Limited Revolver Works

Ryo?'s depository of creativity. Drabbles and ideas unrelated to any other of my blogs will be put here.

[ryo-maybe]

Holy macaroni, Santam! It’s the much belated Christmas Special!

The last flame subsided, a faint flicker swallowed by the darkness. Only the dim afterglow of what few string lights had been spared remained, blanketing the silhouettes of the crimson-clad fallen and the one who looked soon to join them. It was rather quaint: had any onlookers possessed the courage to stay their ground, instead of fleeing the shopping mall - or what little of it remained now, in any case - they would have had to wrestle with an odd sensation. The gripping feeling that, between the bodies strewn on the ground and the woman standing in their midst, it was the latter who seemed closer to suffering a bitter defeat at the end of this grand, forlorn clash.

Long had the carols and the jingles subsided. Now, the air trembled only with the heaving gasps of lungs vying for air they could barely hold on to, the faint noise of flesh and bone tightening around solid steel. And, much to the chagrin of the lone combatant, the stirring of a body.

“Have you tired yet of this charade? This little tussle has made me work up quite the appetite.”

As a tired sigh found its way out of her lips, Ereshkigal willed her trembling legs and the blue jeans they filled to turn to the lazily rising Santa.

Continua a leggere

[limitedrevolverworks]

Snap

The sack spills its rusty innards all over the makeshift table, little more than half of a door resting in somewhat stable equilibrium over stacks of rubble. The floor, more dust than concrete, serves her well enough - better comfort than the makeshift beds in a cheap outpost’s rented room, in any case. Cross-legged, the scavenger removes her rubber face and leans over the piled sum of her efforts: fragments of mysterious wholes, broken parts and bent components. Pieces of yesterday, cast in iron and fermented in a ruinous mixture of time and corrosion. The light seeping in from the empty windowsill shines upon the few scraps which have yet to succumb to the brown plague of rust, but it is a mere illusion of glory. Their era long gone, they are all the same in the eyes of a great equalizer: purposelessness.

Now, they exist solely to be traded in bulk for a scant few Trade Units, and to satisfy a lone scavenger’s odd interest.

Her examination, like everything about her life, is methodical. A lack of urgency keeps her pace sluggish, yet never deprives her of a keen attention to detail. In the embrace of her gloved fingers, trash enjoys, if only briefly, the joy of meaning. Their blemishes are marks of pride, traced along with delicate touch, and the empty remnants of their amputated forms cast an echo she does her best to interpret. Where did this part fit? What hole should one have screwed this threaded protrusion into? How did all of these objects snap together, and to form what kind of shape? What contribution did they lend to the life of an unknown yesterday?

She dutifully turns, rotates and plays around with the insignificant weight of a history which could have been her own, until one particular item gives her pause. Of all the ones she filled her sizeable sack with, this seems to have survived as closely as it could feasibly have to its original state. Or so it would seem - ignorance has a vicious tendency to paint misleading overtones on such artifacts. Nonetheless, the scavenger finds herself fascinated by it, despite the crude simplicity of its operation… then again, that it can operate at all is already cause enough to amaze in its own right. It reminds her vaguely of a pair of pliers, though it lacks a head - but not teeth, which line up the inner portion of the handles. Teeth with no head. It sounds like a riddle, and in a way, discerning the function of this tool is a riddle of its own. The two curved portions have lost much of their sharpness, but there is still a cruelty to the way they are shaped. A smooth exterior and a ruthless interior. The contrast, too, stirs something within her, but what could it be… It is too different from the fantasies with which she usually attempts to fill the gaps in her knowledge of antiques and their purpose. The question does not arise from the object, but from within. And this, more than the ruins of old and the myriads of treasures they hide, leaves her utterly confused. She feels her usual composure jeopardized, threatening to escape from her firm grasp. Her reason, uneager to have control wrestled from it by instinct, acts in a frantic impetus, hardening its clutch. And so does the scavenger’s hand, the physical extension of her mind, closing around the tool in a single instant. The two halves, caught in that embrace, meet each other with a snap.

And just like that, the truth comes to bearing in all of its simplicity. An image: not one concocted from a vague nothing, but a memory dredged up from a murky sea of other remembrances. The clicks and the buzzs teaching her of the world and its dangers. The mandibles flapping open and close, their rhythm cool-headed and reassuring. A voice addressing her - the first she’d ever heard, the last she ever bothered truly listening to. The face of a wasp, overlapping by sheer coincidence with the form of a randomly retrieved gizmo.

A crystal clear reminder of her one and only father, who’d given her a life, a name and a purpose. Of Kl’athr, whom she’d fed to the dust a scant two years ago.

Maira does not realize when exactly she descended to the ruined building’s base, or when she found herself staring at the vague silhouette of Flightless. She cannot see the bird staring back with its beady eyes full of puzzlement, nor understand that putting on her gas mask won’t stop the excess of moisture escaping her eyes. Too late has she realized the weight of loss for Kl’athr to explain it to her, with concise clarity as he was always wont to do. He is not there to tell her that neither the dust, nor noxious fumes or perhaps even the cruel prank of a psion, which are to blame for the suffocating load stuck in her throat and cutting a wet, burning swathe from her eyes across her cheeks. He is not there, and Maira feels as if only now, after happening upon the memento still firmly held in her grip, she has acknowledged the fact.

But Maira does not know, or so she tells herself. She does not understand why she’s burying her face and tightening her arms around her quietly purrying mount. The fuzz enveloping her is too thick, the warmth exuding from its body too high. But it is the closest substitute she has to embrace instead of Kl’athr’s body, and for now, says a mind whose processes for the first time she cannot fully discern, it shall do.

[ryo-maybe]

the vs, the or, and the + for... three random ocs you have

You never quite get used to surprises in the Unterzee.

At times, you are certain - when you spot the strange things hiding in the corner of your eyes, and your first reaction is a placid arumph, or perhaps a deep exhalation. That’s when you think, ah, I’ve got you figured out now. I’ve seen all you had to offer, zee. The horrors, the oddities, the unfathomable and the unthinkable, all bunched up together in a pile of weary despondency. The first tidings of a serendipitous boredom, and like the old fool you are, you welcome them each and every time, almost grasping with feverish abandon at the threads that have unraveled from your oxymoronically positive flavor of cynicism. Finally, your trauma-laden mind-voice mutters to itself, at long last, I have tired of seeping from Madame Fear’s chalice. Or maybe you’ve simply begun the march to the wacky lands of the mad, but let’s be frank here… would you mind such a disappointing finale for your tale? A boring madness over the perdition of something bleaker? Perhaps. Anything, really, as long as it would mean relinquinshing the burdens of dread, of terror and bewilderment.

Continua a leggere

[ryo-maybe]

It was one of those nights, see. One of those kinds of night. You know. The ones where you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place - between drowning in boredom or a kilometric ton of alcohol, in our case - so of course you decide to get wasted and stick something rock hard in your place. You know. So there you are, lounging on a sofa on a Sunday night while you sip some prime quality wine off a Celtic oaf’s pecs. I’m talking the good stuff here, none of that watered down Dom Babylon trash. The stuff of gods. Literally. We just plowed Skadi’s cabinet empty and never looked back. Couldn’t have even had we wanted to, what with us being wasted, and I mean, utterly. You look up ‘mess’ in the dictionary, you’ll find a double spread of us totaling our last braincells with some alcohol-powered steamy action., Rated E for Even I can’t find the words to describe the primal wildness that went on in that room. I think. Honestly, everything past the fifth or eighth bottle is a blur. Next thing I know, I’m awake and discover it’s still Sunday. Took me a couple minutes to realize it was Sunday morning. Yeah. One week. One whole week-wide blank. Like, damn me, that might have been a teensy-weensy bit too much? ‘Course, I said what-ever to that and started prepping for round two of this sleazy bonanza… that’s when I notice it. Took me a while to put two and two together, but there’s not mistaking it: culprit’s a geas. Pretty messed up one at that. Dunno who came up with the idea - I’m placing my bets on ‘Gus personally, beefboy gets some weird ideas for his bedroom games - but it’s a bonafide, one-hundred-percent binding geas, ‘cept I guess we got so drunken off our minds we somehow polluted all the ritualy stuff. So yeah, long story short, I got one heckie of a language filter going on, and no idea how to get rid of it yet. My lips are sealed, so to speak. I tried them all, but the result’s the same. It gets all twisted in my mouth, and not the way I like it, if you know what I mean. Like, I don’t know: weenie-meanie. See! I tried to say noodly-poodly, but no, it comes out like that. Same deal for cakey-pie. Huh, that almost sounded dirtier than the actual thing. Oh, coochie totally gets a pass though. I donno. Maybe it just works on words that don’t kill a biggie-wiggie. Believe me, if it sounds annoying to you, it’s even worse for me. I’m losing my mind here, Eresh.

“O…kay. That still doesn’t explain why we’re, uhm… here, Medb.”

This is where the Queen of Connacht blinked. It was the kind of blink hard-coded in the DNA of humans and their supernatural ilk ever since childhood (or summonhood, in the latter’s case). Innocence spoken in the language of batting eyelashes. The oblivious admittance of a person who couldn’t fathom what exactly was so weird about two adult women standing in an establishment oft referred to as an ‘adult store’.

“Why, to do what everybody else comes here to do: shopping!“

A straightforward answer, if not a sensible one. Mostly because people and rulers of the Underworld like Ereshkigal do not usually shop - or go at all, for that matter - to sex shops.

“But did I have to come too?!” See? That’s not the pouty face nor the awkward yelling of a woman who feels the need to spice up her bedtime. Look at Medb now. The confidence with which she rests her hands on hips thrust out like lethal spears of legend. The condescending look interlaced with a veneer of patience. Like a parent who can’t believe she has to explain to her teen daughter how babies are made.

“Yes. Yes you do. I have a reputation here, you know? A reputation I’d like to uphold. That’s not going to happen, if I walk in holding one of these and ask if ‘pwetty pwease, could they wrap this woobie wobbly toy for me~?’”

The ‘woobie wobbly toy’ in question being waved in front of Ereshkigal’s flabbergasted face was the Goetia Series Barbatos XXL ~ForthComing Pleasure Edition~, which had been enjoying great popularity among frustrated housewives and lonely Avengers ever since its release during last Christmas. The lumpy girth which had won it the affection of many cavities could be attested by the fact that it still wouldn’t have fit through the innocent lips of its witness, despite the Mesopotamian goddess’ mouth having been spread wider open by sheer disbelief and embarrassment than physics should have allowed it to.

“Anyway, I’ve got a shopping list this long to go through and a credit card limit to top off. So be a good mouthpiece and pretend you’re the one filling that basket, alrighty?”

“Not alright, nope, absolutely no–”

It was around the third arc drawn in empty air by Ereshkigal’s wildly flailing arms that disaster approached, clad in the trappings of a kindly smiling clerk. Who might not have been too compliant with the reality of an actual adult store, but let’s face it: realism had gone out the window the moment this had involved two metaphysical manifestations of mythological figures, at least one of whom was direly in need of making some new additions to her dildo collection. Thus, the clerk was left free by narrative convenience to approach the troubled goddess and spell our doom with such a simple sentence as

“May I help you with something, dear customer?”

Words which fell like a grip on Ereshkigal’s shoulders. No, those were actually Medb’s fingers, and that was her smile - curved and sharp like a blade folded a thousand times by an able and kink-heavy artisan. A guillotine strapped to its executor’s face, not at all like the condemned being turned around to face her doom in a rubbery, lotioned future.

“Oh, you definitely can help my needy friend here. Isn’t that right? E~resh?”

It was one of those days, see.

[ryo-maybe]

When was that… couple days ago, tops? The head waiter - you know the one, yeah? Babyface, blond, thick glasses, always puts on the kinda smile makes it hard to tell whether he’s figured everything about you out or just an utter dumbass - pops his head into the office, peers through one hell of a tobacco-flavored smokescreen. Doesn’t even bother knocking or anything, ‘cause he knows either way he’d still find the same pair of eyes staring back with a look as bitter as the cigarette fogging the room up.

“Hey, boss! That guy just came in.”

“You mean that guy?”

“Yep, it’s that guy alright. He just came in, and he looks none too pleased about the fact.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us.”

The cigarette, what little of it’s left anyway, crumples violently into a tray chock full of its brethren. Miss Owner slides back her chair, makes the devil’s own ruckus, which is a feat in and of itself when you fathom that it’s got wheels, and makes her way out. Waiter dude gets himself a shoo and he doesn’t have to ask for a better incentive to get back to his work, while his redheaded manager reluctantly drags her feet to the counter where hers waits. She finds it, or rather him sitting on the other side, the clientele’s, resting his respectable buttocks on a cushioned stool whose comfort she thinks he doesn’t deserve.

Continua a leggere

[ryo-maybe]

It’s the same ol’ story

The silence does not take long to grow awkward. Soon enough, the chair begins to creak under the weight of several kilograms of steel, each piece of the bulky armor stirring as its wearer squirms with mounting discomfort. There is a special edge to the mercilessness of this moment. A sort of mundane subtlety that makes him long for the cruel, if understandable, tragedy of a blood-soaked battlefield. You get used to the bodies piled up until they have become masses of undistinguishable flesh, to the crimson rivers where one bathes their dragged footsteps. Being stared at by a perfectly normal looking pair of potential employers, now… there’s a challenge nothing had prepared him for.

“Demon.“

“Human.”

“He’s got horns. Spells demon to me.”

The young man - young enough, if one were to trust their eye, that man is a label which struggles to cling on his unblemished features - emphasizes his point by mimicking the presence of horns on his own head with the aid of his fongers. The result hardly looks anything like the perfectly good example sitting right across the table in front of him, but his expression, with that frown which bleeds goofiness, is a stubborn one. A magnificent portrait of unjustified convinction.

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[limitedrevolverworks]

What Mutations does Kl’athr have? Are there any that he particularly enjoys using?

The Wasp feels secure in trusting the child with the secrets of his Way.

She is a reflection of him, a mirror opposite. The Wasp, who cast away his society and the future it held for him. The girl, who was left behind by her past. He may yet make a chrysalis out of her, nurture the larval understanding of his reconstructed philosophies and his archaeological effort.

The Wasp teaches the child about the stinger. That it is something beyond mere sharp chitin. A stinger is whatever you make one out of. Not for nothing did he name her Little Stinger.

He is meticulous when showing her the gun. Patient, when explaining that for the Way of old to thrive now, it has to adapt and evolve, while staying true to itself - unlike the inhabitants of the Nest. The Wasp imparts upon her the wisdom of Stinging True: dispatch the enemy. No more, no less. Be efficient, not foolish. Be dishonorable, not dead. Flee from the battlefield, but not from the fight.

The Wasp takes his time showing the child how to turn a firearm into an extension of one’s body. Watches, that he may ensure she is echoing his movements.

He fits the grip snugly in his clutch.

Sustains the barrel underneath the firm touch of his hard fingers.

Puts a light pressure near the tip, that he may not suffer too harsh a recoil.

Keeps the next bullet ready in his hand before he has even fired the first one.

The Wasp looks askance, meeting the glass of the child’s rubber mask. She looks back at him in a silence that is eloquent; lowers her head ever so slightly, to quietly reflect his flawless posture, and the glaring issue stemming from it.

The Wasp lowers his weapon, held by his two arms. His third rises to sustain the fourth, which rubs his pensive chin.

He may yet fashion an excellent heir out of this Little Stinger, soon as he has figured out how to make up for the troubling shortcomings of her species.

[limitedrevolverworks]

After his departure, how did Kl’athr's former hivemates feel about or speak of him? Or was he immediately put out of mind?

“More like he was out of his mind, I’ll tell you what.” A shudder courses through the peddler’s wings for so brief a moment and so loud a buzz, I reckon it might be the closest to a snort these folks have available to them. “Look around you. There’s enough wares in this here place of mine to last me a lifetime and a half. And it’s nothing compared to what’s still sitting underground, waiting to be extracted for decades to come. Income’s not a problem in the Nest. Neither’s security, when there’s two or three guys keeping their stingers polished in case somebody decides to get too grabby for their own good.”

On the other hand, our somewhat mutual acquaintance does not seem to hold these overseeing gentlewasps in higher regard than the rest of the populace.

“Not my fault someone got hit in the head one too many times when they were a larva.” Two sets of arms can do wonders to improve the disdain in a shrug. “War belongs in broken holo-records, not real life. Speaking of, did I show you this perfectly functional model here--”

The wasp meets my dismissal with all the chagrin it can muster with only a set of movable mandibles and four arms to irritatedly fall back on the counter.

“Look, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anybody with half a mind to risk their heads in anything bigger than a bar scuffle, and those don’t happen here, since we’re all honest folk hard at work who peddle their services at reasonable prices, although none as reasonable as yours truly’s. We keep to ourselves, and problems outside where they belong. You ask me, I’d say a dangerous fellow with dangerous ideas like his ought to have left sooner than he did. You got anymore questions? Because I’ve no more answers, ‘less they involve my pricings.”

None of which interest me, just like my curiosity wouldn’t pique his anymore. Leaving the wasp’s shop, I glance around me. What little I’ve gathered about my target rings into my head, and it does so with the concreteness of a truth confirmed - I am surrounded by wary mistrust, but it lacks an edge to it. Mingled with it is a faint trace of concern. While leaving the so-called Nest, I wonder how long it will remain able to buy itself this respite, before something happens that’ll leave it too big a dept to pay off.

[limitedrevolverworks]

Shitlording hoooooooooooo! Where and how did Kl’athr learn the lessons of the Way of the Wasp? Did he develop the philosophy himself or did someone teach him?

It was a long time ago. Back when the dust of Locust Purge in the north had not yet been scattered to the winds, in a period that predated, and eventually survived, the Mantis’ establishment of the Theocracy of Furuwu’n. Before the Nest, there were the Five Tribes, and ‘tween them was strife, and in strife, the Wasp found fulfillment. In bloodshed, the Wasp expressed its ego and thrived, trampling all who would sap the will out of them as they would their fiercely defended land. Victory bereft of honor, sought through any and all means... but there was pride nonetheless, and a purpose, which drove the Wasp to meet the enemy with unfalthering abandon. The Wasp fought true, unburdened of the trappings of any higher purpose. Purity, nurtured by the ichor of fallen enemies. The Way of the Wasp.

The Five Tribes eventually became four, and then three, until at last the Tribe was one, and within the steel bulwarks they’d contented to possess, the Nest came to be. A new beginning took bloomed, while of a long age of strife remained only a corpse, rotting away with all of its ideals. A prelude, but also a finale, its echo reverberating until at last they there was left of them but a pale trace.

The Wasp ceased to be a warrior and became a hoarder. A tinkerer. A peddler. It learned to protect its purse over its land. The battlefield no longer spanned the horizon, nor was it strewn with guts and torn carapaces: now, it stretched only as far as was needed to display rusting wares, the wars fought upon it waged with shrewd words and salable scraps. And so the Way of the Wasp became no more than a shadow of its former self, a hollow claim to an identity shared by merchants rather than warriors. I realized the dullness of their stingers ill matched the sharpness of the truths they’d buried underneath their lethargic greed. The stifling hypocrisy. The ideals of a people who had obtained peace at the cost of their own self. Frustration awoke me to the shortcomings of my education. An anachronistic longing for memories etched in my people’s forgotten history tugged at me from beyond the confines of my home. I listened to the old tales, read what few ancient texts had not yet been lost to the occasional traveler’s bartering skills. I felt the dissatisfaction of my people’s crippled upbringing, and sought to mend it.

The Way of the Wasp does not lie in the Nest anymore, only its pallid, scant traces. The land is kept protected by its continued profitability above all else. The Way of the Wasp lies elsewhere, in the pulsating, blood-filled heart of conflict, and in a determination to never let one’s will be encroached.

That is why I no longer trust the Wasp with the Way named after it. The Wasp lost itself, along with its claim to the ancient spirit. Thus, you shall inherit it, Little Stinger. Despite your skin being too soft to be carapace, and your piddling number of limbs, and your lack of wings. The forgettance of the true Way of the Wasp was nothing short of taboo. Let then another taboo bring renwed life to it. Let it thrive again, Little Stinger, that is truth may not be lost again to the soporific embrace of time.

[ryo-maybe]

The pig-headed - in a manner as literal as it is metaphorical - Bonron doesn’t get it.

“I don’t get it,” he mutters under his breath. Really though… I dun’ geddit, he repeats, providing a quieter and slightly impatient echo to his own words. His words don’t bother Kl’athr much; it’s the adipose contours of Bonron’s shadow that do. He’s in dire need of the luminosity that keeps bouncing off the rotund expanse of his fellow scavenger’s protruding belly, a necessity that in the latter’s priorities fails to match his persistently implied interrogative.

Kl’athr does not sigh, for he does not have lungs to do so. An humanoid-sized (if the human in question were to either be affected by significant dwarfism, or not much older than an age below two digits) insectoid like him, the byproduct of semi-natural evolution turning wasp DNA into its plaything, does not find a need for lungs in most circumstances. This is not most circumstances. It’s an attempt to sift through a dead caravan’s cargo - a failed one at that. And it’ll keep being so, unless Kl’athr manages to rid himself of the shadow impeding his vision, possibly along with its owner. Kl’athr does not sigh, but the acute snapping of his sharp mandibles expresses all the same how enticing he currently finds the latter option.

“Sure, trouncing these thugs’ gonna make passage by the trail a tad easier, I reckon. But they were just that: a bunch of harassers, not even worth a price on their sorry heads.”

Bonron don’t get it all, he takes care to repeat while scratching the few tufts of curly hair jutting out of a head most barren on both sides of its cranial enclosement. Kl’athr does not care. Kl’athr only wishes he could let his chitinous digits sink through the mess sprawled on the dusty soil in front of him without having to blindly take guesses each time he brushes upon a new, unrecognizable shape.

Bonron is about to repeat that, frankly, he can’t understand what’s going through Kl’athr’s mind to have wasted his money hiring the pig mutant and his cohorts to raid a bunch of weaksauce pickpockets and second-rate cutthroats, when he gets interrupted by the intensity of a single, loud and, unbeknownst to his understanding of Vespa dialects, satisfied clack coming from Kl’athr’s vocal apparatus. The porcine mercenary busies reels back, his dirty boots kicking up clouds of dust while he massages his aching ears. Much too late to fulfill Kl’athr’s earlier unspoken wish, but appreciated nonetheless.

“Oi, what gives?!”

‘What gives’ is that the sharp noise reached another pair of ears and set in motion a pair of feet, both sets decidedly smaller than Bonron’s and unsullied by the hodge podge of genetical distortion his species has suffered throughout several generations. He sees, when his vision has finally lost its momentary blur, that the figure approaching Kl’athr and reaching with her tiny hands for whatever the wasp is offering her, is the kid. It’s an odd sight, and a creepy one at that, this little girl clad in a pretty and mostly unsullied beige dress that must have once been white, with that gas mask shielding her feature from sight, substituting them with glassy orbs which shine eerily whenever light bounces off them, and a gun dangling from a loosely fitting shoulder strap, big enough he cannot help wonder how it could fit between her minuscule fingers.

More than that, however, is the object of this quaint pair’s exchange. More than Kl’athr’s earlier deafening signal, it’s the meek tweeting that from the wasp’s claws moves on to the child’s grip, barely able to keep a smattering of fuzzy flesh from spilling all about.

“A kiwi chick. That’s all? You paid me and the boys here a week’s worth of provisions to raid a bunch of dangerous sorts just so you can get your kiddo one of them novelty mounts? Dangit all, flutterwings! I don’t get it one bit!”

Kl’athr stands, dwarfed threefold by the porcine mutant shaking his head in sheer disbelief, and he stands in a way that would make it seem like he is the one towering above the big-bellied mercenary. He stands and, after one last gaze to the sight of the child’s quiet petting of her new fuzzy companion, he sets onward, nowhere in particular, directed to a mere away. But, as he does, one last time he shifts his fractioned vision to his massive hireling, the figure already growing smaller in the increasing distance.

“You do not need to get it.”

[ryo-maybe]

Speaking of, reproduction? Pretty big fucking deal, and please pardon the horrid combination of tasteless language and eyeroll-worthy wordplay. You could say, heeeh, what about it? Animals got it down to a T even if the highest display of their intellect amounts to distinguishing whether the piss-stained spot marks their turf or another of their ilk’s. Plants, they don’t even need that much brainpower, hell, they don’t need a brain at all, just a little hand from the occasional bee passing by and BAM, get that stamen-and-pistil action going, baby. Reproduction’s a non issue.

If it wasn’t for the fact that it can, may and most dauntingly will become an issue when you least expect it to. Oh, stay your pontificating indexes from reaching for the stars, I’m not wasting both of our times by bringing up the lowest common denominator among case scenarios. I’m taking the subtle path here, the next natural step on the troublesome ladder, which one is wont to encounter once said obvios hurdle has already been successfully dealt with.

So, let’s say that you, rather than the generic, non-descript reader I assume to have been led thus far by the inky hand of my words, were to be someone else, an else whose existence skirts that of a something. Let’s say you were a goddess of the deathly underworld from Mesopotamian mythos.

Woah, what! That sure took a strange turn all of a sudden, didn’t it?! And you’re right in thinking that, just like I am in assuming that these are the words which erupted in your brain when I suddenly thrust you in the role and tight-fitting blue jeans of one Ereshkigal, surname kept under wraps to preserve a sliver of her privacy from prying eyes. But, the fact of the matter is that no other person, deity or metaphysically messed up combination of those two could have better embodied the wisdom hinted at by the above paragraphs than her. It was her, after all, that on a particular day of a particular month, in a year and time period whose precision eludes our need for concern, who opened the door to her sizeable household to find not one, but two figures standing in front of her, one smiling far more widely than the other meekly hiding her.

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[ryo-maybe]

w h e r e s t h e l a m b s a u c e?!

“I think…”

Almost immediately, Mosin-Nagant stops her sentence before it has had a chance to vocalize the jumbled mess of code that are her thoughts. Her eyes look ahead, but they see nothing, a gaze emptily cast to the oblivion of a horizon only she could see, if her eyesight wasn’t so misty. Hesitation has stumbled her like beartrap placed right in front of the starting point, the notion that she could be capable of something so sophisticated as thinking while drunk off her artificial buttocks on cheap and likely counterfeit vodka apparently too ridiculous even for her own suspension of disbelief. But it’s too late to stumble groggily back from the limelight: it’s on her that attention has set firmly now, a spectrum running the entire gamut of human-like emotion, which in terms of T-Doll technology finds its extremities in doubt and sheer pitiless disgust.

“I think I got it,” she slurs, giving herself the momentum needed to push out the rest of it before a hefty dose of bile will take its place in her throat. “It’s a meta. A meta… phor. Metaphor. Like… chicken and chick. No, wait. Chicken and omelette?“

“Egg. The chicken and the egg.” Helpful though her contribution may be, there is no trace of compassion in NTW-20′s tone. There isn’t much of a trace of anything for that matter. Chances are good that she’s already long since sublimated her emotions into sizeable packages of raw binary sentiments and shoved the entire load into a compressed folder ‘til the end of these shenanigans. The reason she would do this, of course, is that she’s perfectly aware we don’t play anything but the long game in this here base. When shit goes down, it makes sure to burrow a hole with the stubborn dedication of a rabid drill.

“Yes. Yes! The chick… the chickegg… that. It’s, you know. Phosphorous… phosphophylyte.. phhhh.”

A pause. Tiredly, for the fifth time this evening, 416 raises the bucket, squeezes her eyes tightly shut and her mouth in a tighter grimace in preparation of the vomit projectile which does not come, much to everyone’s relief.

“Philosophy. A tricky, trick question, this one is, mh. But! But. I got it. The answer. The answer…”

Yet another silent pause, this one punctuated by the click of a slide and the glint of cold, hard metal against Mosin’s ushanka.

“This is fuckin’ pointless, cap’n. Lemme pop one in this drunk sow’s skull and save us the hassle, yeah?”

I raise my hand after taking a considerable time considering the option, the other one busy massaging the vague roughness underneath my chin.

“Not yet, CZ75. At this point we’ve tossed every vaguely reasonable theory out of the window, and then we tossed G41 out of the window, which didn’t bring us any closer to a solution but did wonders for my mood. At this point I’m willing to scrape the bottom of the barrel, even if said bottom is a grotty alcohol-stenched pisshole where lie nothing but disappointment and communism.“

“The difference ‘tween those two bein’, boss?” Thompson huffs smoke-riddled words with the all the cheek and none of the tongue. I spend exactly three macro-seconds wishing I had eyelids before turning my head and boring the full brunt of my ping pong ball-flavored gaze through the flimsy cover provided by her sunglasses.

“That communism’s disappointing by default, but not all disappointments aren’t necessarily born of communism, as your existence proves.” To which I add, upon leaning forward with clarity in my murky intent: “You disappointment.”

I turn my attention away from the teary-eyed T-Doll who’s now biting her lip while simmering in envy greener than the felt which comprises my puppet body, wondering if I should advise her against letting loose a single tear, lest she crumple like the wet tissue paper that she is, but decide against it. Can’t spoil the limited quantities of entertainment stockpiled in the room just like that. Not if I want to survive the night with some sliver of integrity left in my mind.

“Anyway, put it away, CZ75.” I quickly check the ceiling for an opinion that it doesn’t offer. “For now.”

“A’right.” Begrudgingly, CZ75 puts the safety back on her axe and shoves it back in its holster.

“Alright. Go on, Mosin. Mosin. MOSIN.”

“Huh! Wah? Wuh—oh. Yeah, sorry. Wasn’t dozin’ off, mind you, just… collecting my things, my. Yeah. Thoughts. Where did, where was I…”

“The answer. Give us the answer, Mosin. It’s been three hours and she hasn’t stopped her wailing. The door can only hold out so much. Illuminate us with your drunk Russian wisdom.”

“Right! Right. So, like…what was the question again?”

The air grows heavier with a collective sigh, yet only Lee-Enfield’s hand finds the strength to leave the comfort of her face to point at the door.

“The one that Springfield has been bellowing in an uncharacteristically guttural manner for the better portion of this evening.”

“Oh. Oh! Yeah! Yeah so, the chicken and egg, right? Here, hear me out: the answer… the answer is that there’s none. None! And that’s ‘cause they’re gone. The lambs. They went extinct, all of them. You can’t make lamb sauce without the lamb. There is no sauce. The world… our world… it is lost. Without the sauce.”

It is, by all means, a most deafening silence which fills the room for the longest interval. The problem being, it’s not the awed or admiring kind. More of a I can’t believe we were duped into wasting so much of the severely limited time we’ve left on Earth for a punchline that completely did without the latter to go ham with the former.

“Well.” I decide that, being the unfortunate bastard of a puppet put in charge of these disasters, it falls upon me to try and revive the last embers of hope. “A good attempt, Mosin. Poetic, in the same way I’d find a Chinese bootleg translation of Bukowski poetic. Honestly, I’d be willing to give your bile-inducingly shitty explanation some semblance of credit, if not for the fact that our world, for all of its apocalyptic shortcomings, does in fact still harbor a sizeable ovine population. We literally ate some in yesterday’s BBQ, at least until we decided to test Skorpion’s idea to add molotovs where they were most decidedly unneeded.”

“But hot damn if those weren’t some might fine fireworks! Ain’t that right, commander?!”

“You’re goddamn right.”

It’s a quiet noise, the one made by an enthusiastic SMG’s gloved hand and a spindly muppet one colliding. But it is in or heart of hearts that the high-five resonates the loudest, and in everyone’s sudden bout of far less enthused migraines that it does so most agonizingly.

“Anyway, I think we can all agree that Mosin’s contribution was useless in a way that borders on the offensive and leaps straight over the razor thin limits of our patience. CZ75, do your thing.”

The red-headed T-Doll jumps up, a springloaded toy given purpose and a scoped axe to fuel the cruelty in her grin and the lungs erupting in a madcap ‘Fuckin’ finally!’

“Hold on.”

Several pairs of eyes and at least one axe blade turn in the direction of the interfering monotone.

“NTW. I suppose you have one hell of a damn good reason to interrupt our bored attempt to stave off boredom and the mounting tension sapping away at our sanity through a senseless act of violence.”

NTW blinks exactly once, and not even in the general direction of Mosin’s currently comatose body.

“No. But I think that she was on to something, before collapsing in a pile of empty vodka bottles.”

I blink. Metaphorically, inside my mind, because again, no eyelids. I hope that scrounching my mouth as if someone shoved a hand into me ass-first and were making a fist against my facial muscles suffices to convey my doubts.

“I think you will understand if I ask you if you are doing what technical jargon in the manuals define ‘shitting me’, NTW.”

“I have rerouted all of my emotional data flow to the neural cloud’s trash bin, commander. It is safe to say that at the present moment, I am not ‘shitting you’, for I lack the software ability to. What I am able to do with the leftover memory is thinking, and doing a lot of it while everybody else busied themselves with anything but, I might have found a possible solution to our conundrum. The key is a metaphor, alright - it’s the interpretation that is wrong. The lamb, you see, is an animal commonly seen as symbolic of sacrifice… the question, therefore, might not be a question at all, but a demand. A demand, for a sacrifice.”

“A sacrifice… Springfield wants a sacrifice?”

It is in that moment that the boundary between man and machine, between android and felt puppet becomes a senseless blur, the meeting of intents and realizations focusing on the same spot in the room. The one sitting on a sofa, arms folded and expression rapidly souring the moment she notices the imaginary spotlights pointing in unison at her.

“W-what?” asks, oh so innocently, WA2000.

“Wait, what about the sauce though?” wonders aloud the pristinely oblivious harbinger of calamities Suomi.

It’s the cincher, the nail that could seal WA2000′s coffin and spare everybody else the need to take measurements for theirs. At a loss for words, neurons and neural clouds join in the dance of discernment to try and seize the last key to dispel the mystery. The lamb sauce. The lamb’s sauce. The sauce… the sacrifice’s sauce… the sauce? The sauce!

“It’s her period!” erupts with the force of a thousand scorching maelstroms the booming catastrophe that is SOP “Soap” II’s voice, her Sangvis-borne fingers stabbing the air separating her grin from the bewildered tomato that has taken the place of WA2000′s face. “It’s shark week all over that nylon heaven! It’s confirmed, we gotta give the predator her prey!”

“I don’t have a period!” manages to yell WA2000, and I cannot help but notice that the demanding voice coming from behind the steel door’s faltering frame has grown a toud louder. “None of us here do! This makes no sense!”

“Don’t you?”

“No!”

Silence once again befalls the room, broken only by the hinges’ cries for mercy.

“Well, whatever. We’ll just pretend you do and toss you into the fray because to be perfectly honest, you were our plan B if all else would fail to begin with, and fail, I’d say, we did in ways that defy the spectacular. Girls, chuck our saucy chamomille for vampires out and then keep the door shut ‘til the screaming subsides.”

“What screaming, commander?”

I place my bootleg Kermit hand atop Suomi’s soft head, the act of patting it made awkward by the metal sticks controlling their movements. Quietly, I motion to the group of T-Doll bravely performing their duty, which entails seizing the struggling WA2000 and chucking her out, in the darkness of a corridor where a sinister pair of emeralds glint with promises most dire atop the waxing moon of a salivating grin. The door turns, several backs pressing against it and waiting. Waiting, until…

“Oh.”

“Yeah. You’ll get used to that. At this point everyone in the base is more likely to become aware they’re breathing than the sound of Springfield ravaging the pantyhosed gates of WA2000′s moist heaven. For now though…”

For now, we wait. I wonder if I should join Mosin in her dreamland. Become lost in cheap Russian sauce, sit down to count the sheep and wait for a new day to come and be seized.

I hope Springfield’ll use the normal filters for tomorrow morning’s coffee.

[ryo-maybe]

Jail Baby Blues

Eventually, it’s Uno who breaks the silence.

“I’m…”

He sends the first few sounds on recon duty, lets them scout the atmosphere through the thick lull blanketing the ol’ Heinkel Kabine’s interior. An unexpected intersection provides him the cowardly excuse he needs to stall more than he’s already done, letting the wheel and the creaky gear lever do the talking for him as he comes to a stop, scours around through thick-lensed glasses, takes his chances with a sharp right. Marnie’s Boutique of Colorless Inks slides into view from the left. The script elegantly etched onto sign atop the door flashes him with familiar hues of dark white and clear blacks that fill him with newfound confidence. The street urges him onwards with a merciful straightforwardness that stretches onwards, into a horizon embraced by the rows of buildings old and less so. By that point the car engine is humming as steadily at the pace it dictates to the three wheels under its command, and Uno’s quivering lip has emptied its reserves of hesitant rain checks.

“I’m just saying.”

A good start. Alright, maybe not, but it’s a start nonetheless, and that in and of itself is a hurdle successfully conquered. He cocks his head, Uno, goes as far as getting a hand off the steering wheel’s white plastic cover to support his already wavering resolve with a gesture, a vague sort of swatting. His palm falls back into place with a loud enough slap to send ripples through his arm and make him jump on the seat. The splotch of gel on the trike’s roof grows a tad wider, his coppery hair a lot less slicked prim. The bump hurts his ego more than his head, really, but the sudden spark of adrenalinic discharge jumpstarts his vocal cords, and indignation seizes the opportunity to ride atop the minuscule wave of panic for all it’s worth.

“Itdoesn’tfeelallthatrighttome.” The words tumble over one other, falling into a messy pile that begs for comprehensibility. Uno sneaks a glance aside, jaw still hanging, and lets out a much quieter and less shrill ‘You know’ to top off his pathetic idea of a sentence. He reels his breath in, awaiting the verdict.

“What?”

Sandy’s reply is an incisive bullet ripping through what little nuggets of protesting confidence Uno had managed to muster in the brief beginnings of the car trip. He doesn’t need to glance in her direction to see it - the dismissal in her eyes, he can feel by sheer trained instinct. A meager consolation, in that he doesn’t have to stare at the contradicting rebellion drawn on that ever-mismatched pair of irises. He doesn’t have to, yet he does anyway, when a cyberknight flashes its automated horse’s neon lights to signal an impatient overtaking; Uno’s glance catches a glimpse in the rear-view mirror while the exoskeleton-clad figure rushes by, of Sandy’s eyes blinking and shifting from a tame green-brown to a garish purple-yellow, one color per each carefree orb.

They turn to stare at the driver, pulling the head they’re set in along with them. A chaotic array of tiny discs, pearls, tubes and several other decorations clink against each other, constrained as they themselves constrain the otherwise untamable locks of Sandy’s mane. Her smile is still there like always, a perennial curve, too slippery to let the gainly weight of harsh truths stick, too empty of care to offer anything more than bemused mockery.

“We finally get the drop on a scummy bastard who’d been eluding us for the last six months. Like, what’s got your panties up in a bunch, now?”

“I-I mean.”

Uno swallows, hard. Not enough saliva in his mouth. He chokes, three coughs before he’s caught his breath and managed to push his chin into gesturing to the bundle held between Sandy’s arm.

“C-criminal or not, it’s s-s-still a, still an infant. A n-newborn!”

A car horn interrupts him, urging his foot to slam the damned pedal already. Uno’s leg fumbles about like a child lost in a mall, tossed around by the angry symphony berating him from the preceding vehicle, until at long last he finds the accelerator again and feels it melt under the pressure, exactly like his sagging shoulders are doing. The honking protests finally quieten down, and so does Uno. All he can muster is the act of driving, and tossing the occasional, pitiful glance at the baby sleeping quietly in the blanket covering him, cradled by Sandy’s loveless grip.

“Yeah, so? Lil’ shit here should’ve known better than run a reincarnation scam on us. Hullo, Mister Uno! PSA for your thick dum-dum skull: they pay us to bust death-cheatin’ scammers.”

“I know!” Understanding with a side-serving of displeasure, loud and strained. He has to shove the words out in a manner that borders on the physical, so stubbornly they hang on the tip of his trembling tongue. “I know, b-but still! T-the poor thing was still b-b-bloody when we tore him from his mother’s arms! The way she kept screaming at us while we walked away with her child… Don’t you feel an ounce of regret, Sandy?!”

“I know I’m already feeling the big ass crepe I’ll be getting meself first thing first once we cash in our reward.”

She made a point of leaning against Uno’s shoulder, just so she could sense him shivering in discomfort while she took her time wetting her grinning lip.

“That’s cold.”

“They wrote me like that. Just like they wrote you to be a precious, spineless nugget full o’ love and nonsense.”

A kiss punctuated the sentence on Uno’s cheek, setting it ablaze, a chain reaction of nerves flaring with an excess of stimuli that jeopardized the trike’s trajectory for a few swerving instants rhythmated by Sandy’s satisfied giggle. Too much of a ruckus for the baby, apparently: it stirred uncomfortably, the lazy stupor in its bulbous eyes and rosy mouth creasing with the beginnings of a nervous spell.

“Look, if we did anything to the wannabe momma, it’s a favor. Donno about you, but I’d kinda feel sort of shitty, knowing I’m raising some dude who runs a long-standing life-laundering op in the city. Now chill, the both of you.” Sandy’s threat was pronounced with the lightheartedness of a joke and the sharp intention of a blade caressing every throat within listening range, at least one of which gulped uncomfortably in response. “The moment this thing whimpers or pisses on my lap, I’m chucking it straight out the car’s window, and I’d rather not waste a stipend like that. ‘Specially not a big one like this widdle sonnuva’s gonna land us. Isn’t that right?”

The combination of a few bumps on the road and Sandy’s eager rocking seemed enough to assuage the steadily relaxing baby, not so much the driver. He spread his mouth, letting the slightly stale air inside the trike fill it. Gave up, when he accepted, somberly, that his voice wasn’t going to take its place, and attempted to put the brunt of his focus on the impredictability of the city’s roads, ever-shifting under the whims of freely doled poetic licences and the indecisive urban planning of Editor-Administrators. Away, from the hospital where a mother still wept the theft of her newborn, and from the cooing noises coming from his colleague.

“Who’s a scamming little shit? Who’s the conniving widdle reincarnating bitch that’s going to jail tonight? That’s right, it’s you~!”

[limitedrevolverworks]

毒 ~その一

About two hours following his departure from the mansion in Kenton Road, Percy Stutton felt suncast warmth blanketing his dozing eyes. His eyelids, weighed upon by riotous reluctance, at first clasped tightly in an attempt to imprison the fleeting haziness of sleep: but, when at last the futility became too much to bear, they surrendered their domain to the tyranny of vision, dooming the orbs beneath them to a scorching supplice. The man called to their aid a pair of fingers which had only ever known the labor of pen and ink - soft-padded tips, and the vague accent of a callus on the middle digit. Their massage provided some ease to his weary pupils, but not to the slight beginning of nausea churning his stomach. He finally reopened his eyes, casting his half-lidded gaze in the dimly lit interior of the cramped chariot. Particles of dust danced lazily like fairy dust bathed in yellow light, an intangible blade of gold cleaving through the spell of their modest invisibility cast from beyond the window’s partially drawn curtains. He reached for the latter, hesitating short of brushing the silken fabric as if stricken with mistrust towards the unfamiliar brightness. Before he could decide otherwise, instinct thrust his limb forward and cast the curtain aside, revealing the scenery past the window’s glass pane.

Within the limited confines of the square frame, an ocean of green stalks swayed to the rhythm whispered by a gentle summer breeze. Atop each of them was a crown of lively red, petals spread as if to welcome the entire breadth of Mother Nature’s boons: the caress of an eastward wind, the delectable taste of unfiltered sunrays, the bees’ dance of life. As he regarded the poppy fields running past him, extending to the horizon in joyous limitlessness, Percy wondered if perhaps he hadn’t merely left the city behind him. He cradled, with the sort of nebulous stupor which encroaches the human spirit upon its waking, the notion that separating him from London was not the transitory physicality of distance, but the absoluteness of an irredeemable change. In Percy’s imagination, fed by the leftover potential of a freshly dreaming mind, the poppies had long since spread far and beyond the grassy prairies. He envisioned their thin stalks taking root, timidly at first, in the gravely edges of the city’s periphery. Like the spreading of a tumorous growth he saw the tapestry of flowers steadily painting the gray skyline a vivid red, poppy seeds blooming beautifully into the ashen walls of the industrial complexes; bunched up blossoms sticking out of the chimneys, coughing mere whiffs of their darkening smokes; his mind eye witnessed the overtaking of unwashed slums, of hoof-struck roads and even the decadent interiors of lavishly furnished estates, the lot of them succumbing to the tidal advance of nature’s beautiful, innocent parasyte. The city of London, festering with the suppurations of its own reckless growth, had at last ceased to be, its inhabitants along with it, perished, them and their intrigues, their pettiness, their vapid addiction to the flavor of venomous spite. Gone were they, along with the boroughs and the streets, the lanes and the roads and the crossings, all of them turned into a tomb-garden. Only Percy remained, a lone fugitive saddled with the burden of a solitary survival, and a costly freedom.

The man retreated his hand, letting the curtain fall back onto the window and his chilling fantasies. He took a deep breath in, filling his lungs with the musty staleness of the air inside the cabin. In so doing, he realized the absence of the familiar, smoky bitterness that of London’s air… and the unease that such healthy lack of a sensation he’d grown so accustomed to suggested in him.

“Sir?”

The conductor’s voice seemed to reach him from a different realm, and for a moment Percy felt the blood chill his veins into immobility, for he became convinced in that surreal instant that the colorful apocalypse born of his fanciful flights had seeped out of its imaginary confines. The raspy words struggled to reach him, shaken by the carriage’s constant bobbing and muffled by the thickness of the wood separating the inside from the outside. The trip had been long and tiring, Percy thought as he attempted to justify his foolish lapse in judgement. He had found himself unprepared to deal with a change of scenery too bewildering for his mind, weakened by fatigue and slumber, so used to the monotonous gray hues of londinese life, to properly embrace. He couldn’t help but chide himself nonetheless: the reasons which had brought him here, so far from the city’s sickening hustle and its oppressive bustle, demanded that he keep his focus refined and his wits sharper yet. Moreover, that he would find anything but pleasure in the joyous variety which abounded in these milieus… it reeked of the conduct of an addict, the kind of wretched reprobate unable to seek enjoyment from anything other than thick, poisonous mists. His mist, however, was that of London: and to admit that the acrid, suffocating miasma was so deeply entrenched in his being, that he couldn’t find relief in its absence, would have been an unacceptable weakness, a shackle he ill desired on his spirit.

Percy’s head shook with firm intent to leave behind him, more than the city, the burden which it represented. A reminder, rather than a newborn resolution, of one among those other, aforementioned reasons for the trip. He bent forward with an impetus spurred by a spark of excitement: as if he were thrusting not just his body, but the entirety of his self into a venture that was equal parts wondrous and risky. With a motion made unsteady by the carriage’s shaking and his own rising euphoria, he slid aside the wooden pane to reveal the rectangular gap hidden behind, beyond which he could see the driver’s grayed hairs, streaming down the coverage of his worn-out hat in curly rivulets.

“Have we arrived yet?” The sound of his own voice, billowing loud and steady in spite of the carriage’s instability, filled Percy with confidence. It affirmed with reassuring clarity his physical, tangible presence in a world where delusions had no place other than in people’s psyches.

“Sure we have, sir.” He gestured, with his rugged chin instead of the stumpy fingers which held firmly on the bridles tied to two brown steeds, their trotting interspersed with the huffing protests which segued the occasional whipping. Percy’s gaze followed the direction indicated, undaunted by the rudeness of the conductor’s manners, to the structure looming a distance mere minutes away.

He almost failed to see the manor. Its diminutive height left no doubt as to the fact that it spanned exactly one story, and one so surprisingly narrow at that! Nothing like the sprawling complexes which towered over the estates of the sirs which constituted the créme of the city’s demimonde, thought Percy as the edifice’s reflection progressively grew in his eyes. And then there was the dullness: an aggressive excess of lack in the pristine ivory of those walls, as if decoration had been submitted in its near entirety to the whims of functionality, leaving only the barest minimum of embellishment to suggest rather than flaunt, like the chiseled decor of the even the more modest among the landowners’ possessions did - like his own did, Percy remarked. It looked to him as if the poppy fields, like rebellious masses dissatisfied with the ownership of their ruler, had chosen to suck his dominion dry of all its beauty, thriving as their majestic beauty spread across the countryside, while leaving a ruin, a former, discarded shell of what no longer held them in their yoke. Again, Percy felt tugging at him the reveries which he had been so easy to fall for: they fed off the contradiction standing so matter-of-factly in plain sight, almost challengingly reveling in its paradoxical existence.

“Are you certain this is the one?” he asked, his parched throat requiring him to swallow down a mouthful of saliva.

“That I am, sir. Quaint, is it? Looks more like a fanciful flophouse more than else, if you ask me.”

He did not. Percy shut the window close again instead, falling back in his seat, and the weight of the fall made the impact feel shattering to his bones. Doubt had began spilling forth from a wound in his beliefs, drenching his brow in nervous sweat. A sense of futility vyed for possession of him now, with only the rapidly depleting residues of a desperate determination posing an obstacle in its way. He was trapped, he realized, caged into a wooden box of his own making, like a pathetic jack-in-the-box waiting for fate to finish revolving the handle and grant him a risible freedom. But no, he couldn’t, he mustn’t fall pray so quickly to fallacious prejudices: for the immenseness of the fields accompanying him on the road they delimited spoke far more eloquently about the true depth of the riches and power which their possessor had. In that, he told himself, he had to trust, for any other possibility laid for him a path paved with disaster.

No, Percy Stutton. This was the correct choice. Your faith will fall into the right pair of hands to repay it with that which you seek. The strength of this belief accompanied him down the steps of the carriage, when it eventually stopped at the edge of the fenceless courtyard which expanded like a gravel shadow in front and around the mansion. And it found encouraging validation, a sort of instinctive abandonment to trust, in the figure which, breaking from the unassuming forgettability of a servant’s silhouette, approached him with a stride at once ethereal and martial, a self-assured, elegant feebleness to each boot-clad step that spoke not of confidence, but knowledge. A belief in the truth of his intangibility in the face of misfortune in all its myriad forms. A stalwart spectre, judging and refusing judgement, piercing the world with an acute gaze that saw even the unseen, and dared it to, go on, by all means, test its mettle against his intellect and willpower.

Percy Stutton felt himself smile, but he also noticed that only part of it was due to the instinctive reassurance he had gotten from meeting gazes with the approaching man. The rest was effort, a conscious decision spurred by necessity, and the realization that something kept this smile from growing naturally by itself. An unease, a tad like an echo of that which had haunted him in the last stretch of his voyage, but acute, focused, yet even more alien to him than his unusual failure to rein such musings in, harder to burden with the trappings of rational effort. An erosion, the progression of which enlarged a gap demanding to be filled with something - and to fill such an inexplicable gap, only inexplicable impulses could have answered the call.

He stepped forward on shaky legs - made so by the trip, he told himself - his hand extended and secretly pleading the one about to meet it, while at the same time fearing its impending grip and all it entailed. In front of him, Percy gazed intently at the man soon to be his host. At the mirthless of cut of those pale features, so bereft of emotion, the face of a god, of a demon, studying humanity from atop its perch. Behind him, the manor seemed to stand taller and more massive than it could possibly be. Lips whose flesh seemed to have long foregone the touch of blood curved in the shape of a joyless crescent bloodmoon, spreading open to let out words like freshly cast iron.

“What should a man find, at the end of a tiresome voyage? What prize, to compensate the torments of a rickety carriage’s vacillations and the vexatious company of a crippling boredom? One less disappointing than the modesty of mine estate, no doubt. Alas, it shall do nonetheless: and, for an old friend such you, it will do, lest I besmirch my name, and our old acquaintanceship, with the sin of disappointment. Thus I promise, Percy Stutton. Welcome to my abode.”

They shook hands. It had been ten long years since Percy had met in person Sir Martin Edgar Locke de Ficheau-Seumetraan-Gardier.

[limitedrevolverworks]

Despite posting with the regularity of a Magikarp taking a stroll along with Sisyphus up a mountain, I decided to make one of those ko-fi pages that all the rage nowadays, so that now you can take a peek at the byproduct of my fingers or toss me an idea you’d like to see them tackle and, should the result elicit a thought along the lines of “Hot damn! How I wish I could pay ludicrous amounts of money for this!”, well, now you CAN.

[ryo-maybe]

Blue Blue Jeans Under the Crimson Blush

It was only when he gazed at the blighted scenery in front of him, that the man simply known as “Emiya” truly understood the meaning of tragedy.

He felt his fingers move spontaneously to the bridge of his nose like survivors fleeing a disaster. The gentle massage was an exercise in futility: when he released the grip, his unobstructed vision stayed the same - a dismaying canvas of despair, not painted so much as splattered all over his eyes. It was like a pinpoint strike against the very concept of hope. Proof that gods existed, and they were capable of spite.

Continua a leggere

[limitedrevolverworks]

My Mother 2.0 [5]

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4]

He awakens to a world of darkness, the first sign that something’s different - he would think it wrong, if only he had a solid enough notion of right to confront it with.

His eyes scan ahead of them, thirsting for the familiar warmth of a light source. Littering the black tapestry, however, are little more than glinting leftovers: the rhythmic blink of tiny LEDs, meager scraps dirtying a plate too big to be filled by them. They will do, nonetheless. All the boy needs, for the time being, is proof that his world has not yet ceased to be. A sign of existence independent of himself, for he is not quite sure he can trust the physical matter that tells him is his own in a strange dialect made up of unfamiliar sensorial inputs. He thusly anchors his eyesight to the tiniest twinkle for as long as he can before succumbing to the need to blink. And, in so doing, he realizes that he just did that - and that he felt two of his eyes bathe in refreshing humor within that minuscule fraction of a second.

The boy makes a second, hesitant attempt. He does so with the methodical precaution that such a trivial action should not normally warrant, succumbing one millimeter to inner darkness per every second it takes him to swallow his hesitation down. The feedback from his right lid is slower to response, strained. It’s inconsequential in the grander scheme of things, but in the extremely limited range of focused perception, the difference from the other lid is tangible. Like that between a sheet of paper and one of plastic. He feels the simile fed to him by his brain satisfying enough. It gives him an angle from where he can analyze the unfathomable oddity that seems to cling to the entire right side of his body, which had long since escaped the grasp of his comprehension to begin with. Braving the unknowns of a world he cannot see is a task best left for later, he decides; for the time being, his first priority lies in the discoveries he can make in the confines of his self.

Herding the scattered fragments of his consciousness takes him some time. Rivulets of sensory output run steadily through the neural pathways laid across his body, ripe for the picking: he dips filaments of focused attention into the intersecting flows in an attempt to catch their contents, but the brunt of them are lost like water seeping through open fingers. Inactivity-induced numbness has turned his flesh and bones into an unknown territory, a prickly swarm of insects idly nibbling on his left leg, where the flow of blood must have slowed to a crawl because of his resting position. The entire left portion of his body has succumbed to a similar fate, but he recognizes it like one does a familiar silhouette - he wishes he could think the same about the opposing half of his body. It provides unsteady footing for his concentration to perch upon. From there, it casts its gaze into the abyss of incomprehensibility to the east of his personal world, hidden beyond a thick curtain of concrete mirages. Illusions of awareness, crooked imitations of self-perception the boy feels uneager to welcome in his conceived notion of ‘self’.

Tension puts his throat in a tight grip. The boy instinctively retreats like a beast who came too close to touching a blazing fire, back into the comfort of a conceivable identity. His apprehensive outburst sends his thoughts reeling, and without meaning to he ends up stumbling through remembrances of his days in the facility, a lifetime ago. They are not pleasant, but he finds reassurance in the patterns he long since got accustomed to. He latches on and digs in with apathetic voraciousness, peeling off unneeded layers of trauma to indulge into the aseptic methods he knows he needs. And he is stopped dead in the middle of his imaginary banquet, when he upholds a morsel dripping with bitter irony - the realization that it now falls upon him to don not only the mask of a test subject, but that of the cold data cruncher. The boy retches with disgust at the mere idea of becoming the monster he had grown to fear and resent, he gags on the paradoxical confusion of being both victim and executioner at once.

But he does not discard the notion altogether. His mind salivates hints of a fresh new impulse he has been conditioned to never feel. Had he been taught the word and explained its meaning, he would realize that for the first time ever, he is harboring something akin to curiosity.

The boy swallows down, hard. He barely takes notice of how much easier it feels on his throat than it has in the last couple of weeks.

With discovery at the forefront of his priorities, he reaches for the available tool at his disposal. Brain signals bristle through underused nerveways, plucking the strings of a motionless hands with amateurish puppetry. A finger twitches, but falls dormant almost immediately. The boy encourages the same, promising digit, and manages to elicit a spasm that ripples across the rest of its rigid brethren. This is what infancy must feel like, he muses to himself. Learning to know his newborn body, the vessel he is bound to eventually fill with a persona he’s not yet sure what to make of. It is equal parts worrisome and exciting: each shudder that lifts an index or a ring finger a little higher is a victory worth celebrating, and when he eventually manages to gather them into a something resembling a fist in its larval stage, the boy wonders if he will ever achieve any feat more impressive than this. But the left angle of his mouth ceases its squirming before it can grow into the semblance of a triumphant smile - his struggle has only begun, the immense effort he has exerted thus far a mere droplet of the ocean of strength he will need to accrue, if he wants to see this through to the end… whatever it may entail.

Open. Close. Open again. He accustomizes himself to the act of giving orders to his own limb, eyes shut so that the distant glow of a LED won’t rob him of the necessary focus. When he feels satisfied enough with the response of his fingers, he precedes the next step with a break. A short-lived pause, which he spends catching his breath and appreciating the damp feeling that sweat has left on his palm, the concrete proof of his labor. There was a time once when he dreaded the conclusion of a task, for the result would either determine a return to the suffocating monotony of his cell, or being subjected to whatever would be deemed suitable to curb his dissatisfactory performance.

No more, however. Now, he only has his own judgement to evaluate him.

Alright. Next is the wrist. He twists his hand around it as best he can, gasping under his breath when the cartilage snaps and tricks him into believing he may have crippled himself by sheer accident. But, aside from a vague tinge where his bones connect, pain fails to arrive. And so he resumes the movements, slower this time, until the beginnings of ache warn him against the dangerous futility of further exertion. Another pause. He is dictating his own pace and the fact fills him with the dread that comes with violating a taboo. All this freedom that’s been thrust unto him, it’s almost too much. For a tense moment, his spirit falters and begs him to stop treading the forbidden grounds of autonomous initiative. But, darting his panicked gaze left and right through the empty, unfamiliar darkness, he realizes that treading back wasn’t an option to begin with: forward is the only direction he’s allowed to move. Wouldn’t this mean that his thoughts and actions are placed upon definite binaries he has no agency on, then? He embraces the notion with frantic eagerness, subconsciously aware that this is like a step taken both forward and backwards, and that seeking any other pattern of thought would cripple him with fearful paralysis.

The boy inspires profoundly. He knows that he has to act before his will leaves him again for good. Projecting his focus back on his arm, he decides to risk it all on a daring attempt, no doubt urged by his destabilized concentration. Ghostly tendrils of intent coil around joints and ligaments, demanding their labor. Slowly yet surely, the warmth of slightly damp fabric underneath the limb is substituted by the coolness of empty air. It takes his everything to keep his arm from falling back, and the firm belief that should that happen, he won’t manage to raise it again from its slumber spurs the boy’s almost desperate efforts to keep going. He fights the fatigue that shakes his weakened muscles, until at last his hand is hovering in front of his face. The inability to see a part of his own body so close he can smell the faint musk of his skin feels odd: his brain’s attempts to draw an outline of it into the dark only further confuses the boy. At a cautiously slow pace he begins to lower the limb, until the tips of his finger make contact with something warm and soft. Sifting through the signals being sent to his brain, he realizes that he is touching his own left cheek, and it startles him that its thinness is such that he can easily feel the bone jutting beneath.

But he feels relief, too. Worrisome though its state may be, he has no doubt that this is, indeed, his face. Cupping it with all the firmness he can muster, he recognizes the sharp outline of a jawbone, the intricacy of the ear on one hand and the smoothness of the chin at the opposite end. His digits brush the soft fuzz of a brow and move on to find the bulbous protuberance of an eyelid beneath, the angular line of a barely pronounced nose cooperating with chapped, dry lips to gather oxygen from stuffy air. It takes him slightly longer to separate the warmth of sweat lining his visage from that of the lone tear streaming down it.

It’s odd to rejoice about having found tangible confirmation of the obvious truth fed to him by his senses. And the sentiment is a short-lived one, either way: the boy gulps down saliva and the other viscous secretions of his mouth, mentally preparing for the next, fundamental step.

Before he can reconsider his own impulses, he slides his fingers over to the right side of his face, and feels the blood drain from the left.

Barely malleable stiffness meets his thumb. Its delicate pressure, in turn, leaves behind it a scorching trail of burning pain signals. Where he should feel a soft, rubbery cheek, the boy finds only the incongruous solidity of a material he cannot interpret as that of human skin. His trembling hand follows the boundary that separates his face in two imperfect halves, almost too enthralled by the impossibility of his discoveries to feel the full brunt of his budding horror.

His nose has been left mostly unspared, with only the skin above the nostril overcome by the strange substance. A prickly sensation stops his index dead in its tracks: approaching it with cautious caresses, he traces its origins in a pointy, sturdy bit of sharpness jutting out of an opening that corresponds to the right part of his mouth, which reaches farther into his hardened cheek than its normal twin. Moving upwards leads him where an eye should be, and for a moment he feels at a loss, when all he finds a bulging protuberance that, like a bony tumor, extends past his face, engulfing an absent ear and stabbing the makeshift pillow with its pointy end. He retreats his hand in a growing panic, immediately regretting the short journey taken on the surface of this incomprehensible, tangible piece of wrongness stuck to his head, and in so doing finds the missing eye: its upper half hides meekly beneath the growth, the rest of it shielded by one thick shell of an hairless lid.

This is wrong. He doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t like the fact. He is far too used to a stable, steady routine, to the predictability of a life that follows a functional pattern set by others. He is not ready, but at this point the boy has grown desperate for answers he is not prepared to receive. Hysteria fills his tired arm with strength and throws it into a frenzied witch hunt across the body’s corrupted half, tugging at the plastic-like film which has engulfed his right portion. Tossing and turning like he does fills his normal side with tiredness and wrecks the other with pain he cannot deal with. A stiff right arm and leg rebel by flailing wildly, and this only exacerbates the searing inferno that envelops their vulnerable surface. The boy is burning, flames from the outside are encroaching on the inside, feasting on his reason and emptying his lungs. He doesn’t hear himself screaming, cannot stop crying out loud for help he knows won’t come, he is blind to the predicament he’s putting his own body into. The stifling darkness has doomed the pleas suppurating from his parched throat to oblivion. He knows he has to cease his outburst, but knows not how.

Then, on the verge of losing the last remnants of his mind and his body along with it, at the edge of his confused perceptions, he notices it. A single dot, shining redder than a dawning sun. He does not know when it lit into existence, nor its exact nature. His instinct cause him to spring into motion before he can even discern why he is doing so, or the words echoing from its general direction.

“Can’t a girl get her beaut-T-T-T-T-y sleep no--woah there!”

The impact between the hard shell of his warped form and the freezing, bulky metal assembly of limbs takes most of the breath out of the boy’s chest, causing him to slump over. His consciousness made hazy from bursts of adrenaline, weariness and the knock against his cranium, he falters. And, having lost most of the trust he’d painstakingly managed with a self that now feels unrecognizable, he thrusts himself to the outside world’s care, clinging to it with all the energy he can muster.

“What’s the big idea, boyo? You keep thra-A-A-A-A-A-shing like that and you’ll end up killing yourself… or destroying my quarte-E-E-E-E-E-rs.”

More metallic-sounding protests bounce off the boy without him noticing them. They only achieve the feat of spurring his arms into clinging more heavily to the steel waist he cannot see, and die on the hill of a strained murmur even more broken than its buggy synthetic rhythm.

“Hurts…”

His labored breathing is shaken by occasional hiccups. Only they fill the silence within the world of black. But it does respond, against his preconceived, desperate worries, and does so with an embrace. The empty world hugs his shaking, warped form with sturdy arms that feel cold do the touch and fill his own shelled dermis with a slight ache. But he accepts it, nonetheless. And, for what feels like a stressful eternity, he feels his anguish dissipating, like the darkness which surrounds the silent red disc of light shining above him.