I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
"General Dragon, Emperor Tyrog, I'm afraid your surrender is postponed indefinitely." a deep and pleasant-sounding voice said from behind the pair, its source hidden from sight by their massive figures. "I do hope you'll forgive the delay. We were not yet aware of our status as allies until an hour ago, and it took some time to remove the shield."
"Now then, if you will allow me... or not, you've no choice in this matter, honestly."
Crow stepped from behind them, a fan of feathers in one hand as he looked down cooly at the Unifiers. He wore no visible robes, but instead a black and white kimono with a black hakama, black hooded haori, and a pair of very tall, single-toothed geta.
He bowed at the waist to the Unifiers, then rose and drew himself into a pose that brought to mind grace and ceremony.
A smooth motion with the arm that held his fan brought it up to meet the other, and then with hands together, he gave a powerful movement. The wind from his fan bisected the Unifiers to one side. He snapped the fan closed, then pointed it at the leader of the present and remaining Unifiers.
"Surrender!" he ordered in a crash of thunder.
"Surrender!" echoed a great host behind the Unifiers—Hunters, all bearing arms and armor.
"Surrender," demanded a new voice—a voice from the memories of Martin, Balthezar, and Tyrog. Elizabeth's voice spoke through the speakers of the nearby Unifier craft, "Surrender, Unifiers, and despair!"
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Coastal Kitties
A continuation of "Chocolate Chip Chat"
Warning: emotional trauma
Juni shrieked as he ran through the waves wearing a life vest. His little feet sank into the sand as he fled from Elizabeth's fingers that threatened his sides with tickles behind the cloth-covered foam construction.
"Noooo!" He shrieked as he felt her hands close around his middle, a grin on his face as she lifted him, then planted firm kisses on his cheeks and face as he laughed.
Poppy giggled as she watched from the pier, toes dipped into the water as she wore an orange and pink spotted bikini that contrasted heavily with her mother's new-purchased black one-piece.
The younger woman yawned and looked toward the direction her mother glanced in often.
Falren would arrive any time now, and once more he'd have no idea she was his daughter.
She forced a deep breath as she caught sight of a truck that could only be his, then looked around for a place she could change as she felt her courage flee.
"Mum, how do you stand it?" she asked in a whisper, eyes locked on the vehicle.
Elizabeth paused in her play with Juni and looked up the hill, then toward her daughter. "You don't have to force yourself, young cat."
Poppy rose, then darted toward a nearby shed. The feline that emerged had an orange and pink spotted collar with a little golden heart bearing her own name and her mother's phone number on the back. She returned with her tail tucked, then sat on the pier once more, hunched with nerves as wide pupils watched the approach.
⋯﴾⛧﴿⋯
The kids were tended to. Poppy knew to see to Juni tonight, much as Elizabeth's guilt dug at her for it.
Still, she couldn't help that there was a man with a mustache asleep beside her, pinning one of her arms. She couldn't help either how she remembered the first time they slept together in such a position—nor could she help but to remember that he didn't.
As she watched him, she felt a tear slide out the corner of one eye, and then the pillow pulled it from her after it slid nearly to her hairline.
Her vision began to blur in both eyes as she watched the man sleep, her rapid-forming and rapid-falling tears cutting two lines down her deceptively unaffected expression.
In her mind, doubts and uncertainties danced with truths so easily she couldn't tell them apart.
All of those memories—the good, the bad, the warm, the cold, the hurtful, and the healing—those were hers alone now. The man asleep on her arm, nestled in its crook and resting his head on her chest—he sacrificed them to save existence itself.
To protect the very thing she was sworn to protect.
She'd also sworn to protect him, and she'd not been there to try to find a different solution. She'd not been there to even offer him a goodbye or comfort.
Her throat tightened, as did her grip on the man as she buried her face into his salt-and-pepper hair, and her long nose introduced one of her tears to his scalp, and another joined it as the fat drops of liquid continued their march along the path of gravity.
He didn't remember his daughter, or how he'd unknowingly plowed and planted a seed within his own child that withered before birth—the last to die before Penelope's life was preserved.
He didn't remember the night in that seedy hotel where they drunkenly joined, nor how they discovered and adopted his 'brother'. He didn't remember the times she snuck away with him to 'teach him magic' as an excuse to spend time with him in private, nor the random times she'd asked him and Jerry to dress in something silly just so she could remove it from them after she'd gotten enough of an eyeful.
He didn't remember the night he left her after he discovered her affections for another man, either.
Elizabeth forced a deep breath to try to banish the thoughts that swirled in her mind, but they remained firmly in place. To distract herself, she lifted her free hand and ran her thumb along Falren's mustache gently, and then over his cheekbone as her hand rested on the side of his face.
Sinclair called him the most constant man he'd ever encountered. So many things had changed, but even without memories, the man's core remained.
His scent in her nose was not a memory—it was real. He still smelled like a hero.
Gentle fingernails combed through the man's hair as the pressure to sob eased from her throat, and heavy eyelids finally slid shut.
Her lips pushed forward to press a kiss against his tear-dampened scalp, and she drifted to dreams, wondering absently how he might react if he knew Juni's real name was the same as his own.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Discard's Desolation
A sequel to "Sanctuary from Sin"
Warning: emotional trauma, death
"Ah'm gonna shove mah... finger... inis... inis mouth... soon's Ah... see... 'im again," Ozy slurred as she stepped forward. Her legs cried out in pain as she moved them, but despite their protests, she simply kept forward, too stubborn to stop in her search for...
She paused as she tried to remember what it was, and a moment later, she remembered and forced her feet forward again.
A man.
Not any mere man. A man with secrets, history, and knowledge to drown thousands of universes, and the curiosity to withhold it so he could watch the natural development of existence around him.
And yet, in such a powerful and ancient being, there was so much more. She'd seen it in a dream—a glimpse. She'd seen it again and again, and there wasn't a word she knew that could describe it precisely.
The best she could do was describe how his mannerisms were not those of confidence, but of fact, to elaborate that he only 'noticed' her when something happened to catch his attention, and then to explain how he held her and didn't let go from the moment he discovered the source of her grief.
He'd let go only when a deeper love appeared before him, and it was with an apology, and she'd understood.
Or so she'd thought.
She could describe things she'd observed—mannerisms and actions, and how the electricity and chemicals moved through his brain. There was too much that couldn't be confined to words, but she craved him, even now when she should have craved food and water and shelter.
He was the first person she'd met who didn't feel for her, but with her. A sort-of brother.
Her thoughts swirled lazily, trying to pinpoint her own feelings because she had nothing else to occupy her own vast mind.
One foot caught in a deep pit of the igneous stone underfoot, and her head slammed down against the large sheet of volcanic rock that marked the entire area.
Her locket bounced against the loose skin of her deflated breasts. Blood dripped along her scalp—it no longer unnerved her like it did the first few times. Instead, the gentle tickle soothed and relaxed her, like a finger tracing a line through her hair, in contrast to the sun-heated silver of a hoop earring that rested against her neck.
A brief sob escaped, and then a "Damniddall, Siyn" slid from her lips. The slurred utterance met no ears but her own.
As moments slid by her stunned stupor, her vision blackened. Ozy didn't know if she closed her eyes or not. She felt her limbs deaden and braced herself for the inevitable discomfort of her organs failing.
Filling. Fall... Fal... ren...?
The vague question of what she'd been thinking about drifted through, but she couldn't trace the connections back even a singular link.
More nonsensical thoughts came and went, flickering in and out as she began to feel her organs shut down, but the disjointed and dream-like train of ideas and words in her mind distracted her.
She woke more than once. An exact count evaded her, but she didn't recognize the terrain.
Ozy's unsteady, near-skeletal arms pulled her forward as her legs pushed, scraping across the hot, igneous plane of stone. It burned and pulled at forming blisters on her flesh, and consciousness came and went until she lost track of time's passage.
Sometimes there was painful brightness. Others, bitter-cold darkness.
She didn't notice that sometimes, she remained dead longer than others.
Finally, she stopped waking.
⋯﴾⛧﴿⋯
A skeletal woman rested on a throne of black and pitted igneous rock. Scraps of cloth hung from her body, and one looked ready to fall from her hair. Silver loops hung from her ears and a necklace around her neck, finer and more pure than could have been made by the culture who carved her throne and decorated the temple built around it.
The stone-age, heavily-decorated spears that hung from their resting places in her torso resembled the quills of a porcupine.
Archaeologists used hand-held scanners to check the ancient mummy and her surroundings for radiation and abnormalities before they dared to approach. Gloved hands began to inspect her.
"Still flexible," one remarked in an awed whisper as he manipulated one of the mummy's hands.
A woman laughed quietly behind her mask as she ran her own gloved hand across the mummy's abdomen, testing gently for changes within. "She always is. It's hard to believe she hasn't deteriorated at all since her discovery four hundred years—"
"Three hundred eighty six years." The third voice sounded disinterested, but his eyes remained firmly glued to the mummy as he stood apart from the rest.
"—Ago," the woman finished after she watched the man in annoyance for several seconds.
"I never thought I'd get a chance to see her in person," the first speaker said, "Not in a million years."
"Well," the older woman said as she finished her abdominal inspection, "Let's finish quickly. Count the spears and then check her scalp. You'll have to use the stool I told you to bring and stand behind the throne."
The young man looked toward the bored man and his colleagues—journalists wanting to publish a story about the ancient mummy. He only watched for a moment before, with a "Yes, Doctor Banks," he began to count the spears.
"Two. Four. Six. Eight, ten, twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen... Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen... and a cluster of three makes twenty-two."
He stopped short and frowned as he ran out of spears, then counted again, one at a time, as he used his other hand to keep track of which he'd already counted.
"Doctor, there are twenty-two here," he said finally.
A camera's shutter went off, and he began to count again as the more experienced of the pair lifted her attention from the dead woman's leg, and she squinted as she began to count, herself. Once, twice, and thrice.
She rose suddenly and walked away as she pulled out her radio. "Inspect the camp and surrounding area. We have two spears missing from Gerarda Hingan. I want a list of anyone who have been in the area in the past two days!"
"Doctor?" her assistant asked in an unsteady voice.
She didn't respond to him, instead making another demand into her radio, "We have surveillance footage, right?"
"Doctor!"
"What!?" she snapped as she turned, but stopped abruptly to stare slack-jawed as her eyes widened.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Ozy wiped her hands on a greasy rag, then stuffed it partway into the pocket of the work pants she'd let Sin pick out for her—she didn't know which ones were brown. Clothing dyes were a hassle to try to identify what absorbed what colors of light. While they were temporarily trapped in this universe, she took on a side job in the repair field. She got first pick of scrap parts this way, plus made plenty enough to support herself and Sin—and almost any endeavor they decided on. Her reputation for seeing to the heart of any mechanical issue quickly allowed her to up her rates to the point she could take a few charity cases now and then, and though the work itself wasn't stimulating, dealing with the people could be very entertaining.
"Lucy, Ah'm home!" the woman called as she reached up the back of her shirt, ready to undo the clasps of her bra, only to stop as she remembered something.
"Was a good day workin'. Got some shiny parts'll be comin' in shortly. Y'might like some of the materials they're made outta," she babbled, then grinned as she rounded the corner to the room she saw him inside, "Oh, an' git dressed. We're goin' out, 'less you cain't stop whatcher workin' on. Found a neat thing Ah wanna try out, an' I ain't sure, but it seems like th'sorta weird thing you'd wanna 'sperience fer yerself."
As she spoke, she allowed one of her legs to bounce. Ever since she'd put on a healthy weight and worked at regaining muscle enough to have some endurance and strength, it was hard to stop moving if she didn't have enough mental stimulation.
"If y'ain't free fer it now, we kin try our hands at bein' skymanta pilots t'morrow, assumin' their crew don't skip town bah then."
The former empress's broad, proud grin gave away what her words didn't: she'd been asking around about interesting things to do again. Everywhere they went, she sought things she'd never done or seen before. She took things apart, broke them, tried to fix them, all with an eager joy that left her complaining about cheek pain later.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
"I Do Desire We May Be Better Strangers."
Inspired by an image.
This is an exploration of the relationship between Troy and Elizabeth.
Warning: sexism, bullying
"Elizabeth!" Troy snapped as he shoved the door open and charged through, "Where is the budget for this month!?"
Elizabeth looked up from her desk, and her crows feet deepened sharply at the sudden intrusion.
"Troy," she greeted with a forced smile, "Lovely day. So nice to see you." Her eyes slid down his form, as though expecting to find him tracking into her office with muddy boots. Her gaze returned to his face as her frown of disapproval deepened. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"This month's budget. Don't be difficult." Troy stepped closer, then shoved a fist onto her desk to lean on. "You were supposed to hand it over to me for double checking yesterday!"
"I was?" she asked, all innocence as her eyes widened. It was impossible to resist when the man got so riled. Worse, the man just made a hell of a mistake. "Oh, it must have slipped my mind," she lied.
Troy gritted his teeth and his eyes searched her desk before he finally stared into her face again. "Don't mock me, woman. You spent the month off cavorting with your agent and recruiting new little sex friends. No better than a damned Hunter. It's all about your animal urges, isn't it, Puss?"
Elizabeth didn't tense, nor did she glare. Her expression lost its humor as she looked him in the eye, waiting. Clearly, hell was empty, and all the devils had come together to bring Troy into an otherwise lovely morning.
"You've finally shown your true colors, haven't you? You're just a fat, lazy house cat. Nobody can stand you or your wrinkled burlap-sack face!"
He rested both hands on her desk as he stared into her face as he growled "You're just trying to make all of the rest of us as miserable as you, because you can't stand that the only people willing to touch you are old, insane, or female."
The still-seated women continued to stare into his face with no sign of expression save boredom. Inwardly, his words stung, but she kept calm in the face of his continued tirade until he paused. "Finished?"
"No, but I have other things to do than stand in your foul-smelling office staring at a sorning tallowcatch. May the gods forgive me these wasted minutes I've spent in the office of Elizabeth Leauge!"
The feline woman folded her hands on her desk and smiled joylessly up at Troy. "Well, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that I left you a memo before my recent 'frolick'—you know, where I investigated the Unifiers, discovered they were after an object that could have destroyed the Multiverse, and stopped them from being able to utilize it?" she began, then allowed him a moment. Inwardly, she enjoyed watching his lips purse until they whitened. She continued, "The memo said that I had finished the budget and handed it to Ygvaine, since you were assigned to an unusually heavy amount of work this month, and Ygvaine and I were not. I also wasn't sure if I'd be back in time for the meeting, so had all the more reason to finish by the end of the first week and hand it over to someone I knew would be available."
She lifted a finger to her lower lip as her eyes widened with faux innocence.
"Surely you didn't ignore my memo?" She couldn't prevent her own snipe from escaping as she dared him: do it, say whatever else your stunted imagination vomits forth.
Troy, white-faced and trembling with rage and indignation, snarled. "I hate you."
"The path to inner peace begins with three words—" a wide grin spread— "'Not my problem'."
She tilted her head to one side and mocked him by closing her eyes. "Now, leave my office before I remove you from it."
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Nine Hundred Lives
In response to the first section of Lurcolm's "Too Stubborn to Stay Dead".
Warning: death mention
Elizabeth waited in the portal room for Martin's arrival as the mages began their casting. Her patience eroded rapidly as the spell fizzled visibly, offering not even a glimpse.
"What was that?" she demanded as she looked toward the leader of this group of casters.
"It didn't connect..."
"Try again."
The mages glanced to each other worriedly, and the leader spoke again.
"It can't connect. There's a shield—"
The Councilman's body went cold.
Unifiers.
Her stomach twisted around itself. There hadn't been anything before this—nothing at all. The time difference that Martin once called his biggest boon was turned against him, and there was no way to reach him or send help.
If he wasn't dead by now... If he hadn't gotten the shields down by now...
The twisting in her gut continued. "Keep trying," she snarled.
⋯﴾⛧﴿⋯
An hour. An hour and nothing.
"With the time difference, Councilman—"
"I know," she murmured. With an abrupt turn, she left the portal room and walked to the administration hall, where a scarred Drake looked up as he heard her approach.
"Councilman," he and others greeted warily.
"All tests taking place at Hunter's Rest are hereby cancelled. Reassign trainee exams accordingly."
With that, she started toward her office. Footsteps from behind warned of following by someone who didn't care to hide the fact. Snot in her nose, built up from her attempts at blinking away tears, deadened her sense of smell.
She just had to guess.
"We can discuss the matter in my office, Drake."
"Yes, Councilman," Drake's baritone agreed.
Inside her office, she allowed him to pass, then closed the dloor and drew the rune on its surface. The lines wobbled, but it was servicable.
Finally, she went behind her desk and sat, then looked toward Drake and waited, unwilling to trust herself to speak.
"Why?" his question was simple.
"Unifiers have shielded it."
Drake folded his hands in front of himself and squeezed them together until they whitened. "No news?"
"None."
She already knew who he was thinking of—Valen. The girl he'd nearly died to free from the abuses of the other admins. Elizabeth's mind swirled around memories of that scared girl, and flowed to her prominent caretakers—Heggala and Magdelyne. Her mind went also to those others there—the examinees, the broken Hunters, and others Martin took in...
At Elizabeth's insistence.
She and Drake remained seated quietly in the office for several moments before Drake rose, the movement sudden.
"I need to get back to work," he excused as he started toward the door.
"Right—" her voice caught, and she cleared her throat, but not before Drake turned back to look at her. "I should get back to work, too. I'm... sorry about this."
Drake watched her for several moments before he looked away and made his exit.
As the door shut behind him, Elizabeth buried her head in her hands.
"Damn it, Martin," she muttered. A loud sniffle escaped, and a moment later, her door burst open.
"Is it true?"
Elizabeth didn't recognize the voice.
She swallowed her grief and lifted her head as she folded her hands together to look at the one who addressed her—a Trainer. Worse, a Trainer with that purple-brown hair and those bright seafoam-green eyes that marked one of the fae-witch family.
Heggala's last brother, and the sole survivor of the family, now.
Thankful for her hood, she nodded. "It's true. My condolences."
The man's teeth grit, and his eyes shut tight, as though trying to block out the truth that he'd become alone again. His hands clenched, and he gave a brief nod before he left.
A steady trickle into Elizabeth's office became a crowd as she informed curious people of the truth. People left her office silent or in tears, and when the last person left, Elizabeth wanted nothing more than to escape to her room and cry, but a final person entered.
The long black hair was unmistakable as Rare silently drew the rune and locked the door. Steps too silent for heels so high carried the demon to Elizabeth's side, and after a moment, Elizabeth pulled Rare into her lap.
"I... I can't... If he comes back..."
Rare, helpless against Elizabeth's round arms, simply rubbed the older woman's back quietly. She stopped only when she saw Falren emerge from the secret passage to Elizabeth's bedroom.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
And Another Life
Continued from Nine Hundred Lives.
In response to the third section of Lurcolm's "Too Stubborn to Stay Dead".
Warning: death mention
"Martin, you cock!"
The man only laughed. A new face to an old name. He declared himself glad to see her, but even as she felt joy rise, dread came alongside it.
She threw her hood up, obscuring face and scent before her fears could catch the noses of the two before her. She had to end this cycle of mourning and celebrating the same man again and again. She had to!
The black-clad woman rose and approached, ready to punch him. Will faltered, and her arms instead wrapped around him. "Asshole." No kisses graced his face as they had when he returned as the March Hare. Instead, only a hug, her grip painfully tight. She didn't notice as she cracked a few of his ribs.
"Jerkoff." Her throat tightened as she realized that even fearful and angry for the future, she couldn't do what she'd vowed to Rare she would do if he came back again.
She couldn't kill him before she got attached again. She was already attached again.
Too many goodbyes plagued her, and her emotions ruled her entirely. Each goodbye left a little more emptiness in its wake.
A mission with no return.
A video of a man broken.
A sudden disappearance.
A distant battle's last stand.
A ring stored in a nook.
A portal unable to open.
Every time she had to answer "Yes. The rumors are true. Unifiers have taken Hunter's Rest."
Goodbyes she couldn't count anymore. Each reminder, each absence—they brought pain, and his return felt so mocking: like fate itself wanted to spit salt into the wounds on her heart.
Even as she knew the cycle had to break, she was too glad to see him again to make demands or try to drive him away.
Finally, she pulled back, hands on his shoulders to keep him at arms' distance from herself.
"Stop fucking dying," she growled, then busied her hands with straightening his hair and jacket, even as tears carved mascara-laden trails down the front of her face, hidden by her hood's enchantment.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
None lasted as she had. For centuries, she fought to fill the holes left by their absences. No matter how she grasped and struggled, fate and choice forbade all from remaining.
Rare was exorcised. Ober, Seela, Kyoko, Bear, and other Hunters were killed. Crow suicided. Martin, she assumed, stopped being able to convince the judges to let him retain his memories. Poppy, Juni, and Sylvia, their nanny, were found dead in their home.
Elizabeth still didn't know what killed the three.
Jerry, Bril, Vinnie, and Victor died for her missions.
Falren—
She was with him when he died. He smelled so strongly of that hero's scent that it choked her. Nobody was left to answer her call for help for him—Sin and Ozy were out of contact and the Hunter organization was entirely gone. All she could do for the man was cradle him and keep a strong face for him.
The tears came in an unending and strangling torrent after the man passed on, but not anymore. Ancient scars on heart and flesh no longer tightened her chest or brought discomfort.
Why she alone survived what those around her did not, she had no idea. For centuries she tried to pull new people into her life to try and fill the gaps, but none remained. Personal choices and fates stole away each, and often it was her own doing.
No, not merely often. Each death was brought by her hand at its core. Each person who walked from her side did it citing Elizabeth's faults—from her nitpicking and smothering to her age and appearance.
The Councilman ceased her efforts toward happiness, but duty bound her to continue extending her protection as far as she could across the loneliness of Existence.
And then she found that even the Unifiers couldn't outlast her. Their base within the void between universes was destroyed by chance as two particles came together, and a chain reaction began that ended with a Big Bang.
The birth of that universe caused such a massive shockwave, sent two universes into early heat death, and the shockwave caused irregularities in countless others.
Elizabeth pondered these and more as she looked out from under her black and obscuring hood at the stranger who stood below. This one would also leave at the whims of either fate or choice. It didn't matter that they'd arrived beyond this moment. She simply had to see to what they wanted and send them on their way.
"What do you seek?" Elizabeth asked in a quiet rasp. Her body didn't move—couldn't, anymore—as she remained seated on a petrified stump, surrounded at back and sides by the remnants of bark. The stump had lush green moss when she first sat to rest weary legs. Now, it bore only lichens in the wasteland around Elizabeth.
"You."
The stranger's answer returned Elizabeth's attention from past to present, and she watched for several long moments. It was an attention-catching declaration, but her pulse and breath didn't quicken. This was neither the first nor would it be the last stranger to say they wanted her.
"Do as you wish," she replied, and her eyes slid shut under the preternatural shadow, "You will find limited uses for me. My limbs are as petrified as my seat."
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Damnation
In response to Lurcolm's "Sanctuary".
Warning: death mention, torture after-effects
The following months saw Rare hovering at the brink of death. When she stabilized, and Alsoome could no longer afford to have the bed taken, Martin was allowed to take her home with him, to Hunters' Rest... as a permanent resident.
With arms and legs and horns amputated to save her the pain, Rare relied entirely on others to survive.
The day of Rare's scheduled move, Elizabeth returned from her vacation.
She accompanied Martin to take Rare to her new, permanent home as Kina carried Rare's trunk of belongings without a word.
After Kina went back, Elizabeth kept her silence until the two of them were in privacy—away even from Rare.
"I know how to fix her," she admitted as she looked away, hugging herself. "It's risky. You could lose her as easily as you could get her back. I've only met one person with the sheer balls to try it, and the side-effects were... noteworthy."
Her eyes closed as she remembered those instances.
"You know why silver burns, yes? Because it's purging the magic?"
Elizabeth's tone urged him to hear her out rather than answer.
"She's of demon heritage. Applying demonic energies to her directly will heal her, but they also build, and they also call to her heritage. I witnessed once, someone channeled energies directly into a bullet wound of hers. She transformed into a demon instantly, wound healed. Another time, I opened a portal to hell to assist in restoring her."
She took a deep breath.
"She almost fled through the portal. I was fortunate she was willing to listen to me enough not to, but only for a few minutes. We had to place a barrier, but it broke because hell called to her so strongly."
Telling Martin of this was a mistake, but she cared too much about Rare not to offer a solution that didn't involve rubbing Alsoome's sulfur-smelling balm into her flesh hourly for the barest chance of recovery after years of treatment.
Martin would surely seek hell for Rare, and Elizabeth knew it. His affections had shifted thanks to the time spent between them being so vastly different.
Once upon a time, she'd dreaded it, to the point she almost forbade him from seeing Rare anymore. Once upon a time, she'd almost delivered an ultimatum to Rare and demanded she never return to Martin.
She kept herself silent instead, and now simply accepted it. It wasn't fair to demand all of his affection and devotion, when she couldn't give all of her affection and devotion in turn. It would have been needlessly cruel.
Now, she simply looked at Martin.
"There are options, though. You won't like them." She couldn't look at him, and walked to a nearby window to look out. "Cut away the damaged flesh and hope you go deep enough to get to the still-magical flesh within, or," Elizabeth trailed off and forced a deep breath, "Or it's time to... let her... sleep..." Her throat tightened, and as she leaned on the window sill, her fingers tightened. Stone cracked under her grip, and her head dropped. Shoulders trembled. That was the last thing she wanted to suggest, but...
Rare had to be in so much pain, both physical and mental. She didn't want her ally to hurt, but aside from stripping away flesh and hoping she was getting enough food to heal, and opening the path to hell for her to potentially flee into for who-knew-what ends—
What else could she suggest?
This was why, for so long, she'd resisted bonding with Hunters. Their lives were violent and ended in ways often horrific.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Without You, I Fall
RoSe AU
Takes place before "You Fell Without Me".
Warning: suicide, death, parental abuse
Sinclair was up to something, and now he'd finally done what she couldn't forgive. Left with only one option, Ozy had no choice but to finish one of his projects for him—a weapon.
Working with only Six for company, weary brown eyes trailed long the small device.
She halfway expected an ill-timed interruption from Felicie or Bear, but as she lifted her head and looked toward the place they'd lived within her lab, an ache filled her chest that obliterated her hunger.
They moved outside, because Bear insisted children needed sunlight to grow.
Six wasn't exactly what she'd call companionship, either. She came and went at will, and Ozymandias felt no true attachment—no real bond.
"Is it complete?"
Right on cue. "Technically," Ozy muttered without looking at the being, "But Ah'm addin' a couple things before Ah deliver it to that girl."
"Adding what?"
"Limitations an' a warnin' label for people lahk me, who kin see how it works inside without opening it up. Ah don't want this thing used willy-nilly. Got too much juice ta make it without a drawback or sommat."
Those were already in place, but there was still one last thing she wanted to add—one final piece to the puzzle.
With a tiny chip on a tray nearby, she moved her hands along a screen, mapping out circuits before she scrawled a tiny message into the board.
This gun will fire only once. Hit the correct target or despair.
The same message was etched into the outside surface of the gun, alongside its 'barrel'.
Another line on the inside went on, though.
Attempts at repairing or duplicating this will be unsuccessful. Don't waste your time trying.
She slid the finished chip, smaller than her pinky's nail, from its resting place and into a slot in the gun.
"How soon?"
Ozy glanced up in irritation, but said nothing before she pressed a few buttons inside and on her desk. A tiny beep sounded, and she nodded.
It was nearly ready.
She soldered it shut and polished it to a high shine before she attached the 'decorative' outer casing—a tough plastic shell with a spell on it to make it glow in the dark. It'd keep people like her from seeing through and trying to fix or make a new one.
"Jade," Ozy called, and a portal opened.
"Hopper Ozymandias." Jade's cool greeting came from within, and the small woman stared at the former empress.
"Here." Ozy pushed the gun through the portal, but kept her arm in place and didn't let go. "Ah need an hour mah time 'fore that thing'll fire for ya. Too dangerous not t' have precautions."
She could see Jade's fear in her mind's synapses and body's chemicals, just as much as she could see the young Multiverse's determination and pain.
The half-bird nodded firmly. "Yes, it is too dangerous to be without precautions. What are these precautions?"
"It'll only shoot once. After that, somma the parts'll melt and it'll signal me t'tell me, an' once Ah get that signal, Ah won't fix it. Understood, hon?"
Jade nodded again.
"Now shoo. It'll be ready ta fire in an hour mah time."
Another nod, and Ozy relinquished the gun before she watched the portal close.
Last step.
She removed her pince nez and attached a small square to each lens, then folded another over the bridge.
Explosives, rigged to detonate when someone pulled the trigger—no. Explosives whose explosion would allow that little gun to fire.
"What the fuck are you doing?" A voice from Ozy's past came from behind her. She looked back, breath stuck in her throat.
Her father.
"Answer!" He grabbed her by the front of her shirt, then slammed her against the nearby wall. "What are you doing to yourself!?"
Damn, he noticed.
Ozy trembled as she worked at prying the man's hand from her neck. "I'm old," she grunted.
"You're not wrinkled enough to use that bullshit on me!" He slammed her head against the wall.
Ozy's vision swam, but she made a show of not hurting as she sighed. "Lissen, just... shut up. Ah ain't got 'nuff fucks ta give t' try'n convince ya what Ah already know, so... If you got any love fer me in yer tar-stained heart, leave me be an' don't innerfere!"
Josiah glared into her eyes, then dropped her. and stepped back. "You're just lonely. Find or make someone new to keep with you," he muttered as he looked away.
"That don't work."
"Then I'll make someone for you!" He walked toward her pince nez and reached toward it. Careful fingers began to scrape the tiny explosive adhesives before Ozy rammed him and bit his arm until she tasted blood.
His howl of pain made her wince and release his arm, but by then, she already had her totem back in her own possession. She panted as she held it in both hands, and her father lunged. He pinned and straddled her, struggling to get the eyepiece as time moved ever forward.
The man grabbed his daughter suddenly by her face and slammed her head against the steel floor.
The dent cradled Ozy's head as she twitched, and Josiah pried her eyepiece from her loosened fingers, then stood and pressed his foot into her neck as he began to pick again at the tiny explosives.
He growled as he struggled, and finally snarled, "Stupid!"
"Stupid girl!" He slammed his foot into her neck, and she coughed and choked beneath him. It wouldn't kill her, he knew. She'd heal. He just had to get the explosions off her totem without damaging it. She'd bonded them to the glass, so he could only use his abilities to remove the one on the bridge.
"Damn it, Julie..." His voice broke as he looked down at his daughter as her face changed colors and she clawed uselessly at her neck.
He couldn't get the explosives off, even hacking them. Tears threatened to fall from his eyes, and he rubbed them away. "Damn it, you stupid girl! Idiot! Fool!"
He put the eyepiece into his mouth and tried to use his teeth to scrape away the explosive stickers, then looked toward her desk, in hopes she had solvent for the adhesive somewhere among her tools.
Pulled from his mouth, he placed the eyepiece on the workspace and grabbed a scalpel. It might scratch the glass, but if he could just prevent complete destruction, he could repair the damages—
Triplet pops went off suddenly.
"NO!"
Josiah stared as time seemed to slow, but so did his limbs. The lenses each shattered. The frame warped. The surge of fire was brief, but melted the materials into the desk.
A tiny whimper drew him slowly to look at his daughter.
Her flesh was covered in deep cuts arranged like cracks. Her bones broke as he watched.
And then the girl, bleeding and still choking where he'd crushed her trachea, began to burn despite no fire touching her. She burned, and her flesh melted.
Josiah could do nothing as he stumbled to her side.
"No... No, no, no. No, damnit... Damnit, Julie..."
He watched how pain roared through her rapid-melting nerves.
A reaper calmly sliced the connection of body and soul with a scythe that didn't harm the broken form of his daughter that Josiah didn't dare to touch.
Only an empty body remained.
"Father," her voice came from behind him. Surely a recording, he refused to turn and look, instead staring at the wreck before him.
"Ah know yer here. You always loved mah pain, so Ah imagine ya came t' watch and get yer rocks off."
He cringed. "No, that isn't—!"
"Anyway, Ah got a favor t'ask. Yer as greedy as Ah am 'bout yer inventions. Take mine an' lock 'em where nobody'll find 'em. Destroy 'em if you wanna. Just don't let anyone git at 'em, cuz as much as y'think Ah'm an idiot an' trash, this world is even worse. They don't deserve anythin' from either of us."
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
My Name Is Ozymandias
The origins of Ozy.
Warning: mental illness, happy end
The Invisible Woman.
It was a silly title, one that became more fitting as she was erased from history so many years ago. News stations stopped mentioning her quickly after the world rediscovered that its former empress still lived, all thanks to Sin—Sinclair.
His name was Elliot Sinclair.
She closed her eyes as she thought back to the events that led to her abandonment. Seated on a rising pneumatic throne, she fiddled with an orb that floated over the armrest.
It was only a copy of Sinclair's chair, though—the little orb had no function except to give her bored hands something to do while she thought about how best to address her deepest concern.
How was she going to leave this miserable universe and explore others?
Once upon a time Sin told her he'd take her to explore them, but now, he wasn't here. She gripped the orb, and her arm wound back, then thrust forward. The metal wall across from her dented, and the ball bounced back, then returned to its place as the woman muttered dark words from chapped lips.
This room had once been Sin's lab that he claimed from her without a word. Now, every part of his works resided in a safe and compact storage she'd made—everything he left behind did. He used things she couldn't, so all that was left for her to do was to try to achieve similar results to his using what she had.
Absently, she wondered if dividing by zero in the Code would be a good idea, and snorted quietly. That might be a painful way to get herself killed, if anything.
She grabbed the hapless ball and flung it again. The dented wall gained another mark, and the ball returned.
Ten years, she'd tried. The best she managed thus far was getting herself mauled by a creature that destroyed her machine and fled. The parts she needed were going to require a trip into the nearby city—but oh, she remembered how well that went last time. Her lips drew back in a snarl, and she threw the ball again.
This time, it didn't return. Lodged in the wall. As she stared at it in disappointment, a poem popped into her head: one she'd heard long ago, when one of her sons was obsessed with sad poems. She began to recite it slowly.
"Mah name is Ozymandias. King uh Kings. Look 'pon mah works, ye mighty, and despair."
Slowly, she looked around. Her eyes saw the code of everything as numbers flowing rapidly around and through the forms of all matter, and walls were little more than sheer veils. She turned her gaze upward, through ceiling and higher basements, through the ground, and up to schools where books barely mentioned her rule. She saw technology that couldn't do on purpose what hers did on accident. She saw near-destroyed environments, sick people, and a class divide larger than she'd ever seen in her life.
A hand slowly rose up to cover her mouth.
"Ha. 'S me. Ah'm ol' Ozy." Her voice grew thick with a combination of laughter and tears, and she pulled her legs up to hug them as she felt just how tiny a mark she'd left on history.
No family. No mark. No reason for pride.
Her fingers began to tremble, and sweat began to form on her neck. Her head throbbed, and the sensation returned—the rapid heartbeat and the sudden overwhelming stress and nervousness. She had to get away from here—further away than mere travel across the world could get. The numbers blurred, and she slowly hugged her legs.
"Ah need ta git outta here."
The seat lowered, and she rose onto unsteady feet. "Ah gotta git outta here, 'fore Ah give up 'gain." She forced herself to breathe, despite growing confusion. Where could she even start? She knew there were other worlds, knew a little about them thanks to her vision and what she'd witnessed alongside Sinclair, but...
A muscle twitch sent her onto her rear, and she sobbed.
She was falling apart!
Still, she began to crawl toward her own lab, and every step slowly eased her from that sensation so similar to her diabetic lows. She went past her attempted inventions and to the kitchenette, then leaned against the counter as she yanked open the mini-fridge and pulled out the orange juice. With a twist, it came open, and she shoved the carton's plastic nozzle between her lips and began to drink the acidic liquid, even as the tears continued.
Diabetes or "demi low," as Vinnie had called it, be damned, she was going to get off this rock!
With the carton half-emptied, she tossed it aside and stood as she wiped at her eyes and looked over her work so far.
But those lines from the poem stuck with her. Looking on her own works, she saw nothing of escape. She'd accidentally reinvented the washing machine, created a new way to skim fuel from the air, and accidentally gave birth to an AI that developed emotions... again. She also created several new ways to explode huge chunks of the world, developed a way to yank a soul right from the grip of the Reapers, and accidentally kidnapped a boy who didn't speak any of the languages Bio knew.
She let out a breath after a long time looking at what she'd made, including the scared child seated on her filthy, period-and-piss stained mattress. "Ozymandias, huh?"
Well, she was mighty, and looking on her own works, she despaired.
"Damnit, Ah think Ah need help." She wiped at her eyes as more tears began to spill, and her shoulders shook.
Continued by VeilofRain: ((Happy ending for your sorrows!!!))
Torn from reality, that was how everything had ended. Before he knew it, the cursor was serving it's purpose once again and they were calling upon him, beckoning him to complete his greatest debt. He had, oh how he had. Of course, it had torn the lives of so many. Secrets spilled out, his little games no longer existed in the shadows and the eyes of those he knew could never look at him the same. They didn't understand, no one did, and when he stood at the precipice of everything, he found nothing. Nothing but the memory of a moment when loneliness had abandoned him. A time so far gone, so short that he would not have remembered it had he been anyone else. Yet here he was, one step, and he walked with dinosaurs, the next he was leaping over a moon, the third he was somewhere with nothing, and the next there was so much he nearly suffocated in those three seconds it took his foot to move from behind him to the next universe.
Every step was something new, and yet for the second time in his life he sought something old. The first time had been a little demon, so full of innocence despite her hidden nature, and he had returned for that once. Alas, even that had been fleeting. Yet once more he gave in to weakness and stood at yet another precipice, this one was dirty and made of metal and stone. It smelled of grease and old food, and ill-bathed flesh. It reminded him of a simpler time. He walked the halls, and felt as if he had always known them. He needed no map, no thought but to let his feet carry him deeper still. Why had he parted from this smell? Why had he left that which had come closest to touching him vanish into nothing—only to return no better than a runaway child realizing they needed that shelter, that home.
He turned the corner, and there she stood, her back to him, a child on a mattress as she asked for help from nothing and no one, only recognized it was required. For the first time in ages he smiled, and closed the distance, placing his hands upon her shoulders, before they slid around and pulled her back against his chest.
"After I fulfill my final debt," he said, as if it were that simple. He had promised to take her away, to new places. The simplest, and yet somehow the most important debt he'd accrued over his life.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
"It's only enigmatic if you don't know the joke."
RoSe AU
Warning: death
Metal capsules littered the ground, spilled from a dropped bag. Adorned with BC and a small red button, there seemed too many to have come from the old canvas shoulder bag at the entrance of the cave.
Small pieces of broken glass rested embedded in the ground around the bony, tight-clenched hand. Dried blood remained between the fingers, in the smallest and deepest nooks.
The first cut began shallow on the back of the wrist. It made its jagged way, branching off irregularly, up to a shoulder, where its path became marked by brown stains in her worn, knit garment.
Tangled, greasy hair hung lump over a wide-eyed and gaunt face, with jaws set in a wide-mouthed scream of silent agony, interrupted by deep cuts and caked blood.
Trapped under her body, her other hand held loosely a small something that gleamed in the light.
Another capsule, so like the others.
As he bent to pick it up, his fingertips brushed the woman's cold, stretched-tight skin.
A press of the button and a drop to the floor brought from the capsule a round disk with a lens at the center and around the edges, and a button at one end that said "push me".
Once held and activated, lights under each lens came together over the central, which released a small and static cloud of a fog-like substance from around its edges.
An image of the corpse's face, unmarked by trauma and softer with fat reserves appeared. She pushed some hair from her eyes.
"Hey Sin. If ya found this, means Ah'm dead. Actually dead, not just waitin ta wake up. Ah recorded this when Ah first got mah ass trapped 'ere, so dependin' on how long Ah lasted an' what happened, some stuff ain't gonna be included."
She glanced to one side, at something unseen in the small projection, and frowned. A few moments passed before she returned her attention forward.
"Listen, Ah know it ain't your style t'git choked up. Ain't expectin' it, leastwise. You got so much goin' on, y'might even forgit me if you ain't already. Ah just wanned t'say all this 'fore Ah go, if Ah go."
"Thanks, Sin. Fer gettin' me off that horrible rock. Ah'd still be there, wastin' away an' miserable, if not fer you. Even if however Ah died was horrible, Ah know that even then, Ah'm gonna be glad fer yer meddlin' in mah life."
A wry smile eased onto her lips. "An' Sin?"
The woman chuckled quietly to herself, as though at a great joke that happened to be shared at a funeral.
"You kin find another me tomorrah."
And that was it. The display cut off, just as she started laughing in earnest.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
I'll Try to Remember, I'll Come Home
RoSe AU
Warning: death menton
It took a lot of doing, but finally, he stood before the portal back.
Back to Cork City, where nobody survived but him and a few select others. Where the devouring of a city's life saved the rest of that universe from obliteration.
He tightened his grip on the ribbon, then took a deep breath.
Behind him, a woman spoke. "Ober, are you sure about this?"
"With all due respect, Councilman, I'm... done. I don't want to see Felicie for a long time. I don't want to see Sinclair or Falren at all. I don't want to see Poppy or Rare or anyone else involved in these..." He trailed off, then looked back. "I'm going to go back to the family I had before Cork. Assuming they'll still have me."
"Assuming they're still alive."
The man flinched and looked toward the portal. "Please don't say that." For such a massive and muscular man, he held an expression of unrestrained vulnerability.
"Keep your phone," the woman behind him urged, "And my number. If I can help you in any way—"
"Councilman." He turned his head to look back at the black-cloaked figure, and he stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets, only for his attempt to tell her to fuck off to die on his lips. Instead, he sighed. He couldn't cut her off so thoroughly, not after she'd done her best to help him so many times asking nothing in return. "Alright," he agreed, "Best as I can."
"Thank you."
Words he still felt weird hearing from a Councilman. A tiny smile curled his lips, and he looked ahead at the portal, then adjusted his coat and stepped through.
The portal closed behind him, and he trudged from the dark basement and along the old alleys, into Cork proper. Heavy feet carried him past various people and buildings, until his feet carried him to the fateful place where he witnessed the elephantine fae, Blocham, gunned down by police while his wife and children watched.
The images of that moment, when one of the children was hit in the rain of bullets, remained burned in the man's mind.
All because of Sinclair and Falren.
Ober wiped at his eyes and hurried past. He needed to get out of this place.
His feet thudded as he began to jog.
Planes, trains, boats, bikes, cars, and boots carried him across borders and oceans as he sought the people he'd called family. He left them to protect their lives and world, but now...
Now he just wanted to return to them.
But now, he'd run out of money, out of food, and his legs felt so tired...
He'd not realized he could get tired from simply walking, but when his legs gave out beside a McDonald's and he couldn't get back up, all he could do was laugh.
He laughed until he cried.
And in his hand, he gripped that ribbon tighter.
"I'm sorry, Corie. Issac. I never shoulda left you guys..." He held the ribbon to his lips as his massive shoulders shook. "Cripes... I messed up... so bad..."
Home Remembers
By Kitti, in response to I'll Try to Remember, I'll Come Home.
The first rays of bleak grey morning fought to illuminate and awaken a small, dark room. Though the few furnishings were old and noticeably worn, they were also obviously well-cared for and clean. At the center of the room, a bed still draped in shadows began to receive a dusting of the weak sunshine. Beneath blankets whose color was indiscernible in the low lighting, a woman stirred.
Not yet opening her eyes, she peeled the covers away from herself and shivered when the chill air rushed to devour the warm pocket she had been nestled in. Her movements were deliberate but careful and she slid out of the bed without jostling the other side in the slightest. Sleepy fingers combed through the pale hair spilling over her shoulders and she opened her mouth to speak before her expression dimmed. As though in confirmation, her eyes gave the empty bed a cursory once over before she pulled her gaze away.
Touching her feet to the floor with the caution of a swimmer dipping their foot into icy water, she recoiled a little at first from the cold and unyielding surface. After a small pause, she pressed the pads of her feet fully down with determination and thoughts of freshly brewed coffee. Before leaving the room, she shrugged on a thin navy bathrobe to warm her gooseflesh arms and then continued out into a short hall.
A quick left turn took her into the impersonal off-white of the bathroom where she began to liven up and get ready for her day. Her fingers brushed across the pair of dry toothbrushes left sitting in the plastic cup on the sink as she returned her damp one to its place and she fought the stinging at the corners of her eyes with a splash of cold water over her face. She prayed that the rest of the day would be smoother but she was sentimental in the mornings, tired and alone.
The hall opened into the kitchen, the next stop that beckoned her with coffee and the morning bustle to distract her thoughts. The clock above the stove confirmed that the day was still barely begun and her world was still sleeping. She opened up cupboards and prepared a pot of coffee - such practiced movements that she could probably have done them still asleep. The sputtering of the machine was familiar but it didn't calm her like she had hoped it would.
Today, she felt on edge. Her chest was tight and the prickling sensation every time she closed her eyes threatened to spill over. This same scene had played out for more mornings than she could count, like tiny figurines in a perfectly wound cuckoo clock, but today the pain felt raw again. Every reminder seemed to rip more sutures out of the wound.
Crumpling into a chair, Corie braced her elbows on the table and buried her face in her cupped hands. The flood broke down the feeble gates of yesterday and the day before to stream down her cheeks in rivulets. She had thought that time had begun to mend the aching inside of her but the empty rooms seemed to whisper his name. It echoed in the chambers of her heart and she repeated in a low, choking sob
"Graham..."
A patter quieter than butterfly wings gave her a start and her head whipped around instinctively to see the boy standing in the hallway, his copper curls catching the rising sun and throwing it around his head in a halo. Corie stood at once, drying her cheeks with a wipe of the bathrobe sleeve in the same motion. A second later, she had wrapped him in her arms and laid her cheek against his hair. It was no longer an easy feat and one day soon, she was certain he would be too tall for her to hold like this but for now she held a little boy in her arms.
She could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, the catch that warned of his tears too. She rubbed his back in comforting circles, whispering shh as she listened to his breathing become more even. She didn't know why he was crying, whether he felt the same way that she did today or if her tears had caused the stopper on them to wiggle free but she calmed him all the same.
"How about we go get something to eat, kiddo? I know we don't go out much but you love those bagels at McDonald's, right? Get dressed and get your shoes on, ok?"
She didn't have the energy to pretend that she was fine today but at least it would be easier somewhere that wasn't full of memories. With any luck, a special treat would cheer Isaac up too and take his mind off things.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Happy Hump Hour
Random Rare snippet.
Warning: explicit sexual content
Violent sex ended suddenly as a fist impacted each of Rare's attackers. Yanked from her stained cunt and throat and dazed from the inhuman strength of her protector, the two fled as the man wrapped his arms tight around the small and delicate-looking woman.
He stroke her hair as he whispered to her in a soothing voice, "It's ok. It's ok. You're safe now."
No matter what he said, it wasn't going to be ok.
Tears clung to her eyelashes as she buried her face against his chest.
Her insides ached.
Her body hurt as quiet whimpers slid from her throat, and thin fingers moved on their own. They wrapped around the man's arm and slid to his wrist as he allowed it despite his confusion.
Rare pulled his arm down, and he bent in response, only to gasp as he felt his fingers brush against labia stained by another man's seed. They parted at the lightest pressure as she pushed her hips forward and raised her eyes to meet his.
Her pleading, pale-brown gaze begged. Tears threatened to fall, and she breathed heavily through opened and tainted lips.
She ground her clit on his palm as she tried desperately to ride his fingers, hungry cunt opened for them. She pushed his hand harder against herself, trying to push his fingers in as she hugged his arm with both hands.
Her flexing muscles against his hand felt strong. They eagerly opened wide with anticipation as she humped his digits, holding it in place with both arms until his fingertips entered her. More clumsy humping, and she rose to her toes to try to take more of his fingers and to do so more deeply.
Forced to bend further to accommodate her hunger, her savior stared. Slowly, he began to move his fingers against her and to grind his palm purposefully between her labia and against her clit.
A moan rewarded his experimentation, and he wrapped an arm tight around her middle as he began to rock his hand back and forth against her, curling two fingers inside of her, thrusting as the desperate woman drooled and tried in vain to keep herself quiet.
A third finger joined the first two, and a fourth. No matter how many he slid in, she continued to squeeze him while her body begged for more. She spread her legs and stood like that while he rocked his fingers back and forth, grinding against clit and delving deeper inside.
She doubled over as he introduced his thumb, then closed his hand into a fist within her. Hoarse gasping accompanied the sight of her eyes rolling skyward, and her hips jerked forward, opening herself with a lewd new angle.
Slow and steady, the man rolled his fist as he pushed it into her, then pulled it just to her entrance. The wet noises filled both their ears louder than Rare's hoarse gasps for air.
An audible intake of air sounded like a quiet scream as Rare's body shuddered and twitched. Her vagina threatened to crush his fist as a stream of sour-smelling liquid splattered against his arm.
The man pulled away and looked her over, only to gasp as he saw how much of his limb she'd taken within her. He yanked his arm out quickly, eyes wide, and Rare jerked violently before her knees gave out.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
The wind blew, not warm, but not chill. Pleasant. A veil of clouds obscured the early evening sky, but the light of day remained—dimmed, but far yet from dark. In a few patches, visible blue made lazy effort to make its presence known.
Dry leaves fell from the surrounding trees one at a time in something like slowed rain on an otherwise silent moment.
The moment stretched, and uncertain feet exited the house. Tired eyes traveled along and took in all as a gentle undercurrent of anticipation brought barely-noticeable tension to an illness-sore back. One deep breath and then another, and stress faded gradually in the strange moment.
The world waited, and oblivious children laughed and played audible in the distance, out of sight of the watcher on the porch.
Absently, she recalled a meal still on the hot stove, but as she stood with a nervous dog beside her, it mattered too little.
Her eyes roved to one side, where a cluster of sunflowers twice her height bowed their heads, heavy with seeds on heads larger than dinner plates. They swayed in that tender breeze.
The watcher didn't lift her arms to rest against the porch rail, nor did she fidget aside from letting her gaze roam the pregnant world around her.
The moment dragged unending as something approached beyond her knowing, and she felt it in every part of her being. It would be both great and small at once, and some part of her knew it was going to be rain. Any second, it would come. It would leave dots of dark on the ancient wood porch, and the ugly patched cement walk, and the old picnic table. It would nourish the wild catnip that grew from the base of the fallen willow, and it would relieve everything.
In the perfect instant of its beginning, all would become relieved.
She longed for what was coming. It would wash over and through her and leave her and the world cleansed.
But instead she heard a car pull into the drive. The front door opened and closed, and a call from within pulled her from her reverie and into the house. In that moment, she knew she missed that which would come, and she reentered normalcy with regret as she pulled her mask back into its place, knowing already she would miss whatever was to come.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Fae Dreams
Continued from Kitti's Tale: Home Remembers, which is in answer to my "I'll Try to Remember, I'll Come Home".
Warning: car violence, starvation
Ober lifted his head. He could smell them—Corie and Isaac. Head raised skyward, he breathed in deeply those scents. Those scents of home, of love, of family.
They gave him the strength to scramble to his feet, startling a couple on their way from their car, but that couple didn't matter in the slightest to Ober.
No, the scent on the air had his full attention as he stumbled into the wind, ribbon gripped tight in his hand. Glamour forgotten, he was hard to miss—over six feet tall before a person noticed the foot-tall cluster of brown branches that stuck out from his unkempt and shaggy waist-length yellow hair.
An uneven beard warred with his freckles and scars for domination over his face, but four-clover eyes won out once a person was close enough to see the rainbow-hued irises. Under his open leather coat, scars marked a life of fighting, with fresh scars visible, and fat absent from his broad form.
Despite starvation, Ober remained a man of herculean build. Shoulders broad enough for two, thick arms, thick legs, and a defined and bulky chest—all of which became even more bulging in appearance as dehydration pasted his skin tight over those muscles.
"Corie," he breathed, hoarse. He'd been outside the McDonald's for several days, maybe as much as a week or two, occasionally gifted food by employees and passers-by, but this was the most energy he'd shown since he first collapsed there.
Despite his state, hope shone in his eyes and a broad grin parted his beard.
He took a deep breath, dizzying himself, before he shouted with all the volume he could muster, "CORIE-PRETTY!"
He hurried toward the scent, gradually picking up speed until he began to cross the parking lot entrance, at a run.
CRASH!
Suddenly, he was on his side on the pavement, stunned and blinking. He could smell and hear panic around, but it didn't register. He could still smell Corie and Isaac somewhere, somewhere near.
Ober tried to rise, but his right leg gave out—the one that the bumper slammed into, and which in turn fiercely dented the front end like Corie'd hit a street light.
"Ff... cripes..." He tried again, but the leg wasn't healing. He turned his gaze toward the car. His breath and heart stopped at the two in the front of the vehicle. "Corie-Pretty...? Zaacky...?"
"I can't tell if this is real or a dream or the afterlife or... or..." It didn't take long for the massive man to start blubbering as he continued to try to stand.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Goodbye, My Alchemical Solution
Warnings: death mention, suicide mention, abuse
A note sealed with the waxen sigil of the Grav family left in Vlad's laboratory alerted him that something was strange. Inside, Lyra's handwriting shook with her now-permanent tremors, and sometimes her letters were too large, while others were too small.
Decades of irregular cycles of drugging and withdrawals left her with damages one couldn't see unless they peered closely, but damages they were.
Beloved God Of My Life, Vladimir,
[spacer]I fear our arrangement has reached its end. Age drags its steady claws and pulls away my vitality with more surety than the disease for which you have so kindly treated me for all these years. I have seen its marks across my flesh, among my hair, and have felt its pains in my joints.[/spacer]
[spacer]This shall be my goodbye. I have left you all but a token of my fortune in my will, as thanks for your faithful treatments over the years, your kindness in acting as my confidante, and your discretion when mine failed. You have been so kind. I thank you eternally, from the bottom of my heart and soul, for showing me such mercies.[/spacer]
[spacer]By the time you return from your conference, I will no longer be your burden on this earthly plane. My body will be in my bed. I have taken care to ensure I will not cause undue filth in my expiry, and pray you forgive me for not consulting you prior, and for stealing some of your alchemical supplies as a means.[/spacer]
[spacer]Whatever ends you have sought in my marriages will need be carried forward by another. I hope my successor in your holy quest will be more obedient and capable than I, and that you will accomplish your ends, whatever they may be.[/spacer]
A kiss mark in the brown of dried blood marked the page beside her name, heavy with the names of those souls they together snuffed for Vladimir's greed.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
It was in the middle of town square the hunter came too. Standing there, dumbfounded. Where was he? How did he get here? Looking around at the busy street he didn't recognize a thing, and couldn't remember beyond a second ago. He knew he was a Hunter, that he worked for an organization... He remembered names and people. Just not his own.
It was so bizarre to blank on his own origin but remember the others. He thought to check his pockets for communication but that's when he realized he wasn't wearing a hunter jacket but a rather bland sweater. It was a little brisk outside here... Where ever this was. He managed to keep his cool, it's not as if he was in immediate danger after all, but the more he searched himself the less he found. Nothing of value... Not his portal device, or a cell phone, or even a wallet. Just a receipt for a hotel stay.
Might as well start there. He had to find out who he was, and that would begin with retracing his own steps. Hopefully if he could find some way to contact his compatriots then all the better.
That was a week ago.
The hotel turned out to be a dead end. The room he was supposedly staying in had none of his belongings spare a change of clothes that he didn't recognize where his. The innkeepers weren't much help either, unable to recall when exactly he had come to stay or any particular details around it. So instead, he strived to find out more about the town and hopefully uncover where else he may have been.
Little did he know just how strange this little place would be.
The town was of middling size. One school, for all grades, a townsquare with just about everything anyone could need and a habor that lead out to sea. A hospitol, a 'rich' part of town... A feel like this was the UK. The technology was not of his world, but not unfamiliar. It was so odd to see people who still used flip-phones; Nothing too advanced.
It was this search of the town that lead him to discover this small place's biggest oddity: Fran Estate. Apparently a former orphanage, he learned from the locals that a doctor by the name of Fran lived there working as a private doctor in her own time. She was no simple doctor though, as everyone seemed to make clear to him. Either stay far away, or you're here just for her. There was no in-between. While at first he didn't think this was of any terrible importance, it was the picture of her he was shown that immediately set of alarm bells in his mind.
Front cover of an old newspaper, the last 'good' picture they had of the woman named Fran, was of her standing with a relaxed smile to the camera, flanked on either side by two gigantic men. There was so much to dissect with the picture but... The most important detail of all was that he knew on sight who it was, or who it looked like.
That was Onawa. She looked just like her! Now, there was a number of odd things very wrong with that. Her face looked like it had been stitched together, with a big metal nail protruding at an off angle from near her temple, and unless his eyes were deceiving him she had another set of arms on her. She was wearing what looked like medical scrubs and in the picture was standing behind a wheelchair with what looked like some poor kid. The two men beside here were beasts of their own... Both also in medical scrubs. They seemed far more somber over posing for this picture.
The headline read 'Miracle Surgery: Fran Does it Again' and detailed the boy's long journey him and his parent's took to be here and receive treatment from Fran.
He had to meet her. He had to know more. This Fran woman looked too strikingly like someone he knew for him to ignore it, and to see such an oddity in this otherwise regular town made it impossible to keep away. He knew what he must do now, and set about to make it happen. Maybe he would even find out who he was in the process.
~~~~~~~~~~
As it turned out, seeing Fran was just not that simple. He quickly learned that she doesn't just talk to anyone, and for the most part has become rather recluse lately because of ongoing pressure from the police. When he asked about why the police would be after her and why she hasn't been arrested when they know where she lives, that's when he discovered just how deep the rabbit hole goes...
Fran is no normal doctor. She supposedly prides herself on pushing the boundaries of what science can do, and doesn't do anything routine unless she sees it as somehow advancing what is possible. In her own view, anyway. To the townsfolk he spoke too, they had a very different take on it. 'She makes monsters' one said, 'Crafting demons and saying it's for the greater good.'
Another, older resident told him about how much of a blessing she seemed like when she first got here some twenty years ago, but the more her work got out into the world, the more people got to see what she really does in that manor.
They painted the picture of a mad scientist who was too powerful for police intervention and more easily ignored than dealt with, of someone who is harmless when unprovoked but a general blight on an otherwise perfectly normal town. However it wasn't always that way. People initially were amazed with her miracle works and the different way she would accomplish things, never charging money so long as they were okay with potentially unseen circumstances that came with her pushing some unseen boundary. It wasn't until Detective Dick Gumshoe, a rather dedicated and passionate man on the force, wanted to have her investigated for the multitude of... Well, bad follow ups to her work. That was when the reclusivness began and the demonization begun as more and more of what became of her patients rose to the surface thanks to this spiffy detective and his work. To find out exactly what that meant, he was encouraged to go speak to the detective directly for the details.
"So you wanna know about Fran-kestein, aye?" The detective said, swirling around in his chair to meet eyes with the hunter as a clear impassioned fire rose from within. "You came to the right man. I know all there is to know about the evil doctor! And by gum, I'll have her on trial someday! She's not invincible, no one is to the law, and I will not rest until she answers for it ya hear!? You say you know her kiddo? Then help me out and maybe we can both get to talk to her."
It was then that he was passed the case files... Many, many case files. Each one detailed a patient of Fran's, at least those that could be confirmed.
And what he found inside those files painted a greater picture that he ever could have hoped for to learn about the buisness of this Onawa look-alike.
Yohan is in his senior year of high school. He is a bright guy, if not perhaps a bit weak willed. Overweight and not exactly desirable, he just barely managed to stay in his crush's life by means of persistence and his intellect. Mikami, a foreign student, was about as far apart from him on the spectrum as she could get. She was beautiful, popular, and had no shortage of boys chasing after her. She moved here when Yohan was still in middle school and had grown a crush for her since year one. However, he had no chance with her from the beginning. She often just ignored him or met his romantic attempts with friendly kindess, though this did eventually turn to annoyance during high school as he just never seemed to give it up. The most he could manage with her was getting on her goodside by agreeing to do her homework and getting waved back when waved too.
It was his last chance before the prom to ask her to go with him. He had tried ever year but just couldn't get her to agree. This time was different though, he was sure. It was his senior year and he had done more favors for her than he ever had before, there would not be another chance after this! He had to try! He left a cryptic note in her locker, not saying who it was from, telling her to meet after school under the tree by the bus stop. He had never done anything as strange as this, and hoped that the odd gesture would get her curious enough to come.
Unfortunatly it began to rain that day, and Yohan didn't bring an umbrella. Still, feeling a little stupid, he hung out under the tree and got soaking wet, standing in wait after school in the hopes she would come.
"Yohan?" Came a voice. Yohan turned to see Mikami, looking rather confused, holding an umbrella above her head as she stepped up and looked him over. "What the hell are you doing just standing in the rain without an umbrella?"
"Uh, well... I was hoping you got my note."
"That was from you?" She seemed visibly disappointed, then almost immediately annoyed, taking a hand off her umbrella to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Yohan..."
"I wanted to ask you to go to the senior prom with me."
"Yohan, no. Sorry, just no. I'm really not interested-"
"Please! It's the last day I get to ask and I've-"
"No dammit! When do you get a clue!? I'm not into you like that and not interested!"
This... Wasn't quite how he was hoping this would go down. She didn't usually speak up like that and it left Yohan feeling rather small and tight throated. He didn't expect her to get this annoyed with him this time.
"Sorry, I-"
"Yohan just take my umbrella already and go home, you're soaking wet. Pretend this never happened." She marched up to him and held out the umbrella, leaving him looking rather speechless. He didn't want to take it.
Then, a gust of wind. The suprise was visible on Mikami's face as the umbrella was ripped from her hand, stolen away by the breeze as it skirted right past Yohan and into the street. He didn't have the reaction to even try to grab it, or run for it, still feeling stunned. Before he could speak up though, Mikami brushed right past him, right on the umbrella's tail as she followed it into the street.
Neither of them even heard the car coming over the sound of the wind and rain.
It all happened so quick. A loud thud, a sudden crash, and and the sight of bloody water streaking across the road and into the drains.
The car didn't slow or stop, blasting past as if nothing happened, and the sight of a absolutely mutilated body sent shockwaves through Yohan. The car carried her at least fifteen feet down the road... At least, one half of her anyway.
Yohan screamed, and breaking out into a run he rushed over to where Mikami's top half was, the gore and carnage too much. Perhaps it was the overload of stress that caused him to do what he did. He scooped up her remains and began to scream, running down the street, yelling for help.
Perhaps it was fate that day that lead him to Fran.
Umbrella overhead, wearing a jacket with a scarf around her neck, she was making her way back home from her walk once the rain had started. Humming lightly to herself, she stopped as a big figure came rushing through the rain down the same sidewalk as her, clutching a bloody corpse from the look of it.
The big boy was screaming and bumbling from the specter of death behind him and she was apparently the first person he came across. "PLEASE! PLEASE HELP ME SHE'S DYING!!"
Fran blinked, looking at what he was holding then back at him a couple times before awkwardly reaching into her pocket and pulling out a cellphone. "I'll get the police for you."
"Aren't you a doctor!!?" He yelled. Apparently he did recognize her. "You're Fran right!? OH THANK GOD-"
"Hm? You want me to help?"
"YES yes please!!"
"...Do you love her?"
That seemed to throw a monkey wrench in Yohan's blundering for a moment. "H-Huh?"
"I can tell by looking at you. Let me ask again: Do you love her?"
Under normal circumstances that would have been very strong and presumptuous language to use, but int hat moment, detecting that it might be important for Mikami to live, he swallowed his nerves and gave a definitive head nod. "Yes. I do. Please help her!"
Fran grew a almost mischievous smile. "Good. In that case, I think I can save her life."
With that and a short phone call, a car with tinted windows pulled up beside them, driven by a tall man in a strange mask. Yohan and what was left of Mikami got in with Fran, and together they drove to her estate.
"Come back tomorrow after school." Fran told Yohan after Mikami was moved inside. "Your presence will play a very important part in helping her recover, you understand?"
And with that, Yohan was forced to leave, hoping and praying the doctor would indeed be able to save Mikami, feeling guilty and responsible for dragging her out there that day.
~~~~
Mikami stirred. Her body felt heavy... REALLY heavy. This feeling of discomfort was unreal. As she opened her eyes, the sight of white lights made her flinch, but... She couldn't lift her arms to her face, try as she might. She squirmed, feeling a cloth over her. What the hell? What happened?
"Awake?" Fran appeared, looming over her, wearing a mask and medical scrubs. She looked down at Mikami with a calm fondness characteristic of either a caring doctor or a proud craftsman.
Mikami blinked. "W-Who are you?"
"My name is Fran. Yohan brought you to me after your accident. If he hadn't, you would have died. He's here now. Say hi, Yohan."
But nothing came. Turning her head with suprising difficulty, like her neck was stiff, she managed to look to the other side and sure enough a short distance away was a rather deathly looking Yohan. He looked shocked.
"I told him to come here after school. He's going to help you recover, I hope."
Recover? That's right... She hadn't thought about that until now. Looking down she saw the bedsheet that covered her but... Something was... Wrong.
"The surgery took a very long time, but in the end it was successful. What happens from here will be up to you and your boyfriend over there." Fran said, sounding pleasant, as one of her hands reach up and grabbed the bedsheet.
With a pull, it came off. That was when Mikami saw what the doctor had done. Six wriggling legs... A long, disgusting, pulsating body full of wrinkles, with odd protrusions and a dark part at the end of her. Like some grotesque insect every movement she made caused the legs to wiggle and the body to writhe.
She couldn't breath. Staring at herself in object horror, realizing that her movements could be felt, that this was actually her, Fran suddenly held a mirror in front of her face.
"Pretty amazing job. What do you think?"
Her head... It was her head alright. It was the only thing normal on an otherwise horrifying backdrop. She was... Like a grub, or a caterpillar. A human head grafted onto some gigantic monstrosity.
She screamed. Screamed until she passed out.
~~~~
Every day after school, Yohan returned to the manor. At first he blamed himself, even contemplating suicide. However there was a few factor's that remained that kept him from falling too far into despair. Firstly, Mikami was indeed alive. She had infact been saved. Secondly, the doctor made it very clear: She is still 'recovering', and that he needed to be there to help her.
Fran's bedside manner really helped things too. She never acted like this was anything other than a process, like nothing was wrong and nothing would go wrong. Once Mikami got over the straight up horror of the sight of her own body, cursing Yohan and everyone for what she had become, she mellowed out with the help of Fran. Mikami wasn't the type to stay all gloomy for too long anyway, no matter what apparently.
While at first Yohan had trouble interacting, feeling guilty and more shy than ever around Mikami, eventually hey worked out their own issues. Fran asked what was wrong, and Yohan told her he felt guilty about all of this and that she didn't need his help anyway, so Fran straight up left her care to Yohan to force his hand.
Together, once they got over the whole 'Being a giant grub' thing, they began to get along better than ever. With Yohan being the only other person she could relate to around, they would bond during their little training exersices. Getting Mikami out of bed, making her learn to walk, hearing her moan about how slowly she moves now and that she's always hungry... In a weird way, this odd situation was making them grow closer together, and Mikami actually grew thankful. If not for him, after all, she would be dead and if he had chickened out here she'd have no one to really talk too. She even let slide Fran calling him her boyfriend and her his girlfriend.
There was a lot of growing moments for Yohan too, growing confidence by showing responsibility over another's well being while also talking and laughing and truly becoming friends. As much as Mikami had brushed him off over the years, this time together made them realize how many moments they actually had and how weirdly well they knew each other without realizing it.
Over the weeks, Yohan helped Mikami get used to her new body, encouraging her to walk and helping her eat sometimes. Fran was present too, checking in on the two of them occasionally and checking her progress.
"Good. You're growing nicely." She said in regards to Mikami's grub body. "Moving faster than I expected."
While neither of them knew what exactly she meant about that, they had grown used to not knowing. Fran didn't tell all, apart from the recovery still being ongoing, but neither of them knew what exactly that meant.
Until, one day, Mikami began to build a web.
"I can't help myself." She said, seeming confused. "I'm... Not sure what I'm doing."
"She's entering the cocoon stage." Fran interjected, standing next to the surprised Yohan who seemed just as confused. "Don't interfere. Just stand by, and be ready for when she comes out, okay?"
With that, Fran took a backseat, backing off the observe and let Yohan be the first person there. As Mikami encased herself, completely disappearing under her construction, leaving a truly gigantic cocoon, there was silence and anticipation...
For hours.
Honestly, not that long compared to the first stage. Almost no time at all really in comparison. The cocoon began to stir, and Yohan waited in anticipation too see what Mikami would become. As the cocoon split open, it fell away and a new Mikami emerged...
Human body, new and pristine.
Yohan couldn't be more relieved, so much so that he shed a tear. Fran smiled to herself. Good, it worked perfectly. That was all she needed. As the naked Mikami seemed to still be getting a hold of herself, Yohan seemed unsure again. He turned, and began to walk with a bittersweet smile on his face. Fran stopped him as he passed her by.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. She's back, so... It can go back to how it was. I learned a lot this past few weeks, and if I can take anything from it all, it's that I should not push my luck with people I care about. She's back to normal, so she doesn't need me anymore."
"Where are you going Yohan?"
Mikami finally spoke up, for the first time since the cocoon opened. From the bed, still looking a little sticky, she had her arms crossed over her chest as if she was cold, looking straight at him.
"Don't talk like that. You gave me this new body... Come here and take some responsibility for it."
Yohan seemed surprised, but... Not unpleasantly so. Without a word but a smile he turned and made a weirdly happy walk of shame back to Mikami who welcomed him with open arms. Fran just smiled before taking her leave from the room, feeling this was a job well done.
The next day...
"How do you think the couple is doing?"
"Oh, they are probably doing what young couples do. I could see it on their faces, they're probably renting a cheap hotel room as we speak. Though, there is one bit of cause for concern..."
"Hm? What would that be, Fran?"
"The surgery went extraordinarily well. Bio-engineering life forms is sort of old-hat for me, but this is the first time I've tried it with this method of using natural processes inherit in certain insect species to achieve results. That said, as with all new things, there is always the chance to encounter some... Unforseen side effects."
"Oh?"
"In particular, inheriting other traits from insects other than just pupation. For example... It's not uncommon in bug species to have an odd instinct: Eating the male after copulation."
~~~~~
Reports of screaming from a motel were reported, and the police were called to the scene. Inside they discovered a terrible scene:
Two naked high schoolers, one dying from having his guts opened, and the other, still eating him with a almost bugged out, crazy look in her eyes.
It seemed that after they enjoyed an evening of lovemaking, something possessed the girl to want to cannibalize her partner.
Margaret was a well known face in the community. In her youth she gained her fortune with an acting career, moving back to her small town for her retirement while being the un-named CEO of a thriving talent company. She was something of a black-hat entrepreneur with the outward appearance of a old woman who's working days were long past her.
In truth though, she was basically a mobster.
One thing that really began to take up space in her mind was her age. She detested the idea of her own mortality, keeping it far from her mind, until the day she discovered her heart was weakening. When she asked why, it ultimatly was chalked up to pretty common symptoms of old age...
This would not do. She still had so much work to do and things planned, she couldn't let her annoyingly unfit body get in her way. The fact that she was once so beautiful was just a spit in the face. Damn the ceaseless march of time... Life was too short!
That was when Fran's unique work came to her attention... The doctor had a reputation of doing the impossible, achieving so much where others might not tread. That was what she needed... If anybody might be able to help her, perhaps this strange little doctor might do the trick. Even if things might go... Ugly.
"Eternal youth?"
"Yes, yes my dear. I'm prepared to comphensate you however much I must if you could find a way to make it happen for me. That is... If you can. Can't you?"
Sitting across from Fran on a chair within the manor, Fran sat on her knees atop a large couch. Fran went silent, hand on her jaw as she just stared at the old woman Margaret. The cogs were working in her mind, mulling something over with her tall male assistant loomed over it all from behind the couch like a mindless drone.
"... It could be done... Yes..." She removed her hand from her face, sitting up straight to address Margaret more forwardly. "I have an idea but it'll take some time. Blood samples... Hormone therapy... You'll have to come in daily for treatment. I can put you on a set of hormones to help prepare your body and keep you healthy while I work on a treatment for a more permanent solution to your issue. Stop the ageing, even reverse it... With some luck, I could get you looking twenty again, but I can't give any guarantees. I don't like to do long term treatment like this, so I'll have to ask you to flip the bill for as long as it goes on..."
"That is fine. I am an old retired woman, what do I have to lose? My money? Won't do me much good if I'm dead."
Fran seemed to get a spark of enthusiasm, smirking before leaning forward and stretching out her hand for a handshake.
"Then you've got a deal. I want to see you here first thing tomorrow, and we can start the process and get things sorted out." This seemed like an exciting new challenge to her, and with that, Margaret willfully agreed and the stones were set.
Over the course of the next month, Margaret would arrive at the same time every day for her appointment with Fran. She was administered an undisclosed variety of hormones and drugs, taking blood samples along the way and heavily monitored in a process that took an hour or so. It became a part of Margaret's daily routine... Although, the effects it was having on her body were often uncomfortable. She began to have period cramps again, something she got used to not having for almost fifteen years now, and mood swings became commonplace.
Fran kept her updated on progress with how she was going to make her young again, but to Margaret it must have been frustrating. As Fran would persue one avenue, hearing that she was exploring another the next day and therefore pushing back any final solutions would annoy Margaret to no end. Why couldn't she just figure this out already? She of course was no professional and didn't even want to begin trying to understand what this must have took, but... She was still paying a lot of money for this everyday. And everyday she wasn't young again was another hit to the bank, and her time, and her patience.
"Good news," Came Fran one day. "I'm actually got a serum in the lab right now. It's just it's first iteration, and I'm not ready to treat you with it quite yet... But, when all of this is said and done, I may have a youth potion just for you, safe enough to drink and easy to administer. With any luck, I will have worked out any unforseen side effects very soon."
"That's great news doctor. What's stopping you from giving it to me now?"
"Well, I just said, unforeseen effects... I'm going to run it through some more trials before I feel okay using it. Remain patient."
"But doctor... I don't think I can pay for another day of this."
Fran tilted her head, looking from what she was doing to see Margaret's face. The woman was clearly running very low on patients for this... Frustrated, maybe feeling swindled.
"... I see. I'll run through the expenses again."
"Thank you, Miss Fran."
But she had already made up her mind. As she left that day, she walked away with crucial information that would inform her decition for the day to come. Fran had a solution worked out, sitting in her lab, she was just not giving it to her. However, it wasen't only that. All these days of medical expenditure, needles, and uncomfortable medical treatment to her body... She had actually grow to somewhat dispise Fran. She wanted a bit of vengence for being so... Slow. How dare she make her go through all this and pay so much just to keep her waiting?
Not only that, but she had the mind of a mobster and entrepreneur. This part of her mind did not skip over the massive opportunity she saw in front of her right now: Fran had the key to youth in her lab right now. If she could make that, she could make more... But, if her and her people could steal such a thing, then they would be richer beyond their wildest dreams.
She wasn't paying another medical bill. Kill Fran, take the serum, use it for herself and her own ends...
She was no innocent old woman, and Fran was about to learn that.
The next day...
~~~~
"I'll be fine alone. Keep working on what you're doing, okay? And stop calling me." Fran muttered into her phone, sounding rather annoyed as she walked out of the gas station with a gallon of milk and a handful of candy in hand. Her ever-loyal servants never liked to leave her be, not because they were necessarily concerned for her safety, but because they seemed to live to be at her beck and call.
How annoying. She just wanted some sweets.
She was easily within walking distance, just three blocks from her manor's gate. Her daily patient was scheduled for her daily check up in an hour, and no doubt she would want some good news after yesterday. It was no secret from Fran that the old woman was not super pleased with things so far, and after not being able to pay her yesterday, she figured some good news would cheer her up. Fran felt like she was so close, and being maybe too passionate for what she did, she decided that she would just not ask for payment from here on out, predicting it wouldn't be much longer anyway and personally really wanting to finish this.
So preoccupied with her own thoughts, marching down the side walk with groceries in hand, she paid no mind when the sound of footsteps grew closer behind her. Not like anything bad would happen to her in broad day light like this and it was a public sidewalk.
So imagine her surprise when she felt a hand over her face and a knife dragging across her neck.
"Margaret's regards." She hear a man mumble in her last fading moments as blood rushed out from the massive gaping cut where her throat used to be, eyes rolling up and about in their sockets as the sharp butcher's knife made such effective and short work of her she was nearly decapitated. Her groceries hit the pavement, milk spilling everywhere as she was let go and collapsed into a heap on the sidewalk, head hanging like a loose hinge off her neck and arms and legs twitching their last nervous twitches as the man slipped away as briskly as he had came.
Meanwhile, at her manor, Margaret arrived early. There was some dirty work to be done. Today she came packing heat, and after more than a month of becoming pretty familiar with the manor, she made her way down to where she was sure the lab would be in order to get what she had came for.
The bloody murderous mess that was left of Fran was still. For a while. Then, her arms began to spaz. Like some creatures acting on their own, they twisted and moved in eerie silence and swiftness, throwing themselves about in what looked like a random manner but with each reach grasped a tool. Sloppy looking to an outside observer but in truth with surgical precision, acting all on their own, they not only pulled Fran's hinged head back together, but they closed the neck. They didn't seem gentle about it, moving swiftly, jerking her head to and fro as it sutured her head back where it belonged.
And like a zombie, Fran lurched up. Her head bobbled from the motion, eyes rolling about like loose marbles as she seemed to reanimate. Within a moment, she snapped her head back to stillness, and one of her eyes evened out. The other was still completely off, but... She seemed otherwise totally unfazed. She blinked, standing herself up before dusting herself off, feeling wet with the puddle of milk that had soaked her clothes before locating her cellphone and giving it a ring...
In the lab, Margaret had already found what she was looking for. It was labled very well, and she took it upon herself to inject it into her arm...
And she looked beautiful within minutes. Her excess skin flaked off rather grossly, but very quickly. Her hair feel out, leaving aheap on the ground, but... with every passing second, it was growing. She felt her insides moving so much... She'd need to find a restroom, asap, but otherwise fantastic.
The serum worked phenominally, and she haden't even used half of it. Still clutching the bottle in her hand, she had stipped down to deal with the ungodly amount of shed skin and hair, observing her own miraculous transformation, by the time the door to the lab opened.
In the door was none other than the lop-eyed, bloody Fran and her two large companions.
Margaret saw them, but couldn't find it within herself to be mad, just smiling as she looked triumphantly at them. She was suprised that Fran was alive... But not enough to ruin her moment. Her gun sat right by her on the same table she had gotten the bottle from.
"Wow. I am glad to see you're already looking so beautiful, Margaret." Fran spoke, not seeming mad.
"Hmph. Yes, thanks to you. I don't suppose you're here to kill me now?"
"No, no. I took an oath, I would never take a life. I just knew what you must have been up to and wanted to come stop you before you made a mistake, but I guess it's too late for that."
Just about as soon as Fran said that, Margaret began to notice smething... Odd. Her skin texture was growing... Thin? Lumps began to form, right around the area she had injected herself.
"I think you came down here to take the serum early because you didn't want to keep paying, then maybe you were hoping to sell it? There's two things wrong with that: Firstly, that serum was made specifically for you. It would not work with anyone else, unless they were genetic clones I suppose. Second, the serum wasn't done."
Margaret began to feel her insides swell, and her perfect skin she had gotten mere minutes ago was beginning to... Grow. Huge growths, swelling out from her like balloons from seemingly random parts of her body, began to grow and become discolored. She was horrified. What was happening!?
"I tried a lot of different approaches. Ageing is thought to be caused by damage to the cells over time, and that damage accumulating until they cease functioning properly, so I thought about ways of cleaning up your blood. That wouldn't really stop your aging though, so I wanted to observe the very mechanism by which cells age and die and what I could do to change that by comparing it with organisms that do not age. That wouldn't reverse the process however and I think would still result in an accumulation of errors in the cells that would eventually still kill you..."
Margaret collapsed, becoming bulbous and hidious, a grow on her back becoming so large it began to start folding over her head just as another was taking over one half of her face. She couldn't speak... Something in her throat, swelling to the point where it was becoming impossible to breath.
"But you know what cells are immortal? Cancer. They are your own cells, essentially rebelling and refusing to die, putting their own survival over the body. I thought if I could use that, I could not just reverse the effects of ageing and make you young, but make you immortal. Make cancer work for health, but make it sort of for your whole body and not just itself. I was till working out how to prevent the inherit need for the cells to not just grow but to reproduce beyond what is necessary though..."
Margaret was not even human looking anymore. A disgusting mass of pulsating living tissue, with the vague shape of what might of been a person slowly melding away with each passing moment.
"I'm sorry for your impatience. This is why I don't like long-term treatment. On the upside though, you're probably immortal now."
Spencer is a fresh college graduate returning home after obtaining his degree. There is a lot in his life to feel celebratory about, but one thing plagued his mind more than any of it: His weight. He had always been obese, from the time he was in the fifth grade right until now. When he was a kid, his parents told him as he grew up he wouldn't grow out. Four good growth spurts later and that never happened.
He tried joining sports to give himself an excuse to excessive, but found it nigh impossible to contribute. He had to lose weight before he could play sports to lose weight, funny enough, otherwise he would never be able to stay in a game long enough without becoming totally exhausted. He tried going on a diet, but found that what little weight he would lose would come back with more behind it the moment he faltered.
He eventually put it away in the back of his mind, figuring it would be something he would eventually figure out in time. However... Going through all of college, some of his final years in a social school enviroment, here he still was...
This had to change. Everything was going for him but this, this one final problem he had yet to make go away. That was when he found out about this strange doctor that had moved into his home town while he had been away at university...
"You're supposed to be a doctor, aren't you?"
"Well, yes, but I'm not someone you can just book any old thing with... I'm sorry, I'm just not terribly interested in such a mundane problem."
"It's not mundane! I'm sorry if I sound desperate, but... You don't understand my position. I have tried everything, and apart from surgery, or some kind of seriously drastic lifestyle change, nothing has worked. I need... Something. Something sustainable. I-I don't need you to vacuum it all out of me or anything like that, just... A solution."
From the comfort of his mother's couch, Fran went silent for a little while, looking squarely across the little coffee table to the man. She had been invited here under the promise that there was some unique problem a special and willing patient would have, but obviously seemed disappointed. Still, she leaned forward, bringing a hand to her chin and lightly scratching at it with a finger as she seemed to contemplate the man, inquisitive plastered on her patch-worked visage.
"... Hmm... Well when you put it that way, I guess I do have something interesting I'd like to try out."
"I'm more than willing. As long as I don't die, I guess. I'll try anything."
"Good! Franklin," She turned to her tall assistant, the man hovering on his feet nearby. "Go start the car for me." Then, he attention went back to the boy, a new smile on her stitched up face.
"Can you do it today?"
Back against the cold operating table, Spencer was feeling very freaked out that he was actually here but still conscious. What kind of doctor moves someone straight to the table before knocking them out? Was she going to knock him out? He tried to keep calm, looking over to see Fran just off to the side, slipping on some gloves.
"So there are many ways someone could lose weight. Exercise, reducing calories, a change in your metabolic state... Usually it takes a combination of those things." She explained, slightly muffled by the surgical mask. She had two extra arms on her, each gloved. She seemed to have put them on just for the surgery. "But when you mentioned that you were looking for something sustainable, that gave me a fun idea."
The same tall man from before stepped into the room, dressed in surgical gown, dragging along what looked like a tank of gas and a mask. It must of been what was going to put him under.
"What if I change the way you eat?" Okay, that gave him some initial fears. Then Fran continued, "What if... I make spinach taste just as good as cake to you? Make sugar taste terrible, make nutrient rich food taste divine... Really get you to not just want, but CRAVE healthier options?"
Well... That sounded interesting. "H-Hey, yeah... That sounds good. That's a great idea."
"So you like it?"
"Yes, but-"
"Good." Before any other utterance, Spencer was surprised by the sudden hands on him, clasping a mask that covered his nose and mouth. "This will be very a very short surgery. All changes are final, but you already agreed to it and I really wanna cut you open~."
He could barely hear her final words before drifting off...
It was a week later. After the surgery, he found himself at his mother's house. He didn't remember even getting up, there wasn't even a scar, he began to think he had dreamt it all. But, when he went to test it, the moment of truth: a banana in his left hand, a cookie in his right. Time to see if there was a difference...
And there was. A big one. He liked bananas before the surgery, but this... This was the best damn banana he had ever had. And the cookie, well... It just didn't taste good. It was bitter in his mouth, and every chunk of chocolate he got tasted distractedly like pure cocoa. The difference was obvious and huge, like she had completely replaced his taste buds or something.
On one hand, there was something sort of saddening to know he'd never look at sweets the same way again. On the other though... Suddenly, there was a massive amount of new food he wanted to taste.
It changed him immediately. He would look at fruits and vegetables completely differently. Spinach became his favorite, treating them like candy, and his diet naturally turned to something more vegetarian not out of any moral standing but out of sheer preference. Low calorie, healthy food became the only things he wanted to eat now, although this did make eating with his family awkward sometimes.
"The new small intestine and organ I implanted should take their toll immediately. There are a lot of things that go into how we determine what food we want, it's not only the tongue. Did you know there are taste receptors on the small intestine too? It helps determine if you ingested poison, and contributes to little fun things like your body producing far more glucose based on what you ate, more than if a doctor had just injected that amount into you. I made these changes to do something very simple: Make the body crave what it needs. I made his metabolism smarter by not just wanting generic things like sugars and carbs, but to analyze what would be most beneficial and change his habits accordingly. I also reduced his ability to feel full, so in theory he will make up the calories he's missing out on by eating more."
Fran bragged to her companion, lounging in the arms of a loveseat as she broke open another pixie stick.
"He should shed the pounds off naturally in no time."
"Can you predict any potential unperceived consequences?" The looming man asked.
Fran paused, stopping herself from pouring the sugar candy right down her open mouth, and gave it some thaught for a moment.
"... Well..."
~~~~
It was nearing his second month.
This had started okay. Opting to buy fruits and veggies instead of something else that might have been bad for him, dealing with occasional cravings for something strangely specific every once in a while with no explanation. He even began losing weight.
However, the longer it went on, the more his new diet became... Distracting. He felt like no matter how often he ate, he just wanted more, something else, not too long after. The time he spent in his kitchen began to out weight his time in his room, this was getting ridiculous. His mother was getting tired of the sheer variety and scale of his new shopping list, and even then... It wasn't enough.
Soon, he found his craving getting really... Odd. He would take the garbage out and see a green leaf from a nearby tree, or a roving Caterpillar, or even dirt and just... Hunger for it. But he couldn't eat those things, could he? That's ridiculous. He shrugged it off...
For a while.
The hunger just never went away. He was constantly eating; Eating things that might be good for you, sure, but... Way too much. He couldn't help it. He craved these foods so much, but every time he managed to get it... The satisfaction was tremendous. He wasn't just hunger, he was craved. Addicted; Addicted to the feeling it gave him when he found just the right thing his body wanted.
And like a junkie, he kept chasing that feeling. He couldn't stop, and would start to get hasty if not hostile when he couldn't find it. That was when he caved... Caved farther than anyone thaught he would, when it truly became a problem he knew had to be fixed.
His mother found him, knelt over and ant hill that was in their back yard, licking swarming ants off his hands. He was stung and bit all over his face, lips, and nose. His hands were awful, swollen and bleeding, some ants still latched on.
And even through the tears, he hungrily lapped at them like some starving dog.
This was when this really became a problem. After this incident, his mother took her adult son's well being into her own hands. She controlled his diet, kept her eyes on him, made sure he didn't do anything like that again to hurt himself. She could seek the help of a professional, but who? A psychiatrist? She had no idea her son had met with Fran... It just seemed like something that cropped up all of a sudden. It had to be the stress from college, that's it... Just coming out of school, not sure what to do next with his life, a huge change in setting... This was probably from stress. This was solvable... And there was no need to pay some doctor to fix a problem they could fix themselves with some close monitoring and care.
It was the worst mistake she could have made.
Spencer's hunger didn't lessen thanks to his mother's interference. It grew, and got worse, as he was denied what he wanted most. The food she made tasted like rot in his mouth, and what little he liked was never what he wanted right at that moment. He became so agitated, lashing out on a whim, clutching his stomach, never feeling so hungry in his life. His body was stacking up things it wanted... And he wasn't getting them.
His body demanded things humans need, discarding simple surviving in favor of sustenance. His mind began to look for jsut about anything... Mind going to the oddest things, the sight of ladybugs on his window a tease to his stomach...
Until, he laid eyes on his own mother one day, and felt it.
Suddenly... She never looked so good before. Not in a sexual way, or even aesthetically, but... Looking at her made his stomach rumble.
What else has everything that humans need better than humans themselves?
Spencer is currently in jail for the murder and cannibalization of his mother, and two cell mates. To this day, no one could say why the nice boy would come back to his own home town and do something like this. No one except Fran, and Detective Gumshoe.
"She's a real freak, ya see? A menace. Ever since she made the entire police force look like a bunch of incompetence children, no one is willing to push the issue! No one but me, see? I'm the last damn detective who ain't scared of that stitched together freak-a-zoid!" The detective went on, letting out his frustrations with his situation to the hunter. The hunte found out the details; Apparently Fran had indeed made the police force who came to investigate her manor look silly to the point of having to actually rescue them from the confines of her unusual abode. A lot of the police straight up refused to go back in there. Though, there was more too it: They technically hadn't had a search warrant yet when they decided to pull that stunt. Between that and the humiliation the chief of police was willing to let things quietly slide...
All except mister Gumshoe here. The hunter agreed to help, with the promise that if they went in together, they'd each get to talk with Fran. Well, he would anyway. Apparently, Gumshoe wanted to straight up arrest her. Alone. In her own manor. The brass balls of this man were almost admirable.
The hunter himself had an idea on how they would get in. The arrived at the gate to the manor later that very evening.
It was locked. The detective, not seeming to care if it was legal or not, took to breaking in by climbing the fence itself with the hunter right behind him. Fran din't used to keep herself and those in her manor so isolated, but the police behavior seemed to have been the catalyst that changed that.
His plan wasn't great admittedly... It was to simply get to the door and knock. Obviously, they would be shooed away if there would be any answer at all. But, if he could just get even a word in edgewise... Based on all that he had read about her, he was sure: She'd want to see him.
Approaching the front door, taking the big steps that lead up to it, the hunter convinced the detective to stay quiet to let him do the talking. Taking hold of the massive metal door-knocker, the hunter lifted it, then gave it three good slams. Boy did he feel his heart in his chest... Fran was the only person he recognized around here. If there was any answers to be had, this was it.
At first, there was silence. Then, slowly bu surely... The hunter could hear slow, heavy footsteps approach from the other side of the door. Then, a voice, deep and formal,
"We no longer receive visitors. Please remove yourselves from the premises."
"We are here to talk to Miss Fran-... I am here to talk to her."
"No visitors. Kindly leave." While it might have been invisible for the detective, the Hunter's supernatural vision gave him notice of the slightest flicker from the door. A peep hole, just hardly giving light their way. They were being looked at. It was his chance.
"Please sir! I have an ailment!"
"For the final time, no visitor-"
The hunter didn't let him finish. In perhaps a unnecessarily violent demonstration, the hunter curled his finger, and bit down on it with all his jaw's strength. It hurt like hell, riding through the pain as he used his canines to tear up his own finger like he harbored a grudge. Even the detective looked shocke,d somehow managing to keep his mouth shut while looking visibly stunned and sick at the same time, clearly wanting to scream 'What the hell are you doing!?'.
With some fresh tears in his eyes, the hunter held his hand up to the peep hole, trying to steady his breathing as he let the man on the other side witness it himself as his mangled finger slowly, but visibly, mended itself in front of him. His healing factor was still there... And he hoped it would be intriguing enough to get him through the door.
"Do you see it?" He said, still breathing a little heavy from the little adrenaline shot the act gave him. "Please... I want Miss Fran to see it."
There was silence for a while, but the man did not move, not a foot fall was heard. He must have been thinking.
"... Very well."
Wait, really? The detective and hunter exchanged surprised glances.
"Miss Fran would not be happy if she learned I turned down someone like you. Please, come in."
Then, the door swung open. Before them, looming very tall (He must have had to bend over quite a lot to look through the door's peep hole) was a stark, well dressed and somewhat lanky man. His ears were pointed and his face was long, with a somber expression and extremely pale skin. His eyes looked tired and empty... The darkness seeming to sink into his very soul, if he had one.
He stepped aside to let them in, giving way to the inside. Finally. As the two stepped up, the man spoke up.
"Not you." He looked to the detective. "Mister Gumshoe. I've asked you to leave Ms. Fran alone if you have no search warrent."
That suprised the hunter. He had done this before? The detective seemed immediatly put off, puffing up and pointing an accusing finger up at them man with a "SEE HERE NOW-" before the hunter put a brisk stop to it.
"He is with me! I don't go if he can't come."
The tall man seemed questioning about that, raising a lazy eyebrow. "Hm? Why is that?"
"He's... My witness. He saw when it happened, and I gained this strange illness. He was even the one to suggest coming here."
Silence fell between them, the Detective seeming to somehow manage to look impressed and got the picture before shutting up and assuming a look of 'Yep, it's all true, what say you now?' as they waited for passage.
The big guy didn't seem at all excited by all this. He spent a good deal glumly looking at the two of them as if trying to find a good reason why he shouldn't believe that and kick them out, but... With a heavy sigh, he relented.
"Then please, come right in. I shall take you both to the good doctor."
~~~~~
This was it. A dark room, illuminated by the glow of a big screen television, and with her back to him... Fran. This was the meeting he was really hoping for, putting all his eggs in this one basket. Either she could help him, or he was out of luck.
"Miss Fran, you have visitors."
Fran didn't seem to react at first, though the hunter could see her lifting what seemed like some sweets to her mouth. Just as it seemed like she was going to ignore them, she spoke.
"Visitors...? We don't have visitors anymore." She turned her head, and looking out over her shoulder he caught her gaze in the corner of her eye, munching away at something in her mouth.
They caught gazes for a moment, Fran and the hunter just staring at each other for a few moments before she finished chewing and swallowed.
"Hello. Did you want to see me?"
She even sounded like Onawa. Just as the hunter opened his mouth to respond, he was just a fraction of a second too late.
"Darn straight I wanna talk to you!" Came the voice of Dick, brushing his way past the hunter. He was absolutely fearless, in bold view of her and her servant, he marched around the seat she was in, rounding to her front where she sat with legs crossed and a bag of candy in her lap. She was dressed in what seemed to be PJs, with long socks, a hardly buttoned button up, and some striped panties. It was like she was prepared for a sleepover.
Without another word, he cuffed her. Straight up, no hesitation, and faster than seemed possible. One moment he approached her, the next he slapped cuffs onto her wrists. Fran looked at the metal thing with some clear confusion and surprise.
"Miss Fran, I am Detective Dick Gumshoe! I have been following through on your case the department has against you, and am putting you under arrest for a litany of charges! You'll be coming with me!"
The balls on this guy. After what the hunter had read and what happened to the police force, it was clear Fran was not someone you could just do this too. Yet, here he was.
Fran blinked again. "I'm sorry detective." And slid her hands out of the cuffs. It happened so smoothly, it would take a bit of replaying in the hunter's head to realize she practically folded her hand in half effortlessly to do it. "Maybe we can talk some other time."
The detective hesitated for just a moment, but determination still on his face, promptly grabbed her by the wrist. "I don't think so!" The moment he tugged, seemingly to get her out of the seat, plop! Her hands came off. He had pulled with enough force that, when met with no resistance, he actually stumbled back a step out of surprise.
"That's enough." Came the voice of the tall attendee, looking rather annoyed as he appeared quick as a ghost behind the detective. He promptly snatched the small hands away from him, tossing them back into Fran's lap before grabbing the detective himself. "I knew this was a bad idea..."
The detective struggled, kicked, and screamed his way along down the hallway, the man escorting him completely unmoving as he walked him out like a child being put to bed. It left the hunter alone with Fran, and as the quiet began to come into the room, he truly felt alone with her now. Finally. He rounded his way to the front of her himself now, looking at Fran as she seemed to use her newfound stumps to move her disembodied hands about.
It was... A strange sight. His first in person experience with the oddity that was Fran. From here, she looked so much like Onawa, he had no doubt in his mind. The stitches though, they were all over. She looked like some cheaply put together doll, especially in her arms, and with how little she was wearing he could see it over the rest of her too.
"Do you... Need any help with that?" He asked, feeling a little awkward watching her fiddle with her hands. She looked up at him, eyes familiar and yet... Not? They seemed like they were different somehow. Same color and everything, but... It was like there was a different person behind them.
"Yes, I'd appreciate it. If you could just help me align them..."
He didn't hesitate, picking up one of the hands and holding it to her. She brought her wrist to it, and the stitches popped together like two ends of a magnet, animation coming over the limb instantly as the hand he was holding was suddenly holding him right back.
He might of been just briefly spooked by the feeling of that happening as he held it, but she smiled. "Thank you." She gave his hand a little squeeze, letting him go and doing the other hand herself. "Sorry I'm not very presentable, I wasn't expecting any company."
He just smiled back and nodded. "Yeah, yeah no problem..." Darn, how was he going to ask this? He told the man at the door that he had an ailment... Probably best to start with that. "I uh... Have this strange problem. I don't know if I should be worried or relieved."
"What would that be?"
He really didn't want to chew through his own finger again just to demonstrate. Additionally, he wanted to find some way to transition into what he really came to talk about. Might as well be 'honest', in a way that leaves out some truths.
"You see, I... Don't have any memory, beyond a certain point. I just sort of... Was here, in this town, without a clue to how I got here. I have no idea who I am or... What happened. And my body, it... well, I recover very rapidly. Like, inhumanly rapid."
Fran looking him up and down for a moment, seeming to understand before reaching over to near her forearm. There was a sewn together seam there, and as if it was merely a sleeve, she popped a few threads with her fingers before reaching in, pulling out a scalpel. Ew.
The threads, like the ones on her wrist, seemed to magnetize back together as she turned to him wielding the very sharp tool. She reached out and took him by the arm. The hunter immediately felt apprehension, as any sane person would, but tried not to say anything and just watch.
"Don't worry, this won't hurt. It is very sharp."
How did that make any sense? He said nothing as she turned his arm over, bringing the scalpel to his arm, and slowly dragging it down...
The skin opened for the tool, parting as she cut very slowly, only for it to close right back up again following her blade's cut. The heal tailed her blade all the way down, not giving hardly an inch as it went, and Fran looked at it with relative surprise on her face. To her credit though, she was right. He didn't feel a thing.
"Do you... Think this could cause problems?"
Fran shrugged, lifting the blade off his skin. "Well, it depends. You'll probably be thankful for small cuts or bruises, but this would make major surgery impossible. Any tumors you get would be almost impossible to remove, and this puts cosmetics like ear rings or other peircings out of the question."
"Huh... Okay. Do you know what could have caused this?" He knew, naturally. He just wanted to keep playing this little game.
She looked up at him and suprised him with a weird, knowing smile, like she saw right through his fake ignorance.
"You said you have no memory of how you got here, right?"
The hunter, feeling a little taken off guard, nodded.
"I do recognize this healing factor, yes. It's in your genes, I can see it in your DNA." She could what? That sounded like something Jade's mother would say. He was feeling a little speechless right now...
"You're a hunter. Do you know what that is?"
The hunter felt like he was about to start sweating, blinking at her before swallowing. "N-No..." Holy shit, was he actually going to get the answers he came here for?
"That's alright. I suppose you wouldn't if you're missing your memory. Hunters are a human like group of bio-engineered humanoids that used to exist some hundreds of years ago."
Used to!? The hunter's expression dropped. She was implying the hunters are gone!? Hundreds of years!?
"It was my understanding that they were all wiped out. Pretty amazing to have one just appear here, in my home like this..."
That's when the facade dropped. The hunter, without another moment passing, grabbed her by the shoulders. He did it with such force that he shoved her into the back of her seat, her head bobbing a little and her eyes oddly rolling around loosly as if he just knocked a doll about.
"Onawa. You are Onawa!"
As Fran's eyes stopped spinning she blinked them until they straightened, not expecting the sudden jolt. When she looked up she seemed confused by his outburst.
"Huh? Onawa?"
"Don't play games with me! You look exactly like her! You know what Hunters are!" He let her go, sliding down onto his knees. "Please..." He moved his hands to the seat of her seat, a look of pleading. "Tell me... You HAVE to be her! What happened to the Hunters!? What happened to Jade!?" He seemed pretty worked up now. "Do you... Know who I am?"
Fran seemed puzzled, looking down at him, seeming clueless on how to react to him. It drained his hope.
"Um... I'm sorry. I am not Onawa, I think you have me mistaken for somebody else."
The hunter's shoulders sunk. Impossible! How!? Just as he began to dip his head in shame...
"Onawa died a long time ago."
As he lifted his gaze back up, she seemed to look more... Sympathetic. She looked down at him for a while before touching his hand. "Please, sit down. It seems there is going to be a lot of explaining I have to do."
The hunter did as he was told. The strange tall man returned, and Fran asked him to return with drinks. She offered him candy too, something that the hunter could gather was a passion of hers based on the empty wrappers discarded in a bin beside her seat. She even muted the television.
Still, she seemed pretty positive, if not even a little excited to have company as they both settled down.
"I'm not sure where to even begin..." She muttered, unwrapping another lolipop as she stared up at nothing in thought. The hunter though, he knew exactly where he wanted to start. He wanted to know everything.
"What happened to the hunters?"
"Not sure really..." She discarded the wrapper, putting the candy in her mouth as she held it by it's stick. "Sometime after I came to be, but by then, I had nothing to do with them."
That was... A weird answer. Came to be? "Well... What happened to Onawa? You look exactly like her. You know who she is. I mean... come on."
Fran eyed over to him for a moment before nodding in conceit. "Yeah, I'll give you that one... It isn't a coincidence." She was really good at talking with that thing in her mouth. She paused to give it some thaught. "You see... Hmm... Well... I guess, in some sense of the word... I am a new version of her."
He didn't say anything, letting his silence tell all she wanted to know. He just waited for her to go on and explain what she meant by that, and that she did...
"Forgive me for having to talk in place of someone else, but I do have her memories to go off of. I guess the jist of it is that I came to occupy her mind after she couldn't go on anymore."
"Couldn't go on...? What happened?"
Fran seemed suprised by that question. "Hm? You don't remember? But you remember Onawa?"
"Yeah... Did something go down?"
"... You must have really been an old acquaintance. She betrayed her comrads...? Kibiira and her escaped, turning them over to the Unifiers?"
The hunter looked mortified. "W-What!?"
Fran sunk a little. "Oh... This is going to take longer to explain than I thaught."
"Start explaining then! Kibiira and Onawa turnt traitor, is that what you're telling me!?"
Fran was quiet, but kept her eyes on him, lolipop stick lightly moving a little as she manipulated the candy in he mouth. "Mmm... Yes. Basically. This was so long ago... Let me try an walk you through it."
"Please! Do!"
"There was a time when Onawa was under the influence of a necromancer. She was brought back to help them in their plight, trapped underground, at the time."
"That is how I remember them, yes."
"Yes, so you probably remember her and Kibiira when all was well in there right...? Well, it probably would have stayed well, but a lot of things happened. No one was idle just because they were trapped, as you know, and Onawa was wholly devoted to the cause. However, there is one flaw... One, gigantic, master stroke of perhaps unintentional genius that Onawa had and that I imagine every Onawa has. You know it was her life goal to discover the fate of her brother, right? It was the only thing she cared about, until she found another reason to live. She was very smart... Smarter than she gave herself credit for, I think. Nothing she did was done unthinkingly..."
"Okay..." Where the hell was this going?
"She created the ultimate fail safe to meet that goal, locked away in her creation. Kibiira, and I believe there was another one named Silver? Something like that....? It's been too long. Anyway; I don't know how much you know about the details between them, but the important one is that instead of earasing her key memories of her driving motivation... She locked them away. There, but inaccessible." She removed the lolipop and smiled to the hunter.
"Do you know what makes you you, hunter?"
He wasn't sure how to answer that, too captivated by what she was telling him to even begin taking his mind on another track.
"It's your memories. They are unique to you and you alone. It's what makes you different from your neighbor, Onawa from Kibiira, and me from Onawa. The same body... Even the same mind. But different perspectives. You don't even know who you are without your memories, do you hunter?"
He kept silent, simply waiting for the point to this tangent.
"So, Kibiira and Silver or whatever... They were not just simple clones. Clones are easy. They, specifically, are 'perfect' clones because they inherited the memories of Onawa. They just don't look the same because of heavy modifications. On the inside, they inherited the same brain and skill sets. By unlocking the memories Onawa closed off from her creations, how do you think it would affect Kibiira?"
Oh... "You're implying Kibiira remembered those locked memories?"
"Not just remembered, she unlocked them completely. Something her and her empath did one day, probably by accident. This is super important! Do you know what it did? The one thing that truly made them separate individuals, that made Kibiira Kibiira and not just a weird Onawa, vanished. Suddenly, Kibiira was Onawa. Pardon if I seem really impressed by this, but I am... Onawa, perhaps unintentionally, created a fail safe that insured that, even if SHE herself failed or lost her way from her life's path, her creation would take up the mantle by becoming her. It's like she never died. The same creation that, keep in mind, was her key to finishing her goal. So, either she lost her way or died and her creation would eventually become her, or she would have succeeded and her creation would have served it's purpose either way! Isn't that amazing!?"
The hunter seemed a lot less enthused. "So... Kibiira betrayed her friends?"
"Well... Eventually. From what I remember, that wasn't her complete intention. She was smart, kept it under wraps as she formulated a plan on how she was going to pick up from where Onawa left off. However, Kibiira, she didn't have the key memories of her time being made that original Onawa had. So, she needed Onawa to make it happen, and to make that happen, Onawa needed to be free to exist without reliance on her necromancer. So, it started one step at a time, but eventually when they worked out a way to keep Onawa alive without him, they could move on. Yet, Kibiira was still the key forward, and Onawa knew this. Kibiira had taken up the mantel, secured Onawa's life, and now that her origonal goal seemed possible again and the opportunity presented itself... Onawa worked behind Kibiira's back. I won't get into the details but... It ends with their friends being exposed to the Unifiers, Kibiira turned in to them, and Onawa coming out of it with everything she wanted..."
The hunter's heart sunk. That was... Horrible. It made Onawa seem like a master mind, able to make it so that even when she loses all interest in her selfish goal, she make sit happen anyway. He remembered the people in that trapped place... All good people. Kibiira too. Trying to picture her plotting behind other's backs, Onawa flipping the table at the right time and ending it with everybody fooled...
Impossible. To fool Kina, she basically fooled herself? The insanity of it all was so hard to wrap his head around, especially knowing how smart Kina was.
"You said she got everything she wanted... What do you mean by that?"
Fran was quiet for a moment. A strange, pregnant pause that seemed to have more behind it that usual.
"I don't mean anything. She continued from where her plan had left off. She turned in Kibiira to her Unifier contact when the betrayal took place, and eventually... She got what she wanted."
"She found out what happened to her brother?"
Another, oddly timed pause. Fran put the lolipop back in her mouth. "Yes. She found him."
He waited for her to go into more details, but... She seemed content to jsut keep sucking on her candy. He had to actually push the issue... Perhaps finally finding something she found difficult to talk about.
"Can I ask what his fate was?"
Silence. She wasen't even looking at him, keeping a straight face, but... He got the impression she was disconnecting herself emotionally from what she was about to say.
"He was alive." She took out the lolipop again... The candy all gone, save for a stained, slightly chewed end of a paper stick it had been on, staring at it forlornly. "He had held on the entire time, waiting for her. She was convinced he'd have been long dead, so... I'm sure you can imagine her suprise to find out her brother was alive."
The way she said that... He could hear it in her voice. This... Was no happy moment she was recounting. In fact, he could feel it. This was the single most terrible discovery Onawa could have ever made. He didn't even want to ask, but...
"... How... Was he?"
"... Alive."
Silence fell between them, and for the first time since he got here... Fran looked sad. She just kept staring at the lolipop stick, unmoving, like she had dug up some long dead matters she hadn't thought about in a very long time.
That's when he had them. A moment of... Empathy? Psychic visions? His head felt a sharp pain, staring at Fran's sunken, saddened face, and something briefly flashing from inside him. Her mind? He winced. It was so brief... A flash into her perspective. Though, perhaps not even Fran's... But Onawa's.
The image of a husk.
He might of been so tall by now based on her own age, but instead, he was as tall as she remembered him, still small as a child. His head of blond hair reduced to nothing... White, dead hairs, clung to his scalp. Naked, and shrivled... You could count every bone in his withered body.
It was a miracle he was still alive. The oldest and only surviving nerve cell extract in his group. The other kids had died out ages ago, but not this one. This one that held on long after he shouldn't of been able to.
The old cord still connected him from the bottom of his tail bone to the wall. Just looking at him, it was obvious that it was the only reason he was still alive. Somehow, he was standing there on twig thin legs... Blank eyes, staring blindly outward. He couldn't see her right in front of him, nervous shaking rattling him.
She called him by the name she remembered him by... and when he seemed to visibly respond with more shaking and wider eyes, she knew it was him.
She found her brother. Waiting for her this entire time. All that time she wasted doing other things... All those times she came just too short... He was here. Waiting. Enduring. Believing her when she told him she would come for him...
It was a blur. An embrace, as she rescued him, pulling out the cord.
After this lifetime of pain, she got what she wanted.
"You alright?" Fran asked. The hunter looked up at her, not realizing he had been with his head down, hand over his face. Must have been more than a while, as she had set down her lolipop stick and was now looking at him.
"Hm? Y-Yeah..." He was not about to get into whatever he just thaught he saw run through his head. "Sorry. What happened next? After all that with Onawa?"
"Well... She moved on. As compensation for her work, they agreed to send her to a place where she could live how she wanted, and she took it without a thought. From there, she had nothing to do with Unifiers or hunters and cleaned her hands of the whole thing. She um... Wasn't well though, not really. She simply... Could not be happy, after doing what she set out for. After finding her brother... She was empty. So, seeing her plight... I stepped in."
"Stepped in?"
"Yes." She thought for a moment about how best to explain that, though as the hunter was about to find out, it was more like a teacher trying to simplify something for a slow student. "When people go through traumatic expiriences, they can develop some rather extreme mental conditions. A common one is for the person's mind to completly block something out, to forget it ever happened. Onawa, well, it was something like that but instead of a single event, it was everything. Depression can also weaken the heart... She was leaving; Done with it all. I didn't want to see her do it with a gun or anything like that, so instead, I offered to take her place. And so I did."
The hunter blinked, brow furrowed as he scratched his head. "So... In a roundabout way, you are Onawa."
"Mmm... No. Not really... Do you remember what I said about what makes you, you? I am not Onawa. Onawa has passed away. She may not have a grave, or anyone left to remember her... But she did have me. I have her memories, but not her experiences."
That seemed dubious to the hunter. He wasn't going to press it though... Not now.
"And if you want to go the 'ship of Theseus' route, then I should mention not all these pieces are original." She smiled and gave a little chuckle. "But I'm sure you've heard enough about Onawa... Would you like to know more about me?"
The hunter almsot blushed, suddenly feeling like he had been rude to not ask when he was being told about these things that happened so far in the distant past for her. "Err- Yes, please."
"Well~ I graduated top of my class and got a doctorate in radiology to start. Started my own practise, went back to school for... Oh, goodness, so many different subjects... Very easy, when you've inherited knowledge beyond what this somewhat primitive place has to offer. Partnered up with a man known as Professor Reeves, and whoa boy, did things take off from there..."
She leaned forward, seeming excited to talk about it as she stared right at him. "You would not beleive the crap we did together. Like... Jeeze, he's such an inspiration to me. He worked on alternative methods to achieve results in just about anything you could think of. He saw people not as single entities, but as a series of parts and pieces. His ultimate goal was what he called 'modular beings'. Imagine a being you could just plug an arm into, or a pair of lungs, or a heart as if they were kids building blocks. After he stopped practising, I picked up where he left off, and took it beyond where he ever could." She made a motion with her and, rotating the wrist, to reference the kind of thing she was talking about, harkening back to when he put her hand back in place.
"I took it many steps further, naturally, but... I also have a ton of my own pet projects. After I figured I shouldn't go outside for a while these days, I expanded the basement and, well... I have been busy when I'm not watching my shows."
"Why have you stopped heading outside lately?"
"That detective, mostly... We had an incident with the police that I won't get into. That alone wouldn't usually bug me, but it's just been... A series, really, of things. I'm beginning to think I shouldn't operate on other people in the general public, so instead I've poured my time in learning other ways of practising my work, even if that's just making the organic beings myself."
That sounded... Spooky. He was going to let that slide for now. It had been a long while of talking and he had a lot to absorb, and one last question to get to.
"If you like, I can show you around. It's very weird to see a hunter still around and about. You're even free to stay, though I've been told that normal people may have a... Difficult time fitting in."
"Thank you, that sounds good. I appreciate how open you've been, but, I'm sorry but I just have to ask: Do you... Know me?"
Fran tilted her head. He could see her eyes moving a little, looking him over again, before she spoke. "Oh, yeah. Onawa knew you once.
"Your name is...
Hello from the darkness, my old friend.
AU of Recon Mission 649b-Alpha.
Warnings: body horror, torture mention
Another voice spoke, just as Fran revealed the Hunter's name, as though it'd been waiting.
"Hello, Flan."
It was a woman's voice, thin and hissing and flat, that emerged from a statue once gifted in lieu of payment. A kirin, it was called, and it loomed in the shadows before a figure in a Hunter's coat emerged.
Childishly short at well below five feet, she stared forward with unresponsive eyes. Onawa would remember her with black, smooth hair so long it could trail on the floor behind her, only taken from its wound knot atop her head for sleep and washing. Now, Fran saw that round face paler than ever before, with the hair she loved shorn from her head unevenly, with a nearly straw-like texture.
The ever-present smile was no more, with no sign it had ever adorned her face.
Her shoulders were so narrow now, unnaturally so, as though her arms were connected behind her back rather than in front—and as she turned slightly to regard the amnesiac Hunter, her hands, with their thin and slender fingers, were almost completely fused into one burnt mass, and her shoulders truly were positioned behind her back.
She walked with stiff knees, and scars adorned all of her visible flesh, while starvation gave her a hollow, ghost-like appearance.
"I have waited to get free... They ripped truths from me and left nothing behind."
An unnatural movement like a puppet on strings jerked one arm up, and her burnt wad of 'hand' grasped the front of Fran's pajamas.
"And she is
DƎ͙̺͊̑͊͞Aͣ̅Ɑ
ᴅ̷̫̼́́͒͘Ǝ͔͉̫̟̓̓͛҉͔̇͊̚Aͣ̅Ɑ̴̵͚̮̞̘̰ͩ̆ͨͮ̐̄̏̿͢͟͟
ᴅƎ̬̕͞҉͔̇͊̚Aͣ̅Ɑ͈͉̀̈́̏
ᴅ̡̙͚͎͎̦ͫ̔̑͞͞Ǝ̬̕͞҉͔̇͊̚Aͣ̅Ɑ͈͓̹͉ͫ̈̔̀̈́̏ͨ̆͢
?" The final word echoed too loud from every shadow around the home at once. Kina's wide eyes stared up at Fran, trembling in their sockets.
Long ago, she'd been the second in the Hunters' intelligence division. Rumors said she could go through walls, travel in time, be in multiple places at once, and more.
Onawa once knew part of Kina's hidden truths about herself.
Kina's other arm jerked, and bones broke as the force of the movement shattered them, but after the first jerk, her arm jerked again. Another bone broke, and her arm hung limp for a moment before she dove a hand into a pocket and, through force of will, lifted her arm with its shattered shoulder and held the bladeless grip of a knife against Fran's throat, finger against a subtle button that would, when pressed, extend and activate the superheated plasma blade.
Kina wasn't healing, but her nose bled dark from one nostril, thick and sluggish.
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Aged
RoSe AU
Shitty, half-cocked sequel to "You Disappeared and Left Me".
Warnings: suicide mention, pity party, death mention, abandonment
Despite the importance of what the Pleiades told her, Ozymandias couldn't concentrate on the tasks she was to complete. It wasn't enough to have purpose.
It wasn't enough that Sin wanted her to do this, either.
This was her third day in bed, lying awake because her body couldn't sleep any longer, but she felt no urge to rise, despite the pain in her back and hips from too long laying down.
Finally though, she rose and went to the bathroom, scowling as she sat on the toilet. Her mind began to wander as her eyes landed on a minor imperfection along the joint between floor and wall.
Her eyes closed, though it did nothing to stop her seeing the flaw in the bathroom's construction until she looked down between her spread legs, toward the front of the toilet seat as she leaned forward and rested her arms on her knees.
She was alone again. She could have sought samples of Sinclair's genetics, but his body was a vessel—the real Sin was bigger than that, and a clone wouldn't be the same—she learned that with her sons, and it was reinforced by Elli's existence, brief as it was by comparison.
Experiences and soul were what made a person, and Sinclair had gone his own way with his. She shifted her arms, then let her head fall into her hands.
"Asshole," she muttered. Her voice caught as she uttered a few more choice words for the absent man, "Jerk. Bastard. Flake..."
Tears began, and her throat closed too tight to speak further. A few half-assed silent insults left her lips before a loud inhale, and then a quiet sob as her back curled forward. Shoulders shook, and despite how she fought to regain control, ragged and audible sobs escaped. Snot and tears wetted her hands and dripped where they willed.
Her mind replayed that Sin was gone, of his own will, and refused to reincarnate. For all she knew, he destroyed himself. For all she knew, it was because of her. She'd been ready to die—ready to stop being a broken girl and start fresh from nothing. She'd wanted to reincarnate alongside Sin and be with him, so neither of them might be alone in their next lives.
Instead, he ended himself and reversed her suicide.
He wanted away from her.
Her mind so easily walked the paths most hurtful as it sought reasons he would force her away from himself so thoroughly.
In her spiraling state, she accepted every reason she imagined as fact.
He hated her. She annoyed him. He was sick of her lack of hygiene. She envied Rare too much. She was noisy. He couldn't stand looking at her ugliness. She was too broken and beyond repair. She was old.
She was old.
The same as her children had been once, she felt ready to die, like she'd done all she could in this life and it was simply time to stop being.
Ozy's thoughts spiraled, and she fell asleep on the toilet.
When she woke, unrested but ungroggy, she stumbled to her workbench.
"You're going to work?"
Ozy didn't answer, nor did she look at the source of the voice behind her. Instead, she turned her gaze upward—to where there was more space between things, and she began to plan in her mind.
"Bio—"
"Ozymandias," the woman corrected absently.
"What are you planning?"
"A way to find Sin, if it's possible."
"... Why?"
The woman sighed through her nose. "To yell at him and yank his cheek." Another nasal sigh. "I'm too old for this..." Her throat tightened, and she turned her attention to her workspace as she felt burning tears in her eyes as she began to work off the blueprint in her mind. This would be based on the Cursor, she decided, using its visual elements to call attention to it, but it would not collect, link, or otherwise gather anything at all aside from raw materials for self-replication and repair. It would instead seek out naturally-occurring portals, and hunt down Sin.
Then, it would relay a message to him.
After one found Sin, the others would make their way to his location and keep relaying the message until each received confirmation that he understood, and then they'd send that confirmation to Ozy along with his location, and then they would find a nice, safe place they could self-destruct so nobody could steal the technology.
She decided on several emergency measures as well, should Unifiers or Hunters find or capture the devices.
Her message, she already decided, would be something along the lines of 'I'm too old for this, you should come fix that.'
I'm open to a wide range of genres. Obscenely wide. It's harder for me to list all I do like than all I don't like.
My favorite settings are fantasy combined with something else, multiverse, post-apoc, historical (mixed with something else), and futuristic. I'm not limited to those, but it's a good start.
My favorite genres include mystery, adventure, action, drama, tragedy (must be mixed with something else and kept balanced), romance (again must be mixed, and more.
I'm happy to include elements of slice-of-life and romance, but doing them on their own doesn't hold my interest indefinitely.
Work Wonderings
RoSe AU
Sequel to the ones where Falren's left and gotten his memory wiped.
Warnings: feels
"I was not expecting that scent on you last monday," Crow's deep whisper cut through the silence of Elizabeth's office, and yellow eyes snapped up from the papers she'd been reading.
"Oh?" One white brow arched.
"You smelled like your agent. Back in contact?" Crow closed and runed the door, then took a seat on the other side of Elizabeth's desk without invitation.
Her pause before she answered was just an instant too long.
"Yyy-es," she murmured before she turned her gaze down towards her paperwork again as her chest tightened. It was him, but more and more, she wondered if having the same body and personality was the same as being the same person.
Crow, she knew, caught her hesitance. He only verified it when he sighed.
Silence stretched between them. To Elizabeth, it felt like a literal hallway that grew and pushed them apart. Her eyes closed.
"If you're trying to replace him, best you stop. What you had was..." Crow trailed off, then shook his head. "You'll only hurt yourself and whatever poor sap you're using for this." He stood and inclined his head in a short bow. "I'll leave it at that." The tengu started to turn, only to pause. "Right. I came to pick up the spring budgets before your trip. If you aren't finished, I can complete them for you."
Elizabeth rose and grabbed a manila folder, then handed it over. "It should be finished, but if you would, please check for any errors."
"Certainly." Crow accepted the folder, then tucked it under one arm as he watched her a few moments before departing, careful to clean away the privacy rune before he did.
Elizabeth waited until her door closed behind him, then slumped.
Falren didn't remember. Was he even still the Falren she knew?
She rested her elbows on her desk, then leaned forward until her fingers wove into her hair. The strands still felt rough and thin between her fingers. She'd hoped eating well and getting enough nutrients would help her regain her looks, what little of them she had, but now she could only assume the stress of death and resurrection caused permanent damage.
The woman reached for a mirror in one of the nooks of her desk, and as she flipped it open, her lips drew into a grim line, and she snapped it shut quickly, loudly.
She looked ancient.
If Falren were to remember, the Elizabeth of his memories would outside the current her. Horrible scenes went through her mind of him turning from her.
"Vain pussycat," she scolded herself, "Fen isn't so shallow."
That reminder brought her some comfort, but her eyes slid toward the closed mirror regardless, and she opened it again.
Slow fingers pulled the loose skin of her neck, then tried to smooth one of her cheeks before she closed the mirror and slipped it back into its place.
Before her death, she'd had such full lips, and her cheeks had at least remained on her face rather than sagging off. Frown lines and raccoonish dark circles under her eyes made her look like death warmed over and served in the style of canned Purina wet food.
A heavy sigh escaped, and she closed the mirror again, then tossed it into the waste bin with a harsh laugh devoid of humor.
"Stop it," she muttered to herself. "Just stop it... Date night is tonight." She took a deep breath. "Date night is tonight, and I refuse to let silly things ruin my time with my Fen."
She walked to the door and flipped the sign on the door as she locked it on her way out. Behind, the thin wood slab declared Elizabeth out of her office for the night as she made her way to the nearest portal room. Black robes billowed audibly with her brisk pace, until she came to the mages.
"The usual, Councilman?" a smooth-faced elf asked.
"Yes."
"Right away." With the others, the elf began weaving magic into a focal point, which opened into a portal.
Aware of the energy it took to keep a portal open, Elizabeth stepped through promptly, and it closed immediately.
A deep breath brought familiar scents to her nose, and the tension left her posture, and the lines in her worn face eased. A quick look around assured her that she was early enough to change into something nicer, and change she did before she allowed herself to fall onto Falren's armchair, bouncing once she came to rest on it.
The woman hugged her knees and rested her chin against them while she waited.
Falren would be home soon, and she had the next two days off, and Poppy would tend to Juni. She spent five days of every week with eight hours of work in the Day Shift, with time spent with her children before work. The weekends were for time with Falren, though. This sort of order to her life was pleasant, if busy and tiring. Work felt fulfilling, and she had so much time for her children now that she knew which of her coworkers could be trusted to take on tasks for her, and her weekends with Falren, though they never felt long enough, left her rested for the week ahead.
While she pondered the strict schedule she'd given herself, weary eyes drifted shut, and she woke to the sound of the door. It didn't shut, but she heard a click and looked up to see Falren's gun aimed at her.
"Who the hell are ye, and how'd ye get in my fuckin house?"
She stared down the barrel of that gun as she shrank away from his suspicious gaze.
"You gave me the key," she tried to say, but the words didn't come out when she tried to speak.
"Mighta believed ye, if ye were pretty." His finger flexed on the trigger, and she woke with a jerk and a gasp, to find Falren in front of her with an expression as warm and sweet as melted butter.
"F... Fen?" she stammered, "Fen... I... Ten hells..." She sniffed, finally gaining awareness of her tears. She hurriedly wiped them away. "I was asleep?" He nodded. "I... Thank heavens... just a dream—"
"About what?"
She looked away, then toward him before she forced a deep breath. "Things," she whispered. She barely avoided saying 'you forgot me again', aided in that by the sob that jerked through her.
