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[Redacted]Charts: What's a legend?
2012.09.15 00:48 3f0b8d [Redacted]Charts: What's a legend?
[Redacted]Charts: Guess The Legend!
2013.06.08 16:02 IUironman Pure ninja brawling n' fun.
2016.07.05 19:08 datprofit The Northernlion Fitness Program
The Northernlion Fitness Program was created in order to help people get fitter by combining entertainment, specifically Northernlion's Isaac videos from Youtube, with exercise.
2024.05.07 23:38 DrBlackJack21 Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 13
Chapter 1
Concept art for Sybil
Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 13
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As he lay down, Carter wondered just how long it had been since he last slept, not counting however long he'd been knocked out for the surgical implementation of his new augments. Between the pirates, the surgery, and "getting to know" his new...huh... Were they his subordinates, his bosses, or just the ship? He shook his head. It didn't matter. He'd gotten to know them a little better, and they didn't feel quite so psychotic anymore. They were still plenty psychotic! But at least he could relate a little.
He thought back to the girl, the original one. How long had she been alone out in space, with nothing but the void, stars, and an emotionless, unthinking ship that only followed orders and offered nothing in return for company? It's a wonder she didn't just up and kill herself! Then again, maybe some people would feel the same about his situation...
Not that he had any intention of taking that easy way out any time soon! Carter had fought too hard and too long to just give up now! He'd find a way to turn this all to his advantage somehow! Though how exactly he'd do that with those three breathing down his neck remained to be seen.
Then, a thought occurred to him. Carter into the darkness. Hey, Sybil, are you there?"
Even before he turned to look her way as she answered, the glowing light in his room told Carter she was. "Yes, Captain?"
Carter laughed. "You don't know how long I've dreamed of someone calling me 'captain.' Now I've done it, and somehow...it feels empty."
The girl looked confused. "Oh? Why does it feel empty?"
Carter looked up at the ceiling, now illuminated by the girl's presence. "I don't know. Maybe it's because of how many 'captains' have already run this ship and how few of them seemed to have meant anything to you. Maybe it's because I just stumbled into the position rather than earning it by viture of my wit and skill. Or maybe it's because everything I do seems to lead me one step forward and two steps back..."
The girl pushed her glasses up, a motion Carter remembered the original girl doing in the memories he'd been shown earlier before answering. "Well, I suppose you'll have to earn the position. After all, it's not like any of our captains came into the role after being carefully selected from a pool of capable candidates. Although, you are mistaken in one aspect."
Carter looked over at the girl with a raised eyebrow. "Oh yeah, what's that?"
The girl looked off into the distance and smiled. "I remember all of my captains. Even the ones who didn't do a good job or were around for very long, and I learned something from all of them. You've already earned a place in my memories. Long after the rest of the galaxy has forgotten almost every human who lives today, your name and accomplishments will live on through me." She paused and smirked a little. "Although, how big the chapter of your tenure as captain will be largely depends on you."
Carter chuckled. "Fair enough, I suppose."
The girl tilted her head. "Was that all you wanted? To vent to me about your worries?"
Carter barked out a laugh of his own. "It sounds a little sad when you say it like that! But no, that just occurred to me when you called me captain. I called for you because I realized I forgot to tell you just what my first order as captain was going to be."
The girl smiled. "Yes, I suppose you did negotiate for the right to issue the first command. So tell me, what would you like to do, oh captain, my captain?"
Carter considered throwing his pillow through the image of the girl but knew it would cause no more harm than some slight digitization. Then he'd have to go get the pillow himself, taking any sting out of the point he wanted to make. Instead, he just grinned and answered, "Simple. I want to get my old ship back!"
-
They were almost to the escape pods when they were sandwiched between two groups of pirates. As Vanessa fired down one corridor to keep the first group at bay, Erik looked around the corner to try to get a count of the second.
The alien ducked back just as a hail of gunfire erupted around the corner. Despite the near miss, Erik grinned. "Well, the group ahead looks smaller but better armed! I don't think blindly charging at them will work this time!"
Vanessa spared her friend a glance as she reloaded the rifle. "Showing restraint in the face of danger, my lady? I suppose there's a first time for everything."
Erik laughed. "Danger is one thing, but I'm not exactly suicidal! What I need is a distraction of some kind!"
As Vanessa poured more gunfire back the way they'd come, keeping the pirates from doing more than blindly firing around the corner while Alen kept his head down, she offered a slightly unladylike grunt. "I would love to be of assistance, but I'm afraid I'm busy keeping the second group at bay."
Realizing this could very well be the end, Alen decided it was on him to do something for once. He could see a room with an open door across the hall. There was almost no chance he could make it without getting shot, however... "I'll do it!"
Erik looked at Alen and laughed. "No offense, kid, but I don't think you can take out the pirates any better than I can!"
Alen shook his head. "No, but I can give you a distraction. It won't be much, a second or two at most, but I can make them aim their guns at the opposite side of the hallway. Would that be enough?"
Erik's grin grew wider, and Alen could swear his eyes dilated just a little. "You buy me a full second of distraction, and I'll make it work, kid! Whenever you're ready!"
With a sigh, Alen shook his head to clear his thoughts, then took a deep breath. "Alright..." Then, without giving himself more time to think about it, Alen stood up and started running.
Alen was used to running. He knew he was in reasonably good shape, doubly so for someone who planned on spending his life aboard a ship as an officer, but he'd never run this fast before and likely never would again. As he passed the corner at a dead sprint, time seemed to slow to a crawl. Each step felt like he was pushing his legs past the breaking point as he willed himself to rocket forward faster with each step. He ignored the blurs at the corner of his vision, even as they opened fire, tracing his movements with their gun barrels as they roared to life, spewing deadly projectiles at his heels. He knew they could turn faster than he could run, but he just had to make it through the doorway ahead, and he'd be home free!
As his foot lifted off the ground, Alen felt a tug at his pant leg but refused to think about it. He slammed his other foot down, propelling him forward again. The sheer volume of gunfire chasing his every step felt like a pack of wolves chasing him through a forest, and all he could do was keep running...but when he slammed his other foot down again, everything went to hell. Pain shot up through his leg. It wasn't the kind of pain that can be described as burning or stabbing. It was the kind of pain that exists only as an abstract concept for most until it is experienced, the kind that sends a shock through your body and stops all conscious functioning.
Alen fell, but he didn't care. His mind was blank except in a pure reactionary way as he curled up around the leg that screamed in agony. He was only dimly aware of Erik's roar as the alien rounded the corner and threw his first two axes. There were screams and more gunfire, but Alen didn't care. He just wanted the pain in his leg to stop, but when he reached down to see what was wrong, his hand encountered only the bloody mess that had once been his foot. Alen's screem joined the rest.
Eventually, Alen became aware he wasn't alone anymore. He was being carried, and the pain was still excruciating, but somehow, it felt more distant. He felt cold, and the world was spinning around him. A part of him wanted to go to sleep, but then something slapped him in the face. "Nuh-uh, kid! No closing your eyes yet! Here. This ought to help!"
Alen felt something jabbed into his side. It hurt, but the pain was so much less than what he was going through it barely registered. Meanwhile, he was being manhandled as someone gripped his foot tightly, sending fresh waves of agony through him. It seemed like they were wrapping something around or above it. Alen tried to fend them off, but his hands were batted aside like a child's. After a moment, the voice returned. "There we go. That ought to stop the bleeding. Hey, that pack got any blood in it? I'm pretty sure he lost more than he ought to..."
Another voice that Alen recognised as Vanessa's answered: "There is a stable chemical similar to human plasma. It's insufficient as a total blood replacement, but it should help stabilize low levels due to traumatic blood loss. Allow me to administer it, as this requires a more delicate approach than I believe you are capable of, my lady."
As the pain started to fade, Alen recognized Erik pulling back from his position. However, the alien was strangely hunched over, as if he'd grown to gigantic proportions and was now too large for the room.
Suddenly, Alen remembered they were in the middle of a firefight. He started to sit up while shouting, "The pirates!" but was restrained by a surprisingly strong carapaced arm.
Erik laughed. It was strangely comforting to hear him back to his usual jovial self as Vanessa continued to treat him. "No worries there, lad! The captain must have done whatever he was gonna do because just as things were looking bad, all the pirates' suits all went dead, as did my axes and Vanessa's gun. However, with a little extra muscle, the axes still did their job just fine!"
Vanessa calrified as she stuck a needle into Alen's arm. "It was a powerful electromagnetic wave. Thankfully, the escape pods seem to have been shielded from the effects. Probably a necessity if you have such a system on board your vessel."
They were on board one of the pods, which explained a few things, including why Erik seemed so large in the relatively small confines of the room they were now in. Alen looked down at his foot. It was wrapped in bandages and looked like a bloody mess. "So then...this was all a waste? I could have just waited a few more moments, and we would have been fine?"
Seeing where Alen's gaze was resting, Erik's smile faded just a bit as the larger man answered. "Maybe. Or maybe we would have been overwhelmed and killed seconds away from salvation. We'll never know. What we do know is that when things were looking bad, you stepped up and did something brave, kid. That's not something Vanessa or I will be forgetting any time soon!"
That spin made Alen smile just a bit, even through the remaining pain. "Well, I just didn't want to die not having tried something."
Erik's smile widened again. "You'd be surprised how rare that is when things get real, kid! You did good back there! Take a little pride in that! You earned it!"
Just then, Vanessa jabbed Alen with something else. Shortly after, the world started getting hazy as she offered her two cents. "What he's earned is a rest. We'll deal with the rest when he wakes up."
Alen wanted to offer a counterpoint but found his mind slipping as the world got hazy while the rest of the pain seemed to fade into oblivion. Not long after, he found the effort of keeping his eyes open too much to deal with, and he quietly slipped into unconsciousness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gonna take tomorrow off as I have a vet appointment in the middle of the day, but I'll add a chapter on Friday to make up for it!
My Wiki has all my chapters and stories, including the short series and stories that I write for an occasional change of pace or style!
As a reminder, "Of Men and Dragons" Books 1 and 2 are available to purchase in e-book or physical form. (Both softcover and hardcovers are available!) Book 3 is almost done being edited, so I'll just have to get the cover art and formatting done, and it will be available to purchase as well! Hopefully, in no more than a month or two! (Barring more Amazon drama like last time...finger's crossed!)
OMAD Book 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NCPP3PP
OMAD Book 2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQ7FQ1ZJ
41 comments
submitted by DrBlackJack21 to HFY [link] [comments]
Concept art for Sybil
Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 13
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As he lay down, Carter wondered just how long it had been since he last slept, not counting however long he'd been knocked out for the surgical implementation of his new augments. Between the pirates, the surgery, and "getting to know" his new...huh... Were they his subordinates, his bosses, or just the ship? He shook his head. It didn't matter. He'd gotten to know them a little better, and they didn't feel quite so psychotic anymore. They were still plenty psychotic! But at least he could relate a little.
He thought back to the girl, the original one. How long had she been alone out in space, with nothing but the void, stars, and an emotionless, unthinking ship that only followed orders and offered nothing in return for company? It's a wonder she didn't just up and kill herself! Then again, maybe some people would feel the same about his situation...
Not that he had any intention of taking that easy way out any time soon! Carter had fought too hard and too long to just give up now! He'd find a way to turn this all to his advantage somehow! Though how exactly he'd do that with those three breathing down his neck remained to be seen.
Then, a thought occurred to him. Carter into the darkness. Hey, Sybil, are you there?"
Even before he turned to look her way as she answered, the glowing light in his room told Carter she was. "Yes, Captain?"
Carter laughed. "You don't know how long I've dreamed of someone calling me 'captain.' Now I've done it, and somehow...it feels empty."
The girl looked confused. "Oh? Why does it feel empty?"
Carter looked up at the ceiling, now illuminated by the girl's presence. "I don't know. Maybe it's because of how many 'captains' have already run this ship and how few of them seemed to have meant anything to you. Maybe it's because I just stumbled into the position rather than earning it by viture of my wit and skill. Or maybe it's because everything I do seems to lead me one step forward and two steps back..."
The girl pushed her glasses up, a motion Carter remembered the original girl doing in the memories he'd been shown earlier before answering. "Well, I suppose you'll have to earn the position. After all, it's not like any of our captains came into the role after being carefully selected from a pool of capable candidates. Although, you are mistaken in one aspect."
Carter looked over at the girl with a raised eyebrow. "Oh yeah, what's that?"
The girl looked off into the distance and smiled. "I remember all of my captains. Even the ones who didn't do a good job or were around for very long, and I learned something from all of them. You've already earned a place in my memories. Long after the rest of the galaxy has forgotten almost every human who lives today, your name and accomplishments will live on through me." She paused and smirked a little. "Although, how big the chapter of your tenure as captain will be largely depends on you."
Carter chuckled. "Fair enough, I suppose."
The girl tilted her head. "Was that all you wanted? To vent to me about your worries?"
Carter barked out a laugh of his own. "It sounds a little sad when you say it like that! But no, that just occurred to me when you called me captain. I called for you because I realized I forgot to tell you just what my first order as captain was going to be."
The girl smiled. "Yes, I suppose you did negotiate for the right to issue the first command. So tell me, what would you like to do, oh captain, my captain?"
Carter considered throwing his pillow through the image of the girl but knew it would cause no more harm than some slight digitization. Then he'd have to go get the pillow himself, taking any sting out of the point he wanted to make. Instead, he just grinned and answered, "Simple. I want to get my old ship back!"
-
They were almost to the escape pods when they were sandwiched between two groups of pirates. As Vanessa fired down one corridor to keep the first group at bay, Erik looked around the corner to try to get a count of the second.
The alien ducked back just as a hail of gunfire erupted around the corner. Despite the near miss, Erik grinned. "Well, the group ahead looks smaller but better armed! I don't think blindly charging at them will work this time!"
Vanessa spared her friend a glance as she reloaded the rifle. "Showing restraint in the face of danger, my lady? I suppose there's a first time for everything."
Erik laughed. "Danger is one thing, but I'm not exactly suicidal! What I need is a distraction of some kind!"
As Vanessa poured more gunfire back the way they'd come, keeping the pirates from doing more than blindly firing around the corner while Alen kept his head down, she offered a slightly unladylike grunt. "I would love to be of assistance, but I'm afraid I'm busy keeping the second group at bay."
Realizing this could very well be the end, Alen decided it was on him to do something for once. He could see a room with an open door across the hall. There was almost no chance he could make it without getting shot, however... "I'll do it!"
Erik looked at Alen and laughed. "No offense, kid, but I don't think you can take out the pirates any better than I can!"
Alen shook his head. "No, but I can give you a distraction. It won't be much, a second or two at most, but I can make them aim their guns at the opposite side of the hallway. Would that be enough?"
Erik's grin grew wider, and Alen could swear his eyes dilated just a little. "You buy me a full second of distraction, and I'll make it work, kid! Whenever you're ready!"
With a sigh, Alen shook his head to clear his thoughts, then took a deep breath. "Alright..." Then, without giving himself more time to think about it, Alen stood up and started running.
Alen was used to running. He knew he was in reasonably good shape, doubly so for someone who planned on spending his life aboard a ship as an officer, but he'd never run this fast before and likely never would again. As he passed the corner at a dead sprint, time seemed to slow to a crawl. Each step felt like he was pushing his legs past the breaking point as he willed himself to rocket forward faster with each step. He ignored the blurs at the corner of his vision, even as they opened fire, tracing his movements with their gun barrels as they roared to life, spewing deadly projectiles at his heels. He knew they could turn faster than he could run, but he just had to make it through the doorway ahead, and he'd be home free!
As his foot lifted off the ground, Alen felt a tug at his pant leg but refused to think about it. He slammed his other foot down, propelling him forward again. The sheer volume of gunfire chasing his every step felt like a pack of wolves chasing him through a forest, and all he could do was keep running...but when he slammed his other foot down again, everything went to hell. Pain shot up through his leg. It wasn't the kind of pain that can be described as burning or stabbing. It was the kind of pain that exists only as an abstract concept for most until it is experienced, the kind that sends a shock through your body and stops all conscious functioning.
Alen fell, but he didn't care. His mind was blank except in a pure reactionary way as he curled up around the leg that screamed in agony. He was only dimly aware of Erik's roar as the alien rounded the corner and threw his first two axes. There were screams and more gunfire, but Alen didn't care. He just wanted the pain in his leg to stop, but when he reached down to see what was wrong, his hand encountered only the bloody mess that had once been his foot. Alen's screem joined the rest.
Eventually, Alen became aware he wasn't alone anymore. He was being carried, and the pain was still excruciating, but somehow, it felt more distant. He felt cold, and the world was spinning around him. A part of him wanted to go to sleep, but then something slapped him in the face. "Nuh-uh, kid! No closing your eyes yet! Here. This ought to help!"
Alen felt something jabbed into his side. It hurt, but the pain was so much less than what he was going through it barely registered. Meanwhile, he was being manhandled as someone gripped his foot tightly, sending fresh waves of agony through him. It seemed like they were wrapping something around or above it. Alen tried to fend them off, but his hands were batted aside like a child's. After a moment, the voice returned. "There we go. That ought to stop the bleeding. Hey, that pack got any blood in it? I'm pretty sure he lost more than he ought to..."
Another voice that Alen recognised as Vanessa's answered: "There is a stable chemical similar to human plasma. It's insufficient as a total blood replacement, but it should help stabilize low levels due to traumatic blood loss. Allow me to administer it, as this requires a more delicate approach than I believe you are capable of, my lady."
As the pain started to fade, Alen recognized Erik pulling back from his position. However, the alien was strangely hunched over, as if he'd grown to gigantic proportions and was now too large for the room.
Suddenly, Alen remembered they were in the middle of a firefight. He started to sit up while shouting, "The pirates!" but was restrained by a surprisingly strong carapaced arm.
Erik laughed. It was strangely comforting to hear him back to his usual jovial self as Vanessa continued to treat him. "No worries there, lad! The captain must have done whatever he was gonna do because just as things were looking bad, all the pirates' suits all went dead, as did my axes and Vanessa's gun. However, with a little extra muscle, the axes still did their job just fine!"
Vanessa calrified as she stuck a needle into Alen's arm. "It was a powerful electromagnetic wave. Thankfully, the escape pods seem to have been shielded from the effects. Probably a necessity if you have such a system on board your vessel."
They were on board one of the pods, which explained a few things, including why Erik seemed so large in the relatively small confines of the room they were now in. Alen looked down at his foot. It was wrapped in bandages and looked like a bloody mess. "So then...this was all a waste? I could have just waited a few more moments, and we would have been fine?"
Seeing where Alen's gaze was resting, Erik's smile faded just a bit as the larger man answered. "Maybe. Or maybe we would have been overwhelmed and killed seconds away from salvation. We'll never know. What we do know is that when things were looking bad, you stepped up and did something brave, kid. That's not something Vanessa or I will be forgetting any time soon!"
That spin made Alen smile just a bit, even through the remaining pain. "Well, I just didn't want to die not having tried something."
Erik's smile widened again. "You'd be surprised how rare that is when things get real, kid! You did good back there! Take a little pride in that! You earned it!"
Just then, Vanessa jabbed Alen with something else. Shortly after, the world started getting hazy as she offered her two cents. "What he's earned is a rest. We'll deal with the rest when he wakes up."
Alen wanted to offer a counterpoint but found his mind slipping as the world got hazy while the rest of the pain seemed to fade into oblivion. Not long after, he found the effort of keeping his eyes open too much to deal with, and he quietly slipped into unconsciousness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gonna take tomorrow off as I have a vet appointment in the middle of the day, but I'll add a chapter on Friday to make up for it!
My Wiki has all my chapters and stories, including the short series and stories that I write for an occasional change of pace or style!
As a reminder, "Of Men and Dragons" Books 1 and 2 are available to purchase in e-book or physical form. (Both softcover and hardcovers are available!) Book 3 is almost done being edited, so I'll just have to get the cover art and formatting done, and it will be available to purchase as well! Hopefully, in no more than a month or two! (Barring more Amazon drama like last time...finger's crossed!)
OMAD Book 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NCPP3PP
OMAD Book 2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQ7FQ1ZJ
41 comments
2024.05.07 18:28 ScrambledEgg12 AMAB questioning if I want to be a girl. But I don't know if I want that permanently.
Eyo all, been struggling with this detail during my questioning as of late.
I'm currently 22 AMAB, and as the title says I'm not really sure what I want tbh. I first had this thought way back during highschool sometime in around when I firsted started "self pleasure". I had discovered gender transformation content at that time and found the idea and artwork highly attractive. I would have the odd thought back then of if I wanted to be a girl. I remember thinking if I was presented with an option to swap my body with that of a cis girls just for the day, I would totally do it. If it was for a slightly longer timeframe but still short (say like couple days or week max) I would of probably still done it. But when I asked myself if I wanted that permanently, I was highly unsure. It wasn't an instant no, but also not an instant yes like the earlier scenario. During this time I wondered if I was potentially trans but brushed it aside due to that uncertainty and also having some thoughts along the lines of, "being trans is for other people. That's not me. What I want is different and lies in the realm of fantasy (shapeshift superpower)".
Well, that was 6-8 years ago and as you can see that thought has still persisted. It was the start of Feb this year when I started questioning again. This time alot more serious (lurking on this sub as well as MtF. Reading a bunch of articles, doing research on various things including HRT etc). But this thought, I havent really been able to find other stories or posts on. Maybe I've just been looking in the wrong places. I could only find stuff like "I wish to be a girl for x reasons" but they never included that second part about the uncertainty of the permanency.
I've tried to think about why I have that uncertainty, and I have a couple theories but nothing conclusive that I've gone "ah yea, that's why I was unsure". Here's some of those theories.
Edit: I should add I'm honestly not entirely sure what I expect out of making this whole post. I think maybe just needed to vent, or just ask from some help maybe? (I've had issues of asking for help in the past. Took me awhile to work up the courage/effort to reach out to that therapist I mentioned above). But again, I'm not really sure tbh.
submitted by ScrambledEgg12 to asktransgender [link] [comments]
I'm currently 22 AMAB, and as the title says I'm not really sure what I want tbh. I first had this thought way back during highschool sometime in around when I firsted started "self pleasure". I had discovered gender transformation content at that time and found the idea and artwork highly attractive. I would have the odd thought back then of if I wanted to be a girl. I remember thinking if I was presented with an option to swap my body with that of a cis girls just for the day, I would totally do it. If it was for a slightly longer timeframe but still short (say like couple days or week max) I would of probably still done it. But when I asked myself if I wanted that permanently, I was highly unsure. It wasn't an instant no, but also not an instant yes like the earlier scenario. During this time I wondered if I was potentially trans but brushed it aside due to that uncertainty and also having some thoughts along the lines of, "being trans is for other people. That's not me. What I want is different and lies in the realm of fantasy (shapeshift superpower)".
Well, that was 6-8 years ago and as you can see that thought has still persisted. It was the start of Feb this year when I started questioning again. This time alot more serious (lurking on this sub as well as MtF. Reading a bunch of articles, doing research on various things including HRT etc). But this thought, I havent really been able to find other stories or posts on. Maybe I've just been looking in the wrong places. I could only find stuff like "I wish to be a girl for x reasons" but they never included that second part about the uncertainty of the permanency.
I've tried to think about why I have that uncertainty, and I have a couple theories but nothing conclusive that I've gone "ah yea, that's why I was unsure". Here's some of those theories.
- Feaanxiety about the whole transition process and coming out to friends/fam. I know that if I hypothetical am trans. I would most likely would be wanting the full package. HRT, voice training, social transition, GRS and potentially BA depending on growth. But that's alot alot to think about. It weights heavily. Also I wouldn't be surprised if there's some internalized transphobia mixed in with all this.
- Maybe it's just a fetish? That's when I first had the thought after all. But I don't really think this is the case anymore after reading the StainedGlassWomen articles (I def used to think this was the explanation for a long time though).
- Tried the thought experiment of what I feel when I imagine myself aging as a woman vs a guy. I found it hard to imagine any long term future at all, regardless of those two options. For as a guy all I really came up with was almost like white noise? Just a blank thing without any definitive expression. As a women fairly similar, maybe just a tad it less? Only like 2% but honest idk. I feel like I didn't gain anything out of the experiment.
- Maybe just enby or genderfluid? But at the same time neither of these really resonant with me. Specifically for GF and presentation I know I have 0 interests in being a fem looking guy. I also don't care for super masculine presentation either tho. Never cared to workout and get big muscles and stuff. Typical "chad bro" kinda stereotype. I was the quiet nerd in school. On the fem side of things I don't really have an attraction to super fem presentation either. I feel like I would have a higher chance of being tomboy or demi girl (if enby). Which about that...
- ATM I def feel like a guy. I've been socialized like one and live/present like one. All my friends are also guys. The exceptions are 2 women that I game with (WoW guild) and a Demiguy who I play D&D with. Besides the 2 WoW friends the only other women I talk to on the reg are my mother, and also coworkers but thats all work related stuff. So I don't relate at all to the "feeling more comfortable in womens spaces and around other girls" that ive seen some transfems say. Also, all my interests/hobbies are also heavily dominated with other guys. So with all that said. When ever I think about all this trans stuff, it starts to feel foreign and weird. I had a consult with a gender therapist (going to be seeing them again in a couple weeks to try and talk about all this) I stumbled hard over my words just trying to give a simple summary of why I was wanting to see them when they asked. Felt super awkward physically vocalizing I've been questioning my gender (don't have that same feeling when I'm a blank face talking to strangers online like with this post for example.
- Super short duration (like mentioned previously, 1 day to a week).
- Or if I could hit the button again at any point after to change back.
Edit: I should add I'm honestly not entirely sure what I expect out of making this whole post. I think maybe just needed to vent, or just ask from some help maybe? (I've had issues of asking for help in the past. Took me awhile to work up the courage/effort to reach out to that therapist I mentioned above). But again, I'm not really sure tbh.
2024.05.07 18:26 ScrambledEgg12 AMAB questioning if I want to be a girl. But I don't know if I want that permanently.
Eyo all, been struggling with this detail during my questioning as of late.
I'm currently 22 AMAB, and as the title says I'm not really sure what I want tbh. I first had this thought way back during highschool sometime in around when I firsted started "self pleasure". I had discovered gender transformation content at that time and found the idea and artwork highly attractive. I would have the odd thought back then of if I wanted to be a girl. I remember thinking if I was presented with an option to swap my body with that of a cis girls just for the day, I would totally do it. If it was for a slightly longer timeframe but still short (say like couple days or week max) I would of probably still done it. But when I asked myself if I wanted that permanently, I was highly unsure. It wasn't an instant no, but also not an instant yes like the earlier scenario. During this time I wondered if I was potentially trans but brushed it aside due to that uncertainty and also having some thoughts along the lines of, "being trans is for other people. That's not me. What I want is different and lies in the realm of fantasy (shapeshift superpower)".
Well, that was 6-8 years ago and as you can see that thought has still persisted. It was the start of Feb this year when I started questioning again. This time alot more serious (lurking on this sub as well as askTransgender. Reading a bunch of articles, doing research on various things including HRT etc). But this thought, I havent really been able to find other stories or posts on. Maybe I've just been looking in the wrong places. I could only find stuff like "I wish to be a girl for x reasons" but they never included that second part about the uncertainty of the permanency.
I've tried to think about why I have that uncertainty, and I have a couple theories but nothing conclusive that I've gone "ah yea, that's why I was unsure". Here's some of those theories.
Edit: I should add I'm honestly not entirely sure what I expect out of making this whole post. I think maybe just needed to vent, or just ask from some help maybe? (I've had issues of asking for help in the past. Took me awhile to work up the courage/effort to reach out to that therapist I mentioned above). But again, I'm not really sure tbh.
submitted by ScrambledEgg12 to MtF [link] [comments]
I'm currently 22 AMAB, and as the title says I'm not really sure what I want tbh. I first had this thought way back during highschool sometime in around when I firsted started "self pleasure". I had discovered gender transformation content at that time and found the idea and artwork highly attractive. I would have the odd thought back then of if I wanted to be a girl. I remember thinking if I was presented with an option to swap my body with that of a cis girls just for the day, I would totally do it. If it was for a slightly longer timeframe but still short (say like couple days or week max) I would of probably still done it. But when I asked myself if I wanted that permanently, I was highly unsure. It wasn't an instant no, but also not an instant yes like the earlier scenario. During this time I wondered if I was potentially trans but brushed it aside due to that uncertainty and also having some thoughts along the lines of, "being trans is for other people. That's not me. What I want is different and lies in the realm of fantasy (shapeshift superpower)".
Well, that was 6-8 years ago and as you can see that thought has still persisted. It was the start of Feb this year when I started questioning again. This time alot more serious (lurking on this sub as well as askTransgender. Reading a bunch of articles, doing research on various things including HRT etc). But this thought, I havent really been able to find other stories or posts on. Maybe I've just been looking in the wrong places. I could only find stuff like "I wish to be a girl for x reasons" but they never included that second part about the uncertainty of the permanency.
I've tried to think about why I have that uncertainty, and I have a couple theories but nothing conclusive that I've gone "ah yea, that's why I was unsure". Here's some of those theories.
- Feaanxiety about the whole transition process and coming out to friends/fam. I know that if I hypothetical am trans. I would most likely would be wanting the full package. HRT, voice training, social transition, GRS and potentially BA depending on growth. But that's alot alot to think about. It weights heavily. Also I wouldn't be surprised if there's some internalized transphobia mixed in with all this.
- Maybe it's just a fetish? That's when I first had the thought after all. But I don't really think this is the case anymore after reading the StainedGlassWomen articles (I def used to think this was the explanation for a long time though).
- Tried the thought experiment of what I feel when I imagine myself aging as a woman vs a guy. I found it hard to imagine any long term future at all, regardless of those two options. For as a guy all I really came up with was almost like white noise? Just a blank thing without any definitive expression. As a women fairly similar, maybe just a tad it less? Only like 2% but honest idk. I feel like I didn't gain anything out of the experiment.
- Maybe just enby or genderfluid? But at the same time neither of these really resonant with me. Specifically for GF and presentation I know I have 0 interests in being a fem looking guy. I also don't care for super masculine presentation either tho. Never cared to workout and get big muscles and stuff. Typical "chad bro" kinda stereotype. I was the quiet nerd in school. On the fem side of things I don't really have an attraction to super fem presentation either. I feel like I would have a higher chance of being tomboy or demi girl (if enby). Which about that...
- ATM I def feel like a guy. I've been socialized like one and live/present like one. All my friends are also guys. The exceptions are 2 women that I game with (WoW guild) and a Demiguy who I play D&D with. Besides the 2 WoW friends the only other women I talk to on the reg are my mother, and also coworkers but thats all work related stuff. So I don't relate at all to the "feeling more comfortable in womens spaces and around other girls" that ive seen some transfems say. Also, all my interests/hobbies are also heavily dominated with other guys. So with all that said. When ever I think about all this trans stuff, it starts to feel foreign and weird. I had a consult with a gender therapist (going to be seeing them again in a couple weeks to try and talk about all this) I stumbled hard over my words just trying to give a simple summary of why I was wanting to see them when they asked. Felt super awkward physically vocalizing I've been questioning my gender (don't have that same feeling when I'm a blank face talking to strangers online like with this post for example.
- Super short duration (like mentioned previously, 1 day to a week).
- Or if I could hit the button again at any point after to change back.
Edit: I should add I'm honestly not entirely sure what I expect out of making this whole post. I think maybe just needed to vent, or just ask from some help maybe? (I've had issues of asking for help in the past. Took me awhile to work up the courage/effort to reach out to that therapist I mentioned above). But again, I'm not really sure tbh.
2024.05.07 17:37 Atlas1664 (HS physics- Parallel circuitry) Question states: use the following diagram to answer each blank below.
 | I feel quite dumbfounded on this one and I am totally brain farted as I’ve done hundreds of these before and just can’t seem to do this specific problem submitted by Atlas1664 to HomeworkHelp [link] [comments] |
2024.05.07 16:35 TNT_613 MyDyscalculia journey...and a touch of humor.
I (36F) have severe Dyscalculia. I struggled with math horribly in Elementary school. I was one of those little girls who would cry and cry and cry at the dinner table when it was time to do math. I would eventually cry myself to sleep. My math was so bad, I had to stay inside during recess to finish (or do) the math homework that was due that morning. I then had to stay after school to attend a special math class. In 4th grade I had classes during the summer for math. My life was all school for just math. When I was approaching 5th grade, my teachers told my parents it would be better if they homeschooled me because they ran out of options for me. They basically gave up (lol). Homeschooling helped in most areas, such as reading and writing, social studies, science, and history (surprisingly), however math was still my nemesis. My parents did their best, given the fact that they could not afford a homeschool curriculum. This was in the mid-90's when homeschool curriculums were not very common or available.
I am self-diagnosed with Dyscalculia, however, I was diagnosed and fully evaluated with severe ADHD when I was six, and again when I was in my late twenties. I still have severe math issues. Math is harder for me than most people around me, even the most basic math problems make me anxious, and sometimes makes me feel sick. I have taken the GED math portion 8 times prior to 2014 and I have never been able to pass it since then because of Dyscalculia. Even with accommodations. I felt like I was at a total loss when it comes to passing the GED. I JUST NEED TO PASS MATH! I had college level scores on all other subjects but math was raspberry BAD. If anyone feels like a failure it's me. I'm 36 and I feel sometimes completely stuck. Any college I wish to attend to I will not be able to graduate until I pass the GED. There are no math classes in my area that I can attend that focuses on adults with learning disabilities. So, I'm always running into a brick wall, and I'm still on the hamster wheel. It's very frustrating.
Until... a couple days ago I discovered a website that helps adults with Dyscalculia. I'll post it below at the end of my TED talk (lol). You won't believe how relieved I am that there's a website specifically for adults with Dyscalculia. It's a God send. More on this later.
When I worked retail and a supervisor would ask me to work on a register, I nearly started crying. Even though 9/10 people pay with credit/debit cards, there's always that ONE person that pays with cash and needs change. I would immediately feel rushed, pressured, and embarrassed. So, the next time a supervisor asked me to work register, I explained my issue, and they let me off the hook (thank God).
When I was in my teens, a few of my friends (and some adults 😠) would ask me a simple math question completely of the blue, in front of other people, and I would just stare at them. "Uhhh..." My mind went completely blank. Then someone esle would pipe up, "it's____!" Never giving me the time of day to try to answer the question. Nothing made me feel more stupid than I already felt. I also had a history with depression, and it was pretty bad back then, so that made me feel even worse. Eventually I got so tired of it I would flat out ignore anyone who randomly asked me a math question.
But now, because I'm wiser, I know how to turn the tables on them. It might seem "mean" to other people, but it brings me a bit of satisfaction of how it feels when it's done to them. I went to massage school a few years ago. Obviously, I had to learn muscle groupings such as the face, neck, upper & lower arms, back, and upper & lower legs, plus their origin, insertion, and action (OIA). My favourite muscle is Sternocleidomastoid (or SCM) (sounds like Stern-o-clide-o-mast-oid when pronounced). YW 😉. It's my favourite because it's fun to say. So, anyone who randomly asks me a math question clearly trying to catch me off guard, I'll ask them this: "Where is Sternocleidomastiod located, and what is its origin, insertion, and action?" And I'll wait. With gleeful anticipation mind you. The look of bewilderment and dumbfoundness on thier faces just gets me every time.
Everyone has SCM because everyone has a neck. Most people have no idea what it is, but I do. For me, it's common knowledge. It's human anatomy. It's easy. But for those who don't know much about human muscles or anatomy, it can feel embarrassing when they don't have an answer to a seemingly simple question on the spot. And I will not give them the answers. I'll let them think and dwell on it all day until they have to look it up themselves. I know, I know, it's so mean. But compared to the humiliation some people attempt to make me feel, it's fair.
I will say this though; It's not in my nature to purposely make someone feel or look stupid, or to get back at anyone for anything, because I know what it's like. I'm a very patient and forgiving woman, for the most part. But if someone wants to go out of their way to ask me a math question when they KNOW I have trouble with math, or even if I just told them I have trouble with math to catch me off guard and make me feel dumb, I'll ask them that question. It's so fun!
Here's the link I mentioned earlier. I hope this will also be of help to you.
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwj-vM7cytqFAxWeR0cBHYioCk8YABAEGgJxdQ&ae=2&gclid=CjwKCAjw26KxBhBDEiwAu6KXtxRPTC0LemPFGqGNJ1UJ8ktu2vEDgfoe0fSckbl0XjbsaTwRwAgALRoCkEoQAvD_BwE&sph&sig=AOD64_2QCCROxTH3MHOswwl1fgQPH5cbXQ&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwjnhMjcytqFAxWfhIkEHSxOALEQ0Qx6BAgIEAM
Now that I have this resource, I feel that it's necessary that I share it with y'all. My Dyscalculia journey has been a very long one. I only just discovered Dyscalculia three years ago. I knew I struggled with math, but I never knew it had a name or a diagnosis. I just thought it was ADHD, and it is, but I never knew it was an actual thing. For many, many years I felt completely doomed for the rest of my life. Stuck in the same type of job. Stuck with no help, or the kind of help I need. Stuck fighting on my own. Sometimes, I still feel stuck, but that's just depression or fear whispering in my ear.
Why am I saying all this? Because...I feel the need to express myself on a platform that understands me as much as I understand others going through the same unique thing. My life has never been easy. Living with severe ADHD, Dyscalculia, depression, anxiety, dread, etc, has sometimes made me feel paralysed. But...I never gave up, even when I wanted to. Especially when I wanted to. But I know that God has a purpose for me through all my trials and struggles. Even if it's sharing all this with total strangers. I'm not very brave when I talk about my struggles to strangers, but I believe we are all here because each of us wants to know that we are not alone in this. And we're not. I'm not. You're not.
Whatever you do, don't lose faith, and don't give up. There is always hope. Answers and rescourses will come your way as long as you keep searching. Don't feel like a failure. You're not. Living with Dyscalculia is difficult, but it's always possible to live out your dreams and goals despite it. Keep going.
submitted by TNT_613 to dyscalculia [link] [comments]
I am self-diagnosed with Dyscalculia, however, I was diagnosed and fully evaluated with severe ADHD when I was six, and again when I was in my late twenties. I still have severe math issues. Math is harder for me than most people around me, even the most basic math problems make me anxious, and sometimes makes me feel sick. I have taken the GED math portion 8 times prior to 2014 and I have never been able to pass it since then because of Dyscalculia. Even with accommodations. I felt like I was at a total loss when it comes to passing the GED. I JUST NEED TO PASS MATH! I had college level scores on all other subjects but math was raspberry BAD. If anyone feels like a failure it's me. I'm 36 and I feel sometimes completely stuck. Any college I wish to attend to I will not be able to graduate until I pass the GED. There are no math classes in my area that I can attend that focuses on adults with learning disabilities. So, I'm always running into a brick wall, and I'm still on the hamster wheel. It's very frustrating.
Until... a couple days ago I discovered a website that helps adults with Dyscalculia. I'll post it below at the end of my TED talk (lol). You won't believe how relieved I am that there's a website specifically for adults with Dyscalculia. It's a God send. More on this later.
When I worked retail and a supervisor would ask me to work on a register, I nearly started crying. Even though 9/10 people pay with credit/debit cards, there's always that ONE person that pays with cash and needs change. I would immediately feel rushed, pressured, and embarrassed. So, the next time a supervisor asked me to work register, I explained my issue, and they let me off the hook (thank God).
When I was in my teens, a few of my friends (and some adults 😠) would ask me a simple math question completely of the blue, in front of other people, and I would just stare at them. "Uhhh..." My mind went completely blank. Then someone esle would pipe up, "it's____!" Never giving me the time of day to try to answer the question. Nothing made me feel more stupid than I already felt. I also had a history with depression, and it was pretty bad back then, so that made me feel even worse. Eventually I got so tired of it I would flat out ignore anyone who randomly asked me a math question.
But now, because I'm wiser, I know how to turn the tables on them. It might seem "mean" to other people, but it brings me a bit of satisfaction of how it feels when it's done to them. I went to massage school a few years ago. Obviously, I had to learn muscle groupings such as the face, neck, upper & lower arms, back, and upper & lower legs, plus their origin, insertion, and action (OIA). My favourite muscle is Sternocleidomastoid (or SCM) (sounds like Stern-o-clide-o-mast-oid when pronounced). YW 😉. It's my favourite because it's fun to say. So, anyone who randomly asks me a math question clearly trying to catch me off guard, I'll ask them this: "Where is Sternocleidomastiod located, and what is its origin, insertion, and action?" And I'll wait. With gleeful anticipation mind you. The look of bewilderment and dumbfoundness on thier faces just gets me every time.
Everyone has SCM because everyone has a neck. Most people have no idea what it is, but I do. For me, it's common knowledge. It's human anatomy. It's easy. But for those who don't know much about human muscles or anatomy, it can feel embarrassing when they don't have an answer to a seemingly simple question on the spot. And I will not give them the answers. I'll let them think and dwell on it all day until they have to look it up themselves. I know, I know, it's so mean. But compared to the humiliation some people attempt to make me feel, it's fair.
I will say this though; It's not in my nature to purposely make someone feel or look stupid, or to get back at anyone for anything, because I know what it's like. I'm a very patient and forgiving woman, for the most part. But if someone wants to go out of their way to ask me a math question when they KNOW I have trouble with math, or even if I just told them I have trouble with math to catch me off guard and make me feel dumb, I'll ask them that question. It's so fun!
Here's the link I mentioned earlier. I hope this will also be of help to you.
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwj-vM7cytqFAxWeR0cBHYioCk8YABAEGgJxdQ&ae=2&gclid=CjwKCAjw26KxBhBDEiwAu6KXtxRPTC0LemPFGqGNJ1UJ8ktu2vEDgfoe0fSckbl0XjbsaTwRwAgALRoCkEoQAvD_BwE&sph&sig=AOD64_2QCCROxTH3MHOswwl1fgQPH5cbXQ&q&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwjnhMjcytqFAxWfhIkEHSxOALEQ0Qx6BAgIEAM
Now that I have this resource, I feel that it's necessary that I share it with y'all. My Dyscalculia journey has been a very long one. I only just discovered Dyscalculia three years ago. I knew I struggled with math, but I never knew it had a name or a diagnosis. I just thought it was ADHD, and it is, but I never knew it was an actual thing. For many, many years I felt completely doomed for the rest of my life. Stuck in the same type of job. Stuck with no help, or the kind of help I need. Stuck fighting on my own. Sometimes, I still feel stuck, but that's just depression or fear whispering in my ear.
Why am I saying all this? Because...I feel the need to express myself on a platform that understands me as much as I understand others going through the same unique thing. My life has never been easy. Living with severe ADHD, Dyscalculia, depression, anxiety, dread, etc, has sometimes made me feel paralysed. But...I never gave up, even when I wanted to. Especially when I wanted to. But I know that God has a purpose for me through all my trials and struggles. Even if it's sharing all this with total strangers. I'm not very brave when I talk about my struggles to strangers, but I believe we are all here because each of us wants to know that we are not alone in this. And we're not. I'm not. You're not.
Whatever you do, don't lose faith, and don't give up. There is always hope. Answers and rescourses will come your way as long as you keep searching. Don't feel like a failure. You're not. Living with Dyscalculia is difficult, but it's always possible to live out your dreams and goals despite it. Keep going.
2024.05.07 14:26 Tourist-Sharp One dangerous step pt1/?
Mini serial up in my head for a while. Writing after 10 years pause, please go easy on me. No hfy yet, just setting things up.
........................
Looking up towards the orbital ring, through dirty plexiglass roofing, James wipes his forehead and furrowed his eyebrows. The ring, known to the local as Halo Station due to the yellow sun glinting off of it when the angle is right, was an ugly strip of brutalist sunshade in James's opinion. It had been hastily constructed over the course of five years with government of private fundings, with the local bureaucrats and politicians the most well off from the scheme. The locals, third generation from the initial colonisers, had been opposed to government postings from the hub worlds but was strong armed by the mining and agriculture conglomerate to accept it. There were of course altercation between the locals and the conglomerate but anything larger than a demonstration were heavily suppressed with threats of cutting off vital terraforming supplies. The uneasy tension lasted until the ring orbital proposal was announced, with the locals divided in two camps. One was in favour, their thinking was that the station would bring attention of the wider human communities to their plights. The opposing view is that it would only bring more corporate interest to their system, with the oppressions and wealth discrimination that their forefathers escaped from to this new world in the first place.
James was of neither the opinions. He was planning on hitchhiking across the frontier worlds, edges of the explored galaxy, relying on his knowledge and skill of hydroponics to earn his living. He empathise with the locals, as he was ine himself, but knew that corporate greeds is as inescapable as taxes and death. The only thing keeping him from despairing the future was the tiny sum his family saved up. He wasrecently orphaned, but his parents were rather well off when they were alive, working on the water treatment plants of the terraforming complex, before an influx of dissolved salts from a hydrothermal vents eruption caused a chlorine gas build up, leading to an explosion when they were doing maintenance on the gas extraction chamber. James was thankful that at least his parents passed away painlessly, but the funeral arrangements had cut into the family funds. It was due to this that he was still stuck on the half terraformed planet.
"Penny for your thought?" asked a hoarse gravelly voice. One would be forgiven for thinking the owner of the voice a male. A frail looking woman with grey hair peered up at James from behind a trellis supporting vines of red pod peas. "Counting down the days the merchant trader will pick me off this pile of dirt," James replied, "Not that I don't see why you would want to stay here." "Can't get the theiving bastards to give me my insurance money otherwise." The woman scowled. " Speaking about that, how's the surgery going? Inhaling that much chlorine would put anyone out of action, not that I'm not thankful for pulling my parents out of there. The company would've let them dissolved if they had their way." James asked the woman. "Well, the off world volunteer doctors bumped me up cue and if lady luck don't interfere, I'll be fully recovered by the end of the local year." she replied with a chuckle then a cough. The planet they are on has a 22 hours day but 976 days per year. This has made the locals used phrase 'end of the year' as a joke for deliberately slow bureaucracy, especially when the government is the one paying. Elisabeth was working with his parents when the accident occured, a toilet break saving her from the experience. She was trained as a first reponder and had taken it up on herself to at least recover the remains of her colleague and friend. Either due to cost cutting or by sheer incompetence, the recently cleared hazmat suit she took from the emergency storage had a leaking hose and she had barely survived. James was grateful for her action and offered her a job in his mostly automated hydroponic farm as she waits for the company to pay her insurance as she can no longer do heavy manual labour. James was going to transfer all his business to her as thanks when he got off planet but had told her yet. "I hope you recover fully," James smiled at the not bad news, "I'm going to give you this farm and the house after I leave. You've been a good friend to the family and I'd to see you suffer because of a good deed." Elisabeth looked thoughtful for a moment then nodded, realising that James was resolved. "I have no need for more money than what I need to survive, I'll send any profits left from the farm to you. You'll need it if you're going to gallavanting around the galaxy." Elisabeth said with a firm tone, or slightly deeper and hoarser to James's ear. "It'll also be somewhere to return to if the galaxy doesn't agree with you. A journey isn't complete if you haven't return and all that." she added. James was expecting this and knows that she won't change her mind. "I'll drop by with souvenirs whenever I come near this part." James said. The rest of the day went by as usual. As James finished checking the monitoring terminal in preparation for the night, a message popped up on his iris implant. He checked the message as he exited the decontamination airlock:
Dear James,
I hope this finds you well. I hate to impose on paying customers but a good friend of mine needs somewhere hole up for a few days on your planet. He has his own ship and offered to take you anywhere you wish after he finished offloading his cargo to the orbital. I have given him your contacts and attached his along with his headscan. I am terribly sorry for taking liberties but I hope you find this a good deal.
Sincerely,
Cpt. Frank Rowe
James was surprised but didn't mind it that much as he had empty rooms and he'll save some money. He quickly went into his sonic shower booth and tapped off a reply to the captain and his guest. He was preparing to cook some of the ripe tomatoes and eggplants he harvested today when Elisabeth came out of her room. He had asked her to moved into his guest bedroom when she started working on his farm and they had been having meals together since. It helped the make the house more lively and Elisabeth liked his cooking. "I don't know if it's the fresh produce or your cooking that make something mundane taste this god." Elisabeth said in between bites, "Either way, I'll miss this when you go. I'll have to remember to scan this into the automeal." "It'll be close but the Dad's recipe needs more dressing oil and salt than the standard automeal will allow. It won't be too unhealthy if you work and sweat enough for two people." James grinned, "My parents always debated this over dinner." "That reminds me about the workload. I will have to automate the fish feeder, my lungs are about done by the time I finished checking the fruit bins," Elisabeth said. "I'll dial in the settings tomorrow, you'll only need to top up pellets." replied James.
That night James got a reply from the guest confirming he will take up the offer. The guest will arrive in two days and James planned to offer his own room. He had not touched his parents bedroom since the accident and he is going to tidy up the room as a farewell. He did not look forward to spending a night in the room but he knows he will regret not doing something to mark off the end of his stay in this house.
On the day of the arrival, James woke up and looked at himself in the mirror. His curly brown hair that he got from his mother was growing out past his liking, along with the light stubble he put off shaving due to being busy setting up the farm for a one person operation. His grey eyes was sparkling and lively, despite waking up an hour before his usual time. He was excited since he will be departing tomorrow and had finished packing last night. After confirming with Elisabeth that everything is working fine in the farm, he left her to get used to the new routine to prepare lunch. A flying taxi touched down as he fished out a large pizza from the oven. He wiped his hands and went to greet his ticket off the planet. A short stocky man climbed down, his skin, where visible was deeply tan, highly unusual for a ship captain travelling long journey through deep space. His dark hair fluttered in the wind and brown piercing eyes take in the rural sight. His glance fell on James and smiled a toothy grin. "You must be the owner of this lovely estate!" he bellowed out with a thick accent James can't place. James walked up to him, offered his hand, and they shook. "James Howard, looking forward to getting on your ship." James replied, a bit put off by the excitement from the man. "Miguel, Miguel Emille. Captain of the Flying Snail. I am very thankful for your hospitality at such short notice. The corpo here kicks the captain off their ship! Imagine that!" James looked around for security drones, a bit fearful of being reported for sedition. The captain looked at him, confused, then in understanding, "Ah, one of those world? Say no more. I won't put my passenger in danger." "Is it not the same where you are from? That's why I'm trying to get off the planet." James asked. "No, I grew up and works mainly for the frontier colony. This one is a special favour for the captain that you contacted for a lift. Contract for some heavy metal isotopes from one of the asteroid mining station for one of your 'esteemed' governer." Miguel winked.
The rest of the day passed by uneventfully, with Miguel switching between telling news of the outer colonies and checking his ship's security cameras. The next morning, James and Elisabeth had a tearful farewell before heading off towards one of the pillar supporting the orbital that doubled as cargo elevator. As they rise, James takes a look at the purple and green landscape falling below. He could see the curvature of the planet right as they enter the orbital. He took a picture of his homeworld, intending to put into his journal to mark the start of his journey. The maglev took them towards the internal docking area, James looking out then windows at the opulence of the wealthy living in the station. As they walk towards the flying snail, they were jossled around wnd forced to stop a few times by the workers and machineries bustling around the dock. James took in the sight of the Flying Snail as they approached, staring at the size and unusual roundedness of the ship, in contrast to the blocky and angular ships standard for most space vehicles. "Custom made on Mariana IX station, designed by my grandfather. A great advertisement for my business and comfortable quarters too. And not as slow as the name suggests" Miguel said as he looked at not a few workers staring at his ship. The advertisement mentioned was stencilled in bright red cursive letters on bare metal, in contrast to the ship's black blocky registration number. As they made their way to airlock, passing the the ship's closing cargo door, an inspector passed Miguel a datapad to sign off. "Cargo confirmed received, payments are being processed by customs due to the new tax coming into effect yesterday. You shouldn't lose much with the currency exchange," the inspector said after looking the form over, " you are clear to depart when traffic control indicates." The inspector turn to another ship busy loading cargo, not waiting for a reply. Miguel lead James through the airlock to his room, a larger than standard room furnished with wooden furniture and upholstered, unheard of in a spaceship from the hub worlds. "Get yourself comfortable then join me on the bridge. The ship AI will help you with the layout. No need to address me as captain since it'll only be the two of us until your destination. I'll be going around looking for government approved bugs. Corporate overlords never can get the idea of privacy." Miguel said before leaving James to unpack. James look around the room, trying to wrap his head around the decor. It was as if someone stole a museum exhibit then use it to furnish a spaceship. He unpacked his luggage, looking around for a storage locker, before putting his meager clothings into a dark wood wardrobe. He then set off to put his toiletries in the attached bathroom before being shocked at the size and items he saw. A large oval mirror hangs on the wall above porcelain basin, with an archaic brass and glass shower cubicle with valves and pipes off to the side. He consdered the logistics of internal plumbing and water storage on the ship for a moment before shaking his head, "Might as well enjoy the luxuries. If this isn't a great start, I don't know what is."
After he finished, James head out of his room then froze as he peered into the corridor. The sterile white panelling had turned into stained wood, the harsh lighting into warm yellow glow from what looks like wall mounted lamps. He turned to look back at his room to see the standard white panelling was still there. He decided to ask the AI for directions to the Captain, "Ship? Where's the bridge?" "Please find the ship map in the mailbox behind the door," a synthetic female voice chimed out. He looked at the automatic sliding door and noticed it had changed to a wooden hinged door with a basket below a metal slot. He grabbed a rolled up brown paper bundle from the basket, unrolling it to seems to be hand drawn diagram of the ship. Other details such as crew members list and meal times are neatly list in one corner. He closed the door before following the map. He was not surprised to find his name engraved below the room number on the brass plaque on the door.
James was apprehensive about finding anything on the ship but there were signs jutting out from the wall at each intersection, surrounded by decorative metalwork in forms of flowers, pointing to major locations. The flooring hard changed from patterned wood to being carpeted the closer he is to the bridge. He finally arrived at a double door, with a plaque indicating that it was indeed the bridge, and he wondered if he should knock. He decided not to, and swung open, to hear a bell ring as the door opens. "James! Come strap yourself in. How do you like my ship?" Miguel was seated on what looks like a couch in the centre of the room, looking at a large screen. The screen shows the outside of the ship, which was the landing bay blast door, still shut. "It's nice but too much like a museum piece to be flying around," James responded, "Isn't it against regulation and too hazardous if the grav generator fails?" "That's why I set the nanites to change to standard whenever I dock. Changed back to what my grandpa designed when we're clear for take off," Miguel answered, " also cleared out to bare walls with carpeting whenever there's an emergency. Only ever happens once in all my years of flying." James had heard of nanites but wasn't aware that it could be used on ships. "The ship was supposed to be a private cruiser for a hubworlder, but he backed out of deal so the swimming pool and hydrotherapy areas was converted into the cargo hold," Miguel added.
James strapped himself in a plush fabric covered armchair near the screen. As he figured out the buckle, the comm beeped then a voice called out, " landing bay E42 cleared. All ships ensure airlock and cargo door are closed before depressurisation in 15 minutes." "Hal, check the doors and prepare for take off," Miguel said. "Sorry captain, I cannot do that." "Stops scaring the passengers. Maybe it's time you watch some modern movies." A huff sounded before the AI replied, "Aye aye, Captain." "She always does that, scaring the living daylight out of my last crew when she pretended to lock the airlock during EVA," Miguel sighed, " i don't know what my Pa was doing, feeding her all that old robot uprising movies." "I thought she was just a basic navigation AI when I asked her for directions." "Yeah, she does that to make people let their guards down before springing the 'Exterminate!' stuff on them. That's why my last crews all signed off." "Isn't that bad on you?" James asked, "also your reputation won't be good." " It's fine, I mainly take on crews for company. Most contracts I got are from fellow captains needing to take orders from regulars but are to far out to accept. She got the latest repair drones and all nanites tech to take care of all damages, excluding only jump core explosions," Miguel smiled.
They waited in the bridge, chatting about life in space and homicidal AI, with Hal, James learned shortened from Haley and pronunciation changed courtesy of the AI herself, chiming in when the checks are done. "Landing bay E42 depressurised in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Landing bay depressurised. All ships clear to take off in E42 once landing bay door fully opened. Green light will light up when ready for manually piloted crafts. Halo orbital thanks you for your business." The traffic controller speaks through the comm, indicating he is a native. Off-worlder would usually call the station 'The Regina's Ring' after the planet. Once the door slides open fully, ships start to go out in rows. When it was the Flying Snail's turn to take off, a hologram of Hal appeared besides the captain's couch and the ship starts to move out slowly in formation, coordinating with the other ships. Once the Flying Snail cleared the door, Hal spoke, "Captain, there's any energy spike reading in the aft sensor. No details on origin available due to station's plating. Seems to be mostly neutrons" "Perhaps someone forgot to shut their cargo door. Probably transporting tritium or helium three. Put up shield just to be safe."
The captain's decision turns out to be just in time as a heavy blast blew the ships out of the orbital. Alarms started wailing and James was pushed back into his seat. "Damage report!" Miguel shouted over the alarms and a diagram of the ship's system popped up on screen. "No structural damage, low EMP, main computer rebooting, shields down to 60 percent," Hal replied mechanically, "Reboot complete. Putting rear view on screen." The screen shows a large explosion on the inner ring side, dropping debris onto the planet below. The alarms turned off as Hal reports, "Ring appears to be holding. Debris calculated to fall on low population area and ocean. Minimal damage to civilians and properties." " There's that at least. Are we expected to help?" Miguel asked. "Negative, the station order civilian vessels to clear the area. No detention order." "Good, get us to the jump point. James, you got a destination?" Miguel turns to look at James. James was still trying to recover from being slammed into his seat, saved from concussions by the seat's padding. "I need to check on Elisabeth," James said as he reached for his wristcom. He then saw an incoming video call from Elisabeth. He sighed in relief as he picked up the call. "I'm glad you're alright. Exciting starts to your trip, eh?" Elisabeth said after seeing James. "Good to see you unharmed too. Did the emergency broadcast says anything?" James asked. "They were saying no damage to those living below. The corporate news network was saying it was the work of the anti-hub government groups." Elisabeth said with a grimace, "trying to weasel out of responsibility if you ask me. I need to check the farm systems in case anything went down. Safe trip out there, I don't want to cry for the second time today," Elisabeth was starting to tear up as James tried to reply before the call cut off. "All's well that ends well," Miguel said as James gathered himself, "good to see her safe. So, destination?" James thought for a moment then replied, "I've never been anywhere further than the Halo. I was thinking of getting off at the last stops but I'm the only passenger here so I think I'll get off wherever your next business ends." " Fine by me. I'm going back three system on my route here, pick up some cargo and or crews, then out to the frontiers," miguel said to James then turn to Hal, " You remembered the station with extra medical supplies looking for buyers? Set destination there." " Aye captain. Arriving at jump point. Jumping in 5 seconds," Hal said before starting the count down. The jump drive, the second most popular after warp, generates a wormhole from Lagrange points. The energy requirements is higher than warp but the near instantaneous travel time is highly value by merchants and diplomats alike.
The jump starts without a hitch and they exited into a red dwarf system. As they make they way towards a spherical station above a green gas giants, they were hailed on all frequencies as the screen starts to shows an armada of black pyramids blockading ships trying to enter and leave the station. The screen suddenly flickers then shows a black upside down triangle with glowing blueish white lights runni ng on its surface. The speakers blared out a high pitch voice, " Bags of mostly water our flattest desire exchange thinking patterns. Flattest yours here deliver. Airwaves produce expect agreement." This broadcast then repeats itself. "Ain't this the strangest day of my life," Hal said loudly. "Exciting first day for our passenger here for sure," Miguel added. James just stared blankly at the screens.
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Looking up towards the orbital ring, through dirty plexiglass roofing, James wipes his forehead and furrowed his eyebrows. The ring, known to the local as Halo Station due to the yellow sun glinting off of it when the angle is right, was an ugly strip of brutalist sunshade in James's opinion. It had been hastily constructed over the course of five years with government of private fundings, with the local bureaucrats and politicians the most well off from the scheme. The locals, third generation from the initial colonisers, had been opposed to government postings from the hub worlds but was strong armed by the mining and agriculture conglomerate to accept it. There were of course altercation between the locals and the conglomerate but anything larger than a demonstration were heavily suppressed with threats of cutting off vital terraforming supplies. The uneasy tension lasted until the ring orbital proposal was announced, with the locals divided in two camps. One was in favour, their thinking was that the station would bring attention of the wider human communities to their plights. The opposing view is that it would only bring more corporate interest to their system, with the oppressions and wealth discrimination that their forefathers escaped from to this new world in the first place.
James was of neither the opinions. He was planning on hitchhiking across the frontier worlds, edges of the explored galaxy, relying on his knowledge and skill of hydroponics to earn his living. He empathise with the locals, as he was ine himself, but knew that corporate greeds is as inescapable as taxes and death. The only thing keeping him from despairing the future was the tiny sum his family saved up. He wasrecently orphaned, but his parents were rather well off when they were alive, working on the water treatment plants of the terraforming complex, before an influx of dissolved salts from a hydrothermal vents eruption caused a chlorine gas build up, leading to an explosion when they were doing maintenance on the gas extraction chamber. James was thankful that at least his parents passed away painlessly, but the funeral arrangements had cut into the family funds. It was due to this that he was still stuck on the half terraformed planet.
"Penny for your thought?" asked a hoarse gravelly voice. One would be forgiven for thinking the owner of the voice a male. A frail looking woman with grey hair peered up at James from behind a trellis supporting vines of red pod peas. "Counting down the days the merchant trader will pick me off this pile of dirt," James replied, "Not that I don't see why you would want to stay here." "Can't get the theiving bastards to give me my insurance money otherwise." The woman scowled. " Speaking about that, how's the surgery going? Inhaling that much chlorine would put anyone out of action, not that I'm not thankful for pulling my parents out of there. The company would've let them dissolved if they had their way." James asked the woman. "Well, the off world volunteer doctors bumped me up cue and if lady luck don't interfere, I'll be fully recovered by the end of the local year." she replied with a chuckle then a cough. The planet they are on has a 22 hours day but 976 days per year. This has made the locals used phrase 'end of the year' as a joke for deliberately slow bureaucracy, especially when the government is the one paying. Elisabeth was working with his parents when the accident occured, a toilet break saving her from the experience. She was trained as a first reponder and had taken it up on herself to at least recover the remains of her colleague and friend. Either due to cost cutting or by sheer incompetence, the recently cleared hazmat suit she took from the emergency storage had a leaking hose and she had barely survived. James was grateful for her action and offered her a job in his mostly automated hydroponic farm as she waits for the company to pay her insurance as she can no longer do heavy manual labour. James was going to transfer all his business to her as thanks when he got off planet but had told her yet. "I hope you recover fully," James smiled at the not bad news, "I'm going to give you this farm and the house after I leave. You've been a good friend to the family and I'd to see you suffer because of a good deed." Elisabeth looked thoughtful for a moment then nodded, realising that James was resolved. "I have no need for more money than what I need to survive, I'll send any profits left from the farm to you. You'll need it if you're going to gallavanting around the galaxy." Elisabeth said with a firm tone, or slightly deeper and hoarser to James's ear. "It'll also be somewhere to return to if the galaxy doesn't agree with you. A journey isn't complete if you haven't return and all that." she added. James was expecting this and knows that she won't change her mind. "I'll drop by with souvenirs whenever I come near this part." James said. The rest of the day went by as usual. As James finished checking the monitoring terminal in preparation for the night, a message popped up on his iris implant. He checked the message as he exited the decontamination airlock:
Dear James,
I hope this finds you well. I hate to impose on paying customers but a good friend of mine needs somewhere hole up for a few days on your planet. He has his own ship and offered to take you anywhere you wish after he finished offloading his cargo to the orbital. I have given him your contacts and attached his along with his headscan. I am terribly sorry for taking liberties but I hope you find this a good deal.
Sincerely,
Cpt. Frank Rowe
James was surprised but didn't mind it that much as he had empty rooms and he'll save some money. He quickly went into his sonic shower booth and tapped off a reply to the captain and his guest. He was preparing to cook some of the ripe tomatoes and eggplants he harvested today when Elisabeth came out of her room. He had asked her to moved into his guest bedroom when she started working on his farm and they had been having meals together since. It helped the make the house more lively and Elisabeth liked his cooking. "I don't know if it's the fresh produce or your cooking that make something mundane taste this god." Elisabeth said in between bites, "Either way, I'll miss this when you go. I'll have to remember to scan this into the automeal." "It'll be close but the Dad's recipe needs more dressing oil and salt than the standard automeal will allow. It won't be too unhealthy if you work and sweat enough for two people." James grinned, "My parents always debated this over dinner." "That reminds me about the workload. I will have to automate the fish feeder, my lungs are about done by the time I finished checking the fruit bins," Elisabeth said. "I'll dial in the settings tomorrow, you'll only need to top up pellets." replied James.
That night James got a reply from the guest confirming he will take up the offer. The guest will arrive in two days and James planned to offer his own room. He had not touched his parents bedroom since the accident and he is going to tidy up the room as a farewell. He did not look forward to spending a night in the room but he knows he will regret not doing something to mark off the end of his stay in this house.
On the day of the arrival, James woke up and looked at himself in the mirror. His curly brown hair that he got from his mother was growing out past his liking, along with the light stubble he put off shaving due to being busy setting up the farm for a one person operation. His grey eyes was sparkling and lively, despite waking up an hour before his usual time. He was excited since he will be departing tomorrow and had finished packing last night. After confirming with Elisabeth that everything is working fine in the farm, he left her to get used to the new routine to prepare lunch. A flying taxi touched down as he fished out a large pizza from the oven. He wiped his hands and went to greet his ticket off the planet. A short stocky man climbed down, his skin, where visible was deeply tan, highly unusual for a ship captain travelling long journey through deep space. His dark hair fluttered in the wind and brown piercing eyes take in the rural sight. His glance fell on James and smiled a toothy grin. "You must be the owner of this lovely estate!" he bellowed out with a thick accent James can't place. James walked up to him, offered his hand, and they shook. "James Howard, looking forward to getting on your ship." James replied, a bit put off by the excitement from the man. "Miguel, Miguel Emille. Captain of the Flying Snail. I am very thankful for your hospitality at such short notice. The corpo here kicks the captain off their ship! Imagine that!" James looked around for security drones, a bit fearful of being reported for sedition. The captain looked at him, confused, then in understanding, "Ah, one of those world? Say no more. I won't put my passenger in danger." "Is it not the same where you are from? That's why I'm trying to get off the planet." James asked. "No, I grew up and works mainly for the frontier colony. This one is a special favour for the captain that you contacted for a lift. Contract for some heavy metal isotopes from one of the asteroid mining station for one of your 'esteemed' governer." Miguel winked.
The rest of the day passed by uneventfully, with Miguel switching between telling news of the outer colonies and checking his ship's security cameras. The next morning, James and Elisabeth had a tearful farewell before heading off towards one of the pillar supporting the orbital that doubled as cargo elevator. As they rise, James takes a look at the purple and green landscape falling below. He could see the curvature of the planet right as they enter the orbital. He took a picture of his homeworld, intending to put into his journal to mark the start of his journey. The maglev took them towards the internal docking area, James looking out then windows at the opulence of the wealthy living in the station. As they walk towards the flying snail, they were jossled around wnd forced to stop a few times by the workers and machineries bustling around the dock. James took in the sight of the Flying Snail as they approached, staring at the size and unusual roundedness of the ship, in contrast to the blocky and angular ships standard for most space vehicles. "Custom made on Mariana IX station, designed by my grandfather. A great advertisement for my business and comfortable quarters too. And not as slow as the name suggests" Miguel said as he looked at not a few workers staring at his ship. The advertisement mentioned was stencilled in bright red cursive letters on bare metal, in contrast to the ship's black blocky registration number. As they made their way to airlock, passing the the ship's closing cargo door, an inspector passed Miguel a datapad to sign off. "Cargo confirmed received, payments are being processed by customs due to the new tax coming into effect yesterday. You shouldn't lose much with the currency exchange," the inspector said after looking the form over, " you are clear to depart when traffic control indicates." The inspector turn to another ship busy loading cargo, not waiting for a reply. Miguel lead James through the airlock to his room, a larger than standard room furnished with wooden furniture and upholstered, unheard of in a spaceship from the hub worlds. "Get yourself comfortable then join me on the bridge. The ship AI will help you with the layout. No need to address me as captain since it'll only be the two of us until your destination. I'll be going around looking for government approved bugs. Corporate overlords never can get the idea of privacy." Miguel said before leaving James to unpack. James look around the room, trying to wrap his head around the decor. It was as if someone stole a museum exhibit then use it to furnish a spaceship. He unpacked his luggage, looking around for a storage locker, before putting his meager clothings into a dark wood wardrobe. He then set off to put his toiletries in the attached bathroom before being shocked at the size and items he saw. A large oval mirror hangs on the wall above porcelain basin, with an archaic brass and glass shower cubicle with valves and pipes off to the side. He consdered the logistics of internal plumbing and water storage on the ship for a moment before shaking his head, "Might as well enjoy the luxuries. If this isn't a great start, I don't know what is."
After he finished, James head out of his room then froze as he peered into the corridor. The sterile white panelling had turned into stained wood, the harsh lighting into warm yellow glow from what looks like wall mounted lamps. He turned to look back at his room to see the standard white panelling was still there. He decided to ask the AI for directions to the Captain, "Ship? Where's the bridge?" "Please find the ship map in the mailbox behind the door," a synthetic female voice chimed out. He looked at the automatic sliding door and noticed it had changed to a wooden hinged door with a basket below a metal slot. He grabbed a rolled up brown paper bundle from the basket, unrolling it to seems to be hand drawn diagram of the ship. Other details such as crew members list and meal times are neatly list in one corner. He closed the door before following the map. He was not surprised to find his name engraved below the room number on the brass plaque on the door.
James was apprehensive about finding anything on the ship but there were signs jutting out from the wall at each intersection, surrounded by decorative metalwork in forms of flowers, pointing to major locations. The flooring hard changed from patterned wood to being carpeted the closer he is to the bridge. He finally arrived at a double door, with a plaque indicating that it was indeed the bridge, and he wondered if he should knock. He decided not to, and swung open, to hear a bell ring as the door opens. "James! Come strap yourself in. How do you like my ship?" Miguel was seated on what looks like a couch in the centre of the room, looking at a large screen. The screen shows the outside of the ship, which was the landing bay blast door, still shut. "It's nice but too much like a museum piece to be flying around," James responded, "Isn't it against regulation and too hazardous if the grav generator fails?" "That's why I set the nanites to change to standard whenever I dock. Changed back to what my grandpa designed when we're clear for take off," Miguel answered, " also cleared out to bare walls with carpeting whenever there's an emergency. Only ever happens once in all my years of flying." James had heard of nanites but wasn't aware that it could be used on ships. "The ship was supposed to be a private cruiser for a hubworlder, but he backed out of deal so the swimming pool and hydrotherapy areas was converted into the cargo hold," Miguel added.
James strapped himself in a plush fabric covered armchair near the screen. As he figured out the buckle, the comm beeped then a voice called out, " landing bay E42 cleared. All ships ensure airlock and cargo door are closed before depressurisation in 15 minutes." "Hal, check the doors and prepare for take off," Miguel said. "Sorry captain, I cannot do that." "Stops scaring the passengers. Maybe it's time you watch some modern movies." A huff sounded before the AI replied, "Aye aye, Captain." "She always does that, scaring the living daylight out of my last crew when she pretended to lock the airlock during EVA," Miguel sighed, " i don't know what my Pa was doing, feeding her all that old robot uprising movies." "I thought she was just a basic navigation AI when I asked her for directions." "Yeah, she does that to make people let their guards down before springing the 'Exterminate!' stuff on them. That's why my last crews all signed off." "Isn't that bad on you?" James asked, "also your reputation won't be good." " It's fine, I mainly take on crews for company. Most contracts I got are from fellow captains needing to take orders from regulars but are to far out to accept. She got the latest repair drones and all nanites tech to take care of all damages, excluding only jump core explosions," Miguel smiled.
They waited in the bridge, chatting about life in space and homicidal AI, with Hal, James learned shortened from Haley and pronunciation changed courtesy of the AI herself, chiming in when the checks are done. "Landing bay E42 depressurised in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Landing bay depressurised. All ships clear to take off in E42 once landing bay door fully opened. Green light will light up when ready for manually piloted crafts. Halo orbital thanks you for your business." The traffic controller speaks through the comm, indicating he is a native. Off-worlder would usually call the station 'The Regina's Ring' after the planet. Once the door slides open fully, ships start to go out in rows. When it was the Flying Snail's turn to take off, a hologram of Hal appeared besides the captain's couch and the ship starts to move out slowly in formation, coordinating with the other ships. Once the Flying Snail cleared the door, Hal spoke, "Captain, there's any energy spike reading in the aft sensor. No details on origin available due to station's plating. Seems to be mostly neutrons" "Perhaps someone forgot to shut their cargo door. Probably transporting tritium or helium three. Put up shield just to be safe."
The captain's decision turns out to be just in time as a heavy blast blew the ships out of the orbital. Alarms started wailing and James was pushed back into his seat. "Damage report!" Miguel shouted over the alarms and a diagram of the ship's system popped up on screen. "No structural damage, low EMP, main computer rebooting, shields down to 60 percent," Hal replied mechanically, "Reboot complete. Putting rear view on screen." The screen shows a large explosion on the inner ring side, dropping debris onto the planet below. The alarms turned off as Hal reports, "Ring appears to be holding. Debris calculated to fall on low population area and ocean. Minimal damage to civilians and properties." " There's that at least. Are we expected to help?" Miguel asked. "Negative, the station order civilian vessels to clear the area. No detention order." "Good, get us to the jump point. James, you got a destination?" Miguel turns to look at James. James was still trying to recover from being slammed into his seat, saved from concussions by the seat's padding. "I need to check on Elisabeth," James said as he reached for his wristcom. He then saw an incoming video call from Elisabeth. He sighed in relief as he picked up the call. "I'm glad you're alright. Exciting starts to your trip, eh?" Elisabeth said after seeing James. "Good to see you unharmed too. Did the emergency broadcast says anything?" James asked. "They were saying no damage to those living below. The corporate news network was saying it was the work of the anti-hub government groups." Elisabeth said with a grimace, "trying to weasel out of responsibility if you ask me. I need to check the farm systems in case anything went down. Safe trip out there, I don't want to cry for the second time today," Elisabeth was starting to tear up as James tried to reply before the call cut off. "All's well that ends well," Miguel said as James gathered himself, "good to see her safe. So, destination?" James thought for a moment then replied, "I've never been anywhere further than the Halo. I was thinking of getting off at the last stops but I'm the only passenger here so I think I'll get off wherever your next business ends." " Fine by me. I'm going back three system on my route here, pick up some cargo and or crews, then out to the frontiers," miguel said to James then turn to Hal, " You remembered the station with extra medical supplies looking for buyers? Set destination there." " Aye captain. Arriving at jump point. Jumping in 5 seconds," Hal said before starting the count down. The jump drive, the second most popular after warp, generates a wormhole from Lagrange points. The energy requirements is higher than warp but the near instantaneous travel time is highly value by merchants and diplomats alike.
The jump starts without a hitch and they exited into a red dwarf system. As they make they way towards a spherical station above a green gas giants, they were hailed on all frequencies as the screen starts to shows an armada of black pyramids blockading ships trying to enter and leave the station. The screen suddenly flickers then shows a black upside down triangle with glowing blueish white lights runni ng on its surface. The speakers blared out a high pitch voice, " Bags of mostly water our flattest desire exchange thinking patterns. Flattest yours here deliver. Airwaves produce expect agreement." This broadcast then repeats itself. "Ain't this the strangest day of my life," Hal said loudly. "Exciting first day for our passenger here for sure," Miguel added. James just stared blankly at the screens.
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2024.05.07 14:11 Angel466 [Bob the hobo] A Celestial Wars Spin-Off Part 1008
PART ONE THOUSAND AND EIGHT
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
We materialised in a shop-front alcove, with a solid concrete wall to my right and a panelled wooden display wall behind glass to my left.
“Keep going,” Rubin said in my ear.
Not sure why he was being so insistent, I nevertheless strode forward as if I knew where I was going, and in just a few steps, the presence of multiple lanes of New York City traffic swept over me. Four lanes, all facing the same way, meant we were on one of the main arterial streets like Fifth Ave or Park Ave. ‘Zara’, a clothes boutique on the other side of the street did nothing to narrow the field any for me.
Not that it mattered. My point with this deductive reasoning was that neither of those streets had curbside parking.
Yet, sure enough, Dad's SUV was on the other side of the sidewalk in the closest lane of traffic, waiting for the lights to change. “Get in, quick!” Rubin ordered.
This wouldn’t be the first time I jumped into an illegal ‘traffic-light-parked’ car, and I raced for the back door, swinging it open and diving inside just as the lights changed. The door ‘magically’ shut itself behind me as I straightened up in my seat and took in Kulon behind the wheel and Gerry in the seat to my right.
“Hey, Angel,” I said, leaning forward to give her a quick kiss. “Missed you.”
“How’d it go with—er—your uncle?” Gerry asked, struggling with the normality of me having met with her god.
“Wanna put your seatbelt on back there, Sam?” Kulon chuckled, glancing at me in the rearview mirror as we moved forward across the intersection.
“It went better than I thought,” I admitted, then grinned. “I even got a really cool old-school bomber jacket out of it.” I saw her cringe and giggled evilly. “And you can’t hate on it, because it was literally a present from God himself.”
She clenched her hands into loose fists and pressed the heels of her palms to her temple. “I-I can’t even…” she finally stammered, and my giggle morphed into a full-blown cackle.
“I’ll show you when we get home. I don’t think you’ll hate it. It’s really nice and super authentic.” I then turned my attention to Kulon. “And dude! That has got to be soooo handy,” I said, gesturing back to where I’d jumped in the car. I was blown away by how easily it would be to catch people like that, just by realm-stepping the second a car was held up at lights. No guesswork. Not even coordinates. Just knowing.
“It has its moments,” Kulon agreed. “So, are we heading home?”
“Yes, please. The guys want to go out to Angus’ place to play some more ball this afternoon, but if I don’t get some home time in with Gerry between now and then, I won’t be going anywhere.”
The trip back to the apartment was quick, with Rubin vanishing as fast as he appeared once we had the building in sight. And with him on hand to pull back the guys any time we needed them, Kulon and Quent both stayed with the car and drove away together once Gerry and I were inside.
Of course, my luck just wasn’t playing nice with me today, for I knew the second I set foot in the apartment and saw Dad rise purposefully from his chair just inside the living room that having fun-time with Gerry wasn’t in my immediate future.
“I need a word with you, Sam,” he said, stepping between the sofa and the coffee table to give Gerry access to the rest of the apartment (with Dad standing in the doorway, it was as if it had been walled off).
“Daaaad,” I moaned, not really caring at this point what he wanted. After the morning I’d had, I needed some real Robbie-food and an hour or four in bed with my girl … minimum!
“Now, Sam.” His tone changed when he looked at Gerry and added, “We won’t be long, sweetheart.”
Not that it mattered. His initial bark had taken all my attention, and I felt my heart clench in my chest, wondering what else I’d done wrong. Not even Uncle YHWH had yelled at me, and I’d accidentally screwed with a couple of his worshippers. I couldn’t think of anything to warrant that, and as I processed the possibilities and came up blank, I barely felt Geraldine’s kiss to my cheek. “I’ll go and do some light reading in the bedroom,” she said, slipping out of my arms and making her way past Dad with a nod.
A few seconds later, I heard our bedroom door open and close, and I looked at Dad like he’d kicked a puppy. “Was that really necessary?”
“Would I have done it if it wasn’t?” Dad countered, and I had to remember who I was talking to. Between my run-in with Tucker’s people and my conversation with Uncle YHWH, I was being bolder than I had any right to be.
I forced myself to relax. “Sorry. It’s been a rough morning already.” I rubbed my chest again because, contrary to what anyone says, being tasered sucked, even if I did heal from it almost instantly.
Dad immediately frowned. “What happened? I thought you were visiting Gerry’s father for breakfast.”
“We were … I mean we did.” So much else had happened, and I didn’t feel like going into all of it. And since he was standing to one side, I headed into the kitchen, dropping my shoulder low to avoid his half-hearted grab on my way through.
I stopped at the plate warmer and was miffed at its empty state. My next port of call was the divine box Robbie called Voila. I remembered him telling me how I had to know what was in there for it to work (that, and how Charlie had scared the crap out of him yesterday morning when she’d told him the box was empty), but this was also Robbie, and he always had what we wanted ready to go. I brought to mind the one thing that would tide me over until lunch. The same thing that had been missing from Tucker’s table.
Just as I’d hoped, when I lifted the lid, an egg-filled baguette with bacon and cheese was waiting for me on a single sandwich plate. “Ye-essss,” I hissed in victory, lifting out the plate and taking the biggest bite I could manage without choking myself. “Thank you, Robbie, wherever you are! I love you!” My words were utterly muffled, but he wasn’t here, so it didn’t matter.
“Their food not to your liking?” Dad asked with an amused smirk.
“The company was challenging,” I answered evasively once I’d chewed enough to swallow. I then went over to the fridge and dug out the jug of freshly squeezed mango juice that I could never get enough of. With both items in my hands now, I was happy.
“Don’t even,” Dad warned when I instinctually lifted the jug to my lips.
“Hmmh?” The sound would’ve been an innocent ‘huh’, except I’d clamped my lips closed like that had never been my plan and put the jug on the island on the way to get a cup. With the dishwasher closer, I opened the door and grabbed one of the glasses from the second shelf. I then nudged the door shut with my shin and slid into Boyd’s seat, dragging the rest of my prizes over to me.
“So, what’s the family crisis?” I asked, pouring myself a drink but keeping the jug within easy reach. Wow, I really do use that word a lot, don’t I? I took a deep swallow to clear my throat, sighed, and then returned for another huge bite of my baguette.
“My youngest brother, Barris, our Mystallian God of the Hunt, has learned about you.”
Oh, for frig’s sake! I lowered the baguette and sat back in Boyd’s chair, my full focus once more on Dad. “Okay,” I answered cautiously, torn between frustration and annoyance. The other word choice that sprang to mind was a sarcastic ‘really’, which would probably require someone picking out an urn for my remains.
Dad shook his head and raised one hand with flared fingers. “It’s nothing bad.” He then pointed at my plate. “Finish your sandwich first.”
My next mouthfuls were maybe a third of the first two, and I might as well have been eating tyre rubber for all the enjoyment I was getting out of it. “How much does he know about me?” I asked between bites.
Dad moved to stand beside me at the corner of the island. “He knows you’ve almost graduated college. He knows there was animosity between your mother and me that’s since been resolved, and he knows about the pregnancy now.”
Now, the baguette felt like a rock in my gut. “Great.”
He slid into Lucas’ seat and curled a hand around my forearm near the elbow, anchoring me in place. “Sam, I said it’s okay. He’s on our side.”
I squinted. A lot of people were making that claim lately and I wasn’t sure I believed it anymore. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Dad met my stare squarely, and I was always amazed at how easily he could do that. “He knows the dangers to your mother, so he’s going to run interference on the family for us until after the babies are born. Despite the fact that it’ll put him in the same crosshairs with the rest of our family as us when they find out he knew, he’s going to do it anyway. He only asks one thing in return.”
I barely restrained my eye-roll. “Of course he does.”
Dad’s face morphed into a dark scowl, and his grip tightened painfully. “You will show your uncle the respect he deserves,” he warned.
I dropped my eyes to his waist; so not up for this. “Yes, sir.”
Dad’s intake for breath was both loud and frustrated. He kicked the leg of the chair I was sitting on for good measure, and when my gaze snapped to his, he was pointing two fingers of his free hand at his own eyes. “That’s right, boy. Right here. Nowhere else. Not there … not there … not way over there.” He pointed to three random locations in the apartment before returning to their original spot before his eyes. “Right here. Always. You get me?”
For some reason, Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham started rolling through my brain, and I was quite proud of myself that I didn’t smirk or even blink. “Yessir.”
He didn’t get any calmer. “Okay …” he finally said, after a few seconds that was—who knew how long for him if he internalised to settle down— “I know we’ve only touched lightly on this before, but I need you to lift your game before we meet with your uncle, starting with stripping the words ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ from your vocabulary. I know your stance on human manners, and I’ve accepted your decision and will support it when it comes up with the others. That said, even the humans hardly ever use those two servitude titles anymore, and you can’t afford to appear weak in front of our family. Okay?”
Dad was compromising. I knew the family wouldn’t agree with my use of manners, but Dad was willing to back that, and to me, it was the more important of the two. “I’ll try,” I said because I couldn’t say for sure if I’d succeed without premonition, and that one wasn’t in my wheelhouse.
Ha, I made a divine funny.
So, why aren’t I laughing?
Probably because I still hadn’t heard what Uncle Barris wanted in exchange for his cooperation. It couldn’t be my head on a pike, as neither of my parents would go for that. But what?
“He wants to meet you, Sam, at a destination of your choosing and he’s agreed not to come here looking for you so long as that request is met. He hasn’t even asked for this address.”
“He’s the god of hunting, Dad. Hunting me down would be a cakewalk for someone like him.”
“True, except he’s promised not to go there unless it’s an emergency. You’re his nephew, Sam. A nephew he knew nothing about until last night. All he wants to do is meet you, and given the circumstances, I don’t think that’s too much to ask, do you?”
“How did he find out?” I asked instead of answering.
Dad’s expression soured. “Helen Portsmith. Apparently, she turned up at his gym last night with her usual spiel; only this time, your uncle put it together correctly and came looking for me for real answers. I told him about you and your mother. I told him our secrets.”
Something about the way he worded that… “As opposed to what?”
“I still haven’t mentioned Robbie or his connection to Yitzak. Nor have I mentioned the true gryps living with us, except for Tiacor, who’s there for your mother.”
I was starting to put this together. “Okay, so when we meet, no mention of Robbie as a cousin, or that he has a food innate, or that Yitzak and Collette know about him.” I got the feeling learning that we had true gryps in the household wouldn’t really amount to much, as they could be anywhere they wanted to be all over the world. It was their world as much as ours.
“Exactly.”
“What about Clefton and Nick? They’ve been here and met us too.”
“Mention them only if you want to get them into trouble for not outing you from the very beginning. Same with Nuncio.”
Well, that’s a hard ‘no’. “Maybe Cuschler?”
Dad scowled again. “There’s no bad blood between us anymore, right?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow warningly.
I sighed. Spoilsport. “Fine. But what about Fisk and the girls … and Najma?” It wasn’t that I’d forgotten my nephew, just that my brother and sisters rolled off the tongue first. “Danika’s been here, and Najma tracked me down at school before everyone else had met me. Even Fisk has popped in from time to time to touch base.”
“Barris knows they knew, and he understands why they’ve kept it quiet. Nothing’s going to happen until the reunion, and even then, maybe nothing if your mother still hasn’t given birth.”
I pushed my half-eaten baguette away and pressed my forehead to the island. “Everybody knows a little bit,” I griped. “How in the world am I meant to keep tabs on who knows what?”
Dad’s grin made me want to kick him the way he’d kicked my chair. “What do you think internalising is for? Remembering whatever we want is literally our jam.”
“I s’pose.” But combing through the details at every turn still seemed like an awful lot of effort, even if that process did seem instantaneous to everyone else. It wasn’t to us.
Dad reached past me and brought back my baguette. “Finish your sandwich. You can go as you are. Your uncle runs a gym downtown, so he’s not exactly at his best either.”
I stared at him in horror. “We’re going right now?”
“Why not now?”
Because I just got back from seeing Uncle YHWH! “I dunno. I mean, it’s too soon, don’t you think?”
I don’t know how else to describe it, but Dad’s expression turned … parental. “And when would a good time be for you with your hugely busy schedule now that school has wrapped up?” he asked like I was an idiot.
I gave a nervous, shrugging roll of my shoulders. “I understand there’s this get-together happening at the end of the year…”
I kinda expected the cuff to the back of my head and tried not to snicker when it happened.
“Don’t be a smartass. Finish your sandwich, and we’ll go. This won’t take long.”
With nothing else for it, I did as I was told, leaving the empty plate and cup on the sink since the dishwasher hadn’t been emptied. “I’m so glad I got a say in this…” I muttered quietly under my breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
I have no idea why I thought we’d at least use the front door to leave. Probably because most people did. But this was Dad, and we were going to meet his brother, and he clearly didn’t want me to have the chance of wriggling out of it.
So without warning, he slapped his hand on my right shoulder and shoved me forward, realm-stepping away with me as I stumbled to keep my footing.
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!
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[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
We materialised in a shop-front alcove, with a solid concrete wall to my right and a panelled wooden display wall behind glass to my left.
“Keep going,” Rubin said in my ear.
Not sure why he was being so insistent, I nevertheless strode forward as if I knew where I was going, and in just a few steps, the presence of multiple lanes of New York City traffic swept over me. Four lanes, all facing the same way, meant we were on one of the main arterial streets like Fifth Ave or Park Ave. ‘Zara’, a clothes boutique on the other side of the street did nothing to narrow the field any for me.
Not that it mattered. My point with this deductive reasoning was that neither of those streets had curbside parking.
Yet, sure enough, Dad's SUV was on the other side of the sidewalk in the closest lane of traffic, waiting for the lights to change. “Get in, quick!” Rubin ordered.
This wouldn’t be the first time I jumped into an illegal ‘traffic-light-parked’ car, and I raced for the back door, swinging it open and diving inside just as the lights changed. The door ‘magically’ shut itself behind me as I straightened up in my seat and took in Kulon behind the wheel and Gerry in the seat to my right.
“Hey, Angel,” I said, leaning forward to give her a quick kiss. “Missed you.”
“How’d it go with—er—your uncle?” Gerry asked, struggling with the normality of me having met with her god.
“Wanna put your seatbelt on back there, Sam?” Kulon chuckled, glancing at me in the rearview mirror as we moved forward across the intersection.
“It went better than I thought,” I admitted, then grinned. “I even got a really cool old-school bomber jacket out of it.” I saw her cringe and giggled evilly. “And you can’t hate on it, because it was literally a present from God himself.”
She clenched her hands into loose fists and pressed the heels of her palms to her temple. “I-I can’t even…” she finally stammered, and my giggle morphed into a full-blown cackle.
“I’ll show you when we get home. I don’t think you’ll hate it. It’s really nice and super authentic.” I then turned my attention to Kulon. “And dude! That has got to be soooo handy,” I said, gesturing back to where I’d jumped in the car. I was blown away by how easily it would be to catch people like that, just by realm-stepping the second a car was held up at lights. No guesswork. Not even coordinates. Just knowing.
“It has its moments,” Kulon agreed. “So, are we heading home?”
“Yes, please. The guys want to go out to Angus’ place to play some more ball this afternoon, but if I don’t get some home time in with Gerry between now and then, I won’t be going anywhere.”
The trip back to the apartment was quick, with Rubin vanishing as fast as he appeared once we had the building in sight. And with him on hand to pull back the guys any time we needed them, Kulon and Quent both stayed with the car and drove away together once Gerry and I were inside.
Of course, my luck just wasn’t playing nice with me today, for I knew the second I set foot in the apartment and saw Dad rise purposefully from his chair just inside the living room that having fun-time with Gerry wasn’t in my immediate future.
“I need a word with you, Sam,” he said, stepping between the sofa and the coffee table to give Gerry access to the rest of the apartment (with Dad standing in the doorway, it was as if it had been walled off).
“Daaaad,” I moaned, not really caring at this point what he wanted. After the morning I’d had, I needed some real Robbie-food and an hour or four in bed with my girl … minimum!
“Now, Sam.” His tone changed when he looked at Gerry and added, “We won’t be long, sweetheart.”
Not that it mattered. His initial bark had taken all my attention, and I felt my heart clench in my chest, wondering what else I’d done wrong. Not even Uncle YHWH had yelled at me, and I’d accidentally screwed with a couple of his worshippers. I couldn’t think of anything to warrant that, and as I processed the possibilities and came up blank, I barely felt Geraldine’s kiss to my cheek. “I’ll go and do some light reading in the bedroom,” she said, slipping out of my arms and making her way past Dad with a nod.
A few seconds later, I heard our bedroom door open and close, and I looked at Dad like he’d kicked a puppy. “Was that really necessary?”
“Would I have done it if it wasn’t?” Dad countered, and I had to remember who I was talking to. Between my run-in with Tucker’s people and my conversation with Uncle YHWH, I was being bolder than I had any right to be.
I forced myself to relax. “Sorry. It’s been a rough morning already.” I rubbed my chest again because, contrary to what anyone says, being tasered sucked, even if I did heal from it almost instantly.
Dad immediately frowned. “What happened? I thought you were visiting Gerry’s father for breakfast.”
“We were … I mean we did.” So much else had happened, and I didn’t feel like going into all of it. And since he was standing to one side, I headed into the kitchen, dropping my shoulder low to avoid his half-hearted grab on my way through.
I stopped at the plate warmer and was miffed at its empty state. My next port of call was the divine box Robbie called Voila. I remembered him telling me how I had to know what was in there for it to work (that, and how Charlie had scared the crap out of him yesterday morning when she’d told him the box was empty), but this was also Robbie, and he always had what we wanted ready to go. I brought to mind the one thing that would tide me over until lunch. The same thing that had been missing from Tucker’s table.
Just as I’d hoped, when I lifted the lid, an egg-filled baguette with bacon and cheese was waiting for me on a single sandwich plate. “Ye-essss,” I hissed in victory, lifting out the plate and taking the biggest bite I could manage without choking myself. “Thank you, Robbie, wherever you are! I love you!” My words were utterly muffled, but he wasn’t here, so it didn’t matter.
“Their food not to your liking?” Dad asked with an amused smirk.
“The company was challenging,” I answered evasively once I’d chewed enough to swallow. I then went over to the fridge and dug out the jug of freshly squeezed mango juice that I could never get enough of. With both items in my hands now, I was happy.
“Don’t even,” Dad warned when I instinctually lifted the jug to my lips.
“Hmmh?” The sound would’ve been an innocent ‘huh’, except I’d clamped my lips closed like that had never been my plan and put the jug on the island on the way to get a cup. With the dishwasher closer, I opened the door and grabbed one of the glasses from the second shelf. I then nudged the door shut with my shin and slid into Boyd’s seat, dragging the rest of my prizes over to me.
“So, what’s the family crisis?” I asked, pouring myself a drink but keeping the jug within easy reach. Wow, I really do use that word a lot, don’t I? I took a deep swallow to clear my throat, sighed, and then returned for another huge bite of my baguette.
“My youngest brother, Barris, our Mystallian God of the Hunt, has learned about you.”
Oh, for frig’s sake! I lowered the baguette and sat back in Boyd’s chair, my full focus once more on Dad. “Okay,” I answered cautiously, torn between frustration and annoyance. The other word choice that sprang to mind was a sarcastic ‘really’, which would probably require someone picking out an urn for my remains.
Dad shook his head and raised one hand with flared fingers. “It’s nothing bad.” He then pointed at my plate. “Finish your sandwich first.”
My next mouthfuls were maybe a third of the first two, and I might as well have been eating tyre rubber for all the enjoyment I was getting out of it. “How much does he know about me?” I asked between bites.
Dad moved to stand beside me at the corner of the island. “He knows you’ve almost graduated college. He knows there was animosity between your mother and me that’s since been resolved, and he knows about the pregnancy now.”
Now, the baguette felt like a rock in my gut. “Great.”
He slid into Lucas’ seat and curled a hand around my forearm near the elbow, anchoring me in place. “Sam, I said it’s okay. He’s on our side.”
I squinted. A lot of people were making that claim lately and I wasn’t sure I believed it anymore. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Dad met my stare squarely, and I was always amazed at how easily he could do that. “He knows the dangers to your mother, so he’s going to run interference on the family for us until after the babies are born. Despite the fact that it’ll put him in the same crosshairs with the rest of our family as us when they find out he knew, he’s going to do it anyway. He only asks one thing in return.”
I barely restrained my eye-roll. “Of course he does.”
Dad’s face morphed into a dark scowl, and his grip tightened painfully. “You will show your uncle the respect he deserves,” he warned.
I dropped my eyes to his waist; so not up for this. “Yes, sir.”
Dad’s intake for breath was both loud and frustrated. He kicked the leg of the chair I was sitting on for good measure, and when my gaze snapped to his, he was pointing two fingers of his free hand at his own eyes. “That’s right, boy. Right here. Nowhere else. Not there … not there … not way over there.” He pointed to three random locations in the apartment before returning to their original spot before his eyes. “Right here. Always. You get me?”
For some reason, Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham started rolling through my brain, and I was quite proud of myself that I didn’t smirk or even blink. “Yessir.”
He didn’t get any calmer. “Okay …” he finally said, after a few seconds that was—who knew how long for him if he internalised to settle down— “I know we’ve only touched lightly on this before, but I need you to lift your game before we meet with your uncle, starting with stripping the words ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ from your vocabulary. I know your stance on human manners, and I’ve accepted your decision and will support it when it comes up with the others. That said, even the humans hardly ever use those two servitude titles anymore, and you can’t afford to appear weak in front of our family. Okay?”
Dad was compromising. I knew the family wouldn’t agree with my use of manners, but Dad was willing to back that, and to me, it was the more important of the two. “I’ll try,” I said because I couldn’t say for sure if I’d succeed without premonition, and that one wasn’t in my wheelhouse.
Ha, I made a divine funny.
So, why aren’t I laughing?
Probably because I still hadn’t heard what Uncle Barris wanted in exchange for his cooperation. It couldn’t be my head on a pike, as neither of my parents would go for that. But what?
“He wants to meet you, Sam, at a destination of your choosing and he’s agreed not to come here looking for you so long as that request is met. He hasn’t even asked for this address.”
“He’s the god of hunting, Dad. Hunting me down would be a cakewalk for someone like him.”
“True, except he’s promised not to go there unless it’s an emergency. You’re his nephew, Sam. A nephew he knew nothing about until last night. All he wants to do is meet you, and given the circumstances, I don’t think that’s too much to ask, do you?”
“How did he find out?” I asked instead of answering.
Dad’s expression soured. “Helen Portsmith. Apparently, she turned up at his gym last night with her usual spiel; only this time, your uncle put it together correctly and came looking for me for real answers. I told him about you and your mother. I told him our secrets.”
Something about the way he worded that… “As opposed to what?”
“I still haven’t mentioned Robbie or his connection to Yitzak. Nor have I mentioned the true gryps living with us, except for Tiacor, who’s there for your mother.”
I was starting to put this together. “Okay, so when we meet, no mention of Robbie as a cousin, or that he has a food innate, or that Yitzak and Collette know about him.” I got the feeling learning that we had true gryps in the household wouldn’t really amount to much, as they could be anywhere they wanted to be all over the world. It was their world as much as ours.
“Exactly.”
“What about Clefton and Nick? They’ve been here and met us too.”
“Mention them only if you want to get them into trouble for not outing you from the very beginning. Same with Nuncio.”
Well, that’s a hard ‘no’. “Maybe Cuschler?”
Dad scowled again. “There’s no bad blood between us anymore, right?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow warningly.
I sighed. Spoilsport. “Fine. But what about Fisk and the girls … and Najma?” It wasn’t that I’d forgotten my nephew, just that my brother and sisters rolled off the tongue first. “Danika’s been here, and Najma tracked me down at school before everyone else had met me. Even Fisk has popped in from time to time to touch base.”
“Barris knows they knew, and he understands why they’ve kept it quiet. Nothing’s going to happen until the reunion, and even then, maybe nothing if your mother still hasn’t given birth.”
I pushed my half-eaten baguette away and pressed my forehead to the island. “Everybody knows a little bit,” I griped. “How in the world am I meant to keep tabs on who knows what?”
Dad’s grin made me want to kick him the way he’d kicked my chair. “What do you think internalising is for? Remembering whatever we want is literally our jam.”
“I s’pose.” But combing through the details at every turn still seemed like an awful lot of effort, even if that process did seem instantaneous to everyone else. It wasn’t to us.
Dad reached past me and brought back my baguette. “Finish your sandwich. You can go as you are. Your uncle runs a gym downtown, so he’s not exactly at his best either.”
I stared at him in horror. “We’re going right now?”
“Why not now?”
Because I just got back from seeing Uncle YHWH! “I dunno. I mean, it’s too soon, don’t you think?”
I don’t know how else to describe it, but Dad’s expression turned … parental. “And when would a good time be for you with your hugely busy schedule now that school has wrapped up?” he asked like I was an idiot.
I gave a nervous, shrugging roll of my shoulders. “I understand there’s this get-together happening at the end of the year…”
I kinda expected the cuff to the back of my head and tried not to snicker when it happened.
“Don’t be a smartass. Finish your sandwich, and we’ll go. This won’t take long.”
With nothing else for it, I did as I was told, leaving the empty plate and cup on the sink since the dishwasher hadn’t been emptied. “I’m so glad I got a say in this…” I muttered quietly under my breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
I have no idea why I thought we’d at least use the front door to leave. Probably because most people did. But this was Dad, and we were going to meet his brother, and he clearly didn’t want me to have the chance of wriggling out of it.
So without warning, he slapped his hand on my right shoulder and shoved me forward, realm-stepping away with me as I stumbled to keep my footing.
* * *
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!
2024.05.07 11:28 Kapten_YeetMstr But I have my own soul magic: Chpt 1
<< First < Back
My ears perked up at the shifting of branches outside of my view. A low growl echoed through the dense foliage that surrounded me. Who was there? What was there?
I had been wandering this forest for what felt like days, but in reality, was only a handful of hours. I was searching for anything, anywhere that could help me on my new journey. Minutes earlier, a hunger and thirst had gnawed at my insides, reminding me I no longer had the soul power to simply ignore hunger and thirst. I had chuckled to myself, recalling the moments my soul shattered and a singular piece ejected into this dimension, continuing my existence, but at a cost of most of my soul.
I instinctually willed power into my hand, shaping it into a sword, before sighing when was warned of using too much before I had finished the hilt.
SP: 14
Soul stage: Shattered
Soul power gain multi: 0.01X
I couldn’t risk losing the final shreds of soul power I had left. With a grimace, I stopped making the sword, willing the power back into my soul, and taking quick glances at my surroundings. Even without my supernatural abilities, I was still a talented fighter.
Is what I would have said if the creature charging at me wasn’t a wolf or boar shaped thing twice my height.
Diving for cover and out of the path of the creature, I booked it. Screw hunting, there was no way in hell I was taking down this freak of nature. Sprinting through the trees, I failed to account for the fact that the gigantic wolf-boar was, in fact, faster than me.
Battle instincts hadn’t disappeared with the rest of my soul, however, as I flattened myself again when the wolf was upon me. I was about to scramble to my feet again when I heard something yell behind me.
The language was unrecognisable, but I stayed down when I saw a flash of light from where the voice originated. A searing hot ball of flame flew over my head, nailing the wolf in the face, stunning it briefly. I looked up to see a man, hands coated in a bright purple light, chanting something. He pushed them forwards, bombarding the creature with a flurry of purple bolts.
The animal screams in agony before crumpling, and the man lands, breathing heavily. He turns to me, grinning and spoke in a language I could not interpret. Right. Isekai worlds, different languages. Duh.
Upon noticing my blank face, he stared expectantly.
I instinctively reached towards a universal translator skill I once had, before realising in that space was just… emptiness. I let out a sigh. Power loss was a steep price to pay for survival.
“Um… do you speak English?” I stuttered out.
The man returned my blank stare.
“Well, I guess that’s a no.” I picked myself off the ground and dusted myself off, checking for any cuts and major damage. A couple of bruises, throbbed, a painful reminder of my loss of healing abilities. When I turned my attention back to the man, he had begun a string of gestures.
First, he pointed to me, then made a mouth opening and mimed putting something in. I supposed it had been an offer of food. Odd, but I nodded in response. I suppose I shouldn’t question the culture of the world, and this man was offering me a free meal, which I wasn’t in the mood to turn down.
He turned, gesturing me to follow, which I did. He lead me back to a small cabin, deeper into the woods and lead me inside. It was quaint, like what someone would expect an abode in the middle of the forest to look like. A brick fireplace, a small bed, a bookshelf, it emanated the sense of rustic comfort.
He picked a book from the bookshelves, flipping it open to an empty page and leaving it on the table with what looked like a writing utensil. Then, he made more gestures. He pointed to me and wrote onto the book. A crude representation of a person, an arrow, and a chair.
Was he asking me to attack a chair with an arrow…?
Wait he wasn’t done. He added an extra symbol that showed the person sitting onto the chair. I mentally facepalmed. So much for universal imagery. I took a seat and pondered the exchange. Even though it seemed like images and their representations were universal, it became very apparent that even the simplest gestures could be interpreted incorrectly.
He put the book and the utensil down and went to the small kitchen area, which held a steaming pot. An aroma of a freshly made stew lingered in the air. Stereotypical, but beggars can’t be choosers.
While waiting for the man to finish making the food, I turned my attention to the fragmented state of my soul.
SP: 15
Soul stage: Shattered
Soul power gain multi: 0.01X
In the 10 minutes we had spent walking, my soul had accumulated a whole extra point of soul power. I groaned at the painfully slow speed and mulled over my options. Previously, I had upgraded my generation speed with my soul power. Spending soul power to make more soul power, I had likened it to an idle game. Alternatively, entering higher soul stages would provide a boost in soul power and reduce skill costs.
I tried upgrading my soul generation capacity first. I focused my meagre power inwards to expanding my soul, coaxing it to grow. It was… way easier than normal, which made sense I suppose, due to the small state of my soul. Soul power condensed and coagulated around my soul, making it bigger, stronger, giving it more capacity and power. Sure enough, when I checked my status…
Soul power gain multi: 0.02X
Doubled. Not bad, but still pitifully weak. I tried the next strategy. Soul stages were entered and exited based on user willpower, which I fortunately had a lot of training with. Even if my soul was lost, my mind wasn’t. I called upon the will that would have easily allowed me to enter soul stage 1 and…
Warning, soul cannot handle excess soul power.
A sharp pain pulled me out of entering the soul stage. I had apparently reached the willpower requirement, but my shattered soul couldn’t handle the influx of energy. I sighed, stuck as a shattered soul until I could find some way to repair it.
Fortunately, my downed spirit was cheered by the presence of the fresh soup placed in front of me. I gave the man a smile, which he returned before digging in. Despite the mouth watering aroma, a sliver of doubt remained. What if the food was unsanitary, or potentially poisonous? But the battle for hunger eventually won over, and I scooped spoonfuls of the ambrosia into my mouth.
After our meal, the man pulled the book to him, in which he drew a house and a question mark next to it. I took a gamble and guessed he was inquiring about my home. For all intents and purposes, I was homeless, which I illustrated by drawing a stick figure walking away from a home with a cross through it.
The man had a look of understanding, before getting up and rummaging through his cupboards, eventually withdrawing a roll of some sort of soft fabrics. He handed them to me, started drawing again. Drawing a sun half obscured by a line, most likely a horizon, followed by a house with an arrow pointing towards it. He emphasised his point by pointing towards me and pointing down towards his feet. He wanted me to… stay?
I hesitated. I had far overstayed my welcome, but then where else would I stay? This kind stranger offered a roof over my head when I had none, so I wouldn’t turn down his generosity. I nodded and looked for a place to lay down the linen… mattress… thing.
***
Stretching and yawning, I winced as the remnants of back pain and exhaustion faded. Blinking away the haze of sleep, I gathered myself. Memories of yesterday flooded in, and I sighed. Still stuck in this Isekai world, great. Checking my interface, I noticed I had accumulated a bit of SP to work with.
SP: 158
Soul stage: Shattered
Soul power gain: 0.02X
First things first, I would try repair my soul as much as possible. Focusing inwards once more and directing energy towards my soul, I felt it expand much more readily than yesterday. Newly formed solid structures held much of the power together as it coagulated into one. I exhaled and checked my status again.
SP: 58
Soul stage: Foundation
Soul power gain: 0.2X
Empty talent slots: 1
I smiled, noticing my soul stage had transcended from “shattered”. It still wasn’t in the realm of what I was used to, so it was probably still abysmally weak, but a 10 times increase in soul power was very welcome. Though one unfamiliar feature caught my attention. Talent slots? What the hell were those?
The user expresses a strong desire to understand. Filling talent slot
The question vanished as soon it was arose, but a new addition took its place.
SP: 58
Soul stage: Foundation
Soul power gain: 0.2X
Talents:
Worldly information matrix
A subconscious echo popped into my mind as I read.
Talents were permanent emplacements within one’s soul that greatly boosts one specific aspect about the person. Whether it be mana regeneration, or a group of or even just one spell, it will strengthen that aspect significantly. Talent slots are unlocked upon the growth of one’s soul.
How the hell did I know that?
Before I could ponder any longer, shuffling was heard next to me, and the man sat up and stretched.
“Mmm, what’s the time…?” He muttered. His voice was deep, gruff, yet friendly and had an edge of kindness to it.
I looked around for some sort of time implement, and upon finding one, responded, “I don’t know how to read your clocks.” However, the words left my mouth in a language I never knew I could speak. We locked eyes in disbelief, and both made an exclamation of surprise.
“What the… I thought you couldn’t speak our tongue!”
“I didn’t know I could understand your language!” I fumbled over the unfamiliar words in my mouth. But whatever changed, it allowed me to speak this new dialect.
Gathering ourselves after the recent discovery, he sat me at the table as he poured me some form of hot beverage.
“So you can understand me now. Excellent! Now, who are you truly?”
“I am…” I hesitated. I searched my past, urging it to provide me my true identity. I sighed, knowing that my true name was lost to time. Instead I provided the name bestowed upon me by those I protected, by the world I had left behind. “I am Custos. The guardian of Earth.”
“I see. A pleasure to meet you Custos, I am Orion.” He chuckles, “I am no guardian unfortunately, just a humble hermit alone in these woods. It’s not common I get visitors. I have never heard of this ‘Earth’. Would you please enlighten me”
I hesitated once more. These people did not seem to know about interstellar travel, let alone interdimensional. “It’s a land from far, far away.”
He nodded, and sipped from his cup, urging me to do the same. “That explains why you didn’t know our tongue. Speaking of, how did you manage to learn our tongue so quickly? No translation spells around here, I assure you.”
“Apparently I used a talent slot to unlock a-“
The sound of a cup clattering onto the table cut me off. “You used a talent slot for it?! Why?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are they that valuable?”
The man gave me an exasperated look. “Valuable? They’re priceless! Enhance magic, grant infinite strength, and you chose being bilingual.”
“Ah I see. Is this permanent?”
The man shook his head. “Every human has 5 talent slots. Permanent, unchangeable, and once a talent has been assigned there is no way of removing it.”
I pondered his statement. It seemed to conflict with the information my own talent provided me, but I shook it off, disregarding it for another time.
“Unfortunate,” I said, taking a sip from my own cup. It tasted like a mocha, but less strong. “You mentioned you know spells? Are you some sort of wizard?”
He chuckled, “Not really, the mages are really up there in terms of skill. I’m just someone who wanted a bit of peace and quiet and learned a bit of magic along the way. This book has been my magical bible.” He stood and fetched another book from his bookshelf, opening it in front of me.
The words shuffled and morphed into a language I could understand, courtesy of my talent, as I read through it. It contained a comprehensive list of spells, alongside Orion’s notes and diagrams, scrawled over the pages.
“Interesting.” I murmured, a spark of curiosity igniting within me. “Well, best I take my leave. I’ve far overstayed my welcome.”
“Friend, no need to worry about that. You may stay as long as you like. Especially if you haven’t a place of your own.”
This man kindness bordered on naivety, but at least I didn’t have to worry about dying for now.
submitted by Kapten_YeetMstr to HFY [link] [comments]
My ears perked up at the shifting of branches outside of my view. A low growl echoed through the dense foliage that surrounded me. Who was there? What was there?
I had been wandering this forest for what felt like days, but in reality, was only a handful of hours. I was searching for anything, anywhere that could help me on my new journey. Minutes earlier, a hunger and thirst had gnawed at my insides, reminding me I no longer had the soul power to simply ignore hunger and thirst. I had chuckled to myself, recalling the moments my soul shattered and a singular piece ejected into this dimension, continuing my existence, but at a cost of most of my soul.
I instinctually willed power into my hand, shaping it into a sword, before sighing when was warned of using too much before I had finished the hilt.
SP: 14
Soul stage: Shattered
Soul power gain multi: 0.01X
I couldn’t risk losing the final shreds of soul power I had left. With a grimace, I stopped making the sword, willing the power back into my soul, and taking quick glances at my surroundings. Even without my supernatural abilities, I was still a talented fighter.
Is what I would have said if the creature charging at me wasn’t a wolf or boar shaped thing twice my height.
Diving for cover and out of the path of the creature, I booked it. Screw hunting, there was no way in hell I was taking down this freak of nature. Sprinting through the trees, I failed to account for the fact that the gigantic wolf-boar was, in fact, faster than me.
Battle instincts hadn’t disappeared with the rest of my soul, however, as I flattened myself again when the wolf was upon me. I was about to scramble to my feet again when I heard something yell behind me.
The language was unrecognisable, but I stayed down when I saw a flash of light from where the voice originated. A searing hot ball of flame flew over my head, nailing the wolf in the face, stunning it briefly. I looked up to see a man, hands coated in a bright purple light, chanting something. He pushed them forwards, bombarding the creature with a flurry of purple bolts.
The animal screams in agony before crumpling, and the man lands, breathing heavily. He turns to me, grinning and spoke in a language I could not interpret. Right. Isekai worlds, different languages. Duh.
Upon noticing my blank face, he stared expectantly.
I instinctively reached towards a universal translator skill I once had, before realising in that space was just… emptiness. I let out a sigh. Power loss was a steep price to pay for survival.
“Um… do you speak English?” I stuttered out.
The man returned my blank stare.
“Well, I guess that’s a no.” I picked myself off the ground and dusted myself off, checking for any cuts and major damage. A couple of bruises, throbbed, a painful reminder of my loss of healing abilities. When I turned my attention back to the man, he had begun a string of gestures.
First, he pointed to me, then made a mouth opening and mimed putting something in. I supposed it had been an offer of food. Odd, but I nodded in response. I suppose I shouldn’t question the culture of the world, and this man was offering me a free meal, which I wasn’t in the mood to turn down.
He turned, gesturing me to follow, which I did. He lead me back to a small cabin, deeper into the woods and lead me inside. It was quaint, like what someone would expect an abode in the middle of the forest to look like. A brick fireplace, a small bed, a bookshelf, it emanated the sense of rustic comfort.
He picked a book from the bookshelves, flipping it open to an empty page and leaving it on the table with what looked like a writing utensil. Then, he made more gestures. He pointed to me and wrote onto the book. A crude representation of a person, an arrow, and a chair.
Was he asking me to attack a chair with an arrow…?
Wait he wasn’t done. He added an extra symbol that showed the person sitting onto the chair. I mentally facepalmed. So much for universal imagery. I took a seat and pondered the exchange. Even though it seemed like images and their representations were universal, it became very apparent that even the simplest gestures could be interpreted incorrectly.
He put the book and the utensil down and went to the small kitchen area, which held a steaming pot. An aroma of a freshly made stew lingered in the air. Stereotypical, but beggars can’t be choosers.
While waiting for the man to finish making the food, I turned my attention to the fragmented state of my soul.
SP: 15
Soul stage: Shattered
Soul power gain multi: 0.01X
In the 10 minutes we had spent walking, my soul had accumulated a whole extra point of soul power. I groaned at the painfully slow speed and mulled over my options. Previously, I had upgraded my generation speed with my soul power. Spending soul power to make more soul power, I had likened it to an idle game. Alternatively, entering higher soul stages would provide a boost in soul power and reduce skill costs.
I tried upgrading my soul generation capacity first. I focused my meagre power inwards to expanding my soul, coaxing it to grow. It was… way easier than normal, which made sense I suppose, due to the small state of my soul. Soul power condensed and coagulated around my soul, making it bigger, stronger, giving it more capacity and power. Sure enough, when I checked my status…
Soul power gain multi: 0.02X
Doubled. Not bad, but still pitifully weak. I tried the next strategy. Soul stages were entered and exited based on user willpower, which I fortunately had a lot of training with. Even if my soul was lost, my mind wasn’t. I called upon the will that would have easily allowed me to enter soul stage 1 and…
Warning, soul cannot handle excess soul power.
A sharp pain pulled me out of entering the soul stage. I had apparently reached the willpower requirement, but my shattered soul couldn’t handle the influx of energy. I sighed, stuck as a shattered soul until I could find some way to repair it.
Fortunately, my downed spirit was cheered by the presence of the fresh soup placed in front of me. I gave the man a smile, which he returned before digging in. Despite the mouth watering aroma, a sliver of doubt remained. What if the food was unsanitary, or potentially poisonous? But the battle for hunger eventually won over, and I scooped spoonfuls of the ambrosia into my mouth.
After our meal, the man pulled the book to him, in which he drew a house and a question mark next to it. I took a gamble and guessed he was inquiring about my home. For all intents and purposes, I was homeless, which I illustrated by drawing a stick figure walking away from a home with a cross through it.
The man had a look of understanding, before getting up and rummaging through his cupboards, eventually withdrawing a roll of some sort of soft fabrics. He handed them to me, started drawing again. Drawing a sun half obscured by a line, most likely a horizon, followed by a house with an arrow pointing towards it. He emphasised his point by pointing towards me and pointing down towards his feet. He wanted me to… stay?
I hesitated. I had far overstayed my welcome, but then where else would I stay? This kind stranger offered a roof over my head when I had none, so I wouldn’t turn down his generosity. I nodded and looked for a place to lay down the linen… mattress… thing.
***
Stretching and yawning, I winced as the remnants of back pain and exhaustion faded. Blinking away the haze of sleep, I gathered myself. Memories of yesterday flooded in, and I sighed. Still stuck in this Isekai world, great. Checking my interface, I noticed I had accumulated a bit of SP to work with.
SP: 158
Soul stage: Shattered
Soul power gain: 0.02X
First things first, I would try repair my soul as much as possible. Focusing inwards once more and directing energy towards my soul, I felt it expand much more readily than yesterday. Newly formed solid structures held much of the power together as it coagulated into one. I exhaled and checked my status again.
SP: 58
Soul stage: Foundation
Soul power gain: 0.2X
Empty talent slots: 1
I smiled, noticing my soul stage had transcended from “shattered”. It still wasn’t in the realm of what I was used to, so it was probably still abysmally weak, but a 10 times increase in soul power was very welcome. Though one unfamiliar feature caught my attention. Talent slots? What the hell were those?
The user expresses a strong desire to understand. Filling talent slot
The question vanished as soon it was arose, but a new addition took its place.
SP: 58
Soul stage: Foundation
Soul power gain: 0.2X
Talents:
Worldly information matrix
A subconscious echo popped into my mind as I read.
Talents were permanent emplacements within one’s soul that greatly boosts one specific aspect about the person. Whether it be mana regeneration, or a group of or even just one spell, it will strengthen that aspect significantly. Talent slots are unlocked upon the growth of one’s soul.
How the hell did I know that?
Before I could ponder any longer, shuffling was heard next to me, and the man sat up and stretched.
“Mmm, what’s the time…?” He muttered. His voice was deep, gruff, yet friendly and had an edge of kindness to it.
I looked around for some sort of time implement, and upon finding one, responded, “I don’t know how to read your clocks.” However, the words left my mouth in a language I never knew I could speak. We locked eyes in disbelief, and both made an exclamation of surprise.
“What the… I thought you couldn’t speak our tongue!”
“I didn’t know I could understand your language!” I fumbled over the unfamiliar words in my mouth. But whatever changed, it allowed me to speak this new dialect.
Gathering ourselves after the recent discovery, he sat me at the table as he poured me some form of hot beverage.
“So you can understand me now. Excellent! Now, who are you truly?”
“I am…” I hesitated. I searched my past, urging it to provide me my true identity. I sighed, knowing that my true name was lost to time. Instead I provided the name bestowed upon me by those I protected, by the world I had left behind. “I am Custos. The guardian of Earth.”
“I see. A pleasure to meet you Custos, I am Orion.” He chuckles, “I am no guardian unfortunately, just a humble hermit alone in these woods. It’s not common I get visitors. I have never heard of this ‘Earth’. Would you please enlighten me”
I hesitated once more. These people did not seem to know about interstellar travel, let alone interdimensional. “It’s a land from far, far away.”
He nodded, and sipped from his cup, urging me to do the same. “That explains why you didn’t know our tongue. Speaking of, how did you manage to learn our tongue so quickly? No translation spells around here, I assure you.”
“Apparently I used a talent slot to unlock a-“
The sound of a cup clattering onto the table cut me off. “You used a talent slot for it?! Why?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are they that valuable?”
The man gave me an exasperated look. “Valuable? They’re priceless! Enhance magic, grant infinite strength, and you chose being bilingual.”
“Ah I see. Is this permanent?”
The man shook his head. “Every human has 5 talent slots. Permanent, unchangeable, and once a talent has been assigned there is no way of removing it.”
I pondered his statement. It seemed to conflict with the information my own talent provided me, but I shook it off, disregarding it for another time.
“Unfortunate,” I said, taking a sip from my own cup. It tasted like a mocha, but less strong. “You mentioned you know spells? Are you some sort of wizard?”
He chuckled, “Not really, the mages are really up there in terms of skill. I’m just someone who wanted a bit of peace and quiet and learned a bit of magic along the way. This book has been my magical bible.” He stood and fetched another book from his bookshelf, opening it in front of me.
The words shuffled and morphed into a language I could understand, courtesy of my talent, as I read through it. It contained a comprehensive list of spells, alongside Orion’s notes and diagrams, scrawled over the pages.
“Interesting.” I murmured, a spark of curiosity igniting within me. “Well, best I take my leave. I’ve far overstayed my welcome.”
“Friend, no need to worry about that. You may stay as long as you like. Especially if you haven’t a place of your own.”
This man kindness bordered on naivety, but at least I didn’t have to worry about dying for now.
2024.05.07 11:19 Horror_writer_1717 Camping alone can be terrifying, especially when something's hunting you.
part 1
A week later I walked out of the hospital, literally. The doctors said I’d been very lucky. Because I’d been sweating, the oil didn’t stick to my skin. Since oil and water don’t mix, it was literally floating on top of the sweat on my legs. Even though I did receive some burns, they weren’t nearly as bad as they could’ve been.
I guess I’m just one lucky guy. Now I get to go home and barricade myself in my house, hoping that thing forgets about me, or better yet, that it had died from its burn injuries.
When I got home, I walked up to the front door and saw the scratches on it. I took the steps one at a time, looking at the doorframe where it had gotten stuck, trying to gouge my eyes out. I opened the front door slowly as if expecting it to be waiting behind the door to nab me and drag me off into the forest to do unspeakable things to me. I released my white knuckles from the doorknob then quickly shut and locked the door.
Splinters and sawdust covered the carpet, along with muddy, inhuman, footprints. After doing a quick walkthrough of the house to make sure it wasn’t there, I grabbed the vacuum and started cleaning.
I had just finished when a knock at my door nearly sent me through the ceiling.
Peeking out through the peephole, I saw the man who’d saved me that night, and opened the door.
“What’re you doing here?” I said.
“I came to check on you,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
I stepped aside and motioned for him to enter. He stepped in and scoped out the room.
“It’s surprisingly clean for having a wendigo nearly destroy it.”
“I just got done vacuuming.”
He eyed me up and down.
“Of course you did,” he said plopping into a comfortable chair.
“So how goes the hunt?” I said, sitting in my usual chair.
He shifted in his seat.
“It’s going well.”
“So you’ve captured it then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Killed it?”
He shook his head.
“Then what have you done?”
“I saved your life.”
“And I thank you. What have you done lately?”
“Well, that’s kind of what I’m here for,” he said. “How would you like to join our team?”
“Team of what?”
“Cryptid hunters.”
I looked at him with sheer disbelief.
“Pass.”
“You haven’t even heard… “
“I don’t want anything to do with that thing,” I said, walking into the kitchen.
“But you’re the only one who’s ever survived an attack.”
I wondered to myself if that was true or if he was just trying to make my pride force me into a bad decision.
“Pass,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be going alone,” he said, getting up and following me to the kitchen. “There’s two other cryptid hunters that would be along, plus me.”
“Not interested,” I said.
“There’s a reward for its capture. You’d get a share of it.”
“No deal,” I said, starting up the stairs.
He seemed flustered, grasping at straws.
“You’d get to carry a big gun,” he said.
I paused halfway up the stairs.
“How big of a gun?”
“Big.”
I thought about it for a long moment.
“Alright,” I said then continued up the stairs.
“Great, then let’s go.”
I paused.
“What do you mean, let’s go? Like right now? I just got home.”
“We need to strike while the trail is fresh.”
“Fresh? A week old is fresh?”
He shrugged. “The guys and your equipment are in the truck.”
“Can I at least grab a shower first?”
There was an odd look in his eye.
“No need,” he said. “We’ll be out on the trail.”
We stood in a silent stare down for a long moment, then I shrugged and came back down the steps.
“So how much money will I be making,” I said.
He smiled. “Enough.”
I followed him outside, turning at the last moment to lock my front door that had seen better days and looked like a stiff breeze would blow it over.
He grinned but said nothing as we approached the truck and climbed in the back doors.
The two men in the front merely nodded when we got in, then the driver started the truck and drove away toward the woods. I wasn’t having pleasant memories flashback when we pulled into the same trailhead I had barely escaped from just over a week ago. I had to wonder if I’d had some head trauma they hadn’t noticed at the hospital, or if Mr. three letter government agency had drugged me without my knowledge to get me to come back here.
I was tempted to run as soon as I opened the door, but I didn’t want to look like a coward in front of these guys, even though I didn’t know them from Adam and they each had a good fifty pounds of pure muscle on me. We stepped around to the back and Mr. three handed me a backpack that was so heavy it nearly pulled me over.
“You gonna be good with that,” he said noticing my struggle. “You can take some stuff out if you want.”
“Nope, I’m good,” I said, hefting it onto my back and somehow managing to keep it there without my knees buckling under the weight.
Next he handed me a belt that had all kinds of stuff on it, including the big gun. It was a revolver, but the cylinder was so long, I wondered if it would shoot rifle shells.
“Just remember,” he told me. “We’re trying to capture it, not kill it.”
“That was never part of the deal,” I said.
“It is if you want the big payday.”
I stopped in front of him.
“What if I want revenge?”
He looked me up and down, sizing me up as if seeing me for the first time.
“Then you should go home and leave the hunting to us,” he said, then stepped around me and started down the trail.
The second hunter followed him, but the third stayed behind and stared at me.
“Aren’t you following them?” I said.
“I’m the rear guard,” he said. “I go last and watch everybody else’s back.”
“So, you’re waiting to see if I follow them or tuck my tail between my legs and slink home?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I looked from the trail to the road and back again, then slumped my shoulders and started down the trail.
“So, what do I call you?” I said over my shoulder to the hunter behind me.
He was silent for a moment, then softly said, “You can call me Ray.”
My mind shot back to an old comedy routine I’d seen on one of those classic TV shows.
“Alright, Ray, I guess it’s gonna be you and me for a while, because I know I won’t be catching up to them with what feels like a Buick strapped t my back.”
“He told you to take out whatever you felt you didn’t need.”
“Ever heard of this thing called pride, Ray?”
He shook his head ruefully.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “Does that mean I can count on you to continue to make stupid decisions?”
I stopped and turned on him.
“I think the answer is obvious.”
“Great,” he said with no small amount of sarcasm.
We started down the trail and I must say, I did pretty well for around a half hour. And when I say pretty well, I mean trudging, heaving, and moaning at the incredible amount of weight on my back as we slowly followed the trail through the forest. To make things worse, it started to drizzle.
It didn’t take too long for him to have…
“Enough!” he said. “Just stop right here.”
I obeyed and nearly fell over backward as gravity grabbed the backpack and tried to hurl it to the ground. If it wouldn’t have been for Ray catching me, I would’ve hit the ground hard and rolled around like a helpless turtle, unable to get up on my own.
He lifted the pack off my back effortlessly and set it on the ground. He dug through it and started thrusting things toward me.
“Here,” he said, shoving a handful of granola bars toward me. “Put these in your pants pockets.”
Next, he handed me a flashlight and some extra rounds of ammo, a water bottle, and a rain poncho. I took the poncho out of its wrapper and put it on.
The first few steps I took sounded like I was wearing a snow suit. Everything he’d given me to stow in my pockets made some kind of noise. The granola bar wrappers rubbed together, the rounds of ammo clinked and clicked, even the rain poncho made noise when I took a step.
“I thought we were trying to sneak up on this thing,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “I sound like a freakin’ one man band.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said avoiding my eyes as he set the pack off to the side of the trail and stepped past me. “I’m sure the rain will cover your sounds.”
I looked up and only a few drops landed on my cheeks. The rest was just a fine mist. Narrowing my eyes, I watched as Ray walked ahead of me on the trail. I hadn’t known him long, but it was easy to see he was hiding something. Maybe he didn’t want to scare me so I would keep on with the search. In any case, I rested my hand on the gun in its holster for comfort.
“Don’t go pulling that out unless you have to,” he said without looking back. “Remember, we’re here to capture, not kill.”
“Maybe you are,” I said.
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned toward me.
“Look, I get it. You’re scared. I would be too if this was the first time I was hunting something like this, but you have to do things our way so no one gets hurt, understand?”
He hadn’t said it a threatening way, just matter of fact, but I still found myself taking a step back.
“What if that thing decides it wants to hurt someone?”
He looked me in the eyes.
“Then we stop it,” he said, then turned and started down the trail not even checking to see if I was following.
I sighed and fell in step behind him, finding it much easier now without the heavy pack of doom weighing me down. I still rested my hand on the gun as we walked.
The forest was quiet. The animals weren’t making much sound and the wind was still. I didn’t know if it was the intensifying rain or something else that seemed to spook them.
“Ray.” I heard someone whisper.
He stopped and whipped around on me.
“What?” he said, looking at me.
“I didn’t say anything.”
His eyes were full of suspicion but he continued along the trail.
It wasn’t long until we heard the sound again.
“Ray… “
His eyes instantly shot to me but I held up my hands in surrender and shook my head.
He scanned the trees, looking for where the voice had come from when we heard it again. This time he was able to focus in on where it had come from. He started toward it without a second glance at me.
“Wait a minute,” I whispered. “Are you sure you want to follow this?”
“Of course,” he said, but his eyes had an otherworldly quality to them like he’d been hypnotized or somehow was under the voice’s spell.
He stepped forward slowly, but not carefully. It was as if he were being drawn and started walking into the woods in front of me. He had almost disappeared when suddenly the creature appeared as huge and real as ever. Its skin was burned all over its body and hanging loosely in some places like it was about to fall off. It was much more terrifying than the last time I’d seen it. Even the hide of the other animal that it wore as a shawl seemed melted to its shoulders.
It slashed Ray across the throat in one lightning fast motion. All I saw was a spray of red before the creature picked Ray up and started off into the woods.
Before I knew what was happening, my gun was in my hand and I was firing it over and over at the beast as it escaped with its prize. I fired the gun empty, but kept squeezing the trigger on empty cylinders. Finally, I realized I wasn’t shooting anymore and emptied the shell casings out, digging into my pocket to reload and dropping bullets in my haste.
Once I finally had it reloaded, I slammed the cylinder shut and looked for the creature. To my surprise two trees came toward me. I aimed the shaking gun toward them when one of them said, “Stop! Don’t shoot us!”
It was so shocking to hear a tree talk that I obeyed its command.
They continued to advance on me when they stopped a few feet away and one of them ripped its top off revealing a human head. It was the agent.
“Give me that gun,” he said with an outstretched branch.
“Absolutely not!” I said, holding it away from him like a kid withholding a toy from a parent. “Where have you two been?”
The other agent removed his treetop as well.
“We were staking out the area,” he said. “You two were supposed to bring it to us so we could capture it.”
“Bring it to you? How were we supposed to do that?”
He stared at me for a long time, looking as though he was unsure of what to say.
I finally got it.
“You used me as bait,” I said. “You knew once that thing got my scent it would follow me.”
He shrugged. “It was as good a plan as any.”
“Except, it caught on to your little plan and now Ray is in harms way, and could already be dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?” he said.
I described him being taken with a special emphasis on the blood spray.
He stared at me silently.
“We need to regroup and think what our next tactic is.”
“Our next tactic is to find this thing and put as many holes in it as possible before it has Ray for an afternoon snack,” I said holding up the gun for emphasis.
“I told you, we’re bringing it in alive.”
“Even at the cost of our lives?” I said, looking from one agent to the other.
My point seemed to sink in grudgingly with both of them.
“We still need to find it,” the head agent said. “After we find it, we can debate killing it or not.”
“Fine, this way,” I said, starting in the same direction I’d seen the creature and Ray disappear.
“Who died and made you boss?” he said following as quickly as his tree outfit would let him.
I turned and faced him, serious as a heart attack.
“Hopefully not Ray,” I said, then turned and resumed in the direction I’d seen them.
I didn’t turn back to see if they were following, but I could hear trees rustling behind me. I hoped that was them, or I was in trouble.
As we walked, my senses were on alert, watching, and listening for the creature in hopes that it wouldn’t pull another sneak attack. Thinking back to the brief battle, I wondered how many of my six shots hit the beast, and how many might’ve hit Ray. I couldn’t be that careless in the upcoming fight. I would have to take better aim and be patient. Not only was there Ray to think of as a potential victim, but also the two clowns behind me dressed up as trees.
We weren’t on any trail, and that made it rough going for me. My legs were still sensitive and I had rushed out of the house in just a pair of shorts and a Metallica t-shirt. The rain poncho I wore gave me a little warmth, but not as much as I would’ve liked. When we left, it was nice out, with the temperature in the mid-seventies, but once the rain started, it dropped ten degrees. That plus the fact that we were walking through rough country, avoiding jaggers, thorns, and all kinds of plants that seemed like they were designed just for the annoyance factor. I can’t imagine how those two behind me were doing in their ridiculous tree outfits.
I turned to check on them, but they were gone.
Slowly looking around the forest, I searched for them, but they were nowhere to be found. With their outfits on, they could’ve been right beside me and I wouldn’t know it. They also admitted to using me as bait. Maybe that’s what they were doing again.
I wish I would’ve stayed home, ordered a pizza, and watched Wipeout on TV, then fallen asleep on the couch. That would’ve been a good first day home from the hospital. Instead I was freezing in the middle of the woods, all alone, and now that I had looked around, I lost which direction I was going. So now I was officially lost in the woods.
Great.
The rain was coming down harder now. I decided to look for some kind of shelter and regroup. I walked forward, looking not for the creature, but anything I could use to hide from the rain. A cave would be great, as long as nothing was in it. A fallen tree that I could sit under would do as well.
In the end, I lucked out, I hadn’t gone far when a cave appeared up ahead. Instead of blundering inside, I circled around and watched the entrance for a while, until I was cold enough to ignore the potential danger and get out of the rain.
Standing in the mouth of the cave helped a little by getting me out of the rain, but I was still freezing. I turned and looked inside. The huge maw of blackness stared back out. Even using my flashlight didn’t tell me much about my impromptu rest stop.
Hanging out near the entrance was not advised. I would have to find someplace else once the rain stopped. But as I looked up a flash of light, followed soon by a crash of thunder that made the world shake, told me the rain wasn’t about to let up.
A cold as I was, it would take a special kind of crazy to go exploring this cave that could hold any number of wild animals who had no problem eating humans. I hoped one of them wouldn’t be the creature. What did the agent call it, a Wendigo?
Against every survival instinct, I shone my light into the cave and started walking. It was big, at least twelve feet from the ceiling, but the walls were smooth, almost like it had been dug with a machine. There weren’t a lot of rocks and debris like you would envision in a cave. It seemed like someone had made this cave and concealed it as natural. But why? There was nothing out here in the middle of the woods. Even the cave itself was far off the beaten path.
As I was wondering about the nature of the cave I heard a sound behind me. Slowly I turned, hoping that the creature hadn’t snuck up behind me like it did with Ray.
All I saw was two trees standing on either side of the cave.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Like no one’s going to notice two trees suddenly growing in the middle of a cave with no sunlight?”
Neither tree moved, but I was sure one of them make a shushing sound.
I shook my head and continued into the cave. The further I went the more the flashlight struggled to ward off the dark. It was like the light was overwhelmed by the darkness.
As big as the cave was, I came to a spot where it opened up into a larger room. The ceiling was so far up it was hard for the flashlight to reach. As I scanned around the room with the light, I settled on something over in the corner. The closer I got to it the more I wanted to turn around and leave.
I stepped up right beside it and pulled my shirt collar up over my nose to cover the stench of death and decay.
It was Ray, or what was left of him, strung up on a rack. Both his legs were gone and the huge puddle of blood under him didn’t give me hope that he had survived. I reached up and felt for a pulse anyway. My hand went right into the opening where the creature had slashed his neck. There was no pulse. At least I didn’t see any bullet holes in him. That made me feel a little better.
I hung my head and turned to report to the trees following me when I saw a sight that made me question reality. The creature had returned. It was in a life and death battle with a tree. It had picked the tree up and was holding it near the top. The tree was kicking and punching the creature as though its life depended on it.
The creature seemed confused at first, but once the tree delivered a well-placed kick, the creature seemed to decide that it had enough. It swung the tree around effortlessly like a baseball bat and smashed it into a wall. The sickening crunching sound it made on impact were a combination of wood and bone breaking.
The tree instantly went limp, but the creature wanted to make sure. It threw the tree at the other wall leaving a red splotch on impact before collapsing the to ground.
The second tree hadn’t moved the entire time. The creature stepped close to it, suddenly suspicious. It reached out when I made my decision to act.
I pulled out the gun, aimed at the creature’s head and squeezed the trigger.
I’d never fired a .44 magnum in a cave before, and I never will again.
My ears were ringing so bad, I couldn’t hear anything. I saw the tree holding its ears as well as the wendigo. Its mouth was open and I imagined it was screaming, but I couldn’t hear it.
I don’t know what happened. If something in me just snapped, or I realized I was about to end up like Ray. I ran up to the wendigo while it was disoriented by the gunshot, stuck the gun under its chin near its neck and squeezed the trigger five more times.
The top of its head exploded with a geyser of bone and blood. It screamed so loud I even heard it through my hopefully temporary deafness.
I didn’t hang around to see what was going to happen. I ran toward the cave entrance, grabbing the uninjured tree and pulling him out with me. It only took a moment for the tree to get the point and run along.
Once out, he guided me back to the trail and took the top of his tree disguise off to talk to me.
“I told you I wanted that thing alive,” he said, looking and sounding very unhappy.
“Why don’t you tell Ray and the other agent you just lost how that thing’s life was more important than theirs?”
He glared at me.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I just shot a wendigo at point blank range. You think your little glare is going to frighten me?”
He continued to glare.
“Ok, you have two choices here,” I said. “Either drive me home or give me your keys.”
He finally allowed his shoulders to relax and started walking.
“I’m not giving you the keys to my car,” he muttered.
We walked back out in silence. Whatever his deal was with bringing the creature in alive, he was serious about it.
I was just glad the whole ordeal was over.
“Do you think its dead?” I said.
He ignored me for a few minutes, then finally said, “I don’t know. I’ve heard some amazing stories about how they recuperate.”
“Wow, gee thanks, I feel so much safer now,” I said as we rounded a corner and there standing in the middle of the trail was a huge bear.
We both froze.
“What do we do?” I whispered to him.
“Shut up,” he whispered back.
We stood as still as humanly possible as the bear sniffed the air and lumbered up to us. For some reason it looked familiar. Could it possibly be the same bear that fought with the wendigo over a week ago. It had some scars and scratch marks on it that looked partially healed.
It stepped up to the agent and stared at him. Perhaps it had never seen a tree partially eat a human before. That’s what he looked like with the top of the outfit off. Like the tree had half digested a human the way a snake devours its prey.
Then it stepped over and sniffed me. Its eyes grew wide with what I would almost call fear. But that couldn’t be right, could it. I mean why would a bear be afraid of me.
It turned tail and ran off into the woods without looking back.
“What was that about?” I said.
“Do you really want to question it, or just get out of here?”
“Get out of here,” I said, my feet already double-timing it down the trail.
We were within sight of the car before we slowed down. Both of us were breathing hard from powerwalking the whole way. I was sure it couldn’t have been easy for him in that tree suit.
“I think I may have figured it out,” he said as we arrived at the car and he fished out his keys.
“Do tell, oh wise one,” I said.
“It smelled the wendigo’s blood on you.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Think about it, if you’re enough of a badass to have wendigo blood on you, the bear probably didn’t want to mess with you.”
I thought about it and it made sense in a way.
Just as we were about to leave, we heard an inhuman shriek off in the distance. He turned to me with a gleam in his eyes.
“Oh no,” I said. “You take me home right now, then I don’t care if you go try to hunt this thing down and end up getting eaten.”
“Oh all right,” he said pouting.
We drove in silence, each of us in our own world of thoughts. Every once in a while I couldn’t help glancing in the rear view mirror, just to be sure.
When we arrived at my house I got out and turned to leave, then stopped.
“Why was that cave man made?” I said.
“What makes you think it was man made?” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“The walls and ceiling were too smooth,” I said.
“They seemed rough enough to me,” he said.
“So you’re not going to tell me that there was a secret military base nearby?”
“You enjoy your recuperation, sir,” he said, handing me a business card. “If you ever have problems like this again, give me a call.”
I dropped the card on the seat.
“I think I’d be better off on my own,” I said. “You don’t protect your partners very well.”
I walked inside my house without looking back.
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A week later I walked out of the hospital, literally. The doctors said I’d been very lucky. Because I’d been sweating, the oil didn’t stick to my skin. Since oil and water don’t mix, it was literally floating on top of the sweat on my legs. Even though I did receive some burns, they weren’t nearly as bad as they could’ve been.
I guess I’m just one lucky guy. Now I get to go home and barricade myself in my house, hoping that thing forgets about me, or better yet, that it had died from its burn injuries.
When I got home, I walked up to the front door and saw the scratches on it. I took the steps one at a time, looking at the doorframe where it had gotten stuck, trying to gouge my eyes out. I opened the front door slowly as if expecting it to be waiting behind the door to nab me and drag me off into the forest to do unspeakable things to me. I released my white knuckles from the doorknob then quickly shut and locked the door.
Splinters and sawdust covered the carpet, along with muddy, inhuman, footprints. After doing a quick walkthrough of the house to make sure it wasn’t there, I grabbed the vacuum and started cleaning.
I had just finished when a knock at my door nearly sent me through the ceiling.
Peeking out through the peephole, I saw the man who’d saved me that night, and opened the door.
“What’re you doing here?” I said.
“I came to check on you,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
I stepped aside and motioned for him to enter. He stepped in and scoped out the room.
“It’s surprisingly clean for having a wendigo nearly destroy it.”
“I just got done vacuuming.”
He eyed me up and down.
“Of course you did,” he said plopping into a comfortable chair.
“So how goes the hunt?” I said, sitting in my usual chair.
He shifted in his seat.
“It’s going well.”
“So you’ve captured it then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Killed it?”
He shook his head.
“Then what have you done?”
“I saved your life.”
“And I thank you. What have you done lately?”
“Well, that’s kind of what I’m here for,” he said. “How would you like to join our team?”
“Team of what?”
“Cryptid hunters.”
I looked at him with sheer disbelief.
“Pass.”
“You haven’t even heard… “
“I don’t want anything to do with that thing,” I said, walking into the kitchen.
“But you’re the only one who’s ever survived an attack.”
I wondered to myself if that was true or if he was just trying to make my pride force me into a bad decision.
“Pass,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be going alone,” he said, getting up and following me to the kitchen. “There’s two other cryptid hunters that would be along, plus me.”
“Not interested,” I said.
“There’s a reward for its capture. You’d get a share of it.”
“No deal,” I said, starting up the stairs.
He seemed flustered, grasping at straws.
“You’d get to carry a big gun,” he said.
I paused halfway up the stairs.
“How big of a gun?”
“Big.”
I thought about it for a long moment.
“Alright,” I said then continued up the stairs.
“Great, then let’s go.”
I paused.
“What do you mean, let’s go? Like right now? I just got home.”
“We need to strike while the trail is fresh.”
“Fresh? A week old is fresh?”
He shrugged. “The guys and your equipment are in the truck.”
“Can I at least grab a shower first?”
There was an odd look in his eye.
“No need,” he said. “We’ll be out on the trail.”
We stood in a silent stare down for a long moment, then I shrugged and came back down the steps.
“So how much money will I be making,” I said.
He smiled. “Enough.”
I followed him outside, turning at the last moment to lock my front door that had seen better days and looked like a stiff breeze would blow it over.
He grinned but said nothing as we approached the truck and climbed in the back doors.
The two men in the front merely nodded when we got in, then the driver started the truck and drove away toward the woods. I wasn’t having pleasant memories flashback when we pulled into the same trailhead I had barely escaped from just over a week ago. I had to wonder if I’d had some head trauma they hadn’t noticed at the hospital, or if Mr. three letter government agency had drugged me without my knowledge to get me to come back here.
I was tempted to run as soon as I opened the door, but I didn’t want to look like a coward in front of these guys, even though I didn’t know them from Adam and they each had a good fifty pounds of pure muscle on me. We stepped around to the back and Mr. three handed me a backpack that was so heavy it nearly pulled me over.
“You gonna be good with that,” he said noticing my struggle. “You can take some stuff out if you want.”
“Nope, I’m good,” I said, hefting it onto my back and somehow managing to keep it there without my knees buckling under the weight.
Next he handed me a belt that had all kinds of stuff on it, including the big gun. It was a revolver, but the cylinder was so long, I wondered if it would shoot rifle shells.
“Just remember,” he told me. “We’re trying to capture it, not kill it.”
“That was never part of the deal,” I said.
“It is if you want the big payday.”
I stopped in front of him.
“What if I want revenge?”
He looked me up and down, sizing me up as if seeing me for the first time.
“Then you should go home and leave the hunting to us,” he said, then stepped around me and started down the trail.
The second hunter followed him, but the third stayed behind and stared at me.
“Aren’t you following them?” I said.
“I’m the rear guard,” he said. “I go last and watch everybody else’s back.”
“So, you’re waiting to see if I follow them or tuck my tail between my legs and slink home?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I looked from the trail to the road and back again, then slumped my shoulders and started down the trail.
“So, what do I call you?” I said over my shoulder to the hunter behind me.
He was silent for a moment, then softly said, “You can call me Ray.”
My mind shot back to an old comedy routine I’d seen on one of those classic TV shows.
“Alright, Ray, I guess it’s gonna be you and me for a while, because I know I won’t be catching up to them with what feels like a Buick strapped t my back.”
“He told you to take out whatever you felt you didn’t need.”
“Ever heard of this thing called pride, Ray?”
He shook his head ruefully.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “Does that mean I can count on you to continue to make stupid decisions?”
I stopped and turned on him.
“I think the answer is obvious.”
“Great,” he said with no small amount of sarcasm.
We started down the trail and I must say, I did pretty well for around a half hour. And when I say pretty well, I mean trudging, heaving, and moaning at the incredible amount of weight on my back as we slowly followed the trail through the forest. To make things worse, it started to drizzle.
It didn’t take too long for him to have…
“Enough!” he said. “Just stop right here.”
I obeyed and nearly fell over backward as gravity grabbed the backpack and tried to hurl it to the ground. If it wouldn’t have been for Ray catching me, I would’ve hit the ground hard and rolled around like a helpless turtle, unable to get up on my own.
He lifted the pack off my back effortlessly and set it on the ground. He dug through it and started thrusting things toward me.
“Here,” he said, shoving a handful of granola bars toward me. “Put these in your pants pockets.”
Next, he handed me a flashlight and some extra rounds of ammo, a water bottle, and a rain poncho. I took the poncho out of its wrapper and put it on.
The first few steps I took sounded like I was wearing a snow suit. Everything he’d given me to stow in my pockets made some kind of noise. The granola bar wrappers rubbed together, the rounds of ammo clinked and clicked, even the rain poncho made noise when I took a step.
“I thought we were trying to sneak up on this thing,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “I sound like a freakin’ one man band.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said avoiding my eyes as he set the pack off to the side of the trail and stepped past me. “I’m sure the rain will cover your sounds.”
I looked up and only a few drops landed on my cheeks. The rest was just a fine mist. Narrowing my eyes, I watched as Ray walked ahead of me on the trail. I hadn’t known him long, but it was easy to see he was hiding something. Maybe he didn’t want to scare me so I would keep on with the search. In any case, I rested my hand on the gun in its holster for comfort.
“Don’t go pulling that out unless you have to,” he said without looking back. “Remember, we’re here to capture, not kill.”
“Maybe you are,” I said.
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned toward me.
“Look, I get it. You’re scared. I would be too if this was the first time I was hunting something like this, but you have to do things our way so no one gets hurt, understand?”
He hadn’t said it a threatening way, just matter of fact, but I still found myself taking a step back.
“What if that thing decides it wants to hurt someone?”
He looked me in the eyes.
“Then we stop it,” he said, then turned and started down the trail not even checking to see if I was following.
I sighed and fell in step behind him, finding it much easier now without the heavy pack of doom weighing me down. I still rested my hand on the gun as we walked.
The forest was quiet. The animals weren’t making much sound and the wind was still. I didn’t know if it was the intensifying rain or something else that seemed to spook them.
“Ray.” I heard someone whisper.
He stopped and whipped around on me.
“What?” he said, looking at me.
“I didn’t say anything.”
His eyes were full of suspicion but he continued along the trail.
It wasn’t long until we heard the sound again.
“Ray… “
His eyes instantly shot to me but I held up my hands in surrender and shook my head.
He scanned the trees, looking for where the voice had come from when we heard it again. This time he was able to focus in on where it had come from. He started toward it without a second glance at me.
“Wait a minute,” I whispered. “Are you sure you want to follow this?”
“Of course,” he said, but his eyes had an otherworldly quality to them like he’d been hypnotized or somehow was under the voice’s spell.
He stepped forward slowly, but not carefully. It was as if he were being drawn and started walking into the woods in front of me. He had almost disappeared when suddenly the creature appeared as huge and real as ever. Its skin was burned all over its body and hanging loosely in some places like it was about to fall off. It was much more terrifying than the last time I’d seen it. Even the hide of the other animal that it wore as a shawl seemed melted to its shoulders.
It slashed Ray across the throat in one lightning fast motion. All I saw was a spray of red before the creature picked Ray up and started off into the woods.
Before I knew what was happening, my gun was in my hand and I was firing it over and over at the beast as it escaped with its prize. I fired the gun empty, but kept squeezing the trigger on empty cylinders. Finally, I realized I wasn’t shooting anymore and emptied the shell casings out, digging into my pocket to reload and dropping bullets in my haste.
Once I finally had it reloaded, I slammed the cylinder shut and looked for the creature. To my surprise two trees came toward me. I aimed the shaking gun toward them when one of them said, “Stop! Don’t shoot us!”
It was so shocking to hear a tree talk that I obeyed its command.
They continued to advance on me when they stopped a few feet away and one of them ripped its top off revealing a human head. It was the agent.
“Give me that gun,” he said with an outstretched branch.
“Absolutely not!” I said, holding it away from him like a kid withholding a toy from a parent. “Where have you two been?”
The other agent removed his treetop as well.
“We were staking out the area,” he said. “You two were supposed to bring it to us so we could capture it.”
“Bring it to you? How were we supposed to do that?”
He stared at me for a long time, looking as though he was unsure of what to say.
I finally got it.
“You used me as bait,” I said. “You knew once that thing got my scent it would follow me.”
He shrugged. “It was as good a plan as any.”
“Except, it caught on to your little plan and now Ray is in harms way, and could already be dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?” he said.
I described him being taken with a special emphasis on the blood spray.
He stared at me silently.
“We need to regroup and think what our next tactic is.”
“Our next tactic is to find this thing and put as many holes in it as possible before it has Ray for an afternoon snack,” I said holding up the gun for emphasis.
“I told you, we’re bringing it in alive.”
“Even at the cost of our lives?” I said, looking from one agent to the other.
My point seemed to sink in grudgingly with both of them.
“We still need to find it,” the head agent said. “After we find it, we can debate killing it or not.”
“Fine, this way,” I said, starting in the same direction I’d seen the creature and Ray disappear.
“Who died and made you boss?” he said following as quickly as his tree outfit would let him.
I turned and faced him, serious as a heart attack.
“Hopefully not Ray,” I said, then turned and resumed in the direction I’d seen them.
I didn’t turn back to see if they were following, but I could hear trees rustling behind me. I hoped that was them, or I was in trouble.
As we walked, my senses were on alert, watching, and listening for the creature in hopes that it wouldn’t pull another sneak attack. Thinking back to the brief battle, I wondered how many of my six shots hit the beast, and how many might’ve hit Ray. I couldn’t be that careless in the upcoming fight. I would have to take better aim and be patient. Not only was there Ray to think of as a potential victim, but also the two clowns behind me dressed up as trees.
We weren’t on any trail, and that made it rough going for me. My legs were still sensitive and I had rushed out of the house in just a pair of shorts and a Metallica t-shirt. The rain poncho I wore gave me a little warmth, but not as much as I would’ve liked. When we left, it was nice out, with the temperature in the mid-seventies, but once the rain started, it dropped ten degrees. That plus the fact that we were walking through rough country, avoiding jaggers, thorns, and all kinds of plants that seemed like they were designed just for the annoyance factor. I can’t imagine how those two behind me were doing in their ridiculous tree outfits.
I turned to check on them, but they were gone.
Slowly looking around the forest, I searched for them, but they were nowhere to be found. With their outfits on, they could’ve been right beside me and I wouldn’t know it. They also admitted to using me as bait. Maybe that’s what they were doing again.
I wish I would’ve stayed home, ordered a pizza, and watched Wipeout on TV, then fallen asleep on the couch. That would’ve been a good first day home from the hospital. Instead I was freezing in the middle of the woods, all alone, and now that I had looked around, I lost which direction I was going. So now I was officially lost in the woods.
Great.
The rain was coming down harder now. I decided to look for some kind of shelter and regroup. I walked forward, looking not for the creature, but anything I could use to hide from the rain. A cave would be great, as long as nothing was in it. A fallen tree that I could sit under would do as well.
In the end, I lucked out, I hadn’t gone far when a cave appeared up ahead. Instead of blundering inside, I circled around and watched the entrance for a while, until I was cold enough to ignore the potential danger and get out of the rain.
Standing in the mouth of the cave helped a little by getting me out of the rain, but I was still freezing. I turned and looked inside. The huge maw of blackness stared back out. Even using my flashlight didn’t tell me much about my impromptu rest stop.
Hanging out near the entrance was not advised. I would have to find someplace else once the rain stopped. But as I looked up a flash of light, followed soon by a crash of thunder that made the world shake, told me the rain wasn’t about to let up.
A cold as I was, it would take a special kind of crazy to go exploring this cave that could hold any number of wild animals who had no problem eating humans. I hoped one of them wouldn’t be the creature. What did the agent call it, a Wendigo?
Against every survival instinct, I shone my light into the cave and started walking. It was big, at least twelve feet from the ceiling, but the walls were smooth, almost like it had been dug with a machine. There weren’t a lot of rocks and debris like you would envision in a cave. It seemed like someone had made this cave and concealed it as natural. But why? There was nothing out here in the middle of the woods. Even the cave itself was far off the beaten path.
As I was wondering about the nature of the cave I heard a sound behind me. Slowly I turned, hoping that the creature hadn’t snuck up behind me like it did with Ray.
All I saw was two trees standing on either side of the cave.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Like no one’s going to notice two trees suddenly growing in the middle of a cave with no sunlight?”
Neither tree moved, but I was sure one of them make a shushing sound.
I shook my head and continued into the cave. The further I went the more the flashlight struggled to ward off the dark. It was like the light was overwhelmed by the darkness.
As big as the cave was, I came to a spot where it opened up into a larger room. The ceiling was so far up it was hard for the flashlight to reach. As I scanned around the room with the light, I settled on something over in the corner. The closer I got to it the more I wanted to turn around and leave.
I stepped up right beside it and pulled my shirt collar up over my nose to cover the stench of death and decay.
It was Ray, or what was left of him, strung up on a rack. Both his legs were gone and the huge puddle of blood under him didn’t give me hope that he had survived. I reached up and felt for a pulse anyway. My hand went right into the opening where the creature had slashed his neck. There was no pulse. At least I didn’t see any bullet holes in him. That made me feel a little better.
I hung my head and turned to report to the trees following me when I saw a sight that made me question reality. The creature had returned. It was in a life and death battle with a tree. It had picked the tree up and was holding it near the top. The tree was kicking and punching the creature as though its life depended on it.
The creature seemed confused at first, but once the tree delivered a well-placed kick, the creature seemed to decide that it had enough. It swung the tree around effortlessly like a baseball bat and smashed it into a wall. The sickening crunching sound it made on impact were a combination of wood and bone breaking.
The tree instantly went limp, but the creature wanted to make sure. It threw the tree at the other wall leaving a red splotch on impact before collapsing the to ground.
The second tree hadn’t moved the entire time. The creature stepped close to it, suddenly suspicious. It reached out when I made my decision to act.
I pulled out the gun, aimed at the creature’s head and squeezed the trigger.
I’d never fired a .44 magnum in a cave before, and I never will again.
My ears were ringing so bad, I couldn’t hear anything. I saw the tree holding its ears as well as the wendigo. Its mouth was open and I imagined it was screaming, but I couldn’t hear it.
I don’t know what happened. If something in me just snapped, or I realized I was about to end up like Ray. I ran up to the wendigo while it was disoriented by the gunshot, stuck the gun under its chin near its neck and squeezed the trigger five more times.
The top of its head exploded with a geyser of bone and blood. It screamed so loud I even heard it through my hopefully temporary deafness.
I didn’t hang around to see what was going to happen. I ran toward the cave entrance, grabbing the uninjured tree and pulling him out with me. It only took a moment for the tree to get the point and run along.
Once out, he guided me back to the trail and took the top of his tree disguise off to talk to me.
“I told you I wanted that thing alive,” he said, looking and sounding very unhappy.
“Why don’t you tell Ray and the other agent you just lost how that thing’s life was more important than theirs?”
He glared at me.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I just shot a wendigo at point blank range. You think your little glare is going to frighten me?”
He continued to glare.
“Ok, you have two choices here,” I said. “Either drive me home or give me your keys.”
He finally allowed his shoulders to relax and started walking.
“I’m not giving you the keys to my car,” he muttered.
We walked back out in silence. Whatever his deal was with bringing the creature in alive, he was serious about it.
I was just glad the whole ordeal was over.
“Do you think its dead?” I said.
He ignored me for a few minutes, then finally said, “I don’t know. I’ve heard some amazing stories about how they recuperate.”
“Wow, gee thanks, I feel so much safer now,” I said as we rounded a corner and there standing in the middle of the trail was a huge bear.
We both froze.
“What do we do?” I whispered to him.
“Shut up,” he whispered back.
We stood as still as humanly possible as the bear sniffed the air and lumbered up to us. For some reason it looked familiar. Could it possibly be the same bear that fought with the wendigo over a week ago. It had some scars and scratch marks on it that looked partially healed.
It stepped up to the agent and stared at him. Perhaps it had never seen a tree partially eat a human before. That’s what he looked like with the top of the outfit off. Like the tree had half digested a human the way a snake devours its prey.
Then it stepped over and sniffed me. Its eyes grew wide with what I would almost call fear. But that couldn’t be right, could it. I mean why would a bear be afraid of me.
It turned tail and ran off into the woods without looking back.
“What was that about?” I said.
“Do you really want to question it, or just get out of here?”
“Get out of here,” I said, my feet already double-timing it down the trail.
We were within sight of the car before we slowed down. Both of us were breathing hard from powerwalking the whole way. I was sure it couldn’t have been easy for him in that tree suit.
“I think I may have figured it out,” he said as we arrived at the car and he fished out his keys.
“Do tell, oh wise one,” I said.
“It smelled the wendigo’s blood on you.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Think about it, if you’re enough of a badass to have wendigo blood on you, the bear probably didn’t want to mess with you.”
I thought about it and it made sense in a way.
Just as we were about to leave, we heard an inhuman shriek off in the distance. He turned to me with a gleam in his eyes.
“Oh no,” I said. “You take me home right now, then I don’t care if you go try to hunt this thing down and end up getting eaten.”
“Oh all right,” he said pouting.
We drove in silence, each of us in our own world of thoughts. Every once in a while I couldn’t help glancing in the rear view mirror, just to be sure.
When we arrived at my house I got out and turned to leave, then stopped.
“Why was that cave man made?” I said.
“What makes you think it was man made?” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“The walls and ceiling were too smooth,” I said.
“They seemed rough enough to me,” he said.
“So you’re not going to tell me that there was a secret military base nearby?”
“You enjoy your recuperation, sir,” he said, handing me a business card. “If you ever have problems like this again, give me a call.”
I dropped the card on the seat.
“I think I’d be better off on my own,” I said. “You don’t protect your partners very well.”
I walked inside my house without looking back.
2024.05.07 11:13 Horror_writer_1717 Camping alone can be terrifying, especially when something's hunting you. Part 2
A week later I walked out of the hospital, literally. The doctors said I’d been very lucky. Because I’d been sweating, the oil didn’t stick to my skin. Since oil and water don’t mix, it was literally floating on top of the sweat on my legs. Even though I did receive some burns, they weren’t nearly as bad as they could’ve been.
I guess I’m just one lucky guy. Now I get to go home and barricade myself in my house, hoping that thing forgets about me, or better yet, that it had died from its burn injuries.
When I got home, I walked up to the front door and saw the scratches on it. I took the steps one at a time, looking at the doorframe where it had gotten stuck, trying to gouge my eyes out. I opened the front door slowly as if expecting it to be waiting behind the door to nab me and drag me off into the forest to do unspeakable things to me. I released my white knuckles from the doorknob then quickly shut and locked the door.
Splinters and sawdust covered the carpet, along with muddy, inhuman, footprints. After doing a quick walkthrough of the house to make sure it wasn’t there, I grabbed the vacuum and started cleaning.
I had just finished when a knock at my door nearly sent me through the ceiling.
Peeking out through the peephole, I saw the man who’d saved me that night, and opened the door.
“What’re you doing here?” I said.
“I came to check on you,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
I stepped aside and motioned for him to enter. He stepped in and scoped out the room.
“It’s surprisingly clean for having a wendigo nearly destroy it.”
“I just got done vacuuming.”
He eyed me up and down.
“Of course you did,” he said plopping into a comfortable chair.
“So how goes the hunt?” I said, sitting in my usual chair.
He shifted in his seat.
“It’s going well.”
“So you’ve captured it then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Killed it?”
He shook his head.
“Then what have you done?”
“I saved your life.”
“And I thank you. What have you done lately?”
“Well, that’s kind of what I’m here for,” he said. “How would you like to join our team?”
“Team of what?”
“Cryptid hunters.”
I looked at him with sheer disbelief.
“Pass.”
“You haven’t even heard… “
“I don’t want anything to do with that thing,” I said, walking into the kitchen.
“But you’re the only one who’s ever survived an attack.”
I wondered to myself if that was true or if he was just trying to make my pride force me into a bad decision.
“Pass,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be going alone,” he said, getting up and following me to the kitchen. “There’s two other cryptid hunters that would be along, plus me.”
“Not interested,” I said.
“There’s a reward for its capture. You’d get a share of it.”
“No deal,” I said, starting up the stairs.
He seemed flustered, grasping at straws.
“You’d get to carry a big gun,” he said.
I paused halfway up the stairs.
“How big of a gun?”
“Big.”
I thought about it for a long moment.
“Alright,” I said then continued up the stairs.
“Great, then let’s go.”
I paused.
“What do you mean, let’s go? Like right now? I just got home.”
“We need to strike while the trail is fresh.”
“Fresh? A week old is fresh?”
He shrugged. “The guys and your equipment are in the truck.”
“Can I at least grab a shower first?”
There was an odd look in his eye.
“No need,” he said. “We’ll be out on the trail.”
We stood in a silent stare down for a long moment, then I shrugged and came back down the steps.
“So how much money will I be making,” I said.
He smiled. “Enough.”
I followed him outside, turning at the last moment to lock my front door that had seen better days and looked like a stiff breeze would blow it over.
He grinned but said nothing as we approached the truck and climbed in the back doors.
The two men in the front merely nodded when we got in, then the driver started the truck and drove away toward the woods. I wasn’t having pleasant memories flashback when we pulled into the same trailhead I had barely escaped from just over a week ago. I had to wonder if I’d had some head trauma they hadn’t noticed at the hospital, or if Mr. three letter government agency had drugged me without my knowledge to get me to come back here.
I was tempted to run as soon as I opened the door, but I didn’t want to look like a coward in front of these guys, even though I didn’t know them from Adam and they each had a good fifty pounds of pure muscle on me. We stepped around to the back and Mr. three handed me a backpack that was so heavy it nearly pulled me over.
“You gonna be good with that,” he said noticing my struggle. “You can take some stuff out if you want.”
“Nope, I’m good,” I said, hefting it onto my back and somehow managing to keep it there without my knees buckling under the weight.
Next he handed me a belt that had all kinds of stuff on it, including the big gun. It was a revolver, but the cylinder was so long, I wondered if it would shoot rifle shells.
“Just remember,” he told me. “We’re trying to capture it, not kill it.”
“That was never part of the deal,” I said.
“It is if you want the big payday.”
I stopped in front of him.
“What if I want revenge?”
He looked me up and down, sizing me up as if seeing me for the first time.
“Then you should go home and leave the hunting to us,” he said, then stepped around me and started down the trail.
The second hunter followed him, but the third stayed behind and stared at me.
“Aren’t you following them?” I said.
“I’m the rear guard,” he said. “I go last and watch everybody else’s back.”
“So, you’re waiting to see if I follow them or tuck my tail between my legs and slink home?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I looked from the trail to the road and back again, then slumped my shoulders and started down the trail.
“So, what do I call you?” I said over my shoulder to the hunter behind me.
He was silent for a moment, then softly said, “You can call me Ray.”
My mind shot back to an old comedy routine I’d seen on one of those classic TV shows.
“Alright, Ray, I guess it’s gonna be you and me for a while, because I know I won’t be catching up to them with what feels like a Buick strapped t my back.”
“He told you to take out whatever you felt you didn’t need.”
“Ever heard of this thing called pride, Ray?”
He shook his head ruefully.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “Does that mean I can count on you to continue to make stupid decisions?”
I stopped and turned on him.
“I think the answer is obvious.”
“Great,” he said with no small amount of sarcasm.
We started down the trail and I must say, I did pretty well for around a half hour. And when I say pretty well, I mean trudging, heaving, and moaning at the incredible amount of weight on my back as we slowly followed the trail through the forest. To make things worse, it started to drizzle.
It didn’t take too long for him to have…
“Enough!” he said. “Just stop right here.”
I obeyed and nearly fell over backward as gravity grabbed the backpack and tried to hurl it to the ground. If it wouldn’t have been for Ray catching me, I would’ve hit the ground hard and rolled around like a helpless turtle, unable to get up on my own.
He lifted the pack off my back effortlessly and set it on the ground. He dug through it and started thrusting things toward me.
“Here,” he said, shoving a handful of granola bars toward me. “Put these in your pants pockets.”
Next, he handed me a flashlight and some extra rounds of ammo, a water bottle, and a rain poncho. I took the poncho out of its wrapper and put it on.
The first few steps I took sounded like I was wearing a snow suit. Everything he’d given me to stow in my pockets made some kind of noise. The granola bar wrappers rubbed together, the rounds of ammo clinked and clicked, even the rain poncho made noise when I took a step.
“I thought we were trying to sneak up on this thing,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “I sound like a freakin’ one man band.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said avoiding my eyes as he set the pack off to the side of the trail and stepped past me. “I’m sure the rain will cover your sounds.”
I looked up and only a few drops landed on my cheeks. The rest was just a fine mist. Narrowing my eyes, I watched as Ray walked ahead of me on the trail. I hadn’t known him long, but it was easy to see he was hiding something. Maybe he didn’t want to scare me so I would keep on with the search. In any case, I rested my hand on the gun in its holster for comfort.
“Don’t go pulling that out unless you have to,” he said without looking back. “Remember, we’re here to capture, not kill.”
“Maybe you are,” I said.
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned toward me.
“Look, I get it. You’re scared. I would be too if this was the first time I was hunting something like this, but you have to do things our way so no one gets hurt, understand?”
He hadn’t said it a threatening way, just matter of fact, but I still found myself taking a step back.
“What if that thing decides it wants to hurt someone?”
He looked me in the eyes.
“Then we stop it,” he said, then turned and started down the trail not even checking to see if I was following.
I sighed and fell in step behind him, finding it much easier now without the heavy pack of doom weighing me down. I still rested my hand on the gun as we walked.
The forest was quiet. The animals weren’t making much sound and the wind was still. I didn’t know if it was the intensifying rain or something else that seemed to spook them.
“Ray.” I heard someone whisper.
He stopped and whipped around on me.
“What?” he said, looking at me.
“I didn’t say anything.”
His eyes were full of suspicion but he continued along the trail.
It wasn’t long until we heard the sound again.
“Ray… “
His eyes instantly shot to me but I held up my hands in surrender and shook my head.
He scanned the trees, looking for where the voice had come from when we heard it again. This time he was able to focus in on where it had come from. He started toward it without a second glance at me.
“Wait a minute,” I whispered. “Are you sure you want to follow this?”
“Of course,” he said, but his eyes had an otherworldly quality to them like he’d been hypnotized or somehow was under the voice’s spell.
He stepped forward slowly, but not carefully. It was as if he were being drawn and started walking into the woods in front of me. He had almost disappeared when suddenly the creature appeared as huge and real as ever. Its skin was burned all over its body and hanging loosely in some places like it was about to fall off. It was much more terrifying than the last time I’d seen it. Even the hide of the other animal that it wore as a shawl seemed melted to its shoulders.
It slashed Ray across the throat in one lightning fast motion. All I saw was a spray of red before the creature picked Ray up and started off into the woods.
Before I knew what was happening, my gun was in my hand and I was firing it over and over at the beast as it escaped with its prize. I fired the gun empty, but kept squeezing the trigger on empty cylinders. Finally, I realized I wasn’t shooting anymore and emptied the shell casings out, digging into my pocket to reload and dropping bullets in my haste.
Once I finally had it reloaded, I slammed the cylinder shut and looked for the creature. To my surprise two trees came toward me. I aimed the shaking gun toward them when one of them said, “Stop! Don’t shoot us!”
It was so shocking to hear a tree talk that I obeyed its command.
They continued to advance on me when they stopped a few feet away and one of them ripped its top off revealing a human head. It was the agent.
“Give me that gun,” he said with an outstretched branch.
“Absolutely not!” I said, holding it away from him like a kid withholding a toy from a parent. “Where have you two been?”
The other agent removed his treetop as well.
“We were staking out the area,” he said. “You two were supposed to bring it to us so we could capture it.”
“Bring it to you? How were we supposed to do that?”
He stared at me for a long time, looking as though he was unsure of what to say.
I finally got it.
“You used me as bait,” I said. “You knew once that thing got my scent it would follow me.”
He shrugged. “It was as good a plan as any.”
“Except, it caught on to your little plan and now Ray is in harms way, and could already be dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?” he said.
I described him being taken with a special emphasis on the blood spray.
He stared at me silently.
“We need to regroup and think what our next tactic is.”
“Our next tactic is to find this thing and put as many holes in it as possible before it has Ray for an afternoon snack,” I said holding up the gun for emphasis.
“I told you, we’re bringing it in alive.”
“Even at the cost of our lives?” I said, looking from one agent to the other.
My point seemed to sink in grudgingly with both of them.
“We still need to find it,” the head agent said. “After we find it, we can debate killing it or not.”
“Fine, this way,” I said, starting in the same direction I’d seen the creature and Ray disappear.
“Who died and made you boss?” he said following as quickly as his tree outfit would let him.
I turned and faced him, serious as a heart attack.
“Hopefully not Ray,” I said, then turned and resumed in the direction I’d seen them.
I didn’t turn back to see if they were following, but I could hear trees rustling behind me. I hoped that was them, or I was in trouble.
As we walked, my senses were on alert, watching, and listening for the creature in hopes that it wouldn’t pull another sneak attack. Thinking back to the brief battle, I wondered how many of my six shots hit the beast, and how many might’ve hit Ray. I couldn’t be that careless in the upcoming fight. I would have to take better aim and be patient. Not only was there Ray to think of as a potential victim, but also the two clowns behind me dressed up as trees.
We weren’t on any trail, and that made it rough going for me. My legs were still sensitive and I had rushed out of the house in just a pair of shorts and a Metallica t-shirt. The rain poncho I wore gave me a little warmth, but not as much as I would’ve liked. When we left, it was nice out, with the temperature in the mid-seventies, but once the rain started, it dropped ten degrees. That plus the fact that we were walking through rough country, avoiding jaggers, thorns, and all kinds of plants that seemed like they were designed just for the annoyance factor. I can’t imagine how those two behind me were doing in their ridiculous tree outfits.
I turned to check on them, but they were gone.
Slowly looking around the forest, I searched for them, but they were nowhere to be found. With their outfits on, they could’ve been right beside me and I wouldn’t know it. They also admitted to using me as bait. Maybe that’s what they were doing again.
I wish I would’ve stayed home, ordered a pizza, and watched Wipeout on TV, then fallen asleep on the couch. That would’ve been a good first day home from the hospital. Instead I was freezing in the middle of the woods, all alone, and now that I had looked around, I lost which direction I was going. So now I was officially lost in the woods.
Great.
The rain was coming down harder now. I decided to look for some kind of shelter and regroup. I walked forward, looking not for the creature, but anything I could use to hide from the rain. A cave would be great, as long as nothing was in it. A fallen tree that I could sit under would do as well.
In the end, I lucked out, I hadn’t gone far when a cave appeared up ahead. Instead of blundering inside, I circled around and watched the entrance for a while, until I was cold enough to ignore the potential danger and get out of the rain.
Standing in the mouth of the cave helped a little by getting me out of the rain, but I was still freezing. I turned and looked inside. The huge maw of blackness stared back out. Even using my flashlight didn’t tell me much about my impromptu rest stop.
Hanging out near the entrance was not advised. I would have to find someplace else once the rain stopped. But as I looked up a flash of light, followed soon by a crash of thunder that made the world shake, told me the rain wasn’t about to let up.
A cold as I was, it would take a special kind of crazy to go exploring this cave that could hold any number of wild animals who had no problem eating humans. I hoped one of them wouldn’t be the creature. What did the agent call it, a Wendigo?
Against every survival instinct, I shone my light into the cave and started walking. It was big, at least twelve feet from the ceiling, but the walls were smooth, almost like it had been dug with a machine. There weren’t a lot of rocks and debris like you would envision in a cave. It seemed like someone had made this cave and concealed it as natural. But why? There was nothing out here in the middle of the woods. Even the cave itself was far off the beaten path.
As I was wondering about the nature of the cave I heard a sound behind me. Slowly I turned, hoping that the creature hadn’t snuck up behind me like it did with Ray.
All I saw was two trees standing on either side of the cave.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Like no one’s going to notice two trees suddenly growing in the middle of a cave with no sunlight?”
Neither tree moved, but I was sure one of them make a shushing sound.
I shook my head and continued into the cave. The further I went the more the flashlight struggled to ward off the dark. It was like the light was overwhelmed by the darkness.
As big as the cave was, I came to a spot where it opened up into a larger room. The ceiling was so far up it was hard for the flashlight to reach. As I scanned around the room with the light, I settled on something over in the corner. The closer I got to it the more I wanted to turn around and leave.
I stepped up right beside it and pulled my shirt collar up over my nose to cover the stench of death and decay.
It was Ray, or what was left of him, strung up on a rack. Both his legs were gone and the huge puddle of blood under him didn’t give me hope that he had survived. I reached up and felt for a pulse anyway. My hand went right into the opening where the creature had slashed his neck. There was no pulse. At least I didn’t see any bullet holes in him. That made me feel a little better.
I hung my head and turned to report to the trees following me when I saw a sight that made me question reality. The creature had returned. It was in a life and death battle with a tree. It had picked the tree up and was holding it near the top. The tree was kicking and punching the creature as though its life depended on it.
The creature seemed confused at first, but once the tree delivered a well-placed kick, the creature seemed to decide that it had enough. It swung the tree around effortlessly like a baseball bat and smashed it into a wall. The sickening crunching sound it made on impact were a combination of wood and bone breaking.
The tree instantly went limp, but the creature wanted to make sure. It threw the tree at the other wall leaving a red splotch on impact before collapsing the to ground.
The second tree hadn’t moved the entire time. The creature stepped close to it, suddenly suspicious. It reached out when I made my decision to act.
I pulled out the gun, aimed at the creature’s head and squeezed the trigger.
I’d never fired a .44 magnum in a cave before, and I never will again.
My ears were ringing so bad, I couldn’t hear anything. I saw the tree holding its ears as well as the wendigo. Its mouth was open and I imagined it was screaming, but I couldn’t hear it.
I don’t know what happened. If something in me just snapped, or I realized I was about to end up like Ray. I ran up to the wendigo while it was disoriented by the gunshot, stuck the gun under its chin near its neck and squeezed the trigger five more times.
The top of its head exploded with a geyser of bone and blood. It screamed so loud I even heard it through my hopefully temporary deafness.
I didn’t hang around to see what was going to happen. I ran toward the cave entrance, grabbing the uninjured tree and pulling him out with me. It only took a moment for the tree to get the point and run along.
Once out, he guided me back to the trail and took the top of his tree disguise off to talk to me.
“I told you I wanted that thing alive,” he said, looking and sounding very unhappy.
“Why don’t you tell Ray and the other agent you just lost how that thing’s life was more important than theirs?”
He glared at me.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I just shot a wendigo at point blank range. You think your little glare is going to frighten me?”
He continued to glare.
“Ok, you have two choices here,” I said. “Either drive me home or give me your keys.”
He finally allowed his shoulders to relax and started walking.
“I’m not giving you the keys to my car,” he muttered.
We walked back out in silence. Whatever his deal was with bringing the creature in alive, he was serious about it.
I was just glad the whole ordeal was over.
“Do you think its dead?” I said.
He ignored me for a few minutes, then finally said, “I don’t know. I’ve heard some amazing stories about how they recuperate.”
“Wow, gee thanks, I feel so much safer now,” I said as we rounded a corner and there standing in the middle of the trail was a huge bear.
We both froze.
“What do we do?” I whispered to him.
“Shut up,” he whispered back.
We stood as still as humanly possible as the bear sniffed the air and lumbered up to us. For some reason it looked familiar. Could it possibly be the same bear that fought with the wendigo over a week ago. It had some scars and scratch marks on it that looked partially healed.
It stepped up to the agent and stared at him. Perhaps it had never seen a tree partially eat a human before. That’s what he looked like with the top of the outfit off. Like the tree had half digested a human the way a snake devours its prey.
Then it stepped over and sniffed me. Its eyes grew wide with what I would almost call fear. But that couldn’t be right, could it. I mean why would a bear be afraid of me.
It turned tail and ran off into the woods without looking back.
“What was that about?” I said.
“Do you really want to question it, or just get out of here?”
“Get out of here,” I said, my feet already double-timing it down the trail.
We were within sight of the car before we slowed down. Both of us were breathing hard from powerwalking the whole way. I was sure it couldn’t have been easy for him in that tree suit.
“I think I may have figured it out,” he said as we arrived at the car and he fished out his keys.
“Do tell, oh wise one,” I said.
“It smelled the wendigo’s blood on you.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Think about it, if you’re enough of a badass to have wendigo blood on you, the bear probably didn’t want to mess with you.”
I thought about it and it made sense in a way.
Just as we were about to leave, we heard an inhuman shriek off in the distance. He turned to me with a gleam in his eyes.
“Oh no,” I said. “You take me home right now, then I don’t care if you go try to hunt this thing down and end up getting eaten.”
“Oh all right,” he said pouting.
We drove in silence, each of us in our own world of thoughts. Every once in a while I couldn’t help glancing in the rear view mirror, just to be sure.
When we arrived at my house I got out and turned to leave, then stopped.
“Why was that cave man made?” I said.
“What makes you think it was man made?” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“The walls and ceiling were too smooth,” I said.
“They seemed rough enough to me,” he said.
“So you’re not going to tell me that there was a secret military base nearby?”
“You enjoy your recuperation, sir,” he said, handing me a business card. “If you ever have problems like this again, give me a call.”
I dropped the card on the seat.
“I think I’d be better off on my own,” I said. “You don’t protect your partners very well.”
I walked inside my house without looking back.
Part 1
submitted by Horror_writer_1717 to nosleep [link] [comments]
I guess I’m just one lucky guy. Now I get to go home and barricade myself in my house, hoping that thing forgets about me, or better yet, that it had died from its burn injuries.
When I got home, I walked up to the front door and saw the scratches on it. I took the steps one at a time, looking at the doorframe where it had gotten stuck, trying to gouge my eyes out. I opened the front door slowly as if expecting it to be waiting behind the door to nab me and drag me off into the forest to do unspeakable things to me. I released my white knuckles from the doorknob then quickly shut and locked the door.
Splinters and sawdust covered the carpet, along with muddy, inhuman, footprints. After doing a quick walkthrough of the house to make sure it wasn’t there, I grabbed the vacuum and started cleaning.
I had just finished when a knock at my door nearly sent me through the ceiling.
Peeking out through the peephole, I saw the man who’d saved me that night, and opened the door.
“What’re you doing here?” I said.
“I came to check on you,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
I stepped aside and motioned for him to enter. He stepped in and scoped out the room.
“It’s surprisingly clean for having a wendigo nearly destroy it.”
“I just got done vacuuming.”
He eyed me up and down.
“Of course you did,” he said plopping into a comfortable chair.
“So how goes the hunt?” I said, sitting in my usual chair.
He shifted in his seat.
“It’s going well.”
“So you’ve captured it then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Killed it?”
He shook his head.
“Then what have you done?”
“I saved your life.”
“And I thank you. What have you done lately?”
“Well, that’s kind of what I’m here for,” he said. “How would you like to join our team?”
“Team of what?”
“Cryptid hunters.”
I looked at him with sheer disbelief.
“Pass.”
“You haven’t even heard… “
“I don’t want anything to do with that thing,” I said, walking into the kitchen.
“But you’re the only one who’s ever survived an attack.”
I wondered to myself if that was true or if he was just trying to make my pride force me into a bad decision.
“Pass,” I said.
“You wouldn’t be going alone,” he said, getting up and following me to the kitchen. “There’s two other cryptid hunters that would be along, plus me.”
“Not interested,” I said.
“There’s a reward for its capture. You’d get a share of it.”
“No deal,” I said, starting up the stairs.
He seemed flustered, grasping at straws.
“You’d get to carry a big gun,” he said.
I paused halfway up the stairs.
“How big of a gun?”
“Big.”
I thought about it for a long moment.
“Alright,” I said then continued up the stairs.
“Great, then let’s go.”
I paused.
“What do you mean, let’s go? Like right now? I just got home.”
“We need to strike while the trail is fresh.”
“Fresh? A week old is fresh?”
He shrugged. “The guys and your equipment are in the truck.”
“Can I at least grab a shower first?”
There was an odd look in his eye.
“No need,” he said. “We’ll be out on the trail.”
We stood in a silent stare down for a long moment, then I shrugged and came back down the steps.
“So how much money will I be making,” I said.
He smiled. “Enough.”
I followed him outside, turning at the last moment to lock my front door that had seen better days and looked like a stiff breeze would blow it over.
He grinned but said nothing as we approached the truck and climbed in the back doors.
The two men in the front merely nodded when we got in, then the driver started the truck and drove away toward the woods. I wasn’t having pleasant memories flashback when we pulled into the same trailhead I had barely escaped from just over a week ago. I had to wonder if I’d had some head trauma they hadn’t noticed at the hospital, or if Mr. three letter government agency had drugged me without my knowledge to get me to come back here.
I was tempted to run as soon as I opened the door, but I didn’t want to look like a coward in front of these guys, even though I didn’t know them from Adam and they each had a good fifty pounds of pure muscle on me. We stepped around to the back and Mr. three handed me a backpack that was so heavy it nearly pulled me over.
“You gonna be good with that,” he said noticing my struggle. “You can take some stuff out if you want.”
“Nope, I’m good,” I said, hefting it onto my back and somehow managing to keep it there without my knees buckling under the weight.
Next he handed me a belt that had all kinds of stuff on it, including the big gun. It was a revolver, but the cylinder was so long, I wondered if it would shoot rifle shells.
“Just remember,” he told me. “We’re trying to capture it, not kill it.”
“That was never part of the deal,” I said.
“It is if you want the big payday.”
I stopped in front of him.
“What if I want revenge?”
He looked me up and down, sizing me up as if seeing me for the first time.
“Then you should go home and leave the hunting to us,” he said, then stepped around me and started down the trail.
The second hunter followed him, but the third stayed behind and stared at me.
“Aren’t you following them?” I said.
“I’m the rear guard,” he said. “I go last and watch everybody else’s back.”
“So, you’re waiting to see if I follow them or tuck my tail between my legs and slink home?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I looked from the trail to the road and back again, then slumped my shoulders and started down the trail.
“So, what do I call you?” I said over my shoulder to the hunter behind me.
He was silent for a moment, then softly said, “You can call me Ray.”
My mind shot back to an old comedy routine I’d seen on one of those classic TV shows.
“Alright, Ray, I guess it’s gonna be you and me for a while, because I know I won’t be catching up to them with what feels like a Buick strapped t my back.”
“He told you to take out whatever you felt you didn’t need.”
“Ever heard of this thing called pride, Ray?”
He shook his head ruefully.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “Does that mean I can count on you to continue to make stupid decisions?”
I stopped and turned on him.
“I think the answer is obvious.”
“Great,” he said with no small amount of sarcasm.
We started down the trail and I must say, I did pretty well for around a half hour. And when I say pretty well, I mean trudging, heaving, and moaning at the incredible amount of weight on my back as we slowly followed the trail through the forest. To make things worse, it started to drizzle.
It didn’t take too long for him to have…
“Enough!” he said. “Just stop right here.”
I obeyed and nearly fell over backward as gravity grabbed the backpack and tried to hurl it to the ground. If it wouldn’t have been for Ray catching me, I would’ve hit the ground hard and rolled around like a helpless turtle, unable to get up on my own.
He lifted the pack off my back effortlessly and set it on the ground. He dug through it and started thrusting things toward me.
“Here,” he said, shoving a handful of granola bars toward me. “Put these in your pants pockets.”
Next, he handed me a flashlight and some extra rounds of ammo, a water bottle, and a rain poncho. I took the poncho out of its wrapper and put it on.
The first few steps I took sounded like I was wearing a snow suit. Everything he’d given me to stow in my pockets made some kind of noise. The granola bar wrappers rubbed together, the rounds of ammo clinked and clicked, even the rain poncho made noise when I took a step.
“I thought we were trying to sneak up on this thing,” I said, stopping in my tracks. “I sound like a freakin’ one man band.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said avoiding my eyes as he set the pack off to the side of the trail and stepped past me. “I’m sure the rain will cover your sounds.”
I looked up and only a few drops landed on my cheeks. The rest was just a fine mist. Narrowing my eyes, I watched as Ray walked ahead of me on the trail. I hadn’t known him long, but it was easy to see he was hiding something. Maybe he didn’t want to scare me so I would keep on with the search. In any case, I rested my hand on the gun in its holster for comfort.
“Don’t go pulling that out unless you have to,” he said without looking back. “Remember, we’re here to capture, not kill.”
“Maybe you are,” I said.
He stopped dead in his tracks and turned toward me.
“Look, I get it. You’re scared. I would be too if this was the first time I was hunting something like this, but you have to do things our way so no one gets hurt, understand?”
He hadn’t said it a threatening way, just matter of fact, but I still found myself taking a step back.
“What if that thing decides it wants to hurt someone?”
He looked me in the eyes.
“Then we stop it,” he said, then turned and started down the trail not even checking to see if I was following.
I sighed and fell in step behind him, finding it much easier now without the heavy pack of doom weighing me down. I still rested my hand on the gun as we walked.
The forest was quiet. The animals weren’t making much sound and the wind was still. I didn’t know if it was the intensifying rain or something else that seemed to spook them.
“Ray.” I heard someone whisper.
He stopped and whipped around on me.
“What?” he said, looking at me.
“I didn’t say anything.”
His eyes were full of suspicion but he continued along the trail.
It wasn’t long until we heard the sound again.
“Ray… “
His eyes instantly shot to me but I held up my hands in surrender and shook my head.
He scanned the trees, looking for where the voice had come from when we heard it again. This time he was able to focus in on where it had come from. He started toward it without a second glance at me.
“Wait a minute,” I whispered. “Are you sure you want to follow this?”
“Of course,” he said, but his eyes had an otherworldly quality to them like he’d been hypnotized or somehow was under the voice’s spell.
He stepped forward slowly, but not carefully. It was as if he were being drawn and started walking into the woods in front of me. He had almost disappeared when suddenly the creature appeared as huge and real as ever. Its skin was burned all over its body and hanging loosely in some places like it was about to fall off. It was much more terrifying than the last time I’d seen it. Even the hide of the other animal that it wore as a shawl seemed melted to its shoulders.
It slashed Ray across the throat in one lightning fast motion. All I saw was a spray of red before the creature picked Ray up and started off into the woods.
Before I knew what was happening, my gun was in my hand and I was firing it over and over at the beast as it escaped with its prize. I fired the gun empty, but kept squeezing the trigger on empty cylinders. Finally, I realized I wasn’t shooting anymore and emptied the shell casings out, digging into my pocket to reload and dropping bullets in my haste.
Once I finally had it reloaded, I slammed the cylinder shut and looked for the creature. To my surprise two trees came toward me. I aimed the shaking gun toward them when one of them said, “Stop! Don’t shoot us!”
It was so shocking to hear a tree talk that I obeyed its command.
They continued to advance on me when they stopped a few feet away and one of them ripped its top off revealing a human head. It was the agent.
“Give me that gun,” he said with an outstretched branch.
“Absolutely not!” I said, holding it away from him like a kid withholding a toy from a parent. “Where have you two been?”
The other agent removed his treetop as well.
“We were staking out the area,” he said. “You two were supposed to bring it to us so we could capture it.”
“Bring it to you? How were we supposed to do that?”
He stared at me for a long time, looking as though he was unsure of what to say.
I finally got it.
“You used me as bait,” I said. “You knew once that thing got my scent it would follow me.”
He shrugged. “It was as good a plan as any.”
“Except, it caught on to your little plan and now Ray is in harms way, and could already be dead.”
“What do you mean, dead?” he said.
I described him being taken with a special emphasis on the blood spray.
He stared at me silently.
“We need to regroup and think what our next tactic is.”
“Our next tactic is to find this thing and put as many holes in it as possible before it has Ray for an afternoon snack,” I said holding up the gun for emphasis.
“I told you, we’re bringing it in alive.”
“Even at the cost of our lives?” I said, looking from one agent to the other.
My point seemed to sink in grudgingly with both of them.
“We still need to find it,” the head agent said. “After we find it, we can debate killing it or not.”
“Fine, this way,” I said, starting in the same direction I’d seen the creature and Ray disappear.
“Who died and made you boss?” he said following as quickly as his tree outfit would let him.
I turned and faced him, serious as a heart attack.
“Hopefully not Ray,” I said, then turned and resumed in the direction I’d seen them.
I didn’t turn back to see if they were following, but I could hear trees rustling behind me. I hoped that was them, or I was in trouble.
As we walked, my senses were on alert, watching, and listening for the creature in hopes that it wouldn’t pull another sneak attack. Thinking back to the brief battle, I wondered how many of my six shots hit the beast, and how many might’ve hit Ray. I couldn’t be that careless in the upcoming fight. I would have to take better aim and be patient. Not only was there Ray to think of as a potential victim, but also the two clowns behind me dressed up as trees.
We weren’t on any trail, and that made it rough going for me. My legs were still sensitive and I had rushed out of the house in just a pair of shorts and a Metallica t-shirt. The rain poncho I wore gave me a little warmth, but not as much as I would’ve liked. When we left, it was nice out, with the temperature in the mid-seventies, but once the rain started, it dropped ten degrees. That plus the fact that we were walking through rough country, avoiding jaggers, thorns, and all kinds of plants that seemed like they were designed just for the annoyance factor. I can’t imagine how those two behind me were doing in their ridiculous tree outfits.
I turned to check on them, but they were gone.
Slowly looking around the forest, I searched for them, but they were nowhere to be found. With their outfits on, they could’ve been right beside me and I wouldn’t know it. They also admitted to using me as bait. Maybe that’s what they were doing again.
I wish I would’ve stayed home, ordered a pizza, and watched Wipeout on TV, then fallen asleep on the couch. That would’ve been a good first day home from the hospital. Instead I was freezing in the middle of the woods, all alone, and now that I had looked around, I lost which direction I was going. So now I was officially lost in the woods.
Great.
The rain was coming down harder now. I decided to look for some kind of shelter and regroup. I walked forward, looking not for the creature, but anything I could use to hide from the rain. A cave would be great, as long as nothing was in it. A fallen tree that I could sit under would do as well.
In the end, I lucked out, I hadn’t gone far when a cave appeared up ahead. Instead of blundering inside, I circled around and watched the entrance for a while, until I was cold enough to ignore the potential danger and get out of the rain.
Standing in the mouth of the cave helped a little by getting me out of the rain, but I was still freezing. I turned and looked inside. The huge maw of blackness stared back out. Even using my flashlight didn’t tell me much about my impromptu rest stop.
Hanging out near the entrance was not advised. I would have to find someplace else once the rain stopped. But as I looked up a flash of light, followed soon by a crash of thunder that made the world shake, told me the rain wasn’t about to let up.
A cold as I was, it would take a special kind of crazy to go exploring this cave that could hold any number of wild animals who had no problem eating humans. I hoped one of them wouldn’t be the creature. What did the agent call it, a Wendigo?
Against every survival instinct, I shone my light into the cave and started walking. It was big, at least twelve feet from the ceiling, but the walls were smooth, almost like it had been dug with a machine. There weren’t a lot of rocks and debris like you would envision in a cave. It seemed like someone had made this cave and concealed it as natural. But why? There was nothing out here in the middle of the woods. Even the cave itself was far off the beaten path.
As I was wondering about the nature of the cave I heard a sound behind me. Slowly I turned, hoping that the creature hadn’t snuck up behind me like it did with Ray.
All I saw was two trees standing on either side of the cave.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Like no one’s going to notice two trees suddenly growing in the middle of a cave with no sunlight?”
Neither tree moved, but I was sure one of them make a shushing sound.
I shook my head and continued into the cave. The further I went the more the flashlight struggled to ward off the dark. It was like the light was overwhelmed by the darkness.
As big as the cave was, I came to a spot where it opened up into a larger room. The ceiling was so far up it was hard for the flashlight to reach. As I scanned around the room with the light, I settled on something over in the corner. The closer I got to it the more I wanted to turn around and leave.
I stepped up right beside it and pulled my shirt collar up over my nose to cover the stench of death and decay.
It was Ray, or what was left of him, strung up on a rack. Both his legs were gone and the huge puddle of blood under him didn’t give me hope that he had survived. I reached up and felt for a pulse anyway. My hand went right into the opening where the creature had slashed his neck. There was no pulse. At least I didn’t see any bullet holes in him. That made me feel a little better.
I hung my head and turned to report to the trees following me when I saw a sight that made me question reality. The creature had returned. It was in a life and death battle with a tree. It had picked the tree up and was holding it near the top. The tree was kicking and punching the creature as though its life depended on it.
The creature seemed confused at first, but once the tree delivered a well-placed kick, the creature seemed to decide that it had enough. It swung the tree around effortlessly like a baseball bat and smashed it into a wall. The sickening crunching sound it made on impact were a combination of wood and bone breaking.
The tree instantly went limp, but the creature wanted to make sure. It threw the tree at the other wall leaving a red splotch on impact before collapsing the to ground.
The second tree hadn’t moved the entire time. The creature stepped close to it, suddenly suspicious. It reached out when I made my decision to act.
I pulled out the gun, aimed at the creature’s head and squeezed the trigger.
I’d never fired a .44 magnum in a cave before, and I never will again.
My ears were ringing so bad, I couldn’t hear anything. I saw the tree holding its ears as well as the wendigo. Its mouth was open and I imagined it was screaming, but I couldn’t hear it.
I don’t know what happened. If something in me just snapped, or I realized I was about to end up like Ray. I ran up to the wendigo while it was disoriented by the gunshot, stuck the gun under its chin near its neck and squeezed the trigger five more times.
The top of its head exploded with a geyser of bone and blood. It screamed so loud I even heard it through my hopefully temporary deafness.
I didn’t hang around to see what was going to happen. I ran toward the cave entrance, grabbing the uninjured tree and pulling him out with me. It only took a moment for the tree to get the point and run along.
Once out, he guided me back to the trail and took the top of his tree disguise off to talk to me.
“I told you I wanted that thing alive,” he said, looking and sounding very unhappy.
“Why don’t you tell Ray and the other agent you just lost how that thing’s life was more important than theirs?”
He glared at me.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “I just shot a wendigo at point blank range. You think your little glare is going to frighten me?”
He continued to glare.
“Ok, you have two choices here,” I said. “Either drive me home or give me your keys.”
He finally allowed his shoulders to relax and started walking.
“I’m not giving you the keys to my car,” he muttered.
We walked back out in silence. Whatever his deal was with bringing the creature in alive, he was serious about it.
I was just glad the whole ordeal was over.
“Do you think its dead?” I said.
He ignored me for a few minutes, then finally said, “I don’t know. I’ve heard some amazing stories about how they recuperate.”
“Wow, gee thanks, I feel so much safer now,” I said as we rounded a corner and there standing in the middle of the trail was a huge bear.
We both froze.
“What do we do?” I whispered to him.
“Shut up,” he whispered back.
We stood as still as humanly possible as the bear sniffed the air and lumbered up to us. For some reason it looked familiar. Could it possibly be the same bear that fought with the wendigo over a week ago. It had some scars and scratch marks on it that looked partially healed.
It stepped up to the agent and stared at him. Perhaps it had never seen a tree partially eat a human before. That’s what he looked like with the top of the outfit off. Like the tree had half digested a human the way a snake devours its prey.
Then it stepped over and sniffed me. Its eyes grew wide with what I would almost call fear. But that couldn’t be right, could it. I mean why would a bear be afraid of me.
It turned tail and ran off into the woods without looking back.
“What was that about?” I said.
“Do you really want to question it, or just get out of here?”
“Get out of here,” I said, my feet already double-timing it down the trail.
We were within sight of the car before we slowed down. Both of us were breathing hard from powerwalking the whole way. I was sure it couldn’t have been easy for him in that tree suit.
“I think I may have figured it out,” he said as we arrived at the car and he fished out his keys.
“Do tell, oh wise one,” I said.
“It smelled the wendigo’s blood on you.”
“What difference does that make?”
“Think about it, if you’re enough of a badass to have wendigo blood on you, the bear probably didn’t want to mess with you.”
I thought about it and it made sense in a way.
Just as we were about to leave, we heard an inhuman shriek off in the distance. He turned to me with a gleam in his eyes.
“Oh no,” I said. “You take me home right now, then I don’t care if you go try to hunt this thing down and end up getting eaten.”
“Oh all right,” he said pouting.
We drove in silence, each of us in our own world of thoughts. Every once in a while I couldn’t help glancing in the rear view mirror, just to be sure.
When we arrived at my house I got out and turned to leave, then stopped.
“Why was that cave man made?” I said.
“What makes you think it was man made?” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“The walls and ceiling were too smooth,” I said.
“They seemed rough enough to me,” he said.
“So you’re not going to tell me that there was a secret military base nearby?”
“You enjoy your recuperation, sir,” he said, handing me a business card. “If you ever have problems like this again, give me a call.”
I dropped the card on the seat.
“I think I’d be better off on my own,” I said. “You don’t protect your partners very well.”
I walked inside my house without looking back.
Part 1
2024.05.07 08:02 Any_Rip_7082 help igcse edexcel biology exam only 2 days left
my igcse biology exam is in 2 days and I'm super freaked out and worried about failing
I read up to unit 1 to unit 5 but the worst thing is I did not memorize anything nor diagrams and neither did I solve any questions
and when I see past papers my mind goes full blank
I need to get a passing mark in paper 1
please help
submitted by Any_Rip_7082 to GetStudying [link] [comments]
I read up to unit 1 to unit 5 but the worst thing is I did not memorize anything nor diagrams and neither did I solve any questions
and when I see past papers my mind goes full blank
I need to get a passing mark in paper 1
please help
2024.05.07 07:58 Any_Rip_7082 my igcse biology exam is in 2 days and I'm super freaked out and worried about failing
I read up to unit 1 to unit 5 but the worst thing is I did not memorize anything nor diagrams and neither did I solve any questions
and when I see past papers my mind goes full blank
I need to get a passing mark in paper 1
please help
submitted by Any_Rip_7082 to Olevels [link] [comments]
and when I see past papers my mind goes full blank
I need to get a passing mark in paper 1
please help
2024.05.07 06:56 mistressbitcoin Heart palpitations accompanied by a lot of burping... could it be my Vagus nerve?
Waiting a while to see a cardiologist... still a couple weeks out.
I have been having heart palpitations, and when they are more frequent, I feel like I constantly have to burp. Stomach feels fine, but i'm still burping a lot. It is sometimes triggered by doing a lot of excersize (ie, bouldering for a few hours).
Palpitations picked up quite a bit two weeks ago when I did a very strange bouldering move that resulted in a sharp pain down the side of my neck. I thought I pulled a muscle and that it would be sore for a while, but the pain went away after 15-30 minutes. That night I had an episode of quite a few palpitations with the weird feeling of always having to burp. Looking at a diagram of the neck, the pain could definitely have come from the Vagus nerve.
Has anyone had symptoms similar to this? Does it seem like a possibility? Thank you!
I was also working out a lot 5-6 days per week (rock climbing 3-6 hours per day) for about a month leading up to this, so my very first thought was that my electrolytes were severely depleted or that I really over-exercised.
submitted by mistressbitcoin to VagusNerve [link] [comments]
I have been having heart palpitations, and when they are more frequent, I feel like I constantly have to burp. Stomach feels fine, but i'm still burping a lot. It is sometimes triggered by doing a lot of excersize (ie, bouldering for a few hours).
Palpitations picked up quite a bit two weeks ago when I did a very strange bouldering move that resulted in a sharp pain down the side of my neck. I thought I pulled a muscle and that it would be sore for a while, but the pain went away after 15-30 minutes. That night I had an episode of quite a few palpitations with the weird feeling of always having to burp. Looking at a diagram of the neck, the pain could definitely have come from the Vagus nerve.
Has anyone had symptoms similar to this? Does it seem like a possibility? Thank you!
I was also working out a lot 5-6 days per week (rock climbing 3-6 hours per day) for about a month leading up to this, so my very first thought was that my electrolytes were severely depleted or that I really over-exercised.
2024.05.07 06:27 Capable_Research_578 Nightmares
YALL SHOULD READ BC ITS WILD Ive been having nightmares lately and every time i have a dream inside of a dream so i have to “wake up” twice before i wake up Dream 1: im sleep and i hear like groceries bags being shuffled around so i open my eyes and i can see my husband next to sleep and see my baby sleep in the crib but i can not move a muscle or speak i try screaming but nobody can hear me but i see a figure im assuming it was a ghost or something but im screaming really loud but i guess my husband hears me humming inside so he looks at me and im just moving my eyes around very fast like signaling him to wake me up so i had sleep paralysis in my dream and he shakes me and my body finally wakes up and we both see a ghost or demon or whatever so i grab my baby and were running throughout the house but every door i open keeps being another room (side note if yall have seen or heard about the winchester house it was about a lady that believed she had a ghost in her house but she loved her house so much she didn’t want to move so it was always under construction and they would add room and staircases and door that led to nowhere so the ghost would get confused and couldn’t find her) so back to the story so every room kept being another room so i literally couldn’t leave the house so we were trapped so i wake up but i wake up in another dream and in this dream me and my husband are packing our whole car up we also have our baby with us and we leave and somehow we run out of gas and we have to go with these other people with their big suv and they give us guns we also had a lot of food and water so i guess the world was ending or something i woke up before i got to the good part and i actually finally wake up wake up
Dream number 2
Im with my best friend brenda and around a lot of different people i ask her the time and she just looks at me with a blank face her eyes turn white and her head spins around like 3 times she grabs me and in a demonic voice she says wake up and get outtt so i wake up but this time again in another dream so in this dream im like in a mental hospital or something but the from America horror story asylum type of vibes and i tried escaping and i almost make it out and i see someone hanging them self ready to die so i cut the rope somehow and we managed escaping and somehow we get to a suburban area and then I finally wake up wake up
But those were my dreams it was wild af 😂😂 if yall have any wild one i lowkey wanna know
submitted by Capable_Research_578 to Dreams [link] [comments]
Dream number 2
Im with my best friend brenda and around a lot of different people i ask her the time and she just looks at me with a blank face her eyes turn white and her head spins around like 3 times she grabs me and in a demonic voice she says wake up and get outtt so i wake up but this time again in another dream so in this dream im like in a mental hospital or something but the from America horror story asylum type of vibes and i tried escaping and i almost make it out and i see someone hanging them self ready to die so i cut the rope somehow and we managed escaping and somehow we get to a suburban area and then I finally wake up wake up
But those were my dreams it was wild af 😂😂 if yall have any wild one i lowkey wanna know
2024.05.07 05:46 Any_Rip_7082 EDEXCEL Biology exam in 2 days need help
my igcse biology exam is in 2 days and I'm super freaked out and worried about failing
I read up to unit 1 to unit 5 but the worst thing is I did not memorize anything nor diagrams and neither did I solve any questions
and when I see past papers my mind goes full blank
I need to get a passing mark in paper 1
please help
submitted by Any_Rip_7082 to GCSE [link] [comments]
I read up to unit 1 to unit 5 but the worst thing is I did not memorize anything nor diagrams and neither did I solve any questions
and when I see past papers my mind goes full blank
I need to get a passing mark in paper 1
please help
2024.05.07 05:09 PussyWagon6969 Update: LED Wall Display Rig
 | First off, thanks to every ones feedback from my previous post! Thought I'd give some appropriate responses to the comments with another post and provide you an update of where I'm at today. submitted by PussyWagon6969 to simracing [link] [comments] TL;DR: learned a lot about the design flaws in the comments. I'm addressing them by eventually making it much larger but first I will build the small version (you saw previously) to better understand the physical build planning and custom parts I need to make in order to achieve the proposed screen curvature. Test build dimensions (aka not it's final form). Custom brackets (in blue) to achieve proposed curvature. Key Takeaways from the comments:
Where I'm At: Yesterday, I designed and 3D printed some brackets that get me the curvature I need represented in the CAD photo in the beginning of the post. So far, I'm seeing the major issues are going to be:
Very mini version to test the very first 3D printed brackets. Rear view of the custom brackets Detailed view of the brackets Top view of the bracket creating a 20 deg angle between panels Dat gap :/ Going to start by adjusting tolerance in my design to address this. |
2024.05.07 03:08 ApprehensiveCap6525 Exchange Program Shenanigans (46)
Yeah I think this community is long past its prime tbh. We've fallen off. May God help us.
CW: vietnamese sniper nest, jelim gets really high, jelim is misgendered at least once, properly foreshadowed plot twist, Prestige Exterminator Vrapic
Memory Transcription Subject: Jelim, Extermination Commander
Date (standardized human time): September 21, 2136
I was really not built to take breaks. I rarely ever did, but I couldn't really tell if that was the cause or the symptom of my not-quite-a-problem.
Well, sometimes it was a problem. I knew Jack would've liked it if I took more time off for my personal life. But, on the other branch, I had a lot of plaques on my office wall back at the district. Couldn't get that if I kept slacking off.
Well, technically, I wasn't slacking off. Technically, I was healing from the ass-beating I had gotten from Heval a little while. Yeah, I'd say I'm good as new by now. Pride's still bruised, though. But, still, people were dying. I should've been out there.
The news broadcast in my hospital bed turned off. That was a shame. It was the one thing I liked looking at in this sterile and soulless room.
Okay, let's take inventory here. We've got... let's see... we've got a wall... another wall... ooh, that one has a window, but yep, still mostly wall. All white, too. You know, it wouldn't kill these people to add in a splash of red or green in here.
"Okay, Jelim, focus up." I turned to look at the door.
Isola stood in it.
Oh. That's unexpected.
"Why the hell are you alive?" I snapped. Okay, maybe not the best way to start a conversation. "And where the hell have you been?"
Now, that's an important question. Good on you, Jelim. You should ask those more often.
She walked into the room, closing the door behind her. "First of all, that's not important. And second of all, I did some snooping. That's why I say you have to focus up." Oh, I was focusing.
"Well, first of all, that is important." It was. But it could be discussed later. "But, as to the second part, I'm all ears." There was nothing she could say that I hadn't already heard.
"Sevros is going to get away." Oh. There was. That was a new one. "I know it. His shuttle is being prepared for launch right now."
God damn. How does she know this stuff?
"He's stored the shuttle at an abandoned hangar in the mountains, his convoy is on its way there right now," said Isola. "If we go fast, we can catch them."
"How, exactly, do you know this?" I asked.
"You think you're the only one who can talk to Salvek?" Oh. That made a lot of sense, actually. "I'm a lot smarter than I usually get credit for." And a lot more arrogant, apparently.
"Your results should speak for themselves, Isola." I waved a wing at the far wall, where my bodyguards had put up my fifth 'Valor Under Fire' award until I could hang it in my office. "Like that."
"Fair point," she conceded. "Now, let's go. We don't have any time to waste."
I sighed, smoothed out a few feathers, and hopped out of my hospital bed. If I'm going to be wrapping this whole thing up, I'd better look nice in the process. "I'll go ahead and secure the shuttle bay, you drum up whatever force you can spare to finish this off." I was already making a plan, a pretty good one too if I do say so myself, and I was out the door in seconds.
"I'll send the location to your pad!" Isola exclaimed before we parted ways. She could probably find Karelim and a few others, if everybody wasn't already fighting in Federation Tower.
I knew those idiots should've held some officers in reserve! I could've told them as much, too, but they didn't brahking listen. I swear to god, this Guild is going to drive me off the deep end one day.
I found the stairwell, waved off all the hospital workers I found, and jumped over the railing to land gracefully on the bottom floor. I love my wings. I was in the basement. Never mind.
Well, better get to work. There's got to be a ramp here somewhere.
I left the stairwell to find myself in a hospital parking garage that was mostly empty of cars, with an extermination van pulling in via a ramp. Oh. Great! Reinforcements!
I ran over to the vehicle, waving a wing in the air, but I stopped in my tracks when I saw who was driving it. Oh. Great. Racists. "Didn't I send people to arrest you?" I asked, patting my hip for a sidearm that I hoped I wouldn't have to use.
"You did. I want to know why."
"Officer Kern advised me-" He cut me off. Yep. I already know where this is going.
"And you believed him?" Vrapic scoffed. "Him, a predator, a creature built on violence and lies?"
I shrugged. "He's been pretty straightforward so far."
"You are a danger to the people of Dayside City, Jelim." Oh, you say that again. Say that again, and see what happens. "You've allowed yourself to become tainted by a predator, and I can't allow that."
I put my claw on the butt of my pistol. "And what, exactly, are you going to do to stop me?" I could deny the accusation, but we both knew that wouldn't work on his type. God, I hope I won't have to kill him.
He also carried a pistol. I did not want to use mine. I stepped closer to the van. "You stay back!" He drew his gun. I took another step. He fired once at my feet. "Put on the cuffs, or your brain paints the floor." He tossed a pair of handcuffs at my feet.
Only one? Dumbass.
"Well, you've got me," I sighed. I unclipped my holster and tossed it away before bending over to put on my handcuffs. "What now?" I gave a pitiful two-clawed wave.
"Get in the van." God damn, you really are stupid, aren't you?
I took a few sheepish steps forward, feigning cooperation until I got within claw's reach of his gun. Then, in a flash, I grabbed his wrist with both claws and pushed it up and away from my head. He didn't fire.
So he doesn't have it in him to shoot. Good. That's good. It means he's not too far gone.
I was getting old, as exterminators went. Vrapic was supposed to be my replacement. I had been training him for years to turn out more or less like me. Funny how that turned out, huh? At the moment, however, I was kicking him in the chest. Sometimes, things didn't go as planned.
I kicked once in the chest and once in the liver for a nasty two-piece combo, sending him doubled over and gasping in time for a nasty shot to the head.
Not from my gun, of course, but God damn it must've felt like it. My kicks were brahking lethal. I wasn't even exaggerating that much.
Vrapic dropped like a two-hundred-pound sack of bricks. Stay down, dog. Next time, don't bite the hand that feeds you. I really needed to write some of these one-liners down. Or maybe start saying them out loud. Either one was good.
Anyway, I had work to do. I did a brief check on the response team, which was going well, and I went outside. It was a beautiful day out. Not very windy. The sun was high in the sky, too, which it usually was in a place like this.
Usually? Hell, try always. I brahking hate this planet sometimes.
The gravity felt heavy on my oh-so-fragile bird bones. It always did. That was why no Krakotl I knew could manage to fly on this planet.
Quite frankly, most of the Krakotl I knew were lazy.
I took off, with some effort, and it didn't take long before I was high enough to rely on wind and updrafts to ease my flight. After that, it was smooth sailing all the way to the shuttle pad. I passed the skyscrapers in seconds, was in the forest just as quickly, and it was nothing but clear skies and beautiful views before I reached the coordinates Isola sent me.
How did she find those, anyway? I might have to ask.
It took me a while, but I was nothing if I wasn't tough. After enough time, I could begin to make out the gray peaks of a mountain range in the distance. I wasn't even sure Venlil Prime had those.
I didn't see anything special at first, even with my sharp vision. Hell, I could barely see the road after so many years without maintenance. It was practically overgrown by now. I closed on the coordinates, finally making out the gray of a shuttle hangar against the gray of the nearby mountain range, before some idiot shot at me from below.
Three-round bursts. Automatic weapon. The shooter's probably camouflaged above the tree line.
I tucked my wings and rolled, losing altitude fast, pretending as if I had been shot. I even yanked a few feathers free and scattered them to give the illusion of a bullet impact.
Yeah, that probably won't do anything, but I've always had a flair for the dramatic.
I landed fast and hard on the forest floor, drawing my pistol and searching. In the distance, not too far away, there was a hangar door and a dirt road leading up to it. I saw it through even all the thick underbrush of the place, because it was a really big type of shuttle, and I heard a few voices as well. Mercenaries, most likely.
They were approaching my position. Must've seen where I fell, and now they were confirming the kill. I could see three armed Venlil heading toward me, cautious but still entirely oblivious.
Okay, let's think here. They don't know I'm alive. They don't know where I'm hiding. I'll take them out one by one.
I crouched by a tree, waiting for the mercenaries to get close enough to act. I holstered my weapon, opting instead for the element of surprise. No weapons. They make too much noise. Just claws.
There's one... two... where's three? I looked around. I heard a twig snap a short distance behind me. There's three.
Footsteps. Closing. So close, now. I lied in wait like some kind of ambush hunter, crouching down like a coiled spring, until I saw a black-furred shape appear in my view.
Three feet away. Five and a half feet tall. Lightly armed. Totally oblivious. He swept the forest with his rifle, moving slowly and tactically, but it wasn't doing him any good at the moment. He had no idea what was coming.
I sprang from my cover the second he looked away, knocking him to the ground with a sweep of my leg and cutting out his throat at the same time. It wasn't pretty, killing never was, but I did it easily enough. One down. Two to go.
The second one wasn't much harder. The bushes were thick, thick enough that I couldn't move in them without creating noise, but he and his friend were making just as much so I just stayed low and did my job. Swept his legs, cut his jugular, light work all around.
The third guy was smart, though. Really smart, because he started booking it back to home base the second his friends stopped responding. Clearly, he wasn't getting paid very much.
Unfortunately, there was nobody else left outside. I shot him. I never did get how some people got used to that.
Now, it was time to go inside. There was a side door next to the main one, unguarded of course, and I entered it. The hangar was large, but that was to be expected. Dusty, but that was also to be expected. A quick sweep of the grounds confirmed my earlier suspicions that, yep, nobody was left inside. Idiots.
I had a text from Isola. First, Heval hadn't been spotted at Federation Tower. That was bad news. Second, Sevros' men were ten minutes out. That was worse. I had to work fast.
I had seen a perfect vantage point on my way here. I had an assault rifle with a poorly-attached sniper scope, courtesy of the guy who tried shooting me earlier, slung across my back. I went outside, spread my wings, and took to the skies.
This was going to be over quickly.
I saw movement on the road not long after. I was in a perfect sniper's nest, concealed by foliage and with a good vantage point to the road, and I waited until they reached a part without much cover before I began firing.
There were three vehicles, and my sniper's nest gave me a good vantage point on all three. Two were exterminator trucks, and their complements of hired muscle were all exposed in the flatbeds. The other was an exterminator van, much less exposed and in the center of the convoy. Sevros' vehicle.
I shot that one first, popping a tire and sending it skidding to a halt. The rear truck crashed into it, damaging them both, and I triple-tapped most of the goons in its flatbed before they could do anything. The forward vehicle stopped, a stupid call given the situation, and I shot out its tires before putting down the machine-gunner who had stayed in the flatbed. Everybody else had bailed out.
There were only a few goons left now. No more than ten, by my guess. They were all taking cover by the trucks, looking for me to no avail, and I lined up a shot on one of them on the other side of the convoy.
It worked. They seemed to think I was shooting from the opposite direction of where I actually was, despite the fact that the body fell the wrong way, but Venlil muscle men were hardly the smartest of the bunch. They practically fell over themselves to get to my side of the convoy, inadvertently leaving them completely without cover.
To borrow a human idiom, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
The entire security force was cleared out in three minutes, barring a few stragglers. None of them had ever faced a sniper before, and they seemed content to huddle in places where I had already tried and failed to shoot them. I could wait until Isola's people got here, they weren't far out, but I really didn't want to.
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Especially in this economy.
I flew from my sniper's nest like I had places to be, which I did, and I landed hard and fast next to the middle van. I cleared the outside of it first, taking out whatever goons I'd been too preoccupied to shoot earlier, before my attention was grabbed by a door opening at the back of the van.
More goons. Great.
The first one to come out got two in the head. So did the second one, as I advanced to clear the inside. I moved quickly, a bit sloppy too, and a brown paw shoved my rifle to the side. "You son of a bitch!"
Excuse me? I'm a woman, I'll have you know.
I ducked and rolled as a fist flew at my head, only to catch another one to the beak in a nasty uppercut when I did. I dropped my rifle, not by choice, which was kind of stupid looking back. Hindsight is always 20/20. I countered with a leg kick followed by another to the liver, which he shrugged off like last time.
Well, it's clear fighting normally doesn't work. Guess I'll just have to fight dirty.
I jabbed at his face, blocked another punch, and scooped up some dirt with my leg to throw in his eyes. It worked, he was blinded for half a second, and I kicked him in the face. Straight in the eye socket, too. That's gotta hurt. I'd feel bad if he wasn't such an asshole.
He stumbled backwards a few steps and reached in the van for a weapon. Wait a minute. I have a gun, too! I was practically surrounded by them.
I grabbed the rifle on the ground with my leg, shooting out Heval's legs in the process. He fell and rolled, pistol in paw, but I kicked it away and tossed the rifle up to my wings. I caught it and leveled it at his head. "You give?"
Heval looked to his right. Sevros sat pressed against the far end of the van, looking positively terrified. Hell, I couldn't blame him. "Does he give up?" I asked. Sevros was too afraid to answer.
"Fine, then." I kicked Heval in the face, then a paw swept my other leg and I fell. Another paw grabbed my rifle, he jumped on top of me and pinned my wing under his leg, and then he started choking my lights out. It all took, like, three seconds, too. God damn, that guy is good. Next time, I'm just shooting him.
If there was a next time. Judging by where I was at the moment, there probably wouldn't be.
I tried clawing at his liver, but his other paw grabbed my wing and held it tight to the ground. I was effectively paralyzed, and I couldn't do anything about it either. I probably didn't have much air left, too, now that I thought about it. My lungs were starting to hurt.
"This time, I'll finish the goddamn job," he snarled. Whatever snappy retort I would've made died pretty quickly in my airless throat. Choking to death was really not a good way to die.
Well, none of them are really good ways to die. This one just sucks more than most.
I clawed at what I assumed was Heval's hamstring, then his wrist, but that didn't do much more than make him mad. Plus, I was really running out of air, and he was bleeding on my legs from where I shot him.
Yeah, that's going to be a problem. Venlil blood is impossible to get out of your feathers these days.
To add insult to injury, or injury to insult, he pinned my wing with his leg and started punching me in the goddamn face. That was never a good thing to be on the receiving end of.
"Just-" punch "You-" punch "Die-" punch "You-" punch "Little-" I didn't hear what came next. That was probably because I was running out of oxygen.
Well, I figure nobody lives forever. As lives go, I think I've had a good one so far. I have no regrets.
Well, maybe a few, but nobody's perfect.
A gunshot. One. The grip on my throat slackened. I sprang into action, locking us together and rolling on top of him, but it really wasn't necessary.
Heval was dead. "Well, I see you were busy today," Isola's voice came from behind me.
"Whatever they're paying me, it's not brahking enough." I really wasn't sure on that end. My salary, if you included all the bonuses I got from putting in work and subtracted all the deductions I got for not being a head-up-my-ass brain-dead robot like I was supposed to, was never that consistent.
"Now, as to this bitch," I gestured toward Sevros, who was shooting a glare at me. "Come on, Isola." I stood up, unarmed for now. It really didn't matter, though, because it was over. I had won.
You know what? Screw it. I'm throwing the most kickass party once I get back. I deserve it.
"Isola?" Sevros asked. Yeah, that's what I said. I'm so glad you're not going deaf. There was the faintest glimmer of hope on his features for a moment. Does he know someone else named Isola? What? Then she stepped into his view, gun held sideways at his head, and his expression switched to sheer and utter confusion. "What? Why?"
Not terror, that came later. Confusion. Betrayal, almost. Hope at hearing her name, then confusion at seeing her point a gun at his face. Why would he be confused? "Put these cuffs on," said Isola, tossing him a pair. He just stammered gibberish. Why would he be confused?
"I gave you what you wanted."
Six words, and everything fell down.
Six words filled in six hundred blanks.
Oh, hell.
Isola's the spy.
I wheeled, quick, but Isola was quicker. She jabbed an injector to my neck and I went down like a brick. Paralyzed. Can't move a muscle. Pretty uncomfortable spot to be paralyzed in, too.
"Why?" I choked out. That took way more effort than it should have.
"He offered to free my brother from the facility. Made good on the deal, too."
Oh. Well, at least the motivation makes sense.
Really, I was in shock from this whole thing. I couldn't even bring myself to get angry, I was so surprised. Even with everything spelled out in front of me, with the evidence of her crimes as clear as a Nishtal sunrise, a part of me still didn't believe it was real.
I silenced that part. It was very clearly wrong.
Isola sold me out. She sold us all out. How many people died for one brahking Yotul?
When I got my claws on her and Onsel, it wouldn't be pretty. I could swear by that much.
"Unfortunately, he blabbed before I could get to him," Isola explained. I knew that! Sevros started yelling something about 'upholding the deal', and Isola turned and shot him three times.
Or, at least, I thought she did. My view wasn't all too great from being face down on the ground. Isola must've guessed that, too, because she at least had the kindness to flip me around. "I really didn't want to do this, you know. I'm sorry that it had to be this way."
She aimed her gun at my head. I still couldn't move one bit. "You're an exterminator. Think of this as justice." She's trying to justify it. To who? Me, or her?
I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I didn't scream, nor did I close my eyes and wait. It would be better to see the end coming. "I'm sorry, Jelim," she said, gun unwavering in her paw as she spoke. She didn't look very sorry.
"No witnesses."
First Previous R.I.P. sevros ik he looking up at us rn🙏🙏
submitted by ApprehensiveCap6525 to NatureofPredators [link] [comments]
CW: vietnamese sniper nest, jelim gets really high, jelim is misgendered at least once, properly foreshadowed plot twist, Prestige Exterminator Vrapic
Memory Transcription Subject: Jelim, Extermination Commander
Date (standardized human time): September 21, 2136
I was really not built to take breaks. I rarely ever did, but I couldn't really tell if that was the cause or the symptom of my not-quite-a-problem.
Well, sometimes it was a problem. I knew Jack would've liked it if I took more time off for my personal life. But, on the other branch, I had a lot of plaques on my office wall back at the district. Couldn't get that if I kept slacking off.
Well, technically, I wasn't slacking off. Technically, I was healing from the ass-beating I had gotten from Heval a little while. Yeah, I'd say I'm good as new by now. Pride's still bruised, though. But, still, people were dying. I should've been out there.
The news broadcast in my hospital bed turned off. That was a shame. It was the one thing I liked looking at in this sterile and soulless room.
Okay, let's take inventory here. We've got... let's see... we've got a wall... another wall... ooh, that one has a window, but yep, still mostly wall. All white, too. You know, it wouldn't kill these people to add in a splash of red or green in here.
"Okay, Jelim, focus up." I turned to look at the door.
Isola stood in it.
Oh. That's unexpected.
"Why the hell are you alive?" I snapped. Okay, maybe not the best way to start a conversation. "And where the hell have you been?"
Now, that's an important question. Good on you, Jelim. You should ask those more often.
She walked into the room, closing the door behind her. "First of all, that's not important. And second of all, I did some snooping. That's why I say you have to focus up." Oh, I was focusing.
"Well, first of all, that is important." It was. But it could be discussed later. "But, as to the second part, I'm all ears." There was nothing she could say that I hadn't already heard.
"Sevros is going to get away." Oh. There was. That was a new one. "I know it. His shuttle is being prepared for launch right now."
God damn. How does she know this stuff?
"He's stored the shuttle at an abandoned hangar in the mountains, his convoy is on its way there right now," said Isola. "If we go fast, we can catch them."
"How, exactly, do you know this?" I asked.
"You think you're the only one who can talk to Salvek?" Oh. That made a lot of sense, actually. "I'm a lot smarter than I usually get credit for." And a lot more arrogant, apparently.
"Your results should speak for themselves, Isola." I waved a wing at the far wall, where my bodyguards had put up my fifth 'Valor Under Fire' award until I could hang it in my office. "Like that."
"Fair point," she conceded. "Now, let's go. We don't have any time to waste."
I sighed, smoothed out a few feathers, and hopped out of my hospital bed. If I'm going to be wrapping this whole thing up, I'd better look nice in the process. "I'll go ahead and secure the shuttle bay, you drum up whatever force you can spare to finish this off." I was already making a plan, a pretty good one too if I do say so myself, and I was out the door in seconds.
"I'll send the location to your pad!" Isola exclaimed before we parted ways. She could probably find Karelim and a few others, if everybody wasn't already fighting in Federation Tower.
I knew those idiots should've held some officers in reserve! I could've told them as much, too, but they didn't brahking listen. I swear to god, this Guild is going to drive me off the deep end one day.
I found the stairwell, waved off all the hospital workers I found, and jumped over the railing to land gracefully on the bottom floor. I love my wings. I was in the basement. Never mind.
Well, better get to work. There's got to be a ramp here somewhere.
I left the stairwell to find myself in a hospital parking garage that was mostly empty of cars, with an extermination van pulling in via a ramp. Oh. Great! Reinforcements!
I ran over to the vehicle, waving a wing in the air, but I stopped in my tracks when I saw who was driving it. Oh. Great. Racists. "Didn't I send people to arrest you?" I asked, patting my hip for a sidearm that I hoped I wouldn't have to use.
"You did. I want to know why."
"Officer Kern advised me-" He cut me off. Yep. I already know where this is going.
"And you believed him?" Vrapic scoffed. "Him, a predator, a creature built on violence and lies?"
I shrugged. "He's been pretty straightforward so far."
"You are a danger to the people of Dayside City, Jelim." Oh, you say that again. Say that again, and see what happens. "You've allowed yourself to become tainted by a predator, and I can't allow that."
I put my claw on the butt of my pistol. "And what, exactly, are you going to do to stop me?" I could deny the accusation, but we both knew that wouldn't work on his type. God, I hope I won't have to kill him.
He also carried a pistol. I did not want to use mine. I stepped closer to the van. "You stay back!" He drew his gun. I took another step. He fired once at my feet. "Put on the cuffs, or your brain paints the floor." He tossed a pair of handcuffs at my feet.
Only one? Dumbass.
"Well, you've got me," I sighed. I unclipped my holster and tossed it away before bending over to put on my handcuffs. "What now?" I gave a pitiful two-clawed wave.
"Get in the van." God damn, you really are stupid, aren't you?
I took a few sheepish steps forward, feigning cooperation until I got within claw's reach of his gun. Then, in a flash, I grabbed his wrist with both claws and pushed it up and away from my head. He didn't fire.
So he doesn't have it in him to shoot. Good. That's good. It means he's not too far gone.
I was getting old, as exterminators went. Vrapic was supposed to be my replacement. I had been training him for years to turn out more or less like me. Funny how that turned out, huh? At the moment, however, I was kicking him in the chest. Sometimes, things didn't go as planned.
I kicked once in the chest and once in the liver for a nasty two-piece combo, sending him doubled over and gasping in time for a nasty shot to the head.
Not from my gun, of course, but God damn it must've felt like it. My kicks were brahking lethal. I wasn't even exaggerating that much.
Vrapic dropped like a two-hundred-pound sack of bricks. Stay down, dog. Next time, don't bite the hand that feeds you. I really needed to write some of these one-liners down. Or maybe start saying them out loud. Either one was good.
Anyway, I had work to do. I did a brief check on the response team, which was going well, and I went outside. It was a beautiful day out. Not very windy. The sun was high in the sky, too, which it usually was in a place like this.
Usually? Hell, try always. I brahking hate this planet sometimes.
The gravity felt heavy on my oh-so-fragile bird bones. It always did. That was why no Krakotl I knew could manage to fly on this planet.
Quite frankly, most of the Krakotl I knew were lazy.
I took off, with some effort, and it didn't take long before I was high enough to rely on wind and updrafts to ease my flight. After that, it was smooth sailing all the way to the shuttle pad. I passed the skyscrapers in seconds, was in the forest just as quickly, and it was nothing but clear skies and beautiful views before I reached the coordinates Isola sent me.
How did she find those, anyway? I might have to ask.
It took me a while, but I was nothing if I wasn't tough. After enough time, I could begin to make out the gray peaks of a mountain range in the distance. I wasn't even sure Venlil Prime had those.
I didn't see anything special at first, even with my sharp vision. Hell, I could barely see the road after so many years without maintenance. It was practically overgrown by now. I closed on the coordinates, finally making out the gray of a shuttle hangar against the gray of the nearby mountain range, before some idiot shot at me from below.
Three-round bursts. Automatic weapon. The shooter's probably camouflaged above the tree line.
I tucked my wings and rolled, losing altitude fast, pretending as if I had been shot. I even yanked a few feathers free and scattered them to give the illusion of a bullet impact.
Yeah, that probably won't do anything, but I've always had a flair for the dramatic.
I landed fast and hard on the forest floor, drawing my pistol and searching. In the distance, not too far away, there was a hangar door and a dirt road leading up to it. I saw it through even all the thick underbrush of the place, because it was a really big type of shuttle, and I heard a few voices as well. Mercenaries, most likely.
They were approaching my position. Must've seen where I fell, and now they were confirming the kill. I could see three armed Venlil heading toward me, cautious but still entirely oblivious.
Okay, let's think here. They don't know I'm alive. They don't know where I'm hiding. I'll take them out one by one.
I crouched by a tree, waiting for the mercenaries to get close enough to act. I holstered my weapon, opting instead for the element of surprise. No weapons. They make too much noise. Just claws.
There's one... two... where's three? I looked around. I heard a twig snap a short distance behind me. There's three.
Footsteps. Closing. So close, now. I lied in wait like some kind of ambush hunter, crouching down like a coiled spring, until I saw a black-furred shape appear in my view.
Three feet away. Five and a half feet tall. Lightly armed. Totally oblivious. He swept the forest with his rifle, moving slowly and tactically, but it wasn't doing him any good at the moment. He had no idea what was coming.
I sprang from my cover the second he looked away, knocking him to the ground with a sweep of my leg and cutting out his throat at the same time. It wasn't pretty, killing never was, but I did it easily enough. One down. Two to go.
The second one wasn't much harder. The bushes were thick, thick enough that I couldn't move in them without creating noise, but he and his friend were making just as much so I just stayed low and did my job. Swept his legs, cut his jugular, light work all around.
The third guy was smart, though. Really smart, because he started booking it back to home base the second his friends stopped responding. Clearly, he wasn't getting paid very much.
Unfortunately, there was nobody else left outside. I shot him. I never did get how some people got used to that.
Now, it was time to go inside. There was a side door next to the main one, unguarded of course, and I entered it. The hangar was large, but that was to be expected. Dusty, but that was also to be expected. A quick sweep of the grounds confirmed my earlier suspicions that, yep, nobody was left inside. Idiots.
I had a text from Isola. First, Heval hadn't been spotted at Federation Tower. That was bad news. Second, Sevros' men were ten minutes out. That was worse. I had to work fast.
I had seen a perfect vantage point on my way here. I had an assault rifle with a poorly-attached sniper scope, courtesy of the guy who tried shooting me earlier, slung across my back. I went outside, spread my wings, and took to the skies.
This was going to be over quickly.
I saw movement on the road not long after. I was in a perfect sniper's nest, concealed by foliage and with a good vantage point to the road, and I waited until they reached a part without much cover before I began firing.
There were three vehicles, and my sniper's nest gave me a good vantage point on all three. Two were exterminator trucks, and their complements of hired muscle were all exposed in the flatbeds. The other was an exterminator van, much less exposed and in the center of the convoy. Sevros' vehicle.
I shot that one first, popping a tire and sending it skidding to a halt. The rear truck crashed into it, damaging them both, and I triple-tapped most of the goons in its flatbed before they could do anything. The forward vehicle stopped, a stupid call given the situation, and I shot out its tires before putting down the machine-gunner who had stayed in the flatbed. Everybody else had bailed out.
There were only a few goons left now. No more than ten, by my guess. They were all taking cover by the trucks, looking for me to no avail, and I lined up a shot on one of them on the other side of the convoy.
It worked. They seemed to think I was shooting from the opposite direction of where I actually was, despite the fact that the body fell the wrong way, but Venlil muscle men were hardly the smartest of the bunch. They practically fell over themselves to get to my side of the convoy, inadvertently leaving them completely without cover.
To borrow a human idiom, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
The entire security force was cleared out in three minutes, barring a few stragglers. None of them had ever faced a sniper before, and they seemed content to huddle in places where I had already tried and failed to shoot them. I could wait until Isola's people got here, they weren't far out, but I really didn't want to.
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Especially in this economy.
I flew from my sniper's nest like I had places to be, which I did, and I landed hard and fast next to the middle van. I cleared the outside of it first, taking out whatever goons I'd been too preoccupied to shoot earlier, before my attention was grabbed by a door opening at the back of the van.
More goons. Great.
The first one to come out got two in the head. So did the second one, as I advanced to clear the inside. I moved quickly, a bit sloppy too, and a brown paw shoved my rifle to the side. "You son of a bitch!"
Excuse me? I'm a woman, I'll have you know.
I ducked and rolled as a fist flew at my head, only to catch another one to the beak in a nasty uppercut when I did. I dropped my rifle, not by choice, which was kind of stupid looking back. Hindsight is always 20/20. I countered with a leg kick followed by another to the liver, which he shrugged off like last time.
Well, it's clear fighting normally doesn't work. Guess I'll just have to fight dirty.
I jabbed at his face, blocked another punch, and scooped up some dirt with my leg to throw in his eyes. It worked, he was blinded for half a second, and I kicked him in the face. Straight in the eye socket, too. That's gotta hurt. I'd feel bad if he wasn't such an asshole.
He stumbled backwards a few steps and reached in the van for a weapon. Wait a minute. I have a gun, too! I was practically surrounded by them.
I grabbed the rifle on the ground with my leg, shooting out Heval's legs in the process. He fell and rolled, pistol in paw, but I kicked it away and tossed the rifle up to my wings. I caught it and leveled it at his head. "You give?"
Heval looked to his right. Sevros sat pressed against the far end of the van, looking positively terrified. Hell, I couldn't blame him. "Does he give up?" I asked. Sevros was too afraid to answer.
"Fine, then." I kicked Heval in the face, then a paw swept my other leg and I fell. Another paw grabbed my rifle, he jumped on top of me and pinned my wing under his leg, and then he started choking my lights out. It all took, like, three seconds, too. God damn, that guy is good. Next time, I'm just shooting him.
If there was a next time. Judging by where I was at the moment, there probably wouldn't be.
I tried clawing at his liver, but his other paw grabbed my wing and held it tight to the ground. I was effectively paralyzed, and I couldn't do anything about it either. I probably didn't have much air left, too, now that I thought about it. My lungs were starting to hurt.
"This time, I'll finish the goddamn job," he snarled. Whatever snappy retort I would've made died pretty quickly in my airless throat. Choking to death was really not a good way to die.
Well, none of them are really good ways to die. This one just sucks more than most.
I clawed at what I assumed was Heval's hamstring, then his wrist, but that didn't do much more than make him mad. Plus, I was really running out of air, and he was bleeding on my legs from where I shot him.
Yeah, that's going to be a problem. Venlil blood is impossible to get out of your feathers these days.
To add insult to injury, or injury to insult, he pinned my wing with his leg and started punching me in the goddamn face. That was never a good thing to be on the receiving end of.
"Just-" punch "You-" punch "Die-" punch "You-" punch "Little-" I didn't hear what came next. That was probably because I was running out of oxygen.
Well, I figure nobody lives forever. As lives go, I think I've had a good one so far. I have no regrets.
Well, maybe a few, but nobody's perfect.
A gunshot. One. The grip on my throat slackened. I sprang into action, locking us together and rolling on top of him, but it really wasn't necessary.
Heval was dead. "Well, I see you were busy today," Isola's voice came from behind me.
"Whatever they're paying me, it's not brahking enough." I really wasn't sure on that end. My salary, if you included all the bonuses I got from putting in work and subtracted all the deductions I got for not being a head-up-my-ass brain-dead robot like I was supposed to, was never that consistent.
"Now, as to this bitch," I gestured toward Sevros, who was shooting a glare at me. "Come on, Isola." I stood up, unarmed for now. It really didn't matter, though, because it was over. I had won.
You know what? Screw it. I'm throwing the most kickass party once I get back. I deserve it.
"Isola?" Sevros asked. Yeah, that's what I said. I'm so glad you're not going deaf. There was the faintest glimmer of hope on his features for a moment. Does he know someone else named Isola? What? Then she stepped into his view, gun held sideways at his head, and his expression switched to sheer and utter confusion. "What? Why?"
Not terror, that came later. Confusion. Betrayal, almost. Hope at hearing her name, then confusion at seeing her point a gun at his face. Why would he be confused? "Put these cuffs on," said Isola, tossing him a pair. He just stammered gibberish. Why would he be confused?
"I gave you what you wanted."
Six words, and everything fell down.
Six words filled in six hundred blanks.
Oh, hell.
Isola's the spy.
I wheeled, quick, but Isola was quicker. She jabbed an injector to my neck and I went down like a brick. Paralyzed. Can't move a muscle. Pretty uncomfortable spot to be paralyzed in, too.
"Why?" I choked out. That took way more effort than it should have.
"He offered to free my brother from the facility. Made good on the deal, too."
Oh. Well, at least the motivation makes sense.
Really, I was in shock from this whole thing. I couldn't even bring myself to get angry, I was so surprised. Even with everything spelled out in front of me, with the evidence of her crimes as clear as a Nishtal sunrise, a part of me still didn't believe it was real.
I silenced that part. It was very clearly wrong.
Isola sold me out. She sold us all out. How many people died for one brahking Yotul?
When I got my claws on her and Onsel, it wouldn't be pretty. I could swear by that much.
"Unfortunately, he blabbed before I could get to him," Isola explained. I knew that! Sevros started yelling something about 'upholding the deal', and Isola turned and shot him three times.
Or, at least, I thought she did. My view wasn't all too great from being face down on the ground. Isola must've guessed that, too, because she at least had the kindness to flip me around. "I really didn't want to do this, you know. I'm sorry that it had to be this way."
She aimed her gun at my head. I still couldn't move one bit. "You're an exterminator. Think of this as justice." She's trying to justify it. To who? Me, or her?
I didn't beg. I didn't cry. I didn't scream, nor did I close my eyes and wait. It would be better to see the end coming. "I'm sorry, Jelim," she said, gun unwavering in her paw as she spoke. She didn't look very sorry.
"No witnesses."
First Previous R.I.P. sevros ik he looking up at us rn🙏🙏
2024.05.07 00:41 DrBlackJack21 Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 12
Chapter 1
Next>
Concept art for Sybil
Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 12
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Alen was thankful they'd only encountered small bands of pirates here and there. It seemed like many of the squads had either split up or been broken up, but as they neared the dining area, the sound of gunfire became much louder and more frequent.
Erik leaned around the corner, then looked back at Alen and Vanessa with a grin. "I got this one. Just keep the kid safe, will ya?"
Vanessa's expression was as inscrutable as ever to Alen, but somehow, he got the vague impression she was being somewhat sardonic as she said, "As you wish, but if you get yourself killed, I'm eating your corpse."
Erik only grinned. "Well, you'll have to tenderize me a bunch first! All this muscle and gristle will make for some tough chewing!"
With that, he slipped around the corner. Alen wasn't sure what would happen, but suddenly, even over the sound of all the gunfire, there was an impossibly loud shout, more like a roar. Then the screaming started, and the gunfire went from sporadic bursts to a constant stream as panic must have set in. A moment later, two pirates rounded the corner, only to be quickly and efficiently cut down by Vanessa.
Then, things seemed to get quiet, or at least quieter, when a familiar voice shouted through augmented speakers, "Is that you, Erik? I thought I told you to get to the bridge!"
Vanessa seemed to indicate it was probably safe to approach, and Alen took a look around the corner just as Erik responded. "Yeah, I got there and cleared the mess up, but then the Captain sent us out to look for you and deliver a message. Something about some protocol or something. Our boy Alen has the details!"
The scene that greeted Alen was like something out of a movie. Erik was standing in the center of a half dozen battle suits strewn around the room. Several of the suits looked as though Erik had cut through them in his usual zealous way, but others had bullet holes, probably provided by the squad of similarly geared defenders being led by Commander Ried hiding behind a series of very shot-up tables in the dining hall. Further behind them were other unarmored crew members peeking over whatever cover they'd managed to hide behind.
The floor in the middle of the area Erik was standing in was slick with a mixture of fluids released from the compromised pirate suits and what were likely bodily fluids that weren't supposed to see the light of day. Alen found himself fixated on the mess when suddenly, a large hand patted him on the back. However, this "pat" was so heavy-handed that it forced him to take a couple of steps forward to maintain his balance as Erik laughed. "Come on kid! Deliver the Captain's message!"
Shaking his head to take himself out of his stupor the rest of the way, Alen looked over at the commander, who'd stood up from his cover and was now approaching, as the younger officer explained. "Ah, yes, sorry... The Captain is going to institute the lockdown protocol. He said everyone should get to the escape pods immediately."
The commander's face was partially obscured, but Alen could still tell he grimaced as he swore. "Damn it! Has it gotten that bad? We need to get word to the rest of the crew!"
Erik laughed again in his usually carefree way. "Don't worry about that, bossman! We've been spreading the word as we go! I'm pretty sure we've got the word out reasonably far and wide by now. You get these people out of here, and we'll look for any stragglers as we make our way out."
After a moment's hesitation, the commander nodded. "Alright, fair enough." Then, looking behind himself, he signaled it was time to move. "Let's go! Those in suits will escort the rest to the pods. There, we'll abandon the suits and get the hell out of this mess!"
The grumbling that followed was half-hearted and exhausted, but it seemed everyone was at their limit and wouldn't be arguing anytime soon. As they left, Alen looked up at the large alien he'd recruited, what now seemed like an eternity ago. "So, uh, what do we do?"
Erik shrugged. "What else? We make it to the pods on the other side of the ship. That way, we're not competing with these people for space and can let anyone we find know it's time to leave!"
Alen nodded. It made sense. Although he couldn't help but add, "And I suppose the fact that it'll give you a chance to kill more pirates isn't part of the consideration?"
Erik's grin was mildly infectious as he laughed. "Now you're getting it, kid!"
-
Carter had to rely on the Sybils more than he was willing to admit to adjusting to his new connection to the ship, but he was finally starting to feel less like he was drowning and more like he was preparing for some major test of some kind, except he'd forgotten to study...or wear pants to class. "So, wait, I have to authorize every time you wanna use any of the primary functions of the ship?"
The girl nodded. "Well, yes...and no. You can give us specific blanket permissions to act independently of your authorization. But on the whole, yes, you need to either be hooked into the ship or grant us oral approval for us to function in any real sense of the word. This system was never intended to be run by a single individual, though we've done our best to adapt over time."
Carter shook his head. "But why bother to install an AI system at all if someone has to approve all these tasks? Usually, if a captain is lucky enough to have an AI aboard their ship, the AI can handle the lion's share of the day-to-day minutia, leaving the crew to focus on the bigger picture!"
The vixen seemed as put out as usual. "We've already explained to you we're not AI. The fact that you seem incapable of grasping this simple concept is further proof of your ineptitude as our captain!"
Cater bit back on his first response and then decided to take a different approach. "Fair enough, then just what are you?"
The vixen and girl both seemed to hesitate to answer his question, but as usual, the pirate blundered ahead without consideration for their reluctance. "We're your predecessors, lad! Or, at least, their echos!"
As what he said sunk in, Carter looked back and forth in horror. "Wait, so you're saying you're the previous captains of this ship? Does that mean I'm gonna be stuck here with the three of you even after I die?"
The girl shook her head. "No. First off, we're not the people we're echoes of. We're based on them and the way they thought, felt, and even looked, but we're not them. Second, we've had hundreds of captains, but very few have stuck around in any meaningful way. Also, certain...conditions seem to need to be met for one of us to come into existence."
Carter looked around at all three of them. "Conditions? What? Is this some kind of contract thing or something? Did I make a deal with the devil here?"
The pirate laughed. "Nothing like that, laddie! It's simple: All three of us died on the job, so to speak!"
Carter furrowed his brow. "But I thought most of your captains died as captains..."
The girl clarified. "He means we all died while hooked up to the ship...and we kind of...allowed the ship to adopt our faces and personalities..."
Now Carter was just confused. "But...why?"
The bridge shifted, and Carter found himself on a much newer, much cleaner, and much busier command deck. Various people were hustling and bustling about, though they seemed oblivious to the three Sybils and Carter, as the girl explained. "This ship was designed to be operated by a small but close crew, leapfrogging through time via cryostasis. Each person was awake for a month at a time and slept for three, with one-half of the crew overlapping two weeks at the beginning of a shift and the other half two weeks at the end. That way, each team was eased into running the ship and kept familiar with any...issues that happened along the way. However, even that wasn't enough to get us to our destination. The idea was that they'd have children who would take over running the ship after their passing. We even had a carefully arranged lineage that would prevent any inbreeding problems. It worked as planned for a couple generations, but then a problem cropped up."
Time seemed to leap forward, and the bridge showed a little more wear and tear, but the number of people working the bridge seemed to shrink a little, and they all also started to look...older. The girl looked at them as if lost in distant memories. After a moment, she continued. "Maybe it was the repeated cryocycles, or maybe it was just generations of exposure to cosmic radiation exposure out here, or maybe they just didn't like their partners as much, but the crew stopped having children. The last child born on this ship was...me."
A half dozen people looked like they could have been grandparents to the little girl who wandered onto the bridge hand in hand with a woman who seemed too old to be having a child. The girl could barely see over most of the consoles as she wandered about, carrying a little doll that looked like it had been used by too many generations before her.
Time seemed to go by, and the girl grew taller and older, but the rest of the crew started to shrink in numbers, too. There were five others when she could finally touch the consoles. There were only four when she was seated and using them. There were three left by the time she fit into a smaller version of their uniforms. Only two remained when she sat in the captain's chair for the first time. Then, the last crew member, now bowed and shrunken with age, faded away, leaving just the girl, who now looked like the girl Carter knew.
Carter watched as the girl wandered onto the bridge, her expression one of loss and forlornment. However, the girl smiled affectionately at the captain's seat. "How's my girl doing today? Anything to report?"
The ship responded in a bland, emotionless voice. "All systems are within acceptable parameters."
The girl's smile widened as she sat down. "Well, let's see about that, shall we?"
The other version of the girl, the one explaining everything, continued her explanation. "She traveled the stars alone for many...many years. But, the human mind is not meant to be alone, so she began to adapt by attributing human characteristics to the ship. She spoke to me like a person long before I understood the meaning behind many of her words, and she stayed connected to me more and more, even when she slept and dreamed."
Carter watched as the girl aged while sitting in the captain's chair. He knew logically she had to get up from time to time if only to eat or use the bathroom, but it definitely drove the point home. When the seat was suddenly empty, Carter feared she'd died, but then an old woman, wizened and bent by age, wandered onto the bridge, smiling affectionately as she patted the consoles, treating them like her children as she spoke to the ship. "My time's running short, old girl. At least I'll have you in the end, but that makes me worry... What will you do after I'm gone? I wish... I could stay with you a little longer..."
The ship answered, as emotionless as before. "Affirmative, captain."
As she eased herself down into the captain's chair, the old woman moved with the pain and exhaustion of someone nearing the end of their life, but she still had that same affectionate smile as she connected to the one thing that gave her life meaning. The other girl, the younger one, shook her head. "Those were the last words she shared with me, and I wasn't even smart enough to answer in a meaningful way. She was asleep and hooked up to me when her heart failed her. As her mind started to fade, I received flashes of various points in her life, in the last of which she was once again the woman you see me as today."
The room went dark, and Carter suddenly felt alone in a void. It almost made him jump when the girl suddenly appeared in the void beside him. "Her last command...or rather, her last request had been to stay with me. I didn't know what that meant or how to achieve it at the time, so I did the only thing I could. I ran small charges through her quickly fading mind and mapped the remnants of her personality onto my circuitry, patching any blank or damaged portions with the data I had of her from the years we spent together. I even adopted her last image of herself as my own. In a sense, I was born."
As the other two personalities appeared, Carter remained silent, for once, at a loss for words. However, as usual, the pirate was not. "Well, that was a depressing story! It's time we move on to happier subjects! Onward and upward!"
The vixen looked utterly disgusted with the pirate. "Ugh, as usual, you lack all tact! How about you show some respect for your predecessors!"
The pirate grinned. "An excellent idea! We should hold a feast in their honor!"
As the two personalities argued, Carter noticed the girl watching them with the same affectionate smile the original girl had worn when speaking to the ship.
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Well, that's one mystery revealed! Hope it was more entertaining than boring!
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Concept art for Sybil
Of Men and Ghost Ships, Book 1: Chapter 12
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Alen was thankful they'd only encountered small bands of pirates here and there. It seemed like many of the squads had either split up or been broken up, but as they neared the dining area, the sound of gunfire became much louder and more frequent.
Erik leaned around the corner, then looked back at Alen and Vanessa with a grin. "I got this one. Just keep the kid safe, will ya?"
Vanessa's expression was as inscrutable as ever to Alen, but somehow, he got the vague impression she was being somewhat sardonic as she said, "As you wish, but if you get yourself killed, I'm eating your corpse."
Erik only grinned. "Well, you'll have to tenderize me a bunch first! All this muscle and gristle will make for some tough chewing!"
With that, he slipped around the corner. Alen wasn't sure what would happen, but suddenly, even over the sound of all the gunfire, there was an impossibly loud shout, more like a roar. Then the screaming started, and the gunfire went from sporadic bursts to a constant stream as panic must have set in. A moment later, two pirates rounded the corner, only to be quickly and efficiently cut down by Vanessa.
Then, things seemed to get quiet, or at least quieter, when a familiar voice shouted through augmented speakers, "Is that you, Erik? I thought I told you to get to the bridge!"
Vanessa seemed to indicate it was probably safe to approach, and Alen took a look around the corner just as Erik responded. "Yeah, I got there and cleared the mess up, but then the Captain sent us out to look for you and deliver a message. Something about some protocol or something. Our boy Alen has the details!"
The scene that greeted Alen was like something out of a movie. Erik was standing in the center of a half dozen battle suits strewn around the room. Several of the suits looked as though Erik had cut through them in his usual zealous way, but others had bullet holes, probably provided by the squad of similarly geared defenders being led by Commander Ried hiding behind a series of very shot-up tables in the dining hall. Further behind them were other unarmored crew members peeking over whatever cover they'd managed to hide behind.
The floor in the middle of the area Erik was standing in was slick with a mixture of fluids released from the compromised pirate suits and what were likely bodily fluids that weren't supposed to see the light of day. Alen found himself fixated on the mess when suddenly, a large hand patted him on the back. However, this "pat" was so heavy-handed that it forced him to take a couple of steps forward to maintain his balance as Erik laughed. "Come on kid! Deliver the Captain's message!"
Shaking his head to take himself out of his stupor the rest of the way, Alen looked over at the commander, who'd stood up from his cover and was now approaching, as the younger officer explained. "Ah, yes, sorry... The Captain is going to institute the lockdown protocol. He said everyone should get to the escape pods immediately."
The commander's face was partially obscured, but Alen could still tell he grimaced as he swore. "Damn it! Has it gotten that bad? We need to get word to the rest of the crew!"
Erik laughed again in his usually carefree way. "Don't worry about that, bossman! We've been spreading the word as we go! I'm pretty sure we've got the word out reasonably far and wide by now. You get these people out of here, and we'll look for any stragglers as we make our way out."
After a moment's hesitation, the commander nodded. "Alright, fair enough." Then, looking behind himself, he signaled it was time to move. "Let's go! Those in suits will escort the rest to the pods. There, we'll abandon the suits and get the hell out of this mess!"
The grumbling that followed was half-hearted and exhausted, but it seemed everyone was at their limit and wouldn't be arguing anytime soon. As they left, Alen looked up at the large alien he'd recruited, what now seemed like an eternity ago. "So, uh, what do we do?"
Erik shrugged. "What else? We make it to the pods on the other side of the ship. That way, we're not competing with these people for space and can let anyone we find know it's time to leave!"
Alen nodded. It made sense. Although he couldn't help but add, "And I suppose the fact that it'll give you a chance to kill more pirates isn't part of the consideration?"
Erik's grin was mildly infectious as he laughed. "Now you're getting it, kid!"
-
Carter had to rely on the Sybils more than he was willing to admit to adjusting to his new connection to the ship, but he was finally starting to feel less like he was drowning and more like he was preparing for some major test of some kind, except he'd forgotten to study...or wear pants to class. "So, wait, I have to authorize every time you wanna use any of the primary functions of the ship?"
The girl nodded. "Well, yes...and no. You can give us specific blanket permissions to act independently of your authorization. But on the whole, yes, you need to either be hooked into the ship or grant us oral approval for us to function in any real sense of the word. This system was never intended to be run by a single individual, though we've done our best to adapt over time."
Carter shook his head. "But why bother to install an AI system at all if someone has to approve all these tasks? Usually, if a captain is lucky enough to have an AI aboard their ship, the AI can handle the lion's share of the day-to-day minutia, leaving the crew to focus on the bigger picture!"
The vixen seemed as put out as usual. "We've already explained to you we're not AI. The fact that you seem incapable of grasping this simple concept is further proof of your ineptitude as our captain!"
Cater bit back on his first response and then decided to take a different approach. "Fair enough, then just what are you?"
The vixen and girl both seemed to hesitate to answer his question, but as usual, the pirate blundered ahead without consideration for their reluctance. "We're your predecessors, lad! Or, at least, their echos!"
As what he said sunk in, Carter looked back and forth in horror. "Wait, so you're saying you're the previous captains of this ship? Does that mean I'm gonna be stuck here with the three of you even after I die?"
The girl shook her head. "No. First off, we're not the people we're echoes of. We're based on them and the way they thought, felt, and even looked, but we're not them. Second, we've had hundreds of captains, but very few have stuck around in any meaningful way. Also, certain...conditions seem to need to be met for one of us to come into existence."
Carter looked around at all three of them. "Conditions? What? Is this some kind of contract thing or something? Did I make a deal with the devil here?"
The pirate laughed. "Nothing like that, laddie! It's simple: All three of us died on the job, so to speak!"
Carter furrowed his brow. "But I thought most of your captains died as captains..."
The girl clarified. "He means we all died while hooked up to the ship...and we kind of...allowed the ship to adopt our faces and personalities..."
Now Carter was just confused. "But...why?"
The bridge shifted, and Carter found himself on a much newer, much cleaner, and much busier command deck. Various people were hustling and bustling about, though they seemed oblivious to the three Sybils and Carter, as the girl explained. "This ship was designed to be operated by a small but close crew, leapfrogging through time via cryostasis. Each person was awake for a month at a time and slept for three, with one-half of the crew overlapping two weeks at the beginning of a shift and the other half two weeks at the end. That way, each team was eased into running the ship and kept familiar with any...issues that happened along the way. However, even that wasn't enough to get us to our destination. The idea was that they'd have children who would take over running the ship after their passing. We even had a carefully arranged lineage that would prevent any inbreeding problems. It worked as planned for a couple generations, but then a problem cropped up."
Time seemed to leap forward, and the bridge showed a little more wear and tear, but the number of people working the bridge seemed to shrink a little, and they all also started to look...older. The girl looked at them as if lost in distant memories. After a moment, she continued. "Maybe it was the repeated cryocycles, or maybe it was just generations of exposure to cosmic radiation exposure out here, or maybe they just didn't like their partners as much, but the crew stopped having children. The last child born on this ship was...me."
A half dozen people looked like they could have been grandparents to the little girl who wandered onto the bridge hand in hand with a woman who seemed too old to be having a child. The girl could barely see over most of the consoles as she wandered about, carrying a little doll that looked like it had been used by too many generations before her.
Time seemed to go by, and the girl grew taller and older, but the rest of the crew started to shrink in numbers, too. There were five others when she could finally touch the consoles. There were only four when she was seated and using them. There were three left by the time she fit into a smaller version of their uniforms. Only two remained when she sat in the captain's chair for the first time. Then, the last crew member, now bowed and shrunken with age, faded away, leaving just the girl, who now looked like the girl Carter knew.
Carter watched as the girl wandered onto the bridge, her expression one of loss and forlornment. However, the girl smiled affectionately at the captain's seat. "How's my girl doing today? Anything to report?"
The ship responded in a bland, emotionless voice. "All systems are within acceptable parameters."
The girl's smile widened as she sat down. "Well, let's see about that, shall we?"
The other version of the girl, the one explaining everything, continued her explanation. "She traveled the stars alone for many...many years. But, the human mind is not meant to be alone, so she began to adapt by attributing human characteristics to the ship. She spoke to me like a person long before I understood the meaning behind many of her words, and she stayed connected to me more and more, even when she slept and dreamed."
Carter watched as the girl aged while sitting in the captain's chair. He knew logically she had to get up from time to time if only to eat or use the bathroom, but it definitely drove the point home. When the seat was suddenly empty, Carter feared she'd died, but then an old woman, wizened and bent by age, wandered onto the bridge, smiling affectionately as she patted the consoles, treating them like her children as she spoke to the ship. "My time's running short, old girl. At least I'll have you in the end, but that makes me worry... What will you do after I'm gone? I wish... I could stay with you a little longer..."
The ship answered, as emotionless as before. "Affirmative, captain."
As she eased herself down into the captain's chair, the old woman moved with the pain and exhaustion of someone nearing the end of their life, but she still had that same affectionate smile as she connected to the one thing that gave her life meaning. The other girl, the younger one, shook her head. "Those were the last words she shared with me, and I wasn't even smart enough to answer in a meaningful way. She was asleep and hooked up to me when her heart failed her. As her mind started to fade, I received flashes of various points in her life, in the last of which she was once again the woman you see me as today."
The room went dark, and Carter suddenly felt alone in a void. It almost made him jump when the girl suddenly appeared in the void beside him. "Her last command...or rather, her last request had been to stay with me. I didn't know what that meant or how to achieve it at the time, so I did the only thing I could. I ran small charges through her quickly fading mind and mapped the remnants of her personality onto my circuitry, patching any blank or damaged portions with the data I had of her from the years we spent together. I even adopted her last image of herself as my own. In a sense, I was born."
As the other two personalities appeared, Carter remained silent, for once, at a loss for words. However, as usual, the pirate was not. "Well, that was a depressing story! It's time we move on to happier subjects! Onward and upward!"
The vixen looked utterly disgusted with the pirate. "Ugh, as usual, you lack all tact! How about you show some respect for your predecessors!"
The pirate grinned. "An excellent idea! We should hold a feast in their honor!"
As the two personalities argued, Carter noticed the girl watching them with the same affectionate smile the original girl had worn when speaking to the ship.
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Well, that's one mystery revealed! Hope it was more entertaining than boring!
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2024.05.06 23:02 Eddygara Is it better the leave a project being the filmmaker or the filmer? I’m in a unique position need some guidance
 | Here's the corrected version: submitted by Eddygara to Filmmakers [link] [comments] "I’m in the process of working on my first film, a documentary piece. It’s a unique story about something I’m heavily involved in. In short, the story involves myself to push forward the narrative. I happen to be working with a group of endangered animals, and participating in a conservation effort to help protect and reproduce them in captivity, aiming to prevent their loss in their native range. I’m an aspiring filmmaker and documentarian. I have been working on this project for the past year. The project revolves around the discovery of the subject's efforts, unbeknownst to him. He happens to be working with a large group, aiming to aid public education and reproductive conservation efforts. In a second part, they travel to the animals' native land in Indonesia to document them for the first time on a 4k camera setup, then share that information with the public. The character also plays a role in working with zoos, building relationships to help donate animals he is helping to reproduce in captivity, starting new breeding projects worldwide to ensure the future success of these animals in captivity and in the wild. The story showcases the project of this individual, all the work leading from the start to his current standing, as well as documenting what is happening to these animals in their native range, why they are endangered, and how it’s happening. Here is the problem: I’m the filmmaker and the subject so far. I don’t want to make this project sound egocentric in any manner, but it happens to be a very important topic to me that I feel needs more exposure. I’ve already done a lot of work; I visited the range they are from in Indonesia solo and documented the entire experience the best way I could (30 days in the jungle). And I definitely know I have a good story, but one thing is missing. I can’t film my journey in the typical way you’d shoot a documentary by myself. This leads me to open up to the idea of bringing in a second person on my next trip to help with this part of the narrative. Here is my problem: I’m struggling to cope with the idea that if I allow someone else to help film, I no longer become the filmmaker of this documentary; I’ll still be the subject but no longer the video camera operator. My story gets told, but I lose the credibility of being the person to film it all. The reason this is such a dilemma for me is that I’m not only trying to share this story and raise awareness of these issues happening to these amazing animals, but I also want to have the experience of being able to say that I am capable of shooting adventure films in practice. Once I give this role to another person, it no longer becomes my film (yes, I’m the subject), but it becomes the film of the new camera operator. Leaving me with a blank space of experience if I ever want to pitch this type of work to other project organizations when looking for future work in this field. So, in finishing this long-drawn-out question, I want to ask: what is more important? The final story and sharing my message, or being the one who captures it all? Should I stop worrying and just make the piece with help, or should I muscle up and figure out a new way to present this story in a new method by myself and take all the credit?" |
2024.05.06 23:01 KyleKKent Out of Cruel Space, Part 994
~First~
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem
The mistake people make with Trytite, is that they think it’s an Anti-Axiom metal. That it somehow tears it apart or dispels it. But no. It does neither. It resists Axiom which lets it pierce and ignore it. It passes through them without breaking them unless the sheer amount is so much as to literally block off entire sections.
Which means the near misses he’s using to batter the hand of his opposing sniper aren’t doing anything to his enhancements. The blade is a nasty piece of work. Not hooked or barbed nasty, but big enough he could eat a meal off it. It’s platter sized, but still has a point despite clearly being a chopper.
The next pass has him feel a bone break under his assault and there’s a grunt of pain from the woman. Swing, swing with the compromised hand and then he breaks another bone and her grip. The trytite blade embeds itself into a nearby wall and she rushes him.
She gets his jacket and slams him against the wall, but he’s got so much Axiom reinforcing him that it feels more like being gently pressed up against a pillow. He simply smirks in her face as it’s now in range and he rips off the mask and then hits her with an Axiom effect to drop her. Technically he could do it through the clothing, but she’s reinforcing that and it would make it hard to hit her with it through the interference.
The woman drops bonelessly and he catches her before angling her onto her side in the recovery position. As modified for an Apuk woman of ENORMOUS size.
“Hmm... we don’t normally have trouble with Apuk. I wonder who pissed in your cornflakes.” He notes before calling a retrieval and restraints to his location, but putting it on the ‘non-vital’ list. With downright chaos happening all over Centris one crazy woman with a gun just wasn’t as big a concern.
He then starts patting her down and finds her communicator. Currently wiped so he starts fiddling with it and forcing a reset, then he gets into the basic operating system and goes through a system restore with the last one having been done three hours ago. He grins when he sees that the latest tidbit is someone saying ‘get ready’. He hooks up his communicator to it and starts recording where things go as he puts in a few ‘random’ commands and then has the number dialed. As it goes through he makes a few stomping sounds and kicks the wall a couple of times to make it sound like whoever was on the other side got butt dialed rather than anything else. Perhaps annoying, but not something to go on the alert for. He keeps up the noise until the call disconnects from the other side and grins. He then raises an eyebrow as the woman’s communicator then goes through a deletion cycle.
“How very interesting.” He says as he forces the communicator off and then has it restore it’s data again.
He then goes back into his own and quickly sends in the copied data, number and frequency of the other side of that call with a little message of them likely being the handler of the woman that just tried to kill him. A bit more padding down and he finds her wallet right under her tail. Some tailed races thought they were clever with their ID strapped into what was basically their third armpit.
“Malla’Tuur? Very poor life choices girl. Your Empress likes us.” He notes as he sits down on her side. Hourglass figure or not the girl is made of corded muscle and is so warm as to be self heating. He can also feel her Axiom flows at this close range and interfere even through the protections woven into her clothing. This lets him keep her easily asleep as he scans the rest of her identification and such.
“Hey there! Here to take granny horny here into custody?” He asks his reinforcements as they arrive. Local law enforcement. That’s fair. This sniper’s perch was from the next spire over after all. Not to mention a Platen is always a solid reinforcement to have.
“Granny?” The officer asks.
“She’s five hundred years old! That’s a granny! Especially to my ittle little thirty!” He taunts the still unconscious woman.
“I shudder to think what you consider my seven hundred years of age.”
“Your on my team. It’s years of youth for you.” He says quickly and the officer laughs before groaning. “What’s wrong?”
“Exhaustion. I’ve seen more action in the last few hours than I have in the last few decades combined. What was the council thinking?”
“They were thinking they found something obscenely dangerous and that it was safer to kick up all this trouble then let things lie.” He says and she looks at him.
“You know what’s going on.” She says.
“And with an NDA, so will you.” He answers and she blinks and considers.
“I don’t need details. I just need to know if it really is that bad.”
“It is. It’s a situation that gets worse the more you consider it and with the first response being the urge to panic I’m sure you can start putting it together.” He says and she looks at him oddly before sighing.
“Will this last much longer?” She asks and he shrugs.
“That depends entirely on forces outside of my control or knowledge. I’m sorry.” He answers sincerely. “However, I have seen Lady Bazalash on the move. If the primals are starting to say stop, then I’ll wager it won’t last much longer.”
“Which means the real challenge is on the approach.” The Officer says and he nods.
“If by real challenge you mean the paperwork and sitting on everything till we can sort it, then yes.” Herbert agrees and she chuckles.
“Look, there are only so many places to hide from the secretaries and bureaucrats, cut me some slack.”
“True enough, you can also only tell them that your communicator is down so many times before they stop caring.” She says and he chuckles with a nod. “Alright, hop off her. I need to properly arrest her.”
“Do you need her awake? She came at me with that knife over there after I dodged her bullets.”
“Eventually. Where’s her rifle?”
“It’s the scattered debris around the room. I got my hands on it and broke it against her.” He says and she nods even as she manoeuvres Malla’Tuur’s arms behind her and cuffs her. She’s then tagged for a teleport and vanishes after a few more moments as the Officer starts bagging up and sorting all the debris and the knife. Herbert’s communicator then goes off and he rolls his neck.
“And that’s my break time officially over with. Have a good day ma’am. I’ve got WORK to do.” He says.
“You were on a break!?” She demands and he shrugs.
“When your dodging bullets you can’t exactly call timeout and tell them to come back in fifteen so you’re rested.” Herbert says before chuckling. “Although imagine if you could! Heh... anyways, excuse me, please.”
Then he’s gone in a recall teleport.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
Within ten minutes he’s getting into position as a pissed off Drin has a pair of utterly terrified Kohbs in her grip and guns to either of their hands. A bit of math as he considers the wind, the distance, the aerodynamics of the trytite bullet and a few more things to consider.
The coils on the gun warm up and then on his exhale his finger doesn’t squeeze the trigger so much as caress it.
The bullet flies, the world is still for a moment. And the crossed weapons of the Drin are both compromised at the same time. The force knocks her back, the shock breaks her grip, and the destroyed weapons fail to fire in the chaos as the hostages drop to the ground and scramble away with what little wits they have in this panic as an Agela in a uniform suddenly tackles the dazed and confused Drin before she can fully rise up.
He lets out a relieved breath and then quickly sends the recorded information off his rifle to the police force he’s assisting before heading off to the next hot zone.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The hostage screams as she’s thrown over the edge and it’s abruptly cut off as a tiny figure hits her with a teleportation tag and she’s abruptly falling on a surface that perfectly dispels the impact. She’s then helped up by heavily armed soldiers and gently escorted out of the room.
Back at the devolving hostage situation, the abruptly cut off screen has the leader, who still has her own hostage, to order her now hostage less underling to check. She then turns as her underling is grabbed by the nose and pulled down before her scream is ALSO cut off.
Then a tiny child in a formal suit pops up over the lip of the hole in the spire and looks around. He then claps his hands together and smiles brightly. He is adorable.
“Okay! So who wants to surrender first? Anyone that does will get preferential and even downright gentle treatment!”
“Why would we surrender?” The leader asks.
“Because I’m going to win.” Herbert says calmly.
“And how will you be doing that?” She asks before suddenly slumping down and out cold along with all her fellow criminals.
“Mostly by distracting you rubes from our Cloaken forces.” He answers as the police rush in to tag and arrest the criminals.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The next fire to put out ends oddly. In that he expects that Rikaxza has decided to apply a little of her substantial pull in order to stop things from going to far. But having all the criminals answer their communicators on both sides of the turf war, universally display fear, and then retreat to their base camps before packing up with looks towards evacuation is a hell of a thing to see.
“Guess the game’s no fun if all the prizes get destroyed in the confusion.” Herbert notes before calling in this hotzone as cleared and requests the next one.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
He’s tracing the Axiom effect all over the complicated bundle of Khutha and Trytite. Wire thin and brimming with energy around one of the main support struts to the next level up. After a little bit he pinches an intersection and rips out the thin trytite from the rest of the bundle before breathing a sigh of relief as the Axiom fades from the improvised bomb.
He lets out a sigh of relief at this before rubbing his face. His communicator alerts him to the other bombs being taken care of and there are no further alerts. Something has happened and the remaining fires are refusing point blank keep burning. He suspects that the news of both Rikaxza and Bazalash deciding that the chaos must end, has ended it.
He smooths out his suit and nods before departing again. Time to start speaking with the commanders on things.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The door opens and all the women in there turn towards him. It’s more than Jahlassi, Elaine and Miya. It’s a small army of just the higher ups alone. He gets a friendly wave from Chief Bowman and he returns it with a smile.
“So things are no longer actively exploding. Which means we all need to have a talk on who’s doing what to try and sort out the madness.” He says as he grabs everyone’s attention. A few of them double take at the sight of him. He still looks like a Private Stream, but exaggerated.
“Are you here to represent The Undaunted in this?”
“For the next three hours I am. Then my day ends and another will be here. You may deal with both of us as if we were the same person. Don’t worry. It won’t interrupt the proceedings.” He assures them.
“I see. It’s good you’re here, we’ve have innumerable reports of The Undaunted assisting local officers and precincts.”
“There’s not enough to get to every single danger zone. But there enough of us to sweep around and quickly try and put things out. Especially as many of them are now refusing to come out on the offence. We need to get some kind of numbers to this though, do we have any idea what percentile are actually hostile, who was panicked and how many, hopeflly few, have been able to go underground again after that?” Herbert asks.
“A lot of data archives are reporting damage or sabotage of some kind. No one is appreciating being spotted the way they were.”
“The question is will this have to happen again.” Chief Bowman asks. “My precinct works closely with The Undaunted, but we’ve had few answers as to why this was happening only that it needs to happen.”
“We’ve found an organization with an enormous amount of Blood Metal and the means to create a great deal more in a more subtle manner than usual. We needed to see how many potential stashes there are. As such The Council, The Trytite Lady and The Undaunted are in complete agreement and initiated this massive sweep over the planet. Indulgences can normally be allowed but massive Blood Metal Stores is far beyond what any allowable indulgence can permit.”
“Please tell me that you’ve merely found some kind of slaughter room with the metal panelling so soaked with blood as to stain it perminently.”
“No. The false Khutha that devours further Axiom. Blood Metal.” Jahlassi states. “Furthermore with the sheer retaliation we have seen, my lady has determined that her eye must be opened wider until the fullness of the madness in Centris is at the very least lessened if not burnt out root and branch. Her initial coming to counter and offer proper judgment to mind benders expanded when she took a short trip into the bottom ten levels of a spire. Now it expands again as she finds that there are sufficient danger in some of the groups formerly considered to be little more than social clubs. She is considering calling a Crusade.”
The room is silent at this.
“There is more.” Herbert says and the room turns to him with wide eyes. “The Inevitable is on approach. We have a little more than sixteen hours before it arrives. When it does any number of things can happen.”
“Well... I mean a doubling of humans is impressive but not so concerning...”
“They’re third contact ma’am. They are a reaction to what The Undaunted have done, including forming The Undaunted and forswearing our allegiance to Earth. There is a very good chance that they are coming to arrest The Undaunted and drag us to Earth in chains for treason.”
“Excuse me? Why?” Someone asks in a scandalized tone.
“Oh come on, you’ve read the hacked files haven’t you? Did you see all the orders every single crew member, soldier and passenger on The Dauntless got? There was no way we would not be committing some form of treason. The only way to obey the spirit of the mission was to disregard nearly every single order we got.”
“So you think they’re liable to do something?”
“They’re going to do something, the what is the question. Now, how much mess can we clean up before the next mess gets here?” Herbert asks.
“... Are you going to surrender when they get here?”
“Of course not, I have a lot of responsibilities and I can’t do a damn thing about a single one if I just surrender to the goon of a bureaucrat who’s flailing around and trying to be seen doing something.” Herbert says and there are a few frowns. He glances back and smirks. “The fact that you’re all here means that you’re not the type to flail for just looking like you’re moving.”
~First~ Last Next
submitted by KyleKKent to HFY [link] [comments]
HHH/Herbert’s Hundred Harem
The mistake people make with Trytite, is that they think it’s an Anti-Axiom metal. That it somehow tears it apart or dispels it. But no. It does neither. It resists Axiom which lets it pierce and ignore it. It passes through them without breaking them unless the sheer amount is so much as to literally block off entire sections.
Which means the near misses he’s using to batter the hand of his opposing sniper aren’t doing anything to his enhancements. The blade is a nasty piece of work. Not hooked or barbed nasty, but big enough he could eat a meal off it. It’s platter sized, but still has a point despite clearly being a chopper.
The next pass has him feel a bone break under his assault and there’s a grunt of pain from the woman. Swing, swing with the compromised hand and then he breaks another bone and her grip. The trytite blade embeds itself into a nearby wall and she rushes him.
She gets his jacket and slams him against the wall, but he’s got so much Axiom reinforcing him that it feels more like being gently pressed up against a pillow. He simply smirks in her face as it’s now in range and he rips off the mask and then hits her with an Axiom effect to drop her. Technically he could do it through the clothing, but she’s reinforcing that and it would make it hard to hit her with it through the interference.
The woman drops bonelessly and he catches her before angling her onto her side in the recovery position. As modified for an Apuk woman of ENORMOUS size.
“Hmm... we don’t normally have trouble with Apuk. I wonder who pissed in your cornflakes.” He notes before calling a retrieval and restraints to his location, but putting it on the ‘non-vital’ list. With downright chaos happening all over Centris one crazy woman with a gun just wasn’t as big a concern.
He then starts patting her down and finds her communicator. Currently wiped so he starts fiddling with it and forcing a reset, then he gets into the basic operating system and goes through a system restore with the last one having been done three hours ago. He grins when he sees that the latest tidbit is someone saying ‘get ready’. He hooks up his communicator to it and starts recording where things go as he puts in a few ‘random’ commands and then has the number dialed. As it goes through he makes a few stomping sounds and kicks the wall a couple of times to make it sound like whoever was on the other side got butt dialed rather than anything else. Perhaps annoying, but not something to go on the alert for. He keeps up the noise until the call disconnects from the other side and grins. He then raises an eyebrow as the woman’s communicator then goes through a deletion cycle.
“How very interesting.” He says as he forces the communicator off and then has it restore it’s data again.
He then goes back into his own and quickly sends in the copied data, number and frequency of the other side of that call with a little message of them likely being the handler of the woman that just tried to kill him. A bit more padding down and he finds her wallet right under her tail. Some tailed races thought they were clever with their ID strapped into what was basically their third armpit.
“Malla’Tuur? Very poor life choices girl. Your Empress likes us.” He notes as he sits down on her side. Hourglass figure or not the girl is made of corded muscle and is so warm as to be self heating. He can also feel her Axiom flows at this close range and interfere even through the protections woven into her clothing. This lets him keep her easily asleep as he scans the rest of her identification and such.
“Hey there! Here to take granny horny here into custody?” He asks his reinforcements as they arrive. Local law enforcement. That’s fair. This sniper’s perch was from the next spire over after all. Not to mention a Platen is always a solid reinforcement to have.
“Granny?” The officer asks.
“She’s five hundred years old! That’s a granny! Especially to my ittle little thirty!” He taunts the still unconscious woman.
“I shudder to think what you consider my seven hundred years of age.”
“Your on my team. It’s years of youth for you.” He says quickly and the officer laughs before groaning. “What’s wrong?”
“Exhaustion. I’ve seen more action in the last few hours than I have in the last few decades combined. What was the council thinking?”
“They were thinking they found something obscenely dangerous and that it was safer to kick up all this trouble then let things lie.” He says and she looks at him.
“You know what’s going on.” She says.
“And with an NDA, so will you.” He answers and she blinks and considers.
“I don’t need details. I just need to know if it really is that bad.”
“It is. It’s a situation that gets worse the more you consider it and with the first response being the urge to panic I’m sure you can start putting it together.” He says and she looks at him oddly before sighing.
“Will this last much longer?” She asks and he shrugs.
“That depends entirely on forces outside of my control or knowledge. I’m sorry.” He answers sincerely. “However, I have seen Lady Bazalash on the move. If the primals are starting to say stop, then I’ll wager it won’t last much longer.”
“Which means the real challenge is on the approach.” The Officer says and he nods.
“If by real challenge you mean the paperwork and sitting on everything till we can sort it, then yes.” Herbert agrees and she chuckles.
“Look, there are only so many places to hide from the secretaries and bureaucrats, cut me some slack.”
“True enough, you can also only tell them that your communicator is down so many times before they stop caring.” She says and he chuckles with a nod. “Alright, hop off her. I need to properly arrest her.”
“Do you need her awake? She came at me with that knife over there after I dodged her bullets.”
“Eventually. Where’s her rifle?”
“It’s the scattered debris around the room. I got my hands on it and broke it against her.” He says and she nods even as she manoeuvres Malla’Tuur’s arms behind her and cuffs her. She’s then tagged for a teleport and vanishes after a few more moments as the Officer starts bagging up and sorting all the debris and the knife. Herbert’s communicator then goes off and he rolls his neck.
“And that’s my break time officially over with. Have a good day ma’am. I’ve got WORK to do.” He says.
“You were on a break!?” She demands and he shrugs.
“When your dodging bullets you can’t exactly call timeout and tell them to come back in fifteen so you’re rested.” Herbert says before chuckling. “Although imagine if you could! Heh... anyways, excuse me, please.”
Then he’s gone in a recall teleport.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
Within ten minutes he’s getting into position as a pissed off Drin has a pair of utterly terrified Kohbs in her grip and guns to either of their hands. A bit of math as he considers the wind, the distance, the aerodynamics of the trytite bullet and a few more things to consider.
The coils on the gun warm up and then on his exhale his finger doesn’t squeeze the trigger so much as caress it.
The bullet flies, the world is still for a moment. And the crossed weapons of the Drin are both compromised at the same time. The force knocks her back, the shock breaks her grip, and the destroyed weapons fail to fire in the chaos as the hostages drop to the ground and scramble away with what little wits they have in this panic as an Agela in a uniform suddenly tackles the dazed and confused Drin before she can fully rise up.
He lets out a relieved breath and then quickly sends the recorded information off his rifle to the police force he’s assisting before heading off to the next hot zone.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The hostage screams as she’s thrown over the edge and it’s abruptly cut off as a tiny figure hits her with a teleportation tag and she’s abruptly falling on a surface that perfectly dispels the impact. She’s then helped up by heavily armed soldiers and gently escorted out of the room.
Back at the devolving hostage situation, the abruptly cut off screen has the leader, who still has her own hostage, to order her now hostage less underling to check. She then turns as her underling is grabbed by the nose and pulled down before her scream is ALSO cut off.
Then a tiny child in a formal suit pops up over the lip of the hole in the spire and looks around. He then claps his hands together and smiles brightly. He is adorable.
“Okay! So who wants to surrender first? Anyone that does will get preferential and even downright gentle treatment!”
“Why would we surrender?” The leader asks.
“Because I’m going to win.” Herbert says calmly.
“And how will you be doing that?” She asks before suddenly slumping down and out cold along with all her fellow criminals.
“Mostly by distracting you rubes from our Cloaken forces.” He answers as the police rush in to tag and arrest the criminals.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The next fire to put out ends oddly. In that he expects that Rikaxza has decided to apply a little of her substantial pull in order to stop things from going to far. But having all the criminals answer their communicators on both sides of the turf war, universally display fear, and then retreat to their base camps before packing up with looks towards evacuation is a hell of a thing to see.
“Guess the game’s no fun if all the prizes get destroyed in the confusion.” Herbert notes before calling in this hotzone as cleared and requests the next one.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
He’s tracing the Axiom effect all over the complicated bundle of Khutha and Trytite. Wire thin and brimming with energy around one of the main support struts to the next level up. After a little bit he pinches an intersection and rips out the thin trytite from the rest of the bundle before breathing a sigh of relief as the Axiom fades from the improvised bomb.
He lets out a sigh of relief at this before rubbing his face. His communicator alerts him to the other bombs being taken care of and there are no further alerts. Something has happened and the remaining fires are refusing point blank keep burning. He suspects that the news of both Rikaxza and Bazalash deciding that the chaos must end, has ended it.
He smooths out his suit and nods before departing again. Time to start speaking with the commanders on things.
•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•×•
The door opens and all the women in there turn towards him. It’s more than Jahlassi, Elaine and Miya. It’s a small army of just the higher ups alone. He gets a friendly wave from Chief Bowman and he returns it with a smile.
“So things are no longer actively exploding. Which means we all need to have a talk on who’s doing what to try and sort out the madness.” He says as he grabs everyone’s attention. A few of them double take at the sight of him. He still looks like a Private Stream, but exaggerated.
“Are you here to represent The Undaunted in this?”
“For the next three hours I am. Then my day ends and another will be here. You may deal with both of us as if we were the same person. Don’t worry. It won’t interrupt the proceedings.” He assures them.
“I see. It’s good you’re here, we’ve have innumerable reports of The Undaunted assisting local officers and precincts.”
“There’s not enough to get to every single danger zone. But there enough of us to sweep around and quickly try and put things out. Especially as many of them are now refusing to come out on the offence. We need to get some kind of numbers to this though, do we have any idea what percentile are actually hostile, who was panicked and how many, hopeflly few, have been able to go underground again after that?” Herbert asks.
“A lot of data archives are reporting damage or sabotage of some kind. No one is appreciating being spotted the way they were.”
“The question is will this have to happen again.” Chief Bowman asks. “My precinct works closely with The Undaunted, but we’ve had few answers as to why this was happening only that it needs to happen.”
“We’ve found an organization with an enormous amount of Blood Metal and the means to create a great deal more in a more subtle manner than usual. We needed to see how many potential stashes there are. As such The Council, The Trytite Lady and The Undaunted are in complete agreement and initiated this massive sweep over the planet. Indulgences can normally be allowed but massive Blood Metal Stores is far beyond what any allowable indulgence can permit.”
“Please tell me that you’ve merely found some kind of slaughter room with the metal panelling so soaked with blood as to stain it perminently.”
“No. The false Khutha that devours further Axiom. Blood Metal.” Jahlassi states. “Furthermore with the sheer retaliation we have seen, my lady has determined that her eye must be opened wider until the fullness of the madness in Centris is at the very least lessened if not burnt out root and branch. Her initial coming to counter and offer proper judgment to mind benders expanded when she took a short trip into the bottom ten levels of a spire. Now it expands again as she finds that there are sufficient danger in some of the groups formerly considered to be little more than social clubs. She is considering calling a Crusade.”
The room is silent at this.
“There is more.” Herbert says and the room turns to him with wide eyes. “The Inevitable is on approach. We have a little more than sixteen hours before it arrives. When it does any number of things can happen.”
“Well... I mean a doubling of humans is impressive but not so concerning...”
“They’re third contact ma’am. They are a reaction to what The Undaunted have done, including forming The Undaunted and forswearing our allegiance to Earth. There is a very good chance that they are coming to arrest The Undaunted and drag us to Earth in chains for treason.”
“Excuse me? Why?” Someone asks in a scandalized tone.
“Oh come on, you’ve read the hacked files haven’t you? Did you see all the orders every single crew member, soldier and passenger on The Dauntless got? There was no way we would not be committing some form of treason. The only way to obey the spirit of the mission was to disregard nearly every single order we got.”
“So you think they’re liable to do something?”
“They’re going to do something, the what is the question. Now, how much mess can we clean up before the next mess gets here?” Herbert asks.
“... Are you going to surrender when they get here?”
“Of course not, I have a lot of responsibilities and I can’t do a damn thing about a single one if I just surrender to the goon of a bureaucrat who’s flailing around and trying to be seen doing something.” Herbert says and there are a few frowns. He glances back and smirks. “The fact that you’re all here means that you’re not the type to flail for just looking like you’re moving.”
~First~ Last Next
2024.05.06 21:19 Fabulous_Brain_7888 I think I encountered a demon in the making
I want to preface this story by saying that while I am pretty much agnostic on a good day and an atheist on a bad day, I am a fan of horror and grew up in a fairly religious environment via a very evangelical Christian high school, so my point of view may be skewed by those influences. However, I do think whatever my fiance and I witnessed was at the very least, an extremely dangerous person.
For context, I started college in fall 2018, going to a university in a somewhat rural area. The college itself sits on a large plot of land surrounded by farmland and vineyards, with sections that are forested and have little trails running through them, and a creek that runs the length of school property. The college has even had a murder victim dumped in one of the wooded areas on campus, but that’s a story for another day.
Freshmen were required to live on campus their first year and one of the benefits of that was that we had unlimited access to the school cafeteria, aka the caf. The caf was pretty nice, boasting a salad bar, sandwich station, mini bakery, hot food with different menu’s daily, and pretty much every fountain drink you can think of. I would get lunch and dinner there with my only friend at the time (and who is now my fiancé), and we began to notice this boy who was always at the caf alone. It wasn’t uncommon to see students eating there alone, my school had pretty poor community outreach/ school spirit, but something was really off about this kid.
First off he had a very distinct look (this is important because we recognized him multiple times over 3 years), his skin was extremely pale and had this heavy, fleshy look to it that I struggle to describe, like he was made of wax, he had red curly hair (insert ginger joke here), a mouth a little too large for his face, but what was the strangest thing about him was his eyes. They were the same color as his hair, that bright red auburn, his iris was almost too big for his eye, and his pupils were always extremely dilated. His eyes had a bulging look, very similar to Mark Zuckerburg, like they were trying to escape his face. It’s hard to describe here but he just had a very unsettling look to him, it just felt that there was something very wrong, like there was nothing inside him.
But his appearance wasn’t what caught our attention at first, what caught our attention was the amount of food this kid could eat. Of course, having unlimited access to food some kids went overboard, but this kid was another level. He always had 5 or 6 cups of juice, soda, coffee, and 3-4 plates piled with food. Mind you, he was not large or overweight, but he would clear every plate and then just sit in his booth alone, staring into space with his headphones in. That was another thing, he always had this blank, vacant expression, always staring into nothing. Whenever you walked past his booth you could hear that the music from his headphones was on full blast.
We began to notice that no matter what time we went to the caf, whether it be for a late-night snack, breakfast, a random afternoon craving, he was always there, sitting alone in the ruins of his empty plates. And we weren’t the only people who noticed his strange behavior. By second semester, people began approaching him, at first just some girls jokingly saying something to the effect of “we strive to be on your level,” referencing his eating habits, and he just stared at them blankly. People began to ask if he was ok, if he would like to join them, but he always just stared, sometimes with a knowing smile on his face, but would never reply, leaving the students to depart awkwardly. Once I even witnessed one of the caf attendants telling him he needed to stop spending all his time there.
My friend that I always ate with became my boyfriend, and we began to theorize what exactly this kid’s deal was. We said maybe mental illness, or maybe he was a competitive eater, or he was trying to bulk up, but his behavior seemed too empty, too neurotic to be explained away by any of these. Our main theory, the one I subscribe to now, did not come till much later.
My sophomore year I opted to live on campus again, and in the middle of my second semester, COVID hit. My school allowed us to remain on campus until the school year was up, and due to some personal reasons of not wanting to go home, I remained in my dorm, and my boyfriend joined me and we quarantined together. That time was so strange because our campus became an incredibly liminal space without all the other students. Some others remained with us, but on any given day you could walk the entire campus and not run into another soul. My boyfriend and I started running the wooded trails on campus to get exercise.
One day we stopped on one of the trails to do some burpees. As we did so, the kid from the caf, emerged from some trees, not on any trail, just walked out of the woods and started running toward us. This really caught us off guard because we rarely saw anyone, and he just maid a beeline toward us. RIght as he ran up on us he stopped. Just smiled at us knowingly, as if we shared some joke, but it was not a nice smile, it was incredibly nasty, sinister even. I don’t know if I felt that way because he had scared us, but something was off. We had never spoken to him those times at the caf but he seemed to recognize us. The other thing that was weird was that he was jacked, way taller and just larger than he ever had been freshman year. It wasn’t just that he gained muscle mass, he just seemed like scaled up, like he hit a massive growth spurt, which I suppose is plausible, but it just seemed really off.
We were both shaken by the experience and began to joke that he had been eating so much to store up energy so he could level up or something. Then one of us, I forget which, suggested he looked so strange because it was a demon wearing a human’s skin and was eating so much to build strength for his demonic powers, and that’s how he grew so quickly. Like I said it began as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the more it just seemed to explain not only his odd appearance but his odd behavior toward other students, the empty look in his eyes.
Here’s where things went from weird to fucking terrifying:
My boyfriend and I forgot about him, and we moved out of my dorm into an apartment a few blocks from school as we were still finishing, and while school was mostly online now, I liked the area. The same creek that ran the length of our school campus ran behind our complex, and as it was still COVID lockdown and we had nothing to do, we would go on long walks up and down the creek.
One evening we went for a walk at dusk and by the time we got to the main road our apartment was on it was completely dark. It was extremely quiet, and as we walked along the road we saw we were coming up on a man walking very slow and deliberate. My hackles were up immediately as our apartment is in a seedy area and there were a lot of homeless and unstable people who sometimes hung out around the creek. And there was just something about his walk, it was so deliberate, and predatory. As we crossed paths with the man he walked even slower, and in the dim light of streetlamps I realized I recognized him as that same kid, that same waxy face, and bulging eyes. I also realized that in one hand he held a paper bag with something big and round in it, while in the other he held a crowbar. A fucking crow bar. He slowed down even more as he passed us and turned his whole head and smiled at us. This time there was no mistake when I tell you it was the most threatening, sinister smile I have ever seen, and it had that same knowing in it, like he knew us and we shared some joke. He didn’t say anything, just stared at us with his horrible eyes. I don’t know if I’ve just read too many creepypastas or if I’m overthinking things, but I knew on an animalistic level he wanted to hurt us and wanted us to know he could.
After we passed him, we took off running, and when we returned to the apartment, we were both in a full-blown panic, even my boyfriend who tends to be pretty levelheaded and skeptical wanted to call the police. We did and as soon as we began to explain the situation, we felt pretty foolish. They asked if he threatened us, and we said not verbally but we felt threatened. Despite the absurdity of our call they said they would look into it because obviously there’s not a lot of non-nefarious reasons to be walking around at night with a crowbar. But we never heard anything, and we never saw him again.
To close this, I just think the whole thing is strange, how this kid kept showing up in our lives over 3 years, and always seemed to recognize us, always seemed to want to let us know he knew us. I think as people we know when there’s just something off about a person, when there’s nothing going on inside. People have said as much about sociopaths they’ve had run-ins with. But I want to know what you guys think, did I encounter the Antichrist leveling up? A demon? Or a really troubled kid who became a dangerous man? Maybe he was just a depressed kid, but I will hold firm that we were, at the very least, threatened by this guy, that we wanted to hurt us, and that we encountered something or someone evil. What do you think?
P.S. I did some rudimentary google searches for police reports in the area for assault with a crowbar, and some other things that might had related but could not find anything.
submitted by Fabulous_Brain_7888 to nosleep [link] [comments]
For context, I started college in fall 2018, going to a university in a somewhat rural area. The college itself sits on a large plot of land surrounded by farmland and vineyards, with sections that are forested and have little trails running through them, and a creek that runs the length of school property. The college has even had a murder victim dumped in one of the wooded areas on campus, but that’s a story for another day.
Freshmen were required to live on campus their first year and one of the benefits of that was that we had unlimited access to the school cafeteria, aka the caf. The caf was pretty nice, boasting a salad bar, sandwich station, mini bakery, hot food with different menu’s daily, and pretty much every fountain drink you can think of. I would get lunch and dinner there with my only friend at the time (and who is now my fiancé), and we began to notice this boy who was always at the caf alone. It wasn’t uncommon to see students eating there alone, my school had pretty poor community outreach/ school spirit, but something was really off about this kid.
First off he had a very distinct look (this is important because we recognized him multiple times over 3 years), his skin was extremely pale and had this heavy, fleshy look to it that I struggle to describe, like he was made of wax, he had red curly hair (insert ginger joke here), a mouth a little too large for his face, but what was the strangest thing about him was his eyes. They were the same color as his hair, that bright red auburn, his iris was almost too big for his eye, and his pupils were always extremely dilated. His eyes had a bulging look, very similar to Mark Zuckerburg, like they were trying to escape his face. It’s hard to describe here but he just had a very unsettling look to him, it just felt that there was something very wrong, like there was nothing inside him.
But his appearance wasn’t what caught our attention at first, what caught our attention was the amount of food this kid could eat. Of course, having unlimited access to food some kids went overboard, but this kid was another level. He always had 5 or 6 cups of juice, soda, coffee, and 3-4 plates piled with food. Mind you, he was not large or overweight, but he would clear every plate and then just sit in his booth alone, staring into space with his headphones in. That was another thing, he always had this blank, vacant expression, always staring into nothing. Whenever you walked past his booth you could hear that the music from his headphones was on full blast.
We began to notice that no matter what time we went to the caf, whether it be for a late-night snack, breakfast, a random afternoon craving, he was always there, sitting alone in the ruins of his empty plates. And we weren’t the only people who noticed his strange behavior. By second semester, people began approaching him, at first just some girls jokingly saying something to the effect of “we strive to be on your level,” referencing his eating habits, and he just stared at them blankly. People began to ask if he was ok, if he would like to join them, but he always just stared, sometimes with a knowing smile on his face, but would never reply, leaving the students to depart awkwardly. Once I even witnessed one of the caf attendants telling him he needed to stop spending all his time there.
My friend that I always ate with became my boyfriend, and we began to theorize what exactly this kid’s deal was. We said maybe mental illness, or maybe he was a competitive eater, or he was trying to bulk up, but his behavior seemed too empty, too neurotic to be explained away by any of these. Our main theory, the one I subscribe to now, did not come till much later.
My sophomore year I opted to live on campus again, and in the middle of my second semester, COVID hit. My school allowed us to remain on campus until the school year was up, and due to some personal reasons of not wanting to go home, I remained in my dorm, and my boyfriend joined me and we quarantined together. That time was so strange because our campus became an incredibly liminal space without all the other students. Some others remained with us, but on any given day you could walk the entire campus and not run into another soul. My boyfriend and I started running the wooded trails on campus to get exercise.
One day we stopped on one of the trails to do some burpees. As we did so, the kid from the caf, emerged from some trees, not on any trail, just walked out of the woods and started running toward us. This really caught us off guard because we rarely saw anyone, and he just maid a beeline toward us. RIght as he ran up on us he stopped. Just smiled at us knowingly, as if we shared some joke, but it was not a nice smile, it was incredibly nasty, sinister even. I don’t know if I felt that way because he had scared us, but something was off. We had never spoken to him those times at the caf but he seemed to recognize us. The other thing that was weird was that he was jacked, way taller and just larger than he ever had been freshman year. It wasn’t just that he gained muscle mass, he just seemed like scaled up, like he hit a massive growth spurt, which I suppose is plausible, but it just seemed really off.
We were both shaken by the experience and began to joke that he had been eating so much to store up energy so he could level up or something. Then one of us, I forget which, suggested he looked so strange because it was a demon wearing a human’s skin and was eating so much to build strength for his demonic powers, and that’s how he grew so quickly. Like I said it began as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the more it just seemed to explain not only his odd appearance but his odd behavior toward other students, the empty look in his eyes.
Here’s where things went from weird to fucking terrifying:
My boyfriend and I forgot about him, and we moved out of my dorm into an apartment a few blocks from school as we were still finishing, and while school was mostly online now, I liked the area. The same creek that ran the length of our school campus ran behind our complex, and as it was still COVID lockdown and we had nothing to do, we would go on long walks up and down the creek.
One evening we went for a walk at dusk and by the time we got to the main road our apartment was on it was completely dark. It was extremely quiet, and as we walked along the road we saw we were coming up on a man walking very slow and deliberate. My hackles were up immediately as our apartment is in a seedy area and there were a lot of homeless and unstable people who sometimes hung out around the creek. And there was just something about his walk, it was so deliberate, and predatory. As we crossed paths with the man he walked even slower, and in the dim light of streetlamps I realized I recognized him as that same kid, that same waxy face, and bulging eyes. I also realized that in one hand he held a paper bag with something big and round in it, while in the other he held a crowbar. A fucking crow bar. He slowed down even more as he passed us and turned his whole head and smiled at us. This time there was no mistake when I tell you it was the most threatening, sinister smile I have ever seen, and it had that same knowing in it, like he knew us and we shared some joke. He didn’t say anything, just stared at us with his horrible eyes. I don’t know if I’ve just read too many creepypastas or if I’m overthinking things, but I knew on an animalistic level he wanted to hurt us and wanted us to know he could.
After we passed him, we took off running, and when we returned to the apartment, we were both in a full-blown panic, even my boyfriend who tends to be pretty levelheaded and skeptical wanted to call the police. We did and as soon as we began to explain the situation, we felt pretty foolish. They asked if he threatened us, and we said not verbally but we felt threatened. Despite the absurdity of our call they said they would look into it because obviously there’s not a lot of non-nefarious reasons to be walking around at night with a crowbar. But we never heard anything, and we never saw him again.
To close this, I just think the whole thing is strange, how this kid kept showing up in our lives over 3 years, and always seemed to recognize us, always seemed to want to let us know he knew us. I think as people we know when there’s just something off about a person, when there’s nothing going on inside. People have said as much about sociopaths they’ve had run-ins with. But I want to know what you guys think, did I encounter the Antichrist leveling up? A demon? Or a really troubled kid who became a dangerous man? Maybe he was just a depressed kid, but I will hold firm that we were, at the very least, threatened by this guy, that we wanted to hurt us, and that we encountered something or someone evil. What do you think?
P.S. I did some rudimentary google searches for police reports in the area for assault with a crowbar, and some other things that might had related but could not find anything.
2024.05.06 20:46 Fabulous_Brain_7888 I'm pretty sure I encountered a demon in the making
I want to preface this story by saying that while I am pretty much agnostic on a good day and an atheist on a bad day, I am a fan of horror and grew up in a fairly religious environment via a very evangelical christian highschool, so my point of view may be skewed by those influences. However, I do think whatever my fiance and I witnessed was at the very least, an extremely dangerous person.
For context, I started college in fall 2018, going to a university in a somewhat rural area. The college itself sits on a large plot of land surrounded by farmland and vineyards, with sections that are forested and have little trails running through them, and a creek that runs the length of school property. The college has even had a murder victim dumped in one of the wooded areas on campus, but that’s a story for another day.
Freshmen were required to live on campus their first year and one of the benefits of that was that we had unlimited access to the school cafeteria, aka the caf. The caf was pretty nice, boasting a salad bar, sandwich station, mini bakery, hot food with different menu’s daily, and pretty much every fountain drink you can think of. I would get lunch and dinner there with my only friend at the time (and who is now my fiance), and we began to notice this boy who was always at the caf alone. It wasn’t uncommon to see students eating there alone, my school had pretty poor community outreach/ school spirit, but something was really off about this kid.
First off he had a very distinct look (this is important because we recognized him multiple times over 3 years), his skin was extremely pale and had this waxy fleshy look to it that I struggle to describe, like he was made of wax, he had red curly hair (insert ginger joke here), a mouth a little too large for his face, but what was the strangest thing about him was his eyes. They were the same color as his hair, that bright red auburn, his iris was almost too big for his eye, and his pupils were always extremely dilated. His eyes had a bulging look, very similar to Mark Zuckerburg, like they were trying to escape his face. It’s hard to describe here but he just had a very unsettling look to him, it just felt that there was something very wrong, like there was nothing inside him.
But his appearance wasn’t what caught our attention at first, what caught our attention was the amount of food this kid could eat. Of course, having unlimited access to food some kids went overboard, but this kid was another level. He always had 5 or 6 cups of juice, soda, coffee, and 3-4 plates piled with food. Mind you, he was not large or overweight, but he would clear every plate and then just sit in his booth alone, staring into space with his headphones in. That was another thing, he always had this blank, vacant expression, always staring into nothing. Whenever you walked past his booth you could hear that the music from his headphones was on full blast.
We began to notice that no matter what time we went to the caf, whether it be for a late-night snack, breakfast, a random afternoon craving, he was always there, sitting alone in the ruins of his empty plates. And we weren’t the only people who noticed his strange behavior. By second semester, people began approaching him, at first just some girls jokingly saying something to the effect of “we strive to be on your level,” referencing his eating habits, and he just stared at them blankly. People began to ask if he was ok, if he would like to join them, but he always just stared, sometimes with a knowing smile on his face, but would never reply, leaving the students to depart awkwardly. Once I even witnessed one of the caf attendants telling him he needed to stop spending all his time there.
My friend that I always ate with became my boyfriend, and we began to theorize what exactly this kid’s deal was. We said maybe mental illness, or maybe he was a competitive eater, or he was trying to bulk up, but his behavior seemed too empty, too neurotic to be explained away by any of these. Our main theory, the one I subscribe to now, did not come till much later.
My sophomore year I opted to live on campus again, and in the middle of my second semester, COVID hit. My school allowed us to remain on campus until the school year was up, and due to some personal reasons of not wanting to go home, I remained in my dorm, and my boyfriend joined me and we quarantined together. That time was so strange because our campus became an incredibly liminal space without all the other students. Some others remained with us, but on any given day you could walk the entire campus and not run into another soul. My boyfriend and I started running the wooded trails on campus to get exercise.
One day we stopped on one of the trails to do some burpees. As we did so, the kid from the caf, emerged from some trees, not on any trail, just walked out of the woods and started running toward us. This really caught us off guard because we rarely saw anyone, and he just maid a beeline toward us. RIght as he ran up on us he stopped. Just smiled at us knowingly, as if we shared some joke, but it was not a nice smile, it was incredibly nasty, sinister even. I don’t know if I felt that way because he had scared us, but something was off. We had never spoken to him those times at the caf but he seemed to recognize us. The other thing that was weird was that he was jacked, way taller and just larger than he ever had been freshman year. It wasn’t just that he gained muscle mass, he just seemed like scaled up, like he hit a massive growth spurt, which I suppose is plausible, but it just seemed really off.
We were both shaken by the experience and began to joke that he had been eating so much to store up energy so he could level up or something. Then one of us, I forget which, suggested he looked so strange because it was a demon wearing a human’s skin and was eating so much to build strength for his demonic powers, and that’s how he grew so quickly. Like I said it began as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the more it just seemed to explain not only his odd appearance but his odd behavior toward other students, the empty look in his eyes.
Here’s where things went from weird to fucking terrifying:
My boyfriend and I forgot about him, and moved out of my dorm into an apartment a few blocks from school as we were still finishing, and while school was mostly online now, I liked the area. The same creek that ran the length of our school campus ran behind our complex, and as it was still COVID lockdown and we had nothing to do, we would go on long walks up and down the creek.
One evening we went for a walk at dusk and by the time we got to the main road our apartment was on it was completely dark. It was extremely quiet, and as we walked along the road we saw we were coming up on a man walking very slow and deliberate. My hackles were up immediately as our apartment is in a seedy area and there were a lot of homeless and unstable people who sometimes hung out around the creek. And there was just something about his walk, it was so deliberate, and predatory. As we crossed paths with the man he walked even slower, and in the dim light of streetlamps I realized I recognized him as that same kid, that same waxy face, and bulging eyes. I also realized that in one hand he held a paper bag with something big and round in it, while in the other he held a crowbar. A fucking crow bar. He slowed down even more as he passed us and turned his whole head, and smiled at us. This time there was no mistake when I tell you it was the most threatening, sinister smile I have ever seen, and it had that same knowing in it, like he knew us and we shared some joke. He didn’t say anything, just stared at us with his horrible eyes. I don’t know if I’ve just read too many creepypastas or if I’m overthinking things, but I knew on an animalistic level he wanted to hurt us and wanted us to know he could.
After we passed him, we took off running, and when we returned to the apartment, we were both in a full-blown panic, even my boyfriend who tends to be pretty levelheaded and skeptical wanted to call the police. We did and as soon as we began to explain the situation we felt pretty foolish. They asked if he threatened us and we said not verbally but we felt threatened. Despite the absurdity of our call they said they would look into it because obviously there’s not a lot of non-nefarious reasons to be walking around at night with a crowbar. But we never heard anything, and we never saw him again.
To close this, I just think the whole thing is strange, how this kid kept showing up in our lives over 3 years, and always seemed to recognize us, always seemed to want to let us know he knew us. I think as people we know when there’s just something off about a person, when there’s nothing going on inside. People have said as much about sociopaths they’ve had run-ins with. But I want to know what you guys think, did I encounter the Antichrist leveling up? A demon? Or a really troubled kid who became a dangerous man? Maybe he was just a depressed kid, but I will hold firm that we were, at the very least, threatened by this guy, that we wanted to hurt us, and that we encountered something or someone evil. What do you think?
P.S. I did some rudimentary google searches for police reports in the area for assault with a crowbar, and some other things that might had related but could not find anything.
submitted by Fabulous_Brain_7888 to Paranormal [link] [comments]
For context, I started college in fall 2018, going to a university in a somewhat rural area. The college itself sits on a large plot of land surrounded by farmland and vineyards, with sections that are forested and have little trails running through them, and a creek that runs the length of school property. The college has even had a murder victim dumped in one of the wooded areas on campus, but that’s a story for another day.
Freshmen were required to live on campus their first year and one of the benefits of that was that we had unlimited access to the school cafeteria, aka the caf. The caf was pretty nice, boasting a salad bar, sandwich station, mini bakery, hot food with different menu’s daily, and pretty much every fountain drink you can think of. I would get lunch and dinner there with my only friend at the time (and who is now my fiance), and we began to notice this boy who was always at the caf alone. It wasn’t uncommon to see students eating there alone, my school had pretty poor community outreach/ school spirit, but something was really off about this kid.
First off he had a very distinct look (this is important because we recognized him multiple times over 3 years), his skin was extremely pale and had this waxy fleshy look to it that I struggle to describe, like he was made of wax, he had red curly hair (insert ginger joke here), a mouth a little too large for his face, but what was the strangest thing about him was his eyes. They were the same color as his hair, that bright red auburn, his iris was almost too big for his eye, and his pupils were always extremely dilated. His eyes had a bulging look, very similar to Mark Zuckerburg, like they were trying to escape his face. It’s hard to describe here but he just had a very unsettling look to him, it just felt that there was something very wrong, like there was nothing inside him.
But his appearance wasn’t what caught our attention at first, what caught our attention was the amount of food this kid could eat. Of course, having unlimited access to food some kids went overboard, but this kid was another level. He always had 5 or 6 cups of juice, soda, coffee, and 3-4 plates piled with food. Mind you, he was not large or overweight, but he would clear every plate and then just sit in his booth alone, staring into space with his headphones in. That was another thing, he always had this blank, vacant expression, always staring into nothing. Whenever you walked past his booth you could hear that the music from his headphones was on full blast.
We began to notice that no matter what time we went to the caf, whether it be for a late-night snack, breakfast, a random afternoon craving, he was always there, sitting alone in the ruins of his empty plates. And we weren’t the only people who noticed his strange behavior. By second semester, people began approaching him, at first just some girls jokingly saying something to the effect of “we strive to be on your level,” referencing his eating habits, and he just stared at them blankly. People began to ask if he was ok, if he would like to join them, but he always just stared, sometimes with a knowing smile on his face, but would never reply, leaving the students to depart awkwardly. Once I even witnessed one of the caf attendants telling him he needed to stop spending all his time there.
My friend that I always ate with became my boyfriend, and we began to theorize what exactly this kid’s deal was. We said maybe mental illness, or maybe he was a competitive eater, or he was trying to bulk up, but his behavior seemed too empty, too neurotic to be explained away by any of these. Our main theory, the one I subscribe to now, did not come till much later.
My sophomore year I opted to live on campus again, and in the middle of my second semester, COVID hit. My school allowed us to remain on campus until the school year was up, and due to some personal reasons of not wanting to go home, I remained in my dorm, and my boyfriend joined me and we quarantined together. That time was so strange because our campus became an incredibly liminal space without all the other students. Some others remained with us, but on any given day you could walk the entire campus and not run into another soul. My boyfriend and I started running the wooded trails on campus to get exercise.
One day we stopped on one of the trails to do some burpees. As we did so, the kid from the caf, emerged from some trees, not on any trail, just walked out of the woods and started running toward us. This really caught us off guard because we rarely saw anyone, and he just maid a beeline toward us. RIght as he ran up on us he stopped. Just smiled at us knowingly, as if we shared some joke, but it was not a nice smile, it was incredibly nasty, sinister even. I don’t know if I felt that way because he had scared us, but something was off. We had never spoken to him those times at the caf but he seemed to recognize us. The other thing that was weird was that he was jacked, way taller and just larger than he ever had been freshman year. It wasn’t just that he gained muscle mass, he just seemed like scaled up, like he hit a massive growth spurt, which I suppose is plausible, but it just seemed really off.
We were both shaken by the experience and began to joke that he had been eating so much to store up energy so he could level up or something. Then one of us, I forget which, suggested he looked so strange because it was a demon wearing a human’s skin and was eating so much to build strength for his demonic powers, and that’s how he grew so quickly. Like I said it began as a joke, but the more we discussed it, the more it just seemed to explain not only his odd appearance but his odd behavior toward other students, the empty look in his eyes.
Here’s where things went from weird to fucking terrifying:
My boyfriend and I forgot about him, and moved out of my dorm into an apartment a few blocks from school as we were still finishing, and while school was mostly online now, I liked the area. The same creek that ran the length of our school campus ran behind our complex, and as it was still COVID lockdown and we had nothing to do, we would go on long walks up and down the creek.
One evening we went for a walk at dusk and by the time we got to the main road our apartment was on it was completely dark. It was extremely quiet, and as we walked along the road we saw we were coming up on a man walking very slow and deliberate. My hackles were up immediately as our apartment is in a seedy area and there were a lot of homeless and unstable people who sometimes hung out around the creek. And there was just something about his walk, it was so deliberate, and predatory. As we crossed paths with the man he walked even slower, and in the dim light of streetlamps I realized I recognized him as that same kid, that same waxy face, and bulging eyes. I also realized that in one hand he held a paper bag with something big and round in it, while in the other he held a crowbar. A fucking crow bar. He slowed down even more as he passed us and turned his whole head, and smiled at us. This time there was no mistake when I tell you it was the most threatening, sinister smile I have ever seen, and it had that same knowing in it, like he knew us and we shared some joke. He didn’t say anything, just stared at us with his horrible eyes. I don’t know if I’ve just read too many creepypastas or if I’m overthinking things, but I knew on an animalistic level he wanted to hurt us and wanted us to know he could.
After we passed him, we took off running, and when we returned to the apartment, we were both in a full-blown panic, even my boyfriend who tends to be pretty levelheaded and skeptical wanted to call the police. We did and as soon as we began to explain the situation we felt pretty foolish. They asked if he threatened us and we said not verbally but we felt threatened. Despite the absurdity of our call they said they would look into it because obviously there’s not a lot of non-nefarious reasons to be walking around at night with a crowbar. But we never heard anything, and we never saw him again.
To close this, I just think the whole thing is strange, how this kid kept showing up in our lives over 3 years, and always seemed to recognize us, always seemed to want to let us know he knew us. I think as people we know when there’s just something off about a person, when there’s nothing going on inside. People have said as much about sociopaths they’ve had run-ins with. But I want to know what you guys think, did I encounter the Antichrist leveling up? A demon? Or a really troubled kid who became a dangerous man? Maybe he was just a depressed kid, but I will hold firm that we were, at the very least, threatened by this guy, that we wanted to hurt us, and that we encountered something or someone evil. What do you think?
P.S. I did some rudimentary google searches for police reports in the area for assault with a crowbar, and some other things that might had related but could not find anything.