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+--- Thread: La Cazadora, La Soldadera, y La Soñolienta Ciudad (/showthread.php?tid=4163)
La Cazadora, La Soldadera, y La Soñolienta Ciudad - Proto Man - 05-04-2017
I walk a lonely road, the only road that I have ever known.
The woman came to a sudden stop. In front of her, the road suddenly dropped off into a fog-laced oblivion. Bent pieces of rebar stuck out and chunks of concrete and asphalt hung loosely above the abyss, as if some giant creature had taken a haphazard bite out of the world.
Behind her, she heard the familiar shuffle of deformed feet on pavement. The chorus of wet thumps and the haggard breath of the creatures hounded her wherever she went.
My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me.
But hadn’t she been in this spot before? This felt too familiar.
Reaching down to her belt, the woman popped the clasp on her sidearm and closed her slender fingers around the grip of the Desert Eagle. She wanted to cry, but there was no ammunition in her tear ducts. Even if that wasn’t the case, the meds didn’t let her get overly emotional. As she slipped the gun free, she caught the sight of the fog that seemed to be thickening around her. Through the haze, dark shapes shifted and shuddered.
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating.
At least four of them out there in the haze. They traveled in packs, though. Sordid mobs of trembling monsters that sputtered bile and gnashed their teeth like famished hyenas. Someone could usually outrun or outmaneuver them, but once they had the scent, they didn’t stop their pursuit until put out of their misery.
And even if you slew a dozen of them, there were always more of them. They were but one of the many, innumerable revenants that haunted the streets and boulevards of this desolate city of broken dreams and sleepless nights.
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me.
Her finger slipped around the trigger as she lifted the gun and pressed the end of the barrel against her temple.
In the distance, she heard the beginning wails of the air raid sirens.
Till then, I walk alone.
The rapport of a fifty-caliber handgun rang through the streets of Silent Hill.
***
Mireya Vasquez limped into the grocery store and pulled the broken automatic door shut behind her. A beat later, she slid a broken broom handle through the door’s pull bars. Just a split-second later, something smacked into the doors, causing both to sag inward a few inches before the wooden shaft kept them from opening any further.
Stumbling away into the darkness of the store, Mireya blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted.
“A la verga,” she muttered beneath her breath as she looked around the interior of the building. “Where’d you go?” Without responding, the woman’s companion stepped out from behind an aisle and waved her hand. “How are you so fast?” Mireya asked once she was close enough.
“High school and college athletics,” the human replied. “Track and volleyball. Cardio works wonders.”
Mireya shook her head. “I spent two years hunting and trapping in the Tangled Green. You ever chase down and bag a shoveltusk?”
The other woman smiled but offered no rebuttal to her companion. “That’s not going to hold forever. They noise will attract more of the shamblers and probably a few other things we definitely don’t want to dance with tonight. Can you spot anyway out of this place?”
The half-night elf gave a short nod before leaning around to get a better view of the rear half of the store. Mostly ransacked, the supermercado stretched back for another thirty yards. If there was any back exit, Mireya didn’t have a clear line of sight on it. “Nada. Need to look more.” She whispered as she retrieved her kukri from her belt and started to creep her way into the back of the market.
As they reached the back wall of the building, Mireya swept left and then right before spotting the outline of a door in the shadows. “There.” She whispered as a loud crash at the front of the store told them that it was time to move.
RE: La Cazadora, La Soldadera, y La Soñolienta Ciudad - Proto Man - 05-04-2017
The pair of women crashed out through the backdoor of the market. Without needing words, they rushed around to the side of the nearby dumpster and quickly pushed the garbage-filled metal crate in front of the exit.
With a few moments reprieve gained for the pair, they both collapsed against the wall of the adjacent building and tried to catch their breath.
Four months earlier…
The Tangled Green was a quiet place. It was one of the constant that Mireya had grown to appreciate in the years since her travels with Proto Man. While random ‘things’ often happened—disrupting the usual order—they often faded away after a few weeks. In a verse comprised of jungles, mountains, and rivers, it was hard to create a large enough shock to disrupt the status quo. Only the Blight had come close, and memories of that travesty were hard to come by in most of the verse’s residents.
This was the Omniverse. Time was an abstract concept.
Mireya’s quaint little community operated as nicely as it always had, with her oddball neighbors supporting one another in their farming and mercantile endeavors. The half-night elf had even built a few additional buildings and taken to raising a small handful of animals. Nothing as serious as cattle, but she had a vast array of rabbits, chickens, and a pair of llamas that kept her entertained when the moogles got too busy organizing their shipment timetables.
On one such lazy morning, Mireya awoke to a gentle ping on the small piece of electronic equipment she kept in her home. Slipping out from her bed, she snatched her robe from the nearby hook and slipped it on as she traversed her bedroom. The beeping had subsided by the time she crouched down and tapped the screen of the Dataverse uplink. After a slight pause, the screen light up to show that she’d received a message from Darkshire.
After a few more taps, the contents of the electronic missive appeared on her screen.
Attn: All Darkshire Defenders
Rumors swirl of a large army amassing in the interior of the Pale Moors. Reports speak of an upstart prime who seeks to attack our city at the behest of our nemesis, Count Dracula. If you are receiving this message, it is because you are either a fully-fledged Defender of our fair city or someone who has stood for us in the past.
We humbly ask for your assistance in our time of need.
Yours,
Dobson Skendor and the Darkshire Council
“By Elune’s tit!”
Mireya brushed the sleep from her eyes and made her way out of the bedroom. She slipped through the hallway and into the room that functioned as both her tool shed and her armory. With a swift motion, she slid a rack of hammers and lumber axes to the wayside. Behind them, her ‘hunting gear’ hung on the back wall. A pair of kukris, a poleax, a bow, and a quarrel of polished arrows hunk on hooks. Mireya kept the equipment cleaned and polished, just in case anything big came stomping through their little slice of Green.
While she had felt uncomfortable in Darkshire, she nevertheless felt a small connection with the city. In the whole of the Pale Moors, it had been the only place with a shred of civility. People called it ‘the bulwark’, and they were right. Darkshire, miserable as it was, kept the rest of the Pale Moors corked into its own verse. The last thing Mireya needed was for the city to collapse and for the Moors to start exporting more Blights to its neighboring verses.
With her equipment still in sight, the hunter-turned-farmer took a few steps to the left and swung open the dusty chest that contained the reinforced leathers that she wore in the wilds.
“Hello, Beautiful,” the woman whispered as she lifted up an arm guard still sporting a few splotches of dried blood.
***
Two verses and time unknown removed from the half-night elf, a woman clad in chainmail armor drove her blade through the slobber-filled maw of a ghoul. The creature continued to lash out at her for a few moments, even managing to rake its claws against her chest plate before falling limp against her weapon.
Tearing the sword free from the beast’s corpse, Sergeant Abigail Reckner stumbled backwards and lost her balance. Was the battle close to being over?
Some fresh blood dribbled down the right side of the woman’s head. Two hours earlier, an errant blow from a deformed monster had dented her helmet and nearly cracked her skull. There had to be some fractures, but the worst had been the chunk of her scalp torn by the twisted, collapsed steel. Aside from the blow to the head, a few sturdy hits had left her with bruises across her chest and legs. A diving hellion had hooked its claws into her right shoulder, torn apart the armor, and dislocated the joint. Had it not been for the stellar aim of a nearby crossbowman, the soldier would have been either thrown from the walls or dragged off for a worse fate than a plunge to her death.
“They’re falling back!”
The scream, somewhat muted by the ringing in her ears, brought a smile to the battered woman’s visage.
Cool. I think… I think I’ll take a breather now.
RE: La Cazadora, La Soldadera, y La Soñolienta Ciudad - Proto Man - 05-13-2017
Four months ago…
Because the concept of time in the Omniverse made about as much sense as an icicle in an oven, Mireya arrived in Darkshire nearly three weeks after the cessation of hostilities. There had been plenty of people sporting blackeyes, slings, and crutches who were more than willing to share with her stories about the heroic deeds of their peers. For her part, the half-night elf nodded along and listened, although she had sworn more than a few times when she found herself alone later that first evening in the town.
Still a Defender of Darkshire, she found herself politely asked to help out with the process of cleaning up the more damaged regions of the town. Her main duty in those next few days? Helping to ensure proper ‘disposal’ of the deceased, both the townsfolk and the attackers. From what she could gather, the old mayor had been some sort of necromancer, and the conclusion of his tenure had left the citizens sour on the notion of the black art. As a result, corpses were no longer buried by the city—they were set to the flame. That way, friend or foe alike couldn’t turn the dead against the citizens of Darkshire.
The whole place still stank of blood, shit, and rotting corpses. The frequent bonfires both in the town square and in areas around the town did their part to stymie the stench, but every time the fires went up, they blanketed the town in a light layer of ash and soot. That made it harder to breath and harder to see. Mireya heard more than a few people complain that the constant fires reminded them of Silent Hill.
She’d never heard of the place before, but her time as a makeshift citizen of Darkshire had filled her with more than a few stories about the former sister city of Darkshire. A prosperous ‘tourist town’ (when such things could have existed in the Pale Moors), Silent Hill had gone silent during the era of Diablo. After the Battle at the Black Gate, the town had resurfaced for a short while before vanishing behind a deep veil of fog.
With only a few transmissions coming out of the town, the place was some sort of city-sized boogeyman for people. Mireya wasn’t quite sure why the citizens of the Pale Moors needed to create more fucking boogeymen, but they had a whole city of ‘em. Tales of wailing souls and shuffling creatures that tried to lure people into the fog. Supposedly a one-way ride, apparently two people had emerged from the fog alive—Shang Tsung and Atelos. More than just escaping from Silent Hill, the story went that they had met the creator of the Omniverse after finding a passageway in the ruins of the city.
After their quest, the pair had played integral roles in the transfer of power, and Mireya was almost certain she had met them at one point during time with Blues. Either way, the two were both too busy dealing with the fallout of the attack, but the secondhand tales of their adventure had interested the half-night elf more than she thought they would.
After her fifth day in the town, Mireya returned to the barracks, where she had been provided a nice cot to sleep. With her Dataverse device in hand, she composed a short email to a friend close to hear heart.
Blues,
Hola, es Mireya. It’s been a long time, and I haven’t heard anything about you or the mouse.
I’m in Darkshire again – have you heard of the attack? They beat back the bad guys, but a lot of good people got hurt. I figured that something like this would be the frontline for you. I’m sure you’re somewhere, but if you have access to this account, you should get back to me. I’ve been working here, since I missed all the fighting (how was I supposed to know what should have been a three-day journey would wind up being three weeks?).
Anyway, I’ve heard a lot of people talk about some place called Silent Hill. Apparently, it was some town that used to thrive in this place. I feel like you probably would know more than me, since you’re always hooked into the Dataverse with that electronic head of yours. Anyway, I guess some of the people in charge here traveled there and wound up in the personal domain of the mastermind behind this place. Shang Tsung and Atelos – you remember those guys, right?
I really wanted to meet with them, but I get turned away. I guess I shouldn’t be offended, since they run the place.
I’m considering seeing if their story is true or not. I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s worthwhile to investigate. I feel like I’ve spent the better part of the last two years just passing time. The farm and the little village we have is doing well, but I feel like something’s missing.
So, I think I’m going to go see what there is to discover in this place. It can’t be any worse than the Black Gate.
Until we meet again.
Setting aside the device, Mireya rolled onto her side and drifted to sleep. As the dreams overtook her, she pondered what the future might hold for her.
***
Four months to day after her arrival in Darkshire, Mireya Vasquez found herself diving behind a dumpster as a hose-like burst of rancid, black bile struck its steel face and immediately started to corrode the thick material.
Leaning her head against the back of the dumpster, the half-night elf looked down and realized that an errant mass of the bile had struck her poleax and already chewed through half of the handle and head.
“Puñeta!”
RE: La Cazadora, La Soldadera, y La Soñolienta Ciudad - Proto Man - 06-23-2018
“You alive, Reckner?”
The darkness shuddered. Cracks of light infiltrated the night as Abigail felt someone place a hand on her shoulder and give her another gentle tousle. When she opened her eyes, the world stayed a blurred haze for the next several moments.
Silent Hill!
Abigail Reckner, vision still foggy, jolted up off the ground and reached for the sword at her belt. She brushed against the scabbard, but there was no familiar handle for her to grasp.
“You’re okay,” the voice next to her muttered as a hand patted her on the shoulder.
After rubbing her eyes to clear away the residual haze and give her brain a few more moments to process, Abigail glanced to her left to see a young man crouched next to her. Perhaps in his early twenties, his hair was a disheveled heap on his head, and his outfit—baggy clothes and a gold-trimmed red hoodie—were in a state of disrepair. Despite looking like a street urchin, he had a disarming expression on his face, and Abigail certainly didn’t feel as uncomfortable as she should have. In a sense, he almost felt familiar.
“Who are you?” She asked before straining to stand. The Youth leaned forward and helped her make it to her feet before he gave her a shrug of his shoulders.
“Forgot that a while back,” he replied in a matter-of-fact tone that belied more questions than answers.
“You called me by my name.”
He nodded his head. “Yea, I guess I do, huh?” He furrowed his brow for a moment. “I guess I always know the names, though.”
The solider scowled. “You’re aware that doesn’t make sense, right?” She wanted to be angrier, but the kid seemed too familiar, like someone she couldn’t get mad at.
“You’ve seen where we are, right?” He asked with a faint grin. “A town, trapped in demon fog, trapped in a blighted wasteland, trapped in a pocket dimension… It only stops making sense if you stop to appreciate it.”
Abigail scowled as she turned her focus to the environment around them. From what she could tell, it was a shuttered gas station—the wall-sized windows were rickety, half-broken shutters. The missing or broken pieces of metal allowed moonlight to cut into the building. Shelves that may have one housed bags of chips or overpriced candy had been pushed against the windows. “Where are we?”
“Shell Gas,” the young man replied coolly as he walked over to the counter. Leaning over for a moment, he turned around and presented the woman with a chocolate bar. “Have you eaten lately?” He asked as Abigail took the food. When she paused to glimpse at the other side, the unkempt youth chuckled. “It’s not expired… none of this stuff seems to go bad. Except the dairy. Silent Hill ain’t dairy land… don’t do it.”
The soldier nodded her head but kept it to herself that she was taking a glimpse at the ingredients and the nutritional information. The boy in the red hoodie didn’t need to know that she liked to maintain a draconian physical and nutritional regime. Given the extra cardio, she figured that some chocolate wouldn’t hurt.
“I was with someone,” Abigail spoke after eating a bite of the chocolate. The bar was one hundred and fifty percent stale, but that didn’t stop her from taking a second and a third as she waited for a response.
After staring blankly at a broken shutter sheet, the youth scratched the side of his head as he nodded. “Maybe?”
“Maybe?” Abigail scowled. “What do to you mean, maybe?”
The boy shook his head. “I mean maybe, okay?” He added with a little less chill in his voice as he pressed his palm against his head. “Stuff gets cloudy, and I can’t always remember the details. It’s not intentional. Just gets hard to remember. Hard to make sense in the fog.”
“I assume this is metaphorical fog?” Abigail mumbled.
“Both, yea,” the Youth replied with a faint chuckle. “I picked you up… the Super 8?”
Abigail scowled. “Grocery store, I remember a grocery store.”
Her acquaintance nodded. “Yea, ‘Convenience Store 8’, that’s what it’s called.” He nodded as he fished into his pocket for what seemed to be some gum. “Alley. It was dark, though. I plucked you up, and we flew her.”
“Metaphorically, I imagine?” The soldier chuckled.
The Youth shook his head. “Nah, literally. It’s quicker that way,” he turned around, and suddenly, he was gone and there was a crow flapping toward the woman’s head.
With a yelp, Abigail ducked as the big black bird soared over her head. A moment later, she heard a crash and saw the young man lying against a collapsed metal rack.
“Bigger, though,” he muttered as he held out his arms. “I think.”
Abigail scowled as she turned away from the strange yet familiar young man and glimpsed through the broken shutters. With the fog the way it was, she couldn’t see more than ten feet beyond the store front. “How long have you been here?”
“Uhh,” the Youth replied as he stumbled away from the collapsed racks and found his way next to her. “In this building? Or…?”
“Were you born in the Omniverse?” Abigail asked. “Or did you arrive here, Kid with No Name?”
“I think I had a life before this,” he muttered, despite the clear frustration that simmered on his young, dirt-smeared features. “I remember two wolves… and also coffee shops and space stations. But this part of town? This is Old Silent Hill, and I think I’ve been here a few weeks now.” He pointed into the fog. “I got a friend.” He smiled genuinely for the first time in their encounter. “A lady, you’d probably like her a lot. Strong-willed, ass-kicker type, and she was trying to investigate.”
“Investigate what?”
“This place is full of bad juju,” the Youth answered. “She…” He ran a hand through his hair and scowled as he played a game of mental hide and seek for a few brief moments. “She wanted to figure out why. We got stuck here, you see.”
“So you were outside the fog?”
The Youth’s eyes light up. “Yea!” He declared as he smacked his hands together. “That’s right. All those years ago, the four of us…” Then he suddenly trailed off, his eyes alive one moment and glossed over and hazy the next.
“You have two other friends?”
He shook his head and wanted to speak once again, but he was interrupted by the wail of the air raid sirens. The noise seemed to trigger something buried deep beneath the surface, because panic spread across the young man’s features. He shook his head and rushed to the door. His hands scrambled through the pockets of his hoodie for the key. Abigail, wincing at how loud the noise was, glanced outside the compromised shutters and noticed that it was getting dark outside. “Too quick for a sunset,” she muttered.
The door opened with a jingle from the bell hanging just behind it. The Youth tossed a keyring to Abigail.
“Where are you going? It’s nighttime,” the woman asked.
The Youth was wide-eyed. “Hide or run,” he declared. “The sirens bring the dark. You think those shambling monsters were scary? Hide or run. This is the real Silent Hill.” The door clicked shut before Abigail could protest, and then, before she could process what was going on, the sirens died and blackness swallowed the world around her.
When the ephemeral darkness faded, the world around Abigail was not as it should be.