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Re: [M] Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Mickey Mouse - 08-28-2015
Quote:This post is rated M for some graphically violent scenes, specifically in regards to violence against animals. If you don't like that, please don't read or be extremely mindful when reading. Thanks.
In the eyes of the angry ape, the hunter saw his soul.
* * *
Mr. Clayton had a sister. Miss Clayton, if you will.
In actuality, her name was Mary, and on this day, she looked more beautiful than the hunter had ever seen her. She stood before her mirror, her white wedding gown barely scraping against the floor. Clayton leaned against the opposite wall, watching as she gussied herself up one last time. He’d dreaded this day for as long as he could remember, but it had finally come—by the end of the day, Mary would no longer be Miss Clayton; she would be Mrs. Muntz.
It seemed like fate. Charles Muntz had been one of Clayton’s closest friends for as long as he could remember. Certainly, they had seen so much of the world together—from when they’d met in college, the pair had gone on adventure after adventure together. The chance meeting of Charles and Mr. Clayton’s younger sister had occurred during one of their more relaxed adventures, and needless to say, the pair hit it off almost immediately. By the end of the trip, they were as thick as thieves, and anyone could guess what direction the relationship headed in. Of course, Charles practiced only the most perfect, civilized courting customs; never once would you catch the adventurer touching Miss Clayton in the wrong way, or making unseemly advances toward her.
So, on this day, Clayton found himself all too happy to see his little sister marrying his best friend. He had always wanted the best for Mary, and could see no better option than for her to marry the man he trusted most—the man he’d trusted with his life on more than one occasion. Yes, this arrangement would be incredible all around, he was quite sure.
“Does it look alright, Billy?” Mary asked, gesturing to her veil. It did not look alright; in fact, it sat quite lopsided on her head.
“Let me take a look, darling,” Mr. Clayton smiled, crossing to the bride-to-be and gently turning her to face him. As he adjusted her veil, he gazed down into his sister’s eyes until her gaze rose to meet his. The crystal-blue eyes that sat just beyond her lids looked at him with a mixture of hope and dread. She loved Charles, that much was certain, but she had never lived outside Clayton’s shadow. Since the day she’d been born, he had protected her, like a mother ape protecting her babies. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to any more.
Once the veil had straightened, Clayton’s face became overwhelmed with a sudden sense of joy. At last, his lovely little sister looked like a perfect bride—just like he’d known she would. “You look absolutely beautiful, Mary,” the hunter smiled, a certain redness flushing over his cheeks. She did look beautiful. Absolutely.
She blushed, too. “Thank you, Billy,” she giggled, and brushed past him toward the door. “I suppose it’s almost time to start, hm?” she asked, spinning around and grinning at her brother. She seemed a bit hesitant; perhaps, Clayton thought, she wanted to enjoy her last moments of freedom, before she got shackled (willingly, of course) to Charles for the rest of her life. The hunter dusted off his tuxedo and followed her.
“Almost,” he smirked, reaching up and cupping one of her cheeks in his hand. “I truly wish you the best wedding in the world,” he gently caressed her face, relishing this moment when he could look on Mary as just his baby sister and not as Mrs. Mary Muntz, “and I do hope you enjoy the venison—I went out and shot a doe just for you. Tried to get her baby, too, but alas, no luck.” Mary pouted the slightest bit.
“She’ll do, I’m sure,” she frowned. “Dear me, Billy, always so violent.” She laughed again.
Clayton pulled his sister’s face close to his chest and leaned down, planting a kiss on her forehead before meeting eyes with her once again. “Don’t let Charles get you into too much trouble on your honeymoon, alright? I won’t have that.”
“You worry too much about me,” she shook her head, “The place is called Paradise Falls—how much trouble could we get into?”
With another tiny chuckle, she swept out of the room. “You could fall?” he called after her, but she was gone. He sighed—she was right. He truly did worry too much about her, and now she would be in Charles’ capable hands. Nothing would happen.
The door swung shut behind her, and Clayton smiled.
* * *
“Charles, please,” Mary protested as her husband stormed about the parlor of their little cottage, tucked away in the hills of the English countryside. “I was there. I saw it. I know it was real, you don’t have to convince me, I believe you.”
“As do I,” Mr. Clayton added, puffing a bit of smoke out of his pipe.
Nothing would dissuade Charles Muntz from his rant, though. He slammed the newspaper down on the table in front of Mary.
“Look at it, Mary,” he oozed frustration, “Look at it.”
She read the headline aloud. “Museum of Natural History accuses famed explorer Charles Muntz of faking one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time,” she read. Clayton could’ve recited it along with her; Charles had forced him to read the article time and time again. It went on to say that the skeleton Charles had brought back from his honeymoon voyage to Paradise Falls was not, in fact, that of a giant, new species of exotic bird, but rather common dinosaur bones that Muntz had put together in a new configuration, to try and pass himself off as one of the world’s premiere explorers. Mary had supported Charles’ claim that they had seen live versions of the birds all over Paradise Falls, but the fact that they’d been unable to capture one of the live specimens seemed to discredit their findings.
“They’re calling me a liar,” he snarled, leaning close to Mary’s face. The former Miss Clayton slid backward in her chair, separating herself from her angry husband. Meanwhile, over on the sofa, Mr. Clayton kept a watchful eye on his long-time friend. His bouts of anger over this whole situation had grown the slightest bit worrying, and not at all like someone of his manner and status. He was showing no class.
“I know you’re not a liar—Billy knows you’re not,” Mary bit back, “Isn’t that enough for you, sweetheart?” She stepped toward him, reaching out to touch his face, but he quickly batted her hand out of the way. The force of his slap knocked Mary to the ground with a shriek, and Mr. Clayton stood almost immediately in his seat.
Charles stood frozen for a moment, not completely sure that he’d actually been the force behind the slap that had sent Mary to the ground. “I—I’m sorry, Mary,” the adventurer stammered; he looked over to Clayton. “William, I—” he started, but the sound of a loudly barking dog broke through the tense air and distracted him for a moment. Clayton’s icy stare remained fixated on the distracted Charles, who eventually returned his attention to the situation at hand.
“Perhaps you should see to your pup, Charles,” Clayton offered.
Charles Muntz turned and disappeared into the kennel.
* * *
Clayton burst through the door to Charles’ and Mary’s little countryside cottage, shotgun at the ready. “Oh, good,” Charles said upon meeting him at the door, “you brought firepower—we’re going to need it.”
The adventurer led Mr. Clayton into the back garden, where somehow or another, a few of his crazed dogs had been released and were wreaking havoc. In his madness, Muntz had decided to make a return voyage to Paradise Falls—a voyage he planned to not return from until he had caught, alive, the exotic bird that so many now accused him of never having found at all. In order to effectively capture it, Charles had taken to training more dogs to help him on his quest; the results had varied. Some of the pups had turned out fine—well-trained hunting dogs, the lot of them. The rest of the group had gone mad from the training; overtly violent and completely unreliable, Muntz had kept them all locked away until he had time to euthanize them all, but sometime that day, the whole lot had escaped their pens.
Mary’s garden was an absolute wreck. As the pair of men lumbered outside, Clayton with his shotgun and Charles with a machete, shreds of green and various different colors of flower petals flew like confetti through the air. The dogs were not difficult to find, and one by one, the pair of men put them out of their misery. The bang of Clayton’s shotgun was accompanied by the squish of Charles’ machete; one after another, the men bested the beasts, working together to take them down until they had just one left.
“Here, puppy,” Clayton called out as he worked his way through the mess of vines and plant life his sister had worked so hard to grow. Too bad, he thought, that it had all gone to waste thanks to these vile creatures—he scoffed a bit at the thought; he’d never liked animals all that much to begin with, and this just added wood to the fire.
That was part of the reason he had taken up hunting in the first place, if he were being completely honest. Since he’d been just a little tyke, he had always seen much more value in other humans than animals—the creatures were unnecessarily violent. He’d had a particularly scarring experience with a snake in his backyard when he was very young. The good doctors said that if the creature had bitten him, he might have died. Clayton couldn’t understand why the thing had lunged at him in the first place—after all, it had slithered its little body into his property, so truly the serpent was the one trespassing.
How dare it try to take out Clayton on his home turf? It seemed so… insolent. And that, he had long decided, was the root of the problem. These creatures were so undeniably idiotic that they had no sense of when they were invading on the grounds of another. They so freely took what they wanted, without so much as a considerate thought toward who they might be stealing it from. Take these dogs, for example—he wondered if they even had any clue how much hard work his sister had put in this garden. How much work had gone to waste because of them.
Of course they didn’t. They were foolish. They were embarrassments to God’s creation and Clayton felt no remorse about wiping them off the face of the planet one by one to be someone’s meal or someone’s decoration. Or just for fun, sometimes, as he had gotten into quite recently. Mary had never particularly liked his hunting hobby, but she had especially not liked the fact that he had recently gotten into killing for fun; but Clayton did not mind his sister’s disagreement. He had always let her live her own life of cotillion and balls and being a perfect lady, and he had always had his own life, his honest mission to better the human race by destroying others.
Besides, at the end of the day, it all came down to her. She was his life force. She kept him tethered to his humanity, and he needed to feel like he was creating a better world for her. And if that better world involved dead dogs, so be it.
Suddenly, she screamed.
Clayton spun around, his shotgun at the ready. There the last dog was, clawing his way on top of Mary. The girl fought and beat at the beast with her tiny little hands, but it soon became clear that she was losing this battle. Scrapes appeared through rips in her dress, and crimson blood oozed out, staining the pristine pink fabric of her gown. Up ahead, Charles stood gawking, wondering what the bloody hell to do.
“Here,” Clayton tossed the shotgun to his friend. Charles dropped the machete and caught the weapon handily, and the hunter surged forward, running to try and wrestle with the dog—
BANG.
A single shot rang out, and the squeal of a rabid, angry dog taking its last sad breath echoed in the air. The beast slid off of Mary, rolling onto the ground in a pile of gored flesh. Blood seeped out from different bullet holes in the creature, pooling up on the ground around it and mixing in with that from Mary’s own bullet wounds—
…bullet wounds? Clayton’s gaze turned to his sister, who had not only gashes from the dog’s teeth and claws littering her body but also holes where shotgun shrapnel had pierced her pristine skin. A guttural howl escaped Mr. Clayton’s throat.
Behind him, Charles Muntz could only stare. His wife lay—basically in pieces—on the ground of her garden, that she had spent so much time and put so much work into over the past few years while he had locked himself away, preparing himself for their return voyage to Paradise Falls. Their return voyage so that he could prove, once and for all, that he was the greatest adventurer of all time.
Clayton scooped his sister into his arms. Not a single breath remained in her, no moment for her to choke up a good-bye as the life drained from her veins. The shotgun’s fiery blows had brought her to death’s door in an instant, and now her eyes carried a sullen emptiness as she hung limply in her brother’s arms, dripping blood into the green grass beneath her. Mr. Clayton, for the first and only time in his life, openly wept, his tears dripping onto her lifeless body. Perhaps, he thought, some of his tears could wash away the blood. He would discover that that would not be the case. No matter how much he sobbed, there was always more blood.
When the water in his eyes had been almost drained, a fire lit up within them. His gaze turned to where Muntz had stood, but the greatest adventurer in the world had made the greatest escape since Harry Houdini himself. Clayton’s shotgun laid on the ground, sparkling in the persistent light of the afternoon sun.
But Charles Muntz had already begun his second voyage to Paradise Falls.
* * *
He released the hefty body of the female ape.
She crashed to the floor of the Swamp of Sadness, looking altogether nothing like his sister save for the similar wounds; she, too, had several gaping holes where his shotgun had pierced her, and her skin was ripped in various places, although they looked more like victims of a machete slicing than a dog bite. Probable.
The hunter spun around in the fog to see the whole conglomeration of them gathered around him, encircling him and their dead brethren. He took a few steps backward before realizing that he should be stepping on the dead female; a quick glance down revealed that her corpse had disappeared entirely when he’d looked away from it. He glanced back up at the gathered crowd, and suddenly, the pieces began to fit.
He nodded to himself. “The Swamp of Sadness,” he said aloud, “…so none of you are real at all. I suppose I look rather ridiculous.”
Still, despite the fact that he knew the apes were just a mirage, one of the Swamp’s illusions, he could not help but feel that the yellow-eyed stares they gave him were very, very real. They stared deep within him; they had pulled out memories that he had not dared think on in what seemed like forever. Certainly not since he had arrived in the Omniverse—no, he’d left all hopes of finding Muntz behind when he’d gotten here. Certainly the odds of that despicable man—the man who’d murdered his sister, accident or not—having been pulled into this strange new universe with him were zero to none.
A part of him had always hoped, though.
His memory flitted back to that day. He remembered laying his sister down and scouring the house for Charles, to no avail. He remembered checking the kennel to find the troop of well-trained dogs gone, and then reading in the papers the next day about how Charles’ famed aeroplane, The Spirit of Adventure, had taken flight for a return trip to Paradise Falls.
He had made his own trip there, of course. Meaning to find Charles and show him the proper punishment for what he’d done. But by the time he’d made it to Paradise Falls—by the time he’d gathered up enough resources—the man had disappeared, nowhere to be found, sucked in by the remote locale’s mystery. Clayton would never know this, but Charles Muntz would have no human visitors until fifty or so years later, when an old man and a young boy would fly a house into Paradise Falls using balloons. He would never catch his exotic bird.
So, in the absence of finding Charles, Clayton had devoted his life to becoming the best hunter in the world. The more he practiced, the more he felt he would one day find the man who had murdered his sister. Perhaps if he was even better at being the best hunter in the world than Charles was at being the best adventurer, one day he’d catch up to his old friend. That hope died a little bit when he’d gotten to the Omniverse, but hunting still motivated him—after all, with folks like the Empire willing to pay a pretty penny, it turned out to be a very marketable skill. And it was still practice—the possibility of cashing in on all that practice was smaller, yes, but it was practice nonetheless.
And this… this was the perfect test. Faced with the hardest hunt of his life… the hunt for a bloody god. Nothing else would matter if he could take Omni and wring the creature’s neck, and then bring him to those bastards at the Empire. As long as they’d agree to let the hunter hang the god’s smirking countenance on his wall when they’d finished, Mr. Clayton would deliver.
“You justify your violent nature with this?” one of the apes said, regarding the memories that had just played out before their very eyes. Hmph, Clayton thought, Talking apes.
“No,” he stated simply, “I justify the hunt. Violence has always been a necessary tool.”
“You manipulate, you lie, you push people,” the ape responded.
“Violence of a different sort,” Clayton shrugged, “Hunting is a game. To win the game, I have to convince the other players to lose. To do that, sometimes I have to twist literally, and sometimes I have to twist figuratively. You understand.”
The apes conferred with each other, but Clayton did not know why. They were figments of his imagination—mirages conjured up by the mystical powers of this swamp. They had tried to bring him to heel with images of his sister, but they didn’t realize that he already saw her every moment of every day. They didn’t realize that she had fallen victim to every single person he’d killed, every single animal he’d slaughtered. He’d written ‘murderer’ on their face, made them complicit in her death, and with that in mind, he felt no remorse.
And he never would.
“We cannot let you pass,” the lead ape said. The group clustered together in his path. Mr. Clayton scoffed.
“Move out of my way,” he ordered, “Now.”
The apes shook their heads. “No,” another one said, “You must stay here until you have been swallowed by your grief. Then, and only then, may you climb out of it.”
Clayton smirked. “I feel no grief,” he replied flatly, removing his shotgun from his shoulder.
He clicked in the little round object he’d found months before and aimed it for the spirit that stood at the head of the pack. The shotgun let out a loud bang and the bullet sailed through the body of the leader ape; as he fell back, the rest of the mirages washed away, lost in the misty air of the foggy swamp.
“I feel only vengeance.”
The hunter lifted his chin, his gaze looking at the clear path that lay ahead of him. At the end of it, he saw Charles Muntz reflected in Omni’s toothy grin. At the end of it, he saw victory.
Quote:Used: One-Shot Kill Shotgun Shell
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Ruby Rose - 08-29-2015
I stood ramrod straight at the edge of the misty swamp, my eyes watching like those of a sentry. I'd heard nothing but rumours about the place; the Swamp of Sadness, a site of despair and utter hopelessness. Those who traversed into the vision-obscuring marsh experienced the deepest sorrows and fears within them. Even I was a tad scared, but Alice... Alice was a whole different tale. The vampire clutched onto my still-torn singlet, pulling herself uncomfortably close to my body, her own shaking and shivering with every respiration, shallow or deep; her fear didn't discriminate.
I held my closest friends (Caelum and Infernum, of course) at the ready, prepared for the horrors that lurked in the smoky haze of the Swamp. Granted, weapons generally wouldn't do shit to help my own mental state in there, if anything they might ruin it further... But they gave me something. Not power, not protection; they gave me drive, a sense of hope. They weren't just mindless weapons to me; I cherished the two as if they were my own hand-raised children. Many a time they had spoken to me through holy and unholy energies alike, and that wasn't going to stop in the fog...
At least that's what I liked to think.
-----
[spoiler]
Quote:Flame after flame after flame sailed through the clogged air, each one's light dying further and further. I aimed my shots carefully, as if one wrong calculation would detonate the decay filling all of our lungs. I sure hoped the infection didn't happen to hand the ability to pass on through the air. With the hellfire forming at my demonic palm, I cleared my immediate area of mindless, decaying minions.Lyra, Raw Onion
Before I could bat an eyelid, a set of cracked and flayed jaws lunged for my face, or more so my nose in particular, and I raised my claws to fend off the rancid assailant, but all that emitted from the palm was a small spark - hardly enough to light a cigarette if I smoked. I raised my arm as a visor and leaned away, Alice's weight on my shoulders wrenching me back...
But my face was saved by the whizzing of a projectile, namely an arrow, and I raised my anticipating eyes to see the undead with a well-aimed arrow through the left eye. I extended my hand and poked a finger to the creature's chest, causing the statue of a zombie to fall to the earth. I spun around to look to my saviour; a young elven girl with very light hair, wielding a bow. I waved my thanks to her with my 'human' arm while the demon claws retracted and reformed into light flesh and nails.
That was when the expense hit. The strain of keeping my demon form, if only on my arm, had prepared its aftereffect on my body; I felt my side split, right where the green creature from the other night had impaled me unceremoniously. The wound wept heavily, and I clutched it with my right hand, attempting to apply as much pressure as possible to the tear. I heard a pair of feet, pitter-pattering rather than tromping, approach my location. My eyes gazed up into the beautiful blue sky - no, wait, they were the elf girl's eyes. Why had I made such a comparison? There was no time to dwell over such petty notions, though.
She grabbed the crook of my left elbow and helped me get up, wary not to let my precious cargo fall. She was extremely gentle in helping me out, and once I was comfortably back on my feet, she guided me through the hordes of undead, letting an arrow fly every few seconds, hitting her mark with astonishing accuracy. Before too long, we broke out to the flying horse from before, who seemed to be holding her own just fine. I showed my appreciation to the elf girl with a warm smile, and I crouched down, flipping out Infernum and slinging his body over my arm, careful with the blade. I began to nail the dead with crackling flames, and after getting into a rhythm, I spoke.
"Thanks for the help. That was mighty nice of you." I finally voiced my gratitude to the girl, and the horse seemed to approve with a high pitched, but hushed 'hah'. I nailed an extra three that came so close I could literally feel their infested flesh, then continued. "My name's Grave, and this is Alice." I introduced us, and the horse was quick to reply; the elf was occupied with skewering zombies.
"Private First Class Raw Onion!" she replied, her voice sounding as if it was bouncing. "This here is Lyra. Nice to meet you... Grave..." her voice trailed off as she said my name.
Yeah, I was wondering when someone was going to realise how grim my name was.
Quote:Alice (Solo)
My eyes creaked open agonisingly slowly, almost groaning like to pairs of rusted gates. Dim touch line filtered through my glittering eyelashes, and my vision stood on the fence between focused and completely out of it. With due time, the former reigned supreme, and my eyes darted around the makeshift infirmary. Why was I there? One moment I was blasting zombies to bits, and the next I was lying in someone's best attempt at a hospital bed.
I mustered my drowsy strength to push myself up to a sitting position. My arms felt like twigs that would break at the slightest movement, and my side was still split; I could feel the sticky red substance under the ramshackle gauze. A for Effort, at least. My dart wound was also killing my muscles. They felt like that were tightly contracting into a small knot around the wound. I tiny giggle snapped me from my vortex of thoughts, and my view spun ninety degrees to see Alice in a similar bed adjacent to me. The paralysis seemed to have worn off, as she was laying comfortably on her side.
"Evening, Grave." She greeted me, her flushed lips shaped into a sweet grin. "The flying horse patched is up as well as she could."
That explains the beds and gauze.
But then it hit me. Us? "What do you mean 'us'? What happened to you? What happened to me?!" I inquired, my voice already impatient. She cocked a blond eyebrow at me.
"You really don't remember, huh? A Darkspawn smacked you across the noggin, and you fell like a lumberjack's timber, taking me with you. I fractured my wrist," She raised her left arm with a half-decent cast over it, "and sprained my ankle. You on the other hand... You look like crap." Alice stated the obvious. I raised a shaking hand to my head, and could feel the rough, papery material of a bandage, tightly wrapped around my head. I breathed out a sigh and laid back down in the bed.
"That girl, Lyra popped in to see you, too, you know." She told me, attempting to tease my weak mind, but I wasn't that concussed.
"Yeah? That's mighty nice of her." I replied, tactfully avoiding Alice's bout of mischief. I turned my head on the half-dead pillow and looked at her. She scowled at me, and I grinned back.
"She's really nice, you know... And pretty..." Her voice began to trail off. I left it for a moment, before taking a deep breath, drawing her attention back to me.
"Alice... This time and place, is not the right time and place to be thinking about things like that. Sure, I might end up getting caught flirting with one of the women, but that's not me being serious. We need to keep our heads out of the clouds, Alice, the world isn't free right now." I explained, my tone dropping to a more somber one. All Alice could do was sigh, and I could have sworn I heard her mumble something about 'old days'.
Quote:Ghoul Zora
I whistled 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' as I strolled out of camp to chop some firewood. There were a few really crappy trees that were already torched or hacked down, but it didn't prove to be too difficult a task to discover the good ones. One of said good trees stood in front of me, towering above me by about a foot. I unfolded my two weapons and began to chop away at the wood. Left, right, left, right, I continued the pattern in my head until all that was left was the giant mes of leaves.
I crouched down, feeling my knees crack in the empty forest, the sharp sound echoing throughout the trees, and scooped up a couple of the pieces of wood. I turned to return then to camp, but a slow, shambling movement caught my eye...
It wasn't that damn zombie from before. No, it was nastier; it was that alien creature, but now with horridly decaying flesh and fur, and sacs of infested body fluids hanging grossly from all her limbs. The poor girl, she got bitten by one of the Darkspawn. I gently dropped the wood I was carrying and stalked towards the alien, watching her shamble along, watching my st-
CRACK!
Ohhhhhhh, shit, I'd stepped on what was probably one if the worst placed twigs ever. The alien's dead eyes stared at me, before she rushed the tree I was standing behind, bolting straight at it. Being a zombie, her fighting must not have been so deadly...
That theory was soon busted when she went to kick me in the ribs. I raised an arm as a wall, and her weak, decayed leg collided with it, but she used my arm as leverage to swing herself around and slice open my chest with her claws on her feet, before dropping back. I stumbled away, grasping the bleeding scratch across my chest. When I looked down, though, it wasn't just bleeding; the scarlet wound was pulsating with a black gunk, pieces of solid infection clinging to the flesh and... Spreading?! I panicked, I didn't know what to do. Should I have cauterised it? Left it? I don't know what clicked in my mind at the time, but my response was to claw at my chest and tear the flesh off the top, ripping the infection away like velcro. I screamed into the open air; there was beyond a doubt that someone heard me, but I couldn't tell if they had.
The alien pushed on, and I fell flat on my ass after tripping over one of the chunks if wood I dropped earlier. My primal, human instincts kicking in, I reacted by scrabbling for the wood and picking it up, before sinking the edge hard into the zombie's head, and she fell to the grass; not dead, only unconscious. I breathed a sigh of relief, and made the wise decision to not touch the body, instead gathering the wood and transporting them back to 'town'. I had a story to tell Lyra and Raw.
Quote:Lyra, Raw Onion
The three of us shared a moment of silence after I told Lyra and Raw about the horrible fate of our ally. I managed to keep my mouth shut about the infection, but Lyra wasn't so blunt; she saw through the guise.
"Grave... Why's the chest of your singlet torn and bloody?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow curiously, and Raw leaned close for the answer. "The chest was fine just earlier." I should have known the archer wouldn't miss a detail like that. I was stupid to think I could evade her metaphorical (and possibly literal) sights.
"U-um... Well... You see... I- uh- she... It... Augh..." I spluttered around before taking a deep breath. "Zora kicked me, and her claws carried the infection. Even though she's mindless now, she still has her natural instincts of how to fight like she used to." I elaborated, pulling the chest of my shirt down at the same time. I revealed a raw, slightly bleeding slab of flesh, and Raw's eyes sprung to the size of cupcakes.
"Grave... Let's get you patched up, shall we?" She offered with a grin, but it seemed rather crooked, like she didn't really want to do it. I understood why.
Quote:Urg
"I was just confiding in a friend." 'Oh, bullshit you were!' was what I wanted to shout at Clayton once he finished his accusation of the little green man. I kept my back pressed heavily, keeping my ears keen. I could tell the General had already noticed me, but the hunter, on the other hand, was just too blunt.
"Tch." I clicked my tongue and began to walk away. Why is he trying to get the goblin kicked out? There's no reason for him to go, I pondered. People can redeem themselves, and so can creatures. Clayton was that one snake in the grass; sly and slippery, waiting for someone to come along to infect with his venom. That guy pissed me off. I was going t-
"Oof!" I grunted as I accidentally bumped into someone. I reeled back a few steps and raised my vision up, and came face to face with another zombie. No, not the ones we had been massacring before, the one Blondie had her gun pointed at when the whole thing started. I cleared my throat.
"Sorry about that." I apologized, before extending a hand out. Sure, he was decayed and all, but I didn't mind shaking hands with him; he was an ally. The zombie moaned for a moment, his eyes meandering a tad, before he slowly raised his hand up and placed it in mine. I made sure to be careful when shaking it, just in case his bones were decayed too. I didn't want the poor guy to lose a hand just like that. "My name is Grave. I see you understand me, right?"
The zombie nodded... Or at least I think he did. Hard to tell when the movement's so slow. His eyes seem to widen slightly at the name 'Grave'. Oh. Shit. Didn't realise that. I cleared my throat again. "Come for a walk with me, hey?" I asked as I began to walk past him.
I had to keep my pace slow so the shambling man could keep up. Yes, I said man, not creature. Unlike zombies I'd seen, this guy had his humanity. He could control his hunger, he knew what he meant to say, knew what he meant to do, knew exactly what he was thinking... It was only his infected body getting in the way of the execution of his thoughts. With this in mind, I began to spark a one-sided conversation, speaking slow enough for him to register.
"I don't trust Clayton one bit. He's the wolf in sheep's clothing." I explained, and received a low gurgle in return. From experiences with zombies, I've managed to translate a couple of their growls, but not too many. "You heard him too, huh? Good to know I've got someone on my side. I don't think the goblin's done anything that should get him exiled. How about you?"
He seemed to think for a moment, before letting out a slightly more high-pitched moan. "I see... I believe in redemption, you know. He might have been a part of that attack, but he managed to help his group through the temple, I'm sure of it." I told him, and his growl became low.
"Glad to know that you now share my opinion." I finished, a soft smile across my cheeks.
Quote:Crow, Jan
I wiped the sweat off my brow as I reared back from the giant log of blackened wood. How long had it been? Not carrying the log, I mean, how long had we been in the area? Weeks? Months? It had felt like forever...
"Come on, Grave, just a little further." Jan egged me on from the other side of the log. A half-asses smile crossed my lips.
"Easy... for you to say... colonel." I panted. "You're a soldier, you're built for strength. I'm a bloody twig. Cut me some slack, hey?" I asked.
"That's no excuse." He shut me down. Ouch, the guy was cold. I breathed a sigh of exasperation, and went to pick up the log again... But only until I heard a pirate singing a sea-shanty. The corners of my mouth curled.
"Put him in the scuppers with the hose pipe on him!
Earlye in the mor-nin!" I chimed in, and more and more members of our ragtag workforce joined in. I picked up my end of the log, and Jan and I made headway towards the inner camp, still singing the sea-shanty. The good Captain knew how to lighten the mood.
Quote:Grobdum, Lyra
Where the hell did they come from?! Orcs were attacking yet again, and they were much stronger than before! Not to mention wearing some kind of gold paint. It didn't suit their skin tone in my opinion. I raised my gunblades up in a cross to catch the massive, cruel weapon one was wielding and gave it a hard kick to the gut...
But it did nothing. The Orc grabbed my wrist and slung me through the air. I felt the back of my singlet tug as Alice extended her wings out, catching my fall and slowly dropping me to the earth. She folded her wings back up and hid in my singlet once again. I charged the beast and brought Caelum around from my right, the blade of light phasing through the thick-skinned flesh. I passed by the monster, before it fell in half and collapsed. Standing up, my sight was drawn to something awful...
I was stunned. I couldn't do anything, couldn't move, couldn't help. I was powerless. An Orc had lodged its crude weapon deep in Lyra's chest, blood pooling around the blade and dribbling to the earth, painting it red. The beast unsheathed his blade from the elf girl's chest and she dropped to the ground in the pool of her own blood as the Orc minded his own business.
"LYRA!" I cried into the air, my call most dominant over the warcries of the Orcs, and the grunts and screams of the other members of our group. A blade cleaved the air in front of my face, and turned to my right, passing Infernum to my left and driving my fist right through the monster's abdomen like a jackhammer. I threw the Orc away before switching Infernum back over and taking aim at the other, blasting it right in half. I began to run to Lyra. She had no reason to die, she just couldn't...
I skidded to a stop some ten meters away from the dying girl, and ducked behind a tree. The goblin, now hosting gold flesh, was holding Lyra close to him. What had happened between the two? The little man was crying over Lyra's dead body. He caused all this chaos... Yet he was upset over the death of our allies. Before long, his head perked up, as if something ignited within him. He rushed off, and came back a minute or two later with a strange, glowing artefact. He focused his mind into the object, and light streamed from it in slow waves of brilliant light. I held an arm to my eyes as a visor to the blinding show.
When I looked back, the goblin was gone, and Lyra was still laying there. I broke from my cover and slid along the earth, stopping beside her. She was breathing; the goblin had saved her life. Genuine tears began to roll out of my eyes, little sparks of holy light contained within each one. I could hear Alice squeaking into my singlet, too. I slid my arms under the elf-girl, one under her knees and the other under her shoulders and neck, and lifted her up, carrying her like I had carried Alice through the temple. I made a beeline straight for the larger group of Secondaries. I don't know how many times I've said it or how many more time I will say it, but I want to just send Omni to hell.
Quote:Lyra
My eyes fluttered open, and my head perked up. I'd seriously just gone and nodded off in my seat. That was poor etiquette. I looked down at the elf-girl laying in the bed beside my chair, and her eyes began to open up. Her blue eyes darted around for a moment, before focusing on me. She gave me a soft smile, and I returned one.
"Morning, Lyra." I greeted her. "How are you feeling?" I asked her, trying to refrain from letting tears out in front of her.
"Sore. Otherwise I'm okay. I don't really remember much, though." she explained. I had to think carefully about my words.
"You were hurt in the battle and... Passed out. I managed to get you out of there. The damage was pretty bloody bad, I have no idea how you survived." I lied to her face. "I volunteered to watch over you while you recovered. We're heading out for the Swamp of Sadness tomorrow. Raw and I will stick with you, alright?" I reassured her, and she nodded with a weak smile.
I broke my policy of making promises I can't keep.[/spoiler]
I looked to Lyra in front of me and gave her a nod. I was going to stick with her, no matter what. Raw stood in front of Lyra, so we had the elf-girl covered. Our single file began the march through the thick white mist, where unknown horrors lurked, waiting to attack any one of us.
Alice clung even tighter to my singlet as we trudged through the muck. "Don't leave me behind, alright?" She asked, her voice quaking. However, my body went rigid, and voices filled my head, jumbled words filling my vision.
Quote:J̗̳͚̮̈́ǫ̝̫̭̻͉̻͌̎͛ͥ͂͒s̛̈́̈̚é͇̖̼͙̭̰̋̓ͪ͑ͧ̚,̮̜͓̠ͯ̎ͫ̕ ̲̺̞̼̋̆ͩ̊͡d͎̟̟̺̪̊̾ͯ̎o̮͈͉͓̜ͯ̚n͇̥̘̉'̛̼̮͈̩͒ͯͯ̆̿t̪̤̲̲̬̗̅̇͊͌̿ͨ ̮͇́̈̃́ḛ̢̯͉̖̩̟ͦͦͨ̈͛v̡͐̋̔ͯȅ̟̓ͫ̒r̓́̐ͮͤ̓̀͜ ͍̥͐̓̋ͧͥ̅͒ḷ̭̹̜͓̿ͫ̚eͬ͆̀a̽̌ͨ̋̒̏͘v̙͔͚̯̥ͦ̈̌͂e̵̫̊ͣ͋̿͑ ̦̤͓̺͓̖̄ͤ̊ͨ͛̓m̬͖̥̪̃͢e͇͍͕̳͈͂ͅ,̹̤͕͉ͯͭ̀ ̆ͥ̈́p̶̥̳͕͋̑̿ͥͦͥ̈́ḷ̙̻̖̍̂̈́̉ͥͥ͟ȇ̃͐̉̌͊̈͞ͅa͚͎̻͚ͪͧͨͧs͔̀̎͘e̩̪͑̽?̸̟͖̗͓̅̑ͥ
̝̫̲̫͐ͧ̏̏̋
̺̼̅I̸͖͔̦̹̼̠͙̒͂̊̐͊̓̚ ͔̖̝̦̻̬͛ͪ͜w̢̬̗̞̙̟̟̞ͫo̹̩͓̳͔̾ͫ̏ͣ̊ͫ͠ͅn̟̗͑̆̎͜'ͪ̃̇̐t̛̟͈́͒̓̐͆̃.̗̻͍̺͎̭͔͑̌̈̇̌ ̙̣̩̳̌ ̛͓̝͚͍͓̟́̾̚I͇̣͔ͬ̇ͥͯͯ ̞̪̝̠͖̘̤s̮͇̺͘w̰̎̌̓̍̇͟è̮͕̜͇̞̝́͢a͓͚̦̺̯̯ͦ̆ͧ͆̿̅r͇͕̫̱͖̤̐ͤ̐̿ ̟͓̑̎͐͛̀ó̜̲̭̰͎̲̜ͫͪͣ̐̚͠n̰̞̭̓̔ͦ͊̓ ̃ͥ͂̂ͫ͗ͅm̠̯̾̒ͯ̃̉̑̔y̭̥̞̣̩̦̭ ̪̄ͅg̡̘͎̹͙ͫͮͩ͌͑͛r͔̦͍̻̱͕̰̍͑̌́a̹͇̟̤̲͉̞ͬ̿̉͗̉̚͢v̝͂ͭͦ̾̀e.̹ͨ͂̌ͤͅ
I gasped sharply, and released my head. I stared at my fingers, and blood had stained my nails. What the fuck was that?! Who's José?! I could feel Alice's dainty hands on my cheeks, but paid no mind to her, as there was only one thought running through my head; Omni, I promise you, I will fucking murder you if you don't give me answers!
Quote:Longest... Thing... I have ever... Written... On... This site...
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Yu Kanda - 08-29-2015
The mist thickened around Klaud and the others, she could barely see the other in front of her. She picked up the pace to catch up. Feeling Jan's hand slide from her shoulder she stopped and turned around, but all she could see was white mist. Turning her head around to check up on Jan she only found thick mist there as well. "Jan ? Iris ? Anyone ?" She called out, as she turned around. Yet, no one answered. A strange feeling started to manifest within her stomach, something did not feel right.
The loneliness started to come back, she was all alone in this damp, disgusting place. She called out once again out of sheer desperation with the same result. Was this the swamp Christa warned them about ? "Don't let it get to you, Christa warned us about this place and how it plays tricks on one's mind. You are stronger than that, you are a general of the black order. You faced battlefields filled with Akuma , the Noah clan and even survived the level four akuma attack on the Asian branch. This is just some silly trick. Just keep on going and you will find your way out." Klaud filled herself with some courage before starting to move deeper into the mist.
***
It felt as if Klaud has been walking for hours through this damned swamp and was starting to get tired. She had to rest for a while. Klaud walked onto a small, dry piece of land on and sat down. Her boots were still in the very shallow waters and her outfit was wet. The eary silence was killing her inside, no birds chirping, animal noises, even the wind was absence with all its potential ominous sound. She could even go for one of Clayton's long and tedious ramblings filled with poisonous words right about now. But instead, all she could hear was a drop from her coat falling back into the water. Her eyes were focused on the ripples created as they slowly faded. What was she to do now ? She was obviously lost, there was nothing for her to navigate with, for all she knew she has been walking around in circles this entire time.
Luckily they brought plenty of rations along for the trip, Klaud took this moment to eat and drink something to regain her strength. She could feel this place having an effect on her, giving her a constant chill down her spine. Even though she knew this was going to happen it was slowly taking over, fighting it was impossible. For some strange unexplainable reason she felt like releasing tears and other emotions that she deemed unworthy and unnecessary at this moment. The proud woman shook her head, finished what nutrition she had left and got up, no time to sit here and let the swamp take over. " I will not bow for the curse that dwells here, I will find Omni and return Lau Jimin to me." With those words in her mind she continued.
The exorcist walked further and further, her eyes no longer focused in front of her. She was looking down, her head tilted towards the filthy muddy water as she dragged her feet along through it. Her mind was empty only repeating her goal in her head to keep going. "I must find Omni, I must find the others, I must find Omni." Her repetitive thought was suddenly interrupted by a creepy laugh coming from within the thick mist.
" Poor little exorcist, all alone in this big bad place." A condescending voice followed the laugh when it addressed Klaud. It snapped the General back from whatever mindless state she was in and started to look around her for the source of the voice. She saw a silhouette emerge from the mist, someone was walking straight towards her. Klaud stood upright and addressed the mysterious voice.
"Who are you ? show yourself."
"Who am i ? You already know who i am Klaud. Just another circus freak that got lucky, just like you." the silhouette now came closer and emerged from the mist, as if Klaud was looking in a mirror she saw herself coming towards her. "Exactly like you" The second Klaud said with a sinister smile.
Klaud stood perplexed for a moment, was that her ? A second Klaud nine ? It must be a trick, the same trick as what happened in the temple all those months ago.
"Oh, this is not a trick Klaud, I am you, you are me. We are one and the same. I am as real as it gets." Her double replied as if she could read Klaud's mind. " Omni has been watching you, and was disappointed to say the least. You have been given the privilege to live here in the Omniverse and you spend your time with these useless people instead of actually finding Lau Jimin. You are not strong enough to complete this journey, currently unworthy of finding Omni. You must have felt it by now, the swamp has already defeated you."
That was why she hasn't reached the end of the swamp yet, that's why she was having these feelings. The swamp has taken over her already. The battle she thought she was fighting was already lost. Each word she spoke reached Klaud deep inside and felt as if she was stabbed within her heart. Her double was right, she was not strong enough to see this through. If she continues this she would fail the others, Jan, Iris, Isaac, Christa, Raw, everyone will suffer the consequences of her failure. Could she do this to the others ? Could she be so selfish and let them suffer by continuing nonetheless.
"I am here to finish what you have started, this quest will be fulfilled if you let me continue it for you. You will continue to exist through me, and i will reunite us with Lau Jimin. We will finally be together again."
Klaud's eyes started to show the words were hurting her allot more then she would normally allow herself to. "No, it can't be true. I have been giving it my all. The others, my friends, Jan, they need me"
"They do need you, just not the way you are right now. You are flawed Klaud, you are not the same person that you were when you got here. Omni has allowed me to show you what is happening and will happen if you continue your current path." The mist next to the new Klaud became more dense and started to glow with a white light. The General looked at the light as with a single bright white flash her mind was flowing with images as if they were projected straight in. Klaud tried to scream but no sound came out her open mouth. Her eyes were forced shut as the images took over.
Within her mind she saw her travelling companions, some of them were still in the swamp some of them further in the future. Omni and the new Klaud were showing her what happens if she continued. She saw Captain Crow hanging from a tree within the thick mist, his lifeless body just swinging from the branch of a tree. Iris was deactivated and was slowly sinking deeper into the swamp. Raw was flying through the air in the midst of battle, a spear was flying towards her but Klaud could see her whip on its way to intercept. Only to be too late as the magical creature was pierced through the chest and falling towards the ground. Grobdum was taking a break in the swamp, eating and drinking when behind him a silhouette appeared coming in closer and closer. A hand pulled the goblin's head back and a machete sliced open his throat, revealing the malevolent and satisfied smile of the hunter Clayton.
Klaud held her head as the images continued to stab within her brain. Pinocchio had his eyes shut as the flames covered his body. She could see Isaac walking away from the group, leaving the others to their own business and abandoning his quest. Grave looked like an old man, wrinkles all over his face as he was still walking around in the swamp. During another battle she could see herself fighting side by side with Top Man both giving it their all. An arrow came flying towards Klaud which she did not notice, Top man jumped in front of it taking the arrow to the chest, pummeling to the floor. Christa was yelling at Klaud why she let her friend die, why didn't she save her ! Christa was in tears and angry beyond believe. The image then showed Christa forcing Klaud to leave before she would do something she would regret. Urg found his way out of the swamp, back to where he came from. He found a town only to be chased by the citizens , he could not find a place to fit in and would be accepted wherever he would go. Abner was sitting within the mist staring at his pistol for a while before placing it in his mouth. The image cuts out as she could only hear a gunshot. The German was found on the ground after a battle, a large hole found in his chest where his heart used to be. Lyra finally found her way out of the swamp, seeing her teammates she felt relieved and walked over quickly, a loud gunshot was heard as a sudden hole appeared between Lyra's eyes. A bullet ended her existence.
"No, enough ! I can't take it anymore" Klaud shouted with all her might but there was one more image being imprinted within her. There he was, Jan standing in the mist. She could see him so clear Klaud thought she could touch him. On the floor Klaud could see herself sit on the floor near him holding the lifeless body of Lau Jimin in her hands. Jan's gun was still smoking at the end of his barrel. Without a single sign of regret, Jan turned around and left Klaud with the corpse of her long lost friend. Finally reunited.
Finally a shout could be heard, Klaud broke down as the tears were flowing from her red eyes. The once strong and proud General was reduced to nothing more than an emotional mess, a burden to everything and everyone around her. She dropped on her knees in the swamp water trying to comprehend why she let everyone down like that. Why it was her fault these things happened, why would she let this happen ? She had no reason to continue if it meant pain and suffering for everyone without reaching their goal, without reaching Omni. This was a sign, she shouldn't continue. Her double was right, there was but one thing to do.
"I see you finally understand what i mean. Let me finish this for us, i can reach Omni for our sake" The second Klaud spoke.
The original exorcist slowly got up, tears still flowing from her red eyes. As she got up something fell from her coat pocket and fell to the floor. It was Jan's gift before they left for the swamp. Klaud picked it up and looked at it for a while, her tears slowly started to stop and her heartbeat slowing down. She thought about the time Jan gave it to her and it started to calm her down. Placing one hand on her lower stomach she showed the faintest of smiles. "No" Klaud said. " You cannot take my place. "There is something far more important at stake. Not only will i find Omni and bring Lau Jimin back to me, I, no we, shall make sure there is a future for him or her here within the Omniverse." Klaud said as she pressed Jan's gift against her lower stomach.
Reaching a calmer state of mind Klaud looked up and couldn't see the demon torturing her any more. She wiped off the remainder of the tears and held on to Jan's gift. Klaud Nine was not finished yet.
Quote: Used "Goddess's fortune" in the previous post
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Guu - 08-29-2015
[spoiler]
Quote:Raw Onion, Lyra-----
The proceeding months have been wonderful. For the first time in her life, she was living her dream. She was living comfortably as the head chef of these people. It was a challenge as the tools she had to use were primitive and she had to learn how to cook meat. However, Lyra was always there to give a helping hand.
Whenever monsters attacked from the shadows, she was quick to drop everything to protect the people. They were her citizens to protect now and she felt a responsibility towards them, but as soon as the threat went away, she went back to her one and only passion.
Lyra would become a dear companion. Every night, after they were finished with the dinner rush, they’d just hang out together. It was kind of weird, her whole life, Raw’s definition of family was always felt like a debt that needed to be paid, to have something so give and take was kind of an eye opener.
For the first time, she would bless the life Omni had given her. Sadly, it didn’t last.[/spoiler]
Suddenly, the Pegasus was alone.
She didn’t know how it happened. She was with Lyra and the other man but suddenly the fog overtook them and everyone else was gone.
“Lyra!” She called out, frantic to find her friend. “Lyra! Where are you?”
There was no reply.
Raw’s large expressive eyes were welling up with tears. The closest thing she had to a real sister was now gone, uncertain if they would ever meet again. Her heart broke, as she knew she couldn’t keep her promise anymore.
“I’m sorry.” She said, as she landed on the ground and trotted forlornly forward.
-----
[spoiler]
Quote:Raw Onion, Lyra“You’re so passionate about your cooking. Why did you let your mother control you like that?”
“It wasn’t just her. It was everyone.”
A month or so earlier, Raw and Lyra were getting ready to occupy their sleeping bags for the night after a long day of cooking. They were having their usual casual conversation, though this one had gotten a little heavier than usual.
“The generals would always talk about the evils the orcs would commit. They’d tell us how it was our duty to serve, and the ponies bought it so much that they’ve gotten into the charade as well, shaming any young person who decides against enlisting. It’s gotten so bad that there were not enough ponies in the workforce. We’ve gotten so close to running out of food too many times for comfort. Of course, those that enlisted got more rations. That’s how they get you I guess.”
“Sounds like a horrible place.” Lyra responded.
Raw sighed heavily as Lyra put a hand on her shoulder.
“When we first met, that goblin you killed. That was your first one, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” She reluctantly responded, taken aback by the sudden question.
“I wouldn’t know what my first was. My battalion focused on hit and run tactics; we never got to see the end result of the orcs we hit. Even though it is obvious that an extended hoof falling from sky would be instant death for most, it was just easy to pretend they were just knocked out or something.
“But one day, my platoon was raiding this orc camp. I struck this goblin who was standing next to a crude building. We both crashed into it and the whole thing collapsed on top of us, trapping us inside.
“I got to watch every second of the goblin, his brain damaged, his body broken, coughing up blood, unaware that I was even there. It reminded me so much of how some of my fellow soldier have fallen it just…”
That’s all she could spit out for she was sobbing uncontrollably now. Lyra moved in close and gave her a hug which the pony returned, soaking the elf’s shoulder with tears.
“It was so senseless!” She yelled between the tears. “What did I sacrifice my soul for?”[/spoiler]
-----
Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t realized how far she had wondered. The swamp had quickly swallowed the landscape and it was the only thing ahead. There was no turning back, she wouldn’t know the way anyways. She had to move forward, and she hoped to Omni that Lyra was ahead somewhere.
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Proto Man - 08-29-2015
It was nice at the start. All these weird, shady-looking people gathered together in the heat of battle. Sure, someone of them were malicious or borderline psychotic, but in this type of situation, most people were willing to overlook a few sinister sneers or what others did behind closed doors. Once the zombies and the darkspawn were cleared from the area, things looked as if they were going to be easy.
There were days when Top Man would just lounge around and play old videos on his feed to keep the customers happy. Hell, they should be happy he gave them new or recycled content on a daily basis, since most of them were goaded into signing up for an entire year through the website that hosted his channel. With their money, Top Man was able to manage to enjoy himself in this stupid little place with a bunch of strangers he didn’t feel like getting attached to… who trusted people who shouted in German?
To be truthful, it had been more fun than he had anticipated. The people he was pretend stuck with weren’t all complete sociopaths. A few of them (the girl from the temple and the talking pony) had become somewhat pleasant to be around, although Top Man could never bring himself to trust a winged horse that talked.
The only real person he had something of a connection with was Pinocchio. Apparently, the wooden boy wanted to become a prime. Top Man had to wonder if that was even possible. The logistical part of his programming wanted him to believe that there wasn’t some sort of switch you throw to turn a non-prime into a prime. Then again, this world wasn’t designed to make any damn sense. The two parted one day after having an in-depth conversation about what really mattered: Being yourself.
What’s the purpose of living if you’re just going to pretend to be something you’re not?
At one point, the little goblin with the magic stick decided he want to try and kill everyone. Top Man was angry for a short while, but after a little while, he realized he couldn’t really blame the small green fella. Conflict prevents you from becoming complacent… it reminds you to watch your back and keep your eyes open, and it also helps to give you some meaning. Without conflict, people become boring and apathetic. Grob-whatever-his-name-was had to find his purpose in a strange world.
During the conflict with the orcs, his viewing audience had got a giant kick out of his arm nearly been torn from its socket. It had taken Top Man a few days before he could repair the joints, and even then, he had to resort to some piss poor materials. The company wanted to charge him double for delivery of anything over a set value, and since he was a frugal robot, his right shoulder had some fancy new scars.
Unfortunately for Top Man, there’s not an infinite supply of ‘organic’ storylines. Like the denizens of the Blighted Dell, the orcs receded back into the Tangled Green. Despite a spattering of drama, it all eventually started to dry up a little, or at least it felt that way to him. Even worse, it showed on his viewing numbers. While his active subscriptions never faltered, his lack of ‘fresh’ content gradually worked its terrible magic on his view. Less viewers meant less money, which meant less things for him.
Do you know how dangerous it is for someone who can’t just naturally regenerate their body parts or make fresh ones out of magic rainbow dust.
So time continued its cruel march. People talked. Friends were made. Enemies were formed. Top Man wrangled some deals with some corporate sponsors and got a relatively nice hut, which he concealed behind a terrible, thatched exterior (don’t want to make people jealous). Sure, it meant he had to drink soda or wear giant versions of sneakers when he published new videos, but it was the best way to keep everything operational.
Did these people really think there was any legitimate food in this place? All it would take was a look at a map to realize that they were a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Swamp of Sorrows. In the other direction? The shit hole they’d been chased through--the Blighted Dell. So yea, Top Man wrangled some deals and made sure the place was filled with wildlife and nontoxic plants to eat. The less these people knew, the better. He didn’t want anyone to be dependent on him for anything other than entertainment or laughs.
[spoiler]
Quote:Top Man, Pepsiman
The orange-black machine sat inside his hut and stared at the little screen in front of him. The little spinning circle told him that it was struggling to find a suitable connection, but before Top Man got too frustrated, it let out a beep. After another few seconds, a figure popped up on the screen.
“Salutations, Top Man, are you properly hydrated?”
The Robot Master stifled a smile as he nodded his head and held up a can of Pepsi-Cola Oil. “Always.” Apparently, you can combine soda, motor oil, and some other ‘natural and artificial flavors,’ and the result is something not completely terrible. Truth be told, Top Man didn’t need any sort of oil or normal robot lubricants to keep his systems running, but he enjoyed the sponsorship deal with Coruscant’s Pepsi-Co. Who in their right mind would turn down free soda and cola-themed accessories?
“How are you? You are near the Swamp of Sorrows, are you not?” When Pepsiman saw his friend nod, he continued. “It’s rumored that the place gets into your head… do you feel that?”
Top Man shrugged his shoulders. They were close to the Swamp, but they technically weren’t in the marsh itself. Did that mean they were free from its effects? Probably not, but the machine didn’t know people enough to pinpoint any dramatic changes in their behavior. For all he knew, everyone around him could be bipolar or schizophrenic. “I think I feel okay.”
“Hydration is important.” Pepsiman stated with an air of gravitas. “Don’t let that swamp dehydrate you.”
“Yea, I know,” Top Man replied as he took a sip from the can.
“You have a noble cause, wanting to bring hydration to Omni, my friend. Don’t give up.”
The robot smiled and pantomimed a toast with the half-empty can of Pepsi-Oil. A beat later, the connected ended, and Top Man was left watching a dozen Pepsi-Co logos bounce around the screen of his laptop. “Thanks, Pal,” Top Man muttered as he closed the lid of the computer and gently leaned back until he was on the ground. After another sip from the can, he stared up at the ceiling of his hut.
He’d painted 8-bit versions of all his brothers and half-brothers, even those disgruntled Gen 2s. In the dark, the luminous paint glowed faintly, giving Top Man a gentle reminder of all those he’d left behind when he set out to become a superstar. He knew that three of them were gone, lost to the harshness of the Omniverse.
Was Top Man strong enough to endure where others had fallen?
For the first time in a while, Top Man didn’t feel so unstoppable
What made him any better than Snake Man or any nobler than Wood Man and Heat Man? They had all died for causes they believed in, and here he was, trying to inflate his bank accounts. if he perished out here in the Tangled Green, would anyone care? Or would his obituary just get a string of comments like ‘lolfag’?
A lovely legacy… The Robot Master took another sip of soda-oil and placed the can on the floor. Why was he even here? More subscribers? More money? More advertising deals? Was that who he was? A frown spread across his face as he closed his eyes.
Maybe, through Omni, he could find some greater purpose.[/spoiler]
After it all, he was alone once again.
They had left behind the remains of their humble little encampment. Without the hustle and bustle of the men, women, and ‘others,’ the little collection of huts stood silent, like a collection of thatched mausoleums.
Christa had led them all off into the Swamp of Sorrows. Top Man thought she was all right, even if she was probably a closet sociopath. The Robot Master had lingered, unable or perhaps unwilling to just march blindly into a place designed to drain you of the will to live. That night in his hut still hung over his shoulders, and there was a part of him that wanted to just turn around right now. He could be back in Coruscant or Costa del Sol in a few weeks. Hell, he could probably pull in a savor and have someone recall him.
But how would that look? If he left now, it would be the end of him. Returning now would ruin any credibility he had built over the last few years, and worse than that, he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
So he was faced with marching toward certain death or staying behind and dying a little everyday for the rest of his unnatural life.
The Robot Master stared at the bank of fog, trying his hardest to will himself forward into a situation that could legitimately lead to his death.
Was he prepared to die?
It was then that the he remembered something.
As he took his first steps into the fog, Top Man remembered that dying had been one of the best things to happen to him.
[spoiler]
Quote:Top Man, Mega Man, Proto Man
With a grimace on his face, Mega Man watched as his well-aimed buster shots deflected away from the spinning Robot Master, who looked like little more than an orange tornado.
As he came out of his spin, Top Man cackled as he landed a roundhouse kick on the chin of his adversary.
Mega Man let out a grunt and fell backwards onto his robotic posterior. Red images flashed on his internal display telling him about compromises to his armor and dangerously low E levels.
“It’s over for you, Blue Bomber.” The top-themed machine said with a grin as he stalked toward the fallen machine. “You can’t stop the Top!” Still grinning from nonexistent ear to other nonexistent ear, Top Man held out his buster arm and released a quick succession of tops. The spinning death dealers hit the ground and zipped toward the dazed Mega Man.
Before they could find their mark, the half dozen tops were blown apart by a rapid succession of blasts. With a dull thud, a red figure dropped down next to Mega Man.
“What are you doing here, ‘Break’ Man?” Top Man shouted as the disguised Robot Master shrugged his shoulders.
“You weren’t fighting fair,” Proto Man replied, his voice muffled behind the mask he wore to conceal the lower half of his face.
While it was true (who fights fair in a battle to the death, anyway?), Top Man was still infuriated that another of Wily’s stooges had interfered in his moment of glory. Wasn’t Break Man on their side? Shouldn’t he be happy to watch Top Man rip apart the Blue Bomber and usher in the world of their creator’s dreams? “You’re in my way,” the top-themed machine growled.
Proto Man shook his head and glanced down at Mega Man, who had pulled himself into an upright position. “The best way to deal with a top is to give it a hard knuckle to the face.” With that, the disguised robot leapt up into the same vent he’d dropped through, leaving an infuriated Top Man to watch as Mega Man rose to his feet.
The Blue Bomber smiled as his color palette changed to dark blue and light gray. The second son of Dr. Light held up the Mega Buster.
“You think that will be enough?” Top Man growled as Mega Man fired the Hard Knuckle. The rocket-propelled fist tore through the air as its intended target started his defensive spin. Instead of deflecting away, it passed through the tornado and slammed into Top Man’s chest with enough force to throw the Robot Master against the wall of his own lair.
Now it was Top Man’s turn to watch as error and warning messages popped up on the corners of his display. Despite the warnings and the electricity-laden fractures on the surface of his chest plating, he pushed away from the wall. With some stumbling, he rose to a fully vertical position and glared across the room at his foe.
“It’s over, Top Man.”
The orange-black robot shook his head as he held up his arm cannon. “How am I gonna lose when I'm rocking all the skill?” Top Man spat as he fired a quick succession of tops at his foe. Mega Man jumped into the air, his Mega Buster spewing death down at the spinning weapons. When he landed a few yards from Top Man, Mega Man fired another flying fist that blasted straight through his foe’s chest.
Eyes wide, Top Man fell back against the wall once more. As he slid down onto his haunches, he knew he’d never rise again. For all his efforts, he’d been defeated by Dr. Light’s Chosen One… a robot whose skills would never reach his in this life or any other.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way,” Mega Man replied. The Blue Bomber’s eyes were filled with… sorrow? Remorse?
“You offer me your apologies with the smoke still rising from your gun?” Top Man rasped, his systems starting to shut down. “We’re all war machines. Don’t offer me your faux emotions… neither of us can feel. We’re both just fulfilling our purpose.”
“But…” Mega Man trailed off.
Top Man was gone.[/spoiler]
The swamp had grown thick and primordial around him. How long had he walked?
When he had first arrived here on that fateful day in Coruscant, Top Man had loved the Omniverse almost immediately. Why not? Here he was in a wonderful new place, free from the programming of mad scientists and gifted with the ability to think and feel at levels he never thought possible.
It was that wonder that drove him on his adventure through the verses. How wonderful it was to be able to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted! There had been no doctors to rule his life or to use him like a tool.
Back then, he’d thought this place was heaven.
If Top Man had learned a damn thing in the few years he’d been scraping by, it was that this place was no heaven. Yea, it was nice to have the freedom to (mostly) do whatever you wanted to do and travel wherever you wanted to go. After a while, you realize that you’re not free. No one in the Omniverse was truly ‘free.’
Everyone here operated under some illusion of freedom as they frittered around, hoping to find some meaning to everything. Meanwhile, a smiling creature fed off of their hopes, their accomplishments, and each and every one of their shortcomings. Top Man had traded a mad scientist for a mad god.
Some people called the Omniverse a prison, but that is no more than just rose-tinted glasses.
The Omniverse isn’t that kind. No one here was special or important in the long run.
A prison? Oh, no.
This place was a cookie jar filled with batteries.
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Gamzee Makara - 08-29-2015
My feet fall softly upon the mossy ground. I take care to avoid the pools of stagnant slurry that passes for puddles of water in this blighted place. Not that it would matter if I didn’t, my stiefel are far from immaculate. The mud and stench of death reminds me of the trenches. It is almost like I am back at home.
Yet, I have never felt so far away from the Fatherland.
I search for my allies, but my simple eyes cannot pierce the veil of unnatural fog.
“Roger…? Crow?”
My words are a whisper. No need in attracting unwanted attent-
Oh schrauben.
“CROW?! ROGER?!” I shout.
“Christa?...” I try weakly. I start to rattle off names, hoping someone will hear me talking to myself.
Nothing. Damn it. Damn it all. Truly, I am alone. I begin to contemplate my next move, when all of a sudden, it feels as if thousands of needles are scraping down my spine.
Something is...compelling me to walk forward. There is something ahead, though I know not what. I level the staff in front of me, fingers stroking the lever-trigger. My breathing becomes shallow and ragged, as if I was attempting to breathe in a layer of smog. The air feels heavy and thick, smothering almost. My feet have been moving of their own accord. I have not felt such trepidation since...since the operation. Since meeting my old ‘friends’.
One step at a time.
Focus.
Left foot, right foot.
Left foot, ri- ACH SCHEIßE!
I cry out in shock as a rotten, soggy hand latches on to my ankle. I almost trip over my own feet, but with some quick thinking and lucky aim, I swipe the staff as if it were a scythe, severing the hand from a currently sunken arm. The handless limb flails around, stirring up quite a lot of muck and grime. I take a moment to detach the vise now clamped onto mein poor ankle. It takes a moment, as the hand is slimy and cold, but eventually its dead fingers relinquish me from its grasp.
The situation in the apparently bottomless puddle has gotten worse. Half of a zombie has now climbed its way out of that hole. And one-handed too! How impressive.
I make a rather nasty face, a sick grin accompanying the hate in my eyes.
I slide my left hand to the top of the staff whilst keeping the right on the bottom of the hilt. With a mighty oomph, I swing the staff high into the air, before bringing it back down in a deadly arc like an axe. The blade sinks itself into the untoten’s rotten flesh with a sickening squelch. Placing one dirty boot on what remains of its skull, I casually rip my weapon free from my now twice dead opponent, along with a splattering of diseased grey matter and bone fragments. I remain silent for a moment, staring at the dead, putrid corpse.
My right eye develops a twitch.
“You… You see what happens when you touch the Doctor!? Eh!?”
I shout at the zombie as if it could hear my cries of outrage. In a furious tempest of anger, I begin to repeatedly swing my staff into the zombie over and over again, as if I were a deranged miner digging for gold.
Gold being chunks of flesh and internal organs.
“Why!? Why won’t you stay DEAD!?” I shout at the desecrated corpse, hysteria flooding my voice. Chunks of black meat splatter onto my face, the blade of Kemat stabbing into the rot at a frantic pace.
With an inarticulate screech of rage, I suddenly recoil from the body, or rather, what’s left of it. Where there was formerly an undead, now lies a mess and tangle of intestines, broken bones, and torn flesh. I plant the staff into the murk, shaft end down.
I fall to my knees, staring at Kemat’s Bite.
My eyes drift down to my hands, which are resting atop my knees. They are covered in a viscous black-ish blood. My eyes float back up to the staff. The same pitch blood coats the blade affixed to the right side.
“You are pathetic, Edward.”
There’s that blasted feeling again. Those rusty needles pin-pricking every vertebrae of my spine.
That voice.
“Samantha.”
A small girl with hair like the feathers of a raven, in a very old styling of polka-dot dress steps out from behind the tree in front of me. In her arms, she is clutching a stuffed bear. The staff rests between us, serving as a barrier, as the line in the sand.
“Edward Richtofen. You accomplish nothing but proving your insignificance. This is not your story, not your epic. This is not where you belong.”
My face distorts into an expression of pure pain and agony. “You think I do not know that you, little brat? You think I have delusions of grandeur involving this universe and these poor fools who inhabit it? Are you really so naive as to believe that I do not plan to return to my allies? To finish what I have started!?”
The girl remains silent, even as tears begin to well behind my eyelids.
“It was you! You took everything from me you little weibsbild! You unleashed the disease! You killed Maxis!”
My hands tangle themselves in my hair, gripping tightly onto the locks that have been growing for the past several months. I groan, and that groan eventually evolves into a shout of excruciating internal pain.
“You should have saved him Richtofen. That was your role; Keep my father from becoming infected. You-”
No. No. I rise to my feet without a word. The little lost girl stops mid sentence, and our eyes meet. Samantha’s eyes are black pits, devoid of any sort of emotion.
“He is not your father!” I begin with a shout.
“You are a figment of Ludvig’s imagination! You haunt me as you haunted him. You prey upon my paranoia, upon my mistakes! I will not have this.”
I stomp towards the staff, spraying swamp murk into the air as I do. I yank my weapon free from its post, and turn away from my demon.
Only to come face to face with her again. She floats in front of me, nose inches away from mine.
“You cannot walk away from this, Richtofen.”
Her voice no longer sounds like a small child’s. It is a rasping, ancient sound, with a demonic taint. I clench my teeth, staring into those black eyes once more.
“Away from me, dämon!”
I take a wild swing with the staff at her pretty, doll-like face. The blade is stopped short, just barely unable to make contact with her snow white flesh. I struggle with all my might, trying to finish the arc and bring that knife crashing into her taunting features. I scream in pure rage, and fling my hands away from the staff, trying to pull it away from her for another attack, but this only succeeds in leaving Kemat’s Bite frozen in mid air, blade still centimeters away from wiping that blank stare off of Samantha’s annoying face.
IT IS NOT FAIR!
Samantha raises a hand, and a wall of invisible supernatural energy flings the staff away from her presence. It spins towards me like a deadly buzz saw, and I am forced to jump out of the way to avoid getting turned into bratwurst.
*Ka-THUNK*
I land in a roll, and when I look back, I see that Kemat has lodged itself in a thick Spanish moss tree. My head swivels to the brat and-
Samantha is floating right above me. She holds a pale hand in front of my face, palm outward.
“With the power of the Aether, I sentence you to torture at the hands of your own broken mind.”
Wh-
Blackness.
Quote:Translations:-----
schrauben = screw it
stiefel = boots
dämon = demon
weibsbild = wench
untoten = undead
ACH SCHEIßE = OH SHIT
mein = my
Nnng… Ich...Wo bin Ich? I don’t remember...Ah. Where have I been? What is going on? The blackness fades from my vision, and I can see clearly again. I carefully scan my surroundings, trying to glean some information as to where I am. Stone walls, lab equipment, thin horizontal slits for windows, salvos of explosions and weapon fire outside.
An operating table.
My gaze slowly falls to the makeshift operation table. On it, lies a pale, vein-riddled corpse. It’s features include a short, grey beard, an angular but humped nose, and the wrinkles of one who has lived for quite a while in a time of great stress. My patient’s eyes have rolled into the back of his head. I can only see the whites. His mouth is agape, as if he was screaming in agony.
His head has been precisely cut open from the top, as if the operator had used a can-opener. I lean over to look inside the recesses of his skull, and find that it is empty.
No brain.
I am suddenly aware of how klebrig my hands are. I raise them into the dim yellow light that is hanging above the operating table, and find they are coated in both fresh and dried blood.
This is-
That’s right. Yes. I was operating on Maxis. He was about to succumb to the disease that had consumed the rest of our workers and armed forces. I begin to visibly shake uncontrollably, and find that it is very hard to stand up. Ludvig Maxis, my colleague, my confident, the closest thing I had ever had to a father, was dead.
And I killed him.
I attempt to speak, to say something, anything to break this horrible, foreboding silence, but no words come out. My bottom jaw is trembling uncontrollably under the effort. No. No I did not kill him. I saved him. I saved Maxis from the sickness that was consuming Group 935, I saved him from becoming one of them.
I saved him.
I keep telling myself this, but I know in my mind that it is untrue. I let him contract this illness. I let him die. His earthly body was doomed because of me, because of my mistakes.
Der Gehirn. The brain, where is it? Where?! I search frantically around the operating table for Maxis’ brain, the only part of his body that was uncorrupted by the disease brought upon this world by element 115. I swerve around, searching the tables of lab equipment for my only hope.
And there it is, suspended in a green, slimy concoction that I brewed up myself to preserve Ludvig’s brilliant mind. I scramble for it, making a mad grab as if I was going to lose it at any moment. I store it safely in my padded satchel.
“Do not worry Maxis. You will live again.” I murmur to no one.
I am broken from my reveries by the wall of the bunker being blown inwards by some explosive force. I shield my eyes from flying debris, and see a figure shrouded by dust standing in the newly erected entrance.
“You Edward Richtofen?”
A gruff American accented voice greets me. Allied soldier Tank Dempsey slowly steps into the open. My old ally eyes me up and down, before levying a dangerous looking revolver at my face.
“You’re coming with me.”
Quote:Translations:-----
Ich...Wo bin Ich = I...Where am I?
Der Gehirn = The brain
“Dempsey? Is that you?”
Wait...How do I know this man? His blocky features contort into a scowl.
“How do you know my name? Who the hell is feeding you intel? Was it the Russian?”
Nikolai.
“You mean Nikolai? Where is he?!”
Tank Dempsey snorts.
“Your informant Nikolai Belinski was mauled to death by your very own workers about thirty minutes ago. I suspect he is in the respective gullets of about six zombified German meat bags.”
No. No this is not how this is supposed to happen. There are supposed to be three of them confronting me. Three!
But...
“Takeo, the Japanese samurai, where is he?!”
Who are these people?
“The Japanese captain Takeo Masaki is also K.I.A. Where are you getting these names from, scum? This is Allied information only, you-”
“Sei ruhig! Shut up! I am trying to think, and your insipid questioning will get us nowhere!”
How do I know these names, and the faces that go with them? I look up, and the soldier lowers his weapon, and stares at me as if it was the last time I would be able to stare back. He speed-walks over to me and places barrel of the gun to my temple.
“My orders were to drag you from this hell-hole back to my commanding officers. They didn’t say in what sort of shape or in how many pieces.”
I sneer at him, throwing my own death glare.
“Kill me then Dempsey. Show your superiors how good you are at following orders.”
His response to that is to smack me in the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. My vision threatens to black out as I feel my eyes pop out of my head, but I hold it together. These past few days in the trenches have hardened me.
“There is no time for these petty arguments, my American idiot. They come for us.”
This entire time, they have been ripping at the boards on the windows, clawing their way out of the ground like the insignificant worms they are. The untoten.
“Something is wrong here Dempsey! Nikolai Belinski and Takeo Masaki should not be dead!”
“Yeah, and the dead shouldn’t be up and walking around making more people dead. People die Richtofen, especially in times like this. You’re going to have to explain what the hell you mean by that.”
I do not know what I mean by this. I don’t know how I know these things. They are just there, in my head! And these thoughts, Gott how they hurt! I can’t think about mein dead friends, because I know they are not dead! But-
An ungodly screech pierces my thoughts. Dempsey’s eyes grow a little frantic. They are closing in.
“We’re taking this conversation on the road. C’mon Doctor. We gotta go.”
And so we do.
We open the bolted door to the trenches. They are appearing all around us, crawling out of the ground and breaking through boarded off excavation tunnels.
This is so wrong! Takeo and Nikolai are supposed to be here, I know they are! We are all supposed to build the staffs of power and wield the elements together.
Warten. Staffs? What staffs? Gah it’s like un whirlpool of different memories in my head, and I can’t take it! These other memories, they are encroaching into my own thoughts, and it’s maddening! It’s like thousands of different voices are whispering and shouting and talking all at once!
Yes you fool! Staves! Staffs! Weapons of Massenvernichtungs! Maxis designed them, you, Nikolai, Takeo, and Dempsey built them!
No. No that is impossible. The Russian, and the Japanese captain, they are both dead. This American soldier has told me as much.
This American soldier is an idiot! You know this! This has happened before! Hundreds of times over.
No. I have never met this man before in my entire life.
Ahead of me, Dempsey clears any undead that get in the way of our progression through the trenches. Brains splatter the muddy path. The way he carries himself, his language and his tone.
What a kapitalistisch capitalist pig.
Nein! Stop that!
I will stop interrupting when you start listening to me scheißekopf!
“Verdammt voices! Get out of mein head!”
Dempsey brains another cursed soldier, and then looks back at me.
“You alright back there, quack?”
*tha-thump*
Quack.
Quack.
“Quack?...” I mutter.
I’ve never been called that before.
Yes. You have.
Sei ruhig! Shut up shut up shut up!
I see a man that is dressed as if he belongs at sea. I remember an old shanty that I sung around a campfire. Other faces. Faces that are blacked out by my own mind. I see myself tending to this man’s wounds. I see myself tending to many people’s wounds, in some sort of encampment.
I sink to my knees. The memories, they threaten to burst through my skull. I hear the calls of the dead behind me, all around me in fact. I cry out, my shouts of pain louder than theirs.
Dempsey comes skidding to a halt in the slick mud, before running back to me.
“What!? What happened? Did you get bit?”
I respond with another cry of agony.
All of a sudden, the radio attached to Dempsey’s tactical vest begins to chatter. He grabs me violently by the arm and hauls me to my feet, half way dragging my sorry arsch away from the growing threat of the dead. The United States soldier clicks on his radio, and speaks into his shoulder.
“I’ve got the target, quit bitching at me... Roger that, RTB for re-tasking.”
Another face makes itself known to me. Aryan features, someone of the Fatherland. I hear words spoken in my native tongue, shared around a campfire. He was a soldier. No, a mercenary. Hired gun.
Where have I been?
Der Omniversum.
Die stimmen! The voices continue to haunt me! They do not cease! Ich-
I don’t get to finish that thought. Thousands and thousands of memories, thoughts, words, whispers, voices, shouts, names, places, VOICES STIMMEN VERDAMMT VOICES!
I see myself dying hundreds upon hundreds of deaths in these trenches and on this battlefield at the hands of the undead hordes. They rend the flesh from my bones, shoving it into greedy rotten maws thousands of times over. I die, again and again, failing my task every single time. The cycle is never broken. Every time I die, I awake in the same bunker, in the same situation, playing the same sick game. Agartha will never be mine to control. I cannot save Maxis. I cannot save my allies, my friends. I cannot save my homeland. I cannot save myself.
And then the cycle was broken. I had died once again, feeling the pain of carnivorous teeth shredding into my flesh. However, when my eyes opened again, I was out of the loop. I was not in the decrepit bunker where four fated allies were destined to meet over and over again.
I was in the Omniverse.
And my work is not done there.
“Unhand me Dempsey.”
“What? No way in hell that’s happening, I need to get you to-”
I draw my Mauser pistol and aim it square at his face. This is not real. This is not the Tank Dempsey I know.
Though to be perfectly fair, if it was, I would still do it.
Dempsey points his own weapon at me. We stand there for a few moments.
“What in the hell do you think you’re-”
*PAP-PAP-PAP!*
This impostor falls to the ground, three small rounds of ammunition lodged into his skull.
The real Dempsey would have shot first and asked questions later.
I hear the growls and roars of diseased soldiers. In front of me, more than a few enemies block my path. I calmly look behind me to see a horde approaching me at a quick pace.
Without a word, I raise the smoking barrel of my Mauser to my temple.
End the Cycle Richtofen.
I squeeze the trigger.
Quote:Translations:-----
Stimmen = Voices
Verdammt = fucking
arsch = ass
Sei ruhig! = Shut up!/Be quiet!
Massenvernichtungs =Mass Destruction
Warten = Wait
scheißekopf = Shit head
kapitalistisch = Capitalist/Capitalistic
“Ich… Wo bin ich?” I open mein eyes, and find that I am staring at the sky, but therein lies the answer to my problem.
I stir from my slumber, and find that the swamp has almost claimed me. I struggle out of the torf, mud sticking to my back. When I am on my feet, I see that Kemat’s bite is leaning against a Spanish moss tree, unsoiled by grime or blood. I calmly retrieve it from its resting place.
Samantha is not here. I am beginning to wonder if she ever was.
Der kampf geht weiter.
Quote:Translations:
Torf = peat
Der kampf geht weiter = The struggle continues.
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Roger Smith - 08-30-2015
Never did care much for swamps. Even the kind that didn't try to mess with yer blasted head. Just too much of a middle ground...not solid enough to really be 'solid ground', but too bogged down with muck and filth to make for easy sailing. And heavens forbid if you were tryin' to get anywhere in much of a hurry; that just wasn't gonna happen. Not when you were sunk shin-deep in swamp muck.
Or when you couldn't see five bleedin' feet in front of you.
This damn fog was a right mess to try and navigate through. And it was really starting to get on Crow's nerves, in more ways than one. He was confident enough in his sense of direction that he would have wagered gold on him not straying from his heading. He'd kept right on into the wind, right in line with his mates. He shouldn't have gotten separated from them as quickly as he had. Or really, he shouldn't have gotten separated from them at all.
"Avast, ye bleedin' swabs! You mean to desert an old sailor in the middle o' this?!" he shouted into the fog. Aside from a faint, eerie echo, his words received no answer. But a stark chill did envelop the air, and the atmosphere seemed to grow more opporessive, as if taking offense to the pirate's sudden outburst.
He was now really beginning to wish he'd paid more attention to things that had been said about this...Swamp of Sadness. Beyond hearing that it could dredge up hopelessness and stir up all sorts of nastiness that was -- for the most part -- all in your head, he had mostly tuned it out. Always too preoccupied with other things to lend the proper attention. And now it had come back well and truly to bite him in the ass.
But at least for the moment, he was merely a tad angry. The general sense of the place, with all of its mysterious separation of everyone, was rapidly wearing on him. Reminding him all too much of a certain trip into that blasted maelstrom. 'Heart of Doubt', indeed...that had been a right laugh once he'd pulled through.....even if Crow had sailed back out of on all but a ghost ship.
"Not every voyage can end as ship-shape as it began, eh, cap'n?"
The voice speaking up out of nowhere brought Crow to complete attention, whirling first this way and then that, trying to seek out its source. This place must have been getting to him...he was hearing things now. The sooner he found some way to get out of this place the better. Last thing he needed was to--
"No sense dwellin' on the past....that always was your motto. Keep it locked away in some dusty old book, to be called back out when you can dramatize and flair it up, turn it into a glamorous story to make yourself feel better and make things seem less bloody and terrible than they actually were."
This time Crow came to an immediate halt. His features clenched into a terrified, wide-eyed stare at nothing, locked on a point that might have been a thousand yards ahead in the fog. He recognized that voice.
"Thought you moight remember me, Cap'n...you always did have a keen mind for rememberin' things, once it gets jogged a bit..."
".....didn't expect t'run into ye out here, mate." For once since arriving in the Omniverse, Crow had been all but struck dumb, left at a virtual loss for words. The voice speaking to him from what he could only call everywhere at once was unmistakable once it really registered. Only one man -- no....only one thing he'd ever met in all his days had a voice that hissed like that.
A great rushing of wind, and a sharp stench hit Crow's nostrils, sending him recoiling and retching, staggering away from it blindly. "....blast it all...why'd ye have to show up now...why here...ghh...."
"Thought you might need a refresher that you can't run away all the time, Cap'n...you can't just go off on a wild chase like this one and die somewhere lost out in the woods, away from the sea....and think that just because you left on your own terms you get a free pass."
Icy cold fingers closed on the back of Crow's skull, wrenching his head up to face the sky. His spine felt liable to snap in half, and he was only dimly aware of the feeling and sound of his knees splashing down into the swamp crud. And then his face hove into Crow's view, leering down at him. "....didn't expect yeh to follow me all the way to this place....Jones."
"You made a deal, Crow. To sail out of that cursed pit alive and well. You got a run of luck and time to beat the Devil himself. But just how much did you think you had?"
In spite of himself, Crow let out a bark of laughter. In spite of the mounting terror rising in his chest, in spite of the uncertainty as to whether he was hallucinating because of something in this swamp, or if he had finally, completely cracked or not, or if his old deals had just picked the absolute worst time possible to finally come due...he laughed. He all but howled in wicked, macabre glee. "So, after all these years, it's in some accursed magic marsh that Captain Crow meets his maker, is it?! Never took you for one to have a sense o' humor, Jones!"
"You've gone fully cracked, Crow..." The sickening visage of the dread pirate cracked into an almost pitying grin. "Don't think I'd miss out on the chance to get you when you were least expecting it. But I didn't expect you to be so ready to let what's coming catch up."
"Heh...yeh really don't know muhc about yer clients, do ya, bucko? I been ready to go fer a while, now...just waitin' on yer sorry ass to finally come and collect."
"......oh, Crow, is that really the best you've got? I waited just for a time like this, you old fool. Just for when you were finally starting to....look forward to things again."
The laugh and amusement in Crow's tone died almost immediately. "W....what're yeh on about..."
"You can lie to yourself all you want, Crow. You can play the doddering, half-insane old pirate all you want for everyone else in this group you've taken up with. But you can't lie to me. You can't lie to the reason you came out here in the first place. It wasn't just to have one last story to tell. It wasn't just to have a convenient excuse for never showing up anywhere again."
Crow howled in more than just physical agony as he was wrenched up from his forced kneeling posture on the ground, and he could've sworn he felt very real blood running down the back of his head, a stark contrast to the icy chill that had all but numbed his clear thinking. The sudden spike of pain, combined with the insinuations of Crow's lying, drew a fight response from the old captain, and he struggled in the grasp of certain death, latching onto the offending arm clasping onto his head. The chill of death nearly sapped the strength from his hands, his arms feeling like lead and refusing to respond properly, but he persisted gamely. "I never did much like yer blasted way o' weavin' words, ye old sack o' bones..." Gritting his teeth, Crow pulled forward with all of his failing strength, letting loose with a heave of effort that sent him lurching forward into the swamp, free of any resistance.
He splashed down in the murky waters of the swamp, and with it, his mind snapped back to reality. Splashing about as he struggled back to his feet, he jerked his gaze one way and then another, searching for any sign of....well, of anything. He spit out a mouthful of swamp water, staggering back to his feet. "Bleedin' hell...never did much care fer that bastard....always tryin' to go and twist a man's words and thoughts like that..." Crow set his mouth in a thin line, his expression grim and cold. "Pullin' bilge out like he knows what he's talkin' about....lying to meself..." Running one hand through his now thoroughly soaked hair, Crow wrinkled his nose in disgust. "....scupper that."
"Richard Falthas Crow never says anything that ain't the truth, ye blasted sea spirit..." Running both hands over his face, trying to brush the entire ordeal away like a bad night's sleep, he squared his shoulders, readying himself to continue aimlessly trudging through the mists. "....me shadow ain't even back at full strength yet, ye addlepate....bit early to go collectin' on a debt when yer own terms're not even up yet."
Shaking his fist at nothing and everything at once, Crow snarled out into the fog, "KEEP YER BLASTED MOJO OUTTA ME HEAD, YEH BLEEDIN' SWAMP! CAPTAIN CROW AIN'T GOT TIME T'BE WALLOWIN' IN DESPAIR! I GOT ME A GOD TO FIND!"
* * *
For all he knew it might have been a few hours, or it might have been days. All he knew was that his morale, restored and burning bright after his shouting match with the swamp at large, had dwindled to an all-new low. He had trudged on ahead, muttering darkly to himself, keeping his mind focused on a firm goal to try and keep out the treachery of the swamp: find the rest of the crazy group he'd grown so fond of over the past months and get out of this alive to find Omni.
It was a simple goal. They were on the last step. They couldn't fail now.
But despite no more grandiose attempts to wrangle him into submission, the swamp had taken its toll on him. Crow's fire had been all but extinguished, leaving him to meander sluggishly through the mist, his movements sluggish and unsure. Frequently he would bring one hand to his eyes, forcing back another outburst -- whether of sadness or anger he had long since stopped being able to tell.
Sadness, perhaps, for the actual thoughts that kept creeping into his head. Worrying over this and that, what might be and what could happen.
Anger, of course, at himself for letting such thoughts take root to begin with. At fretting at all over something that shouldn't even be a possibility.
He was tired, on top of it all. Not just in a physical sense, or in the ready to have a nice lie down and nap for a few days way. It was a deeper tiredness, the kind that only came when you were at the eend of your rope. He wasn't tired in mind or body, so much as spirit. It was going to be a long, hard voyage...
* * *
"Blasted thing....never works when ye need it..."
In one hand, Crow had finally drawn his bloodied saber, having used it to hack apart and carve himself the hard way through vegetation and just about anything else in his path, his mood having deterioriated to such an extent that he was dead-set on a straight course being the best.
In his other hand there was a compas, held up close to his face, trying to see the needle. Thankfully, he could see it well enough, making it easy enough to follow whereve it might spin to point. Unfortunately, it was doing a whole lot of spinning and not a whole lot of pointing.
It had been staunchly doing an impression of a top, spinning about like a blur no matter how much Crow had cursed at it, closed and reopened it and made as if to hurl it off into the swamp. His focus on the compass would soon come back to take its revenge on him, as he found out when his boot was caught on something or other in the muck and he went pitching forward to land with a heavy splash in the cold, muddy waters.
He didn't rise immediately. Rather, he just layed there for a long while, half-floating, half sinking into the muck, until his lungs were ready to give up the fight and he was forced to come up for air.
And when he did, he was met with a scene most disturbing. Most disturbing of all, perhaps, was what he could hear. It was distinctly his own voice, raised in song, but it was a tune that sent a chill down his spine as he beheld the grisly scene before him.
Quote:"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the devil had done for the rest...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike,
The bosun brained with a marlinspike,
And cookey's throat was marked belike,
It had been gripped by fingers ten;
And there they lay, all good dead men
Like break o'day in a boozing ken.
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."
It was the very same camp they had all just set out from, with one very major difference: it was full of the sight and stink of death, and wrapped in banks of dense, swirling fog. And the echo of that damnable sone, that Crow himself had only ever sung once before in his life. On his long, lonely trip out of the Heart of Doubt. On a ghost ship full of corpses and only grim tales of failure and death to relay. not the joyous, rowdy stories and overblown tales of adventure he had planned to bring back.
He sincerely hoped he was hallucinating, or that he was losing his mind. He had never hoped for anything more in all his days. Because what he was seeing now was too terrible for words. He'd sooner take a bullet from his own pistol in the head before he'd willingly do something like....like this.
Quote:"Fifteen men of the whole ship's list...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and be damned and the rest gone whist!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore,
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore,
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay, and the soggy skies,
Dripped down in up-staring eyes,
In murk sunset and foul sunrise,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."
One closed fist, still clutching his saber, smacked into the murky swamp water in a futile display of anger. "SHUT YER DAMN TRAP! I DIDN'T DO THIS! I WOULDN'T DO THIS!" He kept his eyes tightly shut, trying to drown out the image burned into his mind with his own anger if need be; drowing out that damnable song with his own grinding teeth.
Quote:"Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the murder mark!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!
Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head.
And the scuppers' glut with a rotting red,
And there they lay, aye, damn my eyes.
Looking up at paradise,
All souls bound just contrariwise,
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum."
He'd done it once before...sailed into hell with a full crew, sailed back out with only his own hide, barely held together with all the bleeding wounds he'd sustained. One hand barely holding onto his sword, stained with fresh blood that had never let itself be cleaned. The other barely having the strength to maintain a steady heading. And not a shred of shadow to be found under Crow's feet though the sun blazed high in the sky overhead.
And here it was looking to be the same story all over again....a different crew, on a different quest, and he wasn't exactly the captain this time around...but it didn't seem to matter. Much as he might like to ignore it, he could tell. That was definitely his saber pinning the poor girl to the ground...definitely one of his own knives he was so proud of his aim with stuck in mister Templar's eye...
It had been self-defense in the Heart of Doubt, but this time it looked like the exact opposite.
Quote:"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest...
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
Drink and the devil had done for the rest..."
The faint echo of the sound trailed off into nothing as Crow finally gave up on the struggle. His deathgrip on his sword slackened, and the perpetually-stained blade fell from his fingers, splashing down in the water at his side. Both hands came to his face, one still clutching that damnable, useless compass, and covered his eyes, trying to preserve some measure of dignity, or just not wanting to see anything through blurred lenses...
And he wept.
He screeched and howled into the empty swamp, strength and determination abandoning him. Some dim part of his mind knew it was only an illusion meant to mess with him. That it couldn't be his sword he could see, once again stained red with the blood of a friend, since he held the blasted thing in his hand. It couldn't be real, any of it; they'd all left from camp alive, if not necessarily well, and hadn't been back for this grisly scene to play out. Plus, each and every one in the group would have been enough of a match on their own. If he'd snapped and truly had out and out slaughter on the mind, he might have had the chance to take down one...maybe two....but he wouldn't have won. He couldn't have. Which left only the sickening thought of murdering them in their sleep....that would have been much easier, perhaps...but even that wasn't guaranteed. And at least some of them had put up a fight.
He knew all of that, in the back of his mind. He knew it.
But it just didn't register. He just coulnd't piece it together. He was tired, and ready to quit, and this swamp was just too much for an old pirate out of his element.
Why had he even come on this damn trip?!
Grab the biggest story out there in this 'Omniverse' place...ask the big man a few questions, jot down the particulars of the adventure, and send it all into memory as his last and biggest quest, then find some nice quiet place to eat a bullet and go out into memory. That was the idea he'd kept telling himself from the beginning, refusing to acknowledge he was looking for one last try at an adventure that might mean something, hoping against all hope that there might be other people with the same goal in mind. Something to reinvigorate him and let him retire with a clear mind, having put his all into one last voyage alongside a crew with the proper spirit and mindset rather than just....fading away.
It was a nice thought...
His pitiful wailing and howling eventually ran itself dry, and Crow was left slumped forward on his knees in the water, eyes closed, looking as if he were either asleep....or dead. "One last run, eh..." His eyes cracked open, squinting in the dim light, and he was relieved to only see the expanse of chilly fog, dense as ever, swirling about him, the grisly scene from before having vanished. "....think I've got that in me yet..."
Looking down at the compass in his hand, he was startled to see it had resolved on a much clearler course -- still quivering slightly, unsure about where it might have been pointing to, exactly -- but holding mostly steady.
It was only a pale shadow of his usual cheerful, rowdy demeanor, but a grin cracked across Crow's muddy, tear-stained face as his cold-numbed fingers took hold of his saber again. "Can't let those scallywags think I've gone and given up, now...." It took him a great deal of effort, his entire body feeling sluggish and cold, and the muddy earth refusing to let go of his legs without a fight, but Crow finally managed to regain his feet.
And off he went, with as much conviction and renewed determination as his wearied bones could hold.
Quote:Crow has used his compass.
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Ruby Rose - 08-30-2015
I looked Alice in the eyes, silver to red. She was... Crying? What happened to her? That was when it hit me; she was worried shitless about my state of mind. I threw her a comforting smile, tilting my head slightly.
"It's alright. I'm not going mad." I reassured her, before standing up, the vampire's chilled hands leaving my cheeks.
"I beg to differ." She teased cheekily as I extended a hand of my own back down to her, and she gladly accepted it, allowing me to pull her to her feet. We waded through more sludge, the murky substance only reaching around my thighs, while Alice had to lift her skirt almost all the way to not get it dirty. Thankfully, I'm a lanky giant.
The muck became thicker, and rose higher, high enough that I actually had to carry Alice again. This time, though, I was able to give her a ride on my shoulders, seeing as she could keep her balance at that stage. I could hear her scream every time I tripped in the murk (I may or may not have done so twice on purpose), and hear her giggle after the shock. She was a strange girl, and mysterious through and through... But something still didn't feel right about her... I still had to figu-
"OH, SHIT!" I swore as I fell ass over heels, face-first into the swamp that was made of god-knows-what. I managed to claw my way up, and found solace on a rise in the earth, somewhere we could get a brief moment of R and R...
But 'we' did not exist at that moment. I gazed around, my heart pounding. Where's Alice go?! That was when my ears were met with a screaming from the bog, and my eyes met by a flailing arm. I skittered across the dank earth and reached out for Alice, all the while she kept screaming, "Grave! Help me!"
I finally managed to snatch the pearly-white hand and pulled with all my might, the slender vampire slipping out of the swamp, the latter slurping at her heels. I fell backwards, and Alice lay on top of me. Our eyes met for a moment, closer than ever, before she rolled off of me. Although, that was right when it started again.
Quote:J̰̿͝O̩̼S̗͍͈̹̻̙͒̎ͮͯ́É̸̘̊̽͑̔ͫͤ̈!̭̭̲̜̍ͩ̿̋͂̇̎ ̨̩ͣͤ̆H̢͕͖͙̲̮̄ͥ̇̃̒EͧL̆̊P̧̗̟͎͙̣ͨ̑͆ͪͮͅ ̢͖͖̺̜͗̇̄ͤ̓M̻͍͖̥ͫ̉͂̐̈Ė͓̗͔̭͎̩͓̆̉͟!̮̳͚̟̦͊ͅ
̝͕̲͚̹̦ͥ
D̤̈̓ȫ̵̪̮̳͂͛̎ͩn̨̍̇̽ͬ͆'͋́̊͡t̝͕̩͕̊͜ ͒ͯ͌́͑̃͌ǵ̦͈̭̱̏̔i͌͐̆̽̏͏̭̲v̸̳̗̏̉é̠̯͙̗̹ͭ̄ ̮̥̗̥͔͕̅̑̅̏ͭͨu̶̱̞͉̘̞̜̲̇ͭ̉p̙̟̲ͩ̊̈́̈́͝ ̤̠̻̥͚̣o̠͚̝̦͚͇̲̎n̝͖̘͖̫̫̉̃ͅ ͭ҉͕̰̦͎̪mͧ̂̀̽ͯ̈͏̞̮̯ẹ̦̖̋̾̔̐̚͞,̶̳͑̋̅͋̃͛͛ ̸̙̤̳̦̺ͧͭ͊̆̀ͤ̌ͅA̤͎̮͔͈̥̳ͪ̇ͥ͌ͫ͡l̤̜̟̞̘̈͛ͪ͐ͫ͑i̖̠͈̖̭̫̔ͬͪ̓͞c̡̞͇̺̟̻̲̮͛̏̈͋̒͑ͣe̤̙!̭̪͂ͬ̓
I looked up took in a sharp, raspy breath, before exhaling slowly. My hands were shaking, my teeth were chattering, what the fuck was happening?
"Grave... What's happening to you?" Alice asked, her voice shaking like a skyscraper suffering an earthquake. My eyes delved into hers, emotionless. I couldn't think of anything to say; it was like my mouth had been numbed by a thousand needles. I couldn't speak, couldn't make a noise... I was helpless. This is what the swamp of sadness does to one's mind. I could only imagine what the others were seeing.
Then they came. The beating of giant wings, scaly and feathery alike, arrived overhead, and my vision flew up to a terrible sight; a dozen demons, coupled with a dozen angels, all blackened and decaying, dripping black, viscous liquid. They were the demons and angels I had mercilessly murdered in my own world. I knew it.
I stood up and flung out my weapons, opening fire. They ducked and weaved past my shots, each and every one. They knew my patterns too well, there was no chance I could outsmart them.
Actually, I hadn't paid any mind to the smoke bombs around my torso, crafted from the ashes of slain vampires. I went to yank one free, but before I could the sash itself was yanked free by a pair of clawed feet. I took aim at the demon thief, but my attention was stolen by a blast of light, searing a chunk of flesh out of the right side of my neck. I spun around, took aim again, and fired. The beam of burning hellfire finally hit its target, and the decaying angel came crashing to earth, creating a giant crater in the island I had been standing on.
"Alice! Help me out here, damnit!" I cursed, my guns a blur of red, black, white and gold, creating a mini-fireworks display. I heard no reply from Alice. "Alice, com-"
"I can't! I don't know what you're fussing over! I can't help you if I don't what you're shooting at!" She cried, and I felt my body go rigid for the third time, as my mind froze, receiving another message.
Quote:A̛̳̦̘̅ͧͨL̖̈́̿͡I̲̱̜̰̙ͫ̎ͯ͝C̨͌E͚̟͎͈̝ͭ̃͂͆̕!̣͇ͣͯ̓̀ͮ̈́ ̥̬H̻̙̽͛̋̈́̂Ė̸̦̥ͫͦ̈͌͒ͦL̨͙ͮ͆P̳͕̥͚ͨ͑͐͗ͧ͞ ̞̖͎̮̯̣̋͛͂̅̅̃͝M͉̪̦̘̰̉̿̃E̹̗͕̤͎͉͛̌͑͋͡,̞͖͈͉̟͚̰ ̭̮̩͗̎̑Ẇ̵̜Ǐ̛̲̼͉̳̽̃́̎̈́̉ͅL̖̲̭̟̭͐̿L̛̜̘̻̎̑͋̋ͫ ̡̠̲̙̳̆Y̠̩̰̮ͭŌ̦̯̎̎̆͐̂̀̚Ű̯͡?̲̮̹̮͇͐̀!̦̤͓̜͇̔́̒̇ͩͫ̕
J̼̦͈͖̿ͅo̖̞͈̳͇̰ͤ̇̎ͅs̨̥̔ͪ̒ͪ̏̃͆é̞̭̜̦̝̃ͨ͌,̫͔͓͙͓͈ͬͤ̈̎ͩ̊͡ ̧̞͔̹̑ͤ̊I̭̫̲͋̓̈ͬͬ̾͠ ̱̝̱̮̭̯c̟͌̒a͚̥̪̫͎ͫ́̋ͅn͕̋̎͌̒̓'̣̟̗͍͘ṱ̯͓̣̄̓̈́ͬ̚!̄ͯͪ́ͫ̿̉ ̡͕ͥI̋͑̈̃̚ ̰͉̠̮̘̩̾͂ͫc̩̰ͦ̇̎a̢ͭn̨̬̱̭̼ͯͯͫ͂ͦ̈́'͔̳̼͕̥̼͍͂̄̉ͨ̓ͣt͍͖̙̙̣̯͋́ͭ̕ ̮̘͂̓ͥ̏ͨ̈́͝d̖̯̘͊̾̇ͮ̂̀̿͡ȏ̮̂̍ͩ͌̏ ̩͓͕̜̯͛͟a͆̋̿ͦ͏̫̫̗͖̝̝̦n̻̺͚̪͔͐͑̽͝y͉̳̬̳̼̐ṯ̌ͭͪ̎̃ͩͅẖ͔̙̉̊̀͊̄͐ǐ͕̹̤n͔̯̻̱̖͉̺̆́́̿̾͆̃̕g̮̙͗̎̄̆͐ ̳͇͚̗̫͐a̦̫̤͓̟̒ň̸̖͕y͚̞̙̲̽ͣ ̠̖̓͆ͧͨm̟̈́͌̈̓̄ő̫͓͔͈̙r͎̹̭̤̪̬̱͋͡e͉̘̦̖͎͉͔͑̿̔͝!̨̠̗̫̩̠̥̀̂́̒
* * *
Grave's gun lowered to Alice's face level, and her whole body trembled, but it wouldn't move. No, it wasn't that it wouldn't move; Alice knew that she should face the man. Flames began to boil within the barrel of the demonic weapon Grave was toting.
"Grave, it's me, Alice!" She tried to reason with the nephilim, but his dulled eyes told her that wasn't going to happen, but she tried anyway. "Come on, Grave listen to me! I'm right here!" She kept screaming at the top of her lungs. The flames began to condense, and Grave's face became a solid picture of grim anger.
"JOSÉ!" She shrieked, and the trigger was pulled, a gunshot resounding through the foggy forest as a bolt of hellfire screamed towards the vampire. She closed her eyes, and prepared for the blazing impact...
Quote:MASSIVE SPOILER; FOR JUDGES: [spoiler]Alice is not dead![/spoiler]
Phase 5, Post II - Know Thyself/ Close to Ending - Gildarts - 08-30-2015
Quote:Ghosts of the Past
Lit blue eyes sparked open as she broke from her dream.
Christa had fallen asleep, in the hell-worthy Swamp of Sadness –a place that could kill her– but the most tantalizing part of it all, was that she had awoken waist-deep in murderous liquid muck. The miasmic atmosphere was imbued the the taste of dread and emphasized that within the sluggish swamp, any struggle was in vain.
Yet, even with her frenzied disgust, the lethargic goop only tided higher as Chrisra was helplessly suctioned lower. Rolling with speeds of black quicksand, a toxic hourglass, whatever semblance the murky waters could be, they certainly threatened to consume her entire being.
Her eyelashes fluttered faster now, against whatever force chose to swallow her as the thick depths grew only heavier with her own, suddenly aware, consciousness. Every time she thought 'I must get out' the goo's level rose on her body; sinking without any control, she noticed the brambles and deadened trees were getting taller.
The deathly black mud coated her porcelain skin, both her arms and hands were sopping wet as she splashed and thrashed to reduce the oncoming tide. All to no avail. Time drained in the sinkhole of her thoughts, while her now-weary eyes teared with fearful desperation.
The taste of sorrow now choked in her mouth. It grew past her ears until the line of water engulfed her nose and she was forced to inhale the earthy sludge that clogged her airways. Another breath of thick pollution gusted down her throat and delivered the drecky slime with a perturbed gulp, into her unwilling stomach before her eyes slammed to a hard close.
No.. her consciousness fought pathetically. It wasn't supposed to be this way... I was supposed to... I have to see her again.
Another "breath" was stolen with an urge she couldn't hold back anymore. This time, her lungs had sucked in an extra serving of sloppy sorrow. Christa convulsed below the tepid water, but felt no ice delivered to her by the reaper of death.
Numb. Dead. That couldn't be right, for there was still seizing fear beating with Christa's ever-skittering heartbeat.
Her lips had opened out of inherent instinct, thirsting for a single trickle of air, though she has forbidden it. This was worse than suffocation, the swamp was strangling her from the inside out. Truly the epitome of sorrow and sadness alike.
Somber trees, faltering memories, flat smiles all flashed beneath her eyelids. Everything she fought to forget.
So this was what it was like to die. To never live or love again. To have every memory stolen from her far-away body. Christa shook off the relief and battled against the drenched weight of her failing body all while straining for the surface of it all.
More distance between her memories grew, more hope was lost for the nonexistent future. Meanwhile, through it all. Through every day, in every memory, within every face or glimmering smile, Christa saw her sister.
Katia's favorite color was pink. Like the soft apples that weighed on the dipping branches of a once-blossomed tree. Home. Christa caught a glimpse, yet soon the cozy warmth was forgotten with the rest.
Her sister's favorite hobby was drawing. The expansive scape of the daunting mountain she had climbed. Everest. Christa's ultimate achievement. It hung there, as a triumph without a canvas before fragmenting into crayon lines and erasing with the spin of existence's cruel eraser.
There was more –so much more– and then, so much less, as the disintegrating world grew more integrated in the things that make her remember the faltering pain it was to love. Her purpose was wiped away, as her reason and memories became one thing: Forgotten.
And now, the swamp asked her to be hollow. It emptied every freshly numbed emotion and drained away her joy. Slowly the darkness grew, and within her, it haunted without the taste of fear coiling in her gut. The last of her memories faded. She had fallen, and there was nothing left to sacrifice.
All was lost.
...
But then, there was light.
An unsung promise of hope called Christa back from the depths of the grave and resurrected her to the world of the living. On a whim, with the last of her energy, Christa reached for the direction she knew the sky to be and clawed at the now broken surface of the murky pool. The airlessness of her caved-in lungs, crumbled to bits and withered like raisins, began to suck in a heaving, agonized breath. Of air.
At first what the female thought was daylight, soon turned out to be her own skin. It glowed gold and she now nearly floated over the surface of all the slop that threatened to drown her. Most of the mud coating her skin now had dribbled away at the touch of the shimmering light, and spattered back into the dark pools that hadn't been able to claim her life.
The immediate pain of her surging memories was immense. It sweltered down her sides like she had been prodded with hot iron but the same liquified fortune now cooled her lamenting nerve-endings and released her, filling her hollow, soggy soul with the faith to fight, the strength to survive, and the hope to live on.
[spoiler]
Quote:Used Item: Goddess's Fortune[/spoiler]
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Guu - 08-30-2015
Raw Onion trotted forward precariously into the few dry spots in the swamp. She feared what the water had in store for her. She would take to the skies, in fact, her wings were itching to go. However, every single thought of doing so was shoved to the back of her mind as something was keeping her hooves on the ground.
The dry spots were getting narrower and narrower. Eventually, she was forced to jump from spot to spot. They got so small, she could barely stand on them with a single hoof, no less four.
Recognizing her defeat, she looked down into the water. It was murky, but she couldn’t see any sign of life beneath the waves. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she drudged a single hoof into the liquid, her extremity disappearing into it. She drudged another, moving her body forward into the muck. Each step inward submerged more and more of her body, until the water was up to the bottom of her cutie mark.
She would continue to move forward, slowly moving inch by inch. The horrible smell of the water permeated her nose. Even with her years of training, it took every ounce of her focus not to vomit as every breath brought in another lung full of the putrid indescribable odor.
Further and further, praying that she’ll eventually get to the end. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, she just kept her mind focused, almost like meditation, just continuing to remind herself that the edge was just another step forward, that she would clear this thing in a zap.
But all the force on her body eventually took its toll. Eventually, she had to stop to rest. She stood still, submerged, just to take a breath and let her muscles recover. They sore like a bitch. She winced as the blood flooded back into her limbs, bringing in a wave of new pains to add to the ones she was already experiencing.
She tried not to think. She didn’t know why, but her mind was trying to block out all thought. This may have been a defensive measure, as any good soldier knows that giving up often means death and negative thought in this place would certainly lead her down that route.
At first, she thought her mind was playing tricks on her, a figure was in the air above her. She could hear the flapping of wings that suspended the being in the space above. Her eyes came to focus. A Pegasus with golden fur was hovering above her. Her forest-green mane was curled like curtain, her tail tied up in a bun. She was directing her cold black, serious eyes down on the mare through a pair of rectangle spectacles.
“M-mom!” She said, her voice cutting in surprise and terror.
She did not respond. For the longest time, she just glared down on her.
-----
[spoiler]Years ago, a young Raw Onion was inside a house made of clouds. The young little filly was gleefully putting books, pencils, and papers into her saddlebag. She was extra happy today. As she put the last item in the bag, she looked over to her flank. A brand spanking new Onion cutie mark adorned it. A smile a mile wide, she trotted down the fluffly cloud stairs, full intent to leave for what would have been another day of school. However, her mother suddenly stood in the way. In one hoof, she was holding up a pink dress with frills and laces.
“I think you deserve to be pretty today honey. I think you should wear this!”
Little raw took one glance and then gave her mom a suspicious look
“Why do you want me to wear that?” She asked, skeptically.
“A mother can’t want her daughter to be beautiful?”
“You just want me to wear clothing that’ll cover up my cutie mark, don’t you?” The little on said, eyeing down her mother.
“It’s for your own good, Raw.”
“Forget it!” She said, storming passed her and out the door.
She made her way to the school building, again made of clouds. Heading down the hallways, she could see all the military recruitment posters hung up on the walls. Sayings like “Earn your wings!” and “Pegasopolis Wants You!” The posters were more prevalent than the ones about education or self-esteem. She hardly noticed them anymore.
Eventually, she got to the classroom, stocked with cloud chairs, desks, and chalkboard. Most of the class were already in their seats. As she walked across the class, she proudly stuck her head in the air as her cutie mark featured prominently. Eventually, the rest of class slowly peered over, resting their eyes on her no-longer-featureless flank; most just kind of glared at it, expressionless, only taking note of it. As more ponies noticed it, the more the air of silence spread amongst the class. By the time she got in her seat, you could hear a pin fall it was so quiet.
The class was silent, until the teacher came in. She wore her hair up tightly knotted. She already had her “learning stick” out, held aloft from her wing.
“Good morning class.”
“Good morning Mrs. Rain Digger”
She eyed the entire class. The unusual silence meant only one thing: another student had got his or her cutie mark and they were awaiting her approval.
She continued to look over the class before she finally found little Raw Onion. She stepped in closer and inspected her mark closely. As she pulled away, she gave her what felt like the most disapproving look. Onion’s heart sank into her horseshoes.
“Your cutie mark is an onion.” She said plainly. “What does it mean?”
A frog was in her throat, her stomach was filled with butterflies. She couldn’t say her passion was cooking now. Not with that face looking down on her.
“Well? I asked you a question.”
She quickly thought up an answer, spouting out the first thing that made sense.
“It-it represents how much I’ll make my enemies cry!”
“What?”
“You know, onions make ponies cry, that’s what I do to my enemies.”
There was a long pause in the classroom. Eventually, the teacher averted her gaze.
“Very good.”
Many of the students around her patted her on the shoulder and congratulated her on an awesome cutie mark. Years later, that lie would turn into a career as a killer.[/spoiler]
-----
“You were right mom. They did judge me. They wouldn’t see me as equal as a chef.” She said solemnly, tears soaking her face. “I would have been damned in my dream job, I am damned in my military job. I’m a monster no matter what I do.”
Took her a moment to realize, but body was now further down into the swamp, crawling it’s way to her neck. Her feet were glued into the floor. She was trapped and sinking. Not that she cared anymore.
A drenched wing pulled itself out of the muck and grabbed her cell phone. It was waterproof so it was still functional. She took a picture of herself, her body stuck in the muck, and she attached it to an e-mail that read: “I’m sorry mom. You were right.” She sent it off. It was the least she could do, she felt like such a failure.
“I’m sorry.” She said, she wanted it to be her last words.
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Jak Mar - 08-30-2015
"Honor those who have fallen"
This memory in particular haunted me like a shark hunting its prey. Perhaps this thought would kill me if I kept thinking this way.
Our group’s valiant attempt to fight through obstacles was a success. Sad, but a few deaths in the process only made us stronger . Such is battle.
If you are human, then you are like me. A soldier who has to constantly face death and tell him off to live another day.
I am constantly reminded of this day as I bend down beside two makeshift graves I had made for those who had fallen in active duty. It was then I questioned my own life… I was a secondary.. one puppet made to be in the shadow of a Prime in this world. I placed a hand on the gravesites and thought to myself “Would anyone do the same if I died?[/i]”
As I got off my knees that night, my breathing was soft and my attitude was mournful. Nobody deserved a fate such as this.
This memory in particular haunted me like a shark hunting its prey. Perhaps this thought would kill me if i kept thinking this way.
[spoiler]Flashback 1[/spoiler]
Since I had been here, I’d had been a little too cautious. My body language showed defensive behavior. I tried explaining to the group that not all that it seems was right under our noses. Many relished the time that they had in peace. Me? I was a young ISA war dog, trained to survive. My eyes were forcing themselves to close from last night’s long journey. A tired soldier was a dead one on the battlefield.
But yet again, I was human. I needed rest. I fell asleep on a tree trunk that night with one eye open.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
All it took was the snap of a tree branch breaking over my head to awake me. I hopped up to feel a tree branch roll off my head into my hand. Whatever the hell I had been eating the night before, had gotten to me.
My short trip was to see IRIS that night. The robot and I had been getting more closely acquainted lately.
[spoiler]Flashback 1- Jan, IRIS[/spoiler]
IRIS greeted me with a light chuckle. She was beaming to see me even though she had a bad day herself. She could lift the hardest of hearts with her light- hearted jokes and I found myself needing that humor. For once, I think I might have broken out of my own shell like a newborn bird poking his head out of an egg.
Moving my hands to fix parts of her, was like an undone puzzle who was almost done. I heard clicks and whirs and I knew I had put her back together again as she came back to life with a happy laugh. So I thought anyway.
After I did that much for her, she took the time to personally listen to my life story and even asked me questions. We learned so much about each other that we could throw sarcastic jokes at each other and have time to laugh it off.
I started to think that maybe this place wasn't so bad after all.
Images of Klaud filled my mind and brought back happy memories. I couldn't help but smile at the mere mention of her name.
[spoiler]Flashback 2- Jan,Klaud[/spoiler]
Today was a rainy day. It didn't mean that rain would damper my spirits. Personally, being outside my comfort zone was something I enjoyed but it was better here then a typical dusty, dry day on Vekta.
I gathered the right supplies to construct a makeshift tent. I found some loose branches, rocks, and a heavy tarp suitable for building it. I pieced it together and shaved the branches into 2 stakes to help the tent to stay up. I stuck the large branch up and the tent would do for now.
Positioned just right, I took the short walk to visit a old friend, one I had been getting even closer to lately. I noticed General Klaud's structure was needing some help being built, and I knew what to do. "General Klaud, your structure looks too unsteady for somebody to stay in for the night. "
Klaud grumbled something at me, telling that she could do it on her own. So much for a quick talk. I tried again this time, slightly more calm in my voice "Klaud, I'm saying you don't have to drop your pride, but at least see the benefit in letting me help you build your structure.
We made a mutual agreement that I needed to stop calling her general. It didn't feel right but whatever made her feel comfortable.
Once both our shelters was done, I stood back with Klaud to admire our handiwork. There was something about Klaud that i saw in her that I didn't see in Luger. She was calm, Luger was serious. The one thing that stood in between the two of us was Luger . She wasn't here. I lifted a drink to my lips and handed it off to Klaud as we enjoyed the night. A fire was started from the wood I picked up earlier and we were able to cook the of fish Klaud caught us.
After enjoying the drink, I told her the story and where I had come from. "I came from a planet named Vekta. Born in 2329, I vaguely remember memories of my mother before she passed away. My father was a ISA soldier though. He raised me until he died in the 1st Extrasolar war. My father's friend,General Bradley felt like he owed my father a favor and he raised me to become someone like my father and him.
b]"My men were loyal, they fought a lot over the stupidest things, but Damn they were loyal to me.
Now I'll never get to see them again!"[/b]
My body language showed Klaud that I was tense and hurting on the inside. My eyes, they gave me away. I felt alone and scared for the first time in my life. That was another reason why I wanted someone by my side. But Klaud didn't wait, she saw the pain in my eyes. She placed a finger on my lip and the two of us kissed under the moonlight. Then a memory of Luger flashed through my mind. I pushed away from Klaud, confusion in her eyes. I had ran away to figure out my tangled mess of feelings that the kiss had caused
I gritted my teeth and tried to calm down, Before I knew it, I had punched the ground "DAMN!" Luger had come up again and hurt flashed through my mind. I had realized my team would be disappointed in me. Luger would of punched me in the face right there and then. So would Rico. The spy on our team would be more concerned with the mission at hand.
During each day that passed, the two of us had spent more time together. We made sure to tactfully avoid the subject of Klaud and my one-time affair around our allies'.
[spoiler]Flashback 3- Jan, Klaud, IRIS[/spoiler]
IRIS and I went on a hunting trip that day.We were hunting rabbits and returned with a wholesome meal. As IRIS and I returned to camp, Klaud was talking about a possible ally to our cause. I looked in her direction "Who are we talking about here, Klaud?" She mentioned Grave.
I turned and my head raised up, "Grave? He worked with us when we were in the temple and fighting the zombies. He dragged us down. I know he is on our side.
Something slipped from my mouth and I blurted out "Klaud, have you ever thought about... being together sometime? I was thinking about that kiss and... well.. I have something for you. Jan handed a brief dog tag containing his ISA numbers.
Klaud looked at me like she was someone different then when I met her. She was acting very strange; She was hiding something.
Klaud... You can tell me. I promise. I will listen and not judge.
I gave her time to think about it. I decided to go talk to the friendly neighborhood pirate, Crow.
Flashback 4- Jan, Crow
"I haven't had the chance to visit you in a while, Crow. How are things?
Crow said " Ahoy, me ole matey. Thin's 'ave been rough."
Jan looked at Crow and nodded "That's why i wanted to talk to you. You always seem to lighten the place up when people are around. Care to share the whiskey?"
He eyed me for a second and handed over the whiskey "Wha's got ye down, Jan?" I quietly described old problems to Crow while drinking a bit. After taking a few swigs of whiskey, both of us were having a good time . I knew I would have a good night.
[spoiler]Flashback 5- Klaud part 2[/spoiler]
This was the last day before we would leave for the swamp of sadness. I promised I'd visit her one more time before we left. Things were quickly growing closer between us. Luckily only IRIS knew. A gentle wind had picked up as I slowly walked over to Klaud.
I had been two steps ahead and had already packed my supplies before I left to see her. After all, what good is an unprepared soldier?
It was if Omni was looking down on us tonight. Klaud was talking about a secret meeting that night. I promised I'd meet her there. I was there to watch our group of allies debate over if Clayton was an ally or a menace. I voiced my opinion as well about if he would attack us again or not. I just couldn't be too careful. Klaud and I decided to watch each others back.
[spoiler]Flashback 6- Jan, Abner[/spoiler]
There was one more piece of business I needed to attend to. I had visited Abner for a short time to talk about guard duty I talked about problems our camp could potentially face and how we can attempt to get ahead of the game. Abner threw in what he knew about guard duty. We both mentioned our positions and how they related to guard duty at the time.
I stared up in the sky and blinked. Vekta was up there somewhere in another universe but I would make it to Omni this time. For everyone, my friends and the others.
-
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Zack Fair - 08-30-2015
It was almost familiar. A sick, twisted homecoming.
With all the time Abner had spent in the Nexus, this godforsaken swamp was just a bit too typical for him. Instead of an endless white expanse, however, it was muddy water that came halfway up his shins. The endless part was still accurate, though. He had been trudging through this water for so long he'd lost track of time.
He'd taken deep breaths and cleared his head as best he could every few steps. The stories of this swamp were not to be taken lightly. This was the place where hope died. He wasn't entirely sure he believed it, despite the fact that he was beginning to feel that creeping feeling. It could just as easily be stories and rumors, and what better way was there to dwell on your past than to try and not think of it?
Then again, he could feel that there was just something more to this place. A dark energy surrounded it. Abner wasn't very superstitious, in fact he was a pretty firm skeptic, but there was just no arguing about the strange aura that covered this swamp.
Yet he pressed on. His steps were slowing, though, and he felt like he had less and less energy. He'd lost track of which way was which. All of his landmarks were gone, replaced by this plain nothingness. Normally it would have been funny to him, that all of his survival and navigational skills meant nothing here in this place, but he couldn't bring himself to laugh.
Abner slowed to a stop, letting his hands drop to his sides as he closed his eyes. Damn it, he knew what was happening. The swamp was doing this to him, and yet it didn't matter. Thoughts of his past filled his head. He almost felt reflective, yet at the same time depressed.
He'd become a stormtrooper because he wandered to Coruscant, and "war" was the only real skill he had. He'd gone to Coruscant because he wasn't going anywhere without some modern conveniences. If he had to be trapped in this ridiculous excuse for an existence, he was at least going to be comfortable. However, months ago Christa had put one simple thought in his mind. What was the price?
He suddenly opened his eyes, looking at the seemingly endless swamp ahead of him. But for some reason, the thing that scared him the most was the thought of what was behind him. He sensed that he wasn't alone. Whether it was real or not was irrelevant.
"Abner..." a voice whispered, seeming to come from no where and simply hanging in the air.
Slowly Abner turned around. There before him were what appeared to be hundreds of people, all standing side by side, row by row. Each of them had a different grievous wound somewhere on their person. Most of them were gunshots in various numbers, but others had severe cuts and gashes, while some were outright missing limbs. None of the wounds bled even a little, though, despite the fact that none of these people should have been standing.
He understood why. He recognized each and every person there, even those with wounds too severe to make them identifiable. He was a witness to every one of their deaths. The reasons each of these people had died were vast and varying, with one single thing in common. They had, in some way, stood against the Empire.
A woman slowly stepped out of the front row, moving effortlessly through the swampy muck. Her dress was torn at her stomach and just above her heart, and the bullet holes in her skin could be seen. To Abner, she stood out from the others because her face was burned so sharply into his memory. She had been killed in front of his eyes on one of his first days as an Imperial. Her crime was so insignificant that he'd barely batted an eyelash at it. But it was Tier One, and she had shown the slightest bit of resistance. The moment had been a crossroads in his own life. He'd seen the people he now worked for, and had considered deserting in the middle of the night. At that fateful moment, he'd chosen to stay and become a part of a system.
The mere sight of her and all the others was overwhelming. Abner collapsed, dropping to a knee and catching himself by putting his right hand against the ground. He was nearly submerged in the swamp, but he barely noticed. He was more focused on her.
"How...?" Abner spat out between breaths. Not once did he imagine that he would be challenged in such a real way. "What is this place?"
"What did we die for?" the woman simply asked in response.
Abner closed his eyes again. That was the question of his life. All of these people, right before him, were the ones that had paid the price. Their bodies were the foundation of the life he knew. The only problem was that the "price" they'd paid didn't even need to be that. There were better ways, and yet he hadn't done anything to help them. He'd taken each paycheck as they came and showed back up to work the next day. He'd blocked out and repressed the horrible memories, but that didn't make them truly go away.
So this was it. Crushed by the weight of his own shortcomings, this swamp would be the end for Abner. None of his skills would help him out here. All of his connections were useless, because they weren't here. Those that were here would give him as much help as he'd given them. None.
Deep down, though, there was another feeling. Past the sadness, past the depression, something even more powerful burned. He hadn't felt it in so long that he almost didn't recognize it, but it was there, just barely. He knew he had to grab it if he wanted to ever stand back up again.
Drive.
The Empire, that he had served for so long, had sent him to this desolate wasteland on an ill-fated assignment. He'd told every new stormtrooper to take care of themselves out here in this hell of a reality they'd found themselves in, because the Empire wouldn't. Somehow he'd failed to follow his own advice. He'd wandered into the depths against all logic and reasoning, and it was because they'd said so. It wasn't a failure in his mind, though. He'd met some incredible people who he genuinely trusted, and he wouldn't trade the experience. But he would not die here. No one on Coruscant would pat themselves on the back over this.
At it's core the Empire was a rotten, dark, and evil machine. That didn't include everyone in it though, citizens and soldiers alike. Abner knew that, having worked and served alongside so many. It didn't need to be brought down. What it needed was change.
And there it was. That drive and dedication that had once made him such an incredible soldier was back. It took no energy to stand up, now. Just like that he was back on his feet, and he slowly brought his right hand up to his head, tightly gripping the brim of his simple ball cap. He'd worn it the whole time, with the giant Imperial symbol right there on it. Now he took it off his head, his eyes locked with the woman as he turned it upside down and dropped it into the water below. Her expression didn't change, but neither did his. He hadn't answered her question, yet. What had all of these people died for?
"You'll see," Abner told her, neither of them looking down to his discarded Imperial marking. No more needed to be said to understand his new conviction. He'd told himself he'd raise hell when he got back, and dammit that's exactly what was going to happen.
Abner turned around, not waiting for any sort of response from the woman or anyone else. There was nothing further he could do to help them, but there were others he could still help. That would have to be enough for him, as well as them.
Abner pulled a cigarette from his vest and stuck it in his mouth. He fumbled around, looking for a lighter, before digging out the mysterious one he'd come across during that patrol weeks ago. With a shrug he clicked it a few times to light it.
Instead of a simple flame, multiple fireballs appeared before him, forming a trail ahead of him and continuing farther than he could see. He simply shook his head, no longer surprised by the odd occurrences in this swamp. He looked over his shoulder one last time at the people from his past, only to see that they were gone. So instead he looked ahead, before noticing something odd in the fireballs. Within each one he could just barely make out the facial features of each of those people. It was obvious that this was closest he could ever get to having true peace with himself over their deaths, but he'd take it.
He lit his cigarette on the first fireball and trudged onward. He had people to catch up with, a deity to confront, and then work to do.
Quote:Item Used: Mysterious Lighter
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Jak Mar - 08-30-2015
The Swamp of Sadness was a step away.
Jan Templar had Klaud. Things would be great, right?"
Close, yet so far...
As the group crept closer, there were voices surrounding Jan; the friendly and familiar ones of his group mates attempting to wade through the sucking swamp.
Jan traipsed in and muck devoured the boots that he had actually taken the time to polish. The horrid gunk also covered some of his ISA military outfit causing a sick repeated squishing and squashing sound"
Jan kept walking until a strange white fog blinded his attempts at trying to find Klaud. Jan yelled "KLAUD, IRIS?! Anyone?! "
"This was some cleverly established trap, wasn't it?"
The smiley white one's doing to test him...
He called out once again to hear nothing but echoing. Out of a desperate plea to find his men, his friends and form a new future for him and Klaud, his whole being screamed for fighting on.
Jan kept moving through the Swamp of Sadness, as he told himself "Keep moving, the ISA need you back home. Survival is key, survival is key. Our.. child needs a father... So much potential.. in me, I can't let this place take my life.
He was frustrated to the depths of hell but he wouldn't let this crap drag him down. He was dead set on finding his men, his friends and furthermore to form a new, safer future for Klaud and him. Jan pressed on as he mumbled to himself, his voice on the verge of cracking, "Keep going Jan, you're one of the best ISA soliders out there, so many see potential in you. You've done so much more than this, you can survive a stupid forest like this. Remember your military training, solider."
///
Jan found himself kicking mud off his boots. As hours passed, Jan was certain he hit the right spot, only to realise he had arrived at the same spot that he had departed from. He let out a low, agitated grumble. Jan had found somewhere to stop for a momentary breather, and rummaged through some ration kits he had stowed in his pack. He'd need them right away if he valued a full stomach and working head.
After he had taken what he had needed to eat and drink, a chill ran down his spine. Something.... no, somebody was out there... He just couldn't shake that jumble of fear, guilt and anger appearing in the emotions he thought he successfully repressed years ago. The hard-charging soldier kept telling himself that he had to find Omni, repeating the mantra that he would find the god and his friends and, most important of all, Klaud once again.
A voice popped out from the mist, like a mischievous poltergeist. One that was creepy, imitating and eerily disturbing, pierced the air. "Heh, so this is how you end up? The strongest ISA soldier in existence? Left to muck? Or is that a bit below the belt?"
Jan's eyes snapped open once again as he forced his legs into a rhythmic action, and a figure emerged in his vision.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Now, now don't say that, dear Jan. I'm only the strongest soldier out there. The group? They wanted you to die! You're just another soldier to them, a burden they'd rather have buried than follow then around like a lost puppy."
Jan finally saw a mirror image of himself, but instead in a Halghast outfit. Jan gritted his teeth and held his head with a vice-like grip. "NO! I would never betray the Vektan cause!"
The other Jan, in the Halghast suit laughed and a dark tone was elicited from is lips. "Oh? But you did. You supported General Adams before you knew he was going to betray your cause. Oh, I saw who was right in all this. You're nothing but a lost cause to the ISA..Let me show you something. You spent all this time wasting away with these worthless fools you call a group, when you could have found your friends instead. You know the swamp has defeated you. You are nothing but a slave to the ISA, fighting for a cause nobody cares about-"
Jan growled "SHUT UP, YOU DON'T KNOW ONE HELL THING ABOUT ME!"
"Oh? I see a traitor under all those things you call loyalty and trust."
The long-inflicted wound inside Jan bubbled like a geyser; everything he worked so hard for was disappearing in front of his eyes. No, there had to be something more. He had to fight his own demons and face them head on.
His friends were fading in front of his eyes along with Klaud. "No... Klaud! IRIS... Rico... Luger... Gregor... Guys I-"
Before he could finish his sentence, a hand lifted him up from the ground, and a familiar face emerged with a comforting smile, one he hadn't seen in forever. "Get up, Jan.. You are a strong man. You've done more good things in your life than the world could repay you for, and you should be proud of what you have accomplished. Wipe those tears from your face and get going toward Omni. We'll handle this from here. We trust in you and all that you do, that's why you are our leader."
Jan turned to see his friends in front of him in the smoke, everyone he had seen on Vekta.
Rico, Luger, Gregor and some other ISA men had shown up to show their support. But what really hurt him was something else... Something he dreamed he'd never have to face. The sharp click of a whip echoed, and he screamed at his men. "MEN, WATCH OUT". He was helpless, and couldn't do anything more than watch as the woman he loved had taken her whip and slaughtered his friends right in front of his eyes. Luger was the first to go. Sure, she fought back, but Klaud got the upper hand, her whip launching Luger through the bright fog, red liquid trailing from her limp body behind her. Rico was the next to fall. He spat at the fake Klaud trying to kill him, swearing up a storm calling out "HIG, You're as bad as them!" as his gun was helplessly snatched from him and another echoing "WHAP" had Rico reeling in pain from a plethora of bloody trenches in his flesh. "LUGER, RICO!"
Anger filled Jan's heart as he squeezed his fist. Gregor was downed, and Klaud was stomping on him as he tried to fight back. "Give up, Jan.. It's pointless... If your friends couldn't fight me, why do you think [b][i]you could?" [/i][/b]She threw a Jan disturbing smirk and cackled. The once-proud soldier fell to the ground, clutching the men he called his allies. He couldn't help but accept the responsibility for all their deaths, including Luger's.
Jan was at the point of throwing in the towel then; what reason was there to fight on? But the next occurrence stopped his thoughts dead in their tracks. The real Klaud burst from the fog and slammed the fake Klaud into the ground before smiling, helping Jan up. "Pick yourself up, Jan. These are only illusions; they aren't real. You can make it for me and everyone around you... Please... our unborn child needs a father."
Jan finally smiled and his courage flared up enough to finally kiss Klaud for real.
There was Jan holding Klaud and dragging her through the mud, they saw a way through. It was tough but they've made it. Right?
One more test...
Jan faced the traitor, General Adams. "Ah, Jan... Is this your new girlfriend?"
Jan frowned "Leave her out of this, Adams!"
The general had lost his mind this time "Of course, you were always a horrible liar, Jan."
Jan lifted his gun "You're a fake, a illusion to scare me."
General Adams laughed "Am I?" Vasari would be so disappointed to hear that.
Jan had enough and shot the fog, General Adams and Vasari had showed up. Keep trying, Jan...
Klaud squeezed Jan's hand "Let me handle them"
A loud clash of a whip slapped against General Adam's gun and Vasari's body.
There was a new dawning of a day. The fog had lifted and Jan found new purpose. "Klaud...I love you.."
[spoiler]Extras for Judges-
Higs- Helghast Slang[/spoiler]
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Deadpool - 08-30-2015
[spoiler]
Quote:Getting to the camp
The marionette finally came to a halt, and found refuge at a small, circular clearing in the forest. He had put at least a few furlongs of distance between he and whatever the fucked chased him, and finally took the time to look back.
He clapped each hand against its corresponding knee, hunched over, and peered under his armpit; nobody was there. Not a soul—not Top Man, Lyra, Onion . . . not even that devious goblin, Grobdum—trailed him. All that stood behind him was the willow tree that hooked over the path he blazed into the clearing, drenching it with its drooping leaves, which were dead in color.
I have to find the little ghost girl, Pinocchio told himself; so far, his search for Omni seemed more like a survivor game (he could imagine a group of shadowy figures, all hunkered over, watching the carnage with wide grins, half-shown behind fat cigars). Orc militia, murder temples, flesh-eating lunatics, what else? In the note he read, ghost girl never mentioned any of it, not even that one minute detail—she broadcasted the same message across the Omniverse, spreading it like a contagion.
“CLAYTON” a voice boomed from Pinocchio’s northwest.
The marionette hopped up, startled. He swiveled his head to an extent unfathomable to human anatomy, and set his gaze over a line of overgrown bushes. It was difficult to depict the figures as they danced around in half-colored blurs, but he knew they weren’t orcs, nor flesh-eating lunatics; whoever they were, the name CLAYTON was foreign to Pinocchio.
His eyes darted around for a worthy place to hide—a charred tree not far from his left would have to suffice. He pounced over to it and climbed its bark like a squirrel. The tree felt dry and decayed, but he conquered it and lay flat across its sole branch.
Footsteps shambled below him, and he could hear different voices congregating. One person articulated their wariness of Clayton. It was the same voice which roared his name, and from the sound of it, belonged to a headstrong female.
“Is there a problem?” another voice inquired, entering into the discussion.
Pinocchio heard the female subtly gasp, but she quickly collected herself. “These freaks,” she astutely replied, “that’s what the problem is.”
If she were made of wood, and restrained to the same laws as the marionette, her nose would have grown like an appendage to a pervert whom caught a glimpse up a woman’s skirt.
“That’s not what you said,” Pinocchio muttered. “You said the hunter might become a problem.”
“Yes, that too,” the woman said shouting towards the tree. “Thank you for reminding me.”
Pinocchio threw both hands over his open mouth; the woman heard him. As he rolled onto his side to catch a glance of the people under him, his eyes locked with the woman’s own. She saw him. Her dark irises pierced through the curtain of her long bang, and shot metaphorical lasers towards the marionette.
She did not seem mad, simply exasperated. Her visage carried the wounds of attrition, bagged under her eyes in puffy sacs. They told the tales of her mental and emotional anguish, and her far-too-extended trudge in search of answers. And the ghost girl.
Her two accomplices looked the same. The tall, slender man to her right had a broken posture, and his pale skin only served to highlight the wrinkles across his face, which were far too strong for someone of his age; the man to the woman’s left was glossed in sweat, and his armor was smeared with crisscrosses of blood.
None of them came off as aggressive, but Pinocchio did not trust them—if this woman’s cast of friends were the type to pull blades on one another then they were the marionette’s type of people. He trusted Groddum more than them.
“General . . .” her armored comrade said in a drifting tone.
This was Pinochhio’s chance, and he seized it, rolling back over and out of the tree, while the woman’s eyes were shifted away from him; neither the woman nor her goons noticed the hollow thud of Pinocchio’s body bouncing off of the bare ground. He winced as a dull pain shot up his ass, but the fear of not knowing the intentions of the woman and her band fueled him to grab his sore cheek, and lumber towards the willow tree.
Where was his temple-running crew when he needed them? Probably where he abandoned them, somewhere on the other side of the thick foliage he escaped through. He left them as soon as things became hostile, too afraid to help them. What a stupid and selfish move.
As soon as Pinocchio broke through the willow’s barrier of leaves he collapsed to his knees, and pounded his fists against the ground. “I’m such a punk,” he grieved. “I don’t deserve to be a real boy; I’m just a useless tool for entertainment!”
Then a familiar voice echoed: “Little dude!”
“Top Man!” Pinocchio’s head shot up; the voice was close.
The leaves on the other side of the willow shook, and he shot a look over there. Top Man, and the others, it had to be. A comforting feeling floated cover his shoulders, and as a pair of hands parted the leaves he couldn’t help but smile like a child watching their parent walk through the front door. But those feelings ended abruptly, and his smile bowed into a quivering frown as a grunting man hauled himself towards the marionette.
“C-c-can I help you?” Pinocchio stammered, taking a step back. Then another.
The man replied with a groan, and limped forward, dragging his back leg. Below his short-sleeve Hawaiian shirt, chunks of missing flesh ran down both arms, varying in size and depth.
“A-are you . . . ok?” Pinocchio asked, but then stopped in his tracks as he saw the man’s cold, white, lifeless eyes; the man lunged forward, throwing his hands out to grab the marionette. “What’re you doing?!”
The man’s hands latched onto Pinocchio’s shoulders, and with a jerk, he pulled the marionette forward, towards his opening mouth. Strings of saliva stretched from his rotten upper teeth to his jagged lower ones, and Pinocchio felt them closing in and around his nose.
“Pinocchio!” It was the voice of Lyra; must be in his head, like a memory flash right before death.
Pinocchio slammed his eyes shut, accepting his fate, but before he felt any pain a warm liquid splashed over his face. He opened his eyes.
The man let go of Pinocchio’s shoulders and wobbled in place. His head had been caved in from the top, smashed like a baked potato, with brain matter and blood bulging out in a soufflé. He slouched forward for a second, but then collapsed over on his side and rolled onto his stomach. Dead.
“Saved your nose there,” Top Man said, smiling. “Thought we lost you there, for a second.”
Pinocchio let out a sigh of relief. “Man am I glad to see you. I thought I was d—“
“Dead?” The robot chucked. “Not on Lyra’s watch. Let’s just get back to the others.”
“They’re not mad that I ran off?” Pinoccho dipped his head in shame.
“Nah, dude. Plus there’s a whole army of us now.”
Pinocchio whipped his head back up. “Army?” he inquired.
Top Man just smirked. “I can show you better than I can tell you.”[/spoiler]
[spoiler]
Quote:Camp Life
Top Man was right, an army had been assembled; Pinocchio had seen all of their faces before. They were the same people he saw at the destination ghost girl gave, before the plume of smoke scattered everyone like roaches. He remembered the gleams from their gun barrels, and blades, and how they twinkled in the beams of sunlight that broke through the canopy. But now they were all stained with blood and gunk, which told stories of their experiences like tattoos.
Some people were missing, and almost everyone had sustained some sort of ailment, emotional or physical. Hope still sparkled in the eyes of most, though, and while moods overall were low, morale was pleasantly high—“we’re gonna meet Omni and demand a ransom!” one man said as he put the final touches on his leaf-and-branch shelter, receiving a few cheers.
They weren’t as bad as Pinocchio first thought. Were some violent, sure. Were others borderline sociopaths? Check. But the marionette deduced they were no worse than any other community of people; considering the circumstances, they were quite angelic (CLAYTON didn’t pull a blade on anybody).
Many days passed without a lead, and with the exception of a failed orc raid (Pinocchio even kept true to his word, staying to fight instead of running), all there was left to do was survive.
A lot of nights Pinocchio spent laying in his shelter, gazing up through the hole in the canopy, and into the sky. He thought about Gingy. Why didn’t the pastry just create Pinocchio as a human? If primes had so much power it was certainly possible. Gingy could just make it reality—pop! goodbye termites, hello acne! As he continued to dwell on it, resentment began to manifest. A true friend would recognize his dream, and make it true. Pinocchio would do it for Gingy, if roles were reversed. Why not then? Maybe Gingy wasn’t a true friend, just someone who enjoyed the company of a wooden puppet.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]
Quote:Pinocchio and Top Man
“And the humans go out to forage for food,” Top Man said, pointing over to a patch of berry-rich bushes as Lyra crouched down and ripped a vine from it. He and Pinocchio spectated from their sitting positions. “The average human must consume at least two thousand calories worth of food, a day, to survive.” He stuck his finger into the cylinder of his ear and looked over at Pinocchio. “I’ve been reduced to an Animal Planet commentator. Aren’t you glad you don’t have to eat all the time? I know I am. Sounds pretty inefficient to me.”
The marionette took it as a joke, and smiled faintly. “Helps them grow though,” he replied, and then frowned. “Something we can’t do.”
Top Man cocked an eye. “What, you jealous of that?”
“Well, yeah. Me and you are stuck the way we are, for eternity. We don’t grow, we don’t mature.”
“We don’t die,” the robot quipped.
“We don’t get to feel love, or any of those things, either,” Pinocchio pouted, sinking his head between his thighs.
Top Man clapped a hand on the marionette’s shoulder. “Sure you do—sure we do. We have personality, and we have emotions. They may not be produced by hormones, and chemical processes, but we have them. Our anatomy is just different. I don’t know how your internals work, but I have a circuit board, and other technologies, which mimic those jobs.”
“I’m just enchanted,” the marionette replied with a sigh.
“Hey, sounds good to me, lil dude. That what makes you you. I like being my own person, and not like everyone else. I don’t envy humans at all, and you shouldn’t either. I’m sure all your friends appreciate you for the guy you are now. I do.” He paused. “Is that why you want to meet Omni, to become a human?”
“To become a prime, which then I could turn myself human,” Pinocchio replied. “I’ve always wanted to be a real boy . . . to be able to grow, and become an adult. Maybe start a family . . . normal life type stuff.”
“I suppose that’s a good reason. I could see some benefits to being a prime. Just don’t stress over it, because you’re pretty awesome the way you are.”
“Really?” Pinocchio looked up at Top Man. His eyes burned, but did not water. But the emotion was there; Top Man’s words had encouraged him some.
“Yeah, man,” he replied, and raised an open palm. “Up top.”
Pinocchio smiled, and smacked his wooden palm against the robots metallic one, producing a hollow ting![/spoiler]
[spoiler]
Quote:Last Night at the Camp
Pinocchio spent the next night digesting everything Top Man had told him. It was a message about being comfortable in his own skin, and appreciating who he was. Self-worth, and all that jazz. He had heard that discussion before, and even explained far better, but never before did it ring so true. Maybe because every other time he received that message it was from the lips of a human, or other living and breathing creature. Never from another person like himself, an autonomous object.
Even Gingy never gave him a talk like that, and he wasn’t exactly human either. The thought began to agitate Pinocchio until he rationalized it. Perhaps, Gingy wanted him to discover it on his own. Pinocchio was always hard at hearing when it came to advice. Before now, at least—always marching to the thump of his own drum, instead.
Maybe that was the true reason he wanted to be a real boy . . . it was about being his own person—doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Maturation brought independence; as a prime, the marionette would have complete freedom, unrestrained by the laws which currently governed him.
Though Top Man made him realize he was perfect the way he was, Pinocchio wanted the freedom to experience all that life had to offer him.[/spoiler]
“Let’s go around!” Pinocchio heard.
How?
The fog stretched both east and west, as far as Pinocchio could see, and stopped just short of the swamp bank in front of the group. It was thick, and black, towering over them like a foreboding wall . . . the wall to their cemetery, possibly. Myths about the swamp, and its mysterious fog, stretched as far as Camelot—Swamp of Sadness, they called it. No one that’s ever entered it has escaped; it eats you whole, and swallows you as easy as air.
They had left their camp earlier that day, chasing the only clue available. Pinocchio remained skeptical, but it was either enter the swamp, or stay at the camp, and hate himself for never knowing if what lied behind the fog.
With a strong sigh, he took his first step into the swamp; his leg sunk up to the knee instantly, almost tipping him over, but he managed to stay standing. Grass growing from the swamp floor brushed up against his abdomen as he moved deeper into it, making it difficult for him to maneuver, but he pushed forward, raking it aside with his forearms.
He made it to the wall of fog with nothing more than a bad case of waterlog, taking a moment to stare at it before entering. If Pinocchio crossed the fog there was no going back—he couldn’t just whimper, flail his arms, and retreat--, and he knew that. No, he’d have to put his manpants on, and face whatever awaited him. He tried to keep a stern external, but deep down he was scared shitless. Turning around and leaving ran a few laps in his mind, and nearly persuaded him, but he refused. If he could kill orcs, proceed through trivial temples, and survive flesheaters, damnit he could walk through a fog. This adventure of chasing his dream had progressed into more than just a fantasy hunt—it was a journey to find himself.
As Pinocchio entered into the fog everything became dark, after only a couple of steps. He brought his hand to his face, but could barely make out the details of it. All he saw was the contrast of complexion. He turned around, expecting to see the bank of the fog, but all that welcome him was blinding darkness.
What did you expect? a voice said, giggling. Thought you’d see the end of the fog?
Pinocchio whipped back around. “Who said that?”
Does it matter? You can’t see me. I could simply be a voice in your head, for all you know.
“Who are you?” the marionette inquired. He tried to take a step backwards, but the grass locked around his ankles and wrists, keeping him in place.
It doesn’t matter. Why, are you scared?
Pinocchio growled. He tried to pull his hands free from the grass, but it just tightened its grip, wrapping around his wrists like tentacles. He could hear the voice giggling, and watching his struggle with great amusement.
Are you?
The marionette knew that if he lied his nose would grow—his giveaway. “I’ve gone through too much to be scared,” he retorted; he did go through too much.
Just because you worded it in a way where you didn’t lie doesn’t mean you’re not scared.
Memories flashed across Pinocchio’s mind like a fast-moving slideshow. It was the time he was most afraid.
You remember that day—the day when Prince Charming seized Far Far Away—and how he put in you a puppet shop. You were finally home, and with your own kind. All around you, all you could see were other toys. That’s what you are, just a toy.
[spoiler]
Quote:Fog Flashback
Pinocchio remembered that day.
A sharp pain awoke him from his sleep. As his eyes shot open, he realized he was being suspended by the strings attached to his arms. He tried to move, but a consequence of pain resulted immediately.
A crowd of people rushed towards him, pressing their bellies against the glass, which housed him. A few of the men grabbed their sons and daughters, and sat them on their shoulders for a better view. One woman emerged from the crowd, and retrieved a coin from between her cleavage. She slipped it into a compartment next to the glass, just outside of Pinocchio’s view. The marionette tried to catch a glimpse of where she put it, but as he leaned forward another shot of pain ran through his arms. As the woman stepped back, a jingle started to play from out of the compartment, and the wires attached to his wrists began to manipulate his movement.
“No!” he shouted.
The wires pulled his hands back, flopping them over his head, around his neck, and then forward. His legs flapped around like paraplegic forced to dance on crutches, but the strings controlling Pinocchio kept him from collapsing.
The crowd cheered—kids pumped their fists in the air, while their parents grinned widely, chanting “dance, dance, dance!”
Pinocchio could see more people in the background coming towards the crowd, intrigued by the spectacle. His body moved awkwardly, and then about-faced; his head was forced forward, and between his own legs, to stare back at the crowd. They burst into laughter.[/spoiler]
You remember that day, don’t you?
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Gildarts - 08-30-2015
Another heaving breath and Christa's feet touched down onto the slippery bark of a tree. The glowing golden light dimmed as she balanced. At the added weight, the tree began to slowly dip below the surface.
"Ugh, not again." The marksman growled as her weightless 'good luck' fortune seemed to wear off. Her head swept the full three-hundred and sixty-five degrees. But she was still stranded. Faintly cackling laughter could be heard in the distance. Christa shouted to it, the only sound aside from the growling beasts and bubbling mire.
"WHY?" She shouted to the laughter, the distance only grew. Christa was alone. Shouting at assumed hallucinations and no one else was around to hear her scream.
Certainly not the others, not those who were trapped in their own imprisoning memories as the water at their ankles slithered up to their waist.
Everyone scattered across amid the desolation.
Everyone sinking.
All while the ghost child's laughter carried on.
Quote: Phase 5 has ended!
It will take 2 days for us to judge, I hope to have it up Wednesday morning ^_^
Thank you everyone, so very much, for participating. I wish you all the best of luck.
<3
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Guu - 08-30-2015
Onion was sinking. She didn’t know how much time it had been, felt like forever. It was like the weight on her soul was holding her down, slowly shoving her down below the waves. The water was already reaching her neck. Her mind constantly escaped the current predicament, bringing her to times in her past that she could wallow in.
-----
[spoiler]It was a year or so before. Her bags were packed, adorned with stickers advertising the boot camp she was travelling to. Her mother sat besides her on the couch in the house they shared most of their lives together in. Mother was never the talkative type. She just sat there, looking ahead. Raw did the same. She knew she had to say something to her mom. Who knows when’s the next time they’ll see each other. While she was a bit bitter that this woman essentially led her down this path, it was the only blood relations she had left anymore, and she was going to be alone in this empty house. She tried so hard to think up a single warm thing to say, but nothing could come to mind.
“I’m sorry.” Her mother said.
The words hit her worse than a wall of bricks. Being an expert flier, she knew what that felt like.
“What?” She said in response, not believing her own ears.
“I’m sorry to keep you.” Her mother continued. “I don’t want you to be late for your first day.”
Raw’s heart dropped like a bag of rocks. She felt so cheated. This is not the mood she wanted to start her new life in. Without a single word, she stormed out of the house and slammed the door behind her.
As she parted, she could hear another faint “Sorry” from behind the cloud walls. The young Pegasus figured it was her imagination.
That was the last time she saw her mother.[/spoiler]
-----
[spoiler]It must have been a good twelve months since that day. She wasn’t the one that kept track of time, the only indicator she had of how long it had been was the new Private First Class rank she had just been given just a week or so before. Many of the colleagues she started the program with were adorned with them too. She could barely remember that party.
However, the job never rests. She and her band of “heroes” were out raiding an orc encampment. According to her superiors, the place was meant to encroach on Pegasi lands.
The group did their thing, dive-bombing any orc or goblin that got in their way. The gang devised a game seeing how many green skins they could take down before the end of the battle, even going as far as the call out the number as they took them out.
“13!” “19!” “5!” Most of the vets had a laugh at that last one.
Raw never really participated in their games. In battle, she was serious and fierce; knowing the safety of her people was on the line. It gave her purpose.
Halfway through the battle, the goblins came out with their net launchers, shooting her comrades out of the sky. Thankfully, they all had knives to cut themselves loose, but it was only a matter of time before one of their own lands defenseless near an armed orc. Tactics changed and all remaining pegasi focus on taking out the goblins.
Raw saw one of the cretins standing idly on the battlefield, aiming carefully at the soaring troops. Ceasing the opportunity, she charged forward, her leg stretched out for a kick.
Connect! Her hoof collided with the goblin’s head. However, in her haste, she failed to realize that her flight path was off a little. The goblin travelled with her hoof and impacted with a nearby building, collapsing it around them.
Raw was only bruised, but trapped under some of the rubble. The goblin wasn’t so lucky. Despite his brain being exposed, he was still a bit conscious. His eyes dazed, glossing over a bit. He coughed violently, splattering blood all over his shirt. With all the air from his lungs expelled with that last cough, he just kind of sat there. He wheezed a little. From his expression, it looked like from sheer utter pain. She watched as what little life he had in his eyes faded into nothing as he took his final breath.
The sight was so familiar to her. She had seen colleagues fall the same way. Hell, many of her superiors showed videos of this happening to other pegasi. “Perspective” as they called it. However, she never knew any of their foes went out like that. She never knew she actually caused it. Usually she would just kick and run, she never knew any of them could have died from it.
It would be hours before the battle had won and the others had a chance to dig her out. That whole time, she had to spend with her new dead pal in the same enclosed space as her.
As they rode her around on a stretcher, it was the first time she was sitting still long enough to see what the battlefield looked like after the fact. Other equestrian soldiers were cleaning up the bodies. A large pile composed of all the orc children was rotting nearby. Her superiors told her that every orc was born evil, and even the children were dangerous to keep around. Even so, seeing their bodies like that gave chills down her spine, and a welling sickness in her stomach.
A week later, after fully recovering, she spent the remaining day of her sick leave to visit the battlefield. The bodies had long since been removed and most of the buildings were burnt to the ground, but some of their items remained. None of the charts she could find even mentioned an invasion of the Eastern Battalion lands. Instead, she found plans for if the Pegasi should attack. It was all defensive measures.
Her mind quickly encapsulated itself. It was trying to protect her form the truth. She convinced herself that her military just needed a new target to face. It was way she sought other options, like when she reached out to John Connor.
But her time with Lyra and the others showed her the truth. When she actually had someone that needed to be protected, when she had time apart from her generals and colleagues, the truth was more crystal clear than daylight. When there was no war to fight, a soldier that still kills is the true enemy. She was the true enemy.[/spoiler]
As the water reached her chin, quickly about to eclipse her muzzle, she couldn’t help feel like she deserved every minute of the painful death she was about to experience. She’d been killing for long time. She was a monster for a long time. It was time to pay her dues.
She closed her eyes and awaiting for her watery death.
Suddenly, there was a buzz. She felt it on her side. It must be her phone. Her mother must have responded to her e-mail. This was more important than death.
Her wing reached over and picked up the device. She lifted it up to the surface of the water so she could see. She didn’t know what to expect, but what she found floored her.
Thousands of tweets; hundreds of thousands even, all of them words of encouragement.
“Don’t give up warhorse!”
“We all believe in you!”
“You’re too awesome to die!”
“Please don’t give up!”
“You’ve been an inspiration to many, I know you can go through this!”
“Just do it!”
“My prayers are always with you Raw Onion!”
But what hit her the most was the tweet that started it all.
“Mom?”
The photo she sent was attached a tweet that requested that everyone support her daughter. They were all responding to her. They were all listening to her. Seeing her mom’s front page, one tweet stood out even more.
“@RawOnion: You can change the world. I love you. I’ve always loved you. Never forget that.”
Her eyes once again filled with tears, but this time it was out of happiness. She kicked her hoofs, fighting against the pull of the floor beneath her. Her feet pulled loose with even the smallest of kicks. She easily pulled out the other and she stood up, the water lowering to her legs. With a flap of her wings, she took to the skies, the air current blowing the excess fluid out of her fur.
Punishing herself won’t fix the problem. She needed to be strong. She needed to save her people, and the only way she could do that, is to fly.
“Thank you mom." She said with a sigh of relief. She faced forward, awaiting the adventure ahead. "Omni, I’m coming for you!”
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Demetri Malius - 08-30-2015
We walked through the swamp, the fog rolling out towards us as we tread on the murky water and mud.
I don't know how long it's been. Date functions hasn't worked since the war against the Darkspawn. It seems I can hardly compute with half my functions either malfunctioning, disabled, or corrupted. I'm lucky I can still use my lasers though, and hover, for that matter, for which I have Jan to thank for that. However, I have new issues pestering me now, and for that I have Richtoffen to blame. Though I can't say it was his intentions to do so.
[spoiler]
Quote:IRIS: Richtoffen
I eyed the doctor as he performed on the more dire of patients in the makeshift infirmary in the town. It about a week since we met everyone here in the clearing and worked together to fight off the Darkspawn, and Richtofen was tending to some of the injured secondaries. He was well aware of my presence and questioned me as I hovered near him.
" Ah... my little floating ally, I zee dat you might be vanting some kind of... treatment? The German scientist smirked with anticipation as he turned his gaze towards me.
"Um.. yeah, my electronic function recently stopped working, so I was wondering if- "
"Jah Jah of course! Allov me to retrieve mein tools."The doctor bounced around in glee as he rushed to a small shelf, plucking a few sharp metal tools and devices. I really hope that my pain receptors weren't functional. Once he finished gathering his menacing looking tools, he began to walk towards me, a psychopathic grin covering his face. I backed up out of instinct but found myself against an infirmary bed. His oily fingers clutched his surgical weapons and proceeded to the area where the goblin had injured me such a long time ago. I felt like I blinked as soon the silver metal of the utensil touched mine.
Suddenly the area around me was a mess, tools everywhere, Richtoffen red faced and breathing heavily. I watched as my systems turned on, but something felt of. I felt a wave of relief and confusion before Richtoffen began to speak.
"Ah, finally. You vere guite the naughty zupchect. Ach ! As zoon as I pekan, you vent red and starded screaming obscenidies and vanded to rip mein face off. It took only ein few minutes, put you vere fery difficult. Haffen't had one like dat zince exberiment #54. Luckily I managed to svitch vadeffer it vas off." He wiped a bead a sweat from his face as he smiled sadistically, then began to clean up his gear, satisfied with his work and preparing to go back into my injury.
Lucky damned fool, I had him in my clutches and was about to watch the life seep from his face before he switched the circuit status...
Wait. Who was that? I glanced to Richtoffen, but the German didn't seem to have heard anything.
"Hey, did you hear that? I thought a heard a voice...
The German's abruptly stopped organizing his tools and turned to me, his face inches away from my eye. His breath even fogged up the glass. "Foices?! You can hear dem too?! VHAT DO DEY ZAY?! TELL ME FLOATING MECHANISM, VHAT DO THE FOICES TELL YOU? IS IT ZAMANTHA? DON'T LISTEN TO HER! I HAFFE DONE NOTHING!"
I quickly dodged the mad scientists attempts to grab me as I bolted for the exit, quickly rounding the corner and ending up in a secluded area. As I hovered near the floor, I noticed a glow of bright purple instead of blue.
So you can hear me now. Perhaps that doctor wasn't as useless as I thought, although he still deserves death. How interesting though. Perhaps maybe you an finally work towards completing your mission and finding Omni, instead of frolicking with these useless and traitorous group.
I checked my systems as I realized it the voice was coming from me. Maybe Richtoffen wasn't the only crazy one. Craziness isn't contagious, is it?
Checking systems. Functional, some restricted abilities. Combat mode enabled.
What? Combat mode enabled? But that can't be? My functions only initiated combat mode if I felt extremely threatened, which I haven't even been all this trip. In addition, I wasn't supposed to be active during combat mode. Then again, Richtoffen was pretty threatening, and I don't know what exactly he did while operating.
You are as confused as I am at how this is possible right? Well, no matter, like this, I have a say in what we do, and you better listen. You need to kill all of this blundering idiots.
I needed to turn it off, something, anything before anyone else saw me in this condition. As long as I can make my eye blue again I can hide this from everyone. Nobody will have to know I have a crazed murderer as a conscience. I glance over my manual.
HEY! Are you listening, fool?
Shut up, i'm trying to figure out how to turn you off.
Retrieving instructions....
Turn me off, for what reason? I am the better half of you.
No, you are the psychotic half of me I don't bring up at parties.
Download Complete. Step One:
Well isn't someone being rude. How dare you insult me you insolent brat. You're the one going on with these so called "friends" of yours making jokes and giggles, getting nothing done. What were their names, that blabbering pirate and stupid soldier... can't recall, nor do I care. I was embarrassed to watch yo make a fool of yourself the other day, entertaining the others. "Oi, look at me, I can't separate DNA from my circuits so I have to talk like a pirate for a week." Bloody fool.
HEY! You have the same issues with DNA separation!
Please take deep breaths and calm down to return to your normal state.
At least I don't go waving around my errors like a popup alert for entertainment.
Shut up already, I'm getting rid of you.
I began whirring as I calmed my engine and gears, focusing on their slow turning as I felt myself cool down. Okay, good. I watched my eye fade back to blue as I came to complete focus. Finally.
I'm still here you floating phallus.
Error: Issue not resolved. Contact your manufacturer for further details.
Shit.[/spoiler]
While I constantly try to show you the truth, you still don't understand, do you? Everyone here needs to die. You simply can't trust them. How long before one of them betrays you? You have listened to their conversations. Before you are considered obsolete due to your injuries, due to your inferiority? You've seen them. Think about it. If you get left behind, you will have failed your mission. You will have failed creator, like an incompetent swine.
I don't need your nagging opinions, without these people I wouldn't be here. Jan has helped me out especially, since Richtoffen couldn't fix me up.
Oh, then why didn't you tell him about me?
[spoiler]
Quote:IRIS: Jan
After a few days of nagging from CM to kill everyone that I see, I decided maybe another secondary could help me. Jan and I had become closer since the Darkspawn, and he had mentioned a bit about him having some engineering experience. Perhaps he could help. Even if he can't fix CM, I could probably get some of my functiomality back. I would at least need my lasers and HUD to be working.
I came upon Jan in a small area by where we slept, or where everyone else slept and I just floated there.
So first you get messed up one of your "allies" trying to fix you, so you're going to another one? How incredibly stupid.
I ignored it as I approached Jan.
"Hey IRIS! How's it going, fond anything out scouting lately?"
"Nothing really, but thats not why im here, I need help with repairs, and I rember you mentioning you had engineering experience and I was wondeing if you could, you know, help me out. They havw been a little malfunctional since our first encounter with the orcs and the twmple, but recently they stopped altogether."
" Sure," Jan spoke to me with a smile. "You should've said something earlier and I would've helped. Come over here.
I floated over to a small table with a few tools laid out, and patiently waited as the soldier prepped.
"Alright, just hold still, dont wan't to pull out anything you need."
He started prying up my damaged metal before going in and taking out aome broken blades and such from previous battles. Once he finished, he attached any cut wires and hammered out the dents in my armor. Needless to say, it was like a day at the spa, for a machine at least. I floated around with my at my return of electricity. It was so relieving and felt like I was completely energized. My HUD had returned, and although with limited functionality, it was back again.
"Well look at you floating around like a well oiled machine." Jan chuckled at my energy.
"Thank you so much, i appreciate it.
He still needs to die. Anyone can turn on you in an instant.
My energy seemed to dissapate as I remembered my other predicament. Jan seemed to notice.
You alright there? You look tense, anything bothering you?
"No it's alright... I'm fine... thanks.He didn't seem so assured as I quickly floated away.[/spoiler]
My mind had drifted off before I retorted back.
I don't need them worrying about me. I can handle you.
Well look around us, there's nothing but me and you.
I stopped and looked around realizing that he was right. The fog was so thick that I could not see anyone.
It seems that everyone would become lost in this fog. This would be the perfect chance, the chance I've been waiting for.
Waiting for? What did he mean?
Warning, data switching.... combat mode entering main status. Stealth mode entering passive.
WHAT. NO! YOU CAN'T! HOW DID YOU EVEN-
I watched the dark and muddy water turn a crimson red, as my body gave off its hellish glow.
Now now, this isn't the time to chat, its the time to hunt, wouldn't you say?
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Dark Link - 09-02-2015
[spoiler]
Quote:Flashback #1:
Lyra, Raw Onion, Grave, Top Man, Christa, Grobdum, Klaud
It was a grey morning in the jungle as heavy clouds hung over the hilltops, threatening to drench the lush land below with additional rainfall. But in spite of the gloominess of the weather, the inhabitants of the forest remained as lively as ever, their calls and songs filling every corner of the land. The motley crew that lived inside the village of their own design were no less noisy, tending to their duties.
Yet, this wasn't solely the hustle and bustle of their daily life. There was another reason why the atmosphere in the camp was so brisk — one that everyone was reminded of when the jury-rigged speakers came to life with a high-pitched squeak and Top Man's voice began to blare from them: "Gooooooood morning, Omnitown! Last day before we head out into the swamp. Just a reminder, our beloved leader Christa has called for a general assembly after sundown. In the meantime, your resident DJ Top Man will soothe you with some smooth tunes. Here's one fresh off of the Dataverse Top 10 cha-"
He was interrupted by a gunshot, the loud 'BANG!' resonating both by itself and from the speaker system. This was followed by a female voice, one that unmistakably belonged to Christa herself: "I thought I told you no music today....Now get back to work!" Moments later, the signal was unceremoniously cut off. After that brief interruption, the residents returned to their respective tasks, none of them the least bit surprised by what had transpired.
Raw Onion and Lyra were toiling away in the kitchen behind the mess hall when this unusual exchange occurred. The mare paid it little heed and focused again on the vast assortment of meat that was sizzling on the makeshift grill. The Hylian girl, meanwhile, briefly became lost in thought. In the preceding months, she had grown accustomed to the anachronistic nature of her comrades — many of the artefacts and gadgets that once seemed so magical and mysterious to her had become entirely mundane by that point. But even though it was something Top Man had done an innumerable amount of times, his ability to connect his music box to another device and have its tune resonate across the camp continued to inspire her sense of awe and wonder.
Shaking off any further thoughts on the matter, Lyra got back to work. And there was certainly a lot of work to be had, particularly on that day. Though the inhabitants occasionally cooked their own food, the constant expeditions and search parties had necessitated that the pony and whoever was on hand to take care of such tasks. Having to cook for almost twenty people was already a tall ordeal, but with the day of their collective departure nearly upon them, they also had to prepare supplies for their journey.
Not that this bothered Raw Onion in the slightest. In fact, it was precisely when she was preparing food that the warhorse seemed the most upbeat and active, hovering in the air as she rapidly tended to several tasks at once. The blonde girl could not help but be amazed — not just at her cooking talent, but the workplace she had helped to create. Even though they were in the middle of a jungle, the group had managed to put together a surprisingly well-equipped outdoor kitchen with a large fireplace and a stone oven. The mare had even set up a small garden nearby, where she grew a variety of plants that she could use as vegetables and spices.
This made Lyra feel somewhat embarrassed as she herself wasn't quite as gifted. In addition to hunting and scavenging with the others, the teen also served as something of a craftsman for the group. Applying the skills she had learned over the years, she used whatever materials were at her disposal to fashion a variety of items — cups, cooking utensils, bags, ropes, hides and so on. But because she wasn't dedicated to any of the relevant crafts, her handiwork often ended up being crude and aesthetically unappealing.
Nevertheless, when alternatives were not available, they got the job done and her comrades always expressed their gratitude for them. Even though she wouldn't admit it, this made the girl happy. For the first time in a long while, she felt valued — she felt like she belonged there. In fact, in spite of the numerous hardships the group had to face, the time she had spent in the town of their creation represented some of the best moments of her life. Lyra was overjoyed — she no longer had to be alone. And part of her almost wanted for things to remain this way....or at least she did want that, until...
Her musings were interrupted when the brown pony resumed the conversation they had prior to the radio announcement: "Anyway, the nice thing about being a pegasus is that you don't wear out your hooves like some ponies do...though I guess only the bigger ones really have that problem. Some ponies put horseshoes on just for decoration. I don't think I could ever do it....the very idea sounds uncomfortable. Horseshoes are actually mandatory for most military personnel, but thankfully, us pegasi don't have to wear them."
"Huh?" the thief responded, having been lost in thought. "Oh....yeah, that really doesn't sound like it'd be much fun." Now that she was paying attention to the mare again, something clicked in her mind: "Onion, can I ask you something personal?"
"Lyra, you know you don't have to ask me that. Just fire away!" her friend responded merrily as she continued to prepare lunch.
Somewhat hesitantly, the street urchin inquired: "Well....you said that you wanted to ask Omni if you were meant to be a chef, and that you'd tell everyone back home his answer. But I was wondering....how come you didn't tell your mom you wanted to be a chef? I mean, I understand that everyone was pressuring you to be a soldier...but wouldn't it have been easier for you if at least your mom knew what you really wanted to do? I'm sure she'd still be proud of you just the same!"
Caught by surprise, Raw Onion allowed the spatula in her mouth to drop on the nearby table:"O-oh..." Solemnly lowering her head for a few moments, she resumed work before slowly responding: "...Well, maybe...But she was a soldier herself and she wanted me to follow in her hoof steps. She was so happy when I enlisted in the military that...well, I just couldn't bring myself to tell her that it wasn't what I wanted to do....I guess I just didn't want to disappoint her, you know?"
Turning to the Hylian girl, she took a deep breath as a confident smile appeared on her face: "But we're going to reach Omni soon...and then, I'll finally have my answer! Best of all, Top Man will be there to record all of it, so even the generals and my mom will find out directly whether I was meant to be a chef! I mean, not even they can disagree with what a god says, right?!"
"R-right!" Lyra responded, smiling in return. During their time together, she and Raw Onion had become close friends and the teen would often volunteer for kitchen duty, both to aid the mare and to spend more time with her. From the bottom of her heart, she truly wished that Omni would give the pegasus the vindication she sought and that she would be free to become a chef. And if that happened, the thief was determined to be the first in line to get a taste of her latest specialty.
"Oh, that reminds me!" Raw Onion stated as she herself was reminded of something. "There was something I wanted to ask you as well." Looking at her Hylian friend, she continued with a more sober expression: "Back when we were attacked by that black orcish tribe....what happened? Why did you get so close to the front line?"
This time, it was the archer's turn to hang her head, a sad and thoughtful gaze on her visage. She recalled that day as a series of hazy images and scrambled thoughts. In the chaos and haste of battle, it was difficult to keep a clear mind. But there was something she did clearly remember: how she felt.
She recalled feelings of pain, anguish and misery. She remembered feeling betrayed by someone who she thought was her comrade, her ally.....her friend. She could clearly call back the desire she had to face this person, to find out why they had done this. But most of all, she remembered being stunned, being paralyzed....because for all the power and might radiating from him, she was able to witness all those feelings mirrored on that person's face.
"Grobdum...." Lyra uttered with a heavy heart, uncertain as to how to explain her mental state to her quadruped friend.
But as it turned out, no explanation was necessary. Nodding sympathetically, Raw Onion patted the Hylian girl on the back with her hoof: "I know how you feel. None of us took it well that one of our own turned against us. But you know that he was never much of a team player...I mean, he joined us only because we defeated the orcish tribe he was with. And he kept stealing things from people....heck, he tried robbing you back at the temple!"
Rapidly turning to face the mare, Lyra's deep blue eyes gazed into hers, a determined expression on her face. Raising her clenched fists, she exclaimed: "He did those things because he felt like he didn't have a choice! I was a thief too....I know how that's like!"
"That's not the same thing. You didn't have a choice, your survival depended on it. Grobdum didn't have to steal any of the things he did, we would have helped him if he had asked." The warhorse eyed her comrade sternly: "Lyra...you need to move on. Did you already forget that you almost died during that attack? How do you think I and the others would have felt if you hadn't survived that day?"
The teen was taken aback by this response and went silent. Of course she hadn't forgotten....just thinking about it sent a chill down her spine. The sensation lingered in her stomach as though it had just occurred. She recalled how the large blade sunk deep into her flesh, effortlessly crushing her bones. She remembered feeling life literally draining out of her and collapsing on the floor. Lastly, she recalled something touching her and speaking out words before her consciousness was completely submerged in darkness. Ever since then, she had wondered how she could have possibly survived that....and practically unscathed to boot.
"I know. I...I'm sorry. I was careless...." she said, an expression of guilt and torment on her visage. "But Onion, I....I know how Grobdum feels. I know how it's like to be small and insignificant...to feel alone and unwanted. He wouldn't have done this if he thought that there was another way...I know it! And you should have seen him that day, seen his eyes....even though he had so much power, there was so much pain and sadness in them...."
"Lyra....what are you saying? Mister Clayton and General Klaud told us what happened," the pony responded cautiously, waiting to see what the archer was trying to get at.
"I...I think something else happened back then. Something that made Grobdum think he wasn't wanted here.....something that we weren't told about or that might have been missed. I...I'm not sure how we could find out about that, but..."
"Well, maybe you could start by asking the general herself," a third voice suddenly chimed in. Taken by surprise, the chef and her assistant turned to see who it was. They were approached by Grave, who was carrying the carcass of a boar.
"Grave!" the two spoke out in unison.
Dropping the animal on the jungle floor with a grunt, the Nephilim took a deep breath before finally greeting them: "Mornin', ladies. Sorry, but I couldn't help but overhear what you were talking about while I was lugging this hog here....Anyway, Klaud was there when it happened. If anyone would know if there anything suspicious about what happened, she would."
Relieved that they weren't overheard by Clayton or one of the camp leaders, the blonde girl sighed before responding: "I...I don't know. I mean, even if something else did happen, I don't....I don't really think that the General would have lied about it."
The silver-haired hunter replied to that with a chuckle: "Who said anything about lying? I mean, our dear General is quite lovely and competent, but no one's infallible. She could have missed something....something that puts a completely different spin on things. Either way, you won't know for certain unless you talk to her about it."
"Grave's right," the brown pony interjected. "Plus, we'll be leaving soon, so you might not get another good chance for a while. So you should go right away. If nothing else, it might give you a peace of mind."
"But...but we still have so much work to do here," Lyra said uncertainly.
"Haha...anybody can cut up veggies. In fact, I've got a bit of time to kill, since Alice is still chugging her daily dose of animal blood. So you go ahead...I'll fill in for you 'till you get back."
Looking at the two of them, the girl smiled at them: "Thanks, both of you. I'll be back soon, I promise."
"Wait," Raw Onion stopped her.
"Y..yes?"
"Remember...you're not alone. No matter what happens, we've got your back, alright?" the soldier replied, smiling at her friend.
The pointy-eared teen said nothing. Trying, and failing, to hide how much that statement meant to her, she gave them a firm nod before running off to find Klaud. Eyeing the man who was now beside her suspiciously, the mare asked: "Did it really take you so long to carry that boar?"
"Well....I might have been a bit slower about it than usual," the blue-eyed man responded, winking at the chef before he started chopping some sweet peppers.
Quote:Flashback #2:
Lyra, Klaud, Grobdum, Clayton, Raw Onion
Standing inside the general's tent, Lyra and Klaud Nine quietly stared at one another. The exorcist had just shared her thoughts and now patiently waited for the young girl's response. Meanwhile, the thief continued to glare at the uniformed woman in disbelief over what she had just heard: "Y-you mean....?!"
Klaud gave her a brief nod: "Correct. Back then, I had responded in a manner that I considered the most appropriate at that moment in time. But even then, I quickly began to question the wisdom of my decision, as I was unfortunate enough to get a glimpse of mister Clayton's true nature before. Combined with what you had just told me about Grobdum, I am now more convinced than ever before that mister Clayton had orchestrated the event and deceived us."
Lyra was left speechless. To be certain, she had believed that Grobdum hadn't intended any harm to Clayton at the time. However, she thought that it was some sort of misunderstanding that had driven the shaman away. The idea that someone would intentionally do so, that someone would deliberately deceive them into turning against an ally, hadn't even crossed her mind....or was it that she didn't want to believe something like that?
Stammering, the teenager finally managed another question: "B-But....but why?! Why would he do this?! Aren't we allies?! Aren't we all seeking the same thing?!"
"That, I do not know. I can only speculate that Clayton perceived him as a threat, either to the group or to his goals, due to his previous association with the orcs." The soldier's expression turned into a sad frown. "Whatever the case may be, it seems that I had indeed chosen poorly....I am truly sorry." She bowed, a great deal of discipline and grace in her gesture.
"No, please...." the archer attempted to stop her. "Y...you don't owe me any apology...."
"But I do," Klaud resumed as she straightened up again. "Even if I am not directly at fault, my actions ended up driving away an ally and leading up to the events that had nearly cost you your life. PFC. Raw Onion had informed me of your near brush with death. It is most fortuitous that you are still amongst us."
"No, really, it's alright...." Lyra said, her head hung. "You couldn't have known about how Grobdum is really like or what would happen. Besides, it doesn't really matter anymore....Grobdum isn't coming back....and the rest of the group probably wouldn't accept him even if he did." Wrapping herself in silence once more, she contemplated. In truth, part of her had always been unnerved by Clayton. The thief had spent enough time around people to be able to tell when they were being genuine and when they were just pretending. And though the hunter was capable of a very convincing act, that was precisely the thing.....it was too good, like something he had rehearsed a thousand times over rather than how he naturally behaved.
A few more moments of silence passed between them before the general resumed: "Correct, there is nothing that can be done for Grobdum at this point....But we can at least prevent mister Clayton from causing any more harm to the group."
The girl's pointy ears perked up as she heard this. She raised her head: "...What do you mean?"
"...Lyra, the primary reason I risked telling you all this is because, as an affected party, I felt you deserved to know the truth. That was your right and I would have done so regardless. However, there is another reason....I am putting together a group that will put a stop to Clayton. Even you must realise that he poses a threat to all of us. I would like to enlist your aid in this effort so that he isn't permitted to do the same thing."
The Hylian said nothing as she found herself staring at the floor again. The conversation came to another pause. In spite of this, no sounds from the outside could be heard. The General had made certain that her tent had thick covers so as to prevent anyone from potentially eavesdropping.
Finally, there came an answer: "I...I'm sorry. But I can't."
Klaud looked perplexed. It was quickly apparent that she had no expected such an answer: "No? How come?"
The archer remained silent, attempting to figure out how to best formulate her response: "E-even if I am suspicious of Clayton, we...we don't really have any solid proof. For all we know, he might have only had good intentions. Plus, I....I've lost so many allies over the years. I just can't turn my arrows against a member of our own group. Not unless I'm absolutely certain he is intent on harming us."
The woman in uniform allowed the silence to hang in the air for a few moments before firmly nodding: "I understand. Can I at least ask you not to speak of this with anyone else?"
Lyra nodded in kind: "Yes....I won't tell anyone. Also, even if I'm not a part of your group, I'm going to keep my eye out for Clayton. If I see anything suspicious, I'll let you know right away."
"That is an acceptable arrangement. Thank you, Lyra. Now it is best that we each return to our duties."
"Thank you for everything, General," the thief said and turned to leave.
"Wait.....there is one thing I am curious about," the soldier stopped her. "In spite of everything that had transpired...do you still consider Grobdum a comrade?"
Taken aback by the question, the girl stared at her for some time. In truth, the answer to that wasn't difficult....it was merely hard for her to say it. Finally, she managed to utter: "Y....Yes." Feeling embarrassed, she hung her head once more: "You must think I'm foolish."
It was then that, for the first time in their conversation, the exorcist smiled: "I think you can recognise a friend when you see one."
The archer glanced at her once more, stunned by this comment. However, she said nothing more and left the habitat. Part of her was extremely glad to be vindicated in her belief in the goblin. Yet, the revelations had still caused her to have a sinking feeling in her stomach. She had become afraid. Afraid that fate was once again conspiring against her, threatening to take away the people she had grown to care for once more.[/spoiler]
This was it. The day had finally come — the day of their departure. The motley crew was about to traverse the infamous Swamp of Sorrows. None of them had even the slightest idea what dangers were hidden within its impenetrable fog. But it was beyond its murky waters that their destination lied...and there was no turning back for any one of them.
The weather was once again quite dreary, but the group didn't allow this to delay them for even a moment. They had already packed everything they could the previous day so that they could leave first thing in the morning. In fact, the majority of the group had already set off on their trek to the edge of the swamp. Only one person remained behind, trying to take care of some unfinished business.
"Lyra, come on! We have to go!" came the distant call from Grave, who didn't wish to leave the teenage girl by herself.
"Be right there!" she responded before turning to look at the object in front of her. Sitting on a stone altar — really, just the most appropriate slab of stone they could find — was a wooden statue that she designed. The blonde girl actually found it kind of embarassing to look at — it was so simplistic and crude that it was little better than a tribal idol.
Nevertheless, it was something that had taken a significant amount of time to make and that she poured her heart and soul into. It had the rough humanoid shape — according to rumours, that was apparently how Omni looked like...and Omni was the goal that had brought them together in the first place.
The altar it was standing on had letters etched into its cold stone. Near the top, the title "OMNITOWN" was carved with big, bold letters — apparently, enough of the inhabitants thought that Top Man's nickname for the camp was amusing enough to officially dub it that. Below that, twenty-two other names were written on it, one for each of the residents who had helped build the camp in the first place.
But there was one name that was missing...a name that Lyra thought belonged there as well. Turning around to make sure nobody was looking, she took out the improvised chisel and began to pound the solid material, lines forming under pressure. After a bit of work, those lines ended up forming a familiar name:
"GROBDUM"
Solemnly observing the end result, she rummaged through her pockets until she pulled out a shiny object — a silver compass, decorated with curved lines. This was the item that the goblin had attempted to relieve her of back when they met for the first time in the temple. Funnily enough, it didn't belong to the girl either — she had stolen it from a nasty Camelot guard as a 'farewell' gesture prior to heading off for the Tangled Green. And considering the item looked like something he couldn't afford, it was likely confiscated from another poor soul to begin with.
Lyra smiled faintly as old memories flooded her mind: "You always were the better thief." Placing the object in front of the wooden sculpture, she added: "Here, take it. I hope you'll use it to find your way....so that we can meet again someday."
She took one more glance around the now abandoned town. In a way, it was a miracle what they had managed to accomplish — in a scant few months, they had managed to turn a barren hill into a full-fledged settlement. Part of her felt sadness at the thought that they were just going to leave it for the orcs to take — or for nature to reclaim it. For all she knew, it was entirely possible that her small statue would decay into nothingness long before anyone would have a chance to see it.
But as the girl learned as she was glancing at the empty tents and bamboo houses, a home was not a physical location — it was where you felt warm and welcome, where people you knew and cared for resided. Besides, not one of them was willing to give up on their quest, not even Lyra. As happy as she had been there, the questions she sought answers for still plagued her mind, still kept her up at night. And she knew herself well enough to know that she would not be able to rest until she had them.
Finally turning her back to the small monument and the camp as a whole, the thief broke into a sprint in order to catch up with the others. As a slight drizzle was starting to set in, she covered herself with the hood of her cape....only to be showered by a completely different, golden substance. Caught by surprise, she cleared her face as she continued to run. Lyra couldn't believe it...there were still dust particles from the temple clinging to the inside of her cape?! She was certain she had cleared that out ages ago!
But as the archer distanced herself from the settlement further and further, her thoughts went back to the altar they left behind and a dark though crossed her mind. The monument was something they had all done together as a team, united as one.....would it also be the last?
Quote:Flashback #2 goes here.
Before she was even aware of what has transpired, Lyra's worst fears had come to pass. They had barely set foot inside the mists covering the swamp when a mysterious fog set in. By the time it had cleared, the Hylian girl realised that something was amiss. Neither Grave, who was behind her, nor Raw Onion, who was in front of her, were anywhere in sight. All that was there, as far as the eye could see, were the black, tar-like waters and rotted plants.
"Raw Onion?!....Grave?!....General?!.....Captain?!...." she continued to call her comrades, one after the other. But other than the distant sounds of insects and frogs, there was no response.
Trudging through the mud that was covering her boots, the archer shouted with all her might: GRAVE!....RAW ONION!...WHERE ARE YOU?!" But no matter how much she strained herself, this only produced a twisted echo, as if her own voice was mocking her.
Stopping in her tracks for a moment, the blonde girl went silent. Hopelessly looking around, she called out timidly: "....Raw Onion?" But the result was the same. There was no one there to offer her a reply, no one to offer her aid, no one to offer her comfort....She was truly alone.
Her heart pounding in her chest, the thief cautiously proceeded onward. The mud was now reaching her knees. It was odd. She was certain that this part of the swamp was no deeper than what she was walking on before. Yet, tried as she might, her legs continued to submerge deeper into the depths of the swamp...
....Tried as she might, the people she grew to care for always abandoned her. She knew it wasn't their fault, that they didn't mean to do that. But all the same, they left her behind, left her alone to fend for herself. The girl didn't know what was worse: when she saw them die right in front of her eyes or when they just disappeared without a trace, never to be heard from again. She didn't know what was worse: goodbyes that came too early or not being able to say goodbye at all...
...Her sinking was also getting worse. The waters were reaching her waist and it was getting increasingly harder to dislodge her feet from the dark, wet soil. The thief started to sob...and became surprised when she realised she was doing so. What was wrong with her?! It was just a bit of water! She had gotten out of far worse situations than this! She could escape!...
...But she could never escape her fate. Every time that it seemed like happiness was finally within her grasp, destiny saw it fit to snatch it away. Every time that it seemed like she found people she could care for and that would care for her in return, someone or something was always there to take them away. In the end, no matter how many dangers she survived, no matter how many obstacles she overcame, she was always alone and miserable in the end...
...Her present situation was also quite miserable. She was now submerged up to her chest and could hardly take any steps farther. Though she held up her arms, waving them to signal for help, there was no one there to come to her aid. Tears now flowed down her cheeks in a constant stream, agony tearing her apart. She wanted out of these waters, out of this misery!...
....But she could never leave. After all, it wasn't like she hadn't tried time and time again. She could never succeed, so what was the point of even trying?.....What was the point of even living?
Finally, using the last remnants of her strength and will, she threw herself onto a small nearby rock. Clinging onto it, with all but her head and arms submerged in the black depths, Lyra began to weep uncontrollably. Her spirit was utterly crushed....she just didn't care anymore. She wanted to submerge her head in the swamp and drown. If it could bring her even a moment of respite from this wretchedness, this desolation, it would be worth it. Perhaps, if she died, then she could see her friends again....perhaps then, she wouldn't have to be so alone anymore....
"E....everyone...." she said with a broken voice, turning her head to glance around her one more in desperation. But it was then that she realised that there was something else clinging onto the same rock....
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Lyra screamed as she came face to face with a skeleton. Her head bolting upwards, she panted heavily as she took a more careful look. Indeed, they were another person's remains, their bony appendages holding on in the same fashion that hers were. But what was even more amazing was what they held...
Firmly placed on the rock, the tips of what were once hands wrapped around it, was a musical instrument — an ocarina. In spite of its simplistic design, the mere sight of it was breath-taking, an end result of excellent craftsmanship. In the midst of the black and desolate waters, it radiated almost like the sun at its brightest. Most amazingly of all, even though it must have been there for a long time, the moisture hadn't even dented it — it looked as pristine as the day it was made.
Having calmed down at this wondrous sight, the Hylian glanced again at the skeletal remains beside her. Whoever they were, they didn't drown. They still died, but even in their last breaths, they held onto the instrument....held onto their last bit of hope.
This made the archer wonder.....what if it wasn't everyone else who had abandoned her? What if, by giving up, she was inadvertently abandoning them? Could she really do that? Could she really die, never to see the others again? Never getting to see whether Captain Crow's training paid off? Never getting to taste Raw Onion's delicious meals? Never getting to see...
Suddenly, she heard that voice again, the one that spoke to her during the battle. But this time, she could recall what it said with clarity. She could recognise it....it was Grobdum: "I knowz I didn’t do da right ting, but maybe…Maybe we kin find it togethah one day."
"Gobbo...." the blonde girl said staidly to herself. She reached out for the ocarina. Pulling it out of the skeleton's hold, she nevertheless managed to do so without displacing the remains. The thief had never played an instrument in her life. Nevertheless, she blew into it. She hoped that its sound could do what her voice could not...and reach out from the mists.
Quote:Items used:
Goddess' Fortune, Ocarina
Re: Secondary Saga - Phase 5 (SoS) - Storyteller - 09-03-2015
Flickering patches of light flashed in front of those still standing in the muck.
Mud. Pulpy, sludgy, disgusting mud, it covered them all, head to toe.
Those who were once together, had become separated. And those who were once standing, had fallen to a knee, or had plunged deeper into the swallowing depths of sorrow.
It was a slippery slope and Isaac’s eyes dimmed with ernest grief as the soles of his shoes stuck to the ground. Despair didn’t dwell long, as within him, the willpower of his goal swelled within him.
And another, as Christa’s slow sinking began to be released by the monstrous sinkhole that was this damned place. As the muck sucked her in, she couldn’t help to think that some people felt sorrow in the place of fear, sorrow of regret. However, she noticed she felt nothing, except a simple kiss of relief.
And another, as Lyra’s tune carried on the air with melancholy notes as the female elf remembered all she knew, deciding that nothing was worth forgetting.
Raw Onion, Grobdum, and Abner both braved past the reeking slime, as they were showered in brushmarks of clay that marked their face in patterns of war.
Top-Man, Klaud, Clayton, and Crow, while all separate, were delivered from the slow sinking that would surely have meant their end.
Richtofen and Pinocchio both survive, gasping for breath as at the very last second, the air touched their lips and each drank in the sweet, musky air, as though it were warm honey on their lungs.
Those who remained sinking, their titanic impact imprinted on those who stood in the stilled mud, while across the fog, traversing the swamps and desolate land, were those who fell to the war waged by swamp.
A nephilim, who had journeyed with a fellow vampire friend and put all the world’s effort into the passionate empathy he felt for his friends.
A soldier, dedicated to his work, loved ones, and lost sorrows.
An undead man who would not live again, plunged into the sorrowful waters and drowned beneath the still waters and silent waves.
The man working to free an entire solar system.
And the robot who acted on more curiosity than man.
All were the fallen, those who had given their lives, only to have them taken by the Swamp of Sadness.
Quote:Phase six will start tomorrow! Phase six will last at least four days as well. Thank you again, everyone.
I’m deeply sorry you had to wait for all of this, but I am glad we were able to get it up the same day we planned. It’s been very hard having to eliminate some wonderful character’s, writers, and additions to the saga, but without further ado, here’s it!
[spoiler]Injuries/Casualties:
Isaac received a moderate injury.
Christa receives a minor injury.
Lyra receives a minor injury.
Raw Onion has a minor injury.
Abner received a minor injury.
Top man received a minor injury.
IRIS has fallen.
Klaud has received a minor injury.
Crow has received a minor injury.
Clayton is Uninjured.
Grobdum is a beast. Uninjured.
Richtofen has received a minor injury.
Grave has fallen.
Jan has fallen.
Pinocchio has received a moderate injury.
Urg has fallen.
Roger Krugman has fallen.
For those who were disqualified due to inactivity, let me know if you would like to personalize your send-off and I would be happy to put in some effort to help you make it the way you would like.[/spoiler]
Secondary Saga Phase 6 - A Ghostly Finale - Gildarts - 09-03-2015
Not even the soft sound of chirping crickets rattled through the stagnant air.
Thick, heavy breaths poured in to align with the steady beating within her chest. Drums. Christa followed the sound, only to find that the roaring blasts could only be heard in her own eardrums. Blood ran through her in contained streams, flooding her body and rushing oxygen to her deprived muscles at an impossible pace. Rapid, and fueled by the flutters of fear.
It was dark. She was alone. Shapes and shadows all blurred together with the shifting movement when she prompted her feet to carry on. Faint and beckoning laughter drifted in on wind that never whispered over her skin. Occasionally, the woman would glance past her shoulder, trying to find its source, only to have the scratchy, supernatural sounds lead her closer... closer... closer... to its origin.
Crack!
Finally, with the crushing of a twig, Christa only now noticed that the murky swamp water no longer squeaked beneath her toes. The whites of her eyes flashed up as she swirled around with her pistol at the ready to greet the sound, assuming it was her worst fears coming to life.
Instead of meeting a reaper of death, Christa withheld her finger from the trigger as the person revealed themselves, still donned in shadows. Slowly, stress unwound her cramping index from the metallic trip.
“Klaud?” Her own voice wavered, sounding hesitant and nothing like herself.
Klaud shivered in her arms as Christa tossed down her sights and welcomed a painful hug. Both friends -never so sentimental perhaps in their entire lives- welcomed the presence of one another.
“Are you alright?” Christa asked Klaud, before swiftly turning around, alerted by more sounds of broken twigs in the same shadowed darkness.
Mud-covered allies crept together to form a circle around the united Klaud and Christa, who had parted their warm embrace, but remained close to one another. Klaud didn’t utter a word, for a shaken expression spoke on her features where the never-formed words had failed.
Meanwhile, Christa replaced her reassured expression that a friend had made it, with one of determination to inspire the group of survivors. The leader's grip on the Beretta grew with her frenzied eyes suddenly narrowed as she skimmed over the group whose faces were nearly hidden by the moonless night.
Those who now remained:
A hunter, deadly, cunning, and ever-manipulative.
A scientist, maddened by the change of time, and driven by his own thirst for knowledge.
A robot, top tier, who has recorded it all and spread the hardships of their journey to the world.
A wooden boy, whose nose extended, but his curiosity never failed.
A Pegasus, new-found chef, and brave soul.
A general, a woman, a fierce opponent and a friend.
A pirate captain, hearty and adventurous, lost in a sea of green.
A soldier of the Empire, a smoker, a rival and a friend.
A traitor, the goblin, who had waged war again and again. Probably still spiteful about that spider.
A young elf, wielding arrows, compassion, and one who soothes any and all doubt.
A man, master of blood and wisdom.
All lead here to this exact place amid the mass chaos of the endless forest. And little did Christa know, she herself, considered them all to be friends.
Quote: Congratulations to all those who have made it this far, and Welcome to phase six!
Phase six will last a little under a week, but it will also be split into two parts.
The first part will be everyone catching up, and the second part... Well, I won’t spoil what is in store.
notes for this phase:
*Your character was lead to this part by either themselves, or Ghost girl (Christa was lead by ghost girl, it is just enticingly vague)*
*Optional: You too, can do a run-down list of what the survivors mean to your character. I included it because I thought it would be cool (for you) to see how Christa may perceive them. Plus, I personally find it says a lot between the lines.
The deadline is the ninth- *with no exceptions!* (September 9th!) There are a few reasons I made this the longest phase:
1. This will be a hard phase. Plain and simple. But as long as you interact at your best, I think everyone could do really well.
2. It's going to be split down the middle. This means part 1 will be recovering from the swamp and everyone's sacrifices, as well as realigning to complete their mission. Part 2 pretty much speaks for itself.
3. It's the finale, meaning I would rather have good quality and not rush. You all worked hard and were very committed, and that in itself should be rewarded. Plus I think it's just a morale booster (like, oh Gildarts can see that more time = more time for me to compose my best writing ever ;) ). Let me know if you have any questions, you all are amazing, keep it up!
Lastly. Exemplary bonuses will be delivered via PM. And the expectations for this round are still competitive, but no idea is out of the question. Have fun this phase, enjoy interacting with the other secondaries, and of course guessing the mysteries of Omni!
Happy Writing!
-Gildarts