RE: The Savage Brawl [Round 5: Battletopia]
10-28-2023, 10:07 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-12-2023, 02:09 PM by Ixcaliber.)
The City of Battletopia when viewed from above was a wheel. Kracht’s headquarters were built at the centre and then around it were a number of spokes, which were broken down into districts. The seven Holding Cells (each custom designed for the unique challenges in holding a specific contestant) were positioned out across the wheel in such a way that even if every safeguard did catastrophically fail and every prisoner, except Hand of Silver, was released, their distance from each other would give Kracht enough time to perform an emergency execution of Hand of Silver before there was any chance of any of the other contestants killing each other.
On the northwest side of the city was District N, where a neighbourhood was burning and where the watchtower of former District Supervisor Kriok Searae stood unattended.
Just anticlockwise of that was District M, containing the dedicated Gormand Holding Cell, minimally staffed due to the simplicity of containing the contestant in question.
One more spoke anticlockwise was District L and on the far edge of that were Units L and L2. Outside which Tor Kajan and Brother Cedric were now pulling up in a stolen car.
—
Things had been chaotic as Tor and Cedric had made their preparations to search for a qualified neurosurgeon. The Soulmother, whose entire strategy so far had been to build up a fortifiable location and base of support, was pivoting hard, looking to get moving so as to press whatever advantage she had before she no longer had it. The business with Sister Kriok’s half acceptance, and the steps that would need to be taken to remedy this had been seemingly forgotten in the shuffle.
Tor had voiced this concern as they had been driving through the thankfully empty streets of M District, but characteristically Brother Cedric was not concerned.
“I think,” Brother Cedric had countered, “that maybe the Soulmother’s confidence in our skills is so great that she’s simply not worried about whether we’ll succeed.”
“I suppose that is possible.” Tor had said thoughtfully. He worried about her course of action, that she was running too fast towards a confrontation she wasn’t ready for. He hoped that he was wrong and that the growing uncertainty eating at him was just nerves.
They had tried getting in touch with Sister Kriok again. Though it felt somewhat ridiculous to have to ask her for direction on this specific matter, the finding of such a specific profession was well outside their jurisdiction, and they reasoned that even if she was not fully devoted to the Soulmother’s cause she probably wouldn’t refuse a direct request.
However Sister Kriok hadn’t been answering her calls, and they’d been forced to go up the ladder and speak to Lieutenant Matthew Zimmer. Once he’d been convinced that Kriok had abandoned her post, it only took the suggestion that she’d been talking about looking for a neurosurgeon for Lieutenant Zimmer to point them in the direction of Unit L2. He had also indicated he was calling in a replacement to man the District N watchtower. Tor considered that such matters were probably past the concern of the Soulmother at this point.
Finally they arrived at their destination. Offset from the streets of the city, set into the woods just a little, were two buildings. One was a squat drab looking building with barred windows, it was surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. In the yard in between the prison and the outside were large crackling pylons that thrummed with an uncomfortable energy, even from the car on the street their presence was felt.
The other building looked like a normal house, offset from the street and surrounded by untended fields that themselves contained pylons identical to the ones surrounding the prison on the other side of the road. Aside from these fairly notable differences the house itself looked as though it could have been directly transplanted from a suburb.
Tor and Brother Cedric locked eyes. “Ready?” Tor asked, Cedric gave a firm nod in response. The pair opened their doors, got out of the car and each started towards a different building. Cedric was at the gates of the more imposing structure before he looked back and saw Tor heading over the road.
“Brother Tor!” He called out. Tor stopped in his tracks, looked back at his partner with a beleaguered expression on his face. “The prison is right here, Brother Tor. See?” He gestured at the structure behind him. Tor shushed emphatically and gestured at the house behind him, and when this didn’t achieve the desired result, he hurried back over to Cedric at the prison’s gates.
“This is Unit L.” He spoke quietly, not quite a whisper but close. “We want Unit L2.” Here he gestured again at the house over the street.
“Are you sure you don’t have the map the wrong way up?” Brother Cedric asked hopefully (if he noticed Tor’s subtle indication to lower the volume of his voice he certainly didn’t act upon it). He’d really been wanting to make up for the lack of action at the District N Watchtower with a spectacular prison break.
“I’m sure.” Tor said firmly. And so with a faint air of disappointment the pair crossed the street to Unit L2. Their path was obstructed by a garden gate, but it was just a regular garden gate set in a waist high wooden fence. It wasn’t locked and it wouldn’t have been an obstacle even if it was. They followed a little path through the pylons (it felt uncomfortable to be so close to them but not painful) and to the front door.
Cedric stepped up to the door and raised his fist to knock, before Tor stepped in the way, voice still lowered. “Despite appearances this is a prison. We should look for a way in.”
Tor started off around the house, moving as quietly as he could through the overgrown lawn, peeking around corners and into windows. Brother Cedric watched him go and then reached out and tried the front door. It wasn’t locked. “It’s open!” he called to Tor, who shushed him furiously and rushed back to the porch.
“Good work Brother Cedric.” He said clapping his spiritual sibling on the back. As Tor reached for the door Cedric braced himself and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword (technically curfew enforcement officers were only supposed to have batons, but Cedric insisted). Cautiously Tor pushed open the front door to reveal an entirely normal hallway, or well, a hallway that had probably been entirely normal very recently and which now looked like a wild animal had torn through here.
There were claw marks scraped across the wallpaper, upturned and broken furniture, the remnants of probably several different ceramic jars, coats and scarves and shoes all shredded and scattered everywhere. At the far end of the hall a door hung open, slightly pulled off its hinges, and a light spilled out from the room beyond.
Tor made a silent gesture to Brother Cedric and for once he seemed to get the message. The pair crept down the hallway to the open doorway and peered inside. It was a living room, or the remains of one. The sofa had been shredded, drawers were pulled out and scattered across the floor, their handles ripped off and discarded, a bookcase had been toppled, its contents scattered and slashed to ribbons seemingly at random. The only remaining piece of furniture was small coffee table in the middle of the room, a little battered, on which stood a small oil lamp, a bottle of some clear alcoholic beverage and a small selection of glassware, from wine glasses to shot glasses to beer mugs.
The only occupant of the room was a woman with orange fur and pointed ears and… she was a foxgirl. There’s no way around this fact. Her face was elongated into the muzzle of a fox, her hands bore sharp claws and behind her she swooshed back and forth a big fluffy tail. The foxwoman was sat cross legged in the midst of the destruction, throwing back drinks and thumbing through some of the books that still remained intact.
Brother Cedric caught Tor’s eye and gestured towards the foxlady raising his eyebrows as if to question every element of what was happening.
Tor sighed and stepped into the living room proper, with Cedric unsheathing his sword and following behind him. “Excuse me, are you Tranquility-In-The-Face-Of-Annihilation?” The fox turned around, as if barely even surprised by his presence.
she said.
Tor and Brother Cedric looked at each other blankly.
“Did you catch that?” Cedric asked.
Tor shook his head. He looked back at the foxgirl and asked: “Could you repeat that? I couldn’t quite make it out.”
She paused for a second before adding:
Tor and Brother Cedric just sort of shrugged at each other and reconfirmed that neither of them had been able to hear anything she said, though they were quite clear she definitely said something.
“If I do yes/no questions you can nod or shake your head in response and um I guess that should work?” Tor suggested. It was then he noticed a pair of disembodied floating hands carrying over a chalkboard. The hands were odd to look at; perfectly smooth, perfectly uniform in colour (bright magenta). As soon as the chalkboard was in the fox lady’s hands the disembodied ones seemed to evaporate into nothing. Tor and Brother Cedric watched in bewildered silence as she wrote out a single sentence on the chalkboard.
‘This is easier if you let me take over narration’
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brother Cedric asked.
—-
The mood in the reception corridor of Kracht’s headquarters building was tense. On one end Kracht flanked by two of his most intimidating non-organic security officers. On the other a small mob of mostly humans, standing at the back of which was a large brownish red figure most precisely described as an ant/human hybrid, as Michelle had indicated.
Kracht would have preferred to have more backup. CH4-12-L13 and AMP would not be easily overwhelmed but the sheer number of defectors before him made him on edge. He’d been fairly certain from Aph and Michelle’s conduct that some form of mind control was in play and banked on the immunity of non-organics like himself.
In the time since that meeting he’d been making calls reassigning his forces, moving any non-organics that could be spared from Holding Cells to come and reinforce his position here at Headquarters, and likewise to send all highly skilled, non essential organics to man the Holding Cells where they were less likely to be used directly against him.
Only Ajota had arrived much quicker than anticipated. Most of the organic officers were gone but none of the non-organic reinforcements had arrived yet to replace them. The timing was awful and if she had attempted anything more subtle than coming right up to the front door and asking politely this could have been disastrous.
As the hallucinogenic gas poured into the room, Captain Amethyst of the Hand of Silver Retrieval Squadron quickly stepped forwards, hurriedly hitting buttons on her armband as a translucent golden energy bubble formed around her and expanded out to encompass the entire group.
Kracht scowled inwardly, Captain Amethyst had been working in this very building ten minutes ago. She’d been part of the group sent to reinforce Konka’s Holding Cell. If she was here then Ajota had intercepted at least one of the three groups.
“Captain -”
“My poison -”
General Kracht and Captain Amethyst both started to talk at once but they were drowned out by “Brother Vasily!” A kid with black messy hair, glasses and civilian clothing standing at the front of the group was glaring at the headquarters receptionist, who was looking pretty ashamed of himself. “Brother Vasily, I understand your fear, your impulse to fight and protect your newfound family... But unprovoked violence is beneath us. There may be a time for such things, but first we must, for the sake of our family, try to resolve this peacefully.” It took Kracht a moment to place the kid, Jordan Smith; cowardly, minimal pyrokinesis, not a threat.
Private Vasily mumbled an apology (inaudible) and sheathed his firearm. Kracht wondered the extent and the efficacy of this Ajota’s mind control, given that it still seemed to allow for autonomy and dissenting opinions.
“Sister Amethyst?” Jordan prompted.
“Thank you Brother Jordan,” Captain Sister Amethyst began, “my poison filter bubble should filter out the worst effects of the gas.”
“Thank you Sister Amethyst.” Jordan replied. “G-General Kracht.” His voice quavered as he finally turned his gaze towards Kracht himself. “I speak on behalf of Soulmother Ajota. She wishes to negotiate a peace.”
“Is she incapable of speaking for herself?” Kracht asked, looking past Jordan to the still and serene shape of the Soulmother.
“Y-yes, at least to those who are non-organic.” Jordan fidgeted with his sleeves. Kracht had to wonder why of all people she had picked him to be her spokesperson.
Kracht considered the situation. He would likely win should this devolve into a skirmish but could not guarantee that Ajota would not be killed in the process, which was perhaps the worst possible outcome. But if he could buy some time reinforcements for the reinforcements from the Holding Cells to get here, their presence could stack the odds back in his favour.
“Fine in that case I will acknowledge you as her mouthpiece.” Kracht said. “Please explain to me-”
“Stop the gas.” Jordan spoke with a strong emphasis and a surprisingly commanding voice. Kracht reluctantly trailed off and Jordan repeated: “If you’re entering this negotiation in good faith stop the gas.”
“...Fine. As you say, a show of good faith.” Kracht said, clapping his hands again. There was the sound of fans turning on and gradually the air began to clear, though the shutters that had sealed the room did not move. “But now, please explain to me how you can brainwash my soldiers,” he gestured towards the mob of people amongst them Captain Amethyst, Private Vasily Rurikovich, Sergeant Aegis Culpris, “and then come to me and claim to speak of peace?”
A long moment of silence before Jordan replied: “The Soulmother says They were your soldiers, yes. You may feel a sting of betrayal that they stand by me now, but they are my children, my sons and daughters. You value them for their tactical value, the skills they could provide you. I value them because they are my family and I love them no matter who they are or what they can do. Showing them my love is an act of mercy in a harsh and uncaring world.” As he spoke Kracht cast his gaze across the mob of defectors; a ragtag bunch clutching improvised weapons, all of whom were hanging on Jordan’s, or rather the Soulmother’s, every word.
“Irrelevant pedantism. If you are genuinely here to negotiate for peace as you claim, you must relinquish your claim on my soldiers.” Kracht said. “You can keep the civilians if you wish, if your influence does not prevent them from carrying out their assigned tasks. This much is non-negotiable.”
—
Dekowin flew wide arcs over the burning ruins of what had once been a suburb of District N. At the epicentre of the fire a number of houses had been reduced to blackened rubble alongside some unidentified structures that seemed to have been built across the street itself. Fires had spread out along streets from this point, but oddly there was no sign of anybody living or dead. She had to assume that those houses were empty. The explosion had been loud and anybody who had heard it surely wouldn’t still be sat in their house as it burned to the ground. Which prompted the question, where the fuck was everyone?
One more circle of the wreckage and she spotted some black shape moving through the burning streets.
Dekowin considered her options. She wasn’t even supposed to be here, she was a district supervisor yes but she normally covered District A and tonight was her night off. If Kriok had been doing her job Dekowin would still be at home, curled up in bed watching The Rollo Show Arrival Day Special (featuring special musical guest Laura Scourge).
Protocol upon witnessing any suspicious activity like this was to go back to her watchtower and radio this in and someone else would be assigned to investigate. But she was already forced out of bed, onto active duty tonight of all nights. She might as well have some fun.
And so, she descended into the street. Houses on either side of her were standing with their doors left wide open, and thick black smoke billowing out. The air was hot and dry but here in the middle of the street she was far enough from the flames that it wasn’t actively painful. She knew being down here was a terrible idea and if she hadn’t been starved for action for the last year or so she would have simply flew away again, made that report, maybe Kriok had a tv set up in the tower she could use.
“Anybody here?” Dekowin called out to the seemingly empty street. “Special offer for arsonists and terrorists to come and get your asses kicked, completely free of charge.” She turned slowly, looking for that shape she was sure had come down this way. Just as she was about to give up, she saw a black shape moving out of the corner of her eye. She turned to face it, extending her claws and bracing herself when the shape was already upon her, she swung at it but it was smoke, thick and black and cloying as it tried to force itself down her throat.
Instinctively she knew what this was; everyone in Battletopia knew the contestants, knew Ziirphael. It didn’t make much sense that he was here. All four of the battlers had already been safely captured. She didn’t have time to attempt to work out what or why this was happening. She held her breath, holding her nostrils closed with one hand, to try to deny the death god entry to her body, and with the other she started carving into her chest with her claws. The pain was excruciating and she couldn’t hold it in for long. She finished the carving with tears in her eyes as Ziirphael flowed into her body.
“That fucking bitch!” Ziirphael cried out. Here he was referring to Ajota rather than Dekowin. “Fucking ouch.” He looked down at this new body, saw the carving Dekowin had completed and rolled his eyes. It was the binding runes that General Kracht said were often inscribed on his body when he was a contestant. “If you don’t have an ounce of magical power in your body then all you’re doing is drawing symbols.” He sneered, though Dekowin’s consciousness was suppressed and not really capable of hearing his criticism.
He had, back when he had first incarnated here in Battleopolis wished that he didn’t have to hide his existence. But General Kracht said that the fear of the contestants was too ingrained, and that revealing that one of them was a citizen alongside them would do harm to the careful preparation he was making. As such defensive measures, such as these fucking runes, had continued to be taught to anyone who might come into contact with any of the contestants. Fortunately for him Dekowin had never cast a spell in her life.
“That fucking bitch.” Ziir repeated, less emphatically but with no less venom. He thought of Bae, the closest thing he’d ever had to a real friendship. Whoever this Ajota was, he was going to make her pay. With some trepidation, and a couple of misstarts he began to fly and headed back towards Kracht’s headquarters.
—
In his dreams he was home again. His Earth, not just before the beginning of this battle but many hundreds of years previous, in the midst of Human Expansion. It was the most uncomplicatedly good time of his life, even if now he could see ways in which his ambition had fallen short that never could have occurred to him at the time.
This time Hoss could have both the incredible power of his painstakingly constructed technological infrastructure, and the new and exciting possibilities that mastery of magic would bring to him. And with the knowledge of the multiverse that he carried with him now, he wouldn’t just settle for the one universe. All that ever was and ever could be would bear the flag of humanity and it would be glorious.
And it was glorious. He would be loathe to ever outwardly express discontent in the utopia he had created, but the times when he had seemingly insurmountable challenges to overcome were when he felt the most vibrantly alive.
It would have been perfect if not for the rot. It was subtle at first, creeping in at the edges of his vision. Aberrations, glitches in the software, he would reason and make a note to carry out the necessary maintenance when an opportunity presented itself.
Sometimes he would see it in the world, familiar places buried beneath this dark crimson crust, a roiling mass of maroon energy that it seemed as though nobody else could perceive. His old house, entombed in the rot. Many of his numerous installations in the process of being consumed entirely.
There were moments where his most trusted subordinates would be swallowed up by the rot and they would turn to him and say something such as: You must be Hand of Silver. My children have told me much about you and then everything would continue as usual.
He ran every diagnostic he could think of, all of which told him that everything was working perfectly fine. External video sources disagreed with his own experience of events. He enumerated the possibilities: 1) these were hallucinations, and if that was true either they were caused from within, from some undiagnosed disorder or chemical imbalance within his brain, or they were from without, a targeted attack using some cleverly placed hallucinogenic agent.
Or, more radically, option 2) this world was false. He tried to consider how he had learned about the multiverse, how he had come to understand and embrace magic, and it felt as though the world squirmed around this thought. Of course knowing, or suspecting, that the world he was in wasn’t real didn’t mean he could do anything about it.
The more time passed the more pervasive the rot was. He became a virtual recluse to avoid it, working only on a prototype for a multiversal transit vessel, emerging only when he had to and not looking at any of the people who said Let me in Hand of Silver. Let me show you that it doesn’t have to be like this.
By launch day, it seemed as though everything had rotten away. When Hoss opened the doors of his hangar it was as if the world had been swallowed entirely, nothing beyond these four walls but endless maroon, even the sky had grown sickly with it. The weight of it was oppressive. He almost fancied he could hear the walls buckling as it pressed down upon him, but if he could get this prototype to work then he could leave this universe behind. A tragedy that his home universe had been bespoiled by this inexplicable rot, but he knew from experience how much more there was out there.
He stepped into the prototype, only to see some wretched embodiment of the rot. A bizarre creature, as if what he was looking at was a centaur of an ant; the body of a woman rising from the lower half of an insect.
Nobody has ever fought me this hard before. She sounded sad.
“What are you?”
My name is Ajota and I love you ████████ Here she spoke a name he hadn’t used in a billion years.
—-
There had been a pair of guards outside the cargo elevator at Kracht’s headquarters, but like most organics in the building, they had been hurriedly reassigned. So when Soulmother Ajota, accompanied by a scant three (or five) members of her family had arrived there had been nobody to stop them from boarding the lift. The keycard lock that controlled access to the lower floors was easily defeated thanks to the continued mental sacrifice of Brother Algernon.
As the elevator moved downwards the group aboard it consisted of The Soulmother herself, Algernon (still stumbling along behind her guided mostly by the string tied around his wrist), Brother Greyve (a hulking figure of a man with dark skin and a single protruding horn, just about squeezed into one of Kracht’s black uniforms) and his implanted bio-wyrm Brother Sikarius (an unsettling black and yellow-banded parasite emerging from Grey’ve’s shoulder), and Sister Hixley (a rakish woman with amber eyes and a pale orange blazer over her standard issue black uniform) and her weapon Sister Pyrfaen (a simple silver sword with a golden handle and a ruby in the hilt).
“I don’t know about this.” sang Sister Pyrfaen. “Of course I love our beloved Soulmother, and I respect her desire to spread her love as far as possible, but Hand of Silver is a reprehensible villain of a man. Call me heartless if you must but I don’t think a man like that deserves the Soulmother’s love.”
Brother Greyve shrugged. “What kind of big monster do you think they have down there? A dragon? A big robot? A dragon robot?”
“Probably, yeah, something like that.” Liz replied dismissively
Greyve and Sik whooped at the prospect of their impending battle and Pyrfaen hummed crossly.
“Really nobody else has any thoughts about the morality of inviting the multiverse’s greatest racist into our family?”
“If I thought it might actually work I’d be more concerned.” Liz admitted. “Not to downplay our beautiful Soulmother’s perfection, but fundamentally I don’t think his heart would be open to her love.”
“I hope so.” Brother Sikarius sniped. “Sure, yeah it's always nice to get a new member of the family, but we can't recruit everyone. I'm looking forward to someone I can tear to pieces without getting a lecture about it.”
Liz rolled her eyes in response. Normally a Bio-Wyrm's hisses were only intelligible to their host, but their Soulmother's psychic bond seemed to auto-translate Sik's bloodthirsty comments to anyone in earshot, even if they wished that it wouldn't.
“He's a racist Liz, not a machine.” Sister Pyrfaen sang.
“If you’re so concerned shouldn’t we talk to the Soulmother about it?” Greyve asked. The group cast their eyes to their soulmother, present before them but with her attention split between the negotiation occurring somewhere above them and the subconscious of the sleeping tyrant below.
This hadn't been the plan. Right up until the front door her intention had been to bring the fight directly to General Kracht. Then Brother Vasily had joined her family and with him the knowledge of the urgent reassignment of organics. She'd been lucky to catch the contingent that were headed to reinforce the I District Holding Cell before they had gone too far.
It had been chaos to quickly communicate her intentions to her family, to convince them to be strong as they held the attentions of General Kracht so that she might seize upon this opportunity to claim for her own the one thing he seemed to fear so much; the Hand of Silver.
—
Tranquility-In-The-Face-Of-Annihilation was standing in front of some kind of device prominently featuring huge coils of wire and a whole bunch of makeshift parts desperately constructed from things around the house. It was about the size of the trunk of the car that the pair had acquired and the reason for that was that was the container it had been constructed in.
When it became clear that simply taking apart their communicators wasn’t going to provide enough materials for the job, Tor and Cedric had carefully driven the car into the hallway, leaving a gaping wound and splintered wood where the front door had been. Gradually Tranquility had deconstructed most of the rest of the car for parts. All that remained of it now was tyres, seats and patches of fabric all jammed into the narrow hallway of the prison house.
—
“If I do as you ask and release my connection over the members of my family that used to be your soldiers, they will weep and beg and wish for the feeling of my love once again.” Somewhere above Ajota, Jordan spoke her words. “It would be unnecessarily cruel to inflict that upon them.”
“Even if what you say is true that cruelty is yours to bear. You are the one who made them dependent upon you.” General Kracht retorted. “The release of my soldiers is non-negotiable.”
“Do not use that name.” Hand of Silver snapped. “That name is not yours to use.”
Don’t you feel lonely Hoss? Isn’t that what this is all about? After living for such an unfathomably long time, seeing your entire species move on and become something else and you left behind. Venerated but separate. You offered your inner circle immortality once and I think what you wanted was a family that would not leave you behind. That is what I am offering you Hoss, a family that will accept you no matter who you are and all you have to do is stop fighting me.
“No more delaying.” Kracht insisted. “Release my soldiers now or this negotiation is over.” Through Jordan’s eyes she could see her family tensing, their hands going to their weapons. Amethyst calculating a spell. Aegis bracing himself to fight. And from behind them a loud revving, and then the blade of a chainsaw slicing through the metal barrier and peeling it back.
Standing in the doorway was a girl in greyscale with half an exoskeleton and dragonfly wings, a bloody rune carved into her chest and a chainsaw for an arm.
“Ajota isn’t here at all!” Kracht bellowed. Through Jordan’s eyes Ajota glimpsed the illusion Sister Wilhelmina had been maintaining and it was still stood in place, staring forward, not reacting at all to the monstrous being immediately behind her. “Kill them!”
And then the lights sparked and shattered in the reception above her, and she felt a shifting in the subconsciousness of the poor lost soul below, and suddenly she was jolted back to her physical body as the elevator shook uncertainly and came to a stop.
—-
Out on the edge of L District a surprisingly large electromagnetic pulse swept across the town. As jailors panicked and hurried to locate and activate backup generators, a nervous foxgirl peeked her head out of her pantry and asked:
On the northwest side of the city was District N, where a neighbourhood was burning and where the watchtower of former District Supervisor Kriok Searae stood unattended.
Just anticlockwise of that was District M, containing the dedicated Gormand Holding Cell, minimally staffed due to the simplicity of containing the contestant in question.
One more spoke anticlockwise was District L and on the far edge of that were Units L and L2. Outside which Tor Kajan and Brother Cedric were now pulling up in a stolen car.
—
Things had been chaotic as Tor and Cedric had made their preparations to search for a qualified neurosurgeon. The Soulmother, whose entire strategy so far had been to build up a fortifiable location and base of support, was pivoting hard, looking to get moving so as to press whatever advantage she had before she no longer had it. The business with Sister Kriok’s half acceptance, and the steps that would need to be taken to remedy this had been seemingly forgotten in the shuffle.
Tor had voiced this concern as they had been driving through the thankfully empty streets of M District, but characteristically Brother Cedric was not concerned.
“I think,” Brother Cedric had countered, “that maybe the Soulmother’s confidence in our skills is so great that she’s simply not worried about whether we’ll succeed.”
“I suppose that is possible.” Tor had said thoughtfully. He worried about her course of action, that she was running too fast towards a confrontation she wasn’t ready for. He hoped that he was wrong and that the growing uncertainty eating at him was just nerves.
They had tried getting in touch with Sister Kriok again. Though it felt somewhat ridiculous to have to ask her for direction on this specific matter, the finding of such a specific profession was well outside their jurisdiction, and they reasoned that even if she was not fully devoted to the Soulmother’s cause she probably wouldn’t refuse a direct request.
However Sister Kriok hadn’t been answering her calls, and they’d been forced to go up the ladder and speak to Lieutenant Matthew Zimmer. Once he’d been convinced that Kriok had abandoned her post, it only took the suggestion that she’d been talking about looking for a neurosurgeon for Lieutenant Zimmer to point them in the direction of Unit L2. He had also indicated he was calling in a replacement to man the District N watchtower. Tor considered that such matters were probably past the concern of the Soulmother at this point.
Finally they arrived at their destination. Offset from the streets of the city, set into the woods just a little, were two buildings. One was a squat drab looking building with barred windows, it was surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. In the yard in between the prison and the outside were large crackling pylons that thrummed with an uncomfortable energy, even from the car on the street their presence was felt.
The other building looked like a normal house, offset from the street and surrounded by untended fields that themselves contained pylons identical to the ones surrounding the prison on the other side of the road. Aside from these fairly notable differences the house itself looked as though it could have been directly transplanted from a suburb.
Tor and Brother Cedric locked eyes. “Ready?” Tor asked, Cedric gave a firm nod in response. The pair opened their doors, got out of the car and each started towards a different building. Cedric was at the gates of the more imposing structure before he looked back and saw Tor heading over the road.
“Brother Tor!” He called out. Tor stopped in his tracks, looked back at his partner with a beleaguered expression on his face. “The prison is right here, Brother Tor. See?” He gestured at the structure behind him. Tor shushed emphatically and gestured at the house behind him, and when this didn’t achieve the desired result, he hurried back over to Cedric at the prison’s gates.
“This is Unit L.” He spoke quietly, not quite a whisper but close. “We want Unit L2.” Here he gestured again at the house over the street.
“Are you sure you don’t have the map the wrong way up?” Brother Cedric asked hopefully (if he noticed Tor’s subtle indication to lower the volume of his voice he certainly didn’t act upon it). He’d really been wanting to make up for the lack of action at the District N Watchtower with a spectacular prison break.
“I’m sure.” Tor said firmly. And so with a faint air of disappointment the pair crossed the street to Unit L2. Their path was obstructed by a garden gate, but it was just a regular garden gate set in a waist high wooden fence. It wasn’t locked and it wouldn’t have been an obstacle even if it was. They followed a little path through the pylons (it felt uncomfortable to be so close to them but not painful) and to the front door.
Cedric stepped up to the door and raised his fist to knock, before Tor stepped in the way, voice still lowered. “Despite appearances this is a prison. We should look for a way in.”
Tor started off around the house, moving as quietly as he could through the overgrown lawn, peeking around corners and into windows. Brother Cedric watched him go and then reached out and tried the front door. It wasn’t locked. “It’s open!” he called to Tor, who shushed him furiously and rushed back to the porch.
“Good work Brother Cedric.” He said clapping his spiritual sibling on the back. As Tor reached for the door Cedric braced himself and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword (technically curfew enforcement officers were only supposed to have batons, but Cedric insisted). Cautiously Tor pushed open the front door to reveal an entirely normal hallway, or well, a hallway that had probably been entirely normal very recently and which now looked like a wild animal had torn through here.
There were claw marks scraped across the wallpaper, upturned and broken furniture, the remnants of probably several different ceramic jars, coats and scarves and shoes all shredded and scattered everywhere. At the far end of the hall a door hung open, slightly pulled off its hinges, and a light spilled out from the room beyond.
Tor made a silent gesture to Brother Cedric and for once he seemed to get the message. The pair crept down the hallway to the open doorway and peered inside. It was a living room, or the remains of one. The sofa had been shredded, drawers were pulled out and scattered across the floor, their handles ripped off and discarded, a bookcase had been toppled, its contents scattered and slashed to ribbons seemingly at random. The only remaining piece of furniture was small coffee table in the middle of the room, a little battered, on which stood a small oil lamp, a bottle of some clear alcoholic beverage and a small selection of glassware, from wine glasses to shot glasses to beer mugs.
The only occupant of the room was a woman with orange fur and pointed ears and… she was a foxgirl. There’s no way around this fact. Her face was elongated into the muzzle of a fox, her hands bore sharp claws and behind her she swooshed back and forth a big fluffy tail. The foxwoman was sat cross legged in the midst of the destruction, throwing back drinks and thumbing through some of the books that still remained intact.
Brother Cedric caught Tor’s eye and gestured towards the foxlady raising his eyebrows as if to question every element of what was happening.
Tor sighed and stepped into the living room proper, with Cedric unsheathing his sword and following behind him. “Excuse me, are you Tranquility-In-The-Face-Of-Annihilation?” The fox turned around, as if barely even surprised by his presence.
Tor and Brother Cedric looked at each other blankly.
“Did you catch that?” Cedric asked.
Tor shook his head. He looked back at the foxgirl and asked: “Could you repeat that? I couldn’t quite make it out.”
Tor and Brother Cedric just sort of shrugged at each other and reconfirmed that neither of them had been able to hear anything she said, though they were quite clear she definitely said something.
“If I do yes/no questions you can nod or shake your head in response and um I guess that should work?” Tor suggested. It was then he noticed a pair of disembodied floating hands carrying over a chalkboard. The hands were odd to look at; perfectly smooth, perfectly uniform in colour (bright magenta). As soon as the chalkboard was in the fox lady’s hands the disembodied ones seemed to evaporate into nothing. Tor and Brother Cedric watched in bewildered silence as she wrote out a single sentence on the chalkboard.
‘This is easier if you let me take over narration’
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brother Cedric asked.
—-
The mood in the reception corridor of Kracht’s headquarters building was tense. On one end Kracht flanked by two of his most intimidating non-organic security officers. On the other a small mob of mostly humans, standing at the back of which was a large brownish red figure most precisely described as an ant/human hybrid, as Michelle had indicated.
Kracht would have preferred to have more backup. CH4-12-L13 and AMP would not be easily overwhelmed but the sheer number of defectors before him made him on edge. He’d been fairly certain from Aph and Michelle’s conduct that some form of mind control was in play and banked on the immunity of non-organics like himself.
In the time since that meeting he’d been making calls reassigning his forces, moving any non-organics that could be spared from Holding Cells to come and reinforce his position here at Headquarters, and likewise to send all highly skilled, non essential organics to man the Holding Cells where they were less likely to be used directly against him.
Only Ajota had arrived much quicker than anticipated. Most of the organic officers were gone but none of the non-organic reinforcements had arrived yet to replace them. The timing was awful and if she had attempted anything more subtle than coming right up to the front door and asking politely this could have been disastrous.
As the hallucinogenic gas poured into the room, Captain Amethyst of the Hand of Silver Retrieval Squadron quickly stepped forwards, hurriedly hitting buttons on her armband as a translucent golden energy bubble formed around her and expanded out to encompass the entire group.
Kracht scowled inwardly, Captain Amethyst had been working in this very building ten minutes ago. She’d been part of the group sent to reinforce Konka’s Holding Cell. If she was here then Ajota had intercepted at least one of the three groups.
“Captain -”
“My poison -”
General Kracht and Captain Amethyst both started to talk at once but they were drowned out by “Brother Vasily!” A kid with black messy hair, glasses and civilian clothing standing at the front of the group was glaring at the headquarters receptionist, who was looking pretty ashamed of himself. “Brother Vasily, I understand your fear, your impulse to fight and protect your newfound family... But unprovoked violence is beneath us. There may be a time for such things, but first we must, for the sake of our family, try to resolve this peacefully.” It took Kracht a moment to place the kid, Jordan Smith; cowardly, minimal pyrokinesis, not a threat.
Private Vasily mumbled an apology (inaudible) and sheathed his firearm. Kracht wondered the extent and the efficacy of this Ajota’s mind control, given that it still seemed to allow for autonomy and dissenting opinions.
“Sister Amethyst?” Jordan prompted.
“Thank you Brother Jordan,” Captain Sister Amethyst began, “my poison filter bubble should filter out the worst effects of the gas.”
“Thank you Sister Amethyst.” Jordan replied. “G-General Kracht.” His voice quavered as he finally turned his gaze towards Kracht himself. “I speak on behalf of Soulmother Ajota. She wishes to negotiate a peace.”
“Is she incapable of speaking for herself?” Kracht asked, looking past Jordan to the still and serene shape of the Soulmother.
“Y-yes, at least to those who are non-organic.” Jordan fidgeted with his sleeves. Kracht had to wonder why of all people she had picked him to be her spokesperson.
Kracht considered the situation. He would likely win should this devolve into a skirmish but could not guarantee that Ajota would not be killed in the process, which was perhaps the worst possible outcome. But if he could buy some time reinforcements for the reinforcements from the Holding Cells to get here, their presence could stack the odds back in his favour.
“Fine in that case I will acknowledge you as her mouthpiece.” Kracht said. “Please explain to me-”
“Stop the gas.” Jordan spoke with a strong emphasis and a surprisingly commanding voice. Kracht reluctantly trailed off and Jordan repeated: “If you’re entering this negotiation in good faith stop the gas.”
“...Fine. As you say, a show of good faith.” Kracht said, clapping his hands again. There was the sound of fans turning on and gradually the air began to clear, though the shutters that had sealed the room did not move. “But now, please explain to me how you can brainwash my soldiers,” he gestured towards the mob of people amongst them Captain Amethyst, Private Vasily Rurikovich, Sergeant Aegis Culpris, “and then come to me and claim to speak of peace?”
A long moment of silence before Jordan replied: “The Soulmother says They were your soldiers, yes. You may feel a sting of betrayal that they stand by me now, but they are my children, my sons and daughters. You value them for their tactical value, the skills they could provide you. I value them because they are my family and I love them no matter who they are or what they can do. Showing them my love is an act of mercy in a harsh and uncaring world.” As he spoke Kracht cast his gaze across the mob of defectors; a ragtag bunch clutching improvised weapons, all of whom were hanging on Jordan’s, or rather the Soulmother’s, every word.
“Irrelevant pedantism. If you are genuinely here to negotiate for peace as you claim, you must relinquish your claim on my soldiers.” Kracht said. “You can keep the civilians if you wish, if your influence does not prevent them from carrying out their assigned tasks. This much is non-negotiable.”
—
Dekowin flew wide arcs over the burning ruins of what had once been a suburb of District N. At the epicentre of the fire a number of houses had been reduced to blackened rubble alongside some unidentified structures that seemed to have been built across the street itself. Fires had spread out along streets from this point, but oddly there was no sign of anybody living or dead. She had to assume that those houses were empty. The explosion had been loud and anybody who had heard it surely wouldn’t still be sat in their house as it burned to the ground. Which prompted the question, where the fuck was everyone?
One more circle of the wreckage and she spotted some black shape moving through the burning streets.
Dekowin considered her options. She wasn’t even supposed to be here, she was a district supervisor yes but she normally covered District A and tonight was her night off. If Kriok had been doing her job Dekowin would still be at home, curled up in bed watching The Rollo Show Arrival Day Special (featuring special musical guest Laura Scourge).
Protocol upon witnessing any suspicious activity like this was to go back to her watchtower and radio this in and someone else would be assigned to investigate. But she was already forced out of bed, onto active duty tonight of all nights. She might as well have some fun.
And so, she descended into the street. Houses on either side of her were standing with their doors left wide open, and thick black smoke billowing out. The air was hot and dry but here in the middle of the street she was far enough from the flames that it wasn’t actively painful. She knew being down here was a terrible idea and if she hadn’t been starved for action for the last year or so she would have simply flew away again, made that report, maybe Kriok had a tv set up in the tower she could use.
“Anybody here?” Dekowin called out to the seemingly empty street. “Special offer for arsonists and terrorists to come and get your asses kicked, completely free of charge.” She turned slowly, looking for that shape she was sure had come down this way. Just as she was about to give up, she saw a black shape moving out of the corner of her eye. She turned to face it, extending her claws and bracing herself when the shape was already upon her, she swung at it but it was smoke, thick and black and cloying as it tried to force itself down her throat.
Instinctively she knew what this was; everyone in Battletopia knew the contestants, knew Ziirphael. It didn’t make much sense that he was here. All four of the battlers had already been safely captured. She didn’t have time to attempt to work out what or why this was happening. She held her breath, holding her nostrils closed with one hand, to try to deny the death god entry to her body, and with the other she started carving into her chest with her claws. The pain was excruciating and she couldn’t hold it in for long. She finished the carving with tears in her eyes as Ziirphael flowed into her body.
“That fucking bitch!” Ziirphael cried out. Here he was referring to Ajota rather than Dekowin. “Fucking ouch.” He looked down at this new body, saw the carving Dekowin had completed and rolled his eyes. It was the binding runes that General Kracht said were often inscribed on his body when he was a contestant. “If you don’t have an ounce of magical power in your body then all you’re doing is drawing symbols.” He sneered, though Dekowin’s consciousness was suppressed and not really capable of hearing his criticism.
He had, back when he had first incarnated here in Battleopolis wished that he didn’t have to hide his existence. But General Kracht said that the fear of the contestants was too ingrained, and that revealing that one of them was a citizen alongside them would do harm to the careful preparation he was making. As such defensive measures, such as these fucking runes, had continued to be taught to anyone who might come into contact with any of the contestants. Fortunately for him Dekowin had never cast a spell in her life.
“That fucking bitch.” Ziir repeated, less emphatically but with no less venom. He thought of Bae, the closest thing he’d ever had to a real friendship. Whoever this Ajota was, he was going to make her pay. With some trepidation, and a couple of misstarts he began to fly and headed back towards Kracht’s headquarters.
—
In his dreams he was home again. His Earth, not just before the beginning of this battle but many hundreds of years previous, in the midst of Human Expansion. It was the most uncomplicatedly good time of his life, even if now he could see ways in which his ambition had fallen short that never could have occurred to him at the time.
This time Hoss could have both the incredible power of his painstakingly constructed technological infrastructure, and the new and exciting possibilities that mastery of magic would bring to him. And with the knowledge of the multiverse that he carried with him now, he wouldn’t just settle for the one universe. All that ever was and ever could be would bear the flag of humanity and it would be glorious.
And it was glorious. He would be loathe to ever outwardly express discontent in the utopia he had created, but the times when he had seemingly insurmountable challenges to overcome were when he felt the most vibrantly alive.
It would have been perfect if not for the rot. It was subtle at first, creeping in at the edges of his vision. Aberrations, glitches in the software, he would reason and make a note to carry out the necessary maintenance when an opportunity presented itself.
Sometimes he would see it in the world, familiar places buried beneath this dark crimson crust, a roiling mass of maroon energy that it seemed as though nobody else could perceive. His old house, entombed in the rot. Many of his numerous installations in the process of being consumed entirely.
There were moments where his most trusted subordinates would be swallowed up by the rot and they would turn to him and say something such as: You must be Hand of Silver. My children have told me much about you and then everything would continue as usual.
He ran every diagnostic he could think of, all of which told him that everything was working perfectly fine. External video sources disagreed with his own experience of events. He enumerated the possibilities: 1) these were hallucinations, and if that was true either they were caused from within, from some undiagnosed disorder or chemical imbalance within his brain, or they were from without, a targeted attack using some cleverly placed hallucinogenic agent.
Or, more radically, option 2) this world was false. He tried to consider how he had learned about the multiverse, how he had come to understand and embrace magic, and it felt as though the world squirmed around this thought. Of course knowing, or suspecting, that the world he was in wasn’t real didn’t mean he could do anything about it.
The more time passed the more pervasive the rot was. He became a virtual recluse to avoid it, working only on a prototype for a multiversal transit vessel, emerging only when he had to and not looking at any of the people who said Let me in Hand of Silver. Let me show you that it doesn’t have to be like this.
By launch day, it seemed as though everything had rotten away. When Hoss opened the doors of his hangar it was as if the world had been swallowed entirely, nothing beyond these four walls but endless maroon, even the sky had grown sickly with it. The weight of it was oppressive. He almost fancied he could hear the walls buckling as it pressed down upon him, but if he could get this prototype to work then he could leave this universe behind. A tragedy that his home universe had been bespoiled by this inexplicable rot, but he knew from experience how much more there was out there.
He stepped into the prototype, only to see some wretched embodiment of the rot. A bizarre creature, as if what he was looking at was a centaur of an ant; the body of a woman rising from the lower half of an insect.
Nobody has ever fought me this hard before. She sounded sad.
“What are you?”
My name is Ajota and I love you ████████ Here she spoke a name he hadn’t used in a billion years.
—-
There had been a pair of guards outside the cargo elevator at Kracht’s headquarters, but like most organics in the building, they had been hurriedly reassigned. So when Soulmother Ajota, accompanied by a scant three (or five) members of her family had arrived there had been nobody to stop them from boarding the lift. The keycard lock that controlled access to the lower floors was easily defeated thanks to the continued mental sacrifice of Brother Algernon.
As the elevator moved downwards the group aboard it consisted of The Soulmother herself, Algernon (still stumbling along behind her guided mostly by the string tied around his wrist), Brother Greyve (a hulking figure of a man with dark skin and a single protruding horn, just about squeezed into one of Kracht’s black uniforms) and his implanted bio-wyrm Brother Sikarius (an unsettling black and yellow-banded parasite emerging from Grey’ve’s shoulder), and Sister Hixley (a rakish woman with amber eyes and a pale orange blazer over her standard issue black uniform) and her weapon Sister Pyrfaen (a simple silver sword with a golden handle and a ruby in the hilt).
“I don’t know about this.” sang Sister Pyrfaen. “Of course I love our beloved Soulmother, and I respect her desire to spread her love as far as possible, but Hand of Silver is a reprehensible villain of a man. Call me heartless if you must but I don’t think a man like that deserves the Soulmother’s love.”
Brother Greyve shrugged. “What kind of big monster do you think they have down there? A dragon? A big robot? A dragon robot?”
“Probably, yeah, something like that.” Liz replied dismissively
Greyve and Sik whooped at the prospect of their impending battle and Pyrfaen hummed crossly.
“Really nobody else has any thoughts about the morality of inviting the multiverse’s greatest racist into our family?”
“If I thought it might actually work I’d be more concerned.” Liz admitted. “Not to downplay our beautiful Soulmother’s perfection, but fundamentally I don’t think his heart would be open to her love.”
“I hope so.” Brother Sikarius sniped. “Sure, yeah it's always nice to get a new member of the family, but we can't recruit everyone. I'm looking forward to someone I can tear to pieces without getting a lecture about it.”
Liz rolled her eyes in response. Normally a Bio-Wyrm's hisses were only intelligible to their host, but their Soulmother's psychic bond seemed to auto-translate Sik's bloodthirsty comments to anyone in earshot, even if they wished that it wouldn't.
“He's a racist Liz, not a machine.” Sister Pyrfaen sang.
“If you’re so concerned shouldn’t we talk to the Soulmother about it?” Greyve asked. The group cast their eyes to their soulmother, present before them but with her attention split between the negotiation occurring somewhere above them and the subconscious of the sleeping tyrant below.
This hadn't been the plan. Right up until the front door her intention had been to bring the fight directly to General Kracht. Then Brother Vasily had joined her family and with him the knowledge of the urgent reassignment of organics. She'd been lucky to catch the contingent that were headed to reinforce the I District Holding Cell before they had gone too far.
It had been chaos to quickly communicate her intentions to her family, to convince them to be strong as they held the attentions of General Kracht so that she might seize upon this opportunity to claim for her own the one thing he seemed to fear so much; the Hand of Silver.
—
Tranquility-In-The-Face-Of-Annihilation was standing in front of some kind of device prominently featuring huge coils of wire and a whole bunch of makeshift parts desperately constructed from things around the house. It was about the size of the trunk of the car that the pair had acquired and the reason for that was that was the container it had been constructed in.
When it became clear that simply taking apart their communicators wasn’t going to provide enough materials for the job, Tor and Cedric had carefully driven the car into the hallway, leaving a gaping wound and splintered wood where the front door had been. Gradually Tranquility had deconstructed most of the rest of the car for parts. All that remained of it now was tyres, seats and patches of fabric all jammed into the narrow hallway of the prison house.
—
“If I do as you ask and release my connection over the members of my family that used to be your soldiers, they will weep and beg and wish for the feeling of my love once again.” Somewhere above Ajota, Jordan spoke her words. “It would be unnecessarily cruel to inflict that upon them.”
“Even if what you say is true that cruelty is yours to bear. You are the one who made them dependent upon you.” General Kracht retorted. “The release of my soldiers is non-negotiable.”
“Do not use that name.” Hand of Silver snapped. “That name is not yours to use.”
Don’t you feel lonely Hoss? Isn’t that what this is all about? After living for such an unfathomably long time, seeing your entire species move on and become something else and you left behind. Venerated but separate. You offered your inner circle immortality once and I think what you wanted was a family that would not leave you behind. That is what I am offering you Hoss, a family that will accept you no matter who you are and all you have to do is stop fighting me.
“No more delaying.” Kracht insisted. “Release my soldiers now or this negotiation is over.” Through Jordan’s eyes she could see her family tensing, their hands going to their weapons. Amethyst calculating a spell. Aegis bracing himself to fight. And from behind them a loud revving, and then the blade of a chainsaw slicing through the metal barrier and peeling it back.
Standing in the doorway was a girl in greyscale with half an exoskeleton and dragonfly wings, a bloody rune carved into her chest and a chainsaw for an arm.
“Ajota isn’t here at all!” Kracht bellowed. Through Jordan’s eyes Ajota glimpsed the illusion Sister Wilhelmina had been maintaining and it was still stood in place, staring forward, not reacting at all to the monstrous being immediately behind her. “Kill them!”
And then the lights sparked and shattered in the reception above her, and she felt a shifting in the subconsciousness of the poor lost soul below, and suddenly she was jolted back to her physical body as the elevator shook uncertainly and came to a stop.
—-
Out on the edge of L District a surprisingly large electromagnetic pulse swept across the town. As jailors panicked and hurried to locate and activate backup generators, a nervous foxgirl peeked her head out of her pantry and asked:
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You