06-05-2018, 05:41 PM
The barrack’s wall trembled, the smooth white walls shuddering only slightly compared to the titanic thump that echoed in the hallway outside. The woman’s dark eyes narrowed and her hands found their familiar grip of her oversized weapon’s handle. Without looking away from the doorway, she spoke to the two secondaries who had only moments ago been in the middle of a mindful exercise.
“Stay here. I’m gonna see what it’s all about.”
With that, she made her way to the side of the doorway, peeking out into the maelstrom of flashbulbs and grabbing hands, Syntech employees and news people scrambling to both stop and stoke the growing inferno of passion that happened in the main chamber of the Dante’s Abyss superstructure.
Gilgamesh, who she knew by the softly uttered rumors of so many would-be raiders, was being dragged away from a young boy, clad in red armor who was equally being restrained by the local security. She shuddered for a moment, thinking of the fragile hands that clung to the prime’s clothing. The image of their shattering bones, their winking lives, flashed through her mind. She knew that the Golden King would think nothing of ripping them into their component organs if there wasn’t the threat of a ban looming overhead.
The young man’s physical strength was evident as well, almost six full-grown security people unable to really control him despite their strained faces and scrambling hands. These bastards were barely capable of keeping a wall of photographers from bum-rushing a celebrity, and yet here they clung to primes like ants trying to kill a rat.
With a hiss and a clang, a security door snapped down, sequestering the two from each other before the really rough stuff could start. When the young man relaxed and jerked away from the guards, still yammering something, she let out a sigh of relief. Her hammer sagged in her hands as every muscle in her body unclenched, and she cast a glance back to her friends and nodded reassuringly. “I think it’s over, whatever the hell it was.”
She cocked her head to the hallway, “I’m gonna go ask around, see what was up. You guys cool to hang here for a second?” When her companions, seemingly keen to stay away from the bustle, confirmed that they would be fine, she strode into the eerie quiet that followed in the wake of the commotion.
The young boy and his armor were now slumped against the wall across from a large, cartoonishly anthropomorphized mouse. It wasn’t the biggest giant rodent she’d ever seen, but it certainly looked the friendliest. He wore giant yellow shoes that she might expect to see on a clown, a black shirt with yellow buttons and white trim, and red trousers with some kind of blue strap keeping them anime-style fresh. Neither of them looked particularly emboldened by the exchange with Gilgamesh, both wearing dour faces and despondent postures slumped up against the wall.
When the crowd had mostly dispersed out of either fear or boredom, she walked over to the big mouse slowly. Despite being relatively large for a mouse, it was still only about a third of her size, and so when knelt down beside it and offered a weak smile. “Yo, I heard the commotion. You all good?”
The mouse looked up and responded with a chipper, high-pitched voice that belied his somber mood. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine!” he followed it up with a short but peppy laugh. “There’s just a lot of history between us and that guy, that’s all.”
The woman pivoted and joined the mouse, plopping down beside it on the wall. Her metal armor scraped and whined as she settled in, and Sledge’s Hammer hit the ground with a clang. She propped her arms on her knees and looked up to the ceiling with distant focus. “Yeah, I know that feeling, dude.” She offered her rugged hand to the rodent, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Mickey Mouse!” he replied enthusiastically, taking up her hand in a giant white glove. There hadn’t been too many cartoon style people in the Dunes, and this was the first time she had ever made any contact with their more disproportionate features. The glove was soft and yielding, as if it was made of stuffing and cloth, and yet it had the firmness of something much more real. “What’s your name?”
She offered a smirk and returned her attention to the oversized ceiling panels. “Don’t have one. Dude that created me never gave me one.”
Mickey’s eyes opened a little wider than their already massive frames. “Oh, you’re a secondary?” he asked innocently.
A rough chuckle echoed from her throat. “Not anymore.” She shook her head, her dreads tumbling about as she did so. “It’s complicated, but I’m a prime now.” She gestured to the still-closed security gate. “So what was the fight over?”
Mickey’s scowl returned, but with new conviction. “I thought we got rid of Gilgamesh a long time ago. He’s a no-good guy, that’s for sure!”
She nodded knowingly, “Yeah, most of the big names are pretty shitty. But, ya know,” her hand bobbed back and forth in front of her, teetering on the edge of indecision, “not as bad as a lot of the other dudes in charge things out there. His folks get fed. Relatively few are killed in raids by people like the old me.” She shrugged limply. “So, not really awful by Omniverse standards.”
A fire alit within the mouse, and his relatively mirthful tone shifted towards something darker. “He uses people for his own gain!”
The bandit’s lips curled down into a “meh” pose and she lifted her palms up apathetically. “Eh. Seems like everyone does that. Palpatine built the entire Empire on that concept. Same goes for all the dudes in Camelot. People in power only want power because they get something out of it.” She gestured widely to the sprawling structure before them. “Hell, even Karl is probably rolling in the omnilium by creating something this big with so many eyes on it.”
“Karl Jak is another one I’d like to get my hands on,” Mickey brooded, his eyebrows curled in anger.
“Whaaaaat?” the nameless woman laughed, “Karl is fuckin’ great!”
Mickey scrambled up to his feet and held his bafflingly large fist up. “This whole thing is built on violence! It’s built on hate! It uses these people just so they can get ground up in his machine!”
The desert warrior laughed again with a hint of bitterness. She looked up at him from her relaxed position with a lingering smile. “They’re primes, Mickey. We’re all primes here. Violence literally doesn’t matter to us. I can fight and die, and trust me I gave that whirl already, and I’ll come out the other side a little woozy with a brand new body.” She looked into his eyes with earnestness, if a bit of condescension, “We don’t face any consequences here, my dude. Nothing we do or say or break or have broken- none of it means anything to us. The only people that are hurt by death are the people that haven’t figured it out yet.” An exceptionally jacked skeleton in purple robes strode by, laughing in a high pitched cackle. “… And I guess people that want to consolidate power for themselves, but fuck those guys.”
She grunted and got up to her feet, now looming over the cartoon mouse with horrible presence. “But do you know who does have to face consequences in this god-forsaken place?” Her finger extended and thrust towards a portly, sweating hot-dog vendor who was in the middle of clumsily dropping a sausage into a bun. “Them. Secondaries. The people this verse and every other verse was built on the backs of.”
“But that’s what I mean!” Mickey retorted, his anger from his encounter with Gilgamesh still not quite out of his system. “Karl Jak and Gilgamesh and all the rest exploit these people for their own means!”
“That guy?” the heavy-metal maiden asked with a perplexed expression. “That dude is selling hot dogs. That’s probably what he was literally made to do. I’m not a huge fan of people just popping off fully realized conscious human beings just so they can pad their concessions staff, but how the hell is that guy being oppressed? He’s working. He’s getting what he needs out of his life. He might not be happiest dude ever, but it’s not like he’s working under the worst conditions or anything. He’s just… a dude. Doing his job, making a few bucks. He’s gonna get to watch the show.” She snapped her fingers crisply, “And that’s the beauty of Dante’s Abyss! The show!”
She spread her arms wide and did an almost whimsical turn in the middle of the hallway, reveling in the glory of the work of art that surrounded her. “Secondaries across all the verse get to watch some primes beat the ever-living shit out of each other! They get to see primes struggle and die. They get to see them try so hard and fail every year! That’s the glory of it all. We used to huddle up around our tiny little TV in the middle of the desert and laugh and hoot and holler because we got to see you bastards fail. We got to see you get your arms ripped off and shit, we got to see you die, just like what happens to us every goddamn day.” Her once-jovial laugh turned somewhat maniacal. “There’s not enough good I can say about this spectacle, man. It does the heart of the downtrodden so good to see their oppressors get stomped to shit.”
“Stay here. I’m gonna see what it’s all about.”
With that, she made her way to the side of the doorway, peeking out into the maelstrom of flashbulbs and grabbing hands, Syntech employees and news people scrambling to both stop and stoke the growing inferno of passion that happened in the main chamber of the Dante’s Abyss superstructure.
Gilgamesh, who she knew by the softly uttered rumors of so many would-be raiders, was being dragged away from a young boy, clad in red armor who was equally being restrained by the local security. She shuddered for a moment, thinking of the fragile hands that clung to the prime’s clothing. The image of their shattering bones, their winking lives, flashed through her mind. She knew that the Golden King would think nothing of ripping them into their component organs if there wasn’t the threat of a ban looming overhead.
The young man’s physical strength was evident as well, almost six full-grown security people unable to really control him despite their strained faces and scrambling hands. These bastards were barely capable of keeping a wall of photographers from bum-rushing a celebrity, and yet here they clung to primes like ants trying to kill a rat.
With a hiss and a clang, a security door snapped down, sequestering the two from each other before the really rough stuff could start. When the young man relaxed and jerked away from the guards, still yammering something, she let out a sigh of relief. Her hammer sagged in her hands as every muscle in her body unclenched, and she cast a glance back to her friends and nodded reassuringly. “I think it’s over, whatever the hell it was.”
She cocked her head to the hallway, “I’m gonna go ask around, see what was up. You guys cool to hang here for a second?” When her companions, seemingly keen to stay away from the bustle, confirmed that they would be fine, she strode into the eerie quiet that followed in the wake of the commotion.
The young boy and his armor were now slumped against the wall across from a large, cartoonishly anthropomorphized mouse. It wasn’t the biggest giant rodent she’d ever seen, but it certainly looked the friendliest. He wore giant yellow shoes that she might expect to see on a clown, a black shirt with yellow buttons and white trim, and red trousers with some kind of blue strap keeping them anime-style fresh. Neither of them looked particularly emboldened by the exchange with Gilgamesh, both wearing dour faces and despondent postures slumped up against the wall.
When the crowd had mostly dispersed out of either fear or boredom, she walked over to the big mouse slowly. Despite being relatively large for a mouse, it was still only about a third of her size, and so when knelt down beside it and offered a weak smile. “Yo, I heard the commotion. You all good?”
The mouse looked up and responded with a chipper, high-pitched voice that belied his somber mood. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine!” he followed it up with a short but peppy laugh. “There’s just a lot of history between us and that guy, that’s all.”
The woman pivoted and joined the mouse, plopping down beside it on the wall. Her metal armor scraped and whined as she settled in, and Sledge’s Hammer hit the ground with a clang. She propped her arms on her knees and looked up to the ceiling with distant focus. “Yeah, I know that feeling, dude.” She offered her rugged hand to the rodent, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Mickey Mouse!” he replied enthusiastically, taking up her hand in a giant white glove. There hadn’t been too many cartoon style people in the Dunes, and this was the first time she had ever made any contact with their more disproportionate features. The glove was soft and yielding, as if it was made of stuffing and cloth, and yet it had the firmness of something much more real. “What’s your name?”
She offered a smirk and returned her attention to the oversized ceiling panels. “Don’t have one. Dude that created me never gave me one.”
Mickey’s eyes opened a little wider than their already massive frames. “Oh, you’re a secondary?” he asked innocently.
A rough chuckle echoed from her throat. “Not anymore.” She shook her head, her dreads tumbling about as she did so. “It’s complicated, but I’m a prime now.” She gestured to the still-closed security gate. “So what was the fight over?”
Mickey’s scowl returned, but with new conviction. “I thought we got rid of Gilgamesh a long time ago. He’s a no-good guy, that’s for sure!”
She nodded knowingly, “Yeah, most of the big names are pretty shitty. But, ya know,” her hand bobbed back and forth in front of her, teetering on the edge of indecision, “not as bad as a lot of the other dudes in charge things out there. His folks get fed. Relatively few are killed in raids by people like the old me.” She shrugged limply. “So, not really awful by Omniverse standards.”
A fire alit within the mouse, and his relatively mirthful tone shifted towards something darker. “He uses people for his own gain!”
The bandit’s lips curled down into a “meh” pose and she lifted her palms up apathetically. “Eh. Seems like everyone does that. Palpatine built the entire Empire on that concept. Same goes for all the dudes in Camelot. People in power only want power because they get something out of it.” She gestured widely to the sprawling structure before them. “Hell, even Karl is probably rolling in the omnilium by creating something this big with so many eyes on it.”
“Karl Jak is another one I’d like to get my hands on,” Mickey brooded, his eyebrows curled in anger.
“Whaaaaat?” the nameless woman laughed, “Karl is fuckin’ great!”
Mickey scrambled up to his feet and held his bafflingly large fist up. “This whole thing is built on violence! It’s built on hate! It uses these people just so they can get ground up in his machine!”
The desert warrior laughed again with a hint of bitterness. She looked up at him from her relaxed position with a lingering smile. “They’re primes, Mickey. We’re all primes here. Violence literally doesn’t matter to us. I can fight and die, and trust me I gave that whirl already, and I’ll come out the other side a little woozy with a brand new body.” She looked into his eyes with earnestness, if a bit of condescension, “We don’t face any consequences here, my dude. Nothing we do or say or break or have broken- none of it means anything to us. The only people that are hurt by death are the people that haven’t figured it out yet.” An exceptionally jacked skeleton in purple robes strode by, laughing in a high pitched cackle. “… And I guess people that want to consolidate power for themselves, but fuck those guys.”
She grunted and got up to her feet, now looming over the cartoon mouse with horrible presence. “But do you know who does have to face consequences in this god-forsaken place?” Her finger extended and thrust towards a portly, sweating hot-dog vendor who was in the middle of clumsily dropping a sausage into a bun. “Them. Secondaries. The people this verse and every other verse was built on the backs of.”
“But that’s what I mean!” Mickey retorted, his anger from his encounter with Gilgamesh still not quite out of his system. “Karl Jak and Gilgamesh and all the rest exploit these people for their own means!”
“That guy?” the heavy-metal maiden asked with a perplexed expression. “That dude is selling hot dogs. That’s probably what he was literally made to do. I’m not a huge fan of people just popping off fully realized conscious human beings just so they can pad their concessions staff, but how the hell is that guy being oppressed? He’s working. He’s getting what he needs out of his life. He might not be happiest dude ever, but it’s not like he’s working under the worst conditions or anything. He’s just… a dude. Doing his job, making a few bucks. He’s gonna get to watch the show.” She snapped her fingers crisply, “And that’s the beauty of Dante’s Abyss! The show!”
She spread her arms wide and did an almost whimsical turn in the middle of the hallway, reveling in the glory of the work of art that surrounded her. “Secondaries across all the verse get to watch some primes beat the ever-living shit out of each other! They get to see primes struggle and die. They get to see them try so hard and fail every year! That’s the glory of it all. We used to huddle up around our tiny little TV in the middle of the desert and laugh and hoot and holler because we got to see you bastards fail. We got to see you get your arms ripped off and shit, we got to see you die, just like what happens to us every goddamn day.” Her once-jovial laugh turned somewhat maniacal. “There’s not enough good I can say about this spectacle, man. It does the heart of the downtrodden so good to see their oppressors get stomped to shit.”