Tavern of the Muses

Resurrection of the Cabal - Prologue

2011-03-24T21:31:00.008-04:00

Prologue One
The Past

The world spun around the young man, moonlight and forest trees blurring together as he frantically, frenetically searched for some kind of purchase while his entire existence began to blur together. Things were moving far too fast for him to feel sick – if he was weak enough for his stomach to twist at this point, then almost certainly he would be torn to pieces by the very forces spinning his world on its axis, reduced to a quivering, puling child...or worse.

He fell to his knees, gripping his head and doing everything he could to shrink away to nothing. No sound escaped his lips, but a thin line of saliva did as his face and body seized and twitched without restriction. Anyone observing this young man in the moonlit clearing might think that he was simply kneeling on the ground, unknowing of the infinite pain and torment that was roiling within his soul at that moment.

Eventually, the twitching subsided and the silent sobs were halted. After kneeling in silence for another minute, the young man stood. From that point on, he – they – would never kneel again. The young man was no longer alone in the clearing. In fact, it could be very easily stated that the young man was no longer a part of the world as we know it. In his place, in his body, instead stood the vessel that held the captured and combined essences of one million demons, a horde of unimaginable proportions and strength.

Unimaginable evil.

The body of the young man looked around. Desecrated bodies, both French and English, lay on all sides. The English, he realized objectively, were once his kinsmen, his family, and their loss was the catalyst for his creation. He supposed he would never really understand what grief did to people, but such was life and death.

The French, though...he had killed them. Their blood was wet on the grass, the trees, and his clothes. Seconds before he had fallen to his knees, he had unleashed such power on them that they never even stood a chance. Skin and bone unknit before his eyes; muscles and blood vessels burst under his attention; eyes and tongues exploded, bodies twitching and falling in a beautiful, macabre, thrilling dance for the boy.

They had brought this on themselves. The young man had only wanted to help, to mend and cure, as was his calling. He had studied for many long years – almost a dozen, even – in order to learn the ways of the white. The man's magic was only for healing, for mending and the promise of tomorrow. He had taken this French prisoner after English forces had wounded him, swearing to heal him and present him to the English for questioning. He had vital information, after all. But the French officer was shrewd, and managed to trick the young man into believing his injuries were worse than they actually were. The young Englishman had tried to cure him, to make him comfortable and well, and this French pig had responded by taking the healer's family captive and escaping.

The young man pursued, of course, but he could not stop the Frenchman from rendezvousing with his party and making good his escape. Before he left, however, he decided to kill the healer's family, leaving their bodies torn and bloody from the medical tools the Frenchman had stolen and used to keep them hostage. Seeing the tools meant for healing and goodness used to such ends, after years of being indoctrinated with the idea that they could only do good, the young man felt something within him...snap, if you will.

Here he stood, a minute later. He had remembered everything he had ever been warned away from about magic – especially that of trading one's soul for power amongst demons. Mind ravaged by grief and confusion, he had opened his soul to all of the demons in the Unreal, calling to them with the most succulent sorrow. None could resist his call, and soon his body become an unholy conglomeration of evil...and power.

He was a new being now. A new, powerful...no, an unstoppable being, with a new agenda and a new way to run things. He would still bring about tomorrow for all, but this time it would be his tomorrow, and not theirs, on the horizon.

Another glance was thrown around the clearing, this one bearing not confusion and fear, but disgust. It was time he left the past behind and made his way to his future, his destiny, with his own power behind him. He supposed he would need a name of some kind, something that the fearful would whisper in the dead of night, and that the forces he bent to his call would worship. He thought upon all of his eldritch, arcane, and eclectic knowledge, and it was with a grim smile that he decided.

Turning on his heel and striding out of the clearing, Legion disappeared into the inky blackness of the autumn night.

---------------

Seven Years Later...

A man strode alone up the path. He was in the middle of a deep forest in northern Britain, a place of untamed wilds and powerful energies. It was chilly; he would be able to see his breath, if there were any light to see by.

The moon was covered by thick, dark clouds, but even so there would have been some light to penetrate these trees. No, what covered this area in darkness was something far more powerful and sinister: it was magic, and not a friendly kind at that. If he listened carefully, the man could hear the sound of thousands of souls, screaming in eternal torment, just beyond the roiling miasma. His lip curled. It was nothing he wasn't used to, but he wasn't particularly fond of the discordant sound. Something his life in Italy had bred in him, probably.

Though the darkness obscured everything from sight, the man was taking no precautions. His finger toyed idly with the amulet around his neck, an original creation of his that used his magic to bend the light around him and render him perfectly invisible. He called it the Chameleonic, and with it he would only be detectable to other mages. Mages that he hoped to meet tonight.

He felt a presence and looked up. Though there had been no sign of it moments before (of course), there now stood a decrepit shack in front of him, small and leaning slightly to one side. It was all the mage could do to keep from scoffing; surely he hadn't been summoned to this piece of filth in the middle of dark nowhere? Did they even know who he was? Perhaps it was best if he introduced himself, and made it clear that he didn't like to be bothered.

Stealing silently to the door, he pushed it lightly. It glided open silently and he stepped over the threshold, holding his breath. He let it out again in a soft sigh, however, when he realized that he was standing in the foyer of a huge hall, a brilliantly lit mansion of marble and dark wood. He looked over his shoulder; still the darkness and the forest. He knew that if he went outside and looked, it would still be the same shack. Some powerful magicks were at work here, and he aimed to find out what they were doing.

“Ahh, it seems you made it,” came what could be called a voice. The man whirled to find himself facing a table, at which was seated six or seven people, genders and faces obscured by thick black cloaks. The one at the head was looking directly at him when it spoke, though his Chameleonic should have been working perfectly. Judging by the surprised motions and sounds of the others at the table, it had been – which meant that the one at the head must be very powerful indeed.

Unlocking the spell, the man stepped forward. The light-bending effect unraveled around him, making him appear before the eyes of those seated at the table. One hand was on his hip in an impudent fashion, his eyebrow quirked along with his lip as he surveyed those around him. None of this was making any sense to him. This place and this situation reeked of amateurs, and yet this mage at the table had seen through his masterpiece with no problems, and this mansion was truly a magnificent use of space-bending magic. So what was going on?

“You must have many questions,” the one at the head of the table said. This time, when he spoke, the previously invisible man listened harder to pick out what was wrong with that voice, and caught it. When the one at the head of the table spoke, it sounded like a hundred voices, speaking and hissing in perfect unison and inflection, the only difference being a slight overlay in sound and volume. The confusion grew in the man as he nodded. “You are Arturo Trapani, yes?”

“That's right,” the man said, straightening up. “He who drops fireballs on people, blah blah blah. Now tell me, why have I been summoned here?”

The figure at the head of the table stood. “Your impudence shall be forgiven, as you are in an unknown situation and will react as you wish. Our name is Legion.” Throwing back his hood, Legion revealed a face that was perfectly unrememberable, and would, with no doubt, slip from Arturo's mind seconds after the young mage looked away. That is, if Arturo had the ability to look away. For him, Legion had defined powerful, defined evil and driven and singular and legendary – things that Arturo the Hellfire had striven to be his entire life. The Scourge of France, the original Army of One, in the same room as the now-humbled mage.

Dropping to one knee, Arturo was unable to keep his voice from wavering as he said, “Your presence honors me, Master Legion. I...I am sorry for my behavior.” If there was one thing he knew about Legion, it was that Legion was merciless and had slain men of Arturo's caliber without so much as a twitch or a provocation. Though Legion had said he was forgiven, Arturo knew that his ice was very thin now, if not completely broken. Still...he had been summoned here, so perhaps he was necessary for one of Legion's machinations. The silence that stretched on was almost unbearable.

“Thank you,” Legion said eventually, “but please sit down. For now, we await the others.” Arturo almost leaped to do so, though Legion used no compulsion to force him. The Hellfire glanced back over his shoulder; he could no longer make out anything beyond the threshold of the shack's door, as though a black sheet had been hung across it. He took a deep breath and almost shuddered with pleasure as he realized that it was simply a wall of impenetrable malevolence. One thing was clear: they were no longer in Britain.

“One more thing,” Legion said suddenly, causing Arturo and more than one of the other mages at the table to start. “If you would, take a robe and hood from the box and put them on.” Arturo obeyed, and was soon seated at the table with the others as a faceless member of the group.

Over the next few hours, they were joined by more and more mages. Arturo was initially surprised when some of the mages emerged from deeper inside the mansion, each looking as confused as he must have, but after a few had come that way, it was revealed that they had entered through buildings and doors as nondescript as the one the Hellfire had entered through. Each was introduced and told to take a robe and sit. The box never seemed to run empty, and there was always an open seat at the table, until there were over a hundred mages seated together at Legion's table.

When they had all been seated and it appeared that no more were coming, Legion stood and cleared his throat. Attention turned to him instantly as he rose up to the height of the table and floated over it. He appeared to be walking as he spoke, though his feet never actually touched the polished wood.

“Brothers and sisters,” he began, regarding those gathered with a gaze that would pierce steel, “I have gathered you all together today because I am not the only one that has been faced with the difficulties that wait for us. Surely you have all taken note of the increase in the movements of the Hunters that curse our people. More and more warlocks like yourselves are slain each week, and with each raid the forces of the Warlock Hunters grow as they push their campaign from village to village. Soon, Warlocks of all skill levels will be outmatched by the sheer numbers of the Hunters.

“I propose a path that will bring us far above them,” Legion continued, twirling on his heel when he reached the center of the table. With a flourish, he presented to them an amulet that appeared from nowhere. It was burnished gold, with a lining of silver and a cobalt stone set in the center. It shone with an eerie light to those that were gifted with the Third Eye, an ability that allowed them to see the magical currents of the world around them. “This is the Amulet of the Cabal. With it, I may communicate freely with anyone else that is wearing one of the same. With a simple push, I may alert all of those wearing one of any danger that has befallen me, and with a small portion of their energy, those wearing an amulet may move to my location and provide assistance to me in my danger.”
He stopped pacing and looked down at the mage in front of him: Arturo, as it happened, who swallowed softly when Legion looked him in the eyes. “Each of you will be given an amulet to wear. Together, we shall be organized into the Warlock's Protective Cabal. As we are, it is impossible for us to stand against the forces of the Hunters for long. We will be erased from the history books, our art and our knowledge cast as sin and devilry to the future. I will not allow our craft to be thrown aside as such!” A roar of agreement came from the mages at the table as they pounded their fists on the wood top, or stamped their feet.

“Together, we will move in safety,” Legion continued, riding the wave of enthusiasm. “Together, we will stand against the forces of the Warlock Hunters! And together, we will make a brighter future, full of magic and enlightenment, and we will never have to fear for our lives again!”

Arturo smiled to himself as Legion's voices were lost in the crashing blast of sound that erupted around the table. It seemed that everyone agreed that Legion's idea was a good one. Maybe it was just his own sinister bent, but Arturo felt as though Legion had another motivation for creating this Cabal – one that might line up with the Hellfire's own ideas.

At the very least, this should be an interesting undertaking. Arturo accepted the first Amulet of the Cabal with a bowed head, and from that moment on, his fate was linked to that of everyone else that wore the same piece of jewelry around their neck.

Two years passed...

The Warlock's Protective Cabal had been a massively successful undertaking: the deaths caused by the Warlock Hunters had been brought almost down to zero; emboldened mages had begun and continued advanced research in magic that had been impossible while fearing for their lives; members had continued to pour in, bringing the total count into the thousands as mages from across the world were invited to join the fold.

Legion and his appointed council of lieutenants met every month to discuss and further the plans of the Cabal. As Arturo had imagined, Legion's goal was to advance their magic as far as possible, and use it to take control of the world in order to make it a place more accepting of magic – indeed, to make magic commonplace. In addition to their meetings, the general Cabal could be called to meet at any time, and it was at one such meeting that Legion's plan was revealed.

“Good evening, everyone,” Legion greeted, standing on the table as hundreds of cloaked figures gave him their undivided attention. He had been the leader since the Cabal's inception. He was the most famous, easily the wisest and the most powerful, and most importantly, The Cabal had been his idea. He continued, “It has come to my attention that we’ve angered some people with our mass-killings. Now, the purpose of the cabal is to ensure each of us is safe. We have a problem.”

Everyone was silent as he paused. Hundreds of Warlocks hung onto every word he said.

“We cannot make an untraceable teleport. It just doesn’t work. And while black magic is undeniably strong… after all, why else would we pursue it? But it has its weaknesses. It can’t do everything. And if they should ever take advantage of this effectively, we will be, pardon my phrasing, knee-deep in our own shit and blood. In addition to that, they may have found a number of magical weapons, including the Oathkeeper and the Divine Punisher. To this end, I’ve been researching a spell of remarkable usefulness, though I haven’t tested it yet for reasons that will become clear.

“It will require that every person here have progeny. I am aware that many of you detest the idea of children. It is, forgive my terminology, a necessary evil.” The Warlocks laughed. “I am also aware that a number of you cannot have children. If that is the case, I am sorry, but that makes this spell useless to you. It requires successors to your bloodline.

“You see, this spell will allow you to fling your soul forward in time to a descendant, and lie dormant within them until the time is right. I suggest something in the order of five to eight hundred years.”

A murmur passed through the crowd.

“In that much time,” Legion continued, “Our enemies will have forgotten us. Not all of us will make it. Some of us will have our bloodlines exterminated, others may be taken by surprise and killed before we can launch our soul. Some of us will probably carry the spell out with minor, but fatal, errors. But some of us will live on. After all, that’s what we’re all about. Continuing to live.”

He jumped down from the table and shuffled towards the door. He turned before he reached the exit.

“We won’t have contact with each other for most of ourselves’ new lives. It will be difficult to gather again. But we will. Anyway! Using the amulets, I will provide instructions on the procedure of the spell for each mage to prepare on his or her own. We will discuss the results at the next meeting, if no one has anything add. No? Then I wish you all luck.”

Turning on his heel, Legion disappeared through the door's dark portal.

Despite the Cabal's advanced planning and ability, they were caught off-guard by a massive blitzkrieg from the Warlock Hunters. Aided by their legendary weaponry and magic of their own, the Hunters mercilessly slew hundreds upon hundreds of Warlocks around the world, destroying them before they could call for help or move to help the others of their order.

The number of Warlocks that managed to perform Legion's spell was never revealed. The Hunters would have been unaware of the event if one of them had not stumbled upon a Warlock's journal and removed the spells designed to destroy it before it could be permanently erased. Realizing that their work was not done, the Warlock Hunters passed their weapons and abilities on to their own descendants. Some of them threw the calling off as a fool's errand; others decided to continue training and preparing for the eventual return of their ancient enemies.

It is now the year 2012. Legion has awakened in his descendant's body and promptly devours his soul. Sacrificing his host's wife and children in order to gain contact with the demons he originally made the pact with, Legion has become aware of each Awakening as it happens. However, due to advancements in their magic, the Warlock Hunters are also alerted to the unique magical activity that the Awakenings provide.

It's unclear whose life is more confusing: the soul of the Warlock that has awakened to the future, or the body of their progeny, who has one day rolled out of bed to find themselves talking to a voice in their mind that has granted them otherworldly powers. Either way, the race to find them has begun, and the struggle between the Cabal and the Hunters continues after centuries of uneasy silence.

---------------

Enter: Paul McCulloch. At the time that the story begins and his Warlock soul awakens, he is 23 years old. Paul occupies his time working at one of the largest shooting ranges in the world. He has an extensive background with guns and bullets, such that one might be tempted to brand him a “gun nut” or something similar. Really, he just loves being outside and shooting guns – both aspects that his job provides him.

Happily married, Paul works the long days at the firing range and spends the evenings at home with his wife Melissa when she gets home from the office. The young man is friendly, undoubtedly so; in fact, if one were to ask him, he would say that he almost feels obliged to befriend the friendless, having been friendless before himself. He is both blessed and cursed with an almost naïve belief in the goodness of those he meets, though he doesn't show it much outwardly. In fact, Paul's outward expression of feeling doesn't change that much at all: he seems to be in a perpetual state of somewhat good humor, at peace with life in general.

Paul stands over six feet tall, his hair cropped so close to his head that telling its color is a fool's errand. His blue eyes, shining with intelligence and observation, view the world from behind a pair of rimless glasses designed to correct his mild vision problems. His typical attire consists of T-shirts and shorts, which is not to say that he doesn't own anything else, but that he prefers only those.

Almost all of the matters of interest in Paul's life occurred in middle or high school: he fell in with the wrong crowd, and found himself in situations that he would rather not be in. Due to a series of bad decisions in his adolescence, Paul's acquaintances were all rather bad types, and it wasn't long before Paul found himself fighting for non-existent drugs and fending off opposing gang members at every other turn. The only time Paul was ever seriously hurt, though, was in an incident that didn't even involve a rival gang, but a deranged hobo with a knife.

Eventually, though, Paul's conscience took over and he made his escape from the vicious cycle. He moved to Mesa and has lived a happy life there for a few years, meeting and marrying his wife and finding a solid job. It was at this solid job of his that Paul had his first encounter with the Warlock Soul of one Robert McCullough. When a foolish patron of the shooting range mistakenly spun around (gun in hand) and began waving it around, it was the soul of Robert McCullough that gave Paul the heads-up he needed to turn around and take the gun away before anyone was hurt.

It was only afterward that Paul realized that he had known about the gun even though his back had been turned. He was also vaguely aware that he had heard some kind of voice, or a thought, in the back of his mind just before he was suddenly cognizant of the knowledge in his head regarding the incident. Something was not right there, and the largely introspective Paul decided to take the time to escape and sit down to have a little brainstorm.

Only a little prompting later, Paul was largely startled when Robert's soul was fully awakened in his mind. When he rolled out of bed that morning, life had been as it always had before; suddenly, though, he was sharing his mind with one that was virtually a stranger, despite his claims of being an ancestor. It was only after several hours of denial and confusion that Paul was able to come to grips with the fact that Robert was very conscious, and very much inside of his head. It was hours after that that Paul was able to stomach the idea that Robert was his ancestor, and his presence was the result of a powerful spell arranged by demons. What other way could this possibly have happened, after all?

Eventually, Paul allowed Robert to tell him about himself, and the Cabal, and what had happened so many years ago. Robert proved to be a calm, patient man – probably a necessity, because it took Paul a long time to calm down himself. Robert viewed the world that he lived in with a sort of disconnected detachment, viewing almost everything objectively. His patience and calm lent him an air of being standoffish, but he came across to Paul as a nice guy.

Robert was a Scottish man that grew up on a small farm, where his life was mostly uneventful. It was this boring life that lent Robert his incredible patience, and this patience that in turn lent him the ability to be a powerful mage. He explained to Paul that he utilized the magicks of Elementalism and Shadow, two disciplines with multiple applications, ones that allowed him to bend the four elements and the darkness of the world to his bidding. He told Paul all the myriad ways that his powers could be bound to objects, or to keywords, in order to set up effective traps and powerful enchantments for future use. He told Paul about how he joined Legion's Cabal: that a friend had seen some talent in the young McCullough, had trained him secretly for several months before presenting him to the Cabal scouts. Amazingly, they saw the same latent ability and took Robert as one of their own.

When Paul took all of this in, he was far more than speechless. Despite this, though, he knew that something needed to be done: he was being called, and he had no choice but to listen. Robert and Paul agreed almost right away that they were not cut out to be a part of the Cabal any longer, especially not the one that was going to take over the modern world. Still, they needed to do something, and sticking around there wasn't going to do any good. Robert also informed Paul that Legion was aware of their Awakening. Melissa would be in danger.

Given such conditions, Paul decided that it would be best to leave Melissa in the dark. Calling it a vacation, he left for Las Vegas, hoping that an answer would come to him. And an answer did come indeed.

On his first night there, he awoke quite suddenly. Taking in a deep breath, Paul became aware that something was wrong. It was a little too cold, a little too dark, a little too...silent. The sounds of Vegas and the smells of the hotel were muted, almost as though something was keeping them out of this room. Paul couldn't see in the darkness, but he could smell something that tickled his throat a bit, like...rotting flesh.

Shooting up, Paul looked around wildly, but there was nothing new in the room. Nothing new except for the small envelope sitting on the foot of his bed, the front clearly marked Legion. Paul swallowed slowly, suddenly very uncomfortable.

[That's what I was feeling!] Robert broke in. [This is Legion's influence. Get used to that feeling, because whenever it's there, it means Legion, or something he's affected, is near us.] His voice, or rather, the idea of his voice transmitted directly to Paul's mind, was slightly tremulous.

"So do we open it?" Paul asked out loud, still unused to speaking in his mind.

[If we do, there's always danger. There is danger any time you interact with Legion,] Robert pointed out. [The problems being, you and Melissa can't make a living particularly well while on the run; it's pretty much impossible to run from him in the long run; and, if he succeeds and we're on his side you've betrayed everyone and everything you knew and loved, but if he succeeds and we're against him we and everything we knew and loved will be summarily executed...]

"So what if we fight him?" Paul inquired, rubbing one eye absently.

[We'd be hopeless alone. He can use every discipline of black magic and is not only the best thaumaturge I've ever seen, he's among the best evokers, too.]

"Wow." Paul's eloquence left him as he felt Robert's admiration for Legion and knew he wasn't exaggerating.

[Exactly.]

Paul stared at the letter for a little while longer. Something, perhaps a compulsion placed on the letter by Legion, made him want to open it. It made him need to open it.

So Paul did. He opened it.

Nothing happened. Inside the envelope was a small slip of paper, which Paul extracted and read.

Los Angeles. I'll know when you arrive. The time for a new age of humanity has come, an age in which we, those who use magic, will be gods among men.

That was what the note read. A single plane ticket drifted slowly to the ground, heavy with Paul's destiny.

---------------

Enter: Siber Terrian, a pasty little nerd of a man, unsurprisingly single, currently enrolled as a college student pursuing a biochemistry major. The youngest of the major players at only age 21, Siber is also the least experienced of the newly awakened mages in terms of physical combat: with only basic martial training at his disposal, his greatest weapon is not his body, but his mind.

Logical and pragmatic to the point of coldness, Siber is Darwinistic in that he believes in the survival of the fittest. When he forms a friendship, he does not do so as some would; instead of a surface friendship, he gives his friends his quiet support. In all things, Siber maintains a flair for the theatrical, a certain dramatic spark, while at the same time being both reflective and introspective. The boy has a good understanding of how his mind works, and how he can best use its resources to his own ends.

The young Mr. Terrian has a great interest in intelligent debate, spiritual exploration, and the sciences of man. This fascination of his stems from his intense dislike of overly emotional or irrational people, which in turn stemmed from his early childhood, where he observed the actions and mistakes of his brother and sister. It is from this that Siber draws his theatrical interest: the theater only requires the use of false, ever-changing emotion. It was his fascination with the theater, in fact, that led to him shedding his old name of Karl Andrew Terrian and adopting a more fantastic one.

Despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, young Siber is neither corrupt nor righteous. He is, instead, right at the line separating the two, an unbiased and realistic individual. His lack of corruption is contrasted with that of his ancestor: a mage by the name of Keldan Tomera.

Keldan, unlike his descendant, is quite malicious. A social spider, Keldan does not respond to mots slights through his own direct action, instead preferring to pluck the strings that make up the societal webs until things dance the way he wants them to. Though courteous and generous on the outside, he hides a very deep anger within, and sometimes wreaking mayhem on a person's reputation was just not enough for Keldan. In such situations, causing a person severe mental agony is the preferred method of revenge – sometimes Keldan releases his victims with no permanent damage, and other times leaves them as a blubbering mess for the rest of their mortal lives.

Growing up poor, Keldan rapidly grew tired of his life and tried to escape it by striking out, young hero-style, at age ten. Within six months he was back home, but he never forgot his attempt; seven years later, after studying the arts of politics and government, he tried again, this time killing his now-overbearing and violent parents as well as his siblings before leaving. From then on, his skill in manipulating other people gave him all the support he needed to start his life anew. It was this revival of his that led him to discover dark magic, and the influence it could have in accomplishing his ends in life. After some study, Keldan became a somewhat skillful Demoniac as well as a Shadow mage, his preferred style being that of thaumaturgy, like Robert McCullough.

His induction into the Cabal was grand and he rapidly ascended the ranks, but it wasn't long after he joined that the Warlock Hunters wiped them out, and Keldan “died” at age 27. His soul was flung into the future by Legion's spell, and he awoke one day within the body of Siber. He remained silent, dormant even, observing everything through the eyes of his progeny. It was on the day that Siber was approached by Legion, as a matter of fact, that Keldan made himself known.

Siber Roelan Terrian awoke early in the morning to an unnatural chill and a distinct smell of putrid, rotting flesh. He looked down the bed to see that a dead body was placing a letter at the foot of his bed.

"Holy shit!" he exclaimed when it registered. He had already scrambled back to the wall. The body was gone moments later; it walked out of the door and apparently just...disappeared. Siber slowly allowed himself forward again and gingerly picked up and opened the letter. The envelope, which wa simply marked with the name of Legion, gave him a terrible feeling of unease.

Los Angeles. I'll know when you arrive. The time for a new age of humanity has come, an age in which we, those who use magic, will be gods among men.

A small piece of paper fluttered out of the envelope as Siber finished reading. It was a plane ticket, he realized when he picked it up. Holding the ticket in one hand, and the letter and envelope in the other, Siber suddenly realized...he had no idea what was going on. Maybe he was dreaming. No, the surprise he had felt when seeing the body had been more than real. He needed to relax.

Standing in his dark dorm room, Siber made his way to the bathroom, where he turned on some cold water and splashed it on his face. He set the small stack of papers to one side and reached for a towel. When he finished drying his face, however, he was shocked to see another man standing behind him, dressed positively archaically and eyeing the envelope with interest.

[Looks like Legion's back.]

Siber's heart jumped as he spun around, but there was no one there. When he looked in the mirror again, he could vaguely see the man still, but it was much harder than the first glimpse he had had. “What...who are you?” Siber asked cautiously, watching as the man switched from looking at the envelope to looking into his eyes.

[My name is Keldan Tomera. Your name is Siber Terrian. And you, young Terrian, are my descendant. You're wondering about the contents of the letter: Legion; magic; me, surely. The long and short of it is that I'm your ancestor, I came from the farthest pits of Hell to be a part of you, and you're a mage now. Not too complicated, I'm sure.]

Siber's head was spinning. He must be dreaming, right? But no, that was a sad and pathetic attempt at distraction. The young man knew what he had to do, as objective as he was. He went back to his bed and sat down, looking around – no sign of the man.

[I'm still here. Part of you, remember?]

Siber nodded. “I suppose you have a lot to tell me, then. Let's get started.”

---------------

Enter: Joe Simpson. A seasoned special forces agent, Simpson makes his living by risking his life more times weekly than most people do in their entire lives. Trained to deploy behind enemy lines in a radar-stealthed jet and drop in to gather information, protect an objective, or take out a target, it could well be said that even before his Awakening as a mage, Simpson was a very dangerous man. All of the stereotypical images of a super-spy apply to the squad that he belongs to: advanced weapons training, spanning from wooden poles to the most advanced aerial gunships; unarmed combat in a multitude of styles; diplomacy, leadership, problem-solving and memory – the works. These men and women are expected to be the best, and rarely did they fail to deliver.

High standards are and have always been a typical measure of life for Joe, though. From a young age, his parents prompted him to be the best that he could be, and the young Joe made sure to make his parents proud. In fact, it was this same drive that prompted him to join the armed forces after his father, who served in the Air Force, fell ill and died. Swearing to protect his mother and make his father proud, Joe took on the mantle and joined the military, where his high scores in both mental and physical tests caused him to be placed on a special watch list and eventually drafted into the special forces program.

The oldest of the Awakened thus far, Simpson had been serving for about ten years when he first made contact with his ancestor, a man by the name of Roland Dark. A quiet, reserved man, Roland is one that thinks before acting, without fail. Always older than his years and sometimes overly cautious, he has been a tempering force for the sometimes-brash Simpson. Their first conversation occurred at 30,000 feet, when Roland suddenly opened his eyes to find a sight that he had never thought possible: there he was, soaring above the ground, approaching Mach One and feeling the exhilarating freedom of the open air. The empty landscape around them filled both Roland and Joe with a sense of ease, beauty, and appreciation, and Roland's first words since the Dark Ages were poetic and full of wonder towards the beauty around them.

Fearing technical difficulties, Joe attempted to figure out who had somehow gotten into his radio channel. Of course, no one at the operations base could figure out what Joe was talking about, and his test flight was luckily canceled, Joe being put on a temporary wait list pending psychological analysis. To deepen his plight, he was unable to perceive Roland in his mind, unlike the rest of the Awakened; the unfortunate result of an error in the original spell. It was a collection of such errors that prevented the vast majority of the Cabal from awakening in the modern age, and the fact that Roland performed such an error and still Awakened is nothing short of a miracle of statistics.

Because Joe was unable to summon an image of Roland to his mind, however, he only had the voice of his ancestor to relate to him his story, and nothing to lend this story any credibility. Joe feared it was all a specter of his mind, that the stress of his career had finally gotten the better of him. [Please trust me,] Roland had pleaded – but Joe was stubborn. In fact, he did not believe the story to be anything but until the day that Roland finally decided to cease trying to get through to his descendant and resigned himself to silence. It appeared that there would be no getting through to Joe, and that they would live out their joint life apart from each other. As the first night fell and Joe was settling in to bed, however, he found himself filled with a strange sense of unease that Roland recognized quite well. Even before the special forces agent could draw his gun and turn, Roland was aware that they were in the room with a messenger of Legion.

Reflexes were what they were, though, and Simpson gunned the zombie down quite efficiently – or so he thought. It rose again, and Joe put it down again, more than surprised by what he deemed to have been impossible. Deciding to break his own decision, Roland quietly told Joe to check the letter that was in the zombie's hand. Heart pounding and mind whirling, Joe decided to oblige Roland instead of trying to fight him. Opening the letter gingerly, Joe found a plane ticket and a bill that simply read:

Los Angeles. I'll know when you arrive. The time for a new age of humanity has come, an age in which we, those who use magic, will be gods among men.

With that, Joe had no choice but to accept that the events going on around him were real, and that Roland was not lying to him. In an attempt to calm his progeny, Roland related to him his life tale in brief: how he had come from a well-to-do family of much privilege, and how his magical education had started soon after his academic education – as well as the fact that Roland was not his given name. Driven by absent but demanding parents, Roland pushed himself as hard as he could to be good enough for them, to no end. It was impossible to please his parents or even his teachers, who looked down on him for his struggles.

It was on the day of his final magical exam that Roland's life took a turn. Gathered in the presence of his teachers and his parents, Roland began to bend the elements and demonstrate his mastery of them. His overwhelming need to impress was too much for him, however, and he continually stumbled. The teachers continued to scorn him and his parents would have nothing to do with him as he struggled more and more to show them his worth. Confusion and anger got the better of the young mage, and in a bloody flash of power he eradicated his teachers and half of his family's home, including his parents. Mind torn by the impact of what he had done, the confused young man fled into the wilderness, where he cast off his old life and took the name of Roland.

From then on, he traveled the land as a healer, a mender of body and spirit, to atone for his crimes. Unlike the other two, Roland was an Evoker, one who adapted and flowed with the magical energy instead of trying to set its course in advance. When he was invited by another mage to join the Cabal, he had some misgivings: though the Cabal stated that its purpose was to protect the mages, Roland also knew that it was led by a positively evil mage, and the majority of those in the Cabal were of the same type. Still, pressure from the Hunters was mounting, even for a healer, and Roland eventually joined, taking the surname Dark as a half-hearted attempt to fit in. A year later, he “died” and threw his soul forward, hoping for a better life when he awoke.

At the end of Roland's tale, Joe realized that there was more to the world than what he had seen. Ticket and letter in hand, he made the decision to find Legion and discover what the real situation was, just like Siber and Paul. So they set forth, the three newly Awakened mages, each boarding a plane and making their way to Los Angeles to find their destiny.

Phase

2010-12-16T01:48:00.004-05:00

Hi! So this was written I think... eight or nine months ago, but needed lots of fine-tuning. I'm still not a hundred percent happy with it, but I don't really know how to fix it. Anyway! This is presented as a collection of episodes not in chronological order. I'm going to try to post more to this blog over the coming semester; hopefully the philosophy class I'm taking will inspire some fun one-shots. This piece is very personal to me; I hope you enjoy it. t3h p05t, 4 j00

---

I heard him singing and suddenly knew intimately from where seraphs received inspiration. He was standing at the edge of the precipice of the building we had climbed, positioned to project, and I, schooled enough to understand the physical sound, knew that at that angle, no one could hear him but me. The aerial vibrations wouldn’t reach the ground, and with the dip of the roof’s wall, only those there – like me – would hear him. It was beautiful. It was alto. He sang, and standing behind him, I fell to my knees and wept. What had I been doing to him? How had I been hurting him?

I knew. I knew those answers, and it was more because he was singing them than because I had refused to approach them. His mother was dead. I could hear that in his voice, and I could hear what I had done to him. I gasped, and water brimmed in my eyes and then burst the floodgates. On my hands and knees, it was not long before the first drop of saltwater splashed onto the slate. His voice didn’t falter- not even for an instant.

“I’m… s… I’m- sor…” I couldn’t speak right. My lungs wouldn’t hold air for long enough for me to control it as I gasped and flickered in and out of closing eyes, flinging tears at the floor. And still he sang, and the song took a different turn. A false major, descending into minor, pulling through diminished fourths, cracking my ears in a caustic modality as he began to slaughter quarter-tones. He was torturing me, and from what little I could see of his face, he was keeping it all to himself. He raped my ears. And I knelt, and tried to speak, and let him.

---

“Dude I am so gay.”

“I’m… well aware.” It was in fact painfully pervasive in my life.

A short silence, and some blinking. “Drunk.”

“Who in their right mind gave you whiskey sours?” I could smell it on his breath. Them, rather. Our third roommate rushed past where I had landed on the couch to do homework and where the lush next to me had landed when he tripped.

Our escaping friend winked at me and said, “Enjoy!”

I should have killed him right then and there, but I had a computer in my lap and his life wasn’t worth my YouTube access. Also, I suppose I was in a good mood – no one had mentioned Clarissa today. So instead, I sighed and went back to what I was doing as the door slammed and Drinky the eighth dwarf slowly and artlessly crawled closer to me. I didn’t look at him. “If you hurl, I stab you with an ice pick.”

“Your mom is a nice prick! Ha-ha! Ha. Ha! Ha-ha. Hey.” He scooted by about a foot, pretending to look at my computer screen. I inched away. “Hey.” He tried to poke me, missed, and squinted at his finger. “Hey.”

“What.”

“Can I tell you somethin’?”

“I don’t have a cho-“

“You are like the hottest guy here.” His already-red face transferred over to the color of a stop sign. “Like, seven and a half times hotter than… than… that guy.” He waved at the door, then watched for a moment to see if it would wave back.

It didn’t.

“Aaaand it’s time for bed.” I slammed my computer shut and stood up. “’night.”

“But it’s like four in the morning!”

“Eleven at night.”

“Can I come with you?” He crawled up the back of couch to paw at me as I wheeled around it.

“No.”

“But you’re so hot!”

In a strange way, I think I was flattered. That’s got to be why I kept talking. “So you wouldn’t sleep well. It’s already a warm night.”

“Neither one of us would! That’s the whole idea!” He spread his arms wide, lost his balance, and almost did a reverse somersault into the coffee table, but I caught his hand. We had already had to pay for a broken glass door; didn’t need to explain this one, too.

He started grinning slyly and tried to grab back, so I encouraged him over the arm of the couch and walked off.

“Waaauuugghhh!” thud. A moment of silence. “I’m bleeding Technicolor!” I’d forgotten I’d spilled Kool-aid earlier and never cleaned it up. “I’m a Smurf!” It had been blue raspberry. He giggled. “Dude Smurfette was one sexy bitch.”

“You’re gay.” It was really hard to talk and not laugh at the same time.

“So’s your mom.”

“Are you getting up soon or should I call an ambulance?”

“Your mom is an ambulance,” he slurred. He was face-down in dried Kool-aid. “Emergency… lisposuction.”

“Come get me if you’re dying.” As I left, I took the whiskey with me. Getting alcohol poisoning by yourself is sad.

Five hours later, he dive-bombed my bed. My response: “Jesus fuck!”

“Ewwww, all skin and bones!” He went limp on top of me, considering. “Besides, dude had no taste in piercings.”

After testing the aerodynamics of a small college student and locking my door after him, I burst into a fit of silent laughter. That had actually been funny.

---

I’d never heard him slam his door before. Usually, every time I returned to the apartment, I had to deal with that incessant smile and some creepily infantile greeting. Sometimes he even hugged me, or at least, he had tried a few times, until I knocked him against a wall and explained exactly how many pieces the cops would find him in once someone finally realized he was gone. I remember saying the words, “Because Lord knows your parents don’t keep up with their broken child.”

But this time, as I opened the door to the apartment, preparing myself for whatever form of greeting he had in store for me, all I heard - all I felt - was the slamming of his door. I knew it was his because it came from just beyond mine. Because I usually had to throw him out of my room, sometimes literally.

It felt kind of nice, actually, to be able to take a whole, deep breath without being assaulted. Our other roommate actually poked his head around the corner, from the kitchen. He jerked his thumb at our smaller roommate’s abode. “He PMS-ing or something?” he laughed. I grinned, and shrugged.

“Guess so.” I wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a bite to eat. Kind of bland bread and cold cuts, but food nonetheless, and that was what was important. It was nice. I hadn’t been offered to have it spiced in any way, hadn’t had a cooking experiment shoved in my face, hadn’t had to listen to God-awful chattering about nothing.

When I got to my room, I couldn’t concentrate.

---

“Let me help. Please.” A tear was forming at the edge of his eye. Why? What right did he have to cry? It was my girl. My girl had been raped and murdered. My girl! So why was he crying? Why was he putting his hand on my hand?

“I said get off! I don’t want you!” I wanted her. I wanted her so badly. I threw his hand off, hurled it on the counter, shoved him over the back of the sofa. He’s like a sack of twigs; just crumbled and somehow, somehow lying like he meant to be there and beckoning me - both hands flicking those feminine little fingers towards him, before he sniffed and wiped away the tear.

“I want to help. I don’t want to see you like this.”

I screamed at him, “Why the hell not?”

And he just looked at me, as though I’d said something stupid. “Because I love you.” Reality dropped my jaw in the unheard echo of my anger. I stared him in the eyes, my own red and irritated and unblinking as I was caught between the words that kept oozing out of his mouth and the image of her smile burned on my retina, slowly fading as I tried harder and harder to cling to it, effervescing even as I clutched at it with clenched eyelids. “I don’t like to see the people I love get hurt.”

A moment longer. He wasn’t lying to me. I knew he wasn’t lying because of the smile he was wearing. It took me almost three months to figure out his smiles. This one wasn’t lying. “No.” I backed away, opening my eyes. “I don’t need help. And I don’t want it. Especially from you.” I turned around, went to my room, and slammed the door behind me. Let there be thunder.

---

Move-in day. I had never met either roommate before; just went with the lottery and prayed intermittently. I knew that one was somewhat excitable by the way he spoke in emails; the other was reasonable enough. It was the former I met first.

“Hi!” He poked his head out of his room with a smile like a chipmunk. I had not expected him to be so… young-looking. He wasn’t young; I knew that from FaceBook. But he looked like it.

He introduced himself to me and pointed me to the fruit punch he was making. It was an odd color of purple-blue, and there were unfortunate shapes floating in it. I didn’t partake.

“So where’s the other guy?”

“He came in and I met him and he said he had to go do something or another so I’ve just been in here making fruit punch it’s really good you should try some!”

I tried to be cordial. “Need help moving in at all?” He looked pretty small. If he had a chair or anything, the chances of him managing it were-

“Nah, I just had a suitcase or two. I pack light and it’s not as though I can’t buy anything I need from here, right?” I stared. How do you get to college on just a suitcase or two? Hadn’t his family given him a cooler, or like a television or something?

I frankly couldn’t blame the guy who had left, as I endured the next thirty minutes of meeting this peppy little rodent. I started setting my stuff up while he began chattering about school. Music major, hadn’t gotten along well with his last roommates, put himself up for the lottery. I rolled my eyes while he wasn’t facing me. I couldn’t imagine what had put them on bad terms…

“Look, I’m gonna go… get my books,” I said after that half-hour of nonstop talking. “I’ll see you.”

“Okay! Hey, I’ll come with you!” He ran and grabbed a giant paper bag and a list.

“You don’t have t-“

“Come on, we can get to know eachother!” He was already out the door and waiting on me expectantly. Apparently I was stuck with him.

---

I kind of stared at her. Was she deaf or stupid? Had she really just asked me…?

“You know, just to take your mind off things. We could have a fun night, maybe a drink or two.” She was grinning the Lethe at me. After I had told her my girlfriend was dead. As though a night with a whore would melt away three years of paradise, now frozen in my neurons.

But how was I supposed to tell her “no”? She had been my friend for at least as long. She knew I loved Clarissa. She looked like she honestly wanted to help me, but I kept digging my gaze past her eyes and I knew that she had sought me like a tigress after a rabbit for all of those three years. It was stupid to say yes, but I found myself opening my mouth to answer all the same.

“Well, I guess I cou-”

“Mm-mmm, girlfriend!”

I believe I went apoplectic. My face and ears turned a scarlet color of stop sign red. It was him.

He snapped his fingers at her. “He ain’t want you! Ain’t you got a brain up there in that misshapen skull of yours? You uuu-gly, bitch! An’ ain’t no one like a slut.”

“Y- How dare you?” she demanded. His hands went to his cocked hips as they faced off. “I’ve known him for years; I don’t want to-”

“Don’t lie t’ me, girlfriend! You want him inside you.” He smirked and snaked his head back and forth, eyes dancing. When had he learned to behave like this?

She matched my color at roughly the same time as I had begun to calm down, watching this play out. “You bastard!” I almost felt a smile twitch my lips.

He checked his fingernails. He fucking checked his fingernails. I kind of wondered if he had painted them, but couldn’t remember later. “Better ‘n a bitch in heat.”

“Shut up!”

“Look,” he said, and he was no longer joking. His eyes had turned to steel in winter, and she jumped as though electrocuted. We were not exactly in a public place, but for the few ears who could hear, he raised his voice. “You want to take advantage of the fact that his girlfriend was brutally violated and then had her throat slit open. You want to drink her blood from his lips. You are happy another human being is dead.” Those eyes… I was seeing hell, and didn’t even have to meet them straight on. Her face had been exsanguinated. “Back off and find some other man to be your dildo for the night. He doesn’t need your shit.”

Her head turned towards me, dreading looking at him, but unable to keep from looking back. “I… I-”

“Please go away,” I whispered. She did, and I turned to him. “Why…?” I asked, as he also tried to comply.

The same intensity as his hell burned my eyes. Very quietly, in a voice only I could hear, he said, “Because I love you.” And he didn’t look back.

---

"I made a cake!"

Let me be perfectly honest - I cannot say I had ever seen another human being as proud of himself as he was in the moment he very nearly made an imprint of my face in the icing. I looked up from the video game I was playing and glanced at him. "And your shirt is off why?"

He blinked a few times, not seeming to understand, then looked down at his bare chest. The red oven mitts on his hands somehow fit the picture. Why he was still wearing them after the cake had been successfully put on a plate, I don't think I'll ever know. He looked back at me, smiling like a kitten that had shredded drapes and was sitting on the remains. "Cake!"

He turned around while I rolled my eyes and went back to the video game, wondering how I hadn't noticed he had been baking half-naked. Or why our other roommate hadn't, either. Then again, that guy didn’t spend much time here and was probably absent. Regardless, a few moments later, there was a slice of chocolate cake sitting next to me on a plate on the sofa. I looked around - he was nowhere in sight. I looked around again, my hand seeming to press the "Pause" button of its own accord. Again, I surveyed the room. No one nearby, right? My nose very much wanted cake. Was I really going to eat something that twerp had baked? A hand touched the fork, and my narrow eyes scanned the entire place. I even stood up to make sure no one was hiding behind a counter.

I took a bite, and my mouth had an orgasm. It was bliss in chocolate format. This was the flavor created if one were to put Heaven in an oven and cover it with a German bakery. Buddhists should give up on Nirvana and visit this apartment instead.

His face poked out from under the effing couch. "THE FUCK?!" I almost threw the plate at him.

"Cake!"

---

"So I'm broken."

It was three thirty in the morning. I needed to finish a paper in the next five hours. It had to be twelve pages long, and I had four. What the hell was he talking about? "Yeah, as far as I can tell." I didn't take my eyes off the computer screen. "What are you doing in my room?"

His voice was undead. Monotone coloring me translucent. "I think I'm going to jump off the porch."

"Have a nice flight." I couldn't stand people who so blatantly sought attention. He had wanted it all effing semester. Hadn't given me a break from it. Trying to hug me every time he saw me, trying to make me like him; acting like every other love-desperate faggot whose parents hadn't continued to love them once they came out of the closet. This one just happened to have lost one of them recently.

I heard the door open onto the balcony and glanced around the corner. He was going through it. Back to the screen; more important things to do than "Close the door - you're letting in a draft."

"I can't."

"Why the hell not?" Irritated, I turned to look. He was standing on the banister, half-obscured by the cracked open door. Was he… really going to do it? Arms all flung out like some kind of angel on the prow of the Styx - a cracked misplacement. Wind tossing his hair. We were only two floors up, but a swan dive onto the sidewalk…

"If I get down, I'll lose my last chance to feel." His eye almost met mine over his shoulder. And then he started to tilt forward.

I don't know how I lived through that. Surrounded by broken glass, I roughly rolled him out of my arms onto the ground, stood to make sure I hadn't broken anything, and checked his pulse. Alive. "Can you get up?"

Tears leaked from the corners of both eyes, and he answered, "Yes."

I climbed the stairs back up to my computer and got to work after bandaging my cuts. God damn draft wasn't going away now, that was for sure.

---

I know how to lose myself in music. To dissolve my soul in the sound like Rufies in Everclear. My fingers caress the keys and my instrument answers my call. The droplets of sound effervesce through my ears and I recall tears I can’t afford to shed. I can feel music writhe from my heart to my hands, while every sonic bubble lands and caresses my brain. My lips part to release the first of a yearning, grinding melody, trying in it to recall her…

I used to sing with her. Our voices were beautiful together; her dulcet tones and driving power melding with my growling baritone and making wings out of arias. We were sirens for gods.

So now, singing without her is like playing with only one hand. I am a cripple, but I have to play; this is what I have of her. A bit of a memory summoned to remind me how bad it hurts to know she isn’t there, but it’s as much as I can feel; as much as I can remember. Her voice, even, sometimes sounds in the empty air; her ghost finding me, singing with me like we used to.

My eyes are closed, and I play, and I sing. And somewhere between my memory and my ears, she sings with me. It’s beautiful, like it should be. Like it used to be. I hang on to this, refusing to let go, refusing to even believe that it’s just an illusion. She is there with me. I don’t think about it. I just let her be with me. It’s… eternity, for a few minutes.

Her fingers – delicate, soft, and cool – brush the back of my hand, and I smile, dissolved in my dream. The song ends with my eyes still closed, and I will not open them. Not until there is nothing left for me to feel. Seconds, and then minutes pass in silence, with that hand spectrally resting on mine. I can feel her in the room. I can practically smell her, she’s so near. Her lips brush my cheek… and the dream comes to a close, when her fingers lifted off mine, and in my self-imposed blindness I heard the door close to the practice room I had taken.

A pained laugh left me. It was three-thirty in the morning.

Only one person had seen me leave the apartment.

---

He was dancing. I… wanted to yell at him. I wanted to scream at him. Men don’t act that way! Men don’t twirl around, men don’t wear… whatever the hell kind of skirt thing he was wearing, men only take their shirts off if they have something worth showing, men don’t effing bake cheesecakes for other men, and men don’t have… I didn’t want to think about what he had done with other guys.

But I didn’t say anything. He couldn’t see me – he was facing the wrong way and his eyes were closed. He was smiling; a little, elfin smile as he held his hands up over his head, and spun. I think he saw me, then, but the only indication that there had been any kind of recognition was that his smile may have become a smirk for just a moment.

It was the first time I had really looked at him; enthralled by my own hatred for him, I found myself studying him. Very pale, and so boyish that it hurt. It was like he had been untouched by the marring claw of maturity, his pale chest smooth and unblemished in the dim illumination of poor overhead lights, but that was impossible. He was filthy. He was… some kind of perverse traitor. And the dance wasn’t fluid. Sometimes it was. Sometimes the way he twisted his body around and made that dark skirt flow was a lily spinning on a lake. But mostly, it was disjointed and unschooled, even if he kept smiling like it was some kind of private performance.

“Loosen up,” he murmured suddenly, and I noticed with a start that he had been moving himself closer to me. He slowed down his movements and stopped, blinking and not really looking at me, as though he was nervous. He had reason to be nervous; acting like some kind of… I don’t even know. After a few seconds, he looked at me with his customary bright, cheerful smile and said, “You should dance.”

I wanted him to start hitting on me, I realized. Because then I could really hate him. Then I could throw him down and call him a faggot and talk about his parents and how they had disowned him. Then I could hurt him. But shielded by his innocence, I couldn’t touch him. “I don’t dance.”

“You should!” he chirped. “It’s fun! My mom taught my sister how to dance, and once I was outed, my sister taught me a little.” His… voice shook. He had never talked openly about his… preferences. “I mean, you don’t have to dance like I do; I know you think I look like a fairy-fuck. You could dance all macho.” His eyes dropped from mine and he scratched his head with a distracted, weird smile on his face. “That’s the term, right? I think… you called me that once.”

“Yeah… you’re a fairy.”

“Fairy-fuck,” he corrected me, with that unbreakable smile. I wanted to smash it, to rip it off his face, because he didn’t deserve that kind of happiness! He was… but I… God DAMN it, I couldn’t! Not without him doing anything to me.

“Get the hell away from me,” I said instead, knowing it would be completely ineffective.

“Dance!” he giggled. He struck a pose. A “macho” one, like a conquistador of some kind. His voice dropped dramatically. “A manly dance. For are we not men? Are we not… brothers?” He grasped one of my hands between both of his.

I shook them off. “NO. We’re not.” Something in me was trying to surface. I could feel my fury start to fizzle out. He was being silly. And if there is a human being on this earth that can completely ignore unadulterated silliness, I don’t want to know that person. But screw me sideways if I was going to laugh at him. I turned away and started towards my room.

He tickled my sides. “FUCK OFF!” I shouted at him, once I had landed and nearly displaced plaster from the ceiling. He giggled again and darted away, and I flipped my middle finger behind me and stormed into my room, muttering every obscenity I could think of while blood rushed to my face.

“Fucking fairy fuck of a fucking God-damned queer-sucking… damn it,” I sighed into my hand as I fell into a chair. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t get the image of him striking that pose out of my head. It was too stupid, too ridiculous, with him wearing that skirt. I smiled, and I waved my arms around. And I heard his laughter ring through the apartment.

Damn it.

---

“I miss my girlfriend.”

He twitched a bit, trying to force himself to be harsh. It was hard for him. A butterfly saying, “No, I refuse to be colorful.” But somehow, he managed it. “Do you?” He didn’t quite look at me. He stood there and let me look up at him.

“Yeah.” I kept looking for a few more seconds, then let my head fall to the pillow. I don’t know why I had left my door open. His footsteps receded towards his room, and I closed my eyes. His door closed with them.

By now, I had saved his life, and he had saved my soul. I had kept him from cracking his body, while he had set a subtle glaze on the fractures that had rooted themselves in my mind. And when I had helped him, I had despised him and everything he was. And I was convinced that when he had returned the favor, he had hated me just as much. The time he met me at my door when I woke up just to say those three words to me seemed like proof.

I stood up, and I went to his door, and I knocked. I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.” I waited. Seconds dragged by, and then a minute, and then two, and there was no response. Back to my room, then, to hold a pillow as though it was her and remember the smell of her hair.

“I tried to commit suicide. Do you know why?” God, his voice was so soft that it ripped open my skin. I shook my head. I had ideas, but no firm- “Because I wasn’t invited to my mother’s funeral.”

“I-”

“She’s the only reason I can dance.”

“Wh-”

“I miss my mom.”

We looked at one another in silence for a long time. Not a word was spoken between us. He seemed to be considering something, while I just waited. I had hurt him. It wasn’t my place to do anything more.

His lips moved, but no words came out; only a dry, desert-through-glass-bottles sound. And then he tried again. And again. “Thank you.” And again. “For…” And again, and again, tripping on his throat. “Thank you for not…” And again. “Letting me…” And again. “Thank you for not let-…”

I reached up, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him down on the bed with me, wrapping my arms around him and holding his small, child-like back against my chest. I didn’t look at him. I didn’t say anything. I rested my chin on his head and held him. It was all he had wanted from me. And besides… after what he had done that one night, it was like having her back, if only in my mind. So I lay there and breathed with him. And my hand could feel in his chest that he was almost on the point of tears.

Ten minutes later, into the static, he shifted a little bit and said, “So tell me about your girlfriend.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Like…” I heard a small sound come from him. “Was she hot?”

My face broke into a grin. He was giggling. Slowly, hesitantly, nervously, I squeezed him tighter. And he sighed. And it was relief as when a storm, having given us the cloudburst, peters out, and you can breathe again.

---

“Why… is he sitting on your shoulder?”

I blinked. So did the creature perched above me. We exchanged glances and looked back at the questioner. “What?”

They stared a little bit. “Um. Never mind.”

“Okay.” And I kept walking.

Funsmoke!

2010-04-18T20:55:00.004-04:00

What is this I don't even? This isn't prose! It's hardly even words! Yeah, I know, sorry for not roflstomping your eyeballs with a giant wall of text. Trust me; you'll thank me later.
So, this was a project I created for a Media Arts class. We were given about thirteen solid minutes of raw, unedited footage from Gunsmoke, a famous western movie/television show/something. Using only video/sound from that one file, and using only Final Cut Pro to edit, we had to make a 30-60 second short and upload it to the Tubes. Thus, this. Enjoy.
Oh, "moar wurds and plawt delevopment latur lulz".

EDIT: here's the video on YouTube if you want to watch it there.

Indigo Roses (Name in Progress)

2010-02-12T22:41:00.003-05:00

Got bored and felt that Muse a-stirrin' in mah heart. Like always, there's no promise that this series won't just die out within two chapters, but I relish the experience for itself. So, without further ado, CHAPTER IS GOOOO!

The moon.
Ever laid on your back and looked up at the moon? Like that nostalgic scene of watching the clouds. Only, y'know, at night. That's what I was doing.
That great white orb was like an open eye as it stared down at me. It's like being in a staring contest with the great celestial beings. The only one better than the moon at staring was the sun, after all. No one beat the sun in a staring contest.
I sighed. I had blinked again. Oddly, the moon was kind of swimmy in my vision. It seemed a bit blurred, and as it wavered in my sight I felt a sort of warmth spreading, starting at the back of my head.
There was a dripping sound. Then a thud. I could hear voices, shouts, but it was as though I was hearing them from underwater. I moved my eyes away from the moon, but I couldn't see anything around me. The tops of trees in the distance, a few stars through the scattered clouds. Nothing of major interest.
The warmth was still spreading. I reached back; my hand felt so heavy. Too heavy. Then I touched the back of my head and things started to make sense - sort of. My brain was still fuzzy, but my hand came away covered in blood. I had been hurt.
So there I am, having a staring contest with the moon. The voices in the distance I now realized were fighting. I blinked a couple times, tried to clear my head. No dice. I couldn't remember where I was, much less how I had come to be injured.
I tried to sit up - mistake. The world spun and I was back on the ground. Damn, that moon was smug.
I took a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Try to focus. What had happened? Where was I, why was I bleeding, the usual stuff. Had to bring it to mind. I could vaguely recall another person, a sort of fuzzy sillhouette. No, wait...more than one. Two? Three? Yeah, three. There were three shapes. And I felt...not safe, necessarily, but sort of protected.
There was a footstep. I turned my head slightly to see someone familiar standing a few feet away. I couldn't see their face, or make out their details, but I knew that I recognized this person. And for some reason, I felt some sort of vague danger, mixed with pity, when I regarded them. That was an odd mix.
In the moonlight, the gun barrel glinted dully as it was leveled at me. "Time to collect, kiddo," said the person. I couldn't hear right, just a dull throbbing, but that's what was said. And why did it seem like I could sense sadness from this person, who was about to take my life?
It came back to me with a rush. My vision cleared and my head was defogged. I remembered everything, and the second sight of that gun chilled me to the heart. I knew who, where, and why I was...and it was bad.

There Once Was A Gaggle of Geeks

2009-12-30T01:25:00.006-05:00

Gonna hit y'all up with some knowledge: writing a limerick around words that rhyme with "soul patch" is hard as hell, especially when a cackling chorus of crazed college kiddies command your creativity be conjured casually in such cacophanied confines, which, in case you couldn't collect clearly from my cleverly crafted commentary, it can't (O HAI I GOT U THIS AWESOME ALLITERATION I HOPE U LIEK IT). Seriously though, if I could exude creativity like I do facial hair, I'd be the Grizzly Adams of creativity. Or something like that.

At any rate, said limerick was transcribed. The delivery was a little off, thanks to the general malaise which has rendered my throat scratchy and nearly hoarse, but it was delivered nonetheless. And here it is, as written on a scratch bracket sheet from the game "Party Playoff", which has been hereby proclaimed, by the powers vested in me, to be the most retarded game ever. Enjoy.

There once was a man with a soul patch
Who opted to grow a sweet mustache.
His stache grew so fast,
The man could, at last,
A rabid raccoon with his face catch.

Aaand here's a bonus birthday limerick! Happy 21st Siber!

There once was a gaggle of geeks,
Amongst whom an evil crook sneaks:
A hit from the Mafia
At Siber's sweet party, a
move that caused vote-outs and shrieks.

Come Again Another Day

2009-08-28T22:28:00.002-04:00

Hokay, so here's the 'State of the noGreen Union' address: I'm alive, getting back into the swing of collegiate living, High Water is in the works, but the Terraverse is definitely on the backburner for now, and I will be posting more in general. A decent portion of those "in general" posts will most likely be scripts from my Writing for Media Arts class and scripts I may write for a comedy show at school that I occasionally contribute to. I figured if I'm going to write so much this year I might as well post it all here for the hell of it.
This little number was our first writing assignment for said writing class. Nothing too fancy or lengthy here, would definitely put this in the "Wrote This in Under an Hour for Poops and Giggles" file. One-shot, unless you guys want more of what The Rock is cooking. Either way, bon appetit.

Murphy stirred uneasily and sat up in his bed. He rubbed his eyes and squinted at his alarm clock. It was 10:40 A.M.: well past the time his alarm was supposed to go off. Startled, he swiveled his legs over the edge of the bed and jumped to the floor. He staggered on his newly found morning feet and dragged his fingers along the floor in search of his jeans. Attempting to step into them, he collapsed onto the cold tile before his still-waking mind could comprehend that his feet were still wrapped in his bed sheets. After much kicking he finally freed his feet and put on his pants properly. He jumped into a t-shirt and flip-flops, grabbed his keys and wallet, and, cursing under his breath, dashed out of his dorm.

Despite the overcast sky, Murphy’s eyes still strained under the bright morning light. He fixed his eyes on the pavement in front of him, looking up only to avoid passers-by and oncoming traffic at the road between his dorm and the nearest campus bus station. Arriving at the station, he paused to check the station’s digital bus ticker. It was 10:48. The nearest bus was ten minutes away. His class started in twelve. If I start walking now, Murphy thought to himself, I could probably make it to class on time, but I have to leave now. He glanced around briefly at the students waiting at the station as if he could divine his course of action from their empty faces. Quickly glancing both ways down the road in front of the station, he waited for traffic to pass and sprinted across the road.

As he reached the other side of the road, Murphy felt an infinitesimal splash on the bridge of his nose. Looking up, he noticed that the clouds hanging above him had grown darker than they had been when he left his dorm. Off in the distance, in the direction of his class, patches of dirty blue filled the horizon. Nearly every other campus denizen walking past Murphy had a sheathed umbrella in tow. I bet all of their alarms went off this morning, Murphy thought. He reached for his phone to check the time, but his phone was nowhere to be found in his pockets. Damn.

Murphy looked ahead at what seemed like an insurmountable mountain of concrete in his path. Since he lived at the bottom of a hill, he was forced to contend with steeply graded sidewalks and endless stairs just to get to the main part of campus. The insignificant sprinkles he had previously experienced were becoming more noticeable and more frequent. His flip-flops were beginning to squeak, and his shoulders and the thighs of his pants were already spotted with rain. He mussed the wetness out of his hair with his fingers and trudged up the rain-slick pathway that led to campus.

After reaching the path’s pinnacle, Murphy turned onto the main campus lawn and picked up his pace as he began the final stretch of his trek. He could actually see the building where his class was located now, sitting atop a knoll with a flight of stairs leading up to its main doors. Suddenly, the sing-song pitches of the Westminster Quarters rang from the university bell tower. Sounding cheery under normal circumstances, they resounded like an ugly taunt in Murphy’s ears. Upon hearing the chimes, Murphy burst into a jog. He raced up the stairs to the building, dragging himself up by the stair rails. He clutched the door handle with his sweaty hand and swung himself into the door. Confused, he tried again with a gentler approach. Nothing. The door was locked, defiantly blocking Murphy’s way, as if to say, “No, Murphy. You shall not enter these halls this day.” It was only then, as the bell tower chimed the hour, that Murphy saw the notification on the door: his class had been canceled. Murphy shrugged and hung his head in defeat. Then, as the echoes of the chimes gave way to the chorus of rainfall, Murphy shuffled down the stairs and made his way back home.

Blackrock: Chapter 008 - Hairline

2009-08-17T17:46:00.001-04:00

Okay, time to get back to it, hmm?

Kinda short chapter. Develops important character relationships, perhaps a little brutally, but that's how they are.

WHOOP DA SHOOP

---

Amy regained consciousness, again, berating herself terribly for being easy to fright.

On the other hand, the dream had been very real.

It was almost like Alex had actually abandoned her alone with Jac-

Oh, crap. That part wasn't a dream.

Jacob was crouching over her, looking very concerned. He began to reach for her neck. She flinched, he flinched, but steadfastly finished the move to check her pulse. "You okay?" Bewilderment and loss of control was evident in his voice.

The rest of the cave was dark. "I guess so," Amy squeaked. She wasn't about to actually explain it to Jacob. "Just... nervous." Jacob nodded in understanding, then stood up and backed off, leaving her with a flashlight. Amy slowly pulled herself up, shivering uncontrollably, but perfectly warm.

There was no good reason that Alex would have left her behind like this. Amy had explained to him what had happened. She'd told him the threat Jacob posed, and what did she get? She got this. Left alone. With a potential psychopath. Who was carrying a weapon usually reserved for a squad of infantry. Why he hadn't already killed her was mystifying. Hadn't she warned Alex? Of course he didn't believe her, of course he instantly trusted the man, it all made sense, in some sickeningly nonsensical manner.

Jacob was prowling around the cave. He didn't appear to be doing anything productive; instead he was moving around and scratching the walls curiously, then examining his fingernail. After one of these shows, he gave an odd grunt, shook his finger, and gave up, just pacing. He kept glancing at her, but the light was too dim for her to see his face. That worried her.

He had seemed friendly enough at first... but that was how all the creeps were, wasn't it?

Amy's confidence was returning to her at long last. She realized she'd been gripping her knees into her shoulders hard enough to get her arms sore. Relaxing, she stretched out her legs again, then pushed herself into the wall a little in the vague hope of being less apparent. Jacob's shadowed face passed by time and time again, and almost every time it went to her. There was something malicious there.

"Where's everyone else?" she finally grunted.

"They went out to check on the situation up top," Jacob told her. That gravel in his voice made her nervous. "Said it'd be about half an hour, and it's been twenty-odd minutes. I think once they're back we're gonna go."

"Everyone else? Even April and Summer?"

"I would've gone too, but someone needed to watch you - can't have you just sitting alone, bad things happen that way," Jacob explained. Bad things would probably happen this way, he failed to mention. The silence was overbearing. How would he explain it away? It wouldn't be easy... the others were her protection. If she could keep them around... they didn't have a reason to leave now, and Amy needed to keep it that way. If she even just fell behind anyone, and he was there... over the edge. Easy. She wouldn't be coming back up.

In the meantime, she wanted some privacy. "You hear that?" she asked Jacob. He stopped, listening.

"You hear something?" he asked rhetorically. "Uhm... I'll go check it out. Don't go anywhere." He started off the passage, the weapon in his hand glinting. His light disappeared around a corner, and Amy let her head fall against the stone behind her.

After a moment's deep breath, she shined the light onto herself and examined the mess she was already becoming. She didn't have... anything. No mirror, no comb, no belongings at all. Nothing. It hadn't been more than a day or two and she was already caked in dirt. Facial features... were probably a disaster, and hair was certainly a nightmare. Uncomfortable, dirty, and certainly miserable, Amy began to realize that this was certainly her personal hell. Her brain and heart felt numb, her limbs ached, and her eyes hurt. A vague sense of loss persisted at the side of her mind, but she couldn't imagine what it was - nothing on board the ship had had deep abiding personal value; in fact, few of her belongings did. No... it was something else. Something more abiding. A silent voice told her she wouldn't know until her blood pressure went down.

Standing, Amy realized she was stiff. Unfortunately, she had a feeling that would be permanent shortly. Rock was not good for sleeping, and there didn't seem to be much else around. They theoretically had some tools for survival... well, whatever they had would have to do. All she really had was a gun she didn't know how to use. She briefly considered shooting Jacob, but dismissed it; it would be impossible to prove he had any ill intentions. Well, and could she even do it herself? Kill a man, perhaps in cold blood? It was a stretch of the imagination. If it came down to it, though...

Jacob's light was coming back down the tunnel, and she could hear his bootfalls again; he was coming back. Hopefully it was him. Perhaps she needed to learn to use the gun. It might become necessary.

"Nothing out there," Jacob told Amy. The light refused to illuminate his eyes. "I'm gonna go check the other side." He was on to her, she could hear it. He was acting now, pretending to trust her. It couldn't be. He had caught on so fast! How could it be?

It was because she wasn't an actor. The only people she could hide from now were the only people that needed to know. She couldn't bust it out, either; there were too many others, too many who probably trusted Jacob. Her story wouldn't hold good. She'd even told it to Alex... apparently he didn't believe it.

Jacob was gone again, and Amy had a moment to rest easy. The gun... she knew the basic principles of aiming and firing, but there would be no finesse, and if she was going to fire the weapon in anger, she was going to do it right. Danger knew many forms, but mishandled weapons was one Amy had no intention to fall victim to.

And if the time came, if she missed...

---

"Completely clear," Trisha declared, stepping over an outcropping. To others it would have been a small feat; to her, it came up to her knee.

It had been perhaps twenty minutes since Amy's internal discussion, and now it was time to pack up and go. Admittedly, there wasn't much to pack; most of the people were already carrying most of their equipment in packs (Amy didn't have one, for whatever reason; it was probably for the best that others carried things) and were therefore already mostly prepared. A thought crossed Amy's mind, and she glanced to where April stood. Though winded, she seemed fine; perhaps Amy had overestimated the risk to her health. Perhaps not. It was not going to be an easy march, yet again.

"Something wrong?" Alex had appeared behind her like a wraith. Amy started and spun on him.

"Jeez, no need to sneak up," Amy complained.

"Answer the question, hmm?" he insisted.

"No. A little eerie down here, maybe," she offered. He didn't seem convinced. Amy hurriedly stalked off to follow Summer and April before they could get away. As she left, she cast a glance over her shoulder at Alex. A chill ran down her spine; Jacob was standing there now, a hand resting on Alex's shoulder. Some whispered conversation ran between them; amongst the other voices, it was impossible to follow. Both their eyes glanced darkly to her and then back to each other; shortly thereafter they split. A deep sense of abandonment welled up from deep inside; Amy pushed it down and caught back up with the two girls, quietly listening to their conversation.

The River

2009-07-26T17:21:00.009-04:00

Just so you all know, I'm not giving up on "Chamber Music." However, I was deeply, deeply inspired to write this piece by a Cheerwine radio ad. Breathtaking, I know. Read it first, and then there's a fun activity at the bottom of the post you all might enjoy. t3h p05t, 4 j00

---

He was sitting back, fishing as quietly as he could as his frustration simmered with the sun. It had been a rough week, and to repose against the gentle scattering of moss among the mud of the bank made him sigh with pleasant relief. The cork bobbed in the lazy current, not making any real effort to seduce the fish with the lure’s rubber-plastic jiggle. Instead, it kind of rolled and wobbled, as if to say, “Well, come along if you want. But don’t worry about it too much.” A sultry heat wet the man’s brow, but that was why he had the cooler of intermixed beers and root beers with him. Depending on his mood, or sometimes chance, his hand would go to one or the other, or even stumble on a water bottle now and then. A second, slightly larger cooler held a trout that had safely succumbed to the frigid cold under its blanket of ice and stared blankly at the beating sun.

The man sighed out as the line shimmered in the heat. He had been lucky to get that one, even after three hours of sweating and hoping the pines would keep his skin from burning. It was too hot out for anything to be trying to eat, today. “Should’ve stayed home,” he muttered quietly, and pulled the rim of his hat lower, trying to go to sleep - he needed sleep. His wife always said he didn’t sleep enough. She berated him over going to bed as late as he did and making her wait up for him while he was watching television or reading a book of some kind and how the good Lord only knew what was in those books that kept him away from her when she needed someone by her side to comfort her because he didn’t know, no, he didn’t have a clue what she went through during the week to uphold their image when he left her alone every time they had an argument so the neighbors started talking even though she told them because she loved him that she knew he always went fishing but lately she wasn’t so sure anymore…

No, the week had not been calm; it was why he came here. Not many people knew about this place, and even fewer were willing to challenge the signs he had put up to warn off trespassers, even if he was one, himself. It wasn’t always this hot out here, but it was always peaceful, which was good for his mood. The river was was wide, but barely six feet deep at its deepest. Sparse pines guarded the banks with their tall, ancient presence, saying in their wizened tones, “We have endured enough to know that what afflicts thee’s bound to flee, along with time; just let it flow. All things will right again. Winds howl, but if thou sway as thou repose, it will turn out all right. You know it will.” The pines could be a little supercilious, at times.

The squirrels were what kept this place alive, chattering to one another, even across the river sometimes, making challenges that would never be met and threats that would never be carried out. The birds sang, clearly believing their dulcet tones were enough to frighten the rodents off, and a hawk circled above, floating on the rare thermal rise and wondering if any of them had considered the particular reasons some of those threats would never come to fruition. Today, though, it just surveyed its land, almost soothing itself to sleep in its lazy, drifting circles. Even amid these voices, though, once he had made the decision to rest, the man managed to drown his thoughts in the cool flow of the river and submit to a warm, welcome dearth of thought.

That was when the bear came. At first, the man was by no means aware of it. Sure, he felt the snuffling at his hat, but it was probably an errant gust of summer wind. Without really thinking about it (or really thinking about anything at all, actually), he undid another button of his shirt so that if the breeze decided upon a return visit, he could welcome its touch properly. The bear backed off a little when he moved, but seemed satisfied. It lowered its nose to the cooler of drinks. Its face barely fit in as it tried to take advantage of the cool ice inside, and it quickly bored of standing over the tiny, blue box.

It moved over to the next one, which had been placed several feet away from the man in an attempt to avoid mixing trout odor with root beer taste. There, it saw something that actually interested it: fish. A free one, in fact. How it had gotten in the ice was a mystery to be left up to the philosophers, the hunter decided. The fish needed to be let out. Silly of it to be caught there, anyway. The bear reached a massive paw into the box to grab it.

It snorted in confusion. The fish appeared to be out of reach. It pawed at the covering, which moved around a little. Ah. Snow. Out of season, perhaps, but nothing the bear couldn’t circumvent. It raked its claws through the ice, rattling it loudly against the hard plastic, and the man finally woke up with an amnesiac grunt.

“Mm?” he asked.

“Rrn,” the bear responded, not really paying attention.

“Hey.” He had realized what was going on. He had never seen a bear at the river before. He was not exactly prepared, or even sure how one was supposed to react in such a situation.

The bear turned and chuffed once, panting a little in the heat, seeming to indicate that it was not in the mood for conversation. The man noticed that this was not a small bear. No, in fact this was a grizzly bear, and it appeared to want his catch. This was a time for deep thought and careful consideration, the man decided as his muscles tensed up. Unfortunately for him, it was at that moment that a fish decided it was curious enough to venture from its deeper haunts and taste the glimmering lure. The line went taught and the rod bowed, and the bear backed up a few paces in surprise as the man started struggling.

While he fought the fish, the man kept glancing at the bear. It didn’t seem too concerned about this particular turn of events, and instead watched with mild disinterest for a bit before returning to its previous occupation of stealing his food. “Hey,” he said again, trying to split attention between the thief and the fish that was now periodically surfacing as he reeled it closer and closer. Even distracted, he was an experienced fisherman. He let the catch pull this way and that, following it with his rod and keeping everything close and in control, almost like walking a wild dog. On a very thin and oddly-shaped leash.

He looked at the bear. The bear looked up at him again and chuffed again, as though saying, “Look, you have your problems, and I have this fish. I don’t think we’re in disagreement.” It was a more reasonable bear than most. Most likely, the heat of the day had subdued the grizzly’s normally fiery temperament, matching flame with flame and calming the creature via a sense of recognition.

The man wanted to take advantage of such a lacadaisical disposition. “Hey.”

“Grrrn.”

And then, with a splash, the new fish was out of the water and glimmering with the sun as it left its cool, blue home in a final plea for freedom. The man responded immediately, standing, heaving and reeling the shortened wire until the fish hung, still struggling, from his hook. In a practiced motion, he removed the hook and started to toss the catch into his cooler, but then remembered: “Oh. Right.” He awkwardly scrambled to correct his mistake before his potential dinner could slip out of his hands.

He dropped his pole, the noise of which once again made the bear back off. This time, it didn’t go very far – it felt it was very close to consummating its efforts. It gave the man a look, amber eyes searching him for contest. “Come on. I’ve worked for this. You aren’t gonna try to scare me off now, are you?”

The man sighed disappointedly, gripping his more recent catch in two hands. His green eyes, creased a little around the edges from years of fishing like this and staring at the sun on the water, considered the bear with both a survival instinct and a “That’s my fish, you jerk,” instinct. The rest of his face was less wrinkled, but had started to gain a leathery texture. He was a young man still in many ways, but there were plenty younger.

He screwed up his face in half a smile, wondering how crazy he would seem to people if they saw him now. What if his wife saw him now? “Okay,” he said (to the bear), “here’s a deal. This one’s not as big as that one, and I’m not that hungry today. I’ll get you that one if you let me put this one away.” In reality, he knew that one fish of that size was not nearly enough for a meal and he was in fact very hungry, but he was willing to reason with the bear. Besides, he had at least another hour or two before evening set in. He could still catch himself a good meal. Maybe.

The bear blinked at him, one paw on the cooler and seemingly ready to continue its examination. “I’m pretty sure I can handle this myself, thanks.” Or maybe it was more amicable than that. “You have a fish. Why are you still looking at me? I don’t want that fish. As you can see, I have one of my own.” The man was not experienced in ursine facial expressions; it could have been either one.

“Please? I need to store this thing or it’s gonna stink up my car on the way home. Lord knows my wife’ll be angry enough when I get back, anyway. Don’t need fish smell to make it worse.”

“Rrrm.” Chuff. It removed the chicken-sized paw. The man raised an eyebrow. Seriously? But he wasn’t about to give up an opportunity, here.

“Now, I’m gonna come over there, because I am not going to store this with all my beer.” He indicated first his catch, and then his beer. In explanation. To the bear. “And you have to promise me that you won’t tear my face off.”

The bear went back to the cooler. It seemed to be strongly considering just tipping the box over and spilling everything. The man noticed this and tensed up, giving it a warning stare.

“Don’t you tip that cooler over.”

The bear put a paw on the edge.

“I’m warning you, bear, you had better not spill my ice everywhere.” He tried to shake a finger at it, but with the fish, it didn’t turn out looking very threatening at all.

It started to put its weight on the edge. The man took a step or two forward, which drew its attention. “Grrr-rrrrrn.” It lowered its head a little, making itself very clear: “My fish. You have your own. Let’s not be greedy.”

“No, no, you’re mistaken. These are both my fish, and you’re stealing from me.” But he had stopped moving. Tough and hardened? A little. Irked by the events of the week and more willing than usual to stand up to the world? Most definitely. Able to brave most fears? His wife had provided plenty of endurance training. Ready to throw his life away for a fish, though? No, not quite.

The animal’s bearing tended to disagree with him. “So what exactly are you going to do, here? I already said that I have a fish, and you have a fish. What is your problem?” It still wasn’t moving, focused entirely on the man and the struggling fish in his hands.

The man sighed. It was right. He didn’t stand a chance, and he had lost this battle. “Okay, fine. Take it. I’ll just get some fast food on the way home.” But it was a waste to throw away a fish like the one he had with him. He stared at it, and stared at his other cooler. There had to be a way to both have a cold fish and avoid ending up with warm beers. It was cold beers that made him willing to sit out here for five hours of fishing. That and a very strong desire not to go home.

The bear snorted and turned away. “That’s what I thought.” It immediately dumped out the ice, lowered its head, and grabbed the fish in its jaws. Then, instead of moving away to enjoy its catch, the bear lay down and started munching its midday snack right there, in front of the emptied cooler and the melting ice.

The two of them were silent except for the sounds of crunching bones. The man started to say something, stopped, and then bravely plowed on. “You know, I could still use that ice,” he mused. He could not believe he was considering what he was considering, but consider it he did, all the same.

“But you cannot use this fish,” the bear’s stance reminded him. “This fish is mine, in fact. That is why you cannot use it.” The bear actually looked a little ridiculous. The bank was short and kind of steep, so the back half of its body was actually lying above the front half as it lay splayed out and enjoying itself. In less dire circumstances, the man might have laughed. And been prepared to run.

Instead, he very slowly started moving towards the cooler again, determined to keep this fish edible. In this sun, it would be putrid by the time he got it to the car if he didn’t pack it in ice. The bear raised its massive head and looked at him, those amber eyes daring him to keep coming. “You do know this fish is mine, right? And that you can’t have it? Actually…” The man could have sworn he saw it narrow its eyes as they froze on the trout in his hands. It licked its lips. “That’s a pretty tasty-looking fish you have right there.”

“Oh, no,” the man said, drawing back defensively. “Nah-ah. This is my fish. And I’m gonna come over there and put it in that cooler, and you aren’t going to eat my face. Like we agreed.” It was still a request rather than an order, but he tried to put more force behind it.

“Rrrrrnn…”

A few very cautious, quiet steps later, the man knelt down by the spilt ice, his head not three feet from the bear’s as sweat poured off him, now from more than just the lazy sunlight. He was not a small man, but next to the bear, he may as well have been a child. The grizzly watched with a lazy, almost-suspicious gaze as he dumped the live fish in the cooler, righted it, and started scooping ice into it with his hands. “You know you want to let me live,” he mentioned, trying to be casual. This close, he could smell the animal. Surprisingly, its scent was not too terribly different from the rest of the river, and thus not too terrible at all. The fish scent was a little strong, but that was to be expected from its hot and pungent breath as it panted in the sun. It was the fact that he could smell pine on the bear that amazed him most.

“Hmm…” It went back to munching. “I’ll certainly consider it.”

Periodically, the man looked down at his blue jeans to make sure he hadn’t wet himself. This close to a sudden and uncomfortable death, he was not certain he had total control over bodily functions. In fact, thinking back on it, he was not certain what thought posessed him to ever expose himself in that succorless a situation. But so far, the bear had been exceedingly reasonable, so it was possible he was overestimating his own fear. Actually, a few moments into his task, the broiling heat sank into his body again, and he almost felt relaxed. The bear finished its meal and continued watching him as he managed to cover up the flopping, nearly deceased fish. Once he was done, he slowly stood up, picked up the cooler, and went back to where he had been sitting at first.

“Thank you,” he said to the bear. In response, the mammoth creature stood with a grunt and walked into a shallow part of the river, ignoring him as it let the water (a little cooler, at least) wash over its feet. It swayed its head as though fishing, but didn’t seem wholly interested. It was more of a distraction than an actual effort.

The man didn’t cast his line again, yet. The last thing he wanted to do was hook a bear. So instead, he just sat back, popped open a beer (a root beer didn’t seem appropriate after that experience) and watched. Even though the creature had yet to eat him, he feared it – quite a bit, in fact. However, he was fascinated, in a way. Lulled by the atmosphere into a dangerous calm that wrapped around his fear like a blanket, he felt no need, nor even desire, to run to safety. This place was safety. True, he had never seen a bear out here before and it was possible his impression of the surroundings had been altered somewhat by the grizzly’s appearance, but he had known one might come at some point. In a forest like this, now that he considered it, he was even surprised that this was the first one he had seen.

He wondered if this was considered a majestic creature. He had heard them described as such, before, but this man wasn’t inclined to agree; not for this bear, at least. When he thought of “majesty,” he thought of creatures with a regal kind of bearing about them, which stood to reason, etymologically. Caribou were majestic creatures, with their coronal antlers and deep (or devoid, depending on your perspective) eyes; koi were majestic creatures, with their shimmering scales and fluid movements; this bear, though, was just a creature. Hulking, monstrous, sharp-edged, and probably irritable on cooler days, but it didn’t hold itself like a member of the court at all. It just was, and didn’t appear to mind that state of things at all.

After a while, it gave up on trying to find a catch, but seemed to still enjoy the water of the river. With a few rolling movements of its tremendous body, it slid into the cool current and swam to the other side. Once it had gotten out and shaken itself off, the man checked his lure and line and cast again, to see if maybe he could have a decent meal that night. He and his wife ate separately when he did this. She had made it clear that she was not going to clean the fish from the start of their marriage, and he felt that meant she wouldn’t partake, either. So while she roasted herself a chicken, (and later hid the leftovers in craftily-labelled aluminum foil wraps), he would fry himself a fish dinner and usually, through the hustle, bustle, and irritated arguments over who was taking up whose space at the stove, they would manage to loose all their frustrations and could then enjoy a nice dinner. And then she would tell him there were still some steamed vegetables left in the pot because she always fixed too many and if he let them go to waste he may as well go outside and flip his middle finger at the world who had provided them because she sure as anything was not going to stuff herself when there was a man in her house to eat it up who Lord knows wasn’t feeding himself properly with those excuses for fish and she was not going to become some tough man’s fat wife not for the world and not for him she would not…

The man briefly wondered if the bear had a wife at home. The creature had disappeared through the pines on the other side, its mere presence managing to make the river a quieter place as all the smaller animals shut their mouths in a terror-struck kind of reverence. It probably got just as much grief as he did. He smiled to himself as he settled himself against the bank, pulled his hat low, and fell asleep again, hands on the fishing rod, imagining a grizzly wife scolding her husband for wasting a day in the sun. Again.

---

So! Writing activity: write a piece that somehow branches off this one. You can have a scene with the wife, the bear, the pines, the fish, the river, the hawk, the squirrels, or any combination thereof. There could be supernatural things, pseudo-supernatural things, natural things, or whatever. I may be alone in my opinion, but I think it would be fun to have a running expansion of this story/environment/whatever going on from different authors, just as a passive project. Lemme know your thoughts!

Yo, VIP, Let's Kick It!

2009-07-11T22:02:00.003-04:00

I challenge you all to a duel,
A duel that will be oh so cool!
In this limerick contest,
May the winner be who's best,
And may they, and their limericks, rule!

Bring. It. Bitches.

High Water in Medina County, Chapter 1

2009-06-15T00:10:00.007-04:00

TA DA!!! I'm back, making my usual quadriannual appearance, but this time with some new shtuff for you guys to either read or use to practice your scrolling technique on. This reminds me, I'm beginning to develop a mousewheel callus, how sad is that?
Anyhow, in an adventurous attempt to avoid a ridiculously raucous writing rut, I'm adhering to Guideline IV of Da Rules and trying something new. We're gonna take a quick detour away from the Terraverse and spend a little time in Medina County, Texas, circa 2004. As always, honesty is always appreciated and expected, so don't be afraid to tell me this totally sucks. This one's sort of too short to be a full chapter, but didn't really feel like a prologue, so "chapter" it is! Hopefully it's enough to get the ball rolling either way. Here we go...

“I’nt that a shame. Grace was a good goat.”

I was on one knee in my buddy John’s yard lookin over Grace who up til sometime since last night was the nicest goat alive. She never caused anybody no trouble and she always kept Mitch and his Mom and Dad and his little brothers good company. Her appetite was always strong too. She could knock out all the weeds and half the grass in John’s yard and still have room for anything left over from the dinner table and she’d mow through that like they was the first things she’d eaten all day. Now the only things she’d be eatin’d be the dust of the earth and the flies that were beginnin to crawl in her scraggly brown hair and inside her lip and round the puncture wounds in her neck. Bless her.

“Yeah she was. Thanks for comin down Mitch. Figured you’d want to see her fore I put her in the ground”

I waved the flies off her one last time before I stood up and brushed the dirt off my knees as they popped from standin up too fast. Pete was standin off to the side next to a four foot hole in the yard and a pile of dirt of equal size starin at Grace with his arms folded over a shovel he was leanin on. It was hard to gauge his demeanor through his hand-me-down Ray-Bans but judgin by the crick in his mouth it was a cross tween grief and disgust. Can’t blame him. Losin any pet for any reason is bad. More so if it’s to some critter in the middle of the night, oblivious to its happenin and powerless to do anything once you find out.

“You got a extra shovel I could help you out with there John?”

“Yeah, should be a spade out back in the shed.”

I walked around John’s house into his backyard behind some switchgrass and swung the door to his shed open. The smell of wood and gasoline was stronger than usual in the morning humidity. Hiding on the other side of a rusted wheelbarrow was a spade about a yard long. I grabbed it and left the shed and closed the door and by the time I got back to the front yard Pete had wrapped Grace in a length of electric blue tarp and had lowered her into the hole and was beginning to heave dirt from the pile on top of her. I jostled over to the hole and started shovelin dirt. We had the hole filled in no time, even rounded out a nice little mound on top when we were done.

Pete wiped what I suspected wasn’t sweat from under his sunglasses with the sleeve of his t-shirt. He let out a deep breath that sounded like he’d been holdin it all morning. “I appreciate your help Mitch.”

I reached an arm around Pete and slapped him on the shoulder a couple times. “Don’t mention it man. It’s the least a friend could do.”

Pete smiled briefly before looking over his shoulder at his house. “I hate to run you off but I need to help get the twins ready for school.”

“Ah don’t worry bout it.”

“You runnin a route today?

“Nope, don’t have any til Thursday.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah. Well I guess I’ll let you get to the twins then.”

“Alright, thanks again.”

“Yeah man.”

Pete and I shook hands and he turned to go back into his house. Halfway to my Bronco I remembered my plans for the night and I turned back around to yell for Pete fore he got inside.

“Hey Pete if you’re free tonight I was thinkin about gettin a crew together to go into town for a movie or somethin.”

Pete had just barely opened the screen door when I shouted at him from his driveway. “If I could bum a ride you can count me in.”

“Can do. I’ll call you when I get a plan together.”

“Sounds good. See ya.”

“See ya.”

We waved goodbye before he went inside and let the screen door hiss close. I fished my keys out of my pocket and jumped up into the Bronco. As the Bronco growled to life the AC blew warm air on my face and a whiny guitar intoned through the radio that I instantly recognized as the solo from “Commotion” by Creedence. I put her in reverse and crunched through the gravel driveway and then shifted into first and rolled to the neighborhood exit and then turned right and shifted up to second as I drove home.

Blackrock: Chapter 007 - Plans

2009-05-28T11:37:00.010-04:00

EDIT: I goofed up a few names here - for some reason I can't remember.

---

Ian sat against the cave wall, thinking of the memories this brought back. They were so many. How often had he done something just like this? Hit targets all along underground railways, the operations often more militant than criminal. That was how it had turned out, after all. Everyone called him a "thief" or a "cat burglar" or other ridiculous titles. Those were the early days, the very, very early days. Now he was a "sniper" or a "marksman." Just as ridiculous. Maybe not the sniper title, not to the actual snipers who understood what it meant. The ones who believed it and were afraid of him. To the public, though, a sniper could take a shot with iron sights in the open from three yards away as long as no one saw him. Ridiculous.

He didn't have to even voice to himself his opinions of the others around him. They hated him, and he hated them. Their motivations were a bit different than his, though, and that was funny to him. It made it hard not to laugh at them. At himself. At everything. He would have, if he weren't so angry.

Because he was still angry. Right?

Amy woke up suddenly. She hadn't even realized she had fallen asleep, but given the way her muscles ached she had not slept well, even leaning against her brother. There was no light in the cave at all - all the lights that had been on when she had fallen asleep were now off. There were voices, but they were not crew members nor were they passengers. Naught more than echoes, but more than enough to have Alex on complete edge. Even his hair seemed to be standing on edge. Every muscle was completely taught, and she couldn't hear anyone else breathing. She decided that perhaps she too should be as silent, and made her breathing as shallow as possible.

It didn't take long for the echoes to fade. "Third time," Amy heard Trisha breath. "Third time they've swept this area, and every time right on by. I hate to admit it, but the Forsyn was right. Again."

"Always will be," Jacob rumbled in complaint. "Nasty little situation, ours."

"No kidding," Trisha responded. They sounded suspiciously close, but in the darkness it was impossible to tell. Amy cocked an eyebrow nonetheless.

"We can't stay here forever, though," Alex muttered.

"Can't move yet, neither," Ian cut in from further away. He seemed far more relaxed, almost asleep. "If we move, we'll be dead. Do ye like bein' alive?"

"If we stay we die," Alex retorted.

"Too many caves to check. They'll spend a few hours here, and then they'll all move on and we'll be alright."

"Unless they get lucky," Jacob cut in.

"They don' just get lucky with us, got tha'?" Ian snapped in response. Jacob gave off a grunt of irritation, but didn't seem to have any response. It sounded more like a great effort of self-control than esprit d'escalier, though.

Amy shrunk further into Alex. She felt like a child, completely out of place. Too young for this sort of thing. Technically, she wasn't a minor. That was supposed to mean she was self-sufficient. Bullcrap. She was cowering inside a cave, hiding from pirates and wondering if the only apparently competent person in the group would kill them. It was enough to keep her in her place, that was for certain.

How did they get out this far without a single other person capable of handling the situation? Jacob had even been carrying a gun. Didn't that mean he ought to know how to use it? He seemed like a clever enough guy, and he'd been a pilot. Pilots learned survival training, especially for the event of landing behind enemy lines. Well, gee, this qualified. So why wasn't he, y'know, taking charge? That meant he was as emasculated and helpless as any of them. And that said something about the Ian fellow. He was... how had Alex described it? A soldier. A sniper of some variety. And a criminal. So somehow he was good at both? That gave him a very wide skill set - the ability to take by trickery or by force. That was probably all he was good at, other than keeping himself alive. So in this instance, self-preservation.

That was wrong. He was offering support to them. He was... well, perhaps even protecting them. At least as long as they were in gun range. Would he abandon them as soon as he could? It seemed likely. He might already be gone, and someone they had already chosen to put their trust in would just be off like a bullet. He could very well be going to report their position to the pirates, take them back, and -

"Listen, I think they're moving somethin' right pas' us," Ian's voice cut through the darkness. Amy stopped as all breathing hushed and listened. She didn't really need to. The ground vibrated just a tiny bit as something large and heavy rolled right over them. For a long moment after it had passed they remained silent, and then the breathing began again.

"That'll be the armor, ladies and gentlemen," Ian declared. "Tha' means they'll only be a bit longer in this area. An hour, two perhaps."

"Where to once we're out of the... 'clearing'?" Trisha inquired.

"Oh, up," Ian replied, only half paying attention any longer.

"Up," Trisha growled. "Up. Genius."

"He's right," Jacob murmured. "Up will give him an angle and us an advantage. If we can get there before the pirates, we might be able to hold out almost indefinitely. Long as we have food."

"Well, but-"

"Hush, you, you don't know infantry tactics," Jacob rebuked light-heartedly. There was a smack of fist on flesh and Jacob's grunt of objection. Amy wasn't sure if it was cute or annoying.

---

Another nap later and Amy awoke to a light within. Someone had turned on an electric lantern, and the cavern was better lit. Amy idly wondered how deep they were; she hadn't even paid attention to how far they had come within.

Alex, Ian, Trisha, and Jacob were all huddled around what appeared to be a map drawn on a piece of notebook paper. April was nearby, listening and looking rather contemptuous. Other members of the bridge crew were sleeping, cleaning weapons, or looking generally bored.

Something struck Amy. If Alex was over there, who was she leaning on? Someone with long hair. A quick look confirmed that April was asleep against her much as Amy had been against Alex last she remembered. Well, someone was looking to her for protection. That was silly.

Amy tuned herself in to the conversation about the map. "...didn't you see it up there?" Ian grunted. "The waterfall was carrying something down with it. It fell for a good long time. I'm going ta guess there's a mile straight up to the largest openin'. Gonna be a nasty climb, but it'll be worse for them when they come for us."

"Weren't you just saying we kinda needed to survive on stealth?" Jacob demanded. He sounded sort of frustrated.

"Yes, but they'll work it out eventually. We won' be stayin' up there for long. There are a lot of caverns leadin' up there and if we don' keep movin', they could come up anywhere, anytime. That would be... bad, to say th'least."

"I suppose you intend to wing our travel plan once we have the vantage point?" Alex stated.

"I hope that your military friends will show up by then and we won't have to worry about it at all," Ian grunted.

"Or, y'know, Anubis," Jacob suggested quietly.

"Ha! He's been so timely so far." Ian was laughing.

"Well, with him you just kinda don't know until he's ready," Jacob grunted. "He'll show up soon."

"With wha'? A couple fighters, a single troop transport? It won' work. We've got to have a military response."

"Oh, our friend is pretty charismatic..." Jacob murmured. Ian ignored him.

"I don' know how we're going to scale this wall, but I'm sure there's some way up. Too many holes in it not to be, and there's a massive waterfall from the top, so the water can't only come down that way."

"There was water?" Amy inquired, incredulously. She hadn't seen anything.

"Waterfall, lake, river, all sorts of water down here," Ian told her. "We might need a boat at some point. We'll see how it goes, though."

"Is there any way to get over this rock any faster than we're going to?" Alex inquired suddenly.

"Rough rock is just going to be an obstacle we're gonna have to deal with," Ian told him bluntly. "It's gonna be a long walk. A day or two to get a few miles, most probably, if I've guessed righ'. We'll see, shan't we?"

Amy shuddered. Long walks were not her thing; she wondered if she had the grit to keep up with the others. And... and what about April? Summer would be fine, but April was pretty much smaller than even Amy. Would someone have to carry her? It was starting to come to Amy that she could survive this - she'd done track, and things like that, back in high school. Her physical shape hadn't gotten all that much worse, and she could still run a ways. Not military, not spelunking shape by any means, but she could keep herself going. April, though... April was light, but she probably didn't have muscle mass to make up for it. Could she make it any substantial distance?

Why did Amy care, now, of all times?

It had been... two days before? She couldn't have cared less then. She wished that she would've gone away. That was impossible. People didn't change that quickly, let alone herself. Could that have been how it always was? No, this was not the first time Amy had the potential for a older-younger-sibling-type relationship, and it was only with Alex she had ever become successful at that. And now suddenly she was so concerned about this girl? Impossible. It didn't happen. It was like something out of a poorly written novel.

Amy struck upon it a moment later, and decided that this was it - that she was concerned for herself. More people around her meant fewer chances that she would be the unlucky one, not to mention that preserving others would keep her conscience off her back. That must be it - self-interest. More satisfying, if not as pleasant.

Her eyes grew suddenly heavy. They had been up much of the night... she needed rest, and she hadn't slept enough yet, apparently.

---

Amy awoke in a shaft of light, which shined off of the bleached bones she was standing knee-deep in. They were everywhere. The rock around them, shaped into some massive bowl, was scorched - she was in a crater, she saw. The crack in the rock above was still filled by the gun turret of the vessel, but she was trapped in the bones, and it was deeper than she thought - she was sliding in. Trying to pull herself free, she discovered that a skeletal hand was wrapped around her ankle. Furiously, she kicked it off, growing panicked. She managed to expose half of her shins before she began to slide back down. Where was the wall? Bare rock was in view, and she grasped for it, took hold of it - and something took hold of her, she didn't even look to see what, she instead pulled on the rock, but it sheared off, and she was tugged backward. Now she looked, and the skeletons were writhing, furious, suddenly blackened and burned. Some were still on fire, and one such had grabbed her foot. Now they were all grasping, crying out - she couldn't understand at first, but then she realized they were shouting "Kill her, kill the survivor!"

"Why?" she screamed at them.

"Because you deserve our fate!" one shouted back at her, leaping up and taking hold of her hair, trying to drag her down.

Suddenly there was a hand in hers, and she began to pull on it, trying to drag herself free, kicking desperately. There were so many skeletons, and for a long time she wasn't sure if she would escape, and then she began to come clean. Then she looked to see who was pulling her free, and discovered Jacob, his right hand fixed to hers, trying to pull her free. "Come on, they won't kill you," he told her.

"You're saving me?" she asked of him stupidly.

"No, not really," he replied, a terrible grin spreading across his face. From behind his back he produced the SAW he had been carrying before, turned it on her, and pulled the trigger-

Amy truly awoke this time, trying to throw herself up, trying to scream, but there was a hand across her mouth, and one just below her throat. She fought desperately against both, all logical thought temporarily removed, her eyes squeezed shut against whatever horror was awaiting her now.

After a moment, she discovered she could not pull herself clear of whoever it was, and finally opened tear-streaked eyes, to look past strands of black hair and past half-dead eyelids into the very vibrant eyes of Jacob Lowry. She glanced past him, and discovered that they were quite alone.

Her brain stumbled, she panicked again, and fainted completely.

5 Star: Intro - Gabriel

2009-05-27T20:26:00.005-04:00

Well, here's the second chapter of the ongoing 5 Star series. This is another intro chapter, and like the last one the self-intro of the character was written previously. In honor of my friend that created Gabriel, I have kept his intro mostly as it was written. The next two chapters will be intro as well.
And now...CHAPTER IS GOOOO!

After the death of old man Shae, I found myself wandering around, just trying to stay alive. It was a dark time, and much harder than I care to remember. To be alone in the world, with no memories but those of the past few weeks and no one to go to for help, is truly a despairing circumstance.
Thinking along those lines as I walked, I began to wonder; did I have a family? Was there someone out there looking for me, trying to bring me home? It was a thought that I could not shake. I quickly found, however, that walking was an almost therapeutic exercise for me, and even more so when I walked near the water. Luckily, I soon found myself moving along near the bay, and it was there that I decided to stay.
The bay area was a good one for people like me: every week it hosted the Trader's Market, to which buyers and sellers would flock from all parts of the surrounding city to talk, eat, and most of all, buy.
This meant, obviously, that there was an incredibly large amount of leftovers, usually in the form of trash. The Streetwalkers, the poor and homeless, would appear the day after the Market, picking through the refuse to find anything to make their miserable lives a little easier. It is on such a cleanup day that I meet Gabriel Yama, and through him change my life forever.
I was walking along the pavement above the sand, my mind deep in thoughts that I can't even remember. I don't know what I was doing; maybe just waiting for life to give me something to go off of. My feet guided themselves along the winding blacktop, allowing me time to think.
To my left, the slate-colored harbor moved restlessly between the two jetties that reached out like embracing arms on either side. It lapped at the shore in a constant whispering shuffle, and the wind that moved it was the kind that carried a damp chill the cut through all but the strongest defenses. It was on this dismal day, under such bleak circumstances, that I found myself thinking about the possibility of a family that missed me; a family that perhaps did not exist.
To my right, the Streetwalkers were going about their business. There was a gaunt, middle-aged man picking through the remains of a seafood stall. His face flushed with joy as he came upon an almost full cut of salmon; joy that turned immediately into wary care. He looked over his shoulder at the Streetwalkers in the distance, but he was clear. Further along, a couple of young men were fighting over a tarp that had been left behind by a toy vendor that had left in a hurry. They were almost about to go to fists as I passed, but they put their fight aside when he got near long enough to glare at me.
I continued to walk. It was difficult, but I wanted to ignore the plight of the Streetwalkers; the plight that I myself faced. I was one of them; I was among them and with them and a part of them. Their problems were my problems. Even as I thought, my mind was reaching conclusions at every turn. It was both a blessing and a curse to be essentially born at age 12. I was intelligent enough to learn quickly, but to even exist in such a state was painful. Still, I came to realize before long that I was gifted, and because of this I had the chance to make a difference. It was within my power to change the horrible circumstances around me; the horrible circumstances into which I had been thrust; maybe for this purpose!
It was with such a galvanizing thought that I raised my chin and walked on. It was with a new light that I saw the life around me. The struggling, scrawny children around me had a bright future, if I could just manage to harness my potential and fix things. The old and the weak that had to rely on the care of the younger beggars were people to be rescued, and it was my job. I had to make things right for those that were weak, poor, underprivileged. It was my job to bring what I viewed as justice to the Underworld.
As I walked, a piece of flying paper caught my foot. I bent and was about to throw it away, but the headline caught my eye and I smiled. In my few weeks of life, I had come across stories of this man several times, and it made me very happy. Here was a man that was doing what I hoped to accomplish: he was bringing control and justice to the horrible filth of the streets. The man was called Kid Unstoppable, and that was all that was known about him. Age, race, even gender; all unknown. The Kid would carry out hits against mob bosses, drug dealers, overlords, the like. And on each hit, the Kid would leave their calling card: a single quarter, with a long scratch through the portion that said, “In God we Trust.”
This was someone that I wished to emulate. One might even say that Kid Unstoppable was my inspiration to become what I chose to become. What was that? Oh, yes. The Kid inspired me to become a killer. Oh, come on. Let me finish my story before you start judging me again. Have another drink and let's move on.
Now where was I? Oh, yes. So I picked up the article and glanced it over. Seemed that the Kid had killed a high-profile mobster as he was exiting a well-known brothel. No one knew where the Kid had come from, but there was no doubt that it was the Kid's work: a quarter had come rolling slowly down the street, to rest in the bloody gutter beside the dead mob boss. Very impressive effect, I think, but that's just me.
I tossed the paper into a garbage bin as I went back. I felt a considerable amount better than when I had begun this walk. I was almost ready to begin on my mission...if I could just figure out how.
My gaze happened to drift across a small stand of trees about 100 feet away. In it I could see three large boys, dressed as shabbily as myself. In the center of the triangle they formed, I could see...well, I couldn't actually see anything. But I got the impression that there was something between them. I was going to walk on, but it was not what I saw that got my attention; it was what I heard. As I was about to walk on, I heard a cough and a yelp. I looked back, and finally saw him: a small boy, pale and weak, being pushed around by the boys.
“Hey!” I remember calling out. I dashed across the grass towards them, but they didn't hear me coming. They were too intent on their victim. As for me, I had in mind only my mission. I had a chance to save someone from oppression! I was so excited that I could hardly breathe. I crossed the distance in a few seconds and dodged around the first tree, then pounced on the first thug's back. It was about at that time that I realized exactly what I had not done: thought ahead. I would have panicked, but there wasn't time.
The thug quickly threw me off. I landed on the ground next to the other boy, but I rolled back and jumped up easily enough. There was one behind me, but I spun when he tried to shove me and he wound up in the circle. At the time, I did not question how in the Hell I had learned to do things like that, but I guess that's not important. We get to that part later on.
Anyways, we had reached this standoff. The thugs, at first rather confused and hinting at scared, were now leering at me with evil in their eyes. They looked to be about 17 or 18, and rather large for Streetwalkers. I could feel fear in my breast for the second time in my short life, the first being when I had found old man Shae dying, but I swallowed it.
“Just what the fuck is this?” said one. He had a black bandana and a white shirt. From the way the others leaned away from him, I could tell that he was the leader. Again, it's better not to ask how I knew that when I only had a couple weeks' experience. Still, I knew, and it was him that I addressed.
“This is me fighting for justice!” I said in an attempt to swallow my fear by overrunning it with my quest. It...didn't really work out. They laughed aloud, and began to advance again. By now, the boy who had been the object of their tormenting had scrambled back and lay at my feet, and it was for him that I stood as tall as I could.
“And why the hell would we be afraid of you?” asked the leader thug, as he drew a rather long knife from his belt. There is really no way to describe what I felt, but I can sure try. For one thing, time seemed to slow down. Your mind stops working, for the most part, and you can suddenly notice every detail. Maybe that's because your mind is trying desperately to focus on something else. I can still remember the way the light caught on that knife, the way the thug on the right's face twisted in malign glee. In that time, the lead thug's question hung in the air, and my desperate mind could only come up with one response.
“I'm Kid Unstoppable!”
That got a response. The one on the left looked like he was about to laugh, the leader stopped and looked almost thoughtful, and the one on the right looked like he was about to shit himself. It was kind of interesting, the way they were arranged into an almost spectrum. I could tell that if I pressed it, I could run with this, but I had to be quick and I had to be good.
“You really want to ask me that?” I asked, cutting off the leader as he opened his mouth. “I will not prove it to you. I have no need to. You can either believe me, and walk away now, or you can try to test it...and see where that gets you.”
Again that thoughtful look. “Why the Hell would we believe that a runt like you was the Kid?” asked the one on the left, clearly disbelieving. “Shit, the Kid is a beast. Ain't no way that's you. I say we ice him.”
“No no,” said Right, holding out an arm. “No one knows anything about the Kid. This guy could be Kid Unstoppable, and there's no way to know it. I don't wanna risk it, guys. I say we get out of here.”
“Pussy,” said Left, almost disgusted. But he, too, was beginning to crack.
“Shut it,” said the leader. “I get to pick here. And I say, we give him a nice little test. One that the Kid could pass.” I began to grow nervous as he smiled nastily, but I refused to let it show. I needed to be strong if I was going to have any chance of changing the world. I swallowed my fear and drove on.
“And what's that?” I asked.
“What's the Kid's symbol?” he shot back.
“Quarter. With the God portion scratched out.”
“Then let's see it.”
And here was where it got interesting. I'm not sure what gave me the courage to get through the next minute. It might have been the boy at my feet, who I suddenly sensed was straightening up, signifying that he, too, had noticed that we had the upper hand. Or, it could have been something in the lead thug's voice that gave him away; he was scared.
I raised my chin and chuckled. “You can't be serious. I only carry those on hits, and you think you're worthy of that? Not a chance, fuck-o.” He started to object, not willing to take an insult in front of his boys, but I cut him off. “You talk tough, but tell me: have you ever killed a man? Watched as his eyes glaze over and his warm lifeblood spills all over the street? Ever heard the sound of death? Danced with it? Made it do your bidding, and take a life?”
With each question, I took a step forward, until I was standing with the gauntlet of their bodies. I stared right up into his face without flinching, and it was then that I knew I had won. He looked away.
“Let's get out of here,” he murmured.
“But Boss!” said Left.
“I said” he growled, stepping close to him, “that we're leaving.”
With much grumbling, they left, leaving me alone with the boy. I turned to him and helped him up. He looked at me with awe. “Are you really the Kid?”
I glanced back to make sure we were alone and grinned. “Nah, I just lied to get us out of trouble. What did you think?”
“That was amazing!” said the skinny little boy with wonder in his eyes. “I even believed you! Gosh!”
“What's your name?” I asked, thinking for the first time that I might have made a friend. Or at least, an ally on this impossible quest.
He looked me in the eyes and squared himself, and from then on I knew that he was strong as well. “Gabriel Yama,” he said clearly, not taking any shame in his name or condition. If there was anyone that could help me on this insane endeavour, I knew it would be him.
“Markus Shae,” I said. “Come on, let's take a walk.” We headed towards the water and began to talk. "Care to tell me your story?"
He nodded. "Let me think here...it all starts with a game of chess..."

"'Check mate, I win again.'

"I sat at one end of a raggedy table, no older than 12. Upon that table was an old, beat-up chess board, dominated by the broken black pieces despite the fact that most of the white pieces remained.

"'But how did you...' the boy across from me shook his head in utter bewilderment, his white king paling against my army of black, 'We barely started! You only took two or three pieces, it's only the third turn!'

"I shrugged and grinned half-heartedly, 'I would've felt bad if I killed more than I needed.' I said sincerely, 'But we can play again if you want, I have many more strategies that will take a little longer.'

"The boy scowled and stood, leaving me and the chess table behind, 'Screw you!' he said. I simply shrugged, I didn't like these people anyway, I didn't like anything at this orphanage, it was horrible. I was always cold, hungry, and alone. Maybe if I liked these people, I'd let them win once in a while.

"I remember when I first arrived here, I was just a small child, I don't remember who brought me, I never had any parents or family, all I remember is sitting there, alone on the doorstep, cold and alone.

"The door opened and a dressed-up lady wearing too much make-up looked down at me and smiled. I remember smiling back as she took me in her arms and carried me inside, I was in heaven, no one had ever held me in their arms, I no longer felt alone, and, for the first time ever, I felt happy.

"As the days went by, no one held me in their arms again, but things were still good, I wasn't alone anymore, there were people there, people for me to talk to, play with, be with. But no one would hold me in their arms again, not in this home.

"Months went by, and slowly, one by one, my friends started to leave me, they were either being adopted or they stopped liking me, some because they were jealous or annoyed with me, others because they found someone better to hang out with, and others because they just decided they didn't like me anymore. Soon, no one liked me in this shelter.

"A year went by and I soon began to see the true nature of this orphanage. The people who worked here stopped being so nice after no one seemed to want me, and I began to see the same thing happening to the others who were unwanted, we were given food last, and it was always the same, recognizable slop. It tasted horrible and couldn't be healthy. We were given the minimal amounts of water and almost never allowed to bathe. The beds were hard and there were no pillows. We were beat, and it was bad, but not horrible, I would always sneak some bread for me and the others and I would sometimes steal pillows from the others who were wanted and use them through the night before returning them early morning. I never got caught, never got beat, but I was still alone and I was still unwanted.

"As the years went by, the conditions continued to degrade with no end in sight, until today...

"I stood as well, I need to get out of here, need to leave this purgatory behind, I can't take anymore of this, no more beatings, no more cold and lonely nights, no more wondering what could be, no more, I was leaving, and tonight would be the night, this was what I had been planning for the past months…

"I moved silently through the rooms of the orphanage, avoiding any attention. I needed a way out, the windows were barred, the doors chained, this was no orphanage, this was a prison.

"As I walked passed a bare room, I witnessed a small girl, naked and strapped to a chair. She was being "disciplined" by a woman with a razor. I winced and moved on, closing the door as I went, this was no prison, this was a concentration camp.

"I found my way to my room, bare as ever. I grabbed what little I had, my cross, which I've always worn, a bible, a patched up leather jacket, and that was it. I wore dirty black slacks and a red shirt that was just barely wearable. I tucked the bible under my jacket and continued with the plan.

"Soon after, I had made it into the observation room, still undetected. The guard was napping, everything was going as planned. I looked upon the screens and felt bile rise in my throat. The largest screen revealed the front room, nice, plush, and welcoming, several more of the screens revealed the "special" rooms, rooms where the "bad" kids were taken to be severely punished. There was blood upon the walls and in one, a teenage boy sat, strapped to the wall nude. A man was in there with a knife, severing his genitalia from his body as he screamed, such was the punishment for PDA. A teenage girl was next to him in a similar condition; a man stood in from of her and began to unbuckle his pants. I shivered and quickly turned the monitors off before I vomited, I suddenly realized, this was worse than I though, this was Hell.

"I took the guards keys and quickly took off towards the kitchen, acting natural, though I had a hastened step, I had fallen behind schedule. I reached the door that led to the back of the kitchen and unlocked it with the guard's keys when I was sure no one was paying attention. I entered the back and closed the door, leaving the keys behind.

"It was almost time for the garbage to be taken out, that would be my chance. I quietly ran behind the cooks and hid in a cabinet, waiting for one to open the way out to take the garbage to the dumpster.

"I heard the slight clicking of the door as it was opened. I peered out from the cabinet to see a cook carrying several garbage bags out, this was where the plan would get a little messy; the back was watched over with Closed Circuit cameras and alarms.

"I slipped past the cook as he went out the door and hid behind the dumpsters, doing my best not to be seen so soon, it was to no avail, a camera spotted me and an alarm rang out. I swore and ran down the alley, shoving my way past the startled cook while he still had his back turned.

"I leapt onto the back of the garbage truck as it began to take off. I looked back to see the Head of the orphanage come outside and look after with perplexed eyes. I stared her down with my own, chameleon eyes, now brightening to a lighter shade of red and seeming full of life after being dark and dead for so long.

"'How’d you do it!?' she yelled.

“'It’s all in the strategy!' I yelled back as the truck turned the corner.

"Several blocks down the road, I ditched the garbage truck. I had been mesmerized the entire way, this was the first time I’ve ever seen anything beyond the walls of the orphanage besides pictures. The buildings were so tall! There were people everywhere, going about their daily business. It was wonderful! Or so I thought.

"I felt a smile light up my dirty face and I ran a hand through my tangled, wavy hair as I set off in search of a better life. Later that week, I came across a newspaper. The front page headline read: Local orphanage burned down. Horrible past of abuse revealed after years. Several arrests made, many children found dead or mutilated.
After reading the article, I frowned and tossed it away.

"Life outside the hellhole I had come from was harder than I thought it would be; food was hard to come by, but I managed to steal enough to feed myself. It was cold, and shelter was scarce, but I still felt relieved to finally be free.

"However, I was still alone. I wandered around for a little while, before I saw some boys in a group. Thinking only of being included, I went over to join them. And from there...well, you know the rest."

I nodded. I did indeed know the rest, and words couldn't describe my relief and joy that I had found someone just like me. And so soon! What were the odds? We walked on, and evening fell as we became friends.
The next day dawned bright and clear. The two of us had gone back to my place, which was a long overhang in a secluded alley. It was out of sight from the street and reasonably dry, and we made it comfortable.
Anyways, we woke up and began to go about our business. Gabriel went to the bathroom as I cleaned up, and pretty soon the two of us were ready to get out there and keep looking for people to join our cause.
On our way out into the street, we nearly ran into a tall man. He wore classy clothes, and had dark skin and hair. His bone structure made him rather good-looking, although I had no idea how I knew that. He looked at us and smiled. "Would one of you happen to be Markus Shae?" he asked in a deep voice that was carefully controlled.
I nodded happily, still rather titillated about having a friend and pleased that someone knew me already. "Hello Markus," he said, still smiling. "It's nice to finally meet you."
"Who are you?" I asked, looking up at him in wonder. His next six words, however, made my wonder and joy turn instantly into cold fear, and my entire body went rigid.

"You can call me Kid Unstoppable."

The City Skyline

2009-05-04T16:45:00.004-04:00

Here it is: the culmination of The City. I hope you've enjoyed the run, and even now - questions, comments, and criticism is encouraged, both negative and positive. Oh, and remember the way the names are set up; otherwise, the end will be a bit confusing. t3h p05t, 4 j00.

---

The boy awakens to a welcome sight; two faces look down at him, concerned. As soon as his eyes are open, he feels something pressed up against his lips, and water is poured gently into his mouth. He swallows, then tries to get up. A sharp pain lances through his chest and he falls back against… sheets? And pillows…
“Where am I?” he groans.
“He’s talking!” an excited voice squeals. “Mom! Mom, he’s talking!”
Damien immediately tenses. That’s Carden, then, and he’s in their apartment. Is Carden really stupid enough to go get the mother that tried to beat an angel to death with a crowbar? Surely not. But the other face there, smiling, eyes red and wet from fatigue and tears… his mother?
As he realizes this, he flinches. “I- I’m sorry I surprised you…” he croaks.
The mother chokes on a breath of air and her eyes well with tears before she runs off sobbing. Damien turns to the little boy. “What… happened?”
Carden’s face falls a little as he remembers. “After you got shot, Mommy and me waited until the fighting stopped, then got you inside. She feels really bad about hitting you. Please don’t be mad at her.”
Damien cannot ignore the pleading look in the boy’s eyes, as much as he wants to. “I’m not. I’m just confused.” His voice, though he tries to keep it gentle for the boy, holds traces of angry sarcasm. “I remember getting shot and passing out. Are you telling me you and your mother got the bullet out and patched up the internal bleeding enough by yourselves that I’m still alive?”
Oddly, Carden grins widely at this. “Nope!”
“Then how the he-”
He is interrupted by the mother, who returns, dabbing at her eyes and nose with a tissue. “We’re not really sure.” Her voice is quiet, because she’s afraid it will break if she speaks up. “Card, would you please go… I don’t know. Mommy needs to have a grown-up conversation with…”
“His name’s Damien,” he pouts.
“…Damien.” She sees his resistance. “I’m sorry, Card. I promise, I’ll tell you when you’re older. How about this? Go write it down, and put it in my room on my pillow.”
He crosses his arms. “Hmph.”
“Please, Card?” She sniffs and dabs at her nose again. “I promise you.”
For a moment, he looks like he won’t go, but Damien refuses to interfere in a mother’s raising of her son; he makes no move to encourage him either to go or to stay. Especially this mother. As much as he can understand what has probably happened to the woman, he retains a smoldering coal of bitterness against her for being such a cruel and indecent human being in front of her son.
Finally, the child goes. The mother closes the door after him. There is an ugly silence between the two of them who remain. The woman’s hair is long and brown like her son’s, but her eyes are brown and her face has been trapped by the early-onset wrinkles of the city’s age. Even her hair is speckled with gray, he notices after a moment.
The room is strange. He lies on and under thin, white sheets, surrounded by walls too dark to accurately describe. There are building blocks neatly stacked in one corner, on the gray carpet. Some children’s books are organized and leaning on the walls of a small bookshelf, which also has a pack of crayons and a meticulously-stacked handful of paper, the top one with a bright drawing of something on it. A small window nearby opens on the street. On a nightstand to his left, a blue lampstand rises to a cream-colored shade. The majority of the light spills on two feathers. There is color on the feathers. As Damien sees this, he smiles.
The woman speaks first. “Do you… want some more water?” She doesn’t meet his eyes as she sits carefully on the edge of the bed. Every sentence between them is punctuated by heavy pauses.
“No, thanks. Did Carden have a place to sleep last night?”
She nods quickly. “My bed.”
“What time is it?”
“Around two-thirty in the afternoon. Same day.”
He sighs in relief. “That’s good.”
There is silence again. Damien isn’t sure what to say, and the woman doesn’t want to say what she needs to. He asks her name.
“Mary.”
“Have you lived here your whole life?”
She nods.
“Have you ever tried to leave?”
She shakes her head.
“Have you ever thought about it?”
“I used to.” He can tell she has more to say. She still won’t look at him, instead looking through the wall. “I used to think about it every day. When can I get out of this hell-hole? But I never had the money, and this boy’s father… we don’t talk about him in this house. He swore he’d get us out and never did. And I… lost hope. I stopped thinking about leaving, because it seemed like it would never happen. It wasn’t worth it.” She has cried so much that the tears that would normally accompany a confession like the one that comes after do not fall. “It stopped being worth it to me to keep telling Card almost a year ago. How he keeps smiling, I can’t guess. I’ve been terrible. I don’t play with him. He cleans his own room. He makes breakfast for himself. He walks to school most days.”
She pauses for a moment and looks down. “I don’t pay attention to his grades. He shows me, but I don’t look. Sometimes he puts them on the fridge. I tear them down when I need to put up another bill so I’ll remember it. He colors a lot, but I usually give him money to go to the store and buy things for himself. I don’t remember the last time I gave him a present outside of Christmas.”
Mary chokes on a sob. “I just don’t know what happened to me. After we got you situated, I looked at pictures of myself from middle school and high school and just cried over them for an hour. I was beautiful! I smiled, and I was in some kind of glee club, and my skin wasn’t… like this. I feel like I must have been happy sometimes, even though I don’t remember it very well. I don’t know when my parents died. I don’t know where my husband is. Every day, I wake up, go to work, come home, watch TV, and go to bed. I used to think about finding night classes at an art school. I used to draw with Card, before his father left. Now, I sit and watch the TV and when I actually think at all, I think about what an idiot I was to think about taking art classes. I’m basically…” She takes a deep breath, then rushes through the culmination of her pains. “I’ve basically been spending my life waiting to die!”
She breaks into tears again and Damien tries to reach out to her, but can’t. It’s then that he realizes he is on his back and not in pain. While she sobs, he tests the movement of one wing. He can feel it shift, but it doesn’t hurt. Are they… could they possibly be fully healed?
The woman continues after a moment. “I’m so glad you came, and I’m so, so sorry for what I did. When I saw you, this anger that… that I can’t describe, just came up through me. I felt like I was going to explode if I didn’t do anything about it. You looked so innocent, but you were a stranger touching my little boy, even though I haven’t cared about him in God knows how long. And then after I hurt you so bad, for you to… do what you did… I don’t know. I’ve been crying all morning. At least Card learned how to be patient around me, or I’m sure he’d be out of this house by now.”
Her countenance suddenly takes on the enflamed zealotry of newfound determination. She is shivering with her fervor. “I’m going to better to him. I’m gonna be a Mommy and make it worth his time to tell me he loves me like he does. I’m going to find a God-damned art school and if I can’t, I’m going to found one! People aren’t born just to die like they do here! People are born to live!”
Damien watches all of this, knowing he isn’t in any way involved in what she’s saying. He lets her get through these thoughts and when she’s done, he thinks, But why did you need me to be here to come up with that? Why couldn’t you figure that out on your own? Even in this city? What happens to the will of the individual? People just give up. They get stuck, and stop.
He shakes his head. No need to be thinking like that. Whatever her past, she’s trying now, or at least she thinks she is. She snorts a laugh. “Listen to me. I’m still so selfish. Whining about how lazy I’ve been while you’re sitting there with a bullet wound.” A nervous chuckle follows. “Just the wound, though.” She picks something off the bedspread and holds it in front of Damien. It’s a clean, flawless bullet. The angel’s eyes go wide. “We left the room to let you sleep, and when we came back, you had stopped bleeding and this was on the nightstand.” He takes it from her and stares, jaw agape. “So I guess… the next thing to ask is… are you an angel? I can’t imagine what else you’d be.”
He slowly hands back the bullet. The city saved him, after all that. It’s the only explanation.
He shakes his head. “No. I’m just… a guy. I’m no better than anyone else. You can’t ever tell your son this, but I got these wings when I jumped off a building trying to kill myself. I just got lucky, I think. The Preacher tells me I got them from the city. It’s hard to believe.”
She is not so unwilling to believe as he. “Well… whatever the case, I thank you so, so much for coming here, last night. I don’t know how I deserved to be saved, but I was. And I won’t throw my life away again.”
She finally looks at him, and in her eyes, behind the redness, behind the fatigue and the wrinkles, he can see that she means what she says. “I’m glad.”
“Is there anything at all I can do to repay you?”
Suddenly, Damien blanches. He had been afraid of what might happen. “Don’t answer the door. Start with that. Get Carden in here and don’t dare open the door.” She stares at him, confused. “Do it!”
He has seen the Preacher walking down the street. The Preacher has looked through the window. He is coming.
Mary comes back in with her son. “What’s going on?”
Damien sits up, ignoring the pain that jabs his chest like a spear. “You know the Preacher? The Poet? The crazy old whack-job who stands on street corners with a drum?”
“Yeah, he always watches me when I walk to lunch from work…”
“He’s on his way here. He is not a kindly old man; he is not a good man in any way. He’s coming here because he wants to kill you.”
She puts a hand to her throat, frightened. “Why would he…?”
“Because you helped me. I’m the only one he can’t hurt.” Damien gets out of the bed and grabs the two feathers he gave Carden, moving quickly and confidently. “Don’t ask me how he knows I’m here. I don’t know. Mary, I’m sorry, but I have to borrow your son for this.” He looks deep into her eyes with an intensity she cannot ignore. “What you came to see will reach this whole city today, with his help. Is the crowbar in here?”
She nods and draws it out from under the bed, holding it defensively and taking up a position behind Damien and her son. For almost a whole minute, they wait in silence. The stillness in the air hushes around them while Damien glances for the city. Surely the city knows what’s happening, now. It has to. It has to come help them. But the stagnant air persists. If the wind isn’t blowing, he may be unable to fly. No. No, he will fly. He will fly no matter what.
There is a knock on the door. No one even thinks to answer, but waits with baited breath. Carden has wrapped his arms around his mother and is watching the door to the bedroom fearfully. After a few moments, scratching and the grating of metal is heard from the other end, outside the apartment. He is coming in without so much as a word.
The door opens slowly. Sniffing can be heard. He has been the only one he knows with hope for so long that he can smell it where it stands. He is like an animal, like the broken men who attacked the angel before. Damien beckons Carden to him, and gets down on his knees so Carden can climb up on his shoulders. Holding the child’s legs and the colored feathers, he takes a deep, shuddering breath and opens the door, then ducks and steps out, carrying the little boy.
The Poet sees them both immediately and faces them. He is dressed in black, today. His black hat obscures his vision. His black cloak obscures his body. His black gaze is angry and bitter. He speaks in grating jealousy as he sees the boys. “What are you doing, Damien?”
The atmosphere is chilled beyond recognition. Damien can feel the little boy shivering on his shoulders. “I’m showing this city what it means to fly. Like you said I would.”
The young man is shaking his head before the boy has finished speaking. “No. No, you can’t fly yet. You can’t even open your wings without me; you know that.”
Slowly, the white feathers spread out behind Damien. They fill the Poet’s vision. They cover one side of the apartment. They are pure, and shine even in the dim lighting of the apartment, even in the harsh light reflecting in through the windows. “I can fly without you.”
The Poet stumbled and mutters over his words, his lips trembling as he speaks. “You… no. I mean… obviously, you can. But you wouldn’t be able to, without me. I’m leading this city out of stasis, see? I saved you, so you could do this, so that there could be change.”
“No you didn’t.” Damien’s words cut through the air like an eighteen-wheeler. “You saved me because I was stronger than you. You wanted me to die, because you knew I could lead this city. And when you couldn’t drown me in the bathtub, you decided to use me. You decided I needed you to do anything for this city. For which I’m grateful. It’s true; I might not have survived without you.” He blinks his blue eyes and is shaking in his nervousness. As he speaks, his voice gets louder. He is clearly afraid of the Preacher, but he knows he must fight that fear. “But you’re a murderer. You destroy hope so that you can be the only one with it. You killed that little girl because I wanted to save her, too. You killed her because you could, not because she wanted to die! Little girls don’t want to die, old man!”
“I am not an old man! I wanted to…”
Damien shouts at him, “I made you put the hats away so you couldn’t see them, because you don’t deserve them! I broke the pencils to hurt you! This- this is what I can do!” He throws the feathers at the Preacher’s feet. After a moment’s hesitation, the Preacher picks them up. The image on them is full of color and life; full of beauty. This is what made Carden smile when he saw them the first time. Damien has made the plain, white feathers into something even more beautiful.
“Why would you…?” He cannot look at the angel anymore.
“Because I’m an Artist, just like you. But I’m better than you. Not more skilled, no. I’m better because I want to do more than shout from a street corner and keep a tiny flower alive!”
“Even so,” the Poet croaks out, unable to take much more, “it is a small piece of beauty in this city.”
Damien watches him carefully and folds his wings. “I know that.” He notices that the Preacher is blocking his way out the door. “Now will you let me out the door so that I can fly, and spread that beauty to the rest of the city?”
Something has changed in the young man, the Poet. His lips are pressed tightly together as he looks at the feathers. He has not been able to take his eyes off them. He softly strokes them once, then rips them apart and tosses them to the floor to the sound of Carden’s pained cry. The Preacher shakes his head. “No. You can’t. I will save this city. I’ve been its only voice for… for too many years. I deserve some recognition. I deserve something. I kept you alive. I kept the arts alive. I’m Nero, God damn it!” He looks at the angel with querulous eyes. “I’ve been the only patron of the arts in this city in fifteen years! More!”
“You’re a megalomaniacal serial killer. The hat lady was an Artist. Did you ever contact her? You didn’t even know her name the first time we saw her. Let me go past.” He walks forward, but the Preacher brings up his arms threateningly.
“No.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” the angel asks in frustration.
The Preacher is still shaking his head. “I don’t know. I have to start over. I can make this work. I can save this city.” The tension in the room builds with every moment. Damien’s breath is harsh in his own ears, and he can hear Mary behind him, shifting her grip on the crowbar as she watches.
Damien speaks quietly. “You can save this city by letting me go out that door. It’s all you have to do.” Their eyes are speaking fury to one another. “Let me go.”
“No. You have to die.” Those words are as immutable as any death sentence from a judge. He looks up at Carden, who has not said a word, nor even made a noise. Somehow, the world preceding the Preacher’s next two words is deathly quiet. It seems impossible, in a city, for there to be as little sound as there is, as though the city itself wants everyone to hear what the Preacher has to say about this little boy, whose bright, wide eyes are watching him with the curiosity of youth. “Him, too.”
A banshee shriek sounds out, filling that silence with all of the rage of a mother separated from her child. The sound rips through the air, tearing the heavy weight of the tension like shears through the thick fabric of a temple curtain, destroying the separation between man and man, between the city and its people, declaring to the universe that there is something here, something alive, something willing to live and keep its children living. The woman’s cry is like angels singing out to God that no, no, never again will they fall; never again will hope die in this city.
She screams out of her son’s bedroom, her eyes wild as she swings the crowbar over her head and smashes it into the Preacher’s barely-protective arm. Damien can hear a bone snap, and the young man roars out his pain. The boy pushes Nero aside and runs out the door, into the walkway that is open to the air, holding Carden tight to himself. He can hear a crash as Mary is thrown back, but doesn’t look behind him as he runs.
The wind lifts him up and touches his feathers as he climbs flight after flight of stairs, not even listening to the shouts of Nero behind him. He smiles a grim smile. The city knows what he is doing. The city is helping him. His bare feet feel cool against the ground as he runs. Carden cries for his mother, but there is hardly even time for Damien to comfort him. He can only run up flight after flight of stairs, afraid to use the elevator because he does not want to spend so long unable to know where Nero is.
He reaches the top of the building, seven stories up, seven days after the little girl’s death, and stands there in the open air, able to see the city sprawled beneath him, breathing heavily as the wonderful air of a breeze succors his lungs and he stretches his wings in it, heart beating furiously as he walks to an edge, looking down at the streets below.
He knows he has to say something. He cannot just jump off this roof and fly and hope the people see him. They won’t know. They need something said; something artistic to draw them out of themselves, out of watching the pavement, to witness his flight. “We can live!” he bellows, the sound resounding through the city even as he continues looking around, for the city, for Nero, for Mary, for anyone. “We can awaken! To be! The answer is to be!” He can hear footsteps. No, no, Nero, don’t stop this! “Look! The children are yet unsullied by the faults of their fathers! We can change! You can change this!”
No one listens. They may hear, but no one listens. No one looks up at the gentle sunlight. No one knows what to do about the soft breeze floating through their lives. Damien can feel the city. Carden starts shouting with him, his young, thin voice carrying through the wind, down to the city. “Look up! We can fly, look at us!”
“And you can fly as well!” Damien shouts down to them. Their interest is piqued by the child’s voice. No one has heard a child shouting without screaming or weeping in a long, long time. “We are all angels! We are all saviors! Look up, wake up, and live!”
“Icarus is dead.” Damien flinches, and his heart catches in his throat. No. No, Nero. The voice has slit the air like a throat, and reaches as many ears as his. “Icarus flew, and killed himself.” The words are ugly and potent, rusty and abrasive. All of the people who have started listening suddenly look hesitant. It is true. Or at least, it should be. The Preacher said it, and he has been the only voice in this city in years. It must be true.
“Don’t an idiot, Nero,” Damien begs in a quieter voice, one that they city people cannot hear. He walks away from the edge, afraid of what Nero might do to him. “You’re murdering this city, now that it has hope, aren’t you? You can stand no man’s hope but your own.” The two are suddenly facing one another on the roof. “You’re broken, aren’t you?” Nero’s arm hangs limply by his side, and his hat is successfully twisted over an eye that looks as though it has been gouged out. Mary did not go down easily.
His lips smile cadaverously. They are pale and ugly. The color has gone out of him. “I am this city’s only hope,” he commands. “I will save this city.” It is a mantra, now. They are words without meaning. They are a prayer repeated to no one but himself. “You think this city loves you, Damien? Where are you broken? Where did he shoot you? Remember when I died for you? Remember? In my ribs. In my ribs, where the Spear of Long-”
“Shut up!” Damien shouts. It doesn’t even matter if it’s true. He has already considered the danger of what he is doing. If he can jump off a building once, if he can fly off a building once, then he can give his chances to gravity and a city once. “It doesn’t matter! At least my middle finger hasn’t been shot off! At least I can still fire!” He lifts his middle finger to the Preacher, a tinge of his youthful vulgarity rising to this challenge. He still holds Carden tightly with his other arm.
Nero smiles under his hat. “You’re just another pig to the slaughter, Damien. He’s killed so many; do you think you matter?”
Damien smiles back at that, and all the furor of zealotry is in the smile. “Yes. I matter. I am an Artist. I can change the world.” He turns his back to Nero, and starts walking to the edge of the roof. He hears footsteps behind him, but they don’t matter because he knows what he’s doing, now. He reaches up and helps Carden so the little boy can cling to his back, surrounded by feathers. Carden is smiling despite his fear. He trusts everything. He wants to fly. “I am a force. I have been given a gift, and I will fly with it. Icarus died, yes, but he flew!” His voice rises back to the projecting, full glory it had before as he speaks to the whole of the city. “I believe that as Icarus crashed into the surf after challenging Apollo… he was smiling!”
With that, the angel runs and leaps off the edge of the building, his face and the little boy’s both in wild grins as they submit themselves to the air, wings open, ready to show the city what it has been missing, and then, instead of emptiness, Damien’s radiant face comes into contact with the hard concrete of the building. Dazed, he only barely has the presence of mind to reach beneath him and catch Carden as he falls.
He looks up. He is suspended by the Preacher’s hand, unable to fall as blood courses down his face. He looks back down. Carden is dangling from his hand, trying to be brave and not scream, but it is taxing on the little boy. “I’ve got you, Card,” Damien manages to get out, even though his airways are being clogged by his bleeding nose. “Don’t let go. I’ve got you.”
“You will not fly!” screams the Preacher above them, blood coursing down his face from his eye. “You will not fly without me! I should fly! I’ve kept this city alive! I deserve more than this!” He is weeping. His ribs have never fully healed. “I am a savior! Why has this city forsaken me? I should have wings!”
“You’re a murderer! You’re a mockery of what you should be! Let me go! You can save this city if you let me go! You can be forgiven!” He kicks violently back, but can’t shake the iron grip of one born into and raised by the city.
“I will not be left behind!” A metallic crack rings out into the air. Mary is back, with the crude tools of a city. The Preacher twitches where he lies, and almost loses his grip. There is another strike, and he cries out in pain, then starts crawling forward, off the roof. Mary’s tear-struck, bruised face can be seen over the corner of the rooftop as she swings again.
“Let them go! Let my boy go! Ugh!” She swings again and again, but the Preacher keeps coming, keeps crawling off the edge.
“I’m coming with you! I will fly!”
“We’ll all die!” the boy shouts back. “Don’t be a fool.”
But then, they are over, falling. Damien’s breath catches in his throat. No. Impossible. It can’t be. They can’t be failing now. He looks at Carden’s horrified face. He hears Mary’s shriek of agony. How can he possibly fly now, with the Preacher hanging onto his leg? He can feel the wind rush around them and blow up against his wings, slowing the fall, but not enough. How can he save the city? How can he save Carden, the youngest Artist in the city?
And then, he understands, as the image of the picture Carden had left near his bed fills his mind. It is one of a shining city, and a smiling man in a hat, with gray, wispy hair. The city has given him his wings by grace. It is his purpose to start things; not to finish them. He is to be a savior, but he is not to survive the culmination of his sacrifice, because he was once diverted from death and now must accept it. His sacrifice. He is to lose, so that others can gain. The city looks up at him from the streets below. Both eyes are visible. The hat is raised, and the city is watching him, and it looks like he is smiling. Damien knows, then, what to do.
He pulls Carden to him and hugs him close, then looks into the little boy’s eyes with a smile as bright as he can give. “Carden. You can fly. Go fly through this city, and show them what there is for them. You can live.”
Card shakes his head. “No, Damien.” He is crying. “I can’t do it without you.”
“Sure you can. Here.” Let what grace was given me be his. He hugs the boy close again. “Let what grace was given me be his.” He feels their speed suddenly increase and feels pure feathers under his fingers. If the city can give to him, then he can give the city’s gift. He turns Carden in his arms, and gently helps the tiny wings unfold, so they hold the little boy up a bit. Damien and Nero are suddenly beneath him.
The angel smiles up at the little boy as he angles his flight. “Go, Carden. Live.” He pushes the crying, little boy away from him, and the child flies up and away, bolstered by the thermals and winds of the smiling city.
Still with the weight of the Preacher on his leg, Damien smiles, unable to hear the furious, harsh shouts and cries from Nero’s sorrow as they fall. He can feel the wind blow through his hair. He looks around, and none of the city’s people are watching him. Every eye is up, challenging the sun so they can watch Carden as he flies, grace spread through the city. It is alive again.
Damien closes his eyes. He has felt this before. He knows it.
A whisper cuts through the air, borne from his lips:

“It is finished.”

In a windowsill, a narcissus flower, the only green in this city, blooms its yellow petals, and begins to wilt. As it does, a tremendous gust of wind blows through the apartment, seeming to have a mind of its own, and opens the doors of a closet. Out of those doors fly colors, hundreds of colors, lilac and daffodil and marigold and rose over and above the warped floor. They rush through the apartment and out the open window, trailing ribbons that spin gaily in the wind while the narcissus watches, obsessed with its own, fading yellow, and dies.

Others

2009-04-28T00:48:00.007-04:00

So, this is something I wrote for school, and I liked it, and I said, "Hey, let's see what those Tavern wackos think of it!" And so here I am.

On a side note, I'm seriously considering extending this somehow. I like it quite a bit, but I don't know quite where I'd go with it. Well, no, I do sort of. Flashbacks to everything that happened - I didn't have time to develop the other characters in a three-page story. Moving on from that point to show what happened all the way. It would be a lot of fun, I may do it.

Anyway, I'MMA FIRIN' MAH POST, SHOOP DA WHOOP

---

Fourteen months they had been away from terra firma. The Valles-Marineris class had never been designed for such travel, and even now it was a struggle to hold the vessel together as they hurled themselves out of their warp tunnel into the outskirts of the Alpha Centauri system. They already had picked up the signatures of the Others. They would swarm them soon, but the hyperspace engine was giving. The George Washington would not jump again. She could not jump again.

At the helm, Alex Sweeper was resting his brain. He glared into the empty, pitch-black reaches of space, the twinkling gems of stars shining harshly upon the vessel. Probably damaging something critical. His eyebrows sunk lower; relaxation was impossible to attain. Everything around him had a hostile feel. It had been so ever since they had been lost, ever since the arrival of the Others. Somehow he had held the ship together. The sheet metal around him was rusting, and some places were unsafe for walking, but the ship was in one piece and was coming in for one final glorious run.

“Lieutenant Matthews, please alert the gunners and start feeding them targeting information,” he requested of Lieutenant Holly Matthews. A short, trim, all-in-order young woman, she was perfect for the job, and executed her orders quickly and efficiently. “Lieutenant Nicolas, please ensure we have full engine power available to us.” Lieutenant Drew Nicolas, a stout, manly gentleman with a decidedly lax manner, proceeded with the order. “Lieutenant Hopkins, please ensure the shields are at maximum capacitor charge and set to full forward.” Larry Hopkins was short, even stouter than lieutenant Nicolas, and remarkably irritable.

Captain Sweeper checked the sensors himself, a grim frown locked upon his face. Lieutenant Samuel Carpenter, their original radar-man, had long since met his maker.

“It’s been a good run,” Lieutenant Nicolas suddenly cut in. The words hung heavy in the air, too sharp to be touched. Alex considered with a grim prospect. He thought of his wife, his children, left behind more than a year ago. Probably dead now. Lesser men would have cracked, he knew. He had seen it on this very ship. Now it was time to end it. It was almost a relief. His head felt light, so very light.

“Half again engine power, Lieutenant Nicolas.” The order was followed wordlessly. No one questioned the action. Tearing the ship apart was no longer any concern. What they didn’t do themselves would be done for them.

“Sir, priorities?” Lieutenant Matthews requested, as calmly as she could. There was a tremor in her voice.

“Take on the largest first,” Alex declared, as he always did. “We’ll play chicken.” Lieutenant Matthews shook her head, and Alex knew what she was thinking. Always the aggressive problem solver, their Captain.

The Others’ battleship, sleek, beautiful met their head-on charge without a second thought. The remainders pulled away, leaving the Others’ flagship to its kill.

Fire exchange lasted for only five minutes. The shields collapsed in four, and the Others crushed the guns and then the sensors, then finally nearly cut off the engines. Fighters from a far away carrier swarmed around them, ensuring that there was no further resistance. They didn’t have to worry. Now there were no gunners, and the engineers were mostly in the infirmary. Alex rubbed his eyes, Lieutenant Matthews sweated in silence, Lieutenant Nicolas prayed quietly, and Lieutenant Hopkins grumbled under his breath. “Should’ve made a run for home,” he grunted.

“Doesn’t matter now,” Alex reminded him. His fingers were still buried in his eye sockets as he considered their next move. They weren’t dead. Yet. So the Others wanted to take them hand-to-hand. It made sense, really. They had always been oddly predatorial. They were going to run them down individually. Alex reached for his handgun. If hand to hand was what they wanted, they’d get more than they’d bargained for.

“Arm yourselves,” Alex requested politely. Lieutenant Matthews’ sweat grew all the more profuse, beads of visible sweat running down her face. Lieutenant Nicolas stretched and groaned, reaching for his own sidearm while reaching out and punching an alarm. Lieutenant Hopkins growled and snarled as he retrieved a submachine gun.

“Matthews?” Alex inquired calmly.

“I...” She hesitated, and Alex felt it coming before the first tear rolled. “I don’t think...”

“You may surrender, if you wish," Alex offered. Matthews grimaced, and Alex understood she intended to stand by her captain. That was good.

They gathered where they knew the Others would board. They followed a pattern, coming in by the biggest door they could so they could get a foothold. And once that was done... the fight was as good as over.

Standing before the door, Alex let his mind wander, one last time. Back to days when the sun still shone overhead. Even at the beginning of the trip, there had been hope. There had been someone else. It had been a long time since his mind had been straight, since Holly had laughed, since Drew had slept in his chair, since... since anything cheerful had happened. Nothing but the gray steel around them anymore. The stars, the ship, and the colorful vessels that had hunted them the whole way.

Standing in front of that door, Alex tried to remember what it was to be happy. There was a flash of color... a smiling face... some tickle of feeling upon his palm, before he finally realized that he couldn't.

With a sigh, he returned to the door. Only thirty left. He had only thirty crew members left of what, a hundred? A hundred and twenty? It was sad. Such an end wasn't fitting. It would not last for longer than ten, twenty seconds. Fourteen months’ struggle had earned them a better ending they wouldn’t get.

There was a hiss, then a metallic clang. Everyone but Alex crouched behind whatever they could, preparing themselves for the last. Several objects being attached to the door would be the explosives. By habit, everyone pulled on their masks, even though at this point breathing in the vacuum was probably the fastest way out.

Alex didn't bother. Every other time, he had. This time, though, he would not. Let them see his face for once. Let them remember who they had fought. The gray steel all about him changed before his eyes, became something else. A grand tomb, such that never had been had before. This would be their monument. He would make it worth remembering, and he knew just how to do that..

The charges on the far side of the door detonated, and the thick steel burst into hundreds of fragments. They scattered across the deck, slamming into walls. Concussive force tossed everyone back. Alex had ducked in preparation, and he maintained his feet, then stepped out into the middle of the hallway. Now smoke filled the doorway, clouding his line of sight to the other side. He leveled his handgun, stood fast, while everything broke loose about him. For that moment, he alone remained, a duke, a noble, his face and body poised to act and to lead. With a screech, the first of the Others came for him, flying towards this pillar. As all the others had been, the creature had a smooth face and an almost humanoid torso, but the facade was shattered by the pitch-black scales and the knees bent backwards. Its mass of tails or tentacles flew from behind its head, and clawed hands lead the way forward.

Three shots rang out, and the screech strangled but did not die. With a slight, graceful gesture, Alex pushed the airborne opponent to his side and let it fly to the ground behind him. As he did this, a strange thing happened. Another came charging through the smoke, then suddenly slid to a halt and scrabbled back into the smoke, its face fixated on Alex all the way. The thing was well gone before he had another opportunity to pursue it. No more came, which was completely inexplicable.

Around him, his crew was standing again, groaning and recovering from the blast. Alex looked down at himself and found that his uniform had holes where the shrapnel from the explosion had swished by him, but he himself was unhurt. There was a long scratch on his arm from the Other that had leapt past him, but no worse had happened. “Please find a way to seal the door,” Alex asked, and his crew, as intact as before, quickly set to work blocking off the passageway.

Alex turned about to examine the thing behind him. He had hit it, but the injuries were not severe. Oddly, though, it wasn’t getting back up. It was obviously moving away from him, obviously looking at him, but it was not trying to attack. Strange. He stepped forward, and it put its arms in front of its face like a human protecting itself. Nearly human, weren’t they? So strange. The noises it made were now guttural, raspy, quieter. They almost sounded confused.

Advancing, he noticed something he hadn’t before. At the thing’s neck there was an indent, like... what was it like? Moving closer, he began to find a seam. The thing raised its arms again, but the claws on its hands had retracted. This was dangerous, but... He reached down to the indent and tried to pull it up. For a moment it didn’t work, but then his fingers settled into an edge, and he worked them under. Immediately he felt something warm, soft, and skin-like. Now he was the one confused as he pulled away the elastic cover, over the thing’s face, and back past its hair.

Black locks pulled free from the tails on the mask, and electrically blue eyes stared into Alex’s. He took a step back in shock, nearly falling as he tripped over its... no, her legs. Her face was drawn in pain, but she looked as surprised as he did. Suddenly she tried to speak, and softer but still sibilant tones met his ears. Alex could guess what she was saying, and responded in kind. “You’re not an animal at all, are you?”

Behind him, Lieutenant Williams came, pulling the mask off of her head. She too stared for a long moment before speaking. “Sir, what is this?” she asked simply.

“This is our salvation, Holly,” he told her. “We’re going to live.”

The City Hall

2009-04-11T11:27:00.004-04:00

Again, questions, comments, etc. are welcome and appreciated, both negative and positive. Oh! And I know there's been some confusion as to people's different synonyms and all, so because I'm pretty sure the confusion is due to my own tendency to use the wrong words, here's a list:
Carden: the little boy/the child (new character)
Damien: the boy/the angel
Nero: the young man/the Poet/the Preacher/the old geezer (to Damien)
the City: the old man
I'm gonna go back through the other chapters and clarify; thanks to those of you who pointed it out. t3h p05t, 4 j00.

---

It is two days after the woman’s death. That means that it is three days after the girl’s death. It’s how he keeps track of time now.
That woman was thirty-four. The words keep ringing through Damien’s head. Having seen what he has seen – having watched the old city with his sewn lips lay down unjust judgments – it has still taken until now to accept that this city is a sentient cancer. People age beyond their time and only smile just before they die or when their minds have emptied of rational thought.
Nero does not know how Damien spends his days, or has spent his days in his six and a half weeks here. Sometimes, he comes to the street corner and listens to the Poet preach. Sometimes, he wanders the city, taking in its gray sights and searching for something, anything like the hats they found in the woman’s apartment. They have put the hats in Nero’s apartment, but for some reason, the boy has hidden them in the closet. He doesn’t want to see them, even though he searches the city for color. He won’t tell the Preacher why.
Damien breaks into apartment complexes. The citizens are tougher than he is, hardened to these streets, and the angel has returned with a broken nose once and bruises many times as he is chased from bars and homes. He talks to people and shouts at them, or whispers through windows at children while their caretakers are sleeping. Sometimes they believe him when he says he is an angel and sometimes they don’t even listen. The children are infected with the poison of age, but are not all afflicted by it. Inevitably, the child’s caretaker awakens to the excitement in his voice and chases him away, but no one asks about what he has on his back, not even when he sheds feathers. No one cares. No one wants to ask and then find out that it’s something they can never have.
He sees art shops abandoned and turned into hide-outs. He sees clothing stores with plastic smiles on their mannequins, wearing styles and clothing from ten years ago. It’s not as though this city has been paused; it has just been slowed down to a crawl. None of the cars are new. There is no color, and Damien can feel when that has begun to shape his mood. He especially knows what it has done to him since his argument with the Preacher.
Damien buys a pack of colored pencils that day, two days after the woman's death. They are simple. The Preacher has a pencil sharpener. The boy grinds them down until the colors no longer look dusty. The Preacher watches as he takes a sheet of printer paper and lays out the pencils in front of him. Damien takes one in his hand and puts the tip to the paper. Nero then witnesses the boy crush the tip on the paper before taking it in both hands and, with the empty motion of an executioner, breaking it in half. He picks up each pencil, one by one, and repeats the process; he breaks first the tip, then the shaft, over the paper. He doesn’t smile, nor does he frown. The paper catches the colored powder and shavings that drift down from the snapping wood. The sound is like that of cracking bones.
The boy rolls up the fragments in the paper, careful not to let anything fall out of the crumpled parcel, goes outside, and tosses them in the Dumpster underneath Nero’s window. He does not look up at the Preacher. He cannot feel the heaviness that grips the Poet’s heart before he closes the window and the shade to protect the plant from the overbearing heat.
When the boy comes back in the room, Nero asks him, “Why?”
The angel stares him with blank eyes and asks, “What’s for dinner?” He takes off his cape and carefully stretches his wings until they are halfway open, then closes them again with a grimace of pain.
“Let me help you with those; you need to… open them all the way, now and then… to get used to it. And I know you can’t do that without help.”
There is a moment of silence. “Sure.”
Nero can feel that there has been a change in the boy. Even before the woman’s death, he has felt it. Now, it is there, and Nero does not know if the angel is fighting it. But… Nero can pull him out of this. The savior of a city can certainly save the first follower he gained.

It is three days after the woman’t death. That means it is four days after the girl’s death. Damien sits on the roof of the apartment complex while Nero prepares his sermon for the following day. So it is Saturday.
He has been up here before. At first, he wasn’t sure, but now he is totally certain – this is the roof from which he jumped. He remembers his fall in fractions of seconds, and his body is thrilled by the memory of the sensations while he is sickened by the memory of his thoughts. He recalls letting himself tumble, falling forwards so that if he lost his footing and tried to reflexively reclaim the edge, he would fail. The rain was falling down his face and he recalls a soft burn through his skin as he stood. As emptiness opened before him, though, a flash of lightning had split the night in half. He remembers thinking: Even in the darkest hell, light tears the blackness asunder and even though it is swallowed, the ferocity of light’s need to survive breaks through again, and again, sound and fury burning memory of what day was like into the eyes of all things that live in the night.
Emptiness beneath him, a rush never felt before. Nothing there, keeping him standing. His mind had flickered through the motions of memory, bringing to mind the bitterness of knowing that early memories are lies and surfacing through a maddened rush of images, reanalyzing even now glances and silky words, dulcet fingers playing him like a harp and hardy friends turned to dreamless sludge, strobe lightning until the last weeks, watering the thorny seeds of envy and avarice with jealousy and suspicion until the briars choked a city.
He had waited for the swift and sharp impact of his skull like an egg shell on the asphalt to fuse with this city, renowned for its deadly sloth, sweat already mixing with the rain that carried him down until, to his shock and dismay, he had felt his shirt torn open and a shrieking pain in his back. A gale, an icy gasp of air, had swept up under him and delivered him into a wall and then down, scraping against concrete and steel as the wind beat him again and again and again against the building until he landed with a cracking of his ribs on the sidewalk. He had lied to the Preacher. His last memory was of a soft breeze in the rain carrying a newspaper from beneath a dry landing to cover him before he lapsed into a stiff, painless black.
Sitting on the same roof, he lets this all play through his mind. He is glad he didn’t let the Preacher finish baptizing him. It was a horrible ritual, regardless of how much the Preacher believed in it. How many has he killed that way? Why didn’t he kill Damien like he killed the little girl? They both fought. They both wanted to live. Was it just becaue the boy had enough strength left in him to really fight, to threaten him? Did he… Damien’s heart catches in his throat. No… that is too twisted. It’s impossible.
No. Nero wants to save this city. What he does has reason, disgusting as it is. He does his best to eliminate the worst of what lives. It’s like evolution, except that it’s Nero’s selection. There is nothing natural here anymore. Those least fit in Nero’s eyes are killed, while those who even pretend to want to live still live.
But the girl… wanted to live.
The girl will not leave him. She had been so sad and so pathetic in her torn, pink dress. It was heartbreaking just to see her, and then to see her die…! She probably thought she was getting a bath and a caring man to take her in, warmth and something pretending at love in this desolate city, and she was murdered. Even now, Damien wants to weep.
Instead, he stands and looks down at the street. The weight of his wings makes his step waver at the building’s edge. He can see the old man in his battered, twisted hat looking back up at him with his good eye. “What do you want, old man?” he cries out to the air. “Are you letting me do it again?” His wings aren’t healed. If he falls this time, they will only be as useful as before. Another fall like that, and they may shatter irreparably. His voice fills the night from his tower. “To be, or not to be? That is the question! Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing them, end them… to die. To sleep. No more! And by a ‘sleep’ to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die! To sleep, to sleep perchance to dream.” He laughs, and it is maddening as the city watches him. A boy, walking with his mother, glances up at the ugly, gargoyle sillhouette his wings make against the starless sky.
“Ay, there’s the rub! For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause. There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the opressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a lone step i’th’air?” He kicks a foot forward and spreads his arms wide. The boy below is pointing up at him and saying something to his mother, but the mother isn’t paying attention.
“Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bosum no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know naught of? Thus conscience does make cowardsof us all!” He shakes his fist at the darkened heavens. “And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought!” His voice builds to a roar. “And enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action!” His tremendous voice echoes through the streets for a moment. “You are all of you too sick and weary of life even to end it! Awaken from this despondant, waking dream!” In his passion, his vulgarity has been erased. He stomps his feet against the roof and bellows, tears of rage coursing down his face. “WAKE UP!!” he screams. “WAKE UP!!”
Vision obscured by saltwater, he doesn’t see the small child start crying, not from fear, but from the undefinable, empathetic loss that a child feels when seeing another weep. He doesn’t see the child’s mother slap him for crying in public and doesn’t see her drag him along down the street back home. He does not see the city pull his hat low over his good eye and turn away.

It is five days after the woman’s death. That means it is six days after the little girl’s death. Today, Damien visited the little boy from two nights ago, the little boy who listened to him. Finding him took some time, but Damien has time. The little boy lives on the third floor of an apartment building two blocks away. His hair is light brown and falls over his hazel eyes like a gentle, summer rain. His face is pure and unsullied by the rain, still. The angel had stalked him vigorously, first waiting like any other homeless man on the street side, then, once learning what building he lived in, following him and his mother into it and watching the numbers on the elevator they entered until he knew the correct floor. The landlady had not been pleased to see him there, but he had left her scolding eye to climb the stairs, and she had not called the police.
It hadn’t taken long to find the right door – it was the one closing as he reached the third floor. The hallway is open to the air, with a banister all around so people can walk around on a landing, but the people he saw hugged the inner wall as though afraid they’ll fall off. In that hallway, he could look one way and see the glass and concrete of one building, then look the other way and see the steel and concrete of another. It was probably a nice place to live, once, always able to see outside of your own life.
He had memorized the number and left. Eight hours later, almost ten o’clock at night, he had visited again, this time knocking softly on the door and waiting for the child to answer. He shouldn’t be awake this late, but I think he will be. The little boy had answered and immediately recognized him. Some fear had clouded the child’s eyes, but then Damien had reached behind his own back, grimaced a little, and drawn out two feathers, which he then gave the little boy, whose face lit up with wonder. Damien had smiled.
He had beckoned the little boy outside, and the child didn’t hesitate. The angel crouched down as the door closed and whispered, “What’s your name?”
Transfixed by the feathers, he instantly responded: “Carden.” Immediately, his heart had stopped. Carden. From the black fortress. A terrible name for a child.
He had not recovered swiftly, but children sometimes have not yet learned to read the subtleties of adult expressions. “I don’t know many people with that name. You must be special.” He smiled again.
“Mommy says it’s because I was born when Daddy got out of prison.”
“Um…” It wouldn’t have been nearly as awkward for Damien if he had been speaking with someone who knew more about what had really happened. In this city, Damien could imagine that something fairly sinister had given birth to this child. “My name’s Damien. Do you like it in this city, Carden?”
The little boy shook his head emphatically. “No!”
That was the answer he had been hoping for. “Why not?”
It took Carden a little while to formulate an answer and when he finally did, his features were screwed up in a frown. “There aren’t very many kids here, and everybody’s always sad. Mommy keeps talking about when she dies, she’s gonna go to Hell and take me with her. And people are angry and shouting all the time, and I don’t like it!”
Damien could hardly believe what he had heard. If he had even thought about saying the word “Hell” at that age, his mother would have spanked him. It had seemed as though the child had never had the opportunity to voice his thoughts like that. He had almost been in tears, at the end. But he was a strong little boy. “Would you like it if you could make people happy?”
The smile that had graced the child’s face was warmer than sunrise. He had nodded so vigorously Damien had been afraid it would give him whiplash. “Yes! Could I do that?”
Little kids are too cute for their own good. “What if I told you that really soon, I’m going to try to make everyone here happy? Would you help me do that?”
The little boy had nodded again. “Yes!”
Damien had ruffled his hair with a grin. It felt good to smile so much. “Great! Do you go to school during the day?”
The child had told him the name of the elementary school. Damien had locked it in his mind.
“I’ll come get you one day.”
All of a sudden, the little boy’s face had clouded again. He looked like he had remembered something he wished he hadn’t. “But… Mommy says not to trust strangers.”
Half-standing and about to leave, Damien crouched again. “Do you believe in angels, Carden?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And angels are good, right?”
He nodded.
“Look.” Damien had spread one wing just enough that it peaked out from under the cape. Carden’s doubt was unconditionally swept aside by joy and he stretched out an eager hand to feel the feathers. “No, don’t touch. I got hurt very badly, so I have to be careful.”
“I’ll be careful! I promise!”
“Later,” Damien laughed. “When I come get you.” The angel had tried to leave again, but Carden grabbed his hand. He turned. “What is it?”
“Don’t talk about dying again, like you did on the roof.” His hazel eyes had pierced Damien’s blue ones the way only a child’s can. “You shouldn’t die.”
To hear that, even from someone who had no idea what he had done… his heart had felt a rush of warmth. “I won’t. I promise. Now, I have to go.” He had waited until Carden nodded, then made his way back to the apartment with a bounce in his step. It was a good day.

And now he sits on the roof, like he did before, but with no trace of a suicide speech in his mind. He is remembering his mother and father and the way they would smile when they were genuinely happy. Even as a child, he had been able to tell the difference between the fake smiles they handed to party guests and the real ones that came out when they watched his baby sister sleep. Remembering that and kicking at the open air like a little boy, he forgets what he did to them and why. It doesn’t matter. It’s over, and he has a memory of their smiles.
A sudden noise grinds out of the cacophony of the city. “Sing me something.”
Damien jumps, startled, and feels a strong wind hold him steady. He looks around and sees the city sitting cross-legged next to him. The silver hair is shining in what light can be gleaned from the yellow street lamps below. The blind eye is hidden and the good one is looking out over the roof tops. “What?”
“I heard you the other night. You have a good voice. Sing me something.”
“Don’t you have your Preacher for that?”
The city just looked at him, mumbling through the lips that are sewn shut. “One Artist for a whole city? Sing me something.”
“I’m not yours.”
“You should be dead.”
“Yeah, but I’m not.”
“Because of me.”
“What proof do I have of that?” With his personal sovereignety challenged, the boy defends himself, reverting to adolescent anger.
With no warning, a truck appears on the rooftop, screeching towards him. Red, red, red, charging him, collapsing over him, crushing him into the pavement… or wrapping around him while he sweats and screams into the torn fabric of a bundle of skirts. He angrily gathers them all into a ball and sets them by his side. “How the hell did that get here?” he asks. Why am I talking to a potential hallucination?
“How did you get here?” the city responds.
“I walked.”
“You flew. With me.”
“Look,” Damien says, halting the action with an open hand, “if I agree to do this, do I have to stay in this city? Can’t I still move around? I mean, seriously, who lives their whole lives in one place? That’s boring.”
“Cities do.”
“Cities get their change of scenery as they evolve.” He puts his head in his hand. “Listen to me; I’m talking like Nero.”
“Let me tell you a story about when I was younger.”
“You’re like the grandpa I never had. How ingratiating of you. Will you be my Daddy?” His words are as acidic as rain. “There. I spared you some exhaust.”
The city coughs deep in his lungs, cars backfiring and semis spewing smoke as they trudge through first gear. He keeps coughing, his body wracked by the sound until Damien is concerned for him. Then, he hears a snap and looks more closely at the ancient man’s mouth. One of the stitches has broken. It is suddenly apparent from the curvature of his lips that he is laughing.
Finally, the siezures cease. “Haven’t heard… ahem… anything like that in… twenty years.”
Damien is confused. “That wasn’t even a joke.”
The city clears its throat. “But it was wit, I don’t get a lot of that. Was telling you a story.” Just like a doddering old man who chooses what words and intonations to hear and which ones to not hear, he begins his story despite Damien’s rolling eyes and sighs.
“When I was about your age, it was just after World War II. We had suffered through the Depression, and lost my share of men to wars, but wasn’t really strong enough to attract a big criminal undercurrent. Everyone was singing, all the time. And the sketch artists lined up along the streets and must have had… oh, I won’t do that to you. Had seven art galleries, a movie theater, a dozen news stands, a publishing company, two sound studios, three bakeries, and a hat shop.”
“A hat shop?” the boy asks, his attention snagged. “Who ran it?”
“Oh, it was this pretty little girl… not little, older than you. Petite, though. Made beautiful hats, and sometimes, she’d take a piece of newspaper and make things for the children. Not those regular old sailor hats, though. Fezzes, witch hats, top hats… all of them. I’ll tell you more about her later. Remind me.
“Was saying, though, we had got out of the Depression, so we had all sorts of little kids running around. Lot like that Carden boy. Lot like you.” Damien looks at him, not surprised by the words. The city is just trying to entice him. “Knew every single one of the people in this place. Even knew the businessmen and some of the tourists. In the summer, whenever I had the strength, could put a breeze through, or could make sure the ice cream sellers remembered to stock up. In the winter, I would… heh, would fiddle with the stocks to get heating costs down.
“To the point. One day, in came this kid, about Nero’s age, and he said, ‘I’m gonna make this town smell like money.’ Felt like he was a big shot. Clean-cut, nice suit, confidant smile. Read him as well as I could. Seemed a little cold on the inside, but had a head for finances, so I let him stay. Set himself up as a stockbroker, working over one of the art galleries. He was good. Used all the newest statistics to figure out where things were heading. Turned out he had to know an awful lot to be so good at what he did. Got some people rich quick, and always kept some for himself.
“Now I thought that was fine. Kids still playing in the streets and their dads trying to convince their wives to stop going to work. Classic stuff; the other cities I talked to had the same deal. All just want to be happy, you know. Make people happy while we watch the world change. Used to love it. Those women had some fire in them, they did. Especially the black ones!” He chuckles in a car horn. “Talking about how it’ll be a cold day in Hell before a white man and a black woman can go to a poll together. Guess I had my share of hate crimes, but you just get used to crime happening, and sometimes the reason stops mattering. It’s there, and as long as it’s not out of control, then things aren’t too bad.
“Turned out, it wasn’t too long before that man was the mayor. Truth was, he ran things so well that I started letting things slide. Got rich. Really rich. Talk about a power plant, industrialize. Money and good times. He hired a woman to sleep with him for a few nights and then dumped her out on the streets. Just figured it was her bad luck, so I good-lucked her into a job and got her off the streets. But… things happen when people start getting money fast.”
“Other people start losing money,” Damien tosses into the air.
The city nods. “Happens everywhere. Didn’t know why I thought it couldn’t happen to me. Guess I was just another yuppie like you.”
“It hit the Artists first.”
“Mm-hmm.” A tommy gun rattles for a few seconds. “Pretty soon, the musicians didn’t have licenses to play, anymore. Couldn’t afford ‘em. Just hats and cases. Saw one man doing caricatures who had owned one of the art galleries.”
“They don’t do anything ‘productive.’ You know, except sow and reap happiness and change. That’s what my uncle always told me.”
“That’s right. They’re the undercurrent, and everyone on top started forgetting about them. Just come out and say it: you get all the money in the world, no one will make an inch of progress without artists. And for it to start happening when it did… there were plans for me to have a university, you know.”
“No way.”
“Got carried away one night. I knew it was my fault, that I had let it all slip away. But I wanted to blame someone, and that happened to be my mayor. First shot I ever fired. It was a queer one, too; piano fell off a rooftop.”
The boy flashes him a wry grin. “Classic.”
“Put that in a comic strip and it’ll make people laugh. Made everyone angry, though. See, I don’t talk to many people like this. Had a few people I really admired, though, and they seemed to know I had done it. Started really hurting the other Artists. And when a city loses its mayor, well… everyone starts to doubt. People started moving out. Made myself known to a lot of people to keep them from leaving, and everything gets hazy after that. Vietnam came and went and cut down the population even more. Lot of suicide, lot of murder. Had to suck up their energy so they wouldn’t have enough left to kill themselves. Like you said. And here I am now. Dying of a cancer I made myself swallow.”
The two of them sit in silence for a while. Damien thinks about the city’s story. It’s nothing really special, from what he’s heard. He’s never heard of a city being anything like a human being before, but when he thinks about it, this is what happens to most cities when money comes hard and fast. People forget about subcultures, so the subcultures start to hate the people, and soon the rift is so great that crime is too widespread and accepted to ever stop it. And then the city is less than it was, and everyone’s too afraid of it to help it recover.
“What about the hat lady, then? And why’d you choose me? I was suicidal.”
The city ponders this for some time. A shout or two waft out where parents are arguing in front of their children. “Suicidal is better than already dead. And your home city isn’t one of those who keeps his relationships to himself. He would broadcast everything that was happening. Journalists just flocked to him to get their starts.”
“Someone… wrote me up as the… arbiter?” The boy is suddenly angry with himself. He forgets everything he had arrived at concerning his past. It all comes rushing back. The lies, the faces, the planned meetings, the suggestively placed lines of cocaine and fire pokers…
The city nods. “Figured that anyone that smart would be a good person to start changing things. And even if you don’t change anything, Nero won’t last forever.”
“I won’t replace Nero!” he shouts viciously. “That cracked up old geezer’s a monster.”
“He’s twenty-seven.”
“I know he’s twenty-seven! Shit, he could be twelve for all I care. He’s a murdering nut job, and it’s bad enough that I’ve had to live with him; I won’t fucking replace him.”
The city speaks slowly in its gruff tones. “So change things.”
“I’ll just send it all to Hell like I did back home. You know how it started? You prob’ly do. I screwed with these pictures of my uncle to make it look like he was sneaking around my grandparents’ house looking for the will, ‘cuz I figured if I just made everyone have a big ol’ family argument, they’d have it out and would finally stop putting on those cheap, mannequin smiles every day. I wanted someone to cry, to grimace and groan and shout because they all laughed like stuffed birds and smiled like news anchors. Put the pictures in Mom’s cookbook.”
He moves violently as he speaks gesturing wildly through the memories. “But she took it too far. She laced his coffee with arsenic the next time he came over and stuffed him in a closet. My little sister found him and told our other grandparents. Everyone knew in the space of a week, even people I had never seen before in my life. I figured, ‘What the hell? Lessee what kind of shit can be made to go down.’ Three weeks later, I was the only one in my family left alive and some of their best friends had been shot by gangs I was friends with because no one knew who had done any of it, except that my mother killed my uncle. Just a bunch of stupid-ass people fucking each other over, because I thought I could chane something. Everything I touch falls apart. Why should this be any different?”
The city answers calmly. “That was one thing, Damien.”
“It was everything! It was my family! It was my fucking life! It was human beings and a city, and I dunno, maybe one reason I wanted to off myself was so I’d never see how far it spread! It’s a disease, and I’m just like that first little virus that gets in there before the body collapses. I’m a demon! Or a failure.” He tosses his golden hair in agitation. “Or both.”
The city is silent, letting the angel berate himself. He has known these people before. He once had pity on them, before he buried his capacity for pity. “You have ability. You have misguided yourself in its use.”
“What about the hat lady?” Damien is not comfortable staying on the subject of his own life, so he quenches his agitation in a flash. He doesn’t look at the city. “You sound like you… y’know… loved her. I guess the woman you killed was her daughter, or grand-daughter, or whatever. Why’d you do it?”
The city shifts. “She knew what she was doing.”
“So?”
“She knew I would kill her,” he offers, assuming Damien has misunderstood.
“So?”
“Killed her.”
“She was an Artist! I thought you loved Artists. Isn’t that why you trapped me here? Isn’t that why you don’t kill Nero for everything he’s done?”
“You’re questioning something you don’t-“
Damien shouts, “Isn’t that why you suffer him to murder children? Isn’t that why your mouth is sewn shut and your ears are cut off and one eye is blind? You think I can’t see you? You’re dying, and you’re exterminating the cure because it hurts too much to swallow! Isn’t that a part of the global stupidity that’s encircling this God-damned race?”
A blast of wind throws Damien off the building, and he is buffetted by crazed currents that keep him tumbling and floating high above the streets. The sound is like a hurricane. As his vision spins around, he can see the city pointing his gun at him. “You presume more than you know.”
The skirts billow towards him, red, red obscuring his vision, inundating him. “Drop me! You’re just another fuck-up in a world of fuck-ups! You’re one of the reasons I wanted to die!” The cloak is thrown off and away and feathers fall around him like a snowstorm. He struggles to keep his wings folded agains the wind.
“It’s because you’re an Artist.” The city does not speak loudly, or in anger. “You watch the world so closely that you can’t help but learn its flaws. Not only that, but you don’t see people trying to change. You talk of being trapped and of suicide, but that changes nothing, either. Do you have the will to make a change? Because no one has changed anything for me in decades. All you Artists are hypocrites. For years, I have believed nothing can cure me, and then you arrive at my gates and I fight my way through a history of stasis to convince myself to let you live, and this is your response? Your way of fighting is to ask me to kill you?” He shifts the aim of the gun towards a building two blocks away. “Save one thing, if you can!”
Damien feels the winds cease and feels himself begin to drop, the red rising over him like a bloody canopy. He knows where that bullet is going, but he’s falling and he knows his wings aren’t healed yet. He’s tested them and stretched them, and they feel stiff and unready. How can he possibly fly? How can he save someone else if he can’t save himself?
But Carden might be killed.
All other thoughts leave his mind. Thirty feet from the ground, he spreads his wings as well as he knows how and closes his eyes as his nose misses the asphalt by inches. When he opens them, he realizes that he is hearing shots from a firefight. Somehow, he gains enough altitude to put his feet down, trips, and scrapes his body along the ground. He can feel bruises already forming. He has to protect the child, somehow.
The boy picks himself up and sprints to the apartment building, blistered feet slapping painfully against cement as he runs. Ignoring harsh shouts from the residents and landlady, he leaps up the stairs, heart pounding in his ears. He can feel warm wetness on his face and hands, but it doesn’t matter because he can still hear the shouts and gunshots all around him. Everything is passing in blurs as he beats on the door and screams, “Carden! It’s Damien! Get you and your mother away from the windows!”
He hears a muffled “Damien?” from within, accompanied by an angry mother’s curses. The door opens and Damien immediately blocks the portal with his wings and his body, not caring who sees him. The hallway is open to the air. There’s a gunfight hurtling around them. “Get inside and get down, Carden. Go on.”
“What’s happening? How did you get hurt?” He is concerned. He is honestly concerned, but he isn’t listening.
The angel hesitates before he tells as much truth as he dares. “I was practicing, is all. There are some bad people with guns outside, and I don’t want you to get hurt, so just stay close to the ground, okay?” He pushes gently on the child’s shoulder to try to get him on the floor.
There is a loud crack and Damien is unable to focus on anything before a dull throbbing sets in. Something is being shouted, but he can’t hear it. The mother must have hit him. Carden is screaming. Damien’s vision is swimming as he tries to find something to hold on to. A second blow, this one to his ribs, knocks him off his feet, and there is a flurry of motion. Carden is standing defensively over him, crying and yelling at the mother to stop. The mother has a crowbar. She’s not crying or shivering; she’s just angry. She is standing and through the open door, Damien sees a window, all the way across the room. The old man’s excuse for a grin is filling it.
With all of his strength, the angel heaves himself from the floor, stumbles into the mother, shoves her down, and spreads his wings wide to cover the opening as he reaches to swing it closed.

A shot rings out. The angel watches glass shatter.

Damien chokes, and feels something warm and wet on his lips, which are trembling. The pain in his head is receding. In fact, his head feels as light as air. It’s like he can feel every heartbeat burst its way through his body. Even his fingers are pulsing. He can’t stand up straight, though, and falls back when he loses balance. One wing covers Carden as the angel lies there, with a gaping, red hole in his chest.

---

I know there were some weaknesses in this, but I didn't know how to fix them. Suggestions?

The City Walls

2009-03-31T15:05:00.004-04:00

So, I'm really proud of this series so far, even knowing it has flaws. I invite critique, especially if there are things that don't make sense, because my biggest weakness is not realizing that the actions and scenes that make sense to me don't necessarily make sense to other people. So. t3h p05t is 4 j00.

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In the six weeks that follow, much occurs to shape the boy’s view of the city. He witnesses a myriad of events he prays he will never see again. He comes to hate the man, and the city. The old man does not appear to him again except briefly, but every time he thinks of escaping, the image of the red truck bearing down on him flashes through him like a siezure and the burns on the back of his neck seem to flare, long after cooling and being covered over by strange, pink scars.
The young man’s ribs do not heal. He bandages them every day and often must have the boy help him into and out of bed. The boy realizes what power he has in this relationship, although… it is limited. True, the boy is very independent, but he will not eat food the Preacher has not given him. He will not steal, because he believes that the Preacher steals and he will not compound these sins on one another. And his wings are healing, but he still needs the Preacher to help him fold them and stretch them as the bones knit together, and to check the splints they have set. The limbs feel heavy, burdening him, hunching his back as he walks. The atmosphere is tense, but it is mutual. Each must have the other, and the boy can go nowhere without Nero’s consent, because he will not take the cloak when it is not his and Nero has not given the cloak to him.
One day, after those six weeks, the boy does not help him out of bed.
“Damien – I’m so sorry, Damien, will you help me get up?”
“Take some pain killers.” The bottle is next to the bed. The boy has been sleeping on the couch – as his wings heal, he has learned to fold them himself, somewhat. He aches in the mornings, though.
“Damien… please.”
The boy stays in a wooden chair at the table. “You baptized someone last night. Like you tried to baptize me.”
There is a silence from the other room. The plant by the window wavers quietly in the wind. The sun is bright today, but there is that slight wind. So the window is open. “Yes, I did.”
“Where’s the body?”
“It’s in a Dumpster, where we put it.”
Damien crosses his arms and hunches over them. He shouts, “Where is the body, Preacher? Where’s the funeral? Aren’t you a minister? Shouldn’t you have said some words?”
The Preacher speaks quietly. “Why would I do that?”
“Because she deserved them!” There is fury in his features. He will not forget the girl. She was so young… She was thin and pale. It looked like she had come from outside, because her face was so pure and clear, but she was emaciated from wandering and had come to the city looking for a home. When they saw her in the street the day before, with her faded, pink dress and yellow hair, the angel had leaned down and held her while the Poet watched and considered shedding tears, his black hat motionless in the wind. The girl had blinked and swallowed, on the edge of total exhaustion, then cried. She had shivered and wept in the angel’s arms while the Poet watched and the angel stroked her hair, whispered soothing nothings into her ears. “I couldn’t save her!” she wailed. “She’s dead. She never… she never got to do anything. She died!” The angel had looked up to the Preacher, who nodded. The boy had believed it was so they could take her home and let her rest.
“She was just a little girl!” he rages now, swearing he will not cry. “And you drowned her in a bathtub!”
The young man is silent. This is why the city cannot forgive him – because these are the kinds of things he does. He let the little girl kill herself, but the city would have let her live. It would have let her live to starve for her entire life and grow old by age twenty, to be impoverished and alone, even in a city. So the Preacher gave her a choice and baptized her. The angel saw him doing it. The angel tried to intervene on her behalf, but the Preacher fought him. The stubbornness of the young man held him back, despite broken ribs, despite how easy it would have been to let him through, but Nero wanted none of it. When it was over, the child was dead. She had chosen suicide over living in that city.
“She had my place in a city this one consumed. She knew that city the same way I know this one. She lost the one thing she should have been able to count on. She committed suicide to escape that loss.”
“A five-year-old girl does not commit suicide for a hallucination! You weren’t watching her! She was screaming, Nero!”
Nero shouts from his room, “I am twenty-seven years old!”
The boy is stunned nearly out of his anger. He shakes his head in bewilderment. “What?”
“I am twenty-seven years old. The man who almost ran you over is twenty. The gangsters I got the money from – twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three. She did not deserve to live in this city!”
“But… she’s dead! Aren’t we trying to fix this city? How do you fix a city by killing children?”
“We can’t…”
“You’re a deluded old man!”
“I am not an old man! I have been crippled by this city and I do what I can to ease the sufferings of those in it.”
“You’re a decrepit murderer! I hope you die in that bed. It’s all you deserve.” He throws his chair down as he stands and twitches awkwardly on the rippling floor.
“You can’t have the cape. Don’t leave.”
“I’m leaving without it.”
“They’ll kill you!”
He turns. “Why? Why would they kill me? I’m a miracle of the city!” He spits on the floor.
“Don’t go!” The door slams.
The angel has left.

As soon as he is in the hallway, he leans back against the door, shivering. Without the cape, he feels naked. The clothes on his body feel like air and his wings feel monstrous and dense. No one is there. No one can see him. He can hear the Preacher calling, “Damien! Damien!” but he will not go back in. He pushes himself off the door and starts walking. The woman’s door is open; the one whose name the Poet could not remember.
I am twenty-seven years old. Impossible. The dim light of the hallway is shining into the old lady’s room. The carpet in the hallway is swirling through lavender and maroon. The walls are spoiled milk. Being there is like being in an eccentric, deceased aunt’s home before it’s auctioned off to someone who irritates you because they’re willing to take care of it and it makes you feel dirty and heartless. When you’re looking down, you can’t tell that the carpet is lying to you about the colors of the complex. If you look up, you know that the maroon and lavender are faded from dust and paint crumbling off the walls. If you look above, you see the ceiling is damp, spoiled milk.
If you look into the room of the woman in red, you can see where the edge of the carpet is torn off to show that her floor is hardwood, like the Preacher’s. It isn’t warped, though. You can smell a faint perfume in the air. You can see hats like the one she was wearing everywhere in the room. They have color; they aren’t faded. She doesn’t wear these. You can pick one up and feel the velvet rim and robin’s egg dome with a garland of paper flowers, delicately cut and woven together. You can pick up another with a white ribbon above a dandelion base, or another with a two-foot brim and lavender lace. You can see that her bed in the next room is made and the drapery on the window is a gossamer shade, cooling the incoming sun. You can see the framed picture of a young man, a husband or brother or son, smiling fit to bring in the stars, holding something in his hands that seems to have been scratched out of the picture. You can see a neat pile of lace and ribbon and fabric and wire in one corner of the main room.
She did not deserve to live in this city! You can go to the window and pull aside the drapes, and the sun will feel warm and bright as you look into the streets with the delicate fabric held in the corner of your eye. You can see people walking through the heat of the day, unsmiling, all in black. There are homeless people lining the sides of the streets the color of pocket lint and black asphalt glaring the sun back up at you. The windows across the street make the light almost blinding, but it’s okay – you can let the soft drapes fall back into place with the unhurried rush of a summer breeze. You can look back. You can see the woman in red dancing in the street, her skirts wild about her as she spins and skips away, down the road, towards the city limits. You can see her smile up at you with her eyes empty as the night sky in a city.
You can run down the stairs, not caring who sees you this frantic for a stranger. You can bolt out the door into the burning heat and ignore the distressed and angry cry of the street people as they bustle past you and can’t understand what is wrong with you; what is it that makes you so special? You can hear the gunshots as a crime syndicate chases down a traitorous faction alongside you. You can feel the bullets graze your skin like wasps as you sprint naked between their onslaught. You can see the faded hat, trampled on the ground as you follow. You can hear the woman singing like a choking bird ahead of you. You can feel the concrete sidewalks blister your bare feet.
You can see her reach the city limits. You can see her stand at the edge, even though there is no line, there is no boundary for her to stop at, but she knows what the lines are. You can watch her look behind you and you can follow her gaze to the old man who is holding a gun pointed at her, his blind, milky eye emotionlessly damning her to the void if she takes one step farther. No one can leave but those who will come back, and she will not come back. You can cry out to her deafened ears and tell her that you know she doesn’t have to do this, that she has a reason to continue living, that you know she has maintained hope, somehow, in Hell. She has torn off her skirts and they are billowing towards you in the wind, the red, the red, the red like a truck coming at you, slamming you to the asphalt, crushing you.
You can shake it off. You can hear the gun being cocked. You can see the gangsters behind you chasing one another and firing without warning. You can run to her even as you see one superimpose himself on the city, his arm flying out slowly until elbow, wrist, fingers, and barrel are perfectly aligned with the old man. Your legs can get caught in the red, tangle in the fabric, and trip instead of leaping across the line of fire. You can watch her step over the line as the bullet exits the chamber, and you can watch red paint her as you rip your hands on the concrete and rise and throw yourself to her and catch her as she falls, and you can hear the killers behind you…
Fuck, Ferdy, you just shot a woman!
Who the fuck is that guy? He’s got fuckin’ wings!
Is Vince dead yet?
Of course he’s dead!
Who was we shootin’ at?
Whoever was shootin’ at us! Get off me!
Who’s that woman?
It’s just some crazy broad tried to get outta this city.
Let’s get outta here; I think the Preacher knew her.
What? Fuck! Come on, guys, I ain’t stickin’ around here.
You can hear the scattering feet. You can feel her warm blood on your fingers. You can see her faint smile and empty eyes. You can smell the gentle perfume on her cheeks. You can’t breathe. You can taste the acrid tang of bile in your throat. You can feel the hot saltwater on your cheeks. You can shudder and shake as the fabric blows away on the faint wind that’s shifting today.
You can weep while the city turns a blind eye.

The boy feels his flesh burning in the heat of the day, but he doesn’t care. He can hear the sounds of the city surround him, but they don’t mean anything. Nothing means anything. He wanted to save the woman, and she’s dead. The Preacher must have known about her. He must have been lying when he said the city had given up, because she hadn’t. She was making hats, beautiful hats, and lived a peaceful life. Why is she dead? Nero was not the only source of hope for this city, but maybe he is now. Maybe that tyrant is the only one with will enough to save this city…
“Who d’ye think ye are?”
Damien doesn’t listen. He is weeping for the dead woman and for the little girl.
“You some kinda special piece of shit?” “Naw, iss jes’ us ‘t smell all rank!”
The voices become more sinister.
“Them some mighty fine feathers, mm-hmm, yes, sir! Could sure use me a feather piller ter sleep on!” “Hey, yous guys, ‘e’s cryin’ over ‘is ma! Hey, duck-meat! Lemme see if she was a good-lookin’ broad.” “Si, hombre, stop hoggin’ the chica, there haven’t been any good whores here for three days.”
“She’s DEAD!” he screams at them, hunching over her protectively and watching the dark faces of the crowd that has surrounded him. They’re all the same. Bitter. Defeated. Hungry.
A knife flicks open. “Ye think ye’ve got some say around here, have ye? And whaddaya say, hey? Ye want us tae stay back, ye’ve got tae give us somethin’ worth stayin’ back fer.” “Yeah hehh, you’s some kin’a angel or somethin’? What’re these, paper? Hey! Hey, yous guys – paper or plastic? Haaaaaaahehehehaahh!”
He gently lays her body down and stands. “She’s dead.” They’ve circled him, but no one wants to be behind him; no one wants their vision filled with those wings. She lies in the center of the circle, then, as they all hunch forward in their pocket lint clothing, licking their lips and watching her: “I’m with the Preacher!” he bellows. The rest of the street is empty. A car rolls by now and then.
They laugh. “Yer with the Preacher! Hey! Hey, everyone, Ah’m with the Preacher, too!” That one puts his hands on his shoulders like pitiful wings and starts hopping about while the rest guffaw uproariously and bow with their hands over their heads.
“I’m… I’m a child of the city!”
They laugh again, louder. “We’s all children of de city, man. You think you sumpin’ special? You think dem paper wings gon’ let you fly away?”
The angel knows they’re not paper. But he can’t open them, not without the Poet. It hurts too much. Another knife flicks open, and another. The boy balls his fists, ready to fight if he has to. It might be hard, with the… the blood that… his hands… are clean? He gasps too quietly to notice.
“Ye’r gon’ fight, aintcha? Ye’r gon’ fight all us here? An’ we jess gon’ die, jess lak that?” “Ye’ve got balls, but ye won’ have ‘em long, if ye keep’t up like this.”
The roar of an eighteen-wheeler begins to grow behind the angel. He turns his head and sees it. The city is riding in the passenger seat, and it is still a long way away. The city is holding the gun. The angel’s blood rushes in his ears as he wonders who is going to be killed. Why do so many people die? How does the city survive when all of its people are dying?
The men start forward. Their blackened teeth gape with hunger. Their scarred, smudged skin makes them look like animals in a jungle, a jungle of glass and concrete and rubber and asphalt. They grin in front of cancerous tongues licking cracked lips and holding crusty knives. The boy looks at the approaching truck. Its wheels rip a noise out of the street – “Take this bullet.” The city is holding not the handle of the gun, but the barrel. He is offering the angel a bullet.
No. The truck approaches, but he will not kill these men. Too many have died. The chassis is the color of a barn, but the box is white. Like blood washed off his hands. The men crouch over the woman as they edge forward. They want the woman and the boy, but the angel shouts at them to startle them and snatches her body.
The sound grows, louder, louder, filling his ears. “Take this bullet.” The gun is still held by the barrel, but now it is sideways. Either he will take the bullet or he will take the bullet. That much is clear, now. The driver doesn’t care. He is smoking a cigarette and adjusting his red hat.
Breath quickens. Heart races. You can feel the air of the street simmer as heat coats the city with sweat. You can feel the air rising with the moving breeze of the day. His feathers flutter. Let the old man get used to you. You have hope.
How do you fix a city by killing children? But these aren’t children. No, no, not children at all, and not worth his life. These… these are demons.
With a motion like catching the handle of a pistol, the angel first supplicates the air, then takes one step, two steps, three steps in the street. His face is cold like this city has never seen. He rolls the woman in red onto the ground before he leaps and as he is airborn, he feels a touch of graceful wind lift him, just barely, so that he lands all the way on the other side and can watch the men rush on the woman like crows.
There is a shot.

“Where’s the body?”
“In the Dumptser. Where I put it.”
“Was there much blood?”
“No. She didn’t bleed much.”
“And you?”
Silence.
“Damien?”
“None. At all.”

Five Star: Intro

2009-03-30T17:02:00.005-04:00

Well, here's something that I found lying around. It has enormous potential for continuity, so you might be seeing more of it later. No promises, of course, but I happen to like these characters.
Well, here we go. Enjoy, hopefully.

How can I introduce myself?

Well, how do normal people start? Names, right. My name is Markus Shae. I’m 27 years old, I’ve travelled most of the world, and I like dogs, gourmet cooking, and walking on the beach. What else is there? ... What do I do, you ask?

I’m a professional killer.

Now wait, don’t freak out on me. I don’t really get why people seem to think that all hit men are insane, or violent, or whatever. At the very least, we’re expected to have some kind of mental issue. I’m none of the above, actually. I’m not even a mean person. It’s just something that I happen to be good at, and it certainly pays the bills.

This job sort of fell into my lap. I’m not complaining, certainly not. I only have to work once or twice a month, and some of the people you meet can be really nice. At the very least, you’re never bored.

I work in a small-time operation called the 5 Star Syndicate. There’s me, I’m the boss. I still go out and do work, but unfortunately I’m in a more managerial position. There are four of us here. We’re pretty good friends, but that’s a dangerous term. Friendship goes beyond partnership. It implies that we know each other outside of work, that we do things together, and that we’re truly loyal.

But enough about that. Our story doesn’t involve them. By the time the story starts, they’ve already been buried. The real story starts after it looks like 5 Star is finished. At that point, an old acquaintance of mine reentered my life: Gabriel Yama.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m told I get really ahead of myself. Like I said, I’m Markus Shae. You might have noticed, but I didn’t tell you anything about my childhood. There’s a simple explanation: I didn’t have one.

No, I’m not one of those abused kids. I literally had no childhood. I mean…OK, sorry. Getting ahead of myself again. I’m sorry if I’m giving you too much information to start with. Let’s see, around here somewhere I have the memoir that I started writing…where was it? Ahh, yes. Here it is. I hope you’ll forgive me if the style’s not to your liking.

Who am I?

Darkness. Is that pain?

Light. Nope, there's the pain.

Voices. Who's talking? Doesn't matter. Maybe they know me.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the blinding light. Just where was I?

I found myself lying on my back, staring up. Ohh, it was a bed! That also explained why the light was so bright: I was staring up into it. My neck was just a tad stiff, as were the rest of my joints, but for some reason my I couldn't stretch. The question of why never crossed my sluggish mind.

I looked to the left. Blank white wall. To the right, more of the same, with the addition of a strange, blinking machine. At this point, I tried to take a deep breath, and nearly found myself gagging. Looking down, I was surprised to find a tube going down my throat.

This was when I noticed that my wrists and ankles were tied to the bed with wide leather straps. There were other tubes entering various points along the major arteries as well.

I felt panic begin to rise in me. My breathing began to get harder, and the edges of my vision became fuzzy and white. The machine to my right began to beep shrilly. The voices, which to this point had been a background murmur that I had mostly ignored, paused, then kicked back up again, much more intensely. They approached.

Several people in white coats came in. They hastily spread out around me, checking tubes and making sure of whatever they were supposed to make sure of. I won't pretend to know, even now. My attention was on the one that entered the room behind them.

While the men and women in white were scurrying around hurriedly, a woman in black entered casually, locking her eyes on mine and keeping me hypnotized. She walked easily, slowly, to the side of the table. The doctors ran around her unconsciously, without realizing that they were. She stared at me for a moment before grabbing a doctor and whispering something to him.

To this day, I don't know what she said. Maybe I never will. All I know is that the tubes were immediately extracted from my body and I was left to fall into a fitful, pain-filled sleep. The doctors left together, leaving the woman. Alone. With me.

We kept our eyes locked. She was beautiful, I won't lie. Her dark hair, somewhere between black and dark black, was slightly curly, and framed her face perfectly. Her skin, slightly tan, was smooth and perfect. Her eyes were a deep, soulful, hypnotic brown. After a few minutes, she left the room, leaving me to fall shivering into sleep.

Only, I didn't sleep. I pretended. After nearly an hour of hovering between sleep and alertness, I slowly, agonizingly slowly, perked up, looking around me and making sure I was alone. I got down from the bed and stretched my aching limbs. I smiled as they crackled. I looked around one more time, then started for the door.

After the third step, the door slid silently open. She stepped through.

We stared at each other. Damn, she was so beautiful! I couldn't look away. At the same time, I realized she was looking at me hungrily, with some kind of strange desire in her face.

I was about to make a move, in order to get past her, when she stepped slowly to the side. The sound of that one heel clicking on the floor seemed to echo in my mind, even now. After a cautious moment, I darted past her.

I found myself in a long hall. To my right, a long passage. To my left, a shorter passage ending in a turn. All along the hall, identical doors were closed. There was no one in the halls but me and this strange woman, but I had no idea how long that would last. With a final, longing glance at her, I took off to the left.

The details are meaningless. I made it outside without getting caught. From outside, I looked back. The building, so clean and high-tech inside, was nothing but a dilapidated brick factory outside. I looked around. Then it hit me.

I had no idea who I was, or where. I looked at myself first.

Small, frail. Angry red marks where the tubes had so recently been pulled from my flesh. Flesh that was a slightly darker shade of white; origin unknown. I looked to be about 12. I wore nothing but a pair of soft cotton pants of a faded blue, and a matching shirt, short sleeved and with no collar. My hair was cut to a fuzz on my head. I couldn't discern much more than that, other than the fact that I was male.

Next, I looked around. I was in some kind of old industry district. Around me were more buildings like the one I had just vacated. Unsure of what they might contain, I hurriedly left.

The next few days, I'm not sure what happened. And I don't want to be. No food, no shelter, no anything, left me on the verge of death. I could feel it approaching, although I'm not sure how. No one in this city, whatever city it was, took any pity on me. Until that night.

I was unable to drag myself away from the tree I had decided to die under. Even the water fountain, not 15 feet away, didn't hold enough enticement for me to move.

That was when the old man came upon me. As homeless as me and twice as scruffy, he nonetheless offered me half a ham sandwich. When he realized I couldn't eat it, he tore off some of the bread and got it wet in the fountain before putting it in my mouth. It was absolutely disgusting, but it did the trick: I ate the rest of the sandwich slowly, then drank some water. I felt a tiny bit of energy come back to me. It was enough to stand and totter my way back to the old man's place, in a nearby alley. He made a space for me and I promptly fell asleep.

I awoke the next day. The man gave me a bit of bread with some hard cheese. I ate it without complaining.

It was a week before it happened. Some gang members, walking by, decided to beat my old friend for the spare change that he had accumulated. After trashing his home and taking his money, they left him for dead.

I returned from the water fountain a block away to find him in this condition. We both knew it was too late. Scared and alone again, I broke down, crying next to him as his life slipped away. Pulling me close, he whispered to me one thing, something that he had never told me before: his name. With that, his hand fell to the ground, and he died.

Ignited by what had occurred, I made two decisions. First, I would take the man's name, not having one of my own. The second: I would find the others, the outcasts, the unknowns, and we would fight back against the quiet oppression that ruled us.

This last proved harder than initially imagined. Most of the homeless and orphans wanted nothing to do with me. Then, one day, I met him: Gabriel Yama.

Who am I?

Markus Shae.

Still Alive!

2009-03-26T21:02:00.003-04:00

No, not the song from Portal. XD
I know I made a commitment to write more, but school suddenly grabbed me by the head and forced me under for a while. Stuff's just starting to ease up as I write this, having just finished my last essay before Spring Break.
I've got three projects to do over Spring Break, but I'm hoping I'll have the time and drive to write as well. I don't want to get anyone's hopes up though. So if you take anything away from this, it's just that I'm still alive and hoping to write.

PS
Just so everybody knows, this is the guy previously known as Dr. Invisible. I've changed my name because...well, I've changed, I guess. Call it symbolic if you must.

Script Frenzy

2009-03-25T18:50:00.003-04:00

Hey, folks. Just here to spread the word about a little something called Script Frenzy. For those of you who've heard of NaNoWriMo, it's similar, but for scriptwriting. The site is http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/whatisscriptfrenzy if you're interested. I'll be writing one - the idea is to write a hundred pages of script in April. They guide you through the motions and keep people updated and all, and I encourage you to at least try it. It's not a competition - just an opportunity to make yourself write, even if the material sucks. Then, you get to "publish" your script and you get a little electronic badge that you can put in signatures and jazz that says you did it. Hope to see y'all there!

Blackrock: Chapter 006 - Two Below

2009-03-16T12:16:00.006-04:00

So I went back, and realized that three out of five chapters didn't have the "series: Blackrock" tag. That's fixed now.

IMMA FIRIN' MAH CHAPTAH, SHOOP DA WHOOP

They were going back down again. Amy couldn't focus; she could only seem to feel the pain surrounding her. And then... a dead spot, a heartless one. This newcomer... Amy didn't like him at all. He seemed completely indifferent, as though the lives lost bore no importance.

The captain seemed to be feeling much the same way as they came to where Jacob and the other soldiers were unloading weapons, food, water, and clothing from a cart they'd dragged to the top levels of the ship. Amy, remembering her wind-bitten skin, looked into the clothing they'd grabbed and picked up a heavy hoody. It was a lot better, but she suspected that this wasn't going to be the coldest part of the journey, and that worried her.

The gunships had pulled back momentarily, but now they were returning. "I don't suppose you went and grabbed some rockets?" the newcomer asked Jacob.

"Well, we can't exactly lug rockets around the terrain we're gonna face," Jacob replied. "But... yeah, I grabbed an RPG-21 and maybe twelve rockets."

"You could carreh them?" the newcomer queried calmly.

"Well, maybe three or four," Jacob replied.

"Well, let me see the launcher. I'm gonna get these gunships on the run, then we go underground." He hopped into the ship and returned with the promised RPG, flipped up the sights, and loaded one of the several rockets he'd grabbed into it. It began buzzing, first low and then high and then a veritable shriek. As soon as it shrieked he pulled the trigger and a rocket screamed forth, detonating into one of the gunship's rotors. The gunship struggled to gain air, spun briefly, regained control, and double-timed it out of there. Of the other three gunships, two disengaged immediately, apparently having no defenses against SAMs. The one that stayed flew low, then turned and opened a hatch. The newcomer quickly reloaded, aimed again, and fired just as a rope descended to the ground. This time the rocket went straight in the open doorway and several bodies flew out before the smoking remainder split in half and exploded on the rock below.

Amy could only wonder why she had to be a part of this.

"Alright, everyone grab a weapon and some ammo and we'll get outtah heah," the newcomer told them. No one seemed to have the mental or spiritual fortitude to resist; not the captain, not Jacob, not Alex. Wait, Jacob wasn't objecting. He was reaching into his own coat, then... he produced a rifle of some variety, a very short energy caster weapon with two barrels poking out near the bottom and a build that made it look like a square. Jacob charged the weapon with a noisy "ka-chunk-swieeeeeee" and extended its sliding stock out to full position.

"Jacob," the captain asked him levelly, surprisingly so, "have you been carrying an E249 under your coat this entire time?"

"Actually, I have since I was fourteen," he told her. Amy nearly fainted. What if he had decided she was trouble down in the hanger? He had massive musculature, he had a heavy automatic firearm. This was absolutely insane. This wasn't a pleasure cruise, this was a hellish nightmare.

"Alex, take this," Jacob told him, removing a submachine gun from the other side of his jacket. It was remarkably small and had a folded stock which had a pair of magazines attached to it. Jacob tossed it to Alex, who somewhat nervously pulled back the handle and opened the stock. "MP5, it'll do for you," Jacob informed him. The bridge crew, who numbered five or six, had all collected small rifles marked "M2010 Energy Caster Carbine", and had three spares, one which went into April's hands, one which the captain collected, and one which was... thrust into Amy's own hands. She stared at the crewman who had given it to her.

"Are you kidding?" she asked him after finally regaining her tongue. "I'll shoot you just on accident!"

"You've got to have something," he told her, then stalked off to talk to the captain.

The red-haired man was loading a pistol-type magazine into the pistol grip of a very long rifle with a scope attached to the top. It must have been a sniper rifle of some variety, Amy could tell, and he looked fairly confident with it - a sniper of some variety? Was he a soldier? She watched as Summer picked up an assault rifle carbine, and then the... soldier, perhaps, called out, "Let's move!" They started climbing downward again, but the red-haired man wasn't satisfied as he began to job ahead. "Come on, faster or they'll be back befoar we can get underground!" he called, setting a fast pace. On the downhill it was easy enough to keep up with, but Amy wondered once they hit the rough rock below. There was rubble pushed up against the ship where the shattered bow had slid in and across the rock, and the rubble would be hard to climb over. This didn't seem to perturb their apparent leader, whoever, who lead the way straight into and over it without seeming to pause for a moment. The military or ex-military personnel didn't have any troubles with it, and neither did Summer nor Alex, ironically, but Amy found that both she and April were slowed the instant they reached it.

"Ian, hold up," the captain called to the Scot.

"We don't have all daey," he responded shortly, but stopped nonetheless while the captain assisted April first and Amy second.

"Thanks, Captain..."Amy told her, trailing off as she realized she hadn't heard her name yet.

"Cole, but Trisha will do," she responded, turning immediately as though she hadn't enjoyed facing the direction she had been. It took Amy a second, but she realized it was not because of what she had been facing, but what she hadn't been.

There was an air of calmness, even confidence, surrounding the Ian person, but Jacob, Trisha, Summer, and Alex were all on edge, and it wasn't just what they were running from. The nervous attitude was getting to her, too, as they came off the ship and started over the rough ground. Then... descended into a cave. One of many, apparently, rather small and difficult to see from even a short distance away until you were going in. It was so dark in here, not directly illuminated by the pillar of light dropping from the sky, and it got worse when you went underground, as Amy suddenly found herself blind. Various people turned on flashlights, many of them attached to rifles, and Amy discovered that she too had one, even if it seemed like a bad idea to be illuminating things with a gun.

Once they had hiked downward a little further and the air had gotten appropriately stale, they suddenly came to a stop. She heard someone turning around ahead, and then that someone began to speak. "Alright, listen up. I know you've got yerself down to here, but at this point you're goin' to have to follow mye lead. I've-"

"What?" Trisha cut him off violently. "You're kidding! There is no way in all of the glorious heavens that... you?" she snapped, and a light ahead moved up rapidly. "I've let you out of your shackles, I've let you walk this far with a gun. Don't push your luck."

"And if you kill me, what then?" the man inquired calmly. "You're stuck on a plahnet of rock that you have no idea how to survaeve on, purseued by enemies you don't even know." This was moving fast, but Amy tried to assemble a picture in her head. So. This man knew the pirates, somehow. Trisha didn't trust him, and neither did anyone else, but he was critical. Why might that be?

"You've been here?" Trisha faltered.

"No," he told her.

"Well then - "

"I've been on rough graound a lot more than all of you combaened," he informed her calmly.

"Ian - " she started.

"Forget it. I'm your only hope," he finished. "If you're done arguing...? Good. They'll assume we tried to make distance from the ship. Naow, I don't know how many of you were paying attention, but what we landed in was like a clearing of sorts." What? "We'll need ta get farther towards the walls, but this cave's only gonna go a couple meters more. We're gonna staey in here until theay've moved a bit farther awaey searching. That'll be a few hours. Then we go up and maeke a run for it."

Clearing? Amy hadn't been paying any attention at all to the horizon - how could she miss things like that? The others shuffled in discomfort around her, then began to sit down. Alex was conveniently enough close to her, and she shifted over to him.

"Alex, who is that?" she asked of the man who had declared himself in charge.

"He's a nasty piece of work named Ian Forsyn," Alex informed her. "Son of a gun's a thief, crook, murderer... and a survivalist, a soldier. Sniper, no less." He hesitated. "He has a lot of blood on his hand, most of it innocent. And he's not even rich for it." The ending caught Amy's attention. He killed... for pleasure, then? Fear ingrained itself deeper into her.

"And... Jacob?" she asked.

"Jacob?" he returned, confused.

"You know, the..." She hesitated again. "The gun."

"Oh, that?" he told her. He didn't sound concerned. "Amy, he's ex-Navy. He's going to carry a gun, even a very powerful one."

"Yeah, but..." Yet again she faltered, but then she told him the story of the hanger, the phone call. "And he was carrying a gun, and..."

Alex went silent, and even in the darkness Amy could imagine the thoughtful expression he'd have. "Well, he didn't hurt you, but that might have something to do with the fact that he couldn't without getting caught. I don't know. It certainly seems like we don't have a great choice here." Now he was concerned, she could hear, and it seemed like with good reason.

They were being chased by pirates, but they couldn't seem to trust their own saviors. Amy felt distinctly ungrounded, aloft and more importantly falling.

Where she'd land was harder to say.

What Ho? A Challenge!

2009-03-12T01:13:00.004-04:00

So this isn't really a real challenge. I heard about this idea where people write short, but definitive pieces of fiction (usually tied to a fandom, but not necessarily) with options for continuing it. Props to Lilybell for the idea.
I thought doing that here could be fun. The basic sequence of events is:
1) Write a one-shot with elements that could be expanded or completed.
2) Define the characters well enough within, or, if completely necessary, outside of the one-shot so that they cannot be twisted.
3) Leave openings for artistic exploration of your universe.
4) Wait.
For (s)he who performs the continuation/expansion:
1) DO NOT violate the universe the author has created. If the universe is full of ironical tropes and such (a la A Series of Unfortunate Events or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then you may start doing strange things as long as they make sense within the context of the original.
2) DO NOT unnecessarily warp the characters. Develop parts of them that have remained undeveloped, if you wish. Other than that, if you're writing about Inigo Montoya, you cannot have him suddenly turn traitor and stab Fezzik. It's just not kosher.
3) DO pay attention to the original plot line. No having Juliet kill herself first so that Romeo can run off with some a Nigerian princess. That violates all sorts of rules and I imagine Shakespeare would be waiting for you when you died with King Richard III at the ready.
4) DO NOT add in unreasonable characters. If you need some cannon fodder characters so that Trinity can have life before Neo, that's fine, but Frodo's mother does not appear in the timeline of the Lord of the Rings we are shown. Adding a sex scene between her and Sam is not wise.
5) You may put things in, but you may not take them out. Similarly, anyone who writes after a continuation/expansion must also respect the continuations/expansions that came before.

I'll be adding a genre for this once I come up with a good name for it or if one of you would like to provide one. You can do this to non-one-shots if you so choose; it depends on your preference. One-shots have more unexplored territory; series have preexisting boundaries that can make characters easier to work with. "Iocaine and Prune Juice" is a good example of something that would not be hard to work with. For fun, I'm posting another short little thing below this post that is similar. Here ya go, and have fun with this! Also, feel free to discuss it in the comments. It's a fledgling idea; it will probably need tweaking.

-SiberDrac

(t3h p05t, 4 j00)
----

He was enchanted. “Vanessa,” he breathed into her gossamer, platinum hair as they held one another. “You… complete me. I don’t know what life was like before you.” He shifted himself delicately to avoid giving them both rope burns.
“Oh, Marcus,” she laughed lightly. “You’re just wonderful.”
“How did we ever find one another?” he asked through the screaming wind as they fell through the elevator shaft.
“You know, I don’t remember,” she said through a coy smile.
He chuckled. “Oh, maybe I can do something that will jog your memory…”
“You’d better be able to.” Her tone was suddenly deadly serious.
His face shattered. “What?”
“I’m serious, Marcus.” She was. “If you can’t remember how we first met well enough to remind me when I’m dying of Alzheimer’s, we have a problem.”
“But… don’t be silly, you won’t get Alzheimer’s.” He grinned away her fear.
Or tried to. “Three of my grandparents had it! Don’t you remember anything?” The two of them jolted to a halt three feet above the ground. Without warning him, she cut the wire. He landed with a dancer’s grace, but she landed with a flourish of flowing hair and a glare that sent him staggering backwards. “Did you ever even love me?”
“What are you talking about? Of course I love you!” He walked after her as she started torching open the door onto the basement floor. He paused. “How long do we have until the next car comes down?”
She pursed her lips and kicked out the hole she made into a small, metal hallway. “Half a second.”
He dove over her head and rolled as she pulled herself through. Both of them shot as they moved. Tiny, electromagnetic charges wiped out the cameras’ last hour of video so the robotic watchmen couldn’t identify them as strangers. Then, they climbed up the walls and held their breaths on the ceiling while a security guard made a precursory glance into the long hallway from an elevator car and went back in. But not before looking up and winking at the two of them.
They dropped to the ground. Marcus whirled on her, his mid-length, boyish hair making a defiant sweep through the air. “What the hell was that? You got a plant? Without telling me?”
“Don’t you use that tone with me,” she whispered fiercely as they jogged down the passageway. “You clearly wouldn’t have remembered if I had told you. Our relationship means nothing to you!” Tears were streaming down her face.
“I…”
“Oh, God, I’m such a bitch!” she howled. Marcus put his hands to his ears, then whispered as loudly as he could for her to be quiet. After a moment of contemplation, though, he backed away, hands on his hips. He looked hard at her.
“You know what?” he said. “You are. You really are. There we were, in free fall, getting ready to bankrupt the most powerful man in Chicago, having the most romantic moment we could have, and you go all psycho-zilla on me. You know what? I’m not gonna take that. After this, we are through!” He gestured violently. It seemed to get his point across.
“NO WE ARE NOT!” she roared, apparently no longer wary of any form of security. He turned away and started running to the weapons cache. She followed him. “We are NOT through!”
“I thought you were perfect for me!” he shouted over his shoulder. “But you’re just as crazy as everyone else!”
“You love me! I know you love me!” she commanded. “You get back here and love me!” Her voice took on a petulant tone. “I need you, Marcus! I can’t do this without you! I’m so sorry!”
He slowed, coming up to the safe. Every word she spoke was as from an angel’s lips. He whipped his head around with a pained expression. How could he ever consider leaving her? She was his golden gal, his shining star; they were meant for eachother! “I could never leave you!”
She grinned. “I know. I’m leaving you, though.”
His dreams were broken like those cheap glass ornaments that your cat knocks of the Christmas tree just because she feels like it. “But why?”
She hacked into the safe without seeming to try too hard. “That plant in the elevator isn’t a pansy like you are.” She sighed dreamily as she retrieved the diamonds and put them in a velvet, drawstring bag. “I’ve always been the man in this relationship.”
“You just said…”
“I know.” She grinned. “I really am one. So… I’m gonna go now,” she said. He stared after her, speechless, as she ran off down the hall. “If you follow me, I’ll have Bruno shoot you. Oh! And I was the one who killed your parents. And Mr. Fiddlesticks, which is a gay name for a cat, by the way. I did it so I’d be the only one you could turn to.”
No… no, Vanessa. My lovely Vanessa! “You said the Russians killed my parents! Vanessa!”
“My name is Katja Abnilovna! I lied!” She laughed pleasantly and shook a finger at him. “I do plan on dangling myself in front of you like a carrot in front of a donkey, though, so keep that in mind. Bye!” She waved down the hall as she stepped in the elevator with a heavily armed, grinning, sweaty Bruno.
“Hi… his…” He couldn’t believe it. “His name is Bruno?” he shouted furiously as a klaxon started wailing. He had been framed! Framed for a woman. But she was so beautiful! But his parents! And Mr. Fiddlesticks! But… Vanessa!
He fell to his knees in agony as the police closed in from unknown locations. It wasn’t fair! He loved her. He took the ring out of his pocket that he had meant to give her and was still staring at it and sobbing when a guard clubbed him into unconsciousness.

Another grave tale of unrequited woe, fair readers! Questions litter the ground like abortions after prom night, the story is more contorted than Father’s Day in Harlem, and answers are as scarce as headlights in South Carolina. How did Marcus let himself be whipped so thoroughly? Why was Bruno sweating? Should we consider Mr. Fiddlesticks for a purple heart? Or should we just remember that his heart is now purple? Tune in next time for another episode of…

…two days –before- the day after tomorrow.

Iocaine and Prune Juice

2009-03-10T17:07:00.002-04:00

A/N: I was bored one night and thought this would be a good idea. It will not be a serious series. t3h p53ud0-p05t, 4 j00

Abby turned to her lover, holding her Magnum out at the Saudis that had surrounded the two of them on the cliff. She looked at him, at his soft, ebony hair blowing freely in the wind, at the blood-stained shamshir by his side, at his watchful, blue eyes keeping his aim with his PK-47 steady. He was rustic and handsome. But the Saudis were advancing with their swords, and the lovers each only had one bullet left.
“John!” she cried as she shot her final round between a zealot’s eyes, “this is the end. I have to know – do you regret anything? Anything we’ve done together, that’s brought us here, now?” She pulled out the steak knife she had hidden in her shirt and the dagger on her thigh, ready to fight to the death.
He turned those depthless eyes to hers and took in her figure. Her long, blond hair blew in the wind like golden silk and her green eyes were like emeralds. And her bosoms were nice. “Well, actually, Abigail, yeah.”
She gave him a strange glance as he put down a turban-swaddled Muslim with his final shot. That wasn’t what she had been expecting. “What?”
He drew his sword. “I actually wrote ‘em down once. Three or four things.” He did not seem perturbed.
She put her hands on her hips, then immediately removed them to swing at an errant sand n*gger and cut off his arm. It fell a thousand feet down to the raging river and bounced off the rocks and into the piranha-infested rapids. “Well, like what?”
He beheaded a man. The blood streaked across his face like across wax, time moving in slow motion to catch his gorgeous eyelashes as he blinked. “I always wanted to learn to play bassoon. I just never had time, you know?”
“Bassoon?” Well, that was… certainly different. But she nodded. Her lover was like no other. Gentle, strong… like the majestic bassoon. “…okay, sure. What else?”
“JIHAD!” A suicide bomber came rushing through the ranks, but she threw her dagger through his fuse before kicking him and his explosives into the path of a sharpshooter, clearing at least twenty of the infinite number of heretics away.
“And I kind of regret using your toothbrush to clean Giraldo’s teeth after he found all that cat crap. Did I ever tell you about that? Seemed like it left an awful taste in his mouth.”
“You used my toothbrush on our pit bull?” That bastard! But he was her lover, her golden guy, her man. They were adventurers and well, adventurers got down and dirty.
“I didn’t want him licking my face with that all over his teeth, and I was using my toothbrush. I also wish your name wasn’t Abigail. I’ve never really been able to understand that name. Abigail.” He shook his head with a chuckle as he ran a man through with his sword and then broke his nose. “Stupid name.”
“John! Really?” This wasn’t nearly as romantic as she had planned. And where the hell was John Williams and the orchestra she had hired to play “I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You”? And it was supposed to be sunset, not midday. “You asshole!”
“I also kind of regret going out with you in the first place. You’re not my type. I mean, come on. You read Cosmopolitan. I read the comics section. You use the Internet to buy things. I used it to build the pipe bomb that sent your car flying into a ravine.”
“I thought that was the Afghanis!”
“No, but it sure was fun watching you go Rambo on innocent drug cartel scouts.”
“Drug cartel? In Afghanistan?” She was flustered and almost let a Saudi bastard close enough to touch her.
“Look, I had started jonesing real bad one night after I hit those ‘shrooms. Remember when I told you I wanted to have kids? I was high as a kite. Well, I mean the day after, I needed somethin’ bad. You left your Visa on the bedside table.”
“You said that money was for a wedding ring! I thought you were dying of some desert disease!”
“Let me tell you, the diamonds I got were a lot more worth it.” He giggled.
“John!” she cried again, and grabbed his shoulders. She drew his head in for a deep, passionate kiss (cue strings), and he gave one back, all the while fending off the enemy with great bravado. Such as bravos are inclined to do. She pulled back from his salty, sweaty, blood-streaked lips. She looked at him desperately, wildly. “Did you ever love me?”
“Nah. Hey, have you ever been base jumping?”
He hadn’t even had to think about it! “What?”
“Base jumping. Like short-distance sky diving.”
“No, I’ve never been base-jumping.”
He sighed, then shrugged his shoulders. “Welp, I guess that means I’m the only one with a parachute. I’ll be seeing you, then.” He rolled his eyes up in thought. “Maybe. It's been fun!” With that, he hopped off the cliff. She watched him go, then turned back to the grinning hordes before her.
No. No, John. “John!”
He turned up to her. “My name is Kilton! I lied because John sounds sexieerrrrrrr….” His voice was lost in the *floomp* of an opening ‘chute.

Readers. We may never know what happened to either one of them. Did she live? Did she die? Did he leave her a way out, or just leave her? How much did the cartel charge for a dime bag? How can we hit some of that $h!7? Check back in again for another episode of….

Dun-dun-dunnnn…

The City Limits

2009-03-03T22:39:00.005-05:00

YAAAAAAAYYY update. So I'm enjoying writing this, but I'm having trouble deciding on how to manipulate symbols, both physical ones and ones based on actions. Anyone who has suggestions for how to improve this thing, lemme know. t3h p05t, 4 j00.

In the morning, the young man awakens. He has given the boy his bed, so he has slept on the musty sofa. To him, though, it doesn’t matter. He has not slept so well in decades. He breathes in and looks at the plant on the desk near the window, then smiles. It feels so good, as he recalls that pleasant stretching of his features from the previous night. There is yet hope for this city.
He continues smiling as he dresses. The boy is not awake. With the extent of his injuries, he will not awaken until midday at least, despite his bold words. Nero gathers the boy’s clothes from the night before and tosses them in the wash along with his own. Though his own skin has long since toughened to the acid rain, it can still begin to burn if left in it for long enough.
Something feels wrong this morning, though; something internal. Nero cannot place it. He has never been an introspective man. No, Nero has always watched those around him, deeming himself unimportant in comparison with the world he is trying to right. His poetry is about the joy that once dwelt among people, the laughter of children, the despair of the terminally ill, the tears of the homeless, and the pleading, heart-wrenching, feeble cries of the elderly men and women as they fall before the city limits. His poems beg as much to the city as to the people of the city. So he does not understand what is wrong, and feels it is unimportant on this day.
Going to the window, he looks out at the light after rain. In most cities, this would be a cause for joy. Here, though, the light is so bright that it burns the eyes and sears the eyelids. The air that was so cold during rainfall is filled with the reflective mist of poisoned rain and magnifies the sun until it hurts to look anywhere but down, and even then, most squint their eyes against the glaring asphalt. Even so, they don’t dare, nor even think, to look up.
The man looks down, and the anger from last night resurfaces. He has been angry at the city for so long because he feels that even the city has given up. It is true that the city has no power over its citizens’ minds, but Nero feels that it is the city’s responsibility to not let this depression hold his efforts at bay. He knows the city was better, once. But now, looking down, Nero does not see a cool breeze blowing in the streets as it once may have been to alleviate the burning of the sun. He does not see clouds cover up its smoldering eye. He does not hear birds singing for partners and claiming trees. He does not see birds. He does not see trees.
But the city spoke to him. Perhaps he can speak to the city and discover the source of this ailment. He knows much of it came from the gangs, to begin with. The gangs force innocent people to make impossible payments and hold them responsible to pay in flesh what cannot be paid in cash or belongings. He would go after the gangs, but he knows after his sole experience with them that destroying one will not prevent others from arising, not when the police force no longer cares about its duties. It is up to the city to instill its sense of justice in the people again, and the city has not done that. Instead, it walks its streets and fails to weep.
The man smiles, though. He has found this boy, this creature, this Damien with his wings. He is afraid to ask the city how the wings got there, but he has the boy. Once the boy has been shown the futility of leaving the city, Nero will protect him. How to hide the wings is still a problem, but they will find a way, even if they have to make him pretend he has a backpack and wear a canvas sheet to cover them.
Nero hears the sound of the angel groaning from his room. It is painful for him to awaken, with his wounds. This is earlier than the young man expected, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a good sign, in fact. What with this city’s heat and rain, it takes most people a very long time to recover from any wounds. This foreigner in his youth and strength will heal quickly, as long as he is kept out of the rain. The young man goes to fix breakfast for the two of them.
Two of them. Until now, it has been just the one. But Nero will lead the angel, Damien, and guide him to save this city. Nero will save this city, because he is the only one left who can.
There is a bump and a cry of pain from the direction of the young man’s room. He turns quickly and rushes there, only to find the boy stepping sideways through the door, having slammed his still-tender wings against the doorframe. They have unfurled slightly during the night as he slept (on his chest, the man presumed) and so even moving sideways is difficult.
“Hold still,” Nero murmurs. Damien complies and lets the Preacher cautiously press the wings closed. “You’ll have to figure out how to move these on your own, eventually.”
“Ah, shut it, old man,” the boy says sheepishly, moving the rest of the way out of the doorframe. “I smell bacon. Any of that for me?” he asks with a hopeful smile.
Hopeful. He’s hopeful. And leaving isn’t the first thing he’s done. “However much you want. Come eat.”

They eat in communal silence, but it isn’t long before the angel reminds Nero he hasn’t forgotten his plan. “So take me to the city limits. I wanna see what this ‘city’ is gonna to do to keep me from leaving. You know, I never asked you about that.”
Nero takes up the plates and cleans them while they talk. “Asked me about what?”
The boy runs a hand casually through his golden hair, his young eyes shining with a light that Nero knows has attracted the old man who now watches them from the window sill. He has a hungry look in his eye. Nero catches his breath quietly as he recalls what that means. It may actually be a good day to try to escape.
“You keep talking about this place like it’s alive,” comes the boy’s voice, snapping Nero back. “An’ I’ve heard people say, like, ‘oh, she’s a fine city, she is,’ or ‘protect the motherland,’ an’ stuff” – he takes on silly accents for the quips and Nero smiles, humored – “but you talk about this city like it thinks and feels.”
“Well, it does,” the young man answers, finishing and beckoning the boy into the hall after putting on a black, round-top hat. He usually has the hat on when he goes out, but last night, it wasn’t worth it. Last night, he was frustrated. More than usual. “All cities do. Most people don’t realize it, but when we build a city, we forge an independent consciousness that is dependent upon those who made it, but still exists on its own.” Watching him strangely, the boy follows and Nero locks his door. They walk through torn paper hallways and past lifeless vending machines to the elevator. A woman meets them there. She is dressed in fine clothes that in any other place would have made her elegant and lovely. Her red dress is faded, though, and her gaudy hat is battered and torn. Her thin, nervous smile is faded as well in her creased face and she almost doesn’t meet the Poet’s eyes as she passes. He almost lets her.
Then, though, he considers - I am going to be this city’s savior… I should… say something. “Go- good morning, miss… uh.” She raises hopeless eyes, portals into blackness, and brushes by the two of them, not even taking note of the wings the Preacher and the boy have forgotten to conceal.
“Smooth,” Damien comments, trying to be snarky. Nero can hear it, though. This one encounter has almost struck the boy dumb. It can be horrifying, the seeing someone who has aged like that for the first time. “But… don’t you think you should try for someone… I dunno…”
“Younger?” the Preacher offers. “More alive? Less dead to the world?” The simmering rage of a Poet has surfaced at his own inadequacy and inability to recall her name and with the reminder of how young they all really are. She’s thirty-four years old. Seven years older than I am, and he can’t tell. He sighs. We all die young, here. It just doesn’t look like it.
“Well… not younger. She looks about your age,” he corrects, embarrassed and trying to recover. Nero starts back to his apartment and gets his keys out. “All those other things, though.”
“We forgot to cover up your wings,” the Poet says gruffly, opening the door again and turning to Damien.
The boy’s face falls. “Ssshhiii…” The white feathers ruffle slightly in agitation where they stand over his shoulders, and a flash of a grimace dashes across Damien’s features.
Nero smiles grimly. “…t. We’ll figure something out. Get in.”

The next time they leave, Damien is wearing a long, sable cape that Nero has kept from younger days, when he was in a school play. It had nearly been a success, except that at the finale, only a few of the lookers-on were still watching and fewer were smiling and clapping. Some cried. It was a musical.
It is not the most inconspicuous guise ever worn, but it is better than wings. Although, thinks the young man, if Miss… Whoever didn’t notice, what’s to say anyone else would? They’re all looking at the asphalt, anyway. His face takes on a scowl as he thinks about the past again. Then, there would be a guitarist on a street corner now and then or a Bible-beating fellow Preacher failing to spread the word of God or groups of teenagers skipping school, smoking, and clapping one another on the back for shoplifting another pack of cigarettes. Nero’s face darkens further as he realized that comaraderie in petty thievery is what he considers “the good old days.” And he is only twenty-seven.
“So what do you do for a living, old man?” Damien asks, nearly recovered from his encounter with the woman. He is slowly taking in the bedraggled, beaten brows of the city’s people. Now and then, a cop car stops by a homeless man and the driver gets out and beats the starving man, then takes his meager life savings and leaves. Now and then, gunshots ring out as rival gangs obligatorily engage one another, but the few that are seen don’t even have their hearts in that. You know the life has gone out of a city when even the criminals don’t like what they do for a living.
Nero’s expression softens. “I’m a street performer, of sorts.” The glass and concrete glimmer around them in the oppressive heat, but Nero hardly notices. The boy, though, is sweating.
Damien blinks and wipes his brow. “No way. There’s no way you could afford that place like that.”
“The city provides. It keeps me alive as long as I am its last vestige of feeling.” He thinks for a moment while they walk. “It treats me well, because I treat it well.”
“How nice of it. Does it just drop cash in your pocket, then?”
“Actually…” the Preacher trails off. A moment later, a man runs towards them, frightened for his life by the people chasing him. He’s holding a bloody knife and has a crazed look in his eye, but he doesn’t seem to see the angel or the Poet. Nero reaches out into his path, makes a few circular movements, and cracks the offender’s head against the pavement. Blood flows freely, but so does cash, clumsily stuffed into a front pocket. The Preacher calmly bends and claims the wad of bills, then stands to observe the group of three men who had been chasing his victim.
They slow, and one steps forward. They seem hesitant behind their hard expressions. “Preacher,” the one greets in a heavy Jersey accent without smiling, then nods at the boy behind him as though to say, “Ah, I see you exist.” He is wearing a worn-out, black, three-piece suit and a red tie. He looks to be about fifty-three, which means his true age is probably thirty or so.
“Ferdinand,” the Preacher says.
Ferdinand stares at him for a moment longer, clearly uncomfortable. His two cronies are fidgeting. It’s as if they don’t even notice that they’re the only ones packing heat. “Dat guy just took five hundred bones from Gus here.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the bigger of the two followers. “We figure he oughta-ve given a bit back.”
The angel stares as the scene unfolds, shocked and bewildered to the point that his features can’t settle on an expression fitting for what just happened.
The Preacher speaks. “What’s the money for?”
“Food. My wife an’ I gotta eat.”
“Shut the fuck up, Gus!” Ferdinand yells without looking back. Gus and the other one flinch at the frightened tone their leader has let into his voice. He lowers it. “We’d like to have what’s ours, Preacher. If you’ll let us.”
The Preacher holds his gaze for a little longer, then turns to Gus, who flinches again. “For food, Gus?”
“Yes… yessir.”
The young man counts out three hundred dollars, walks past Ferdinand without even looking at him, and hands Gus the money. Gus takes it with a trembling hand. Nero smiles indulgently. “Use it well, Son. I won’t forget this gift.”
“Th-thanks. P-preacher.” He nods, jams the money in his pocket, and looks past Nero to Ferdinand, who is sweating more than the heat dictates. He licks his lips.
“Let’s get outta here, guys. Thanks, Preacher. He was a bad one, dat guy.”
The three move off with nervous haste and are out of sight before Damien can recover. Nero carefully folds and pockets the money, then kneels over the dead man’s body, closes the gazing eyes, and says a quick prayer for his soul.
Damien finally finds his voice. “I… I didn’t think you were a real Preacher… You- you aren’t, are you?”
The Poet turns around, but not to look at Damien. He turns and sees the city, smoldering gun in his hand, following them. By his side is a pale, sickly girl who is holding his gnarled hand with her young one. Nero nods his thanks with stone-cold eyes, knowing why the city is behind them and why the girl is confused as she dies. This city is consuming another. Soon, she will fade. But for now, the city is distracted. Maybe…
Damien follows his gaze, sees nothing, and turns back around, bewildered. “Well? What the hell was that? You just killed someone!” He backs away as his voice grows in volume and weakens in control.
Nero has enjoyed being able to display his strength. “I am an ordained minister, actually,” he says quietly as he stands, “but the people here know me as the Preacher, because I am the only one who will meet the very few who still go to church on Sundays. I call myself a Preacher… because I am a Poet. It has nothing to do with God.” He continues walking in the direction of the city limits. “The city will provide for me, because I’m all it really has left.”
Damien stares for a time, then jogs to catch up, feeling the weight of the heavy cloak over his wings as he tries not to jar them too much. “Those guys… those guys had guns. They could have shot you, and you stole their money, and they didn’t do anything. Hell, that Gus dude thanked you for only taking half his money.”
“Two fifths.”
“Who gives a shit? I mean, damn it, if you had taken fifty, I’d at least understand where you’re coming from!” he shouts. Looking around, he sees that people hardly take note of the body behind them or the terror in his voice.
“Hm. Ten percent as tithes. Not enough to live on. This is the city’s money. I told you it has nothing to do with God.” He doesn’t look over his shoulder at the boy, who has nearly caught up.
“Nothing you do seems to have much to do with God! You call what you did to me a baptism? It’s all for this God-damned city! What the f-!”
“This city is God-damned! God-damned, God-forsaken, God-forgotten!” The young man whirls on the boy with fire and brimstone in his eyes. Damien backs away.
“Then where did I come from?” Damien demands, fighting to hold his ground.
“Your name tells you you came from Hell. Where do you think you came from?”
“You said I got my wings from this city! If I came from Hell, then Hell is here!”
“Hell is knowing God and not feeling His hand! Welcome home, Damien!” the Preacher seethes through a cracked smile.
The angel’s eyes are wide and search Nero’s for remorse. They find it, hidden in cracks behind a fury that has been there for decades, a rage that he was born into a world doomed to lose God and to lose hope. It is a rage that flares against the city’s walls, but a rage that weeps for the city’s limits. The man is mad. The man is mad! This man is mad! And he could kill me!
Through with trying to think about it, Damien dashes like a frightened rabbit around the Preacher, towards what he can see are the city limits. Just follow the sidewalk, beside the street, get out onto the highway! His shoes slap against the cement and his breath is harsh in his ears, even though he has not run for long. He looks behind him, afraid. The Preacher is following, his eyes flickering fearfully, far faster than any man that age should have been able to run. When he looks ahead, a middle-aged man is sleeping behind the wheel of a red, four-by-four truck and has slipped onto the sidewalk as it barrels down the highway. There’s no time to move.
Everyone here is middle-aged.
He hears a mad cackle, but it’s not the Preacher’s. It’s a laugh of self-loathing, centuries-old bitterness, and fatalistic hatred. It comes from all around. The driver wakes up and meets Damien’s eyes, but isn’t inclined to change course. Let come what may. It’s a good excuse to die, and what kinder way than to remove someone else from Hell? The truck is only feet in front of him.
“CRUCIFY ME!” bellows the Preacher from behind him, and the boy hears a cry of confounded fury. A front tire on the truck blows from the heat of the day and sends the vehicle careening back onto the road. The angel turns to shield his face as hot rubber from the detonated tire beats mercilessly into his poorly protected wings. He yells in agony and has time to watch the Preacher, quiescent, get clipped by the uncontrolled truck and sent flying to the side of the road, then fail to move. The world grows still.
Panting for air, Damien watches an ancient man with a sickly, blind eye kneel over the Poet’s motionless body and reach a hand into the young man’s left shoulder, the side where he was hit. He makes a jerking motion in the suddenly static, quiet air as cars dart past them, and the Poet groans. The hand travels down his chest, still beneath the skin, then feels the hip and thigh, making another motion. Once done, the man stands and turns a baleful, blind eye to the boy. Damien cannot believe what he is hearing, but somehow, in the honking of horns and the wail of police sirens, a voice cuts through the air. “Don’t endanger my Poet again.” He raises his gun with an atrophied arm and points without wavering at the boy’s heart. Damien covers it in what he knows is a futile reflex. “He lives now, but has given his life for yours. Remember that.”
The old man fades. Damien is left to stare at the awakening Poet, then back at where the old man was. He just vanished. He… he disappeared. Not like a magician, who goes in a flash, but like smoke. How…? Was it… the city? “Nero! Old man!” he calls out, then runs to the Preacher where he lies. He kneels, and Nero opens his eyes. “I believe you, dude,” he says frantically, not sure what to do. “But what the hell?”
“Good.” The young man coughs, then groans in pain and reaches to his lower ribs to gently feel them for wounds. “That jerk left my ribs broken. Feels like…” he drifts off and stares into space, then laughs bitterly. Damien can hardly stand how bitter everything here is. He wants to scream. This is unreal. What the hell happened to him? What happened to the Preacher? What is this city? “He broke me where the Spear of Longinus hit Christ… That bastard. I can’t believe he let that girl go just to kill you… You must mean something to him.”
Spear of what? “What are you talking about? What girl? What is this place? This city isn’t normal. Who are you? What are you? Shit, dude! What the hell is going on?” The Preacher reaches to him and asks for a hand up, but only now does Damien notice the missing finger. “And what the hell happened to your finger?” His breath comes short and he can feel his heart beating in his chest and his wings ache and the heat feels like it’s boiling his skin and everything around him is dissolving into chaos. What is that a symbol of? What’s going on? Why is everything fucked up to hell and back? He takes the hand after hesitating only a moment more and helps the Preacher up, amazed he can stand after taking a blow like that at his age. He’s amazed the man is alive. “This is impossible.”
“This is Hell. But with you… it could be Heaven. The city hates you, but he won’t let you leave. Stay here. Rest. Let the old man get used to you.” Their eyes meet, pleading with one another as the boy shakes his head. “Please. Then show these people what it is to fly again. You have hope. We have hope. Let’s give it to everyone else.”
“I can’t… This is madness.”
“Madness? You should have seen what the city did when this one woman dodged his first bullet.”
Silence reigned for a moment, heavy with thought. Damien put a hand to his head. “I can’t… I can’t stay with you, and I can’t stay anywhere else. You’re a murderer, and you’re insane. But this whole city is insane, and it’s stupid to stay anywhere else.” He was finally breathing deeper, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do. He couldn’t leave, but staying here was stupid. “I- I’ll stay with you. But damn, dude. Things’ve gotta start making sense pretty damn quickly.”
Nero nods. “That makes sense to me. Let’s head back downtown – we’ll get you some clothes, and maybe something else to cover up with. I have money, after all.” He smiles.
Damien is horrified. “That’s not funny, dude.”
“You clearly grew up somewhere where humor still meant something.”
They retreat from the city limits, Damien maintaining a steady distance from the Preacher. Their companionship is tenuous, but there. There is hope for the city.

Blackrock: Chapter 005 - Red River

2009-02-19T20:17:00.001-05:00

Yeah, no. No Halo. I take Stephanotis' excuse that... it's hard to avoid copying, I believe was basically what she said.

Also, this is actually post 117 :D

Or it would have been if I'd finished it before Siber's announcement.

Also! Time to introduce my FAVORITE CHARACTAH

ANYHOW

IMMA FIRIN' MAH CHAPTAH, WHOOP DA SHOOP

---

Oh, how perfect. He wasn't sure who it was, but one of the pirate groups had decided now would be a good time to strike, to go for him. Let it be Anubis. Let it not be... but of course it would be. There was no way he was going to escape this time so easily.

The captain had decided to have him moved to the front. He knew just why this was. When the ship came down, she wanted him to die, to get off of their hands in some kind of "accident" that was unavoidable. She'd make up some excuse later to waive blame and he would finally die, not after trial, but executed on the woman's own ship. How horribly poetic.

But it was too late. He wasn't all the way to the front when he felt the ship dropping, dropping like a stone. They'd been hit, he could hear it... and he could feel it, the way the ship limped like that. The... right engines, yes. They'd gone out, and the vents were jammed. Bursts of energy were still going out, creating the limp that he could feel. No antigrav, either; it never kicked in. Inertial dampeners were not at peak, either, and the soldiers guarding him realized this and ushered him into a room, locking it behind him.

He kept feeling the ship, pressing himself against the wall that he would be thrown to anyway. No impact, he could remain conscious this way. No way to force anything to break his restraints in the small closet; nothing was in here, so the wall was just going to be his support.

There it was, the front layers crumpling and steel grinding against itself. The push of G-forces, despite all they had done. He could feel it all, up until it stopped. The noise of steel bending had gotten very close, and the walls to his left and right were in fact slightly crumpled. The door was ajar, and he stood to push it ajar. Dang it. Jammed. He thrust his shoulder into it harder, but it was no use - it was very solidly jammed. With his luck, the soldiers outside were dead, and the captain would presume he was dead with them. Starve to death, so close to freedom. Oh well. It all had to end somehow.

Amy groaned as she slowly returned to her senses. Her vision fluttered, pulsed light and dark, lost focus, then finally snapped into reality. The floor was angled at a good twenty-five degrees downward, towards her feet - she must've been turned that direction. Alex was crouched over her, pressing a paper towel or something to her forehead. His left eye appeared to be swollen shut as though he'd been struck with a fist, but there was a distinctive "L" shape diagonally pasted on his face over the eye. Ouch. She couldn't turn her head, but with a change of direction of looking, she spotted Jacob, who had taken off his jacket shirt to examine the bruises on his chest and back. Many of the crew members were similarly bruised or bleeding slightly. Out of curiosity, she focused on herself again and discovered there was a thick, iron-smelling liquid coming out of her nose - blood, of course. Her lip felt cut, and her head was ringing something horrible. Torso, abdomen? With mild chagrin, she realized she had never bothered to get dressed in her room and was still wearing sweatpants and a bra, basically. Her chagrin was less indecency, however, and more the very cold metal against her skin.

She tried to comment on that, but instead said something to the effect of "Urgh."

"Relax," Alex told her, stopping her from getting up. "You hit your head on one of the consoles pretty good."

"You're one to talk," Amy managed, almost chuckling but instead choking on her own spit and coughing. She wasn't that badly hurt, though, and flushed a little at seeming hurt worse than she was. "I'm fine, seriously," she told him, finally beginning to thoroughly recollect control of her physical functions. A little stronger of voice, she spoke again - "let me get my back off of this steel, it's cold." Alex nodded with a brief laugh and pulled her up to a sitting position.

"Ahh, gnarly," she heard Jacob say from where he was poking at the various bruises he had accumulated. Some of them were pretty darned impressive.

Amy took hold of the paper towel Alex had been holding just as the captain reappeared from behind the trench around the captain's chair, some sort of gash across her stomach. It had already been bandaged, but the bandages were already turning red. Her walk was slow and pained. Amy shuddered empathetically. "We should be getting out of the ship," the captain told them, her voice low and pained, through clenched teeth. "The other passengers are already being evacuated, but we'll have to go out our own way. We're going to have to climb down the ship itself, so it'll take you some time."

"'You'?" Jacob demanded. "You think we're going to leave you behind?" Amy paused, horrified. She had assumed that the captain meant that the crew would go faster on territory they were accustomed to.

"I'm injured. I'll slow you down, and speed is of the - what are you -?!" she demanded as the shirtless Jacob strode over to her, bent over, and stopped less than an inch away from her face.

"If I have to carry you every step of the way, I am not leaving you behind." Amy paused. Why did Jacob care so much about her? Was it just... how he was?

"Jacob..." the captain protested.

"No." It was an order. "We don't leave men behind. Not in my squadron we didn't." After a brief pause, he choked and added, "Or women!" The captain laughed, but nonetheless pushed by him.

"Escape hatches are at the top, so we'll need to start climbing the access shafts. Elevators are probably out. It won't be a long climb, though, maybe four or five stories. I'll be fine on my own," she added to Jacob, and his protest was silenced before it began.

"Hold up, ma'am," one of the bridge crew told her. "It looks like we've missed someone." It appeared he had just returned to his station, and was examining what looked like internal scanners. "No, two someones. They're a couple of floors down."

"Ptolemy, Bartolomei, you two go get them, quickly now, and we'll get out of here," the captain advised.

"Don't forget your sidearms," Jacob added quickly before the two left.

A few minutes later, they came back up with Summer and April. Amy moved to greet them. They both appeared to have sustained their share of being tossed around, but none were as messed up as the bridge crew. It appeared that the failure of the inertial dampeners had been a very local thing, and most of the people had only experienced a very hard braking instead of a nice little flight.

"Hey, what're you doing up here?" Summer demanded pleasantly. "I thought everyone was supposed to be with the rest."

"I could very well ask you the same," Amy replied, cocking an eyebrow.

"I noticed you weren't there, so I came up to your room to look, then the whole thing crashed," Summer replied. "Aaaand I dragged April along," she added with a cheery grin. April rolled her eyes but didn't look entirely displeased.

"Jacob brought us up here," Amy told Summer, lowering her voice. "Something weird's going on. Jacob knows the captain but the captain thinks Jacob's scum, and they keep talking about how Jacob is a personal friend of Anubis."

"The Egyptian god?" April muttered curiously. "Obviously not, but then..." After some pondering, no one could come up with an answer.

Two of the soldiers approached the captain, spoke in quick whispers, then prepared to leave. Jacob strode across the room, arrested the movement of one, and gave them a steely glare. They hesitated for a moment, then continued with Jacob in tow. Amy raised an eyebrow, but didn't seem capable of saying much else. To Summer and April she added, "The captain sure heated up fast to Jacob. I don't know why." In retrospect, her harshness seemed faked. "I think they must've known each other before. They talked about squadrons, maybe she was a pilot."

"She's got the right build," Summer chuckled, glancing over Amy's shoulder. She had a point - the captain was very, very small, just the right sort of person to stuff in a tiny fighter cockpit. On the other hand, Jacob was very, very large, and had also been stuffed into a fighter cockpit. Perhaps he had his own personal one?

That was unimportant in any case. The crew seemed impatient, especially with their captain potentially bleeding her life out, while they waited for the soldiers and Jacob to return. Where had they gone, anyway? Alex was talking to the captain, presumably about that - the captain was stony-faced, and seemed to be blowing Alex off as best she could. After a moment, she shrugged, winced, and pointed up the ladder. Alex shook his head, but looked to Amy and her friends and beckoned them to join her. Amy wondered why should couldn't understand the slightest bit of what was going on around her.

In a few minutes they were on the ladders. Alex was just above Amy, and he seemed... huffy, almost. Insulted, unsure. It seemed that his conversation with the captain had been secretive. Come to think of it, she had seemed extraordinarily quick to become stony with whatever Alex had asked her. And Jacob... what had Jacob been insisting on?

She cast her mind back to the phone call. Jacob had known this was coming. He'd avoided telling her, or at least he hadn't expected it to be this bad. Anubis was involved in this somehow, and apparently wasn't unfriendly but was decidedly looked down upon. Anubis didn't like pirates, either. So... Anubis was a bounty hunter, a mercenary group leader? Mercenarying wasn't very popular, because most major governments hated mercenaries with an unbelievable passion. This was probably since most mercenaries were pirates, but that was because no one hired mercenaries. It was a vicious loop.

They were coming to an airlock, but the captain had jammed the doors open. It was dark outside, it looked like. A few minutes later, and a blast of cool, untouched air pressed against them. The breeze felt like it was coming off of water, and as they clambered out of the hatch onto the sloped metal they looked around.

Above them was a massive shell of rock, supported by walls and pillars of thicker stone. It looked like they had come down right between some such pillars; that might have saved their life, as it turned out. The nose of the vessel was indeed half in a river, half crushed against stone. Out here, the vessel could be felt to sway, but inside the slightly-functional inertial dampeners had apparently taken care of that. The whole thing, though, had to be suspended - the Bariad wasn't just crushed, it had dug into the rock and was hanging.

Expanses of darkness were in the distance. A few pillars of light from outside the hole they had punched showed patches of the terrain, uneven, broken, and dangerous. Somewhere in the distance they heard the echo of a waterfall. Voices echoed, too - lots of voices. The rest of the crowds had already emptied down below. In fact, the various lights still activated on the vessel showed them down below, if unclearly.

Amy also realized it was really cold out here. Her clothing, and more importantly the lack thereof, was going to become a problem quickly. It had to be less than 0 C, and she couldn't survive long in this temperature.

Alex had approached the captain. "You going to wait for Jacob?" The captain stiffened, but replied.

"He went to get supplies we'll be needing."

"With a pair of soldiers?" Alex inquired.

"Needs a few extra hands," the captain replied. She didn't seem sincere. Frankly, she was a terrible liar. Alex, however, was a wonderful diplomat and could shrug this off. He nodded in faked belief (Amy could tell, but she doubted anyone else could) and left her for Amy.

"You know, I suppose?" he told nigh upon silently upon coming beside her.

"I noticed," she murmured back. April nodded randomly very slowly.

"Yes, it's not right," she whispered, much more quietly than either Amy or Alex, which was pretty impressive. Amy, Alex, and Summer all turned to look at her. She flushed a truly remarkable shade of red and drooped her head.

Movement further down the metallic slope caught Amy's eye, and she followed it to four figures. Four? They must've found another survivor somewhere down there. She couldn't see very clearly, but she realized how smooth the slope was. Once one started going, he or she would slide for a good eight or nine hundred yards before even reaching the ground. And the slope had to be at least 30 degrees. This was dangerous, and Amy just had sneakers she'd pulled on.

It was really truly incredible how unprepared for anything like this she was. She glanced at her fingernails, uttered a yelp when she saw they were blue, then recalled that she had painted them the other day and was not in fact freezing to death yet. That was good. At least now her cheeks were warm, too.

They began the trek down the top of the vessel. As they got further, their angle on what of the ship had survived got better, and they could see gaping holes that the pirates had punched into their ship. As they went down, the others came up. One of them, a new one whose head appeared red from this distance, was running, and probably shouting something. It was impossible to hear him from this distance.

As he approached, it got even harder. A buzzing came from above, and as it did the man threw himself down on the surface of the vessel. Amy looked to the hole in the rock above and behind, and saw that the pirate's ship had filled the crack in the wall. Several pinpricks of light, the things that were buzzing, were descending. Aircraft of some sort. Probably pirate dropships. Better to get captured than to starve to death, though. The captain seemed to think the same.

The man who had dropped was starting up again, faster than ever. The buzzing grew louder, though, and it was impossible to hear him. One of the dropships was coming their direction, but the rest were flying over to the crowd below. They kept moving towards him, but Amy stopped to look at an oncoming dropship. It was growing larger, slowly - it was quite a distance down they'd come, she realized. Details were beginning to appear - this thing was armed. Missile pods of some variety and a multi-barreled machine gun on the nose, or the chin, or whatever. She glanced down to the man, who had now reached the captain, and she jogged down to meet them.

The man was tall, moderate, and muscular. He was wearing a single-piece jumpsuit that was gray with very large orange patches on the sides and shoulders. His hair was red, his badly trimmed facial hair was red, his eyes were vibrant blue and a little hagard, and his eyebrows, no, his face in general pulled into a constant watch, an endless anger. In his hands he was holding a long, scoped rifle of some variety, and he had a pistol on his hip. The captain seemed very cautious around him, and had even drawn her sidearm. Amy stood back upon noticing this, wondering if she should be worried about him. He was shouting something, and Amy scooted forward again to hear.

"...get them away from here!" he was roaring as she finally made out his words. His Scottish accent was incredibly thick. Scottish were supposed to be the things of books, right? No one talked that way, except maybe those from Sol. Huh. "Once that dropship gets here and they realize I'm not with the crowd, that crowd is dead!"

"Why would they even do that?" the captain demanded over the increasing noise of the gunship's blades.

"I'm the one they want, not any of them! They're not going to take monetary things from people! Ah, it's too late already," the man groaned, shaking his head as the crack in the rock above them showed motion. It was a gun turret. A big one. Amy's head spun, yet again. She was so confused.

Pulses of blue suddenly rained down. Gunships near the crowd below scattered moments before the rock erupted into spouts of lava. Screams, thousands of screams, echoed. Amy slammed her hands to her ears, but it couldn't be shut out. There was Alex, pale as a ghost; April, shouting something incoherent; Summer, eyes squeezed shut and face turned away but unable to hide her tears; the captain, as aghast as Alex; then the man. The man was not horrified. Disappointed, but not surprised at all. He gave his head one little shake, and then the slaughter was over.

Smoke and dust filled the air as gunships circled around the spacecraft and the few dozen survivors.

"We've got to move," the man told the captain, ignoring the cacophony of aircraft and Summer's scarce-controlled sobs. Amy looked into the cloud of smoke and dust. Surely this was a dream. Give it a few minutes, she'd be awake. She'd had nightmares like this, millions massacred for no reason, then she herself. So the aircraft would kill them and she'd wake up.

It had to be a dream, it had to.

The pain in her chest and her roaring headache told her otherwise.

Purging Terra, Chapter 6: The Ascent of Roth

2009-02-10T23:55:00.004-05:00

Greetings bloggers, limerick extraordinaire noGreen here with my latest installment.
I get the feeling that my writing isn't as developed as it could be, so any critiques are more than welcome for whipping me into shape. For the record, if anyone sees areas in my writing that could merit criticism, constructive or otherwise, just let it rip. Read something that was way cheesy? Have at me!
On a lighter note, engage with me in a hypothetical situation. Suppose you are a noobish WoW player. Suppose you are a Hunter and have the ability to tame combat pets. Suppose you currently own a yellow raptor which you have named Clevergirl, but you just recently tamed a black raptor that is teh secks and are thinking of a name for it. What do you name your new drop dead sexy black raptor? Do you name it Muldoon, after the warden from the first Jurassic Park movie? Or do you name it Unas, after the ancient Egyptian god-king who, according to legend, assimilated the power of defeated gods by devouring their flesh? Or maybe you would name it Riddick, after the scifi killer clad in black? Or maybe even something entirely different? A penny for your thoughts.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, on with the show. But first, an introductory limerick:

With Gehenna’s dark fires does Terra gleam,
Burning ‘round Mansa’s discovered scene,
While we witness at HQ
Roth’s rise overdue;
So begins our apocalyptic dream.

The offloading hangar buzzed with orders and battle cries. When Corporal Strickland felt that enough of his fireteam had gathered within earshot, he hollered his assignments aloud.
”Our target area . . . is in the suburbs of Tokat. Once we land, we’re gonna collect some soil samples before and up to when we find the object. Dunbar, you’re in the Crawler with me. Sasuke! Busiri! Santiago . . . Santiago! Get the hell over here! You and Busiri and Sasuke are on support. Get to the armory, max out your O-tanks and ammunition. One of you, I don’t care which, pack a Gauntlet, the other two pack conventionals in case we need some extra hands. This bucket touches down in ten. Dunbar, you stay with me. The rest of you, hop to it.”
The three marched towards a service elevator as Strickland and Jaak headed for a modified excavator. The machine was already facing the opened hangar doors, and it was still grimy from the last time it was used, which was uncertain, but definitely a long time ago. Strickland climbed up into the cab and brushed the dust off the gauges. “Get in,” he bellowed to Jaak, who quickly clambered up the vehicle’s opposite side. “Run through the weapons suite checklist, make sure everything’s in working order. I’m driving.”
Jaak jumped into the console behind the driver’s cab and began flipping switches and pushing buttons, checking off various listed items as he went. The targeting display fuzzed over briefly, then cleared, punctuating the airspace outside the hangar doors with virtual crosshairs and ammo counters.
The targeting reticle jolted as Strickland gunned the treads, lurching the machine forward towards the open air. The force of the jump knocked Jaak around in his seat. He anchored himself with a firm grip on the sidestick, bouncing the reticle around as Strickland locked one of the treads, fishtailing the vehicle into a jarring hairpin turn meters from the hangar doors. The excavator rocked as it clattered to a stop. Strickland let out a low whistle, then whipped the excavator around and sent it bucking back to its original parking space in the hangar.
Strickland turned in his seat to face a shaken Jaak. “Treads are go, everything else is good down here. You done yet?” Catching his breath, Jaak checked the sidestick off his list, and then fastened his harness around his heaving chest. “Yeah corp, all go up here.”
“Good,” Strickland said, settling back into his chair. He then craned his neck, noticing something on deck. “Huh, ‘bout time,” Strickland grunted. Dunbar peeked around Strickland to see the rest of the fireteam approaching the vehicle in protective suits with armaments and helmets in hand. Sol wielded the Gauntlet, probably not by chance either, since he was the only one besides Strickland that was physically capable of handling that much firepower. A sleek carbine rattled against Ishi’s bony hips, and Mansa had a chunky rifle slung across his back. An automated announcement alerted the crew of the impending landing of the Ammit, hastening the steps of the final three.
”Twenty seconds until touch-down…fifteen…fourteen…thirteen…”
Strickland yelled over the announcement to the rest of the fireteam as he revved the excavator’s engine. They sprinted to the excavator, jamming their helmets on mid-run, and crammed themselves into the confined rear cargo hold.
”Ten…nine…eight…”
Sol had just barely sealed the cabin door when Strickland floored it, pinning all in the machine against any structure or person that was immediately behind them. ”
Six…five…four”
Jaak swore as the machine launched from the hangar, gliding briefly but ultimately crashing down onto the ground, fifteen feet below. The countdown continued back in the hangar as the vehicle kicked up dirt and sand, hauling off towards Tokat with Strickland cackling all the way.

The raucous hum of the shuttle’s engines took 23 back to his rude awakening aboard the Ammit. The sound reminded him of the dizziness of those first few conscious moments when he was thrashed about by his commanding officer, that swine called Strickland. Such behavior was well out of line, even if it was directed at an intern. One girl sitting nearby looked 23 in the eye. She slid into the seat next to her and looked back at 23, smiling. The shuttle bucked unexpectedly and then became absolutely still. The engines’ hum dwindled to a hoarse whisper. 23 ignored the girl and shifted his weight, leaning against the bulkhead of the shuttle while turning to face the rear hatch. Fresh air gusted into the cabin as the hatch opened. A woman was already waiting for the shuttle on deck. She walked up the exit ramp to meet the interns.”Good morning, interns. And welcome back to HQ. Follow me please.”
The interns filed out of the shuttle into a cavernous, windowless structure. 23 led the group in following the woman through the halls of the building. He felt someone brush up against his arm; glancing to his side he noticed the smiling girl from the shuttle. His spirits sank as he anticipated an obligatory conversation in three, two—
“Hi, were you that guy they knocked out of the bunk back on the ship?”
“Yeah, it was, thanks for reminding me.”
”Omigosh, that must have been so awkward. I would have just died!”
If only. “Yeah, thanks.”
The girl nodded her head for a while, and then excitedly stuck her hand out in front of 23. ”I’m Ava! Or Intern-5, either one!”
23 forced a smile and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
The woman leading the group stopped suddenly in front of a door. “Captain Heneth will brief you all personally,” she said as she swiftly knocked on the door before twisting on her heels to face the interns. Moments later, an aged man with scraggly salt and pepper hair emerged from the room.
It didn’t take him long to find the person he wanted. ”You first,” he said as he pointed a wrinkly finger at 23. He turned back into the room, motioning for the intern to follow. 23 heard the woman say something about a waiting area before he closed the door behind him.
The room was simple: wall-length display on one wall, a corporate table with chairs in the middle. Kurck gestured to one of the chairs while walking around the table.”Please, son, have a seat.”
23 sat in the offered chair as Kurck grabbed a chair on the other side of the table. Kurck sat, tapping commands into his handheld between glances at the intern. Suddenly, a flash emanated from the device. 23 blinked it away, waiting for an explanation.
“Sorry son, your mugshot was a little dated. I thought I’d remind the authorities what you looked like, seeing as they haven’t seen you for…”
“Seven years, captain.”
“…seven years. There’s an item of interest: managing your affairs off the grid for so long. Care to divulge your secret?”
23 thought for a brief moment, and then shook his head, letting the silence speak for him.
“Fair enough. I’ll set you loose and see how long you survive this time, learn your secret firsthand.”
23’s hands clenched at the captain’s words. “You’re gonna give me up to the authorities?”
“No. Not yet, at least. I have debts that need collecting. I was going to let them slide when Terra blew up, but seeing as this rock is still here, I could use the credit. Once all the shuttles have brought everyone back I’ll provide you with more specifics.. This line of work is slightly different than what you’re accustomed to, but it’s not that big a jump. You’ll learn all the nitty-gritties as you go. My best operators will go with you to help ease the learning curve for you. After a few deals I think you’ll be experienced enough to operate alone.”
Kurck placed an awkward canvas sack on the table. “I believe these items were confiscated from your person at the time of your detainment.”
23 grabbed the sack by its bottom and allowed its contents to clumsily fall on the table. He took the handheld first, thumbing it to life for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, and then clipped it to his belt. Two bear-claw knives rattled on the table next to a polished handgun; he concealed them in his pants pockets for the time being.
“Did we misplace anything, son?”
23 patted his pockets patronizingly. “Nope, the gang’s all here.” He got up from his chair and turned for the door.
“Can I count on you to do this, 23?”
”Please, captain,” he said, grinning at the captain from the opened door, “call me Roth.”

Pushing through debris, the excavator rolled through the devastated ruins of Tokat. The streets had filled quickly with the destroyed remains of buildings and vehicles. At times it was easier to bulldoze through leveled buildings than push through the mess on the streets. Mansa watched from atop an overturned van in the street as the excavator barreled through a dilapidated store. Ishi and Sol climbed over the excavator’s trampled path.
Mansa glanced around at the structures that were still standing, amazed that they were, in fact, still standing. Some wouldn’t last past sundown; they would pour smoke into the sky all day and eventually, crippled by pounded infrastructure and rampant matter-consuming fire, they would collapse. However, a few of high-rises seemed unfazed by the catastrophe. Even in Tokat proper, barely visible from the suburbs even through the haze, some skyscrapers still stood tall, even though they shouldered their leaning, smoldering brothers. Mansa could not reconcile their existence with the events that had taken place in the last day.
Shadows fluttered down the street. His visor interface autozoomed as his eyes focused on the scene, but it was only ragged smoke, fuming from a crippled vehicle amidst the rubble. He fancied that it once could have held a family of four, but it was now nothing more than a heap of ugly, smoldering metal. The whole street came back into view as his eyes relaxed, and he continued his scan as the wreck smoked.
Strickland’s voice sputtered through his helmet COM, “Busiri, haul over to this pile o’ dirt down here and get me a sample.”
Mansa hopped off the van, keeping an eye on the buildings surrounding him. The excavator had pushed through to the other side of the building and had come to a stop in front of a bus. The bus had nearly capsized, leaning across the sidewalk onto a still standing building. A sandbar had already accumulated along the bus, covering the sidewalk with dirty sand and ash. The windows had all been shattered, but the resulting glass was nowhere to be seen. Probably swept away with the wind, he thought.
He unsnapped a container from a D-ring on his suit and buried it in the dirt. He gave it a few good digging twists until it scraped the sidewalk, then scooped it up out of the sandbar. As he brushed the excess sand cap off the top, his fingers came across a bump in the sample. Fishing through the container, he exhumed the bump from the sample and scrubbed the excess grime away with his thumbs to get a clear look. In the process he accidentally stripped a coarse fragment off the object, realizing after the fact that he had ripped the nail out of a severed toe he now held in his hands. He crammed the toe back into the container, which he sealed with a lid and slipped into a compartment embedded in the tread guard of the excavator.
“Dirt’s in the bag, corp, made it extra special, just for you.”
“Good. Hold this intersection. Sasuke, take point.”
Mansa plucked the rifle from his back as the excavator rumbled out of the store and onto the street, rolling past the bus as it collided with chunks of concrete and crashed cars. He looked back down at the dune of dirt and debris that had accumulated along the side of the bus and had extended out in front of it. On the side facing the road, the dirt was carved smooth by the wind. On the other side, shielded from the wind by the bus, the dirt was strangely uneven. He crossed over the dune, getting a better look at the irregular ruts in the dirt. The whole side of the dune was pockmarked with shallow depressions, all originating from the crashed bus and branching out across the dirt.”Hold up, Corporal, there are tracks back here.”
The excavator rolled to a stop.
“What kind of tracks, Busiri?”
Mansa focused in on the impressions in the dirt, which had been broken up by his dig. Closer examination revealed colored streaks in one of the prints, darker than the earthy soil in which they were left. The prints were made up of two areas of depression, separated by a few inches. At the end of the print was a sideways cluster of smaller depressions, disconnected from the main prints. One set had five such depressions; the other had only four.
”Footprints. These were left by bare feet. Someone must have survived.”