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.
Monday, 26 March 2012
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!"
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Interlude: Another Bar
His father hadn't told him much, but one thing had stuck with the Hispanic man: the way to tell if you'd made your mark on life was how much life had made a mark on you.
The man had come to agree with him in the last decade. Forgetting the ropes of scar tissues that wrapped around his arms, chest, legs, and back, age had brought wrinkles to his Hispanic features that looked less like aged skin and more like entropy had decided to leave its mark on the man's face by attacking him with multiple small rakes. He'd always had a hard face, but life had polished its low-key fierceness to a razor's edge, and with his hair still refusing to show a hint of gray (as if perhaps afraid to anger the man), he could pass from any age from his 40's to his 60's, though it was in the latter range that he was actually in. Fortunately, the days when people would mess with him to try and prove something had nearly all vanished; they'd left their marks on him, but he was the one still walking around in most cases. The man suspected that he didn't much mind that fact any more meant he really was getting old. Well that, and of the few dozen friends he'd had when the Change had come, less than half a dozen still had a pulse. But his mom had always told him to not bitch over spilled milk. Though she could hardly talk as she'd spent so much of her paycheck on crack cocaine that the man had been lucky to have any milk at all.
But that was a lifetime ago, several now, humps that the man had gotten over. Still, when he walked into the tavern that called itself the Deranged Unicorn, he was reminded of his age by how much his legs ached. It seemed like not five years ago he could walk all day and still be ready to throw back enough alcohol to render the average man comatose, and perhaps entertain some female company after that. Now he just wanted a few beers and some sleep. Maybe AFTER that he could drink and 'drive' as it were...
Lacking any nearby festivals or trouble, the building's several long tables and twenty smaller, personal ones were mostly empty. The man did a mild double take at the three Ihmensel’jk sitting at one of the tables playing what appeared to be some sort of variant of dominoes. It seemed like yesterday that any 'Ick' who showed up in a human settlement with their distinctly 'inhuman' faces (their skin being various strains of literal, unhealthy white, and their faces tending towards exaggerated, heavy jaws with eyes sunk deep into their skulls and hair that seemed more akin to metal wire than organic filament) would either be there to burn it to the ground or be chased away with literal pitchforks and torches (and the chase only lasted until they got caught; there were no trials for Ihmensel’jk in those days). Then again, the man had once been considered to be little better than an 'Ick'...and most people would say he probably still was. The man lived with it, as he made his way to the bar.
The woman's face behind it looked like it had been forged out of a literal battleaxe, but her expression was neutrally friendly enough as the man approached.
"Have any Warmfang venom?" The man asked.
"Some."
"Fresh?"
"Three days."
"Right. Put a drop in the house brew, whatever it is, I don't care. Got any eggs?"
"Sorry, that gentleman over there got the last of them for the day."
The man glanced over. It took him several seconds to recognize the one-who-had-ordered-the-eggs, but when he did, he felt rooted to the spot. The egg-eater did not notice, as he was cutting into the length of meat he'd ordered with the eggs, putting it into his mouth and slowly chewing. After fifteen seconds of said mastication, he swallowed the meat and took a drink from the flagon of water by his side, which was when he finally noticed the man. After a few seconds, the egg-eater had his own flick of recognition.
"I'll be damned." The man said.
"I think, Rajoh..." The egg-eater said, as he put his drink down and resuming cutting at his meat. "You were damned long before you stepped foot in this place."
"...Can't really argue with that." Rajoh said, putting down a square coin of tightly forged black dirt as the bartender brought him his drink. "Keep them coming, but spare the venom for the rest." With his drink order placed and paid for, Rajoh walked over to the egg-eater at the table, indicating that he wanted to sit down. The egg-eater motion that he could or could not, whatever Rajoh wanted, the egg-eater didn't really care.
"Can I help you, Rajoh?"
"Oh no. Just a very big surprise. You're the last person I ever thought I'd run into again...
"...Caine."
Caine said nothing in regards to Rajoh's comment, at least not at first, waiting to finish another bite of meat first. Unlike Rajoh, who wore traveling clothes (and while his boots were made for walkin', his legs were starting to tell him how much they disagreed with how much he did. Though no one had yet been able to walk over Eutropius Rajoh), Caine seemed to wear a patchwork of old uniforms mixed in with some hunting leathers, and while he had no weapons evident, Rajoh suspected seeing was not believing.
"...If for some reason you're that sore over eggs..."
"No no, I can live without eggs. Like I said. I'm just amazed you're alive."
"Because you haven't seen me for a few decades?"
"Well, that, and that makes you the only one to ever get on his bad side and live to tell the tale." Rajoh said. "You ARE him, right? You're not some blackbird trick?"
"Last I checked."
"...how the hell did you live this long, Caine?"
"My dispute was...settled. That's all that really needs to be said." Caine said, returning to his meal.
"And, what, you've just spent the last 30 years..."
"28." Caine corrected.
"28, just farting around? If your dispute is 'settled', why didn't you go carve out a kingdom for yourself or something?"
"When you knew me, Rajoh, beyond what you knew, I was always a man of simple tastes." Caine said, as he actually started eating the eggs he'd beaten Rajoh too. "I didn't need much then, and I don't need much now. I had enough trouble in my life with one grudge, I didn't need to make more by trying to 'carve out a kingdom' as you put it. You should know. Or did you ever manage to best the golden boy?"
"Heh. Got over that myself, long time ago. Plus I managed to...charm his daughter, if you catch my drift. I'll consider that settlement enough."
"...she WAS of proper age when she did that, I hope."
"Hey, Caine, I'm a bad man. I'm not a BAD MAN, if you catch my drift." Rajoh said, leaning back in his chair and putting one boot up on the table. "No more a real bad man than you, I guess. Who would have thought it? Two old bad men in a bar, instead of in the ground or on a trophy case. Seeing you here makes me realize just how bad the odds were against us. We didn't do too badly when it came to lives, did we?"
"I suppose not." Caine said, putting down his utensils and tapping a rough looking cigarette from a metal case into his palm.
"You know those things will kill you."
"The hell with it, I'm 72." Caine said, and lit up the tobacco stick, taking a long inhale before blowing it off to the side. "And I disagree with your assessment that I was a 'bad man'."
"What would you consider yourself then?"
"A soldier." Caine said, as the bartender came to take his empty plate away and bring Rajoh his second drink.
"Haven't found a war that can kill you yet, then?"
"I've fought my wars, Rajoh. It's not worth it. Look at what it did to the Hemel. Or Rapanga. Or hell, even HIM. It forged him a nice little gilded cage. If I cared, I think I'd enjoy that fact." Caine said, taking another inhale of his cigarette. "Maybe you still like trouble, like the old days, but I never found a taste for it. If you want to get any older, I'd suggest you do the same."
"Eh..." Rajoh said, settling back down in his chair. "I've found that no matter what you do, where you go, whether you're some punk off the street or a Center...if trouble wants to find you, it will."
Rajoh then glanced behind himself, looking at the bar door. Caine took mild notice, following his gaze.
"Expecting someone? Or something?"
"No and...well, not yet I guess." Rajoh said, turning back. "So. Got any kids?"
"Not my preference. You?"
"Well, technically I got eight, but I seemed to have crapped out in that all their mothers don't like me...well I guess Shea's kinda gotten over it, but for the most part it seems it just works better if I give them money and stay out of their lives. At least half of 'em got better dads than I could ever be..."
The man had come to agree with him in the last decade. Forgetting the ropes of scar tissues that wrapped around his arms, chest, legs, and back, age had brought wrinkles to his Hispanic features that looked less like aged skin and more like entropy had decided to leave its mark on the man's face by attacking him with multiple small rakes. He'd always had a hard face, but life had polished its low-key fierceness to a razor's edge, and with his hair still refusing to show a hint of gray (as if perhaps afraid to anger the man), he could pass from any age from his 40's to his 60's, though it was in the latter range that he was actually in. Fortunately, the days when people would mess with him to try and prove something had nearly all vanished; they'd left their marks on him, but he was the one still walking around in most cases. The man suspected that he didn't much mind that fact any more meant he really was getting old. Well that, and of the few dozen friends he'd had when the Change had come, less than half a dozen still had a pulse. But his mom had always told him to not bitch over spilled milk. Though she could hardly talk as she'd spent so much of her paycheck on crack cocaine that the man had been lucky to have any milk at all.
But that was a lifetime ago, several now, humps that the man had gotten over. Still, when he walked into the tavern that called itself the Deranged Unicorn, he was reminded of his age by how much his legs ached. It seemed like not five years ago he could walk all day and still be ready to throw back enough alcohol to render the average man comatose, and perhaps entertain some female company after that. Now he just wanted a few beers and some sleep. Maybe AFTER that he could drink and 'drive' as it were...
Lacking any nearby festivals or trouble, the building's several long tables and twenty smaller, personal ones were mostly empty. The man did a mild double take at the three Ihmensel’jk sitting at one of the tables playing what appeared to be some sort of variant of dominoes. It seemed like yesterday that any 'Ick' who showed up in a human settlement with their distinctly 'inhuman' faces (their skin being various strains of literal, unhealthy white, and their faces tending towards exaggerated, heavy jaws with eyes sunk deep into their skulls and hair that seemed more akin to metal wire than organic filament) would either be there to burn it to the ground or be chased away with literal pitchforks and torches (and the chase only lasted until they got caught; there were no trials for Ihmensel’jk in those days). Then again, the man had once been considered to be little better than an 'Ick'...and most people would say he probably still was. The man lived with it, as he made his way to the bar.
The woman's face behind it looked like it had been forged out of a literal battleaxe, but her expression was neutrally friendly enough as the man approached.
"Have any Warmfang venom?" The man asked.
"Some."
"Fresh?"
"Three days."
"Right. Put a drop in the house brew, whatever it is, I don't care. Got any eggs?"
"Sorry, that gentleman over there got the last of them for the day."
The man glanced over. It took him several seconds to recognize the one-who-had-ordered-the-eggs, but when he did, he felt rooted to the spot. The egg-eater did not notice, as he was cutting into the length of meat he'd ordered with the eggs, putting it into his mouth and slowly chewing. After fifteen seconds of said mastication, he swallowed the meat and took a drink from the flagon of water by his side, which was when he finally noticed the man. After a few seconds, the egg-eater had his own flick of recognition.
"I'll be damned." The man said.
"I think, Rajoh..." The egg-eater said, as he put his drink down and resuming cutting at his meat. "You were damned long before you stepped foot in this place."
"...Can't really argue with that." Rajoh said, putting down a square coin of tightly forged black dirt as the bartender brought him his drink. "Keep them coming, but spare the venom for the rest." With his drink order placed and paid for, Rajoh walked over to the egg-eater at the table, indicating that he wanted to sit down. The egg-eater motion that he could or could not, whatever Rajoh wanted, the egg-eater didn't really care.
"Can I help you, Rajoh?"
"Oh no. Just a very big surprise. You're the last person I ever thought I'd run into again...
"...Caine."
Caine said nothing in regards to Rajoh's comment, at least not at first, waiting to finish another bite of meat first. Unlike Rajoh, who wore traveling clothes (and while his boots were made for walkin', his legs were starting to tell him how much they disagreed with how much he did. Though no one had yet been able to walk over Eutropius Rajoh), Caine seemed to wear a patchwork of old uniforms mixed in with some hunting leathers, and while he had no weapons evident, Rajoh suspected seeing was not believing.
"...If for some reason you're that sore over eggs..."
"No no, I can live without eggs. Like I said. I'm just amazed you're alive."
"Because you haven't seen me for a few decades?"
"Well, that, and that makes you the only one to ever get on his bad side and live to tell the tale." Rajoh said. "You ARE him, right? You're not some blackbird trick?"
"Last I checked."
"...how the hell did you live this long, Caine?"
"My dispute was...settled. That's all that really needs to be said." Caine said, returning to his meal.
"And, what, you've just spent the last 30 years..."
"28." Caine corrected.
"28, just farting around? If your dispute is 'settled', why didn't you go carve out a kingdom for yourself or something?"
"When you knew me, Rajoh, beyond what you knew, I was always a man of simple tastes." Caine said, as he actually started eating the eggs he'd beaten Rajoh too. "I didn't need much then, and I don't need much now. I had enough trouble in my life with one grudge, I didn't need to make more by trying to 'carve out a kingdom' as you put it. You should know. Or did you ever manage to best the golden boy?"
"Heh. Got over that myself, long time ago. Plus I managed to...charm his daughter, if you catch my drift. I'll consider that settlement enough."
"...she WAS of proper age when she did that, I hope."
"Hey, Caine, I'm a bad man. I'm not a BAD MAN, if you catch my drift." Rajoh said, leaning back in his chair and putting one boot up on the table. "No more a real bad man than you, I guess. Who would have thought it? Two old bad men in a bar, instead of in the ground or on a trophy case. Seeing you here makes me realize just how bad the odds were against us. We didn't do too badly when it came to lives, did we?"
"I suppose not." Caine said, putting down his utensils and tapping a rough looking cigarette from a metal case into his palm.
"You know those things will kill you."
"The hell with it, I'm 72." Caine said, and lit up the tobacco stick, taking a long inhale before blowing it off to the side. "And I disagree with your assessment that I was a 'bad man'."
"What would you consider yourself then?"
"A soldier." Caine said, as the bartender came to take his empty plate away and bring Rajoh his second drink.
"Haven't found a war that can kill you yet, then?"
"I've fought my wars, Rajoh. It's not worth it. Look at what it did to the Hemel. Or Rapanga. Or hell, even HIM. It forged him a nice little gilded cage. If I cared, I think I'd enjoy that fact." Caine said, taking another inhale of his cigarette. "Maybe you still like trouble, like the old days, but I never found a taste for it. If you want to get any older, I'd suggest you do the same."
"Eh..." Rajoh said, settling back down in his chair. "I've found that no matter what you do, where you go, whether you're some punk off the street or a Center...if trouble wants to find you, it will."
Rajoh then glanced behind himself, looking at the bar door. Caine took mild notice, following his gaze.
"Expecting someone? Or something?"
"No and...well, not yet I guess." Rajoh said, turning back. "So. Got any kids?"
"Not my preference. You?"
"Well, technically I got eight, but I seemed to have crapped out in that all their mothers don't like me...well I guess Shea's kinda gotten over it, but for the most part it seems it just works better if I give them money and stay out of their lives. At least half of 'em got better dads than I could ever be..."
Friday, 16 March 2012
Sound of Silence, Part 3: Foe
"And the people bowed and prayed...
To the neon god they made...
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence..."
One forgets the toughness of a human's body.
It's easy to. Surrounded by entertainment that is built on the back of the lie of how easy it is to break a back, further surrounded by genetic superhumans and war machines, of half-demons and soldiers locked away under ten different layers of metal, within reach of a woman who knits together flesh and bone with a wave of her hands...one forgets. Constantly observing beasts be broken and remade in forms that, no matter how horrendous, always seem to be functional to some degree...one forgets. The human body can endure such amazing things. Self-amputation. Cranial impalement. The body being reduced to jelly, or wrapped in burning tar that suffocates even as it scorches. All things a human have survived and recovered from...one forgets. Forgets its gifts.
But just because the body is tough does not mean one should try and overtly test it. Limits always remain, and the human neck is a far cry from an owl's. The wrong impact, the wrong leverage, and all motion went away, if not all entirely. When seized and twisted like a crude attempt to remove the top of a soda bottle...
Speed is often the gift of machines, but even the best machine can only react so fast.
Fortunately, Zephyrus had a few unique gifts of his own. Time frozen, and the robot scrambled over and yanked Sine backwards, the fatal neck breaking turning into violent whiplash as the stasis ended and Sine found the strength being exerted cutting off like a switch. Falling into one of Zephyrus' arms, she tried to regain her bearings. Fortunately, her ear plugs somewhat lessened the fact that Zephyrus immediately bellowed directly into her ear as he opened fire with the other arm in the direction he'd taken Sine from. Metal tore through the air, clad in saw blades and pointed needles and spinning stars, and as Sine began to recover Zephryus' arm shifted around before he raked a cutting laser back and forth over the same street, sidewalk, and housing he'd just turned into an elaborate pincushion.
"Can you see it?" Sine said, scrambling back upright and scooping up her Bolter where she'd dropped it.
"NO!"
"Even with-?!"
"YEAH! NO!" Zephyrus yelled, his previous irritation at Sine having fed into full-blown fury at this creature, this damned thing, trying to get around his precautions and turn her into another prey animal. Shifting his left arm back into normal mode, Zephyrus' fan began to emit its own roar, the crystal in his forehead glowing bright before he sent out multiple destructive tornadoes, the air cutting and tearing into everything Zephyrus could see, even as he struggled to see if he was doing anything else besides property damage.
"There's no one in the house in front of us, right?" Sine said, racking a slide.
"No!"
Sine sprayed off her own blast of bullets, the projectiles exploding with the force of grenades, the house before Sine shattering and collapsing into flame even as she reduced the yard before it to a replica of a first World War battlefield. The ground violently cracked beneath her, a spiderweb of shooting out from beneath Sine's feet. Zephyrus looked momentarily alarmed, pushing his friend aside in case the damned thing was trying the same trick twice, but then Sine emitted a cross noise. Zephyrus looked where he'd put his hand to give the shove and then jerked it away.
"Sorry."
"Not your fault. I modified the Bolter to feed the recoil of it down through my suit and into the ground beneath me. Kinetic disruption. Makes the weapon a lot easier to handle...and makes me glad I got my teeth capped years ago, because firing it would probably rattle out all my fillings. You can't see it? Still?"
"No."
"Hear it?" Sine said, putting her back to Zephyrus', even as she yanked out her ammo clip to check how much was left.
"No."
"Think you hit it?"
"Even if I did, it doesn't help much if I can't see if it bled somewhere or didn't hear it scream." Zephyrus said.
"Got any ideas? Besides running?"
"My current idea is cycle through my vision modes faster and hope for the best."
"Expect the worst." Sine said, tapping a button on her finger to call Fantomas to her. The omnidirectional needle blade broke apart and settled into the blade, replaced after a few seconds by a line of burning plasma energy held in a disruptible field. "This will work better...I think."
"...a thought occurs to me. If we DID hurt it, it might have left. Crawled back into whatever corner it came out of to wait another four decades."
"Even if you're right, I doubt you'd just sit and declare that creature someone else's problem."
"You DO know me well." Zephyrus said, glancing over his shoulder. "Sine, what about your helmet? Maybe we can work something together that neither of us can apart."
Sine glanced at her wrist computer, typing two keys before cursing in a low tone.
"No dice. You remember all that panic I mentioned earlier? Well, when I was caught up in it, someone bashed me over the head with a golf club. Wrecked my helm completely. I just pulled it off and stuck some nanites out it to fix it, and it's not done yet. Bloody hell...wait."
"What?"
"I have an idea. You have motion detectors, right? And you're a good stand in for a wind god?"
"Yes and yes."
"You know how liquid vibrates and ripples if there's a slight wind? Blow some air around and..." Sine trailed off.
"Sine? What's wrong, is it coming?" Zephyrus said, jerking around as he rapidly scanned.
"...no. No, I...sorry." Sine said, after having been quiet for nearly ten seconds. "As I said. Try and specialize your motion detectors to detect the way liquid would ripple and then blow some air around. Scan for that motion, and if you can detect it without putting a visual element to it...well, if it's bleeding, we shot it less than a minute ago. Blood would still be fresh. If we can detect it, maybe we can analyze it. Come up with something. Better than just standing here."
"...you're still really smart, Miss Sine, even if you're dumb in other areas." Zephyrus said, slipping into his old title-age by force of habit, as he began doing what she asked. Another old force of habit.
"Thanks...I guess."
"Look, when this is over...let's just touch base, all right?" Zephyrus said, and with his programs lined up, his fan began to spin as he emitted winds to try and stir liquid that was hopefully there. "We can have lunch, invite Antoinette over, maybe a few of the others, heck maybe even open the Bar for an afternoon...I'm sure there must be some opening in your calender..."
Sine did not reply. A second later, Zephyrus realized she wasn't pressed up against his back any more. Blind panic flooded him, and he whirled around.
She was not being snapped in half and devoured by some invisible hunger. Instead, she was now standing away from him, about two dozen feet. Watching him.
"Sine, what are you DOING?"
The ground erupted up beneath Zephyrus, and he felt the pressure close down on him. He bellowed in surprise and rage, wondering if Sine could hear him as the crushing grip clamped down on every part of him. He stabbed his claw in and did his best to rend and tear, but even his mechanical arm found it difficult to get any proper purchase, like the damned thing had an armored side that it used to kill its prey. It surged into his fan, Zephyrus having a brief and terrible flashback to his brother's leaves before he powered through it, the blades trying to slice into the invisible flesh, Zephyrus feeling himself being plucked off the ground.
Sine hadn't gone quiet because she'd had a random brain fart. She'd gone quiet because she'd had a second flash of insight right after her first one. This one, however...
You can't see it or hear it. It seems to exist outside those realms of perception. So how does it see and hear? If it can perceive on some higher level, and actually used such advanced senses to hunt, you'd be dead already. It must need some lower, more traditional sense...maybe it doesn't see and hear us the normal way, but in some other way. What were you doing when it attacked you the first two times? Talking. Making noise. Emitting sonic vibrations, even at a very low pitch. If it hasn't run away, and it's trying to size us up at targets, what would it be most attracted to? How about a robot that's both talking and spinning a giant fan in his chest? Stronger vibrations=more likely target. That means...
Move away from him. Let him get picked up. Then YOU'LL know where it is, and Zephyrus...well, he's a lot harder to break than you.
Zephyrus had called her smart, more than once. He wasn't all wrong. But something that the robot had likely been less likely to learn, even after the social interaction he'd had, was that not all of the brains belonged to Loyal Friend Sine X. Cosine.
Part of those brains also belonged to Pre-Bar Sine X. Cosine. The loner. The trekker. The survivor, having to react to situations as they came. The one who's primary need was to save one's own skin. Perhaps it wasn't the dominant part, but it had never gone away. And when it had spoken up this time, Sine found that she hadn't hesitated. She couldn't, not for the plan to work.
It had. And Sine brought up her bolter and opened fire.
The explosions that detonated around Zephyrus nearly knocked Sine over. Sine's only indication that she'd done anything was the vague realization that windows up and down the street were shattering. That, and Zephyrus was now being shaken in the air like a can of jumping beans, still caught in its grip...
His armor streaked and blackened. The final realization slammed into Sine. She'd summoned the Bolter weapon because she felt she'd needed the firepower. The process had required her to 'swap out' her kinetic orb system, exchanging it for the gun. It had worked...too well. She'd only fired several shots into the damned thing and she'd damaged ZEPHYRUS as well. If she emptied the clip, she might risk badly hurting the robot...
Do it anyway! You know what he's like! Self-sacrificing! Surely he's figured out that you hurt it! He's not dumb either! Why ELSE would he have 'detailed files' of human neurology? He was a war machine built by Dr. Wily! He probably has files on how to damage and hurt organics that run into the thousands of pages! Just fire! Before it runs off again! SHOOT IT! You already hurt him so much, why not a little MORE?
Sine felt the second stretch out, and then she dropped the bolter. Inside the creature, Zephyrus tried to yell at her to not do something stupid like charge the creature and attack it with her sword. Even IF the shots had hurt him, she had no idea where to stab or slash...
Then she disappeared.
It was Zephyrus' turn to feel the second stretch out. His vision wasn't as badly affected as Sine's when caught in the grip of the creature. He could see her quite clearly, had tried to yell at her, knowing and feeling that the sound wasn't reaching her, and then she was gone.
She wouldn't have. She had her flaws, her failings...but she wouldn't have. Wouldn't have thrown him to the wolves and run. Wouldn't have decided that after her choices, the best one was to sever and flee.
But she'd done this without telling him. She'd left him open, a target, so she could try and kill the damned thing. Did she think the weapon wasn't working? Were her nerves so frazzled that she'd misunderstood?
Without constant contact to keep a connection established...was this what she really was? Someone who ran?
The truth was...yes and no. She had run.
But she came back. Bulkier. That was all Zephyrus saw before the fire roared out from Sine's form, and then everything Zephyrus saw was blackness and red.
Pain. He felt its pain. Not directly, and not emotionally, but he could tell from the way it thrashed under the fire that it had never experienced this before. Zephyrus felt himself get slammed into the ground, the heat of the fire scorching his paint, and then he was yanked back up before his body was returned to him, the robot tossed through the air. With a blast of wind, he adjusted his balanced and landed on his feet. He could hear again, his sound no longer cut off by the creature's body. Sine was screaming bloody murder, her words degenerating into formless noise, and in that anger Zephyrus heard both the things he loved and hated about the woman.
But the time for talk was later. Maybe neither of the pair had been able to see or hear the damned thing, but it was not a ghost. It still existed in a natural form, and there were ways to deal with something you couldn't see. Like marking it with paint. Or a laser. Or spraying it with combusto-plasma fuel that had been designed to cook armored insectile aliens in their chitin shells.
"BURN YOU FUCKING THING BURN AND DIE AND FUCKING BURN!" Sine was yelling, the nearby trees and a few houses igniting as the girl hosed down everything in front of her with fire in the process of making absolutely sure the burning mass couldn't flee. From the dull shape Zephyrus could make out, the damned thing seemed little more than some kind of amorphous blob, possessing no defined parts or features, a consuming mass that existed in an odd crack of nature. Unique and terrible, and tragic in the fact that it had to go.
Zephyrus considered the tragedy for about a quarter of a second. Then he primed up his own fire weapons and joined in with Sine, throwing in some electrical bolts and more lasers for good measure. After nearly a straight minute of constant flame, Sine finally stopped jamming her finger on the trigger, lowering the massive weapon, her form finally seeming to notice the fuel tank on her back, and just how much it weighed. Sine's panting gasps finally turned into coughs, and she reached for a breathing filter on her belt before Zephyrus' whirling fan blew the smoke away and brought fresh air in its wake. Another neat trick of the wind crystal.
"...thanks." Sine said.
"You're lucky Jonesy made that thing portable." Zephyrus replied, indicating the Perdition-class flamethrower Sine was holding. "Did you actually ask permission to take that?"
Sine's response was to jerk up the flamethrower and hose down the area in front of her with fire again, her teeth grit and her eyes fierce.
"Sine! SINE! It's dead." Zephyrus said, putting one hand on the burning-hot barrel.
"How do we KNOW?"
"I saw its body breaking up, as best I could. It's either dead or dying. It's over."
Sine lowered the flamethrower again, her breathing having slowed, but remaining deep.
"...when I started punching holes in it with the Bolter ammo, I realized that I'd probably risk blasting you to pieces too. Decided I needed a weapon you could shrug off easier."
"So you went and grabbed a flamethrower. Jonesy's, to be specific." Zephyrus said. "You decided potentially lighting me on fire was better."
"You can handle being lit on fire better than myself or that thing. Hell, I figured worst comes to worst, you could just use that wind crystal of yours to summon a vortex around yourself. create a vacuum, snuff out the fire before it did more than wreck your paint job."
"That the same thinking process that had you sneak away from me without telling me so I could become a target for the creature, hence becoming a target for you, which you also did, by the way, without telling me?"
Sine was silent. Zephyrus crossed his arms again.
"I...didn't think...time was...it seemed like...I was making the smart choice instead of the nice...I..." Sine said, and then she settled down onto the ground, the fuel tanks emitting a low clanking thump as it hit the battered street. "...Zephyrus...am I a bad person?"
"...Sine, if you're trying to play broken bird so I'll resist the urge to be critical..."
"No Zephyrus. Like I said. You've had more life experience since the tournament ended. You know more of people than our little crazy bar circle. You should have developed beyond thinking I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. I want to know what you think of me now. Hell, take the last ten minutes into account, if it's important." Sine said, reaching up and feeling her forehead. "...not sweating any more."
"That would be because the heat from the flamethrower burned it all off." Zephyrus said. "Well Sine, I think the thing that really speaks is that you never used Fantomas here."
"Pardon?"
"You shot at it with a Bolter, you used me as a weapon against it...not that I mind that much, but you did. And then you borrowed Jonesy's flamethrower. None of those belong to you. They come from others, and that's...how you seem to think of others. A source of material. When you think everything's great, you just take them for granted. You don't think about how they might feel, or at least, not as well as I know you could. I know we're a product of our experiences...but after half of what happened to the Bar, I don't expect you to be using that as an excuse."
"...New Zoofights soon. Most likely. New faces and old. I was wondering about the new year. And what happened in the old year." Sine said, looking at her arm. Zephyrus suspected she was looking at the black veins beyond it, the mark left on her by darkness distilled. "Those old days...I'm starting to be uncertain how much of that was the Lord, and how much of that was myself."
Sine's computer beeped, and after checking it, she detached something from her belt and hurled it away, the disc-esque object spinning off into the distance.
"It's not that hard to change, Sine. It comes down to if you want it. I don't really think you want this ambiguous state between yourself and most of the Bar."
Sine was silent again.
"...Sine? You DO think your relations could be improved, right? If you wanna ask if you're a bad person, then you need to know what's bad about you. Because it exists. You're cold. Standoffish. Try and cover it too much with laughing it off. Bad things don't really make bad people....it's bad choices."
Sine stood back up, slipping off the flamethrower's fuel tanks. She thought she could hear distant sirens.
"...there's nothing left we can do here. Hopefully we made sure no one else is going to be plagued by that damned thing." Sine said.
"Sine...what are you doing..." Zephyrus said, a note of edge entering his voice.
"I wish we could just exchange a few sentences and have that be it, Zephyrus...but you and I both know otherwise. Drop Jonesy's flamethrower off, could you? I'm not ignoring or dismissing you. But I need to think..."
"I'm sure you can think perfectly well after you do that yourself. And maybe say hello to some of the other Bargoers."
Sine glanced back at her friend, her face unreadable. A distant form swooped back, the floating disc having attached itself to her helmet to return the equipment. Sine had already tucked Fantomas into her waist before she'd gotten the flamethrower, and she'd dropped the Bolter at Jonesy's house.
"...you think, Zephyrus. But you still don't know me as well as you think you do." Sine said.
"Sine don't you just-!" Zephyrus managed to get out, but Sine ignored him, pushing a button on her wrist. Reality briefly distorted, the alteration consuming the redheaded girl, and then she was gone. "Oh damn it to hell. No no no, you're not going to keep defining the argument on your terms so you can keep running away. If I have to drag you back..." Zephyrus said, as he typed at his own Sifter.
CONNECTION SEVERED. SIGNAL JAMMED.
Zephyrus stared at what Sine had done to be alone with her thoughts, and then he face-clawed so hard he accidentally poked a tiny hole in his rather large metal forehead. He idly wondered about an old phrase; the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.
And how much the flesh really had to do with it.
-----
So who are you, Sine X. Cosine? The girl who only hears what she wants to hear? Who wants others to do as she says, not as she does? Do you really think you have an unlimited amount of slack to get?
"You know what I think." Sine said, standing in the filthy alleyway. "...maybe it's best Zephyrus doesn't know at all."
The Bleed was a dangerous place, even if one treated it with respect. As Jaxx had said, constant exposure turned you into a weirdness magnet, and Sine had been running through it most of what she considered her true life. Never considering the dangerous possibilities, because she never stayed still. If the bad things always trailed in her wake, then what did their number matter? They'd never catch up...
Until she'd decided to stay still.
They'd come, disaster after disaster, to the point where if something unexpected happened, most of the Bar assumed it was connected to her. They'd stood by her, but the sad part was that, in a way, that didn't matter. Because Sine didn't know if everything had already caught up to her, or if things had just started.
Maybe it would be better to leave her friends behind. Let the bad things pass them by. Just start and keep running again...
You absolutely sure about that, girl? Or...is that also the kind of girl you are?
"...to thine own self be true." Sine said. She had absolutely no idea what that meant, and at the moment she didn't really care. She could decide how to care about it all later.
She had to run.
Run to, run away...
She'd figure it out. Whatever else she was, she was a survivor. Maybe, in the end, her own best friend.
Or worst enemy.
VROP.
"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence...
THE END
"...Burning Moon, what is this disturbance?"
"...something carves a passageway through the realms..."
To the neon god they made...
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence..."
One forgets the toughness of a human's body.
It's easy to. Surrounded by entertainment that is built on the back of the lie of how easy it is to break a back, further surrounded by genetic superhumans and war machines, of half-demons and soldiers locked away under ten different layers of metal, within reach of a woman who knits together flesh and bone with a wave of her hands...one forgets. Constantly observing beasts be broken and remade in forms that, no matter how horrendous, always seem to be functional to some degree...one forgets. The human body can endure such amazing things. Self-amputation. Cranial impalement. The body being reduced to jelly, or wrapped in burning tar that suffocates even as it scorches. All things a human have survived and recovered from...one forgets. Forgets its gifts.
But just because the body is tough does not mean one should try and overtly test it. Limits always remain, and the human neck is a far cry from an owl's. The wrong impact, the wrong leverage, and all motion went away, if not all entirely. When seized and twisted like a crude attempt to remove the top of a soda bottle...
Speed is often the gift of machines, but even the best machine can only react so fast.
Fortunately, Zephyrus had a few unique gifts of his own. Time frozen, and the robot scrambled over and yanked Sine backwards, the fatal neck breaking turning into violent whiplash as the stasis ended and Sine found the strength being exerted cutting off like a switch. Falling into one of Zephyrus' arms, she tried to regain her bearings. Fortunately, her ear plugs somewhat lessened the fact that Zephyrus immediately bellowed directly into her ear as he opened fire with the other arm in the direction he'd taken Sine from. Metal tore through the air, clad in saw blades and pointed needles and spinning stars, and as Sine began to recover Zephryus' arm shifted around before he raked a cutting laser back and forth over the same street, sidewalk, and housing he'd just turned into an elaborate pincushion.
"Can you see it?" Sine said, scrambling back upright and scooping up her Bolter where she'd dropped it.
"NO!"
"Even with-?!"
"YEAH! NO!" Zephyrus yelled, his previous irritation at Sine having fed into full-blown fury at this creature, this damned thing, trying to get around his precautions and turn her into another prey animal. Shifting his left arm back into normal mode, Zephyrus' fan began to emit its own roar, the crystal in his forehead glowing bright before he sent out multiple destructive tornadoes, the air cutting and tearing into everything Zephyrus could see, even as he struggled to see if he was doing anything else besides property damage.
"There's no one in the house in front of us, right?" Sine said, racking a slide.
"No!"
Sine sprayed off her own blast of bullets, the projectiles exploding with the force of grenades, the house before Sine shattering and collapsing into flame even as she reduced the yard before it to a replica of a first World War battlefield. The ground violently cracked beneath her, a spiderweb of shooting out from beneath Sine's feet. Zephyrus looked momentarily alarmed, pushing his friend aside in case the damned thing was trying the same trick twice, but then Sine emitted a cross noise. Zephyrus looked where he'd put his hand to give the shove and then jerked it away.
"Sorry."
"Not your fault. I modified the Bolter to feed the recoil of it down through my suit and into the ground beneath me. Kinetic disruption. Makes the weapon a lot easier to handle...and makes me glad I got my teeth capped years ago, because firing it would probably rattle out all my fillings. You can't see it? Still?"
"No."
"Hear it?" Sine said, putting her back to Zephyrus', even as she yanked out her ammo clip to check how much was left.
"No."
"Think you hit it?"
"Even if I did, it doesn't help much if I can't see if it bled somewhere or didn't hear it scream." Zephyrus said.
"Got any ideas? Besides running?"
"My current idea is cycle through my vision modes faster and hope for the best."
"Expect the worst." Sine said, tapping a button on her finger to call Fantomas to her. The omnidirectional needle blade broke apart and settled into the blade, replaced after a few seconds by a line of burning plasma energy held in a disruptible field. "This will work better...I think."
"...a thought occurs to me. If we DID hurt it, it might have left. Crawled back into whatever corner it came out of to wait another four decades."
"Even if you're right, I doubt you'd just sit and declare that creature someone else's problem."
"You DO know me well." Zephyrus said, glancing over his shoulder. "Sine, what about your helmet? Maybe we can work something together that neither of us can apart."
Sine glanced at her wrist computer, typing two keys before cursing in a low tone.
"No dice. You remember all that panic I mentioned earlier? Well, when I was caught up in it, someone bashed me over the head with a golf club. Wrecked my helm completely. I just pulled it off and stuck some nanites out it to fix it, and it's not done yet. Bloody hell...wait."
"What?"
"I have an idea. You have motion detectors, right? And you're a good stand in for a wind god?"
"Yes and yes."
"You know how liquid vibrates and ripples if there's a slight wind? Blow some air around and..." Sine trailed off.
"Sine? What's wrong, is it coming?" Zephyrus said, jerking around as he rapidly scanned.
"...no. No, I...sorry." Sine said, after having been quiet for nearly ten seconds. "As I said. Try and specialize your motion detectors to detect the way liquid would ripple and then blow some air around. Scan for that motion, and if you can detect it without putting a visual element to it...well, if it's bleeding, we shot it less than a minute ago. Blood would still be fresh. If we can detect it, maybe we can analyze it. Come up with something. Better than just standing here."
"...you're still really smart, Miss Sine, even if you're dumb in other areas." Zephyrus said, slipping into his old title-age by force of habit, as he began doing what she asked. Another old force of habit.
"Thanks...I guess."
"Look, when this is over...let's just touch base, all right?" Zephyrus said, and with his programs lined up, his fan began to spin as he emitted winds to try and stir liquid that was hopefully there. "We can have lunch, invite Antoinette over, maybe a few of the others, heck maybe even open the Bar for an afternoon...I'm sure there must be some opening in your calender..."
Sine did not reply. A second later, Zephyrus realized she wasn't pressed up against his back any more. Blind panic flooded him, and he whirled around.
She was not being snapped in half and devoured by some invisible hunger. Instead, she was now standing away from him, about two dozen feet. Watching him.
"Sine, what are you DOING?"
The ground erupted up beneath Zephyrus, and he felt the pressure close down on him. He bellowed in surprise and rage, wondering if Sine could hear him as the crushing grip clamped down on every part of him. He stabbed his claw in and did his best to rend and tear, but even his mechanical arm found it difficult to get any proper purchase, like the damned thing had an armored side that it used to kill its prey. It surged into his fan, Zephyrus having a brief and terrible flashback to his brother's leaves before he powered through it, the blades trying to slice into the invisible flesh, Zephyrus feeling himself being plucked off the ground.
Sine hadn't gone quiet because she'd had a random brain fart. She'd gone quiet because she'd had a second flash of insight right after her first one. This one, however...
You can't see it or hear it. It seems to exist outside those realms of perception. So how does it see and hear? If it can perceive on some higher level, and actually used such advanced senses to hunt, you'd be dead already. It must need some lower, more traditional sense...maybe it doesn't see and hear us the normal way, but in some other way. What were you doing when it attacked you the first two times? Talking. Making noise. Emitting sonic vibrations, even at a very low pitch. If it hasn't run away, and it's trying to size us up at targets, what would it be most attracted to? How about a robot that's both talking and spinning a giant fan in his chest? Stronger vibrations=more likely target. That means...
Move away from him. Let him get picked up. Then YOU'LL know where it is, and Zephyrus...well, he's a lot harder to break than you.
Zephyrus had called her smart, more than once. He wasn't all wrong. But something that the robot had likely been less likely to learn, even after the social interaction he'd had, was that not all of the brains belonged to Loyal Friend Sine X. Cosine.
Part of those brains also belonged to Pre-Bar Sine X. Cosine. The loner. The trekker. The survivor, having to react to situations as they came. The one who's primary need was to save one's own skin. Perhaps it wasn't the dominant part, but it had never gone away. And when it had spoken up this time, Sine found that she hadn't hesitated. She couldn't, not for the plan to work.
It had. And Sine brought up her bolter and opened fire.
The explosions that detonated around Zephyrus nearly knocked Sine over. Sine's only indication that she'd done anything was the vague realization that windows up and down the street were shattering. That, and Zephyrus was now being shaken in the air like a can of jumping beans, still caught in its grip...
His armor streaked and blackened. The final realization slammed into Sine. She'd summoned the Bolter weapon because she felt she'd needed the firepower. The process had required her to 'swap out' her kinetic orb system, exchanging it for the gun. It had worked...too well. She'd only fired several shots into the damned thing and she'd damaged ZEPHYRUS as well. If she emptied the clip, she might risk badly hurting the robot...
Do it anyway! You know what he's like! Self-sacrificing! Surely he's figured out that you hurt it! He's not dumb either! Why ELSE would he have 'detailed files' of human neurology? He was a war machine built by Dr. Wily! He probably has files on how to damage and hurt organics that run into the thousands of pages! Just fire! Before it runs off again! SHOOT IT! You already hurt him so much, why not a little MORE?
Sine felt the second stretch out, and then she dropped the bolter. Inside the creature, Zephyrus tried to yell at her to not do something stupid like charge the creature and attack it with her sword. Even IF the shots had hurt him, she had no idea where to stab or slash...
Then she disappeared.
It was Zephyrus' turn to feel the second stretch out. His vision wasn't as badly affected as Sine's when caught in the grip of the creature. He could see her quite clearly, had tried to yell at her, knowing and feeling that the sound wasn't reaching her, and then she was gone.
She wouldn't have. She had her flaws, her failings...but she wouldn't have. Wouldn't have thrown him to the wolves and run. Wouldn't have decided that after her choices, the best one was to sever and flee.
But she'd done this without telling him. She'd left him open, a target, so she could try and kill the damned thing. Did she think the weapon wasn't working? Were her nerves so frazzled that she'd misunderstood?
Without constant contact to keep a connection established...was this what she really was? Someone who ran?
The truth was...yes and no. She had run.
But she came back. Bulkier. That was all Zephyrus saw before the fire roared out from Sine's form, and then everything Zephyrus saw was blackness and red.
Pain. He felt its pain. Not directly, and not emotionally, but he could tell from the way it thrashed under the fire that it had never experienced this before. Zephyrus felt himself get slammed into the ground, the heat of the fire scorching his paint, and then he was yanked back up before his body was returned to him, the robot tossed through the air. With a blast of wind, he adjusted his balanced and landed on his feet. He could hear again, his sound no longer cut off by the creature's body. Sine was screaming bloody murder, her words degenerating into formless noise, and in that anger Zephyrus heard both the things he loved and hated about the woman.
But the time for talk was later. Maybe neither of the pair had been able to see or hear the damned thing, but it was not a ghost. It still existed in a natural form, and there were ways to deal with something you couldn't see. Like marking it with paint. Or a laser. Or spraying it with combusto-plasma fuel that had been designed to cook armored insectile aliens in their chitin shells.
"BURN YOU FUCKING THING BURN AND DIE AND FUCKING BURN!" Sine was yelling, the nearby trees and a few houses igniting as the girl hosed down everything in front of her with fire in the process of making absolutely sure the burning mass couldn't flee. From the dull shape Zephyrus could make out, the damned thing seemed little more than some kind of amorphous blob, possessing no defined parts or features, a consuming mass that existed in an odd crack of nature. Unique and terrible, and tragic in the fact that it had to go.
Zephyrus considered the tragedy for about a quarter of a second. Then he primed up his own fire weapons and joined in with Sine, throwing in some electrical bolts and more lasers for good measure. After nearly a straight minute of constant flame, Sine finally stopped jamming her finger on the trigger, lowering the massive weapon, her form finally seeming to notice the fuel tank on her back, and just how much it weighed. Sine's panting gasps finally turned into coughs, and she reached for a breathing filter on her belt before Zephyrus' whirling fan blew the smoke away and brought fresh air in its wake. Another neat trick of the wind crystal.
"...thanks." Sine said.
"You're lucky Jonesy made that thing portable." Zephyrus replied, indicating the Perdition-class flamethrower Sine was holding. "Did you actually ask permission to take that?"
Sine's response was to jerk up the flamethrower and hose down the area in front of her with fire again, her teeth grit and her eyes fierce.
"Sine! SINE! It's dead." Zephyrus said, putting one hand on the burning-hot barrel.
"How do we KNOW?"
"I saw its body breaking up, as best I could. It's either dead or dying. It's over."
Sine lowered the flamethrower again, her breathing having slowed, but remaining deep.
"...when I started punching holes in it with the Bolter ammo, I realized that I'd probably risk blasting you to pieces too. Decided I needed a weapon you could shrug off easier."
"So you went and grabbed a flamethrower. Jonesy's, to be specific." Zephyrus said. "You decided potentially lighting me on fire was better."
"You can handle being lit on fire better than myself or that thing. Hell, I figured worst comes to worst, you could just use that wind crystal of yours to summon a vortex around yourself. create a vacuum, snuff out the fire before it did more than wreck your paint job."
"That the same thinking process that had you sneak away from me without telling me so I could become a target for the creature, hence becoming a target for you, which you also did, by the way, without telling me?"
Sine was silent. Zephyrus crossed his arms again.
"I...didn't think...time was...it seemed like...I was making the smart choice instead of the nice...I..." Sine said, and then she settled down onto the ground, the fuel tanks emitting a low clanking thump as it hit the battered street. "...Zephyrus...am I a bad person?"
"...Sine, if you're trying to play broken bird so I'll resist the urge to be critical..."
"No Zephyrus. Like I said. You've had more life experience since the tournament ended. You know more of people than our little crazy bar circle. You should have developed beyond thinking I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread. I want to know what you think of me now. Hell, take the last ten minutes into account, if it's important." Sine said, reaching up and feeling her forehead. "...not sweating any more."
"That would be because the heat from the flamethrower burned it all off." Zephyrus said. "Well Sine, I think the thing that really speaks is that you never used Fantomas here."
"Pardon?"
"You shot at it with a Bolter, you used me as a weapon against it...not that I mind that much, but you did. And then you borrowed Jonesy's flamethrower. None of those belong to you. They come from others, and that's...how you seem to think of others. A source of material. When you think everything's great, you just take them for granted. You don't think about how they might feel, or at least, not as well as I know you could. I know we're a product of our experiences...but after half of what happened to the Bar, I don't expect you to be using that as an excuse."
"...New Zoofights soon. Most likely. New faces and old. I was wondering about the new year. And what happened in the old year." Sine said, looking at her arm. Zephyrus suspected she was looking at the black veins beyond it, the mark left on her by darkness distilled. "Those old days...I'm starting to be uncertain how much of that was the Lord, and how much of that was myself."
Sine's computer beeped, and after checking it, she detached something from her belt and hurled it away, the disc-esque object spinning off into the distance.
"It's not that hard to change, Sine. It comes down to if you want it. I don't really think you want this ambiguous state between yourself and most of the Bar."
Sine was silent again.
"...Sine? You DO think your relations could be improved, right? If you wanna ask if you're a bad person, then you need to know what's bad about you. Because it exists. You're cold. Standoffish. Try and cover it too much with laughing it off. Bad things don't really make bad people....it's bad choices."
Sine stood back up, slipping off the flamethrower's fuel tanks. She thought she could hear distant sirens.
"...there's nothing left we can do here. Hopefully we made sure no one else is going to be plagued by that damned thing." Sine said.
"Sine...what are you doing..." Zephyrus said, a note of edge entering his voice.
"I wish we could just exchange a few sentences and have that be it, Zephyrus...but you and I both know otherwise. Drop Jonesy's flamethrower off, could you? I'm not ignoring or dismissing you. But I need to think..."
"I'm sure you can think perfectly well after you do that yourself. And maybe say hello to some of the other Bargoers."
Sine glanced back at her friend, her face unreadable. A distant form swooped back, the floating disc having attached itself to her helmet to return the equipment. Sine had already tucked Fantomas into her waist before she'd gotten the flamethrower, and she'd dropped the Bolter at Jonesy's house.
"...you think, Zephyrus. But you still don't know me as well as you think you do." Sine said.
"Sine don't you just-!" Zephyrus managed to get out, but Sine ignored him, pushing a button on her wrist. Reality briefly distorted, the alteration consuming the redheaded girl, and then she was gone. "Oh damn it to hell. No no no, you're not going to keep defining the argument on your terms so you can keep running away. If I have to drag you back..." Zephyrus said, as he typed at his own Sifter.
CONNECTION SEVERED. SIGNAL JAMMED.
Zephyrus stared at what Sine had done to be alone with her thoughts, and then he face-clawed so hard he accidentally poked a tiny hole in his rather large metal forehead. He idly wondered about an old phrase; the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.
And how much the flesh really had to do with it.
-----
So who are you, Sine X. Cosine? The girl who only hears what she wants to hear? Who wants others to do as she says, not as she does? Do you really think you have an unlimited amount of slack to get?
"You know what I think." Sine said, standing in the filthy alleyway. "...maybe it's best Zephyrus doesn't know at all."
The Bleed was a dangerous place, even if one treated it with respect. As Jaxx had said, constant exposure turned you into a weirdness magnet, and Sine had been running through it most of what she considered her true life. Never considering the dangerous possibilities, because she never stayed still. If the bad things always trailed in her wake, then what did their number matter? They'd never catch up...
Until she'd decided to stay still.
They'd come, disaster after disaster, to the point where if something unexpected happened, most of the Bar assumed it was connected to her. They'd stood by her, but the sad part was that, in a way, that didn't matter. Because Sine didn't know if everything had already caught up to her, or if things had just started.
Maybe it would be better to leave her friends behind. Let the bad things pass them by. Just start and keep running again...
You absolutely sure about that, girl? Or...is that also the kind of girl you are?
"...to thine own self be true." Sine said. She had absolutely no idea what that meant, and at the moment she didn't really care. She could decide how to care about it all later.
She had to run.
Run to, run away...
She'd figure it out. Whatever else she was, she was a survivor. Maybe, in the end, her own best friend.
Or worst enemy.
VROP.
"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence...
THE END
"...Burning Moon, what is this disturbance?"
"...something carves a passageway through the realms..."
Tuesday, 13 March 2012
WTF Theater Part 7: VERY Afraid of THIS
My friends, I think we have a REAL winner this time.
Okay...now, to be fair, the last several entries on this list are kind of low-hanging fruit. Some of them likely make sense in context (tennis killing dinosaurs, giant enemy crab killed with music) and some are just Japan's oddness (weird female wrestler entrances, JRPG critical mass). Heck, even that strange Marik video makes some kind of sense: he's pretty batshit crazy and that video shows it off in a weird but interesting way.
But this...THIS...
THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.
I stumbled over this when I remembered an old Real Ghostbusters episode and decided to see if it was on Youtube. It was. In THIS form.
WHAT. THE. FLYING. FUCK.
It's like some sort of bizzaro fanfic crossover from hell, except it's not even THAT because it's just bits crammed into an already established episode and...who did this? Why are there multiple episodes? WHY are they doing this? Is this some private internet joke on some back of the woods forum that was put up on Youtube? EXPLAIN, INTERNET! EXPLAAAAAAAAAAIIINNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay...now, to be fair, the last several entries on this list are kind of low-hanging fruit. Some of them likely make sense in context (tennis killing dinosaurs, giant enemy crab killed with music) and some are just Japan's oddness (weird female wrestler entrances, JRPG critical mass). Heck, even that strange Marik video makes some kind of sense: he's pretty batshit crazy and that video shows it off in a weird but interesting way.
But this...THIS...
THIS MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.
WHAT. THE. FLYING. FUCK.
It's like some sort of bizzaro fanfic crossover from hell, except it's not even THAT because it's just bits crammed into an already established episode and...who did this? Why are there multiple episodes? WHY are they doing this? Is this some private internet joke on some back of the woods forum that was put up on Youtube? EXPLAIN, INTERNET! EXPLAAAAAAAAAAIIINNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Monday, 12 March 2012
Sound of Silence, Part 2: Friend
"In restless dreams I walked alone...
Narrow streets of cobblestone...
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light...
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence..."
It felt like being crushed by a giant wet washcloth.
The comedy of such a description was lost on Sine, as well as her spacial awareness. Nothing distorted her vision; she could still see the abandoned houses, the dark sky, the cracked pavement that had been beneath her feet, but whatever had her was twisting her around with the force of a tornado. Sine found her hands locked into their current positions, unable to direct her blade or change its current needle-blade mode, unable to even squeeze the trigger. The only advantage she'd maintained was finding the time to close her eyes and mouth when she'd felt herself get swept up, having previously jammed filters into her nose and plugs into her ears when she'd been less aware of the threat and compensating in case it tried to use gaseous or sonic attacks. As it turned out, it didn't need to.
She couldn't breath, but she wouldn't have time to suffocate. She could feel her limbs being torqued in their joints, the pressure closing down on her torso and skull, the rough consuming pressure trying to crack her open like an egg. She wanted to scream, but then it would be inside her too...
She didn't hear the unique arrival sound, or the loud yelling. Only the vaguest sense of blue light, and then the pressure was gone, Sine crashing down onto the street, just barely managing to avoid whiplash-bashing her head into the ground. She heard more yells and the sound of firepower as Zephyrus tossed various weapons at where he thought the threat might be, and then turned back to his best female friend as she tried to sit up, coughing violently.
"Sine! Are you all right?"
"Jelly..."
"What?"
"Jelly!" Sine babbled. "They're just jelly! It's not my fault, they're just jelly! JELLY!"
"Sine, snap out of it!" Zephyrus said, peering around for the invisible threat.
"THEY'RE JELLY!"
"Du! Ly! Noted! Sine!" Zephyrus said, snapping his crab claw in front of Sine's eyes as loud as he could with each word. Sine blinked a few more times before her vision cleared.
"Zephyrus...thanks. Oh god, thanks. Never have I appreciated your promptness more than...well, the last time I appreciated it." Sine said, pushing herself up.
"With you it's kind of a necessi-"
"Zephyrus, your ocular sensors. They're more advanced than a human's, right?" Sine said, cutting him off as she retrieved her weapons.
"Yes..."
"What about auditory?"
"Yeah..."
"I need you to access every single mode on both and turn them all on at once, cycle rapidly through them, interlock them, whatever! Infrared, motion detectors, electroreception, everything! If you have sonar, use that too! Even if it's redundant, I don't care! Now!...Please!" Sine said, looking at Zephyrus, whose unique face still managed to convey his expression of confusion, alarm, and beneath it, mild irritation. "I would have told you all this before you came, but...well you saw it. Or rather didn't."
"What WAS that, Sine?" Zephyrus said, even as he began booting up the necessary programs. Sine didn't answer immediately, instead yanking the clip from her bolter out to check its ammo, snapping it back in and looking around.
"Do you see anything? Hear anything?"
"Nothing I shouldn't be seeing." Zephyrus said, scanning around the wrecked neighborhood. "God...what happened here, Sine?"
"...you ever think about eyes, Zephyrus? Human eyes?" Sine said, putting down her sword so she could comb her hair out of her face with her fingers. Zephyrus, despite himself, sighed inwardly. He knew what was coming. Sine was never that good at getting to points, at times. He knew enough about her that it was a coping mechanism; she rambled with the idea that the greater outline she could give a situation, the more control she could exert over it. Hopefully her need to talk wouldn't just bring whatever he'd tried to shoot running back, like how her initial request had.
"No Sine. Why?"
"Well...they're quite something if you think about them. A fully working camera, with color, depth perception, distance estimation, fairly decent tracking ability...and when you come down to it, they're mostly made out of water and jelly." Sine said. Zephyrus figured that explained her rant, as he tried to get his sensors to filter out ambient and non-dangerous unnatural heat sources. That was the problem with heat tracking; it was great if you were in some cool underground cave, and not so great when you were in a city scarred by hostility and fear. "Our ears aren't bad either. The smallest bone in our bodies is in them, you know?"
"Sine? Skip to the end, if you could?"
"Sorry...the point is humans are very dependent on those two senses. We have five, but nearly all our data comes from those two. The problem is, they're imperfect. We can't see, for an example, x-rays. But since virtually all our ideas of life come from something we can see or hear, we assume that everything falls under that...what happens when it doesn't?"
"...so...we're dealing with a ghost? Or some kind of alien with a cloaking ability?"
"Oh no, nothing that simple."
"Only in our lives would a ghost or cloaked alien be simple." Zephyrus muttered, and jerked his main hand towards a vague flicker of motion that turned out to a light going out in a nearby house. "What is it then?"
"I read a journal kept by one of the town's founders, back at the tail end of the 19th century. He died inexplicably, and official cause of death was due to mountain lion, but he wrote in the journal about being stalked by something. Something he couldn't see or hear. Not because it was quick or quiet, but because he LITERALLY couldn't see OR hear it. He called it 'the damned thing'. Something that lay outside both human visual and aural perception. Or worse...had vision and aural abilities that ALSO lay outside from human perception. I also found some newspapers about mystery deaths back in the 30's, more in the 70's...it seems like this thing wakes up every 40 years to feed."
"And you happened to drop down into this place just at the right time." Zephyrus said.
"Lucky me, huh? Of all the small towns in the multiverse, I have to stroll into THIS one. The one that's expanded a great deal since the last time. Instead of being able to pick off a few victims from the outskirts, the damned thing came right up in the center of town."
"It did all this?"
"Oh no...they did it. The townspeople. To themselves. Another thing about humans Zephyrus, our brains. They're made up of three parts. Limbic system controls the movement and biological functions of the body, cerebral cortex controls advanced things like sapient thought, and the reptile brain as its cordially known controls all the basic animal instincts. Eat, sleep, procreate...fight, flight."
"Your neurology is actually a little behind the times, Sine."
"Really? How do you know that?"
"I have detailed files."
"Interesting. Well, the point is that part of the human brain is still based all around the animal instincts we still have. They're imperfect, but sometimes they pick stuff up that our more advanced conscious senses can miss. You ever see a dog growling seconds before a threat presents itself? Same thing. I think." Sine said. "If the presence of a superior predator sets it off, and humanity in general has no superior predator, then what do you think happens when the reptile brain goes crazy and human senses can't marry a source to what's setting it off?"
"...they find one." Zephyrus said quietly.
"You see the end result. I don't think the damned thing even means for it to happen. It's just a hunting animal, wants to eat. But if you inject a massive amount of blind fear and the anger that comes with it into a mass of people and have no apparent cause...well, things break down. I wasn't as badly affected...I think maybe due to my less than usual brain. Still needed to pop some tranquilizers to keep rational...made me realize that just because I couldn't see it didn't mean I didn't know people who COULD."
"Like me."
"Like you, my friend. The fact that you're loaded for bear and half the animal species I know is a delightful bonus." Sine said, yanking up her sword. "Arnold said it best. If it bleeds, we can kill it. And considering it ran away when you popped out of nowhere and shot at it, I'm pretty damned sure the damned thing BLEEDS."
"...I would have shot at it more, but all I could see was you thrashing around, I didn't know where to aim..." Zephyrus said.
"You did your job fine, Zephyrus. Now we need to finish it." Sine said, turning around. "Now...if I was something that was effectively invisible to my prey that got hurt for the first time in how long, where would I go..."
"Where did YOU go, Sine?"
"Pardon?" Sine said, turning her head towards Zephyrus. Zephyrus folded his arms, letting a bit more of his crossness come out of his eyes.
"This is the first time I've seen you since Christmas. And Christmas was the first time I saw you since Zoofights ended."
"...I was busy."
"Sine, you're a dimension-walker. If your job's travel was just around the world I might understand your absence, but you can literally be across worlds, and further still, in a heartbeat."
"...between Zoofights and Des I fell behind on my orders. I had to pick things back up after Christmas, especially if I wanted to a buffer before the next Zoofights..."
"And you can't pop over for an hour, half that? You can't make a phone call? Write a letter? Heck, we're starting to get electronic communication which I'm sure you know about, you can't send an email? By the way, Jonesy got a blog."
"...that's...nice? Zephyrus, is this really the best time to discuss this?"
"We're clean. I've checked everything in the surrounding hundred yards, and if anything moves into that radius I'll know and cut this off. So...what gives Sine?"
"...I was busy..." Sine said, looking away from the former robot master.
"Every hour of every day of every week?"
"...I see you've picked up more social experience."
"Some. Stop avoiding the question, Sine. I'm your best friend, so why do I feel like a Facebook friend?"
"You've gotten to Facebook?"
"Maybe...it's kind of confusing at the moment....hey. You're doing it again. Stop that." Zephyrus said, trying to keep his chiding soft. "Okay, I get maybe not visiting Erebus and Jonesy, or Rain and Stella, or Alex and Sarah...but not even Antoinette? Or, heck, ME?"
"...you haven't exactly been reaching out to let me know your displeasure over this, Zeph." Sine said, looking back at Zephyrus, her head cocked and her expression neutral.
"I didn't think I HAD to! Until recently, anyway."
"Zephyrus, I..." Sine said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I've always been something of a transient girl...and the chaos of Zoofights did kind of make me long for a return of those times..."
"Except when you're in trouble."
"Hey, watch it. The old me would be LONG gone from this mess. I stood my ground and tried to fight because of your examples. You and the rest of the Bargoers."
"Fair enough. What about the rest?"
"...Zephyrus...it's not easy to explain..." Sine said, turning back around and starting to walk away. "I don't know...ever since Jaxx kicked the bucket and I got back into the run...there's a part of me that just doesn't want to stand still...even if that means leaving behind things half-built to rot. I don't think it's a major part of me, but I think it wants to be...and that's ME, Zephyrus. No outside source screwing with my head. You should know what it's like when you're coming from a bad situation. Haven't you been tempted to blame every screw up on Wily?"
"...Sometimes. How big is YOUR sometimes?" Zephyrus asked, his tone neutral. Sine ran a hand through her sweat-drenched hair again.
"My sometimes...my sometimes they are a-changin'...maybe you're right, maybe I do need to ground myself...again..." Sine trailed off. Her brain had clicked onto something.
"Now...if I was something that was effectively invisible to my prey that got hurt for the first time in how long, where would I go..."
How about underground?
The vibration under her foot was her only clue. The only indication of what was coming before the street ripped up from under Sine. Until the rough pressure seized onto her pretty little head.
Seized.
And twisted.
"And in the naked light I saw...
Ten thousand people, maybe more...
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share...
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence..."
Narrow streets of cobblestone...
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light...
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence..."
It felt like being crushed by a giant wet washcloth.
The comedy of such a description was lost on Sine, as well as her spacial awareness. Nothing distorted her vision; she could still see the abandoned houses, the dark sky, the cracked pavement that had been beneath her feet, but whatever had her was twisting her around with the force of a tornado. Sine found her hands locked into their current positions, unable to direct her blade or change its current needle-blade mode, unable to even squeeze the trigger. The only advantage she'd maintained was finding the time to close her eyes and mouth when she'd felt herself get swept up, having previously jammed filters into her nose and plugs into her ears when she'd been less aware of the threat and compensating in case it tried to use gaseous or sonic attacks. As it turned out, it didn't need to.
She couldn't breath, but she wouldn't have time to suffocate. She could feel her limbs being torqued in their joints, the pressure closing down on her torso and skull, the rough consuming pressure trying to crack her open like an egg. She wanted to scream, but then it would be inside her too...
She didn't hear the unique arrival sound, or the loud yelling. Only the vaguest sense of blue light, and then the pressure was gone, Sine crashing down onto the street, just barely managing to avoid whiplash-bashing her head into the ground. She heard more yells and the sound of firepower as Zephyrus tossed various weapons at where he thought the threat might be, and then turned back to his best female friend as she tried to sit up, coughing violently.
"Sine! Are you all right?"
"Jelly..."
"What?"
"Jelly!" Sine babbled. "They're just jelly! It's not my fault, they're just jelly! JELLY!"
"Sine, snap out of it!" Zephyrus said, peering around for the invisible threat.
"THEY'RE JELLY!"
"Du! Ly! Noted! Sine!" Zephyrus said, snapping his crab claw in front of Sine's eyes as loud as he could with each word. Sine blinked a few more times before her vision cleared.
"Zephyrus...thanks. Oh god, thanks. Never have I appreciated your promptness more than...well, the last time I appreciated it." Sine said, pushing herself up.
"With you it's kind of a necessi-"
"Zephyrus, your ocular sensors. They're more advanced than a human's, right?" Sine said, cutting him off as she retrieved her weapons.
"Yes..."
"What about auditory?"
"Yeah..."
"I need you to access every single mode on both and turn them all on at once, cycle rapidly through them, interlock them, whatever! Infrared, motion detectors, electroreception, everything! If you have sonar, use that too! Even if it's redundant, I don't care! Now!...Please!" Sine said, looking at Zephyrus, whose unique face still managed to convey his expression of confusion, alarm, and beneath it, mild irritation. "I would have told you all this before you came, but...well you saw it. Or rather didn't."
"What WAS that, Sine?" Zephyrus said, even as he began booting up the necessary programs. Sine didn't answer immediately, instead yanking the clip from her bolter out to check its ammo, snapping it back in and looking around.
"Do you see anything? Hear anything?"
"Nothing I shouldn't be seeing." Zephyrus said, scanning around the wrecked neighborhood. "God...what happened here, Sine?"
"...you ever think about eyes, Zephyrus? Human eyes?" Sine said, putting down her sword so she could comb her hair out of her face with her fingers. Zephyrus, despite himself, sighed inwardly. He knew what was coming. Sine was never that good at getting to points, at times. He knew enough about her that it was a coping mechanism; she rambled with the idea that the greater outline she could give a situation, the more control she could exert over it. Hopefully her need to talk wouldn't just bring whatever he'd tried to shoot running back, like how her initial request had.
"No Sine. Why?"
"Well...they're quite something if you think about them. A fully working camera, with color, depth perception, distance estimation, fairly decent tracking ability...and when you come down to it, they're mostly made out of water and jelly." Sine said. Zephyrus figured that explained her rant, as he tried to get his sensors to filter out ambient and non-dangerous unnatural heat sources. That was the problem with heat tracking; it was great if you were in some cool underground cave, and not so great when you were in a city scarred by hostility and fear. "Our ears aren't bad either. The smallest bone in our bodies is in them, you know?"
"Sine? Skip to the end, if you could?"
"Sorry...the point is humans are very dependent on those two senses. We have five, but nearly all our data comes from those two. The problem is, they're imperfect. We can't see, for an example, x-rays. But since virtually all our ideas of life come from something we can see or hear, we assume that everything falls under that...what happens when it doesn't?"
"...so...we're dealing with a ghost? Or some kind of alien with a cloaking ability?"
"Oh no, nothing that simple."
"Only in our lives would a ghost or cloaked alien be simple." Zephyrus muttered, and jerked his main hand towards a vague flicker of motion that turned out to a light going out in a nearby house. "What is it then?"
"I read a journal kept by one of the town's founders, back at the tail end of the 19th century. He died inexplicably, and official cause of death was due to mountain lion, but he wrote in the journal about being stalked by something. Something he couldn't see or hear. Not because it was quick or quiet, but because he LITERALLY couldn't see OR hear it. He called it 'the damned thing'. Something that lay outside both human visual and aural perception. Or worse...had vision and aural abilities that ALSO lay outside from human perception. I also found some newspapers about mystery deaths back in the 30's, more in the 70's...it seems like this thing wakes up every 40 years to feed."
"And you happened to drop down into this place just at the right time." Zephyrus said.
"Lucky me, huh? Of all the small towns in the multiverse, I have to stroll into THIS one. The one that's expanded a great deal since the last time. Instead of being able to pick off a few victims from the outskirts, the damned thing came right up in the center of town."
"It did all this?"
"Oh no...they did it. The townspeople. To themselves. Another thing about humans Zephyrus, our brains. They're made up of three parts. Limbic system controls the movement and biological functions of the body, cerebral cortex controls advanced things like sapient thought, and the reptile brain as its cordially known controls all the basic animal instincts. Eat, sleep, procreate...fight, flight."
"Your neurology is actually a little behind the times, Sine."
"Really? How do you know that?"
"I have detailed files."
"Interesting. Well, the point is that part of the human brain is still based all around the animal instincts we still have. They're imperfect, but sometimes they pick stuff up that our more advanced conscious senses can miss. You ever see a dog growling seconds before a threat presents itself? Same thing. I think." Sine said. "If the presence of a superior predator sets it off, and humanity in general has no superior predator, then what do you think happens when the reptile brain goes crazy and human senses can't marry a source to what's setting it off?"
"...they find one." Zephyrus said quietly.
"You see the end result. I don't think the damned thing even means for it to happen. It's just a hunting animal, wants to eat. But if you inject a massive amount of blind fear and the anger that comes with it into a mass of people and have no apparent cause...well, things break down. I wasn't as badly affected...I think maybe due to my less than usual brain. Still needed to pop some tranquilizers to keep rational...made me realize that just because I couldn't see it didn't mean I didn't know people who COULD."
"Like me."
"Like you, my friend. The fact that you're loaded for bear and half the animal species I know is a delightful bonus." Sine said, yanking up her sword. "Arnold said it best. If it bleeds, we can kill it. And considering it ran away when you popped out of nowhere and shot at it, I'm pretty damned sure the damned thing BLEEDS."
"...I would have shot at it more, but all I could see was you thrashing around, I didn't know where to aim..." Zephyrus said.
"You did your job fine, Zephyrus. Now we need to finish it." Sine said, turning around. "Now...if I was something that was effectively invisible to my prey that got hurt for the first time in how long, where would I go..."
"Where did YOU go, Sine?"
"Pardon?" Sine said, turning her head towards Zephyrus. Zephyrus folded his arms, letting a bit more of his crossness come out of his eyes.
"This is the first time I've seen you since Christmas. And Christmas was the first time I saw you since Zoofights ended."
"...I was busy."
"Sine, you're a dimension-walker. If your job's travel was just around the world I might understand your absence, but you can literally be across worlds, and further still, in a heartbeat."
"...between Zoofights and Des I fell behind on my orders. I had to pick things back up after Christmas, especially if I wanted to a buffer before the next Zoofights..."
"And you can't pop over for an hour, half that? You can't make a phone call? Write a letter? Heck, we're starting to get electronic communication which I'm sure you know about, you can't send an email? By the way, Jonesy got a blog."
"...that's...nice? Zephyrus, is this really the best time to discuss this?"
"We're clean. I've checked everything in the surrounding hundred yards, and if anything moves into that radius I'll know and cut this off. So...what gives Sine?"
"...I was busy..." Sine said, looking away from the former robot master.
"Every hour of every day of every week?"
"...I see you've picked up more social experience."
"Some. Stop avoiding the question, Sine. I'm your best friend, so why do I feel like a Facebook friend?"
"You've gotten to Facebook?"
"Maybe...it's kind of confusing at the moment....hey. You're doing it again. Stop that." Zephyrus said, trying to keep his chiding soft. "Okay, I get maybe not visiting Erebus and Jonesy, or Rain and Stella, or Alex and Sarah...but not even Antoinette? Or, heck, ME?"
"...you haven't exactly been reaching out to let me know your displeasure over this, Zeph." Sine said, looking back at Zephyrus, her head cocked and her expression neutral.
"I didn't think I HAD to! Until recently, anyway."
"Zephyrus, I..." Sine said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I've always been something of a transient girl...and the chaos of Zoofights did kind of make me long for a return of those times..."
"Except when you're in trouble."
"Hey, watch it. The old me would be LONG gone from this mess. I stood my ground and tried to fight because of your examples. You and the rest of the Bargoers."
"Fair enough. What about the rest?"
"...Zephyrus...it's not easy to explain..." Sine said, turning back around and starting to walk away. "I don't know...ever since Jaxx kicked the bucket and I got back into the run...there's a part of me that just doesn't want to stand still...even if that means leaving behind things half-built to rot. I don't think it's a major part of me, but I think it wants to be...and that's ME, Zephyrus. No outside source screwing with my head. You should know what it's like when you're coming from a bad situation. Haven't you been tempted to blame every screw up on Wily?"
"...Sometimes. How big is YOUR sometimes?" Zephyrus asked, his tone neutral. Sine ran a hand through her sweat-drenched hair again.
"My sometimes...my sometimes they are a-changin'...maybe you're right, maybe I do need to ground myself...again..." Sine trailed off. Her brain had clicked onto something.
"Now...if I was something that was effectively invisible to my prey that got hurt for the first time in how long, where would I go..."
How about underground?
The vibration under her foot was her only clue. The only indication of what was coming before the street ripped up from under Sine. Until the rough pressure seized onto her pretty little head.
Seized.
And twisted.
"And in the naked light I saw...
Ten thousand people, maybe more...
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share...
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence..."
So, I realized something about Erebus...
During Zoofights VI we saw a Bad Future where Erebus ultimately ended up becoming a Daemon Prince, which was represented by this picture
There was something about this picture that always bugged me...and last night in a half-asleep state, I finally realized where I partially recognized it from.
OH NO! RUN! EREBUS IS GOING TO KILL US ALL WITH SECOND-RATE (?) SUGARY CEREAL!
...then again, he could always be THIS Count Chocola...
(I have also forgotten if anyone else made this observation first and I just forgot THAT, re-remembered, and thought I was the first...)
...then again, he could always be THIS Count Chocola...
(I have also forgotten if anyone else made this observation first and I just forgot THAT, re-remembered, and thought I was the first...)
Saturday, 10 March 2012
Sound of Silence, Part 1: Or (Dinary)
What makes you so special, Sine Xandra Cosine?
Cloverdale was like so many small towns. Across worlds, across dimensions, across civilizations carved out by so many different hands in so many different shapes, some archtypes always seemed to follow. One was the tiny world within a world of a town, a little microcosm of a greater artificial ecosystem, where the rest of the world seemed so far away at times and sometimes so unneeded. It was a false assumption, but a rational one. The mortal mind could only process so much, some more than others. Trying to comprehend a world was one thing; a town was safer, easier, more merciful on the senses. Sometimes it went wrong, but going wrong was part of life. Cities went wrong. Empires went wrong. Hell, in more than a few legends Atlantis was swallowed because it had gone deeply, deeply wrong. Being part of a tapestry made a facet of it no less beautiful, no less important than the whole...
Unless something happened. Some things always happened.
Other things...not so much.
Is it because of your unique circumstances? You didn't pick those, earn those. Those were granted by the grace, or perhaps the oversight of existence. Your brain comes from that. Your knowledge comes from those before you who earned it with sweat and blood and tears. Maybe you bore it, maybe you learned to make it work for you, but who hasn't? Widow Maker, Erebus, Antoinette, they all made the best of bad circumstances...hell, your tribulations are nothing compared to Jaxx's. You don't like him for that, do you? Well, that and he promised to shoot you...but it bothers you that someone you find so distasteful for his views and choices has such strength, doesn't it? You know what happened after a week in isolation for you; he endured four billion YEARS. If everyone around you is special, than no one is. Is that why you move around so much? So you'd have an excuse to be a snowflake among the rain drops?
Small towns had their charms. Their downsides. Their secrets. Sometimes they held an unfair view of outsiders; sometimes their views were wholly justified. Sometimes being an outsider was the best thing for a small town, to see what its occupants could not, would not...
If that was the case, then Sine was a failure. She'd come here just to have a break. To rest after two hard weeks of delivering stuff. And perhaps to hide away that while Desdemona considered the loft they shared their home, Sine was not quite so quick to decide it was that...
Your creations? You're a scavenger, a cobbler, a engineer of the reverse, as much as you are a builder and creator. You're like a T-Rex, granted such a fierce bite, yet theorized by some to have mostly fed on other dinosaur's leftovers. You don't really have a lot of things that are YOURS, do you? Is that why the loft bothers you? Filled with DES' paintings, DES' furniture, DES' mess, all things belonging to HER...do you remember Sarah's discomfort at the pool party? How you glossed over that she should be proud of herself, her body all hers, unlike you, with your nano-sculpting and gene-tweaking and who knows what else? Sure, perhaps you like to live life on the run, and use what you have to set the pace...but it all comes back to the same question. What really belongs to YOU, Cosine?
She was sweating. She hated sweating, feeling the liquid run down her face, her back, between her breasts. Or maybe she hated being hypersensitive to it, and hated the fact that being hypersensitive was the only way she was probably going to get out of this alive.
Well, there was another way. She could run. It was what she was best at. Run away from the small town. Run away from the damned thing. Abandon the normal people here to the abnormal, when she was the only other abnormal around.
Maybe she should. By the time she'd started having some idea of what was going on, things had already gone out of control. The houses around her were as quiet as tombs; some had their doors open, others their front windows smashed. Cars were everywhere save where they should have been, on lawns or overturned on the streets instead of parked in driveways. Sine was pretty sure she could see a house in the distance where someone had made a new door with a car. Standing in the middle of the street, one hand clutching Fantomas, the other holding a Godwyn-De'az Pattern bolter gun, Sine felt more like a neanderthal caveman waving a sharp stick and a rock at the dark than any form of confidence. That might have had something to do with the fact that she'd lost her helmet (and all its tracking mechanisms) after someone had unexpectedly brained her with a golf club, but that had been outside her control. What scared her more, deep down, was that whatever a caveman might have been threatening, however outmatched they might have been if it was a bear or a mammoth or a sabre-toothed tiger, they still had a chance. Sine had weaponry a thousand generations more advanced, a sword with as many ways to kill as Sine had fingers and toes and a hand-held weapon that could carve through the average tank, and she still felt like she just had sticks and stones. And whatever was out there didn't have bones to break.
You know what belongs to you. Trouble.
You're a troublemaker. A shit-stirrer. You decide to hang around that bar, and look what happens. Hell, let's be fair and forget the Lord and its 'divine providence', hell, we'll even forget the Neverthere and their machinations. What about the nest, the Praetorian beast? That alter that Jaxx killed? What about Jonesy, how you stuck your nose into her new life and recovery to the point where she wanted to fight you to the death? What about Des, bringing all the madness of the bar into her life when you could have just had a one-night stand, and not being as generous in return? Did you bring this here? Did you wake it up? Or maybe you're just drawn to it, destined to find it or bring it along with you. There'll be a new Zoofights soon. New faces and old. What are you going to inflict on them then? After all, if this is the lone thing that belongs to you, evidence certainly states its what you're good at...
"Is any of that relevant?" Sine said, her voice so quiet that anyone would have been hard pressed to hear it. Considering how quiet the town was, that was saying something.
So quiet. Too quiet. Dead quiet.
Connection between main units re-established. Opening communication band.
What makes you so special, Sine? Because whatever it is, you don't have it here. So go do what you always do. Run. There's more than one way to do it, after all.
"Sine? Is that you?"
"Hello darkness, my old friend...
I've come to talk with you again...
Because a vision softly creeping...
Left its seeds while I was sleeping...
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence..."
"...Zephyrus, I need you lock onto..."
Too quiet. Too loud. It heard her.
It was on her.
Cloverdale was like so many small towns. Across worlds, across dimensions, across civilizations carved out by so many different hands in so many different shapes, some archtypes always seemed to follow. One was the tiny world within a world of a town, a little microcosm of a greater artificial ecosystem, where the rest of the world seemed so far away at times and sometimes so unneeded. It was a false assumption, but a rational one. The mortal mind could only process so much, some more than others. Trying to comprehend a world was one thing; a town was safer, easier, more merciful on the senses. Sometimes it went wrong, but going wrong was part of life. Cities went wrong. Empires went wrong. Hell, in more than a few legends Atlantis was swallowed because it had gone deeply, deeply wrong. Being part of a tapestry made a facet of it no less beautiful, no less important than the whole...
Unless something happened. Some things always happened.
Other things...not so much.
Is it because of your unique circumstances? You didn't pick those, earn those. Those were granted by the grace, or perhaps the oversight of existence. Your brain comes from that. Your knowledge comes from those before you who earned it with sweat and blood and tears. Maybe you bore it, maybe you learned to make it work for you, but who hasn't? Widow Maker, Erebus, Antoinette, they all made the best of bad circumstances...hell, your tribulations are nothing compared to Jaxx's. You don't like him for that, do you? Well, that and he promised to shoot you...but it bothers you that someone you find so distasteful for his views and choices has such strength, doesn't it? You know what happened after a week in isolation for you; he endured four billion YEARS. If everyone around you is special, than no one is. Is that why you move around so much? So you'd have an excuse to be a snowflake among the rain drops?
Small towns had their charms. Their downsides. Their secrets. Sometimes they held an unfair view of outsiders; sometimes their views were wholly justified. Sometimes being an outsider was the best thing for a small town, to see what its occupants could not, would not...
If that was the case, then Sine was a failure. She'd come here just to have a break. To rest after two hard weeks of delivering stuff. And perhaps to hide away that while Desdemona considered the loft they shared their home, Sine was not quite so quick to decide it was that...
Your creations? You're a scavenger, a cobbler, a engineer of the reverse, as much as you are a builder and creator. You're like a T-Rex, granted such a fierce bite, yet theorized by some to have mostly fed on other dinosaur's leftovers. You don't really have a lot of things that are YOURS, do you? Is that why the loft bothers you? Filled with DES' paintings, DES' furniture, DES' mess, all things belonging to HER...do you remember Sarah's discomfort at the pool party? How you glossed over that she should be proud of herself, her body all hers, unlike you, with your nano-sculpting and gene-tweaking and who knows what else? Sure, perhaps you like to live life on the run, and use what you have to set the pace...but it all comes back to the same question. What really belongs to YOU, Cosine?
She was sweating. She hated sweating, feeling the liquid run down her face, her back, between her breasts. Or maybe she hated being hypersensitive to it, and hated the fact that being hypersensitive was the only way she was probably going to get out of this alive.
Well, there was another way. She could run. It was what she was best at. Run away from the small town. Run away from the damned thing. Abandon the normal people here to the abnormal, when she was the only other abnormal around.
Maybe she should. By the time she'd started having some idea of what was going on, things had already gone out of control. The houses around her were as quiet as tombs; some had their doors open, others their front windows smashed. Cars were everywhere save where they should have been, on lawns or overturned on the streets instead of parked in driveways. Sine was pretty sure she could see a house in the distance where someone had made a new door with a car. Standing in the middle of the street, one hand clutching Fantomas, the other holding a Godwyn-De'az Pattern bolter gun, Sine felt more like a neanderthal caveman waving a sharp stick and a rock at the dark than any form of confidence. That might have had something to do with the fact that she'd lost her helmet (and all its tracking mechanisms) after someone had unexpectedly brained her with a golf club, but that had been outside her control. What scared her more, deep down, was that whatever a caveman might have been threatening, however outmatched they might have been if it was a bear or a mammoth or a sabre-toothed tiger, they still had a chance. Sine had weaponry a thousand generations more advanced, a sword with as many ways to kill as Sine had fingers and toes and a hand-held weapon that could carve through the average tank, and she still felt like she just had sticks and stones. And whatever was out there didn't have bones to break.
You know what belongs to you. Trouble.
You're a troublemaker. A shit-stirrer. You decide to hang around that bar, and look what happens. Hell, let's be fair and forget the Lord and its 'divine providence', hell, we'll even forget the Neverthere and their machinations. What about the nest, the Praetorian beast? That alter that Jaxx killed? What about Jonesy, how you stuck your nose into her new life and recovery to the point where she wanted to fight you to the death? What about Des, bringing all the madness of the bar into her life when you could have just had a one-night stand, and not being as generous in return? Did you bring this here? Did you wake it up? Or maybe you're just drawn to it, destined to find it or bring it along with you. There'll be a new Zoofights soon. New faces and old. What are you going to inflict on them then? After all, if this is the lone thing that belongs to you, evidence certainly states its what you're good at...
"Is any of that relevant?" Sine said, her voice so quiet that anyone would have been hard pressed to hear it. Considering how quiet the town was, that was saying something.
So quiet. Too quiet. Dead quiet.
Connection between main units re-established. Opening communication band.
What makes you so special, Sine? Because whatever it is, you don't have it here. So go do what you always do. Run. There's more than one way to do it, after all.
"Sine? Is that you?"
"Hello darkness, my old friend...
I've come to talk with you again...
Because a vision softly creeping...
Left its seeds while I was sleeping...
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence..."
"...Zephyrus, I need you lock onto..."
Too quiet. Too loud. It heard her.
It was on her.
Friday, 9 March 2012
What If: Mobius Rip
"Was it really wise to...wait, haven't I done this already?"
"You're not a good kitty! You're a bad kitty!"
"...Cassandra...why are you...how did...why did YOU absorb the crystal of fire, HOW did you absorb the crystal of...I...this makes no sense and...fine. If you stand before me girl, you'll fall like the rest."
"Accursed stun locking...Cornwind, stop being lazy and write those darn Sine stories..."
"You're not a good kitty! You're a bad kitty!"
"...Cassandra...why are you...how did...why did YOU absorb the crystal of fire, HOW did you absorb the crystal of...I...this makes no sense and...fine. If you stand before me girl, you'll fall like the rest."
"Accursed stun locking...Cornwind, stop being lazy and write those darn Sine stories..."
What If: The Devoured Day
"Was it really wise to come alone, Erebus Svilzerian?"
"You're a shadow of your former self, you wretched piece of excrement. I'm all that's needed."
"My power grows by the minute. Soon history will repeat itself, save for one crucial difference."
"I think you will find history is not as much on your side as you think."
"You would claim that? You? Have you ever really considered what you are, Astartes?"
"I care not for your opinion."
"You are a butcher, a monster, a fiend. You spent eons locating the weakest, most vulnerable targets, and then killing them to the last man, woman, and child. But that wasn't enough, oh no. You would terrify them first, rain screams and promises of unbelievable hells down on them, and then descend to do your murdering. You CHOSE to do this. For EONS. For what purpose? For your father? For an Emperor who was so divinely grand and yet couldn't even figure out how to talk to his sons? You really think a few years of suffering and trial makes up for it? You really think you can change? For your choices, Erebus of Nostromo, I know this as surely as the fact you're confused by how long this sentence seems without you reacting due to its psychic nature. Your father was a fool. YOU are a fool. And for spending untold years slaughtering the defenseless, my crimes, as your lot would call them, pale in comparison. IF ANYONE HERE IS A TRUE NIGHT LORD, IT'S ME."
"...there will be nothing left of you but ASH."
"Burn me if you can, Astartes..."
"But nothing can change the past...and the future holds no kindness for our lot..."
"You're a shadow of your former self, you wretched piece of excrement. I'm all that's needed."
"My power grows by the minute. Soon history will repeat itself, save for one crucial difference."
"I think you will find history is not as much on your side as you think."
"You would claim that? You? Have you ever really considered what you are, Astartes?"
"I care not for your opinion."
"You are a butcher, a monster, a fiend. You spent eons locating the weakest, most vulnerable targets, and then killing them to the last man, woman, and child. But that wasn't enough, oh no. You would terrify them first, rain screams and promises of unbelievable hells down on them, and then descend to do your murdering. You CHOSE to do this. For EONS. For what purpose? For your father? For an Emperor who was so divinely grand and yet couldn't even figure out how to talk to his sons? You really think a few years of suffering and trial makes up for it? You really think you can change? For your choices, Erebus of Nostromo, I know this as surely as the fact you're confused by how long this sentence seems without you reacting due to its psychic nature. Your father was a fool. YOU are a fool. And for spending untold years slaughtering the defenseless, my crimes, as your lot would call them, pale in comparison. IF ANYONE HERE IS A TRUE NIGHT LORD, IT'S ME."
"...there will be nothing left of you but ASH."
"Burn me if you can, Astartes..."
"But nothing can change the past...and the future holds no kindness for our lot..."
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
WTF Theater Part 6: Space Case
...yeahbuhwuh?
After a little more watching, apparently all of these 'Star intros' fall under WTF Theater. This is just the first one I stumbled over.
After a little more watching, apparently all of these 'Star intros' fall under WTF Theater. This is just the first one I stumbled over.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
WTF Theater Part 5: Helder zur Hälfte Shell
This is actually a good WTF theater. A show that came out in the tail end of the 80's, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has a very familiar theme I'm sure several readers could recite or at least hum along to. Lo and behold, I recently discovered this.
The strangely metal GERMAN version of the intro theme. Schildkröte-Energie!
The strangely metal GERMAN version of the intro theme. Schildkröte-Energie!
Friday, 2 March 2012
What If: The Poison Tomorrow
"So you've come, Space Marine...how predictable."
"No moreso than the Lord empowering another pathetic specimen who wouldn't understand true combat if it bit him."
"Decry the master all you want. He is the one tearing your city to shreds. Again. This time it will stick."
"My allies will turn back his efforts. And I will leave nothing but ash, this time. You will merely be what I sharpen my claws on."
"The claws you no longer have, after the master trapped you in that mortal shell? I will give you credit for fusing with your crystal of fire, Space Marine...but it will not help you. You're merely an element. I am the essence of genocide. I am Massacre, and you will not pass."
"Fall silent until the time comes to die, whorespawn."
"Then let this be your final lesson, Erebus of the Night Lords. Your name is false."
"NO. YOURS IS."
"No moreso than the Lord empowering another pathetic specimen who wouldn't understand true combat if it bit him."
"Decry the master all you want. He is the one tearing your city to shreds. Again. This time it will stick."
"My allies will turn back his efforts. And I will leave nothing but ash, this time. You will merely be what I sharpen my claws on."
"The claws you no longer have, after the master trapped you in that mortal shell? I will give you credit for fusing with your crystal of fire, Space Marine...but it will not help you. You're merely an element. I am the essence of genocide. I am Massacre, and you will not pass."
"Fall silent until the time comes to die, whorespawn."
"Then let this be your final lesson, Erebus of the Night Lords. Your name is false."
"NO. YOURS IS."
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