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..."