I really so bad in my failings that I deserve this? Is this all it takes for them to declare me a 'monster' and a 'forevercursed parasite' and all this? Because even if I'm not comprehending the size of it, if this is all it takes...Des, forget what it says about me. What does it say about THEM, that so little in the grand scheme of things prompts so much? How can I fix my mistakes when, according to them, it's automatically worthy of being declared worse than the being that possessed me, you know, the one that committed genocide? Do you know how many murders I've committed in this life, Des, where I deliberately of my own free will tried to kill someone who had done me no wrong? None. None at all. And I'm being torn down to these levels, by people, beings, who, oh if you KNEW some of what THEY'VE done..."
Sine snapped the laptop closed.
"I fucked up. I hurt Zephyrus and Annie. You too, I suspect. But I don't deserve this. Tell me I do, Desdemona."
The artist was quiet.
"...Des...please. I'm not telling you that it's my side or bust. But you're a smart girl. Surely you can see I'm not being entirely self-righteous here. I mean...you know me. Better than Zephyrus or Ann in some ways. Tell me that I'm wrong to feel this way. And why."
"...because it doesn't change what you did, Sine." Desdemona said. "That's just your thing. You've never been good at accepting what you did that you didn't like. You have your reasons...but that doesn't change it either."
"...I don't know what to do." Sine said, putting her head in her hands again.
"I do. Give me the Sifter."
Sine snapped her head up so fast Desdemona was surprised that it didn't break right off from whiplash.
"Des...that's a bad id-"
"Give it to me, and you won't be able to run from your problems. You'll have to fix them..."
"Des, these people don't want to parlay or work things out, they want to fucking KILL me..." Sine said. "I haven't even gotten into some stuff, like my Bleed exposure and what..."
"No, Sine. Don't change the subject. Give me the Sifter. I'll go with you to fix these problems. I'll demand parlay..."
"They won't LISTEN! They have the self-control of kindergardeners-!"
"Fortunately, I have some experience with such things." Desdemona said. "I'll be the neutral party telling them to be better than their anger. Just like you have to be. If they can't overcome it, if they try and harm me...well, I think your disagreements with your friends will be a relatively small problem after that. Now give me the Sifter."
"Des, they could KILL you..."
"Sine...we can work all this out afterwards. But you know how it has to start. Give me. The Sifter."
Sine stared at her girlfriend.
...she wasn't as 'loud' as she used to be. When Sine had met her, Desdemona had kept her hair in a very tall style, the epidermis dyed on the tasteful side of garish and her face adorned with multiple piercings. Since then, she'd toned her looks down, cutting her hair and taking out most of the piercings. Sine hadn't breathed a word about doing it either; Des had done it on her own. Sine had wondered, privately, if it was Des changing her fashion herself, or if she'd toned her look down as if to say that she was off the market, and whatever attention she wanted, she had a dependable source. She'd told Sine stuff, about her childhood, opened up in a way Sine had hesitated to...
But...she didn't understand.
Didn't she?
"I've been with addicts, Sine. They have to want to make a start of it, but they also have to remove themselves from temptation. You want to fix this...you can't be the cowboy, digging in your spurs and riding off to the next town if things get too hot for you here. Give me the Sifter. We'll work out stuff for emergencies, if things go as badly as you fear...but otherwise, you'll have to actually face this. Instead of just running off like you did with Zephyrus. Whatever your reasons were...they weren't good enough. So you have to TRY and be good enough."
"...and if that's NOT enough?"
"...then they can talk all the shit they want. You'll have tried. You'd be amazed...what trying can accomplish."
Sure can. You tried to be a friend, and helped give humanity back to Zephyrus and Antoinette. Then you tried to go back to what you considered comfortable, and showed everyone why the Lord hated humanity so much.
Sine stared for nearly twenty seconds, before she began to unhook the Sifter.
Halfway. Then she snapped it back on.
"No."
"Sine...give me the Sifter." Desdemona said, keeping her voice level.
"No...I can't." Sine said, standing up. "I can't trust them...I won't try and play their games with life and death...we can work something out but I can't give you-"
My freedom.
You.
"Sine, this is why the problem got so bad. You KNOW that the only way they're even going to start trusting you is if you can't run away if things get bad."
"They won't trust you either..."
"Then they can take that up with ME. They won't take the Sifter from me, that I promise you."
"What if I can't fix things..."
"Then you TRIED."
Silence settled over the loft again.
"...I can't..."
"You CAN. Sine..." Desdemona said, trying to walk around the counter and get close.
The look Sine gave her was one of the most haunted Desdemona had ever seen. It froze her in her tracks...because she recognized that look. It had stared out from her in a mirror, once, after her family had finally tumbled headlong into the abyss, and what that had ended up meaning. That sense of desolation, of the idea that if this step was taken, there would be no good end result, and no telling where the fall would end.
But it wasn't enough, as Sine would have said. Desdemona knew about the selfishness, the comforting cloak of cold numbness such a thought process offered. If she'd worn it too long...
If Sine put it back on...
"...no. NO, Sine. You are NOT doing this. You are NOT a coward. Damn it Sine, don't..."
Sine turned away. Desdemona paused a moment, began reaching out out, then stopped herself before she slapped her hand down on the counter.
"Damn you, Sine." Desdemona said, cold anger finally entering her tone. "Okay, fine. Give me the Sifter, OR DON'T COME BACK."
The ultimantum hung in the air like a blade between them.
For a moment, when Sine looked back at her, her arm shifting on her wrist, Desdemona had hope.
Then Sine's hand settled. Her gaze fell.
And then she was gone, the VROP swallowed by the walls.
For a time, Desdemona just stared at the empty air. For a bit after that, she ripped a blank canvas to shreds. Ironically, she had two paintings of Sine, but she did not damage them. There was no point. Those were finished, done. A blank canvas meant infinite possibilities...and Desdemona felt like some had just been lost forever. After that, Desdemona got herself a beer. She'd look into packing up the few things Sine had left behind later.
"...I didn't want to believe them." Desdemona said to the empty air. "...I really didn't."
Desdemona didn't speak the rest of the night. There was no point.
She didn't have anyone to talk to.
-------
"There was a rodent problem. It got moved back two weeks at the last minute. Oh, by the way Sine, you made a promise that you'd be there with me. I put it on your schedule." Desdemona said. From the looks of her, she clearly hadn't been painting, and Sine couldn't see a muted television or put-aside book that indicated she had been reading when Sine had showed up. Based on that, the fact that she was standing up, one arm leaning on her kitchen counter, it seemed like she'd been expecting Sine, and just waiting for her warning signal to go off. Sine wet her lips, the flesh suddenly appalling dry.
"Oh yes...you're right...I did." Sine said. "Uh...well um..."
"I told you about it the last two times I saw you. The last one being two weeks ago." Desdemona said, her tone calm, but firm. "You've been something of a ghost, Sine."
Sine swallowed, considering her options. Maybe she could...
Yes...go ahead. Lie to her. Maybe she'll even buy it.
Des' eyes widened a bit with alarm when Sine grimaced.
"Sine, are you all right?" Desdemona said, walking forward.
"Fine...fine." Sine said, waving her girlfriend off.
"Sine, the last time you tried to shrug off an illness, you ended up-"
"I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME THE LAST TIME!" Sine found herself roaring, causing Desdemona to step back. "Sorry, sorry...that was too harsh. Desdemona, I'm not suffering any sort of possession relapse. The Lord is dead."
Pity. That would provide the perfect excuse for the rest of them, wouldn't it? But she won't need a perfect excuse. She cares for you. Just toss something half-decent out and she'll gladly take you back. Lonely girl with the dead parents...
Sine raised her arm, slowly clenching her fist.
"Are you just suffering from a headache then? Do you want some aspirin?"
"No, it's just..."
Get to lying! It's what you're good at!
NO. Desdemona had nothing to do with any of this. If anyone deserved the truth, it was her.
"You're right, Des. I completely forgot about your art show. I was...busy with my jobs. Had some...trouble, if you missed the scuffed outfit with the facial expressions. And in truth...if it had been this weekend, I probably wouldn't have gone looking for you. I've had some troubles, I wanted to be alone...that gave you a raw deal, and I'm sorry." Sine said. "But...it worked out, right? My last job was a motherlode. I can completely stop my trips for a few months, at the very least. I can attend your art shows, we can go on more trips...or hell, we can just hang around here..."
Desdemona said nothing.
"...what do you know that you're not telling me?" Sine said.
Desdemona's laptop was a huge, bulky thing, but not so much that it couldn't be hidden behind some cookie jars. Sine already knew what she was going to show her when she pulled it out.
"What's this, Sine?"
Sine bit back the bile. Desdemona's tone was neutral. Don't fall into the outrage trap again...the outrage trap had gotten her chased halfway across the Auspex city where she'd left a few pounds of skin behind.
"It's...a misunderstanding...that I mean to correct..."
"They sound pretty damn angry-"
"THEY'RE A BUNCH OF FUCKING MORONS!" Sine erupted. She'd tried, she really had...but the second Desdemona had talked about their anger, Sine hadn't been able to keep reign on her own. Des took another step back, though she was less alarmed by this outburst, it seemed. "I mean...Zephyrus...it didn't happen that way! It's a fucking misunderstanding and...FUCK!"
"Zephyrus isn't the one posting the bad things."
"You're missing the POINT, Desdemona. Look at the overall issue here. I did shit wrong, yeah. Probably REALLY wrong. You got some of it too. But look what happened. Look at what a little lack of communication..."
"Three months is not a little-"
"We can argue semantics later! It's not GOOD, yes, but it's not UNFORGIVABLE. And this crap about using Zephyrus as bait, nearly letting him DIE, THAT IS ALL WRONG...some of that's my fault, I tried to take the path of least resistance...but look at this, Des. LOOK AT THIS." Sine said, jabbing her finger into the screen. "Calling me a monster? Telling me I'm no better than the LORD? That drug-addled insecure...you think where she's right EXCUSES this? This isn't her sticking up for a friend. This is her OPPORTUNITY. She NEVER liked me, for some good reasons but for more bad, STUPID reasons, and in her mind, THIS JUSTIFIES EVERYTHING! I mean, shit, maybe I brought this on myself by borrowing her flamethrower...but even WITH THAT, HOW IS THIS HER BUSINESS?"
"Isn't she Zephyrus' friend too?"
Sine grimaced so hard her teeth creaked, before she sat down at the kitchen counter, hands in her head.
"She's right...I have such bad habits...but it's not enough, Des." Sine said, lowering her hands, her eyes becoming as hard as flint. "Not enough to put me under this kind of moral microscope. Because she DAMN well can't stand up to it herself. I never talked about the bar people in depth, Des, because it's not my place...but look at this. LOOK. AT. THIS. Pech is swearing murderous revenge. So is Doomrider, and Jaxx is just sitting back and clapping his hands and going 'See? I told you so, the worthless ginger'. Jonesy had taken a bad situation and made it a thousand times worse, and WHY? So she can feel better about herself. That's what this is, in the end, Desdemona. It's a damn character assassination by an insecure little girl."
"...is that what you've been telling yourself since you read it?"
"DON'T start, Des."
"You're angry."
"Am I in the wrong to be so?"
"You're not in the right..."
"Like I said, Des. It's not enough." Sine said, flipping the computer around. "Friendships have rough patches, sometimes worse that rough patches, sometimes you let people down, sometimes you can't fix it...but am I really so bad in my failings that I deserve this? Is this all it takes for them to declare me a 'monster' and a 'forevercursed parasite' and all this? Because even if I'm not comprehending the size of it, if this is all it takes...Des, forget what it says about me. What does it say about THEM, that so little in the grand scheme of things prompts so much? How can I fix my mistakes when, according to them, it's automatically worthy of being declared worse than the being that possessed me, you know, the one that committed genocide? Do you know how many murders I've committed in this life, Des, where I deliberately of my own free will tried to kill someone who had done me no wrong? None. None at all. And I'm being torn down to these levels, by people, beings, who, oh if you KNEW some of what THEY'VE done..."
Sine snapped the laptop closed.
"I fucked up. I hurt Zephyrus and Annie. You too, I suspect. But I don't deserve this. Tell me I do, Desdemona."
The artist was quiet.
"...Des...please. I'm not telling you that it's my side or bust. But you're a smart girl. Surely you can see I'm not being entirely self-righteous here. I mean...you know me. Better than Zephyrus or Ann in some ways. Tell me that I'm wrong to feel this way. And why."
"...because it doesn't change what you did, Sine." Desdemona said. "That's just your thing. You've never been good at accepting what you did that you didn't like. You have your reasons...but that doesn't change it either."
"...I don't know what to do." Sine said, putting her head in her hands again.
"I do. Give me the Sifter."
Sine snapped her head up so fast Desdemona was surprised that it didn't break right off from whiplash.
"Des...that's a bad id-"
"Give it to me, and you won't be able to run from your problems. You'll have to fix them..."
"Des, these people don't want to parlay or work things out, they want to fucking KILL me..." Sine said. "I haven't even gotten into some stuff, like my Bleed exposure and what..."
"No, Sine. Don't change the subject. Give me the Sifter. I'll go with you to fix these problems. I'll demand parlay..."
"They won't LISTEN! They have the self-control of kindergardeners-!"
"Fortunately, I have some experience with such things." Desdemona said. "I'll be the neutral party telling them to be better than their anger. Just like you have to be. If they can't overcome it, if they try and harm me...well, I think your disagreements with your friends will be a relatively small problem after that. Now give me the Sifter."
"Des, they could KILL you..."
"Sine...we can work all this out afterwards. But you know how it has to start. Give me. The Sifter."
Sine stared at her girlfriend.
...she wasn't as 'loud' as she used to be. When Sine had met her, Desdemona had kept her hair in a very tall style, the epidermis dyed on the tasteful side of garish and her face adorned with multiple piercings. Since then, she'd toned her looks down, cutting her hair and taking out most of the piercings. Sine hadn't breathed a word about doing it either; Des had done it on her own. Sine had wondered, privately, if it was Des changing her fashion herself, or if she'd toned her look down as if to say that she was off the market, and whatever attention she wanted, she had a dependable source. She'd told Sine stuff, about her childhood, opened up in a way Sine had hesitated to...
But...she didn't understand.
Didn't she?
"I've been with addicts, Sine. They have to want to make a start of it, but they also have to remove themselves from temptation. You want to fix this...you can't be the cowboy, digging in your spurs and riding off to the next town if things get too hot for you here. Give me the Sifter. We'll work out stuff for emergencies, if things go as badly as you fear...but otherwise, you'll have to actually face this. Instead of just running off like you did with Zephyrus. Whatever your reasons were...they weren't good enough. So you have to TRY and be good enough."
"...and if that's NOT enough?"
"...then they can talk all the shit they want. You'll have tried. You'd be amazed...what trying can accomplish."
Sure can. You tried to be a friend, and helped give humanity back to Zephyrus and Antoinette. Then you tried to go back to what you considered comfortable, and showed everyone why the Lord hated humanity so much.
Sine stared for nearly twenty seconds, before she began to unhook the Sifter.
Halfway. Then she snapped it back on.
"No."
"Sine...give me the Sifter." Desdemona said, keeping her voice level.
"No...I can't." Sine said, standing up. "I can't trust them...I won't try and play their games with life and death...we can work something out but I can't give you-"
My freedom.
You.
"Sine, this is why the problem got so bad. You KNOW that the only way they're even going to start trusting you is if you can't run away if things get bad."
"They won't trust you either..."
"Then they can take that up with ME. They won't take the Sifter from me, that I promise you."
"What if I can't fix things..."
"Then you TRIED."
Silence settled over the loft again.
"...I can't..."
"You CAN. Sine..." Desdemona said, trying to walk around the counter and get close.
The look Sine gave her was one of the most haunted Desdemona had ever seen. It froze her in her tracks...because she recognized that look. It had stared out from her in a mirror, once, after her family had finally tumbled headlong into the abyss, and what that had ended up meaning. That sense of desolation, of the idea that if this step was taken, there would be no good end result, and no telling where the fall would end.
But it wasn't enough, as Sine would have said. Desdemona knew about the selfishness, the comforting cloak of cold numbness such a thought process offered. If she'd worn it too long...
If Sine put it back on...
"...no. NO, Sine. You are NOT doing this. You are NOT a coward. Damn it Sine, don't..."
Sine turned away. Desdemona paused a moment, began reaching out out, then stopped herself before she slapped her hand down on the counter.
"Damn you, Sine." Desdemona said, cold anger finally entering her tone. "Okay, fine. Give me the Sifter, OR DON'T COME BACK."
The ultimantum hung in the air like a blade between them.
For a moment, when Sine looked back at her, her arm shifting on her wrist, Desdemona had hope.
Then Sine's hand settled. Her gaze fell.
And then she was gone, the VROP swallowed by the walls.
For a time, Desdemona just stared at the empty air. For a bit after that, she ripped a blank canvas to shreds. Ironically, she had two paintings of Sine, but she did not damage them. There was no point. Those were finished, done. A blank canvas meant infinite possibilities...and Desdemona felt like some had just been lost forever. After that, Desdemona got herself a beer. She'd look into packing up the few things Sine had left behind later.
"...I didn't want to believe them." Desdemona said to the empty air. "...I really didn't."
Desdemona didn't speak the rest of the night. There was no point.
She didn't have anyone to talk to.
-------
"It's all the same, only the names will change...
Everyday it seems we're wasting away
Another place where the faces are so cold...
I'd drive all night just to get back home..."
Everyday it seems we're wasting away
Another place where the faces are so cold...
I'd drive all night just to get back home..."
A truck full of gold. Millions worth. To Sine, it might as well have been filled with rock salt. It didn't really have much worth now. None of her jobs did.
"I'm a cowboy...on a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted...dead or alive
Wanted...dead or alive..."
I'm wanted...dead or alive
Wanted...dead or alive..."
Sine suspected that wherever the chair had come from, it had once held technology that surpassed her Sifter. The process that had dumped it on her little asteroid had burned out all that wonder tech though, just leaving a simple chair. Sine sat down in it. For a while, she didn't do anything.
"Sometimes I sleep, sometimes it's not for days
And the people I meet always go their separate ways...
Sometimes you tell the day
By the bottle that you drink
And times when you're alone all you do is think..."
And the people I meet always go their separate ways...
Sometimes you tell the day
By the bottle that you drink
And times when you're alone all you do is think..."
ALL ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES SELECTED. PLEASE SELECT OPTION.
DELETE.
DO YOU WISH TO DELETE ALL ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES?
"I'm a cowboy...on a steel horse I ride
I'm wanted...dead or alive
Wanted...dead or alive..."
I'm wanted...dead or alive
Wanted...dead or alive..."
ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES DELETED.
Existence was hers. All hers.
All you.
"I walk these streets, a loaded six string on my back
I play for keeps, cause I might not make it back
I been everywhere, still I'm standing tall
I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all..."
I play for keeps, cause I might not make it back
I been everywhere, still I'm standing tall
I've seen a million faces and I've rocked them all..."
"Just...see you laters." Sine said. She did not speak again.
"I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride...
I'm wanted...dead or alive...
I'm a cowboy, I earned the night on my side...
I'm wanted...dead or alive...
Wanted...dead or alive..."
I'm wanted...dead or alive...
I'm a cowboy, I earned the night on my side...
I'm wanted...dead or alive...
Wanted...dead or alive..."
-----
"You promised, Burning Moon! YOU PROMISED! But this world is ash and smoke, and the pretty thing is gone!"
"Then we'll find it again, Sky Song. Nothing escapes us."
"HOORAY!"
"You are aware that the others are going to hold this against you."
"Let them, Cloud Runner. I meant what I said. No one escapes the Knights of Maeyr.
"NO ONE."
Monday, 11 June 2012
Run, Part 3: Flight
(As a reminder, this all happened a month or so before Zoofights Redux began and people began gathering at the Bar again)
Some plans looked so perfect on paper...but that was why any plan worth its salt had some sort of a testing phase. To plow on ahead, having stopped at the paper stage...well, one was taking their chances.
The machine and its weapons that Sine had replicated had been 'designed', so to speak, for a far larger, far heavier being. Sine had done her best to deal with issues such as weight and heat...but she'd overlooked a few other crucial areas. Like the fact that two high-power plasma-energy cannons designed to fight other war machines had one HELL of a kick.
Hence, instead of laying down covering fire and disabling the Volo's flying cars and SWAT-equivalent vans, Sine promptly began spraying fire everywhere, screaming in surprise and frustration as various Volo swooped and dove for cover. Some shots slammed right into the engine of one, and it drunkenly lurched and then plummeted down towards the distant streets below, the Volo inside throwing open the door and diving out to escape, his descent slowed by the emergency grav-discs he had. Sine continued yelling in pure rage (which she knew would just make it look like she MEANT to spray her guns around like a madwoman, but she was too irked and too much of a need to vent it to care) as she spun around like she was trying to replicate the Death Blossum, more explosions ripping into the front of the museum, its stairs, and the Volo's 'police-cars'.
Sine finally got her hands on the emergency thumb switch and shut down the guns, and after a split second made a snap decision and hit the emergency release switch as well. The gun apparatus undid its clamps, the gravity mechanisms she'd used to lighten its weight briefly pulsing to lift itself off of Sine and fall off her shoulders, the mechanism plummeting towards the ground below. Sine didn't really care. Her attempt to disable and retreat had turned into an accidental attempted mass murder (at least, that's how the Volo would see it), and she'd be turned into a shattered bag of meat in seconds if she tried to engage the Volo with her conventional weapons.
That just left full bore retreat, until her Sifter recharged. Suddenly hiding in the museum looked like a lot better option. But you blew that, just like you blow everything else.
A small part of Sine hoped, as she whirled the jet board around and took off down into the 'flight-streets' of the city below, that she could leave the voice behind as well as the Volo.
Some plans looked so perfect on paper...but that was why any plan worth its salt had some sort of a testing phase. To plow on ahead, having stopped at the paper stage...well, one was taking their chances.
The machine and its weapons that Sine had replicated had been 'designed', so to speak, for a far larger, far heavier being. Sine had done her best to deal with issues such as weight and heat...but she'd overlooked a few other crucial areas. Like the fact that two high-power plasma-energy cannons designed to fight other war machines had one HELL of a kick.
Hence, instead of laying down covering fire and disabling the Volo's flying cars and SWAT-equivalent vans, Sine promptly began spraying fire everywhere, screaming in surprise and frustration as various Volo swooped and dove for cover. Some shots slammed right into the engine of one, and it drunkenly lurched and then plummeted down towards the distant streets below, the Volo inside throwing open the door and diving out to escape, his descent slowed by the emergency grav-discs he had. Sine continued yelling in pure rage (which she knew would just make it look like she MEANT to spray her guns around like a madwoman, but she was too irked and too much of a need to vent it to care) as she spun around like she was trying to replicate the Death Blossum, more explosions ripping into the front of the museum, its stairs, and the Volo's 'police-cars'.
Sine finally got her hands on the emergency thumb switch and shut down the guns, and after a split second made a snap decision and hit the emergency release switch as well. The gun apparatus undid its clamps, the gravity mechanisms she'd used to lighten its weight briefly pulsing to lift itself off of Sine and fall off her shoulders, the mechanism plummeting towards the ground below. Sine didn't really care. Her attempt to disable and retreat had turned into an accidental attempted mass murder (at least, that's how the Volo would see it), and she'd be turned into a shattered bag of meat in seconds if she tried to engage the Volo with her conventional weapons.
That just left full bore retreat, until her Sifter recharged. Suddenly hiding in the museum looked like a lot better option. But you blew that, just like you blow everything else.
A small part of Sine hoped, as she whirled the jet board around and took off down into the 'flight-streets' of the city below, that she could leave the voice behind as well as the Volo.
- Go now, if you want it...
- An otherworld awaits you
- Don't you give up on it...
- You bite the hand that feeds you
- All alone, cold fields you wander
- Memories of it, cloud your sight
- Fills your dreams, disturbs your slumber
- Lost your way, a fallen knight...
- The Volo, however, were not going to let their quarry go so easily, especially considering the fact that 1) They still thought Sine was just one of their kind with a helmet and heavy firepower, 2) She had unleashed that heavy firepower onto them, then discarded it, and 3) Their jobs and lives were built around chasing and catching Auspex who tried to fly away from them in a score of different ways. Sine's was little different than a few of them, and their tactics wouldn't need much adapting anyway. They had numbers, and unlike Sine, they actually knew the city from more than the equivalent of an advanced GPS.
Flying down into the Auspex's more conventional ground traffic wasn't enough to dissuade them either, Sine's computers barely keeping up with the wheel-based vehicles she was forced to dodge and weave around. She had expected that the Auspex might catch up to her...
Just not as quickly as they did.
The electrified nightstick slammed into Sine's shoulder and back; had her outfit not been insulated, she likely would have been stunned badly enough to faceplant into the ground or fly directly into the nearest building. Grunting, Sine spun her jetboard around and began flying backwards, blocking the next blow with her kinetic Launcher's. Despite his lack of jets, the Volo officer kept pace with Sine, flying with the aid of more advanced anti-gravity discs (which made some kind of sense. If you could manipulate gravity, it wasn't too far away from manipulating kinetic energy in general) as he continued to swing at Sine.
Or maybe it was a girl too, who knew? The Volo's 'advanced police' outfit (as Sine doubted she was being chased by the equivalent of patrol officers) removed any clue of their gender or emotional situation. The Volo could have been confident, angry, scared, or desperate, its own headgear rendered that truth a blank. Whatever its sex or feelings, it was swinging its weapon like a champion.
At least until Sine showed off one of the advantages of flying on a jetboard; it made a fair makeshift weapon, as Sine reared the board up and slammed the edge of it against the Volo, sending the bird-like humanoid flying off as Sine flipped herself back to an upward base and continued forward, going right at the next intersection...
She found three more Volo for company, heading directly for her. And these Volo had guns.
Hold now, aim is steady...
An otherworld awaits you
One thousand years, you ready?
The otherworld, it takes you...The needle projectiles, Sine had again expected. Her rude surprise this time was when one of the Volo, instead of aiming a firearm at her, pulled something off their belt and threw it at her instead. When Sine made a sharp sideways sweep to dodge them, the projectile went with her, the bladed-boomerang like device flying for her head, Sine barely managing to dodge by ducking. She took a second to glance behind herself to confirm that it wasn't going to do a U-Turn and try and nail her in the back, and then resumed flying forward, barreling through the three Volo before she did a sharp turn to the left. The Volo were a lot better at doing U-turns then their bladed projectiles, the bird-men hot on her heels almost as soon as she had passed them.
"Grapnel." Sine said, the kinetic launcher on her left arm switching firing modes. Aiming at the tall spire of a building coming up, Sine fired off a line to latch onto the building's frame before spinning and flying backwards again, her line twisting so he arm didn't. Once again facing her pursuers, she immediately began retracting the line, arching her flight path upwards, and firing at the Volo with her other kinetic launcher, her helmet's aiming systems doing a lot to counteract her highly troublesome firing position. One took a blow to the arm and fell, the other two moving to grab their companion; Sine promptly released her line and flipped back around, diving back into the city...
Only to find herself flying directly into the grip of another Volo. And THIS Volo was their version of Murducken. Complete with Big Muscly Arms.
"SH-" Sine got out, before the masked flying man gave her a resounding headbutt. Her viewing glass cracked, her systems shouting alarms as her as the beast tried to tighten his grip. Sine promptly tested to see if the Volo's genitals were located in the general primate area, and discovered that if they weren't, whatever she rammed her blow into hurt real good too. The Beast-Volo's grip loosened, just a bit, and Sine promptly grabbed HIM, spinning her jetboard and doing a combination judo throw and pushing charge to throw the Volo downward, his body crashing violently against a rooftop, and through it, Sine's helmet picking up faint screams as she drew herself back up.
She allowed herself two seconds to check her recharging apparatus. Almost done...
The Volo weren't anywhere near done, Sine's helmet yelling at her to duck, the bladed arc projectile skimming off the tips of its pointed ears before Sine turned and kicked her jetboard back into forward high gear. Multiple Volo and two of their police 'cars' zoomed after her, barraging her with needles.
Go, into the sand, and the dust, and the skyGo now, there's no better plan than to do or to dieFree me, pray to the faith, in the face of the lightFeed me, fill me with sin, and get ready to fightYou know you will...You know you will...
Sine snatched the Black Box off her belt.
"Proximity, vehicle." Sine said, and tossed the explosive over her shoulder. The Volo flew past it, thankfully, but their cars never got the chance. The explosive did not actually damage the flying vehicles, as it went off two feet from them, and the plastic that pelted the flying machines was too soft to do any damage. It was meant as a distraction.
It served. And more. One of the cars veered off so violently crashed into its fellow, the two machines falling from the sky and down into the street below. Sine jerked her head back, her eyes going wide at the sight of it.
"Fuck-!" Sine cursed. She'd just wanted them to back off a bit, not crash-!
You want what you want. Any collateral damage is acceptable.
"GOD DAMN IT JIMINY, SHUT UP!" Sine snarled as she dove back into the street again, flying through the sidewalk equivalent as Auspex frantically dove to get out of her way. In front of her, several Volo cars pulled up, attempting a classic police blockade. For a second, Sine wondered if they'd forgotten the vertical aspect of this battle. After another second, she figured it would be best to act like they hadn't, and burned towards the cars assembled at the crossroads.
The floating vehicles jerked upward eight feet as she approached. They HAD taken her likely escape into account.
Sine, however, weighed less than a car, and hence went up ten feet, flying over the air-mobile roofs.
She promptly discovered the Volo had planned for THAT too, as several were leaning out the back windows with weapons ready. More needles filled the air, Sine trying to both outrun and dodge them.
A perfect distraction for the Volo who came up from beneath her and grabbed onto her board.
"DAMN IT!" Sine yelled, as she looked down at her new passenger. She tried rattle-jerking the board as she flew on, but the Volo refused to dislodge. When she tried spinning, he held on. When she tried firing at him with her kinetic orbs, he remained in place.
Then he pulled the knife and stabbed for her left ankle.
Deep down, Sine couldn't blame the creature. She'd caused its fellow a fair bit of misery. On the surface, Sine just screamed a curse, even as her computers unlocked her foot due to their proximity alarms, Sine jerking the limb out of harm's way and then stomping her foot down onto the Volo's helmeted head several times before he let go. Sine spat another curse and turned around.
The Beast slammed into her, and Sine found her world turning upside down. With one foot out of the locking mechanism that held her on her jetboard, Sine partially fell and partially yanked the board upward as the giant muscled Volo's weight forced her backwards and down. The mechanism reacted as she programmed it, releasing Sine's other foot lest the awkward situation caused the board to break her ankle or twist her foot right off. Good for it...except Sine no longer had the ability to fly.
Her captor did.
And he was NOT pleased.
Sine though he would smash her into the ground. Instead, he tossed her upwards, then stopped on a dime and flew up after her, shoulder-ramming her before she could turn around and fire. Stunned, Sine fell briefly before she found an iron grip seizing her ankle, the Volo flying down the street and pulling her along like she weighed nothing. Sine would have complimented him on his strength and skilled use of tech...
Then he tossed her through a building window.
Sine exploded out the other side of the building, having been thrown at an angle through the two corner panes of glass, the myriad pieces slicing across her outfit...
And her belt pouches.
Time seemed to slow down for Sine as she saw her blue ruby, what she'd gone to so much trouble to get, fly out into the open air. No. She could take a beating, she could live with morally questionable acts, but she could not, WOULD NOT, give up what she'd worked so damn hard to-!
Steal.
Sine's first frantic grab missed the ruby.
She did not get to make a second, as the Beast Volo slammed into her again and drove her through the air.
Call Zephyrus and have him fight with him instead! Call Jonesy and ask to borrow her power armor this time! Call Doomrider, he'll help a friend! After all, surely they've already forgiven you and forgotten all that vitriol, right?
Fight, fight, fightFight, fight, FIGHT!Fight, fight, fightFight, fight, FIGHT!
Sine knew her punches would do nothing. She also figured that as much as this brute liked to go in close and hand to hand, he probably still had weapons on him.
So she swiped his nightstick. She'd handled enough alien tech to quickly locate switches, and even as the Beast jerked back as he (or she, who knew?) realized what Sine had done, she flipped on the weapon's electrified mode and promptly jammed it into the sweet spot between the Auspex's shoulder and neck. The Volo spasmed, letting go of her as the electricity shocked him...
Sine planted her boot and kicked off, flipping backwards, dropping the nightstick as she did. Her computers did the rest, the jetboard having circled around and come at her thumb-button'd command. She did not land perfectly on the locking mechanisms, but she landed well enough to keep her balance and crouch down, grabbing the edge to steady herself.
She promptly flew another edge of the board directly into the Beast-Volo's face. He let out a small, pained cry, flipping over and tumbling down towards the street as Sine put the board into a steep dive and flew down towards the street herself.
The Auspex on the ground had been too busy fleeing the falling glass to notice the blue gem scattered amongst the pieces. Sine slowed down to scoop up her prize, taking a few more seconds to lock in her feet before she rose back up, hand gripped tightly around her gem...
The needles smashed into the ground around her, the Volo on her like white on rice. Sine let out a small snarling scream in frustration and kicked in the afterburners again, blazing down the street as the Volo gave chase.
Hope dies, and you wanderThe otherworld, it makes youDreams, they rip asunderThe otherworld, it hates you...
"FUCK OFF! I EARNED THIS! FUCK OFF!" Sine yelled, her voice lost in the wind. She let her words speak for her instead, arming her other Black Box and hurling it behind her. The explosion drove several Volo back, but more came to replace them. One of them hurled another blade-arang at her, and Sine found her dodge a second too slow, the blade of it slicing open the side of her shin. Sine fired a few kinetic orbs in response and then barreled down the street. She'd spied a thin alleyway in the row of buildings at the end of it, and her scanners and GPS told her she could fit through it. Maybe the damn Auspex would show sense and go around, or cease pursuit!
Yeah, right.
She wasn't entirely right about the alleyway either. It was wide enough to accept her...but thin enough that the sides of her jetboard struck the walls, sparks flying up among her legs as she tried to stay in her surfer-like position and keep herself from veering even an inch to the left and right. After thirty frantic feet that took two seconds that felt like ninety to cross, the alleyway widened out and Sine blazed down it.
"Yay."
The Volo flew out of the gap a few seconds later, having not been dissuaded in the slightest.
"NO!"
Sine looked behind herself to see the Volo, five strong in pursuit, chasing her like she'd stolen the whole museum instead of one little gem. Sine fired off a few shots at them. In response, the Volo all pulled out their flying boomerang esque weapons and tossed them at Sine. All at the same time, whatever kinetic systems the weapons used to outspeed their wielders rapidly encroaching on Sine.
"I HATE THOSE THINGS!"
Sine tried veering back and forth by minute degrees, trying to get the pursing projectiles to crash into the walls. No dice. She tried shooting them in mid air. No go. She debated firing chaff for a second, and then realized she didn't have any. She didn't have any time left either...
She did, however, have a third dimension. Sine promptly jerked her board up and in the tightest loop she could muster, spinning another 180 degrees to face upward. The projectiles zipped by beneath her; Sine promptly did the last thing she expected the Volo to expect, and put her machine into a steep dive directly towards them.
One veered into the wall to dodge her. Another took her jetboard in the gut and spun off, crashing into the wall as well. Sine held up the fist she had her blue ruby clenched in, and promptly decked the third Volo in the face as hard as she could, sending him spinning out in turn as Sine flew on, yelling both in triumph and due to the pain that shot up her arm.
"THAT'S WHAT YOU GET! THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CROSS-!" Sine yelled, looking back at her work and making sure the Volo weren't getting back up.
Hey Cosine. Do the math. You just took out three Volo.
Weren't there five?
Sine turned back around.
She flew into the rope the last two Volo had strung across the alleyway a second later.
The safety mechanisms probably saved her life; otherwise her tumble might have smeared her across the walls or cost her both her feet as she and her jetboard went into an out of control spin from her altered momentum. The fact that the board immediately disengaged and went tumbling down the alleyway to crash in a fiery explosion that Sine wasn't a part of was no comfort to her, as she crashed down onto the ground herself and bounce-rolled a few more dozen feet before she stopped. Every single nerve in her body seemed to wake up at once to remind her that yes, they existed, and no, they did not like that, and what the fuck was she doing, fighting giant orange fire-breathing dragons again?
"I wish..." Sine whispered. Her helmet display was awash with errors, but she could see her armor's stability ratio in the single digits. It had done its job though. Her violent stop and fall should have left her dead in and of itself, or at least with more than a few broken bones. Instead, in the words of Little Nicky in regards to an attempted fatal experience, 'That just hurt a lot.'
"Well...at least...I have...my priorities straight..." Sine whispered, opening her aching hand to look at the blue ruby within...
Ding.
"Ding?"
Sifter battery charge complete.
Sine stared at the sky, vaguely hearing the approaching Volo.
"...repeat."
Sifter battery charge complete.
Sine stared another second, and she would have laughed more when she did, except it hurt to laugh. Still a blessursed existence. Still.
Free now, ride up on itUp to the heights, it takes youGo now, if you want itAn otherworld awaits you...
Palming her gem, Sine reached down to her belt and snapped open the armored charge-pack, extracting the battery and reaching her to snap it into her Sifter. She rolled over onto her back...
She did not understand what the Volo said as they aimed their guns at her, yelling. But she could understand the intent.
She wondered if they could do the same.
"...don't you know...about the bird?" Sine said, and then flipped the Volo off. "Everybody knows that the bird is the word. Previous location, code STREETSHARK."
VROP.
----
"Where's my money?"
"...Miss Cosine..."
"I got you your gem, Mr. Mainx. If you honestly think I perpetuated some elaborate fraud that included looking like I ground twenty pounds of skin off myself to give you a fake gem...well, you're allowed to think it. But I know what I did, and what I did was what you wanted. Your gem, your request, is on the table in front of you. I don't feel like hanging around for it to be tested. WHERE'S. MY. MONEY?"
"...must you stick your weapon in my face?"
"Not in a mood to play around."
"...the truck is in a warehouse at Meglia and Trillo. Thirty million in gold bullion, as promised."
"Then this is done." Sine said, removing her launcher from Mainx's face. "You have your blue ruby. Make your granddaughter happy. Have a good rest of your life. Ciao."
"...was it really that disagreeable?" Mainx said.
"You have no idea, old man." Sine said, and promptly teleported out.
----
She should have been kinder. Mainx had been good to his word, stocking the truck with gold bricks, the best she could muster to universal currency. But she had as well. She'd found him his blue ruby. Now she had her money...
Yeah I bet you can bribe all your old friends back to your side...
"Just shut up. Whatever you are." Sine said, getting out of the truck, having parked it on her small asteroid home in the pocket universe she'd claimed. She really didn't want to hang around there at the moment. She'd grabbed up some medicine and bandages, blithely tapping buttons to head to a warmer, more private place. She hadn't seen Sarah among all those people buying into Jonesy's smear campaign, maybe she'd track her down...
At least that was the plan.
Until Sine warped into Desdemona's loft home...
And found Desdemona home.
"...Des?" Sine semi-squeaked in surprise. What was she doing here? She was supposed to be away this weekend at an art show!
"Welcome back. Sine." Desdemona said, but her tone indicated she was anything but.
-----
And elsewhere...
Fire began to fall from a world's sky...
"Where is she, Burning Moon? I get her first!"
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Run, Part 2: Monkey
Alarms. Normally, Sine hated alarms. She even hated them when they were working in her favor and warning her of danger, their loud discordant wails slamming against her auditory canals like the noise equivalent of a stumbling, drunken frat boy looking for a fight. There were better ways to warn of danger, even when she technically was NOT the danger...
This time, though, she kind of wanted them to be louder. If only to drown out the voice.
Why don't you just surrender?
Sine's hacking skills were subpar, but a museum security system was little match for her extremely advanced computer; if John Conner could open sesame with his bulky, awkward laptop she could certainly do it with her wrist device. The real difficulty came with the thrice-damned voice.
"Sure, surrender. I'm sure they'll just put me in their police car equivalent without bothering to search me. How do you think they're going to react when they find out I'm ape-descended instead of bird descended? They might kill me right there, or drag me off to a government lab to dissect me, and as lovely as that sounds, imagine what they'd do with my tech! You want to dump a singularity event on this planet?"
There's no guarantee they'd be able to figure anything out about it, let alone reverse engineer it.
"I think there's a far larger guarantee that they'll both confiscate my stuff and do Bad Things when they figure out I'm not Auspex." Sine said.
And you realize why you won't have anyone riding to your rescue?
Sine bit off her reply to...herself, in the end, and re-routed the last wire, opening the metal door. That should help with the barricades throughout the museum...
It did not help with other factors. Like the fact that across the room, two more Auspex security guards stood staring at the black-garbed figure that had just opened their locked doors.
Sine ran to take them out before they could get their guns out, as she sprinted over, leapt up...and promptly got bashed in the side with a flashlight when she attempted her jumping snap kick, knocking her to the ground. Cursing her lack of bullet time, Sine rolled over and blasted the pair with another tranquilizing orb, getting up and leaving their coughing, slumping bodies behind as she fled out the door the guards had been in front of.
You could have done that to start. Why did you initially decide on violence?
"WHY DON'T YOU BE USEFUL OR BE QUIET?!" Sine snapped, as she called up her map of the museum inside her helmet and tried to find the shortest route out?
It's a good question. Here's another. Why don't you just find some place to hide in the museum? Wait until your Sifter is recharged and just jump out? Surely you're clever enough to avoid some police for a bit. Worst comes to worst, you could try and fake a negotiating situation...
A weird buzzing noise sounded, and Sine stopped, trying to figure out what it was. She quickly learned, as the hacked metal doors abruptly changed their mind and snapped close again, Sine too late to get through. An override. Someone had overridden her access and closed the doors again. Once again she was a rat, trapped, and from the secondary alarms Sine heard under the museum one, her options for cheesing it was rapidly approaching zero.
"...no." Sine said, as she popped out her tranquilizing orbs and selected a replacement.
...This is not needed.
"I'll be the judge of that."
Yes, your judgment has proven impeccable this last week. Month. Since you left the Bar. Why bother looking for another angle? You're already in freefall, and your math can't produce any new answers...
"It can tell me one thing. I don't need a conscience hanging over my shoulder and critiquing my every act. I got through my life without you, I got through Zoofights without you, and I sure as hell don't need you now. What I need is an exit." Sine said, as her helmet did calculations.
...Maybe what you need is the last thing you want.
"Fuck off, Jiminy Cricket." Sine said, and locked onto the frailest part of the wall and unleashed her explosive orbs. The blast took out the wall...
And most of the exhibit on the other side. Sine, running through the gap she'd made, spared it a brief glance.
"...I ain't got no strings to hold me down." Sine said, and then continued on, activating something on her wrist computer as she did. Despite how bad things had gotten, Sine hadn't come as far as she had without having backup plans for her backup plans. Especially when she was on her own. She might have made poor choices when she'd jumped to Orthines, but she'd done her research about it beforehand and planned accordingly.
The second wall she blew out took a fair chunk of the ceiling as well. Sine scrambled over the rubble and went on, fleeing down a hallway and finally getting to the entrance hall of the museum. The Auspex had even had metal doors close down over THAT, but their stone proved a lot more vulnerable than their metal, as Sine went off to the side and emptied three orbs into the museum wall, blasting a hole to the outside and freedom.
So to speak. Sine leapt out of the smoke to find that she may have done better if she'd turned around and gone backwards. Because despite her shortcut, the Volo had still arrived.
In force. Sine's computer immediately picked up nearly fifteen equivalents of a police car, as well as two SWAT vans, the main difference being the vehicles flew on null-gravity generators rather than drove. It rather reminded her of some cartoon series she couldn't recall, though the Volo who immediately shone a spotlight on her looked nowhere near as comical as the entities that had driven those vehicles.
Sine quickly assessed three things. One was the fact that out in the open, her tranquilizing gasses would be far less effective. The second was that she was outnumbered fifty to one, and most of the Volo were wearing rather menacing facial protection that may or may not have served as gas filters. The third was that she did not have a minigun and could not chase away these police with the fear of superior firepower.
Oh, and one last thing. The museum was near the top of this mountain-constructed city. The stairs ended in a drop that went down a good hundred feet before it hit the buildings below. The actual streets of this city were even further down. She could run left or right, but the Volo would either easily chase her down with their flying cars and their anti-gravity discs (the same ones Sine had tried to use to steal the blue ruby) or cut her to pieces. She was trapped.
Or not. Sine broke for the Volo, lowering her head and hoping they'd take a few seconds to shoot. She was also hoping that they were expecting her to fly, and make plans to intercept her as that accorded.
She got one of her wishes. Bullets, or rather the needle-like projectiles the Volo used, their ends either dull or sharp depending on whether they were shooting to wound or kill, barraged Sine, several of them smashing into her armor and nearly causing her to lose her balance. But she made it, in the end, and as the Volo moved to stop her from flying, she promptly leapt off the edge into freefall.
No new answers...
New toys would do.
The mechanical surfboard-like machine came in from the left, a tractor ray locking onto Sine and bringing it to her feet while slowing her momentum. Her ankles screamed as the board fixed her in place, the device having originally been built for a considerably larger and somewhat denser being, Sine having been unable to do much in the way of modifying the machine before she'd headed to Orthines. Anti-vertigo and bracing fields activated, and Sine thrust one foot down and rocketed back up, the specialized auras keeping her senses intact as she spun back up to face the Volo, who immediately moved to shoot her back down.
The secondary part of the machine arrived them. Its heavy weight came in from behind, snapping up at the last second and clamping down on Sine's upper body. The weight felt like it was going to crush her for a moment, and even when the gravity-dampeners (she really had a lot of devices that screwed with gravity, Sine mused for a half second) kicked in it felt far too heavy and far too hot. But it worked.
Arnold could keep his minigun. What she had had as her backup was simply...prime.
The guns unlocked, and Sine reached behind her and pulled the twin cannons on the firing platform forward, the guns arming as the laser sight sprang up between, her computers assessing her targets. There was no need to go to war with these people...but she wasn't going down either.
No.
"My turn." Sine said, and opened fire.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This time, though, she kind of wanted them to be louder. If only to drown out the voice.
Why don't you just surrender?
Sine's hacking skills were subpar, but a museum security system was little match for her extremely advanced computer; if John Conner could open sesame with his bulky, awkward laptop she could certainly do it with her wrist device. The real difficulty came with the thrice-damned voice.
"Sure, surrender. I'm sure they'll just put me in their police car equivalent without bothering to search me. How do you think they're going to react when they find out I'm ape-descended instead of bird descended? They might kill me right there, or drag me off to a government lab to dissect me, and as lovely as that sounds, imagine what they'd do with my tech! You want to dump a singularity event on this planet?"
There's no guarantee they'd be able to figure anything out about it, let alone reverse engineer it.
"I think there's a far larger guarantee that they'll both confiscate my stuff and do Bad Things when they figure out I'm not Auspex." Sine said.
And you realize why you won't have anyone riding to your rescue?
Sine bit off her reply to...herself, in the end, and re-routed the last wire, opening the metal door. That should help with the barricades throughout the museum...
It did not help with other factors. Like the fact that across the room, two more Auspex security guards stood staring at the black-garbed figure that had just opened their locked doors.
Sine ran to take them out before they could get their guns out, as she sprinted over, leapt up...and promptly got bashed in the side with a flashlight when she attempted her jumping snap kick, knocking her to the ground. Cursing her lack of bullet time, Sine rolled over and blasted the pair with another tranquilizing orb, getting up and leaving their coughing, slumping bodies behind as she fled out the door the guards had been in front of.
You could have done that to start. Why did you initially decide on violence?
"WHY DON'T YOU BE USEFUL OR BE QUIET?!" Sine snapped, as she called up her map of the museum inside her helmet and tried to find the shortest route out?
It's a good question. Here's another. Why don't you just find some place to hide in the museum? Wait until your Sifter is recharged and just jump out? Surely you're clever enough to avoid some police for a bit. Worst comes to worst, you could try and fake a negotiating situation...
A weird buzzing noise sounded, and Sine stopped, trying to figure out what it was. She quickly learned, as the hacked metal doors abruptly changed their mind and snapped close again, Sine too late to get through. An override. Someone had overridden her access and closed the doors again. Once again she was a rat, trapped, and from the secondary alarms Sine heard under the museum one, her options for cheesing it was rapidly approaching zero.
"...no." Sine said, as she popped out her tranquilizing orbs and selected a replacement.
...This is not needed.
"I'll be the judge of that."
Yes, your judgment has proven impeccable this last week. Month. Since you left the Bar. Why bother looking for another angle? You're already in freefall, and your math can't produce any new answers...
"It can tell me one thing. I don't need a conscience hanging over my shoulder and critiquing my every act. I got through my life without you, I got through Zoofights without you, and I sure as hell don't need you now. What I need is an exit." Sine said, as her helmet did calculations.
...Maybe what you need is the last thing you want.
"Fuck off, Jiminy Cricket." Sine said, and locked onto the frailest part of the wall and unleashed her explosive orbs. The blast took out the wall...
And most of the exhibit on the other side. Sine, running through the gap she'd made, spared it a brief glance.
"...I ain't got no strings to hold me down." Sine said, and then continued on, activating something on her wrist computer as she did. Despite how bad things had gotten, Sine hadn't come as far as she had without having backup plans for her backup plans. Especially when she was on her own. She might have made poor choices when she'd jumped to Orthines, but she'd done her research about it beforehand and planned accordingly.
The second wall she blew out took a fair chunk of the ceiling as well. Sine scrambled over the rubble and went on, fleeing down a hallway and finally getting to the entrance hall of the museum. The Auspex had even had metal doors close down over THAT, but their stone proved a lot more vulnerable than their metal, as Sine went off to the side and emptied three orbs into the museum wall, blasting a hole to the outside and freedom.
So to speak. Sine leapt out of the smoke to find that she may have done better if she'd turned around and gone backwards. Because despite her shortcut, the Volo had still arrived.
In force. Sine's computer immediately picked up nearly fifteen equivalents of a police car, as well as two SWAT vans, the main difference being the vehicles flew on null-gravity generators rather than drove. It rather reminded her of some cartoon series she couldn't recall, though the Volo who immediately shone a spotlight on her looked nowhere near as comical as the entities that had driven those vehicles.
Sine quickly assessed three things. One was the fact that out in the open, her tranquilizing gasses would be far less effective. The second was that she was outnumbered fifty to one, and most of the Volo were wearing rather menacing facial protection that may or may not have served as gas filters. The third was that she did not have a minigun and could not chase away these police with the fear of superior firepower.
Oh, and one last thing. The museum was near the top of this mountain-constructed city. The stairs ended in a drop that went down a good hundred feet before it hit the buildings below. The actual streets of this city were even further down. She could run left or right, but the Volo would either easily chase her down with their flying cars and their anti-gravity discs (the same ones Sine had tried to use to steal the blue ruby) or cut her to pieces. She was trapped.
Or not. Sine broke for the Volo, lowering her head and hoping they'd take a few seconds to shoot. She was also hoping that they were expecting her to fly, and make plans to intercept her as that accorded.
She got one of her wishes. Bullets, or rather the needle-like projectiles the Volo used, their ends either dull or sharp depending on whether they were shooting to wound or kill, barraged Sine, several of them smashing into her armor and nearly causing her to lose her balance. But she made it, in the end, and as the Volo moved to stop her from flying, she promptly leapt off the edge into freefall.
No new answers...
New toys would do.
The mechanical surfboard-like machine came in from the left, a tractor ray locking onto Sine and bringing it to her feet while slowing her momentum. Her ankles screamed as the board fixed her in place, the device having originally been built for a considerably larger and somewhat denser being, Sine having been unable to do much in the way of modifying the machine before she'd headed to Orthines. Anti-vertigo and bracing fields activated, and Sine thrust one foot down and rocketed back up, the specialized auras keeping her senses intact as she spun back up to face the Volo, who immediately moved to shoot her back down.
The secondary part of the machine arrived them. Its heavy weight came in from behind, snapping up at the last second and clamping down on Sine's upper body. The weight felt like it was going to crush her for a moment, and even when the gravity-dampeners (she really had a lot of devices that screwed with gravity, Sine mused for a half second) kicked in it felt far too heavy and far too hot. But it worked.
Arnold could keep his minigun. What she had had as her backup was simply...prime.
The guns unlocked, and Sine reached behind her and pulled the twin cannons on the firing platform forward, the guns arming as the laser sight sprang up between, her computers assessing her targets. There was no need to go to war with these people...but she wasn't going down either.
No.
"My turn." Sine said, and opened fire.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Once there was a girl whose prison was a care
The girl had a monkey, they made the strangest pair
The monkey ruled the girl, it climbed inside her head
And now as fate would have it, one of them is dead..."
Friday, 27 April 2012
Hope continues to be a jerk
Must run in the family.
(Yes, that's actually Juri Han, from Street Fighter semi-fame, who served as Hope's avatar in a few pictures (mainly due to her eye) and while Hope is worlds better than Juri's psychotic bloodlust, I'm pretty sure it doesn't take much for most of my readers to picture her acting like this.)
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Real Life Post: On Adult Regrets
This post is somewhat less 'connected' to me, and hence less 'important' (very heavy finger quotes there), but it's still something that made me think. I just got a phone call from my dad: it turns out my mom's brother's wife (so my uncle's) suddenly passed away on Monday. Now, she wasn't 'young', and I didn't know her and her husband as well as my other uncles, on my dad's side of the family, as my uncle wasn't the most social person, but it was still a 40 year marriage ending, a life companion lost. This is enough to get my deepest sympathies, but there's another factor that makes me post, something I've been thinking on these last hours.
See, when I inquired on cause of death, there has yet to be an answer. But while inquiring, my dad informed me that apparently, my aunt had an incident in her youth that left her utterly terrified of doctors, and hence she refused to ever see a doctor, or a dentist, or any medical professional, for the rest of her life. This strangely mirrors an acquaintance-friend my dad had years ago, named Tex, who refused to see a doctor about his diabetes because his brother had lost a foot to the disease, and Tex didn't want to go into the doctor's and be told he would also have to have something amputated. So he neglected medical care for his disease, and eventually he suffered complications that, instead of costing him a foot, cost him his life. As someone who has their own degrees of paranoia (though mine run in the hypochondriac-esque other direction), I can understand how these concerns can override logic, but that's not the point of my post.
What I've been thinking about is how my uncle spent 40 years with this woman, likely knew about her issue, and apparently had no way to help her with it. What do you do when you get older and medical issues become a deeper concern, yet you're irrationally terrified of seeing any kind of doctor? Do you force her? Knock her out and strap her to a bed in a hospital? How could you possibly inflict that kind of pain and suffering on someone you love? And, if something like this happens...how can you not think that you should have done it anyway?
Many of our characters have reality-based issues, but at the same time, they all have fantastic circumstances tied to them that requires suspension of disbelief. This is the kind of regret that's as real, and as dark, as it gets. There's no real answer, and it rides on the pain of grief like a parasite. It's just something to think about, I guess, for the future. The reality of some regrets.
See, when I inquired on cause of death, there has yet to be an answer. But while inquiring, my dad informed me that apparently, my aunt had an incident in her youth that left her utterly terrified of doctors, and hence she refused to ever see a doctor, or a dentist, or any medical professional, for the rest of her life. This strangely mirrors an acquaintance-friend my dad had years ago, named Tex, who refused to see a doctor about his diabetes because his brother had lost a foot to the disease, and Tex didn't want to go into the doctor's and be told he would also have to have something amputated. So he neglected medical care for his disease, and eventually he suffered complications that, instead of costing him a foot, cost him his life. As someone who has their own degrees of paranoia (though mine run in the hypochondriac-esque other direction), I can understand how these concerns can override logic, but that's not the point of my post.
What I've been thinking about is how my uncle spent 40 years with this woman, likely knew about her issue, and apparently had no way to help her with it. What do you do when you get older and medical issues become a deeper concern, yet you're irrationally terrified of seeing any kind of doctor? Do you force her? Knock her out and strap her to a bed in a hospital? How could you possibly inflict that kind of pain and suffering on someone you love? And, if something like this happens...how can you not think that you should have done it anyway?
Many of our characters have reality-based issues, but at the same time, they all have fantastic circumstances tied to them that requires suspension of disbelief. This is the kind of regret that's as real, and as dark, as it gets. There's no real answer, and it rides on the pain of grief like a parasite. It's just something to think about, I guess, for the future. The reality of some regrets.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Real Life Update
Dad's out and doing fine, looking into more tests and getting on a medication called Plovax (?) to help with blood clots. Considering all his tests came back with no obvious problems, I guess it's just in the hands of random chance now. And as many people know, our brains don't understand probability well.
So yeah. Let's hope chance is kind.
So yeah. Let's hope chance is kind.
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Real Life Post: Dad's in the hospital
At the very least, he went in on his own two feet than in an ambulance.
A bit of backstory: my dad got his family started late and hence is pretty old now (70) and he's smoked his whole life. A few months back, he had a sudden attack of weakness in his left side and believed he was having a stroke. While we called for an ambulance, the paramedics and my dad decided that going to the hospital was not necessary, as based on what he had told them (weakness, but no loss of vision, or slurred speech, or migraine headache, or any of the other stroke symptoms) meant that the hospital likely couldn't pin anything down, and my dad, being a stubborn old man who hates wasting time and hates sitting around for hours for something that would be more or less pointless (maybe) even more, ultimately decided not to go. Some research indicated that he may have suffered one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_ischemic_attack
Which are complicated because they can either be an indicator of a stroke, or happen on and off without ever leading to a stroke. My dad started taking baby aspirin and scheduled blood work and doctor's appointments, but on April 10th he was also planning to travel somewhere for a few months.
Last week, he had another incident with the same symptoms (weakness only, and he tested for the others as he suffered them). Due to the long Easter weekend, he could not get in touch with his doctor until April 11th, when he'd arrived in his trip area (ie, left home). His doctor recommended that he go to a hospital immediately, due to it having happened more than once. Fortunately, he was still in Canada, so he did. They've run some tests and come back clean, and they're keeping him overnight, so he's about as 'safe' as he can be. Hopefully it's an issue they can treat.
Still, it's making me aware that sometime in the future I might be putting up a far more depressing blog post (and chances are I won't exactly be in a writing or creative mood for who knows how long after that). I'm just hoping the time frame is in years.
Don't smoke, people. Just don't.
A bit of backstory: my dad got his family started late and hence is pretty old now (70) and he's smoked his whole life. A few months back, he had a sudden attack of weakness in his left side and believed he was having a stroke. While we called for an ambulance, the paramedics and my dad decided that going to the hospital was not necessary, as based on what he had told them (weakness, but no loss of vision, or slurred speech, or migraine headache, or any of the other stroke symptoms) meant that the hospital likely couldn't pin anything down, and my dad, being a stubborn old man who hates wasting time and hates sitting around for hours for something that would be more or less pointless (maybe) even more, ultimately decided not to go. Some research indicated that he may have suffered one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_ischemic_attack
Which are complicated because they can either be an indicator of a stroke, or happen on and off without ever leading to a stroke. My dad started taking baby aspirin and scheduled blood work and doctor's appointments, but on April 10th he was also planning to travel somewhere for a few months.
Last week, he had another incident with the same symptoms (weakness only, and he tested for the others as he suffered them). Due to the long Easter weekend, he could not get in touch with his doctor until April 11th, when he'd arrived in his trip area (ie, left home). His doctor recommended that he go to a hospital immediately, due to it having happened more than once. Fortunately, he was still in Canada, so he did. They've run some tests and come back clean, and they're keeping him overnight, so he's about as 'safe' as he can be. Hopefully it's an issue they can treat.
Still, it's making me aware that sometime in the future I might be putting up a far more depressing blog post (and chances are I won't exactly be in a writing or creative mood for who knows how long after that). I'm just hoping the time frame is in years.
Don't smoke, people. Just don't.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
Run, Part 1: Gem
Why aren't you happy, Sine X. Cosine?
It figured. In the absolute quiet of the museum, the voice had to fill the silence as Sine floated downwards. Fine. Let it talk. She'd gotten good at ignoring it.
Look at everything you have. A brilliant mind, a mind that lets you do so much. Yes, perhaps it's not something you earned, but it's not something you stole either. It was handed to you; you didn't have a choice in it. The price was what you had to live with, but you paid it. You were the one who took all the raw data and memories and made something of it. Look what it gave you. Endless possibilities, the option to remake yourself in ways few ever could...
Why do you spend so much time pointlessly reviling it? Why do you let it define you so much?
Why do you feel such a deep need to be alone, when your existence suggests you have always been anything but?
Why do you not realize the one obstacle that you've never been able to escape is yourself?
----
His name had been Deonte Mainx. He had been born into money, but he'd worked hard to earn it, working first in his father's steel company, branching out into electronics and computers as they were developed, and even spending some time as a U.S Senator. Now he was nearly ninety and dying of cancer, and he'd given Sine a very special and specific request.
"I want...a blue ruby."
It had been for his granddaughter, Sapphire, one among five grandchildren he had that he was closest to. When she'd asked him what her name meant, Deonte, not being a geologist, had told her she was named after a 'blue ruby'. Sapphire had never pressed about the misinformation, but now that he was dying, Deonte wanted to give her something to show her what she had meant to him, something to remember him by. The backup plan was a necklace with a special combination of sapphires and rubies, but Deonte had learned enough, and met enough people, during his life, that he'd been able to contact Sine to try and achieve his dream gift. His request to her had been simple: a blue ruby.
Easier said than done. While rubies and sapphires had the same base mineral, corundum, rubies got their fierce red color from impurities in the chemical element chromium. It was still possible to have a sapphire with a red-esque or pinkish tint if it had purer chromium in it, which meant that, by some technical standards, a sapphire gem was ALREADY a 'blue ruby'. That was not what Deonte wanted. He literally wanted to find a ruby that had chromium in it that, instead of turning it deep red, turned it deep blue. An anti-ruby, as it were. Normally, Sine would have just encouraged him to see past the bizarre nature of this request...
But she wasn't herself. She was angry, pissed off, and still considering exactly what she was going to do with her 'friends' who had betrayed her so quickly, so easily, over such a stupid misunderstanding. Instead of seeing the blue ruby as a snipe hunt, she saw it as a challenge. She knew thousands of universes, possibly millions. What she didn't know, her Fate Locus would (and it should; she'd given up fifteen years of her life and her chance to ever have kids for that book, and she'd still had to escape the fact that no one ever made a bargain with a fifth-dimensional genie and came out clean again. She hoped that Qwsp had found something else to attract his attention...). Surely she could find one where the table of elements worked differently, where imperfect chromium caused a deep blue tint instead of a red tint. And considering Mainx had been offering a literal truckload of gold, enough money to set Sine up for months, she'd taken him up on it. She'd find him his blue ruby.
Her first tries hadn't worked out so well, due to dragons and inexplicable basketballs. The last one had pissed Sine off even more. So here she was.
The people of this world called it Orthines. It was an earth-like planet with a few vital changes. A slightly lower gravity was one, but the main change was a lack of any asteroid or other disaster to wipe out the dinosaurs. However, the shifting climate over millions of years had resulted in dinosaurs going extinct anyway, their lines evolving into birds. However, the ecosystem lacked mammals to the same degree Earth had, and as a result, evolution had followed the birds instead, the avian creatures eventually evolving into humanoid bodies and gaining sentience, their civilization progressing through the ages, having currently reached the high-level levels of the Level I Karashev scale. Though the people of this world, who called themselves the Auspex, no longer possessed wings or the ability to fly, their avian heritage had manifested in other ways; they preferred to build their cities up against mountains, and preferred short-range flying vehicles to ground based ones, their military and police forces even having access to personal flight systems that compensated for the Auspex' lost wings (and were, in more than a few ways, far more practical).
They also had the vital chemical shift. Imperfect chromium turned rubies blue here. All she had to do was get one.
Maybe if she'd been in a better mood, she wouldn't have made the choice she had. She might have tried to mine it herself, or trade for it, carefully keeping her primate-based heritage hidden under her helmet. Time was not an issue; she could return, at least, a few days after she'd left Deonte Mainx, and he doubted he would have kicked the bucket by then. But her patience over this issue had long between frayed down to nothing, greatly exacerbated by Jonesy's stupid overreaction and what it had done, and how quickly her so-called friends would turn on her. So she's taken a shortcut.
The museum's name could be translated to something like the Vaunted Heritage Of Our People Museum, and it had many aspects of history and the Auspex's discoveries on display. Including a set of various gems, which included several blue rubies.
Sine figured they could spare one.
One would be fine! She wasn't trying to steal one of their equivalent to the crown jewels, for Christ's sake! There were just one display among many in a large museum! All these gems were doing here were sitting under glass and looking pretty! One could make a difference, show a girl how special she was, maybe inspire her to BE something special! Sine wasn't even going to take the biggest or the shiniest gem, just one of the secondary ones set off to the side! It was the size of her fingernail, they could spare it! She would pay them, should have, but she knew they'd never understand and damn, she'd had enough of bullshit. She had better things to do...
----
Like what? Repair the relationship with your friends? You think stealing is going to be the key to making them re-endear yourself to you?
Sine would have told the voice to shut up if she could spare the sound. They'd never know. When she had the money, she could relax. Sit down. Figure things out. All she had to do was get the gem...
Easier said than done. The Auspex were no fools; they had criminals as well, and hence the room with the gems had a fair degree of defenses. Sine was no fool either, though, and had brought her own counter-measures, including this floating tech (anti-gravity discs that she wore on her shoulders, wrists, belt, knees, and ankles) she'd actually swiped from an Auspex police station (the Volo, they were called) to lower herself down from the ceiling after she'd made her way to said ceiling through the vents. Floating down from above took care of avoiding the pressure sensors in the floor, but the Auspex figured that plenty of 'people' had had the same idea Sine had, and besides said floor sensors had, they had cameras covering every inch of it, as well as having laced the room with both motion sensors and laser triggers. Anything triggering them, any of them, even one, put the museum in lockdown and called the Volo.
In truth, Sine shouldn't have had any reason to be worried. The Auspex didn't have Sifter defenses, did they? She could parade in like a bull in a china shop, smash the glass by whatever means, grab a gem, and just VROP out, right?
Of course not. Sine had been so pissed off by her so-called friends that she'd forgotten that the way she'd currently programmed her Sifter (which both masked and jammed her passage, which kept Zephyrus from tracking her down) ate power like it was going out of style. Her battery had burned out with this last jump, and to her extraordinary annoyance, Sine found that she'd grabbed a nearly dead one as a backup instead of a fully charged one, not noticing due to her angry egress from her home. While she'd luckily taken to carrying a miniaturized fusion engine for emergencies like that these days, it meant she still had to charge it. Normally, she'd have done just that.
But she'd been too mad. Too pissed off to show a little patience. She didn't need her Sifter. Between her current bag of tricks, and her intelligence, she could out-think a bunch of literal bird-brains and their defenses any day of the way. Hell, Zephyrus always told her she was smart, she should damn well use it...
So that's it then. You're the fallen friend. You'll probably end up fighting them in the arena with the Cosmic Cube at this rate.
Bullshit. They'd never know. This was her secret. HER job. HER life. What claim could any of them have on any understanding of it?
Keep forging the distance. Keep making excuses. Simple, easy excuses...
Sine began overtly ignoring the voice again. She had to focus.
The cameras were the simplest to deal with; the Auspex were a lot like humans and the 'people' guarding the museum were so used to quiet that none of them noticed the slightly altered picture of a feedback look Sine had invoked by attaching a device in the computer room. The lasers criss-crossing the room, visible with her helmet, were dealt with with mirrored floating spheres, a concept she'd modified from a blueprint copied from a disturbed inventor called Jebediah Morningside and usually kept on her to help deal with light-based offensive weaponry. The motion detectors were the hardest, but she'd managed to solve that by jamming them with a signal emitter and one of her computer programs that she used to help deal with inertia, the motion sensors briefly becoming confused and being unable to detect any motion at all. She didn't exactly have all the time in the world, but once she was in position and checked her watch, she knew she'd have enough. So she'd released herself from the ceiling and begun floating down, the mirrored spheres going before her to deflect the lasers and clear her a path to the display below her and the glass-like material that protected it...
You know why you aren't happy. You don't want to be. You want to play the victim. You want to be blameless. You want everything YOUR way. You claim you don't know why Zephyrus did what he did...you even bother to ask him what his situation was when you yanked him away?
The glass was in reach. Had she done this the 'simple' way, it would have been her lone obstacle; not actually glass, it was a dense plastic, shatterproof and highly cut and heat resistant; Sine could have used a modern blowtorch on it for half an hour and not gotten anywhere, never alone all the defenses she'd have to avoid. Breaking through it was out of the question.
So Sine had brought out her fractal cone, activating the coin-sized machine pinned to the palm of her right glove and reaching down. In this case, this was her one shot desperation 'skeleton key', being used on an unconventional lock. Her hand briefly pressed up against the top of the glass case, and then phased through it, the cone tweaking physics to briefly 'remove' the glass...and ONLY the glass, as Sine reached down and quickly grabbed her choice of rubies, the tiny machine only rendering the glass-shielding intangible. She extracted her arm with two seconds to spare, the cone's small power source burning out with an inaudible hiss as the display case fully settled back into reality. Good thing she'd gotten it on the first pass. If the cone had run out while her arm had been phased through the glass, the best case scenario would have been the glass destabilizing, ie shattering and setting off every alarm in the place. The other possibilities involved a lot more maiming and pain than Sine liked; one thing about anger, it kept you from hesitating sometimes if something had too much risk for not enough reward.
That was, in the end, irrelevant. She had her blue ruby. When she had money, she could stop and think. Figure things out.
Oh yes...I'm sure you think it will be simple. You can figure all of them out, when you can't even figure yourself out. Sine X. Cosine, trying to do trigonometry when she can't even see how things add up, subtract...or divide.
Sine would have asked if there was a point to all this, but she figured her efforts were better spent getting back to the ceiling, as she began to float back up, craning her head to check the clear path...
You think you can easily fix the complex problems...that's your THING, Sine. You're so busy trying to take in the forest you ignore the trees.
Which let her spot the twinge at the corner of her eye. Her floating mechanism let her do two things. Move up and down slowly, and turn around. She did the latter, to stare at the Auspex staring back at her, the bird-man's deep set eyes bulging out in surprise.
Like how you can work around all the mechanical defenses you want, but a schedule is just a piece of paper on a wall, and that doesn't mean it will always be followed like clockwork every night. Too bad for you.
"...well, fuck." Sine said, and snapped up her hand.
The Auspex were descended from birds, and maintained certain traits of the creatures. Instead of hair, their heads were covered with fine feathers. They tended towards being tall and gaunt, and their skulls and jaws had an ever so slight protruding aspect, the last vestigial traces of a beak. Their skin color followed the range of human primates, and including a few more exotic reds, yellows, blues, and even greys, the legacy of colorful feathers. Their general clothing was usually recognizable when it came to uniforms; casual clothing could be a lot harder to grasp for an outsider, but the Auspex looking at her was clearly wearing his equivilant to a security guard uniform. His 'hair' was a deep yellow, his eyes a sharp grey...
And he, like his kind, possessed a complicated respiratory system that left them highly susceptible to gas-based weapons. Sine did not do things without a few backup plans.
The orb struck the Auspex, erupting into the tranquilizing miasma. He was asleep in four seconds.
That was two seconds after he'd slammed his hand on the button on the wall.
You blew it again, Sine. You always blow it. That's why you're not happy. You're a failure, and you know it.
As the alarms filled the room, Sine felt her irritation and grief twist deep down within her stomach. She could hear the doors closing; fortunately for it, the Auspex guard had fallen out of the frame of the door he'd just walked through, and hence was saved potentially being cut in half (though in truth, safety measures would have made the door open again before it fully closed, like an elevator). He was no longer the problem though.
She was. She'd reacted to her problem not like a smart person, or a clever person, but instead as a thief. And now she was being locked up.
...Like hell.
Time to run.
And as the doors continued to slam shut, Sine slipped the blue ruby into a belt pouch and did just that.
Go on then. Go run back to your 'friends'.
After all...misery loves company.
And with that truth rattling around in the back of her head, Sine did her damnedest to escape.
It figured. In the absolute quiet of the museum, the voice had to fill the silence as Sine floated downwards. Fine. Let it talk. She'd gotten good at ignoring it.
Look at everything you have. A brilliant mind, a mind that lets you do so much. Yes, perhaps it's not something you earned, but it's not something you stole either. It was handed to you; you didn't have a choice in it. The price was what you had to live with, but you paid it. You were the one who took all the raw data and memories and made something of it. Look what it gave you. Endless possibilities, the option to remake yourself in ways few ever could...
Why do you spend so much time pointlessly reviling it? Why do you let it define you so much?
Why do you feel such a deep need to be alone, when your existence suggests you have always been anything but?
Why do you not realize the one obstacle that you've never been able to escape is yourself?
----
His name had been Deonte Mainx. He had been born into money, but he'd worked hard to earn it, working first in his father's steel company, branching out into electronics and computers as they were developed, and even spending some time as a U.S Senator. Now he was nearly ninety and dying of cancer, and he'd given Sine a very special and specific request.
"I want...a blue ruby."
It had been for his granddaughter, Sapphire, one among five grandchildren he had that he was closest to. When she'd asked him what her name meant, Deonte, not being a geologist, had told her she was named after a 'blue ruby'. Sapphire had never pressed about the misinformation, but now that he was dying, Deonte wanted to give her something to show her what she had meant to him, something to remember him by. The backup plan was a necklace with a special combination of sapphires and rubies, but Deonte had learned enough, and met enough people, during his life, that he'd been able to contact Sine to try and achieve his dream gift. His request to her had been simple: a blue ruby.
Easier said than done. While rubies and sapphires had the same base mineral, corundum, rubies got their fierce red color from impurities in the chemical element chromium. It was still possible to have a sapphire with a red-esque or pinkish tint if it had purer chromium in it, which meant that, by some technical standards, a sapphire gem was ALREADY a 'blue ruby'. That was not what Deonte wanted. He literally wanted to find a ruby that had chromium in it that, instead of turning it deep red, turned it deep blue. An anti-ruby, as it were. Normally, Sine would have just encouraged him to see past the bizarre nature of this request...
But she wasn't herself. She was angry, pissed off, and still considering exactly what she was going to do with her 'friends' who had betrayed her so quickly, so easily, over such a stupid misunderstanding. Instead of seeing the blue ruby as a snipe hunt, she saw it as a challenge. She knew thousands of universes, possibly millions. What she didn't know, her Fate Locus would (and it should; she'd given up fifteen years of her life and her chance to ever have kids for that book, and she'd still had to escape the fact that no one ever made a bargain with a fifth-dimensional genie and came out clean again. She hoped that Qwsp had found something else to attract his attention...). Surely she could find one where the table of elements worked differently, where imperfect chromium caused a deep blue tint instead of a red tint. And considering Mainx had been offering a literal truckload of gold, enough money to set Sine up for months, she'd taken him up on it. She'd find him his blue ruby.
Her first tries hadn't worked out so well, due to dragons and inexplicable basketballs. The last one had pissed Sine off even more. So here she was.
The people of this world called it Orthines. It was an earth-like planet with a few vital changes. A slightly lower gravity was one, but the main change was a lack of any asteroid or other disaster to wipe out the dinosaurs. However, the shifting climate over millions of years had resulted in dinosaurs going extinct anyway, their lines evolving into birds. However, the ecosystem lacked mammals to the same degree Earth had, and as a result, evolution had followed the birds instead, the avian creatures eventually evolving into humanoid bodies and gaining sentience, their civilization progressing through the ages, having currently reached the high-level levels of the Level I Karashev scale. Though the people of this world, who called themselves the Auspex, no longer possessed wings or the ability to fly, their avian heritage had manifested in other ways; they preferred to build their cities up against mountains, and preferred short-range flying vehicles to ground based ones, their military and police forces even having access to personal flight systems that compensated for the Auspex' lost wings (and were, in more than a few ways, far more practical).
They also had the vital chemical shift. Imperfect chromium turned rubies blue here. All she had to do was get one.
Maybe if she'd been in a better mood, she wouldn't have made the choice she had. She might have tried to mine it herself, or trade for it, carefully keeping her primate-based heritage hidden under her helmet. Time was not an issue; she could return, at least, a few days after she'd left Deonte Mainx, and he doubted he would have kicked the bucket by then. But her patience over this issue had long between frayed down to nothing, greatly exacerbated by Jonesy's stupid overreaction and what it had done, and how quickly her so-called friends would turn on her. So she's taken a shortcut.
The museum's name could be translated to something like the Vaunted Heritage Of Our People Museum, and it had many aspects of history and the Auspex's discoveries on display. Including a set of various gems, which included several blue rubies.
Sine figured they could spare one.
One would be fine! She wasn't trying to steal one of their equivalent to the crown jewels, for Christ's sake! There were just one display among many in a large museum! All these gems were doing here were sitting under glass and looking pretty! One could make a difference, show a girl how special she was, maybe inspire her to BE something special! Sine wasn't even going to take the biggest or the shiniest gem, just one of the secondary ones set off to the side! It was the size of her fingernail, they could spare it! She would pay them, should have, but she knew they'd never understand and damn, she'd had enough of bullshit. She had better things to do...
----
Like what? Repair the relationship with your friends? You think stealing is going to be the key to making them re-endear yourself to you?
Sine would have told the voice to shut up if she could spare the sound. They'd never know. When she had the money, she could relax. Sit down. Figure things out. All she had to do was get the gem...
Easier said than done. The Auspex were no fools; they had criminals as well, and hence the room with the gems had a fair degree of defenses. Sine was no fool either, though, and had brought her own counter-measures, including this floating tech (anti-gravity discs that she wore on her shoulders, wrists, belt, knees, and ankles) she'd actually swiped from an Auspex police station (the Volo, they were called) to lower herself down from the ceiling after she'd made her way to said ceiling through the vents. Floating down from above took care of avoiding the pressure sensors in the floor, but the Auspex figured that plenty of 'people' had had the same idea Sine had, and besides said floor sensors had, they had cameras covering every inch of it, as well as having laced the room with both motion sensors and laser triggers. Anything triggering them, any of them, even one, put the museum in lockdown and called the Volo.
In truth, Sine shouldn't have had any reason to be worried. The Auspex didn't have Sifter defenses, did they? She could parade in like a bull in a china shop, smash the glass by whatever means, grab a gem, and just VROP out, right?
Of course not. Sine had been so pissed off by her so-called friends that she'd forgotten that the way she'd currently programmed her Sifter (which both masked and jammed her passage, which kept Zephyrus from tracking her down) ate power like it was going out of style. Her battery had burned out with this last jump, and to her extraordinary annoyance, Sine found that she'd grabbed a nearly dead one as a backup instead of a fully charged one, not noticing due to her angry egress from her home. While she'd luckily taken to carrying a miniaturized fusion engine for emergencies like that these days, it meant she still had to charge it. Normally, she'd have done just that.
But she'd been too mad. Too pissed off to show a little patience. She didn't need her Sifter. Between her current bag of tricks, and her intelligence, she could out-think a bunch of literal bird-brains and their defenses any day of the way. Hell, Zephyrus always told her she was smart, she should damn well use it...
So that's it then. You're the fallen friend. You'll probably end up fighting them in the arena with the Cosmic Cube at this rate.
Bullshit. They'd never know. This was her secret. HER job. HER life. What claim could any of them have on any understanding of it?
Keep forging the distance. Keep making excuses. Simple, easy excuses...
Sine began overtly ignoring the voice again. She had to focus.
The cameras were the simplest to deal with; the Auspex were a lot like humans and the 'people' guarding the museum were so used to quiet that none of them noticed the slightly altered picture of a feedback look Sine had invoked by attaching a device in the computer room. The lasers criss-crossing the room, visible with her helmet, were dealt with with mirrored floating spheres, a concept she'd modified from a blueprint copied from a disturbed inventor called Jebediah Morningside and usually kept on her to help deal with light-based offensive weaponry. The motion detectors were the hardest, but she'd managed to solve that by jamming them with a signal emitter and one of her computer programs that she used to help deal with inertia, the motion sensors briefly becoming confused and being unable to detect any motion at all. She didn't exactly have all the time in the world, but once she was in position and checked her watch, she knew she'd have enough. So she'd released herself from the ceiling and begun floating down, the mirrored spheres going before her to deflect the lasers and clear her a path to the display below her and the glass-like material that protected it...
You know why you aren't happy. You don't want to be. You want to play the victim. You want to be blameless. You want everything YOUR way. You claim you don't know why Zephyrus did what he did...you even bother to ask him what his situation was when you yanked him away?
The glass was in reach. Had she done this the 'simple' way, it would have been her lone obstacle; not actually glass, it was a dense plastic, shatterproof and highly cut and heat resistant; Sine could have used a modern blowtorch on it for half an hour and not gotten anywhere, never alone all the defenses she'd have to avoid. Breaking through it was out of the question.
So Sine had brought out her fractal cone, activating the coin-sized machine pinned to the palm of her right glove and reaching down. In this case, this was her one shot desperation 'skeleton key', being used on an unconventional lock. Her hand briefly pressed up against the top of the glass case, and then phased through it, the cone tweaking physics to briefly 'remove' the glass...and ONLY the glass, as Sine reached down and quickly grabbed her choice of rubies, the tiny machine only rendering the glass-shielding intangible. She extracted her arm with two seconds to spare, the cone's small power source burning out with an inaudible hiss as the display case fully settled back into reality. Good thing she'd gotten it on the first pass. If the cone had run out while her arm had been phased through the glass, the best case scenario would have been the glass destabilizing, ie shattering and setting off every alarm in the place. The other possibilities involved a lot more maiming and pain than Sine liked; one thing about anger, it kept you from hesitating sometimes if something had too much risk for not enough reward.
That was, in the end, irrelevant. She had her blue ruby. When she had money, she could stop and think. Figure things out.
Oh yes...I'm sure you think it will be simple. You can figure all of them out, when you can't even figure yourself out. Sine X. Cosine, trying to do trigonometry when she can't even see how things add up, subtract...or divide.
Sine would have asked if there was a point to all this, but she figured her efforts were better spent getting back to the ceiling, as she began to float back up, craning her head to check the clear path...
You think you can easily fix the complex problems...that's your THING, Sine. You're so busy trying to take in the forest you ignore the trees.
Which let her spot the twinge at the corner of her eye. Her floating mechanism let her do two things. Move up and down slowly, and turn around. She did the latter, to stare at the Auspex staring back at her, the bird-man's deep set eyes bulging out in surprise.
Like how you can work around all the mechanical defenses you want, but a schedule is just a piece of paper on a wall, and that doesn't mean it will always be followed like clockwork every night. Too bad for you.
"...well, fuck." Sine said, and snapped up her hand.
The Auspex were descended from birds, and maintained certain traits of the creatures. Instead of hair, their heads were covered with fine feathers. They tended towards being tall and gaunt, and their skulls and jaws had an ever so slight protruding aspect, the last vestigial traces of a beak. Their skin color followed the range of human primates, and including a few more exotic reds, yellows, blues, and even greys, the legacy of colorful feathers. Their general clothing was usually recognizable when it came to uniforms; casual clothing could be a lot harder to grasp for an outsider, but the Auspex looking at her was clearly wearing his equivilant to a security guard uniform. His 'hair' was a deep yellow, his eyes a sharp grey...
And he, like his kind, possessed a complicated respiratory system that left them highly susceptible to gas-based weapons. Sine did not do things without a few backup plans.
The orb struck the Auspex, erupting into the tranquilizing miasma. He was asleep in four seconds.
That was two seconds after he'd slammed his hand on the button on the wall.
You blew it again, Sine. You always blow it. That's why you're not happy. You're a failure, and you know it.
As the alarms filled the room, Sine felt her irritation and grief twist deep down within her stomach. She could hear the doors closing; fortunately for it, the Auspex guard had fallen out of the frame of the door he'd just walked through, and hence was saved potentially being cut in half (though in truth, safety measures would have made the door open again before it fully closed, like an elevator). He was no longer the problem though.
She was. She'd reacted to her problem not like a smart person, or a clever person, but instead as a thief. And now she was being locked up.
...Like hell.
Time to run.
And as the doors continued to slam shut, Sine slipped the blue ruby into a belt pouch and did just that.
Go on then. Go run back to your 'friends'.
After all...misery loves company.
And with that truth rattling around in the back of her head, Sine did her damnedest to escape.
-------
"The world is a vampire, sent to drain
Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
And what do I get, for my pain?
Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
Even though I know - I suppose I'll show
All my cool and cold - like old job
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage...
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage...
Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved...
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage..."
Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
And what do I get, for my pain?
Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
Even though I know - I suppose I'll show
All my cool and cold - like old job
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage...
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage...
Then someone will say what is lost can never be saved...
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage..."
------
"Burning Moon, enough of this delaying. Either indulge Sky Song or don't. You know what will happen. Just decide-"
"DON'T ever think of giving me ORDERS, Cloud Runner. I lead for a reason. I've considered everything you said long before you spoke."
"And?"
"We go. Mark the territory. Prepare for the others. Sky Song can claim her own toy in the process, I'm more interested in how the others will react. Perhaps this will finally give us the advantage, Cloud Runner. Perhaps, finally...we can WIN."
"I obey and agree, Burning Moon. Victory is truth."
"Just prepare the Honor Field, Runner. Sky Song has given me enough of a headache already."
This, I suspect...
I don't happen to have a GIF for how it REALLY went, so feel free to submit suggestions.
Monday, 2 April 2012
Rock Bottom
"I hear voices in the air
I hear it loud and clear
They’re telling me to listen
Whispers in my ear
Nothing can compare
I just want to listen
Telling me
I'm Invincible
I'm Invincible
I'm Invincible
Telling me
I'm Invincible
I'm Invincible
I'm Invincible
I am..."
Not.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Stumble: Jammin'
The tennis ball can filled with marbles was heavy in Sine's hand, sweat running down her face as she gently put her hand on the gem, said gem barely fitting in one hand. Careful...careful...
Sine slash-slid the exotic gem off its pedestal and replaced it with the weighted tennis ball can, holding her breath as she waited...waited...
Silence. She'd done it. Holding up the blue ruby, Sine smiled brilliantly, a glean in her eyes.
Then the gem turned into a basketball.
"...THE FUCK?!" Sine cursed, and in her surprise, dropped the ball. It bounced onto the floor, and Sine heard the dull click of a switch before the floors gave out from under her.
"SON OF A BITTTTTTTCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-!" Sine yelled as she vanished into the darkness.
Sine slash-slid the exotic gem off its pedestal and replaced it with the weighted tennis ball can, holding her breath as she waited...waited...
Silence. She'd done it. Holding up the blue ruby, Sine smiled brilliantly, a glean in her eyes.
Then the gem turned into a basketball.
"...THE FUCK?!" Sine cursed, and in her surprise, dropped the ball. It bounced onto the floor, and Sine heard the dull click of a switch before the floors gave out from under her.
"SON OF A BITTTTTTTCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-!" Sine yelled as she vanished into the darkness.
Friday, 23 March 2012
WTF Theater 8: A Request To Steel Komodo
EXPLAIN THIS, PLEASE (this is a link)
PLEASE...what's with the panda? And the super robot cyborg girl! And the 'Excellent!' And the giant and the devil and why is the old man doing a powerbomb and EXPLAIN, TEKKEN DEVOTEE! EXPLAINNNNNNNNN!
PLEASE...what's with the panda? And the super robot cyborg girl! And the 'Excellent!' And the giant and the devil and why is the old man doing a powerbomb and EXPLAIN, TEKKEN DEVOTEE! EXPLAINNNNNNNNN!
Thursday, 22 March 2012
????: Wrath
Somewhere vast, hot, and cruel...
...pain...
THUD.
Agony...
THUD.
My hatred burns through the cavernous deeps...
They had tried so hard to break him, but they had failed. He had recovered. He had recruited. He had rebuilt. HE WOULD RETURN.
The ground cracked open, spitting fire. The waters turned, boiled, and rose to consume.
The world HEAVES with MY TORMENT!
Armor crafted of the metals of the elements, as black as pitch.
Its wretched kingdoms QUAKE BENEATH MY RAGE!
They had dared to consign him to death? HE WAS DEATH. AND HE. WOULD. FLY.
Mountains shattered. Fires blazed. He was back.
But at last, the whole of this world will break...
He knew just where to go first.
And all will burn...BENEATH THE SHADOW OF MY WINGS.
---
VROP.
"All right, if there's any place I can find a blue ruby, I..." Sine said, looking up from her computer at the sound of the distant rumbling roar. "The hell? What is that, a tornado?"
Sine's eyes caught the flying form as it swooped up and then crashed down, the unfathomably black dragon looking bigger and meaner than every single Zoofights competitor ever made put together. His head seemed to be the size of the arena the Bargoers had fought in so many times, eyes of eternal flame and inconceivable wrath looking right through Sine as he began to walk forward, shrieking a rage that would render a world to ash.
"YOUSEEMTOBEOCCUPIEDSTORMWINDILLCOMEBACKLATER!" Sine screamed, and disappeared just before a shattered statue crashed down on her head.
(Felt bored and decided to see how many people I could trick into thinking I had stupidly changed my mind and decided to bring the Lord back again.)
...pain...
THUD.
Agony...
THUD.
My hatred burns through the cavernous deeps...
They had tried so hard to break him, but they had failed. He had recovered. He had recruited. He had rebuilt. HE WOULD RETURN.
The ground cracked open, spitting fire. The waters turned, boiled, and rose to consume.
The world HEAVES with MY TORMENT!
Armor crafted of the metals of the elements, as black as pitch.
Its wretched kingdoms QUAKE BENEATH MY RAGE!
They had dared to consign him to death? HE WAS DEATH. AND HE. WOULD. FLY.
Mountains shattered. Fires blazed. He was back.
But at last, the whole of this world will break...
He knew just where to go first.
And all will burn...BENEATH THE SHADOW OF MY WINGS.
---
VROP.
"All right, if there's any place I can find a blue ruby, I..." Sine said, looking up from her computer at the sound of the distant rumbling roar. "The hell? What is that, a tornado?"
Sine's eyes caught the flying form as it swooped up and then crashed down, the unfathomably black dragon looking bigger and meaner than every single Zoofights competitor ever made put together. His head seemed to be the size of the arena the Bargoers had fought in so many times, eyes of eternal flame and inconceivable wrath looking right through Sine as he began to walk forward, shrieking a rage that would render a world to ash.
"YOUSEEMTOBEOCCUPIEDSTORMWINDILLCOMEBACKLATER!" Sine screamed, and disappeared just before a shattered statue crashed down on her head.
Monday, 19 March 2012
A Prelude: Wake
Two days after a very bad night in a small Texas town...
Sine had experienced more than a few cleaning methods. Being coated in a special gel that literally peeled off you with all the dirt. High grade scourge-type lasers that left you feeling like a saltine cracker. Special cleaning 'animals' that had made Sine mighty nervous. But in truth, nothing beat a good shower.
"Do do do..." Sine hummed, pacing out into her small house on the small pocket of existence that was the closest thing she had to a home. She took a moment to put some bread in her custom toaster, and the custom part kicked in as the Ipod-like device attached to it cued up a random song. Sine got out her hair dryer and turned it on, the heating waves drying out her hair as the song began.
"...hey kids, rock and roll. That's how I lost control. Hey kids, go get high. I can't remember why..." Sine sang quietly along, juggling her hair drying mechanism with some eggs that she cracked into a pan, taking a moment to turn on the burner on her small stove. "Up all night, I waste my time...I am fine, but a day behind...up all night being stupid and happy but the days are overlapping...my days are overlapping..."
Sine, with her hair dried, got out a fork to beat her eggs to scramble properly in the pan (her preferred method), but the fork ended up being used as a makeshift microphone first.
"I'D START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP IN THE MORNING! I'D START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP, GET UP! START A REVOLUTION! START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP, GET UP! START A REVOLUTION! START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP IN THE MORNING!" Sine sang loudly, nearly jumping up on a chair before she got ahold of herself and used the fork the way it was supposed to be used, humming along to the rest of the song. Her toast popped up halfway through, and Sine turned the burner heat down in order to apply butter and cherry jam to the bread before she finished cooking her eggs. Scooping it onto a plate, Sine put her toast on the side and sat at her table, picking up what some people might try to conventionally describe as a tablet to check on her work listings and confirm some payments.
The fact that she was connected to the Cloud brought the less pleasant memories swimming back to the forefront. She had thought about things, but she still didn't have any answers, nor anything to really salve her worries. Still, she'd really left Zephyrus in the lurch, and based on how they'd interacted when trying to deal with that damned thing, she couldn't count on his newly developed sentience and humanity making it a cinch to make her easy to forgive. He was right; she'd blown it on the keeping in touch front. If Sine had any answers, she'd have gotten to work immediately on that problem.
Then again, just sitting around hoping the problem would go away never worked either. She might as well start something, no matter how small...she could unjam her Sifter signal, maybe. Call Zephyrus, have a proper talk...no, that seemed like it would go to the dangerous issues too quickly. Maybe she could organize a lunch...she'd have to see if there was any new Zoofights information...and oh yeah, didn't Zephyrus say Jonesy had a blog? Maybe THAT would be a good small first step. Now how hard could it be to find that blog...
...
As it turned out, it wasn't the trip down that was hard. It was the landing.
-----
"You fucking COWARD. At least the Lord didn't pretend he wasn't using people. You're a manipulative cowardly bitch..."
"You coldhearted, self-centered forevercursed parasite. If you EVER come into my life again, pray to whatever god is willing to aid someone like you for mercy, because I will have none...."
"BUT I'M MORE OF A MOTHERFUCKING HUMAN BEING THAN YOU'LL EVER BE."
"Ahahaha oh god yes it's so beautiful...Yo Sine, I call dibs on your stuff when Jonesy punches your face off..."
If there was one thing David wasn't going to get, it was Sine's pseudo-tablet. Because it was after reading that line that the young woman finally snapped the computer completely in half from the seething rage that had begun boiling three minutes beforehand and had finally hit pressure cooker status.
"...WHAT...THE...FUCK DID YOU TELL THEM ZEPHYRUS?!?!!!!" Sine snarled, before she got up and hurled the wrecked computer across the room, before she began to pace frantically, her breakfast forgotten. The woman was not replicating the cartoon-back-and-forthing that indicated a bad question, because Sine knew exactly what Zephyrus had told them. Or rather, what he'd told them through the filter of acceptable, deserved anger...
Which is your fault.
But he'd gotten all wrong...it wasn't like she'd said goodbye! Or that she didn't want to see him any more! She'd said she'd wanted to think!
You also said he didn't know you at all. After all he went through to save your life and sanity. After you didn't contact him at all for three months.
But...she HAD to think! She couldn't do that with Zephyrus there, not properly! He was a wonderful guy, but he was also so young, so optimistic...he'd influence her thinking, calm her fears, but this situation NEEDED those fears, in proper doses. If she'd gone with him to see Annie she'd have concluded everything would be fine and then one day something might have come along to hurt them again and who knew if Sarah or her mother was going to be around again to serve as a walking pair of DEM's to pull people away from the brink and it would be her fault because she was the one who had to make the tough decisions and she'd chosen the path of least resistance and she'd SAID she wasn't ignoring or dismissing him yeah he could get angry but what the hell did he SAY?
The truth.
No...no. She hadn't used him as bait, that insinuated that's why she had called him to begin with, she'd called him to watch her back, and yeah she'd made a scummy tactical decision and hadn't told him but tactics were not an emotional, personal thing they were a cold, logical thing and it had come to her on the spot and she'd acted on it before she started to second-guess herself because she hated to second-guess herself and he hadn't nearly DIED he'd gotten his chassis banged up a bit the damned thing might not have even been able to really damage him and what damage was done could be easily buffed out it was nowhere CLOSE to dying and she hadn't stolen the flamethrower she'd borrowed it if she'd just used the gun Zephyrus would have taken even more damage and she hadn't RUN AWAY she had needed to THINK was that really so hard to UNDERSTAND...
Then explain the no contact.
"I TOLD him! I was catching up on my orders! Making a buffer! For crying out loud, HE didn't call me either! It's not like I ignored him!"
That's precisely what you did. To all of them. The second the anchors were removed, you went right back to what you knew. The constant changes, the constant new experiences, never the same thing twice or a set schedule. You went right back into that safe little bubble of constant new sensation, because you think if you slow down and take a look you'll realize you never went anywhere at all. You're still that sad little girl who already had her life lived for her several times thinking that everything you do or earn means nothing, because it's not YOU, it's Sine Gallant, or Sine Voss, or Sine Thorsil, and you're just repeating the steps they took. That's why you ran away. Because if you slowly cut them out, then you can have that comforting little doubt that whatever effect you had on them was yours and not someone else's. It's why you never stop running. Because you so dearly want to run away from yourself.
"And what do they think of Sine X. Cosine then? HUH? HUH?! Zephyrus, yeah, I get that, Annie...fuck, Annie...but what the FUCK IS THIS?!" Sine yelled, gesturing at her broken computer. "Who the fuck do they think they are? They think they understand me? That they can just dismiss me and pile on the scorn? They reserve the right to judgment? WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY? The fucking drug addict, those fucking GENOCIDAL MONSTERS? THEY JUDGE ME? FUCK! THEM!"
That's it. Deflect. Change the subject. Self-justify. Their echo chamber might magnify issues that could otherwise be settled, but you're all by yourself and just have to answer to yourself. No wonder Jaxx is so gleeful, and so easily believed that you delivered a bomb to commit mass murder. You're so afraid that you're wearing a mask that you slap on any one you think will best help you. The end result is the same. You have no face. And you have no ability to face things.
Sine stopped stalking around, turning to look at a mirror that stood against one of her walls.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Oh really, Sine...this? You wanna go that way? You wanna try and seek out some fragment of the Lord, some other scapegoat for your issues, claim that's what's going on? Even if they buy it, what's going to happen when you relapse again? What's going to happen when they're right again? I'm you, Sine. Just you. Go ahead and run, you can't outrun me...
The mirror shattered as Sine punched it, her image fragmenting into a hundred chaotic shards. A hundred faces, all hers, none hers.
"...fuck them. No. Fuck them all. If all it takes is a little time apart and one misconstrued incident to bring this up...fuck all of them." Sine raged, stalking over to where her Sifter lay. "You hate me Jonesy? Fuck you, you're a fucking know-nothing jarhead who wouldn't know hate if it reared up and bit you. You still afraid I'll steal your man? I don't have to, you'll drive him away yourself. I know your kind, Jonesy. I know all their kinds, and I don't need their shit..."
Sine snatched the Sifter up and began typing.
ALL ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES SELECTED. PLEASE SELECT OPTION.
EXPUNGE.
WARNING. COORDINATES WILL BE COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM SYSTEM. DATA WILL BE IRRETRIEVABLE. ODDS OF RE-LOCATING DIMENSION FAR LESS THAN ONE PERCENT. PROCEED?
YES.
THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. ALL DATA WILL BE IRRETRIEVABLE. PROCEED?
Sine dramatically raised her finger. Her penchant for spectacle probably saved her, as she stopped three quarters of the way down.
Des. She'd be completely abandoned too. She hadn't 'turned' on her...
Had any of them? People did stupid things when they were angry, let alone when they were justifiably angry. Look at what she was doing, and she probably had a lot less right to rage than Zephyrus and Pech and Doomrider did. Hell, look at Widow Maker, trying to be reasonable, wouldn't that genre-savvy bug know what she was talking about?
Wasn't she just proving them right, doing this?
...but what the fuck was this shit? All this vile, this venom? Didn't any of them realize that she'd never meant to hurt anyone? That she was just a normal girl, with her own problems, quite capable of making mistakes? No, of course they didn't, she did everything she could to wave how special and precious she was in their faces...
To thine own self be true...
COORDINATE EXPUNGING CANCELLED.
PROCESS SET ON REMINDER. THE ACTION OF EXPUNGING SET COORDINATES WILL BE PRESENTED AT THE FUTURE UNTIL TAKEN OR OTHERWISE COMPLETELY CANCELLED.
"...damn it all." Sine said, turning around. She couldn't deal with this. She wasn't go to run off and beg forgiveness, not after what they'd said. Shit...what COULD she do? Even if she tried, who knows what Oceanus and Pech and Doomrider might do? They'd assumed the worst so easily, spoken so freely, okay maybe it was understandable considering their own past experiences but it didn't make it right and that didn't salve the hurt at all...
...she had to work. She had to get this out of her head. She...
You have to run.
Sine felt the same coldness that had laid a hand on her shoulder and guided her away from Zephyrus for the greater good. This time, it wrapped around her heart, soothing the painful heat there. This wasn't her fault. Correction: it wasn't her COMPLETE fault, and they wanted to act like it was. Fine.
She'd live with it.
She knew a lot about living.
Sine had experienced more than a few cleaning methods. Being coated in a special gel that literally peeled off you with all the dirt. High grade scourge-type lasers that left you feeling like a saltine cracker. Special cleaning 'animals' that had made Sine mighty nervous. But in truth, nothing beat a good shower.
"Do do do..." Sine hummed, pacing out into her small house on the small pocket of existence that was the closest thing she had to a home. She took a moment to put some bread in her custom toaster, and the custom part kicked in as the Ipod-like device attached to it cued up a random song. Sine got out her hair dryer and turned it on, the heating waves drying out her hair as the song began.
"...hey kids, rock and roll. That's how I lost control. Hey kids, go get high. I can't remember why..." Sine sang quietly along, juggling her hair drying mechanism with some eggs that she cracked into a pan, taking a moment to turn on the burner on her small stove. "Up all night, I waste my time...I am fine, but a day behind...up all night being stupid and happy but the days are overlapping...my days are overlapping..."
Sine, with her hair dried, got out a fork to beat her eggs to scramble properly in the pan (her preferred method), but the fork ended up being used as a makeshift microphone first.
"I'D START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP IN THE MORNING! I'D START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP, GET UP! START A REVOLUTION! START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP, GET UP! START A REVOLUTION! START A REVOLUTION! IF I COULD GET UP IN THE MORNING!" Sine sang loudly, nearly jumping up on a chair before she got ahold of herself and used the fork the way it was supposed to be used, humming along to the rest of the song. Her toast popped up halfway through, and Sine turned the burner heat down in order to apply butter and cherry jam to the bread before she finished cooking her eggs. Scooping it onto a plate, Sine put her toast on the side and sat at her table, picking up what some people might try to conventionally describe as a tablet to check on her work listings and confirm some payments.
The fact that she was connected to the Cloud brought the less pleasant memories swimming back to the forefront. She had thought about things, but she still didn't have any answers, nor anything to really salve her worries. Still, she'd really left Zephyrus in the lurch, and based on how they'd interacted when trying to deal with that damned thing, she couldn't count on his newly developed sentience and humanity making it a cinch to make her easy to forgive. He was right; she'd blown it on the keeping in touch front. If Sine had any answers, she'd have gotten to work immediately on that problem.
Then again, just sitting around hoping the problem would go away never worked either. She might as well start something, no matter how small...she could unjam her Sifter signal, maybe. Call Zephyrus, have a proper talk...no, that seemed like it would go to the dangerous issues too quickly. Maybe she could organize a lunch...she'd have to see if there was any new Zoofights information...and oh yeah, didn't Zephyrus say Jonesy had a blog? Maybe THAT would be a good small first step. Now how hard could it be to find that blog...
...
As it turned out, it wasn't the trip down that was hard. It was the landing.
-----
"You fucking COWARD. At least the Lord didn't pretend he wasn't using people. You're a manipulative cowardly bitch..."
"You coldhearted, self-centered forevercursed parasite. If you EVER come into my life again, pray to whatever god is willing to aid someone like you for mercy, because I will have none...."
"BUT I'M MORE OF A MOTHERFUCKING HUMAN BEING THAN YOU'LL EVER BE."
"Ahahaha oh god yes it's so beautiful...Yo Sine, I call dibs on your stuff when Jonesy punches your face off..."
If there was one thing David wasn't going to get, it was Sine's pseudo-tablet. Because it was after reading that line that the young woman finally snapped the computer completely in half from the seething rage that had begun boiling three minutes beforehand and had finally hit pressure cooker status.
"...WHAT...THE...FUCK DID YOU TELL THEM ZEPHYRUS?!?!!!!" Sine snarled, before she got up and hurled the wrecked computer across the room, before she began to pace frantically, her breakfast forgotten. The woman was not replicating the cartoon-back-and-forthing that indicated a bad question, because Sine knew exactly what Zephyrus had told them. Or rather, what he'd told them through the filter of acceptable, deserved anger...
Which is your fault.
But he'd gotten all wrong...it wasn't like she'd said goodbye! Or that she didn't want to see him any more! She'd said she'd wanted to think!
You also said he didn't know you at all. After all he went through to save your life and sanity. After you didn't contact him at all for three months.
But...she HAD to think! She couldn't do that with Zephyrus there, not properly! He was a wonderful guy, but he was also so young, so optimistic...he'd influence her thinking, calm her fears, but this situation NEEDED those fears, in proper doses. If she'd gone with him to see Annie she'd have concluded everything would be fine and then one day something might have come along to hurt them again and who knew if Sarah or her mother was going to be around again to serve as a walking pair of DEM's to pull people away from the brink and it would be her fault because she was the one who had to make the tough decisions and she'd chosen the path of least resistance and she'd SAID she wasn't ignoring or dismissing him yeah he could get angry but what the hell did he SAY?
The truth.
No...no. She hadn't used him as bait, that insinuated that's why she had called him to begin with, she'd called him to watch her back, and yeah she'd made a scummy tactical decision and hadn't told him but tactics were not an emotional, personal thing they were a cold, logical thing and it had come to her on the spot and she'd acted on it before she started to second-guess herself because she hated to second-guess herself and he hadn't nearly DIED he'd gotten his chassis banged up a bit the damned thing might not have even been able to really damage him and what damage was done could be easily buffed out it was nowhere CLOSE to dying and she hadn't stolen the flamethrower she'd borrowed it if she'd just used the gun Zephyrus would have taken even more damage and she hadn't RUN AWAY she had needed to THINK was that really so hard to UNDERSTAND...
Then explain the no contact.
"I TOLD him! I was catching up on my orders! Making a buffer! For crying out loud, HE didn't call me either! It's not like I ignored him!"
That's precisely what you did. To all of them. The second the anchors were removed, you went right back to what you knew. The constant changes, the constant new experiences, never the same thing twice or a set schedule. You went right back into that safe little bubble of constant new sensation, because you think if you slow down and take a look you'll realize you never went anywhere at all. You're still that sad little girl who already had her life lived for her several times thinking that everything you do or earn means nothing, because it's not YOU, it's Sine Gallant, or Sine Voss, or Sine Thorsil, and you're just repeating the steps they took. That's why you ran away. Because if you slowly cut them out, then you can have that comforting little doubt that whatever effect you had on them was yours and not someone else's. It's why you never stop running. Because you so dearly want to run away from yourself.
"And what do they think of Sine X. Cosine then? HUH? HUH?! Zephyrus, yeah, I get that, Annie...fuck, Annie...but what the FUCK IS THIS?!" Sine yelled, gesturing at her broken computer. "Who the fuck do they think they are? They think they understand me? That they can just dismiss me and pile on the scorn? They reserve the right to judgment? WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY? The fucking drug addict, those fucking GENOCIDAL MONSTERS? THEY JUDGE ME? FUCK! THEM!"
That's it. Deflect. Change the subject. Self-justify. Their echo chamber might magnify issues that could otherwise be settled, but you're all by yourself and just have to answer to yourself. No wonder Jaxx is so gleeful, and so easily believed that you delivered a bomb to commit mass murder. You're so afraid that you're wearing a mask that you slap on any one you think will best help you. The end result is the same. You have no face. And you have no ability to face things.
Sine stopped stalking around, turning to look at a mirror that stood against one of her walls.
"Who the fuck are you?"
Oh really, Sine...this? You wanna go that way? You wanna try and seek out some fragment of the Lord, some other scapegoat for your issues, claim that's what's going on? Even if they buy it, what's going to happen when you relapse again? What's going to happen when they're right again? I'm you, Sine. Just you. Go ahead and run, you can't outrun me...
The mirror shattered as Sine punched it, her image fragmenting into a hundred chaotic shards. A hundred faces, all hers, none hers.
"...fuck them. No. Fuck them all. If all it takes is a little time apart and one misconstrued incident to bring this up...fuck all of them." Sine raged, stalking over to where her Sifter lay. "You hate me Jonesy? Fuck you, you're a fucking know-nothing jarhead who wouldn't know hate if it reared up and bit you. You still afraid I'll steal your man? I don't have to, you'll drive him away yourself. I know your kind, Jonesy. I know all their kinds, and I don't need their shit..."
Sine snatched the Sifter up and began typing.
ALL ZOOFIGHTS COORDINATES SELECTED. PLEASE SELECT OPTION.
EXPUNGE.
WARNING. COORDINATES WILL BE COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM SYSTEM. DATA WILL BE IRRETRIEVABLE. ODDS OF RE-LOCATING DIMENSION FAR LESS THAN ONE PERCENT. PROCEED?
YES.
THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. ALL DATA WILL BE IRRETRIEVABLE. PROCEED?
Sine dramatically raised her finger. Her penchant for spectacle probably saved her, as she stopped three quarters of the way down.
Des. She'd be completely abandoned too. She hadn't 'turned' on her...
Had any of them? People did stupid things when they were angry, let alone when they were justifiably angry. Look at what she was doing, and she probably had a lot less right to rage than Zephyrus and Pech and Doomrider did. Hell, look at Widow Maker, trying to be reasonable, wouldn't that genre-savvy bug know what she was talking about?
Wasn't she just proving them right, doing this?
...but what the fuck was this shit? All this vile, this venom? Didn't any of them realize that she'd never meant to hurt anyone? That she was just a normal girl, with her own problems, quite capable of making mistakes? No, of course they didn't, she did everything she could to wave how special and precious she was in their faces...
To thine own self be true...
COORDINATE EXPUNGING CANCELLED.
PROCESS SET ON REMINDER. THE ACTION OF EXPUNGING SET COORDINATES WILL BE PRESENTED AT THE FUTURE UNTIL TAKEN OR OTHERWISE COMPLETELY CANCELLED.
"...damn it all." Sine said, turning around. She couldn't deal with this. She wasn't go to run off and beg forgiveness, not after what they'd said. Shit...what COULD she do? Even if she tried, who knows what Oceanus and Pech and Doomrider might do? They'd assumed the worst so easily, spoken so freely, okay maybe it was understandable considering their own past experiences but it didn't make it right and that didn't salve the hurt at all...
...she had to work. She had to get this out of her head. She...
You have to run.
Sine felt the same coldness that had laid a hand on her shoulder and guided her away from Zephyrus for the greater good. This time, it wrapped around her heart, soothing the painful heat there. This wasn't her fault. Correction: it wasn't her COMPLETE fault, and they wanted to act like it was. Fine.
She'd live with it.
She knew a lot about living.
CORNWIND EVIL PRESENTS...
A SINE X. COSINE RP STORY...
"I'm the monster, I'm the creature
That makes you keep this from me
I'm the master of disaster, yeah
I'm the one who, can't be trusted
My intentions questioned daily
Fighting over the story sold here, yeah..."
That makes you keep this from me
I'm the master of disaster, yeah
I'm the one who, can't be trusted
My intentions questioned daily
Fighting over the story sold here, yeah..."
Sine's suit had recently been given a name: Tribulation. It seemed like something long overdue, and far too fitting, as Sine slid the outfit's container out from under her bed, having donned her undergarmets first. The pants went on first, then the top, the outfits merged to become a one piece garment. The boots went on next, then the gloves. Finally, the cloak...bearing the twisting whirlwind. Sine glanced back for several seconds, and then pressed a few buttons on her belt. The tornado vanished.
"Hey, I just don't know what to say
When I got this fingertip stuck in my face
Black or white, had enough of the game
Turn my back, now watch me walk away...
Walk away...Walk away...
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
When I got this fingertip stuck in my face
Black or white, had enough of the game
Turn my back, now watch me walk away...
Walk away...Walk away...
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
Her kinetic orb system, the gauntlets locking onto her wrist. Several spare packs of ammo. Her blade, Fantomas, that had been used to fight dragons (twice) and machines and lunatics...and someone else...
"You're the artist, paint the picture
On display for the world to see
A regular Leonardo Da Vinci
You're the writer, write the poem
If it rhymes then it certainly must be true
Who am I to question your authority, yeah..."
On display for the world to see
A regular Leonardo Da Vinci
You're the writer, write the poem
If it rhymes then it certainly must be true
Who am I to question your authority, yeah..."
The sword went into its sheath underneath her cloak. Its brother blade, Tloque Nahuaque, which dearly needed a new name considering who'd constructed it and what he'd done to her...friends...and maybe there'd been more to the reason than convenience for why he'd selected her and Sine shoved those thoughts into a dark, dark box and threw away the key, joined it. She was loading up heavier on the weapons than usual, but unlike most times she was dearly hoping for some trouble to find her this time. After all, she was destined to be a magnet for it, wasn't she?
"Hey, I just don't know what to say
When I got this fingertip stuck in my face
Black or white, had enough of the game
Turn my back, now watch me walk away...
Walk away...walk away...
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
When I got this fingertip stuck in my face
Black or white, had enough of the game
Turn my back, now watch me walk away...
Walk away...walk away...
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
Her helmet. What had hidden her gender during the start of last year's Zoofights, and behind which the problems of Sine X. Cosine, Bargoer and Many More Things, vanished. Now she was just Sine X. Cosine, delivery girl. It was what she was before, perhaps it was all that was needed to be...but for certain it was was she needed NOW...
"While I fall through the crack, you shove me
You shove me and I scream for my life
While you kill me and disown me
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
You shove me and I scream for my life
While you kill me and disown me
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
Finally, her Sifter. The compensation for her blessursed existence. The machine that put reality at her fingertips, gave her the chance to have the experience of a thousand lifetimes, let her go anywhere, sometimes anywhen, let her be anyone...
The eggs and toast had been forgotten. They would never be eaten, as Sine went out the door. She wasn't hungry any more. She tapped a few buttons, wondering where to go...
...anywhere but here.
Anywhere but there.
The blood began to flow, highly tested and experienced muscles contracting around bones. Her pace sped up, the first and greatest survival mechanism of homo sapiens enveloping her. The realm of fear, of champions, of heroism and cowardice, of discovery and damnation, of forwards and backwards...
Her.
VROP.
VROP.
"RUN"
"Hey, I just don't know what to say
When I got this fingertip stuck in my face
Black or white, had enough of the game
Turn my back, now watch me run away...
Run away...run away
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
When I got this fingertip stuck in my face
Black or white, had enough of the game
Turn my back, now watch me run away...
Run away...run away
I am not your cover, I want this over..."
----
"...Cloud Runner, the disturbance is back! It's pretty!"
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