Mini-Grand 5104 (Game Complete)

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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”MY DADDY WAS A POLICE OFFICER.” The voice of Amme Beelzeburg was not so much spoken as excreted, heralded by a foul industrial smell. Hector wasn’t sure why they’d equipped Emissary with olfactory sensors, but it worked. ”MY DADDY WAS A GOOD MAN. YOU ARE BAD MEN.” Then, the death—O, such death there was.

“Snap her infantile neck while she’s distracted!” yelled Jastra, pressing up against Hector’s back, but Hector was distracted as well. For one thing, whatever was in that tea was starting to push over an event horizon where his euphoria subsided into sleepiness and hunger. For another, there were cops and strippers everywhere on the screen, and Hector had a lot of confusing thoughts about that. For a third thing, Jastra was not helping, with her, you know, touching him.

Furthermore, and perhaps most significantly, were all the tubular slimy things crawling all over his shoulders, which Jastra identified as “snakes.” He assumed without looking very hard that they had pointy teeth and no social qualms about using them. Jastra didn’t seem to mind them, and seemed to ascribe to them some sort of symbolic value.

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to maneuver the robot across the field of strippers and death, he settled on punching more cops. He was interrupted when a grotesque, pointed hand grabbed Emissary’s head and spun the robot around.

”Hmm. There’s someone new behind the wheel now, isn’t there? Well, nice to meat you!” The robot’s punches weren’t doing anything to Carne-Z except perhaps tenderizing her a bit, and were promptly stopped when Emissary found itself bound by strips of something brown and crispy.

“What’s that smell?” asked Hector.

“Bacon,” replied Jastra, giving his stomach a squeeze. “Perfect bacon.”

Hector decided he didn’t want to know what “bacon” was made from or what qualities of bacon constituted perfection. Whatever it was, it had Emissary completely incapacitated, leaving Carne-Z to deal with the cops by herself.

Hector, frustrated, stepped out of the control apparatus. Snakes dropped off of him with a sound like water boiling.

Jastra sulked. “Carne-Z’s meat constructs tend to fade into grease and nothingness after a half hour or if she goes more than a half mile away,” she explained. Then she gave an evil smile. “That gives us some time alone, at least.”

Jastra Juggs leaned in and whispered something in Hector’s ear, leaving behind just a numb feeling and a trace of saliva on his earlobe. Hector got her gist, but was nonetheless compelled to ask her what a “cock” was, just to make sure.

“I’ll demonstrate,” giggled Jastra, a violet flush spreading over her scarlet cheeks. She knelt down and reached for Hector’s waistband, and then froze.

And then remained frozen. Agent 7 was standing in the doorway, carrying what Hector recognized as a freeze gun.

”Looks like you’re gonna need to take a cold shower,” quipped the fish.

* * * * * *

Before he could properly bemoan that pun, the Player was blindsided by a flashing “You’ve lost karma!” message.

“Minus karma for not letting this guy get off!?” he demanded of whatever Gods would listen. “That is horseshit!”

* * * * * *

This change of events was hormonally traumatizing enough that in Hector’s time, he would have been hospitalized for it. Lacking access to the proper medical facilities, he instead responded with an all-consuming rage, like a star. “Fuck you, man,” was the best response to the fish he could manage. Then he remembered that he had a Thing he could do. “You should not have done that,” he growled, his eyebrows twitching dangerously.

From the hallway out of sight there came a sound Hector did not recognize.

* * * * * *

From the left speaker there came a sound the Player recognized. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he moaned.

He spun Agent 7 around to the right. Sure enough, there was a stampede of charging elephants. Suspecting that the freeze ray would not be terribly effective in this situation, he ran.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Zavon Okanta lived in a cupboard.

He had always lived in the cupboard all his life. That corner there was the corner where the coats hung; over there was the area where the shoes were, in the other corner was the black blob thing that was always looking at him. It was all he had ever known.

Sometimes he would count the shoes. There were always twelve, except that one time before he’d taken off his own shoes and put them with the others. He couldn’t remember how many there had been back then, only that the final total was different. Man those had been the days.

Sometimes he would examine the coats. There were coats of all shapes and sizes; plain black coats, coats with thick fur trim, heavily padded coats that contained a flask of some kind of mysterious liquid in an inside pocket, thin coats that were covered in purple badges. He read the words on the purple badges sometimes but ‘vote praetorian’ didn’t mean anything to him. He figured that that coat probably belonged to the blob that watched him. It was wearing a similar badge.

Sometimes he tried to talk to the blob that watched him, but there wasn’t much in the way of conversation topics. You can only talk about that one time when there were not as many shoes so many times before it gets quite frankly a little dull. The blob that watched him was not much in the way of a conversationalist.

Occasionally there were noises coming from outside the cupboard that made Zavon nervous. At times like this he clutched a coat hanger as though it were a weapon and cowered in the corner until the noises went away.

“I think I’m going to call you Bob.” Zavon said as he regarded the blob that watched him. “Bob the blob.” He chuckled to himself.

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The arrival of the Allied Lands lawships caused quite a stir on Uae. Having never encountered an extraterrestrial species before, the Uae were not sure how to respond. Many fled the landing site, screaming and waving their many appendages frantically. Others hung around, curious to see what manner of life form would emerge from the curious white and place spaceships. They were eager to see whether this first contact would be peaceful or if it would be the beginning of a bloody invasion. Admittedly they weren’t so eager for the bloody invasion scenario but the point is they wanted to know.

The spacecraft doors slid open and from it emerged a being made entirely of black smoke. It was more a cloud than a person, though someone had gone to the efforts of trying to get it to wear a police officer’s uniform. The smoke just sort of billowed over and around it.

“Move along please, nothing to see here.” The message was transmitted psychically to each of the Uae gathered around the spacecraft, not a single one of them did as they were bid. The smoke creature, not one to waste any time with such trivialities simply reached out and took over the minds of the gathered crowd, turning them sharply on their heels and making them walk away.

As the crowd unwillingly dispersed more officers emerged from the lawships. They were a motley bunch, only a couple of them appearing to be from the same species as any of their peers. They were all trying to wear the same uniform, to limited success. They assembled before the smoke creature, whom they addressed as The Superintendant. He gestured towards the offices they had landed a couple of streets away from.

“To the untrained eye these are just ordinary offices!” he exclaimed. “But to an Allied Lands police officer these are a hive of Grand Battling scum and villainy, and it is our duty and our honour to get in there and shut it down.” He paused. “Battlefield reports indicate the presence of a remotely controlled drone posing as one of the contestants. We’ve heard of things like this in other battles, and we posit that this ‘Emissary’ is actually a fake contestant, colloquially known as a ‘ninth contestant’, being somehow controlled by the ‘Grandmaster’ from within this very building. With that in mind let’s get in there and shut these motherfuckers down.”

There was a chorus of agreement and at The Superintendant’s instruction they formed up and advanced on the CHEKOV headquarters.

Originally posted on MSPA by Pick Yer Poison.

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Manfred Keklovitch raised his stamp dramatically, then brought it down with the fury of the heavens onto the form in front of him. It made a quiet thump sound as it marked the form invalid. To Manfred's disappointment, it was still the same quiet thump that it always was. It was weak and wimpy no matter how he imagined it. The time he had come closest to making it sound impressive had been when he'd made it a blacksmith's hammer, forging a sword that would overthrow tyrants and win wars. Manfred, of course, was the blacksmith in that instance. He had to be; after all, someone needed to swing the hammer, and he was already holding it. He moved the form in front of him into his outbox and pulled another paper from the inbox's stack. He glanced over it, more going through the motion of reading it than actually doing so, then lifted his stamp again.

Thump. No one ever brought anything that was actually valid down to his office, so Manfred rarely bothered to read them. Sometimes he resolved to re-evaluate his method, since it had been a few years since he'd decided he was never going to get something that wasn't invalid. He'd then check a few of the forms, give up, and go back to simply stamping them and dumping them in the outbox. He figured it wasn't the best way to do things, but since it was a good deal better than neither reading nor stamping them before putting them in the outbox, it was at least 50% better than the next worse option. He swapped out the current form and raised his stamp again.

Thump. He hated that noise, the one the stamp made whenever it declared a form not fit for survival. It reminded him that he was stamping papers. He'd known people who had become astronauts, war heroes, doctors...and here he was, stuck on the lowest rung of the food chain in a company that he just knew had way more interesting jobs. He pulled a new form out of the inbox and raised his stamp. It could always be worse, he mused. At least he wasn't the janitor.

CRASH! The cheap plaster wall of Manfred's office burst open and Agent 7 flew through. He hit the opposite wall and flashed red. After he picked himself up, a strange tank appeared on his back, connected to a nozzle that appeared just as abruptly in his hands. He pulled the handle on the nozzle and a blue mist shot out of it just in time to make contact with the elephant that charged through after him. Its front began freezing over, causing it to back away, snorting. "I'm putting you on ice," Agent 7snarled.

The elephant apparently did not approve of this one-liner, and charged again. Agent 7 fired the freeze beam again, but the elephant charged heedlessly through the frigid mist, crushing Agent 7's last health out against the wall of Manfred's office. It let out a rather unimpressive trumpet from its frozen trunk, then trundled back through the whole it had made in the wall, leaving Manfred to look at Agent 7's dead body, his stamp still clutched uselessly in his hand.

It took The Player a few seconds before he was able to form a coherent sentence. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT HORSESHIT!?" he demanded of no one in particular, still trying to make sense of the Game Over screen. "Since when is an elephant stampede a hazard? I've never even seen one of those in the game before!" He hit a button and returned to the main menu. He navigated to the LOAD GAME screen and resumed from the last checkpoint, which was just before Agent 7 had gone into that weird battle to the death. He played up to the point where he had been abducted, then stared at the screen in confusion as nothing out of the ordinary happened. It began to dawn on him that whatever had happened was definitely not supposed to have happened, and definitely wasn't going to happen again.

The Player jumped at the sudden banging on his front door. "Open up!" someone shouted from outside. "This is the Multiuniversal Police! We're here to arrest you for having unknowingly participated in an illegal Grand Battle!"

The Player had no idea what a Grand Battle was, and he'd sure as hell never heard of the Multiuniversal Police, so he decided it was one of his friend's infamous pranks. "John? Is that you? What the hell are you doing? I thought you weren't coming back to get your game until next week!"

Some bustling outside was quickly followed by a series of loud THUMPs, after which a police-issue battering ram knocked down The Player's door and three cops filed in. One of them stepped forward. "You're under arrest for illegal unintentional participation in a Grand Battle. Your name will be going on record as--"

The cop's sentence was drowned out by the sound of a police-issue brick crashing through The Player's window, followed by three more police officers clambering in through it.

"--you say can and will be held against you." The officer turned to the group of five that had clumped together. "Bag him, boys." They nodded and moved in towards The Player, who had a horrified expression on his face. They handcuffed him and led him out of the house. Two minutes later, a third squad came down the stairs, having finally finished prying the attic door open with a crowbar. Seeing that everyone had left but still determined to make themselves useful, they looted The Player's game console, throw pillows, and silverware, then rushed off after the other squads.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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"Congratulations, another among you is dead. You surprise me with your relative competence. And now, the final round awaits."

Hector and Obfuscation soon found themselves facing a huge metal door. On the walls beside them were dozens of prison cells.

"Welcome to the Treasury. This well-defended fortress is home to an enormous fortune, and also to some of the most cunning and dangerous prisoners in the multiverse. As you might imagine, there have been many attempts to break into the vault ahead of you, and ultimately it was decided that it would be far more efficient simply to hold the would-be-thieves in the same facility."

To emphasize the point, the two combatants were turned around to face the cells lining the walls, where each could see several prisoners of various species, most of them highly intimidating.

"Of course, any imbecile can see that this means that a jailbreak would be disastrous. Consequently, the security measures here are incredibly strict. If two beings were to suddenly appear out of nowhere, for example, they would go on high alert almost immediately."

There was a flash of light, and the two suddenly found themselves surrounded by golden coins, jewels, and numerous other valuables.

"And if those two beings suddenly appeared inside the vault itself... well, it would get even more interesting. Enjoy yourselves. Once one of you dies, that shall conclude this battle."

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SpoilerWelcome to the Treasury. It's a massive vault with a prison attached to it, and the craziest security ever.

You're both in the vault, which is big enough that you don't have to start right next to each other. Feel free to have some security personnel or whatever already inside. You do have the means to exit the vault, but expect security to arrive immediately if you do that. And, of course, there's probably at least one band of criminals already here, preparing to loot the vault and/or pull a jailbreak...

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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The girl strolled casually through the vault, her bare feet cold against the hard stone floor. Her fingertips danced along the podiums and plinths that held exquisite treasures. She’d heard movement, and her curiosity had brought her out into the vault proper. It probably meant that they were adding new treasures to the vault, but maybe it meant that a ruggedly handsome bandit had finally managed to penetrate the defences of this place. He’d want to steal her away of course and that would be a BAD THING but maybe she’d let him steal her away just for a little while. Merely thinking about the possibility of her gentleman thief made her heart simultaneously soar and sink. No, she chided herself. She wasn’t allowed to leave the vault for any reason, no matter what any well chiselled scoundrel with dubious intentions might say to convince her otherwise.

Carefully she picked her way through the pedestals, disinterested in the rare and valuable antiques and priceless treasures that rested upon them. She’d seen them all too many times before, they were boring. She moved through the rows and rows of treasures, until she saw perched atop one of the pedestals there was some kind of blob thing with little arms and a purple badge.

While she was a little disappointed the girl was heartened that she would at least have a companion in this dreary place. She had been alone for so long that any companion would be an improvement, even a weird black blob that didn’t appear very interesting. She poked at the blob with a fingertip, causing it to shrink back and look up at her with a look of confusion and concern.

“It’s okay…” the girl said soothingly. She scooped the blob up in her hands. “We’re going to be good friends you and I!” she held him up to her face and read his badge. “I think I am going to call you Praetorian.”

At that moment there was a noise in the distance. It sounded like something falling from one of the pedestals and smashing upon the stone floor. The girl, without a second thought, dumped the newly christened Praetorian and darted off through the aisles of treasures towards the noise. That didn’t sound like the noise that the owners made when bringing in a new treasure. That sounded decidedly like a handsome young vagabond come to steal the treasures of the vault. She rationalised to herself that she was only going to watch him from a distance and make sure that he didn’t try to kidnap her of course.

As she approached she saw the movement of an oddly dressed man trying to put the vase he had broken back together. Around him a selection of animals slithered and crawled along the treasures of the vault. He wasn’t exactly what she had pictured when she had pictured the man who would break into this vault and sweep her off her feet. Not that that was a thing she wanted of course…

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Hector glanced furtively around, one of these creatures had knocked this vase off the podium and he was pretty sure that any minute the security team the voice had mentioned would arrive, and he didn’t want to think of what would happen then. He didn’t have an alien robot interface to hide behind this time…

When someone stepped out from between the aisles of treasures his first thought was that it was a security guard come to arrest him, and he staggered back raising his hands to protect him. After a second there was a sigh and he lowered his hands to see the girl standing over him, a look of disappointment on her face.

She was wearing a thin white gown that barely covered her beautiful golden skin; her hair was a long silver tangle scraping against the floor as she moved. She seemed to glow from within, lighting up the dimly lit vault with her presence.

“I guess you’ll have to do.” She said; her voice was like the melodious ringing of distant bells.

“What?” Hector asked bewilderedly.

“You’ll have to hurry if you want to take me.” The girl replied. “Security will probably be here pretty soon.”

“Excuse me?” Hector asked. The girl sighed heavily.

“You’re going to steal me.” She said. “Now come on, we don’t have much time.”

“Who are you?” Hector asked. “What are you doing in here?”

“Who am I?” The girl scoffed. “How can you not know who I am? I’m the girl. I’m the treasure. I’m the whole damn point of this vault. Now you really shouldn’t be stealing me but if you’re quick you’ll get away with it.”

As the girl pulled Hector to his feet and pointed him towards the least well guarded exit from the vault she couldn’t help but think that there had been a good reason she was kept inside the vault. She was sure there was. It was the very reason she’d been so reluctant to be rescued.

But for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was.

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Spoiler#CCB42E for the girl

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

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Her name was Helen. After the distressing events of the previous round (did Hector kill that guy by sending giant gray quadrupeds after him? Probably), Hector’s sex drive went through only a brief transitory period before settling on her as an equally acceptable object of desire. She was perfectly beautiful, in a more subtle way than Jastra, but more rewarding as well.

Not that I’ll ever get to the, er, reward, thought Hector grimly, the way my luck’s been going.

“Here,” he said curtly, handing her the white ball of fluff that seemed to be in his hands now. He was still trying to figure out the aesthetics of these things, but was reasonably certain that this thing was adorable.

His suspicions were confirmed when he became certain that Helen’s squeal was one of glee, rather than abject terror. ”Awwwww, I’ve always wanted a chinchilla!” ”Chinchilla” struck Hector as a truly ridiculous word, but he filed it with the other new words he had learned. ”His name is Anarchy Omega,” Helen declared.

Hector had heard an awful lot of unoriginal pop songs complimenting women on “the way [they] move[d].” He had always assumed this was strictly a dance-floor thing, and wondered why the songwriters didn’t simply say “dance” instead, which seemed to him to be more to the point.

Helen, however, had a way of… moving. Every moment she wasn’t standing perfectly still (which was never; she was fidgety) was delightful in its own personal way. He wondered if this was what love felt like. Also, “Anarchy Omega” was an absolutely sublime name for a chinchilla. ”I should have brought Praetorian,” Helen cooed, clutching Anarchy Omega to her breast. ”Praetorian and Anarchy Omega would surely be the best of friends.”

Hector didn’t respond to any of that, confident that he didn’t really have to. He was under the impression that he was of more symbolic than personal value to Helen, anyway.

Or maybe she just needed him to get past the guards. There were two of them approaching, and though they were just as fluffy as Anarchy Omega where not covered in armor, they were decidedly less adorable.

“Mistress Helen!” said the darker-looking one. “Cease this foolishness! You must not leave the facility!”

”Mustn’t I?” Helen sneered at the guards. ”Hector, this is Panthar and Tigar. They’ve been helping to keep me in here for years. Make them stop.”

”I don’t know what lies you filled her head with,” growled Tigar, addressing Hector. “We’re here for Helen’s protection. But if you persist in this… we’re going to have to kill you both. I’m sorry, Mistress.”

Panthar and Tigar drew fierce-looking barbed swords and charged, tears welling in their eyes. Hector panicked… but only for a moment. He remembered what happened to the last creature that tried to mess with him. He dug into that one, shining area of his brain where the Thing that he did came from. He could see the source of his power in his mind’s eye, larger and brighter than ever before, radiating with a newfound purpose of Love. Or else just throbbing with an unresolved and increasingly desperate erection. Either way. He reached into that part of his brain and concentrated harder than he ever had before.

When he opened his eyes, the world reflected his imagination perfectly. Panthar and Tigar had been stopped in their tracks by two giant, muscular chinchillas (chinchillae?). “Jesus Christ,” whimpered Panthar, being lifted by the collar by a bright green fuzzball wearing a hat.

“Your gods won’t save you now,” the chinchilla replied (well that’s new, thought Hector contentedly). “Nothing can save you from ANARCHY ALPHA—”

“—and CHIN-KILLAH X-TREME!” finished the blue, bandana-clad chinchilla who was slapping Tigar across the jaw repeatedly. “If you wanna mess with our best friend Hector—”

“—You’re gonna have to go through us!” Anarchy Alpha and Chin-Killah X-Treme turned in perfect synchronicity and threw the two guards into one another, knocking them both into a semiconscious heap. Helen cheered.

The chinchillas approached Hector and greeted him with hearty high-fives. “Looks like we arrived—“

“—Just in time.”

Hector cleared his throat. “Good job, boys,” he said. “Let’s blow this popsi—“

“Please,” panted Tigar. “Mistress, I beg of you. If we cannot stop you from going forth with this… take our lives. Kill us now, before we are made to endure much worse.”

Helen cocked her head, momentarily unsure, then shrugged and nodded. ”Sure, I guess,” she said. ”Anarchy Alpha?” she asked, as though addressing an old friend. ”Could you—“

”Wait, wait, hold on,” interrupted Hector, his damned intelligence beginning to get in the way of his adolescent fantasy. “Boys, hold off. Tigar, explain to me exactly what’s going on here.”

“You don’t know?” Tigar chuckled. “You stupid thieves are all the same. Not a thought to the consequences. Very well, I’ll tell the tale, since Helen herself seems to have neglected to inform you.” He leered at Helen angrily; she only shrugged, hiding behind Anarchy Omega. Then he turned back to Hector. “The circumstances of Helen's birth—“

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SpoilerRe: this post

Personally I blame the government

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Show Content

SpoilerMeant to post this a while back.

To say that it had been an unusual pregnancy would be something of an understatement. You might as well say that the ocean was a bit damp, or that burning to death would be a bit unpleasant. However it was finally time to push, metaphorically at least. The final stages of this pregnancy would not however be playing out in a sterile hospital, but in an abandoned church. It had been abandoned a long time ago and now vines crept along the crumbling stonework. Puddles occasionally rippled as further droplets of rainwater dripped down from the old roof. It was here, in this empty hall that two people stood. Well that one person stood at the other person kneeled.

The first was a very plain looking woman, who was somewhat reminiscent of a librarian (though not a sexy librarian). She wore sensible clothes and would to anyone that she spoke advocate the most sensible course of action in any given situation. She was almost one would say the embodiment of practicality. Needless to say that a woman such as Fiona would not have gotten pregnant out of wedlock; she was not to give birth to Helen.

The second was a reasonably attractive young woman, whose attractiveness was masked by the agony that she was going through. Her cries echoed throughout the old church as she begged and pleaded with the other woman to make it end. Needless to say she was not to give birth to Helen; she was in fact not pregnant. The commotion was to do with the thing that lived in her head; the ancient being that had been riding around in her body for the last couple of rounds.

“You fucking bitch!” screamed Lamia. “Just kill me now! You get to win the battle, and I get to not have to live my life as a fucking goody two shoes going around getting cats out of trees and all that crap!”

Fiona drew her sword (an extremely unexciting iron sword with no magical powers whatsoever). On the one hand she could stand by and let the Benevolence finally fully manifest. There was a chance that perhaps the deity at full power would have a real chance at killing Thaddeus and The Unfinished and release them from this battle. But on the other hand if Fiona just killed Lamia where she stood then she was guaranteed to be released.

As the blade passed through Lamia’s chest a couple of things happened; Lamia’s steady stream of insults was finally stemmed, Thaddeus reappeared in the old church and crucially the old wooden doors were kicked open. Behind them stood a group of Allied Lands police officers, lead by one Visyvia Lyathan. Her statuesque body shimmered azure.

“Attention battlers, this is your new Grandmaster, the Enforcer speaking. You’re all under arrest.” Visy said as her troops poured into the church. Within minutes everyone had been arrested; Fiona, Thaddeus and the corpse of Lamia.

“It’s too late.” Thaddeus told the xadlakian. “For better or worse what is done is done.”

And that is when Helen was born. Her birth was a crescendo of golden light and when the light was gone there was little Helen, pretty much as she is today.

“Explain!” Visy demanded of the old man. Thaddeus did so. He told Visy that Helen, as yet unnamed, was the product of the battle that had just been fought, that the actions of the contestants had formed her, for better or for worse.

“Hey Lorenzo get over here.” Visy said. The Rinoat was already at her side, because who was going to be anywhere else when a mysterious golden girl had just appeared out of thin air. “This girl…” she said. “…is evidence…” she paused. “Bag her.”

And so Helen came to be property of the Allied Lands Police Force, who deemed her far too powerful to be amongst the general population. They claimed that there was still within her the potential to do enormous harm to the world at large and mandated that she be kept somewhere very very secure.

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Unfortunately for Hector, and also the world at large, the telling of tale of Helen’s birth was cut tragically short. Tigar had got no further than the word birth when the wall behind them exploded, and through the swirling dust walked a band of slimy no-good thieves.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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Slowly the dust cleared to reveal a group of five heavily armed thieves. At the head of the group was a pirate wearing a scarlet longcoat, tricorne hat and a jet black mask. This was the acclaimed crossdressing pirate Ripper Blackmask. She was of a slender build and had long brown hair that fell to just over halfway down her back.

Behind her was a woman whose appearance was that of a sensible librarian on a mission to rob a heavily guarded vault. What this essentially amounted to was a bulletproof vests and lots of pockets with useful tools crammed into them, and her hair up in a bun. This was the woman who had been present at Helen’s unusual birth; Fiona Guille.

Also present was a scruffy looking welsh kid, his head bowed in prayer to the many gods that chattered away in his head. Saint Timothy might not have seemed an obvious choice for raiding The Treasury, but he had a wealth of experience in thievery.

Then there was what could only be described as the muscle of the group. Heavily built, and dumb as a plank Sammy Therion surprisingly had the ability to control the flow of Karma, though he had to really concentrate to make any noticeable impact.

Finally there was a creature that resembled Tigar and Panthar, the only difference being that she had tawny fur and was carrying the same high-tech weaponry as the thieves. In truth this was Pha. In her natural shape she was little more than sentient red ooze. Her shapeshifting abilities made her invaluable for jobs like this.

“Down on the ground ye scurvy lot!” Ripper exclaimed. “Nobody make a move and we might just let ye live.” Hector was only too happy to do as they requested, pulling Helen to the ground alongside him.

“Coogar?” Tigar asked. “How could you work with these thieves? Don’t you know how important it is to keep Mistress Helen safe? Do you need me to tell you the story of her birth again?” Pha responded by rolling her eyes and blasting the troublesome Tigar with her laser pistol.

“Tigar!” Panthar cried in horror. His comrade collapsed to the floor, a smoking hole blown through his head.

“Now see what ye’ve gone and made us do?” Ripper said; she tutted judgementally at the remaining guard. Pha transformed, for a moment passing through her gelatinous form. She quickly took the shape of Tigar, nodded to her comrades and headed back into the corridor beyond the destroyed wall.

“Unfortunately for you, you didn’t bargain on going up against ANARCHY ALPHA-” The first chinchilla began, causing Hector to bury his head in his hands.

“-and CHIN-KILLA X-TREME!” The other chinchilla finished, ending their speech with a fist-bump. The thieves stared bewilderedly at the oversized rodents, before Fiona sighed heavily and opened fire upon the pair. After a couple of blasts on each were completely ineffectual she stopped and raised an eyebrow.

“You must not know that-” Anarchy Alpha started.

“-our fur is completely laserproof!” Chin-Killa X-Treme finished and they triumphantly high-fived. Neither of the chinchillas noticed Saint Timothy soothingly whispering to Sammy Therion. It took a minute but slowly Sammy Therion gathered together enough focus and drained the life straight out of Chin-Killa X-Treme. Ripper laughed heartily as Anarchy Alpha stared in disbelief at his bro’s body. His eyes welled up with tears.

“You haven’t heard the last of Anarchy Alpha-” he said his voice furious and anguished at the same time. He all but burst into tears at the realisation his bro would never be finishing his sentences again, turned and fled deeper into the vault.

“Now that’s the vermin dealt with…” Ripper said, striding towards Helen and Hector. She reached down, grabbed Helen and hauled her to her feet. “They say ye are the most precious treasure of them all… I wonder how much power I’d get from ye.”

Hector was suddenly on his feet. “Let her go!” he yelled. Ripper effortlessly shoved him back to the floor. There was a click from behind her as Fiona pressed her laser pistol to the back of the pirate’s head.

“I will not let you harm my daughter.” Fiona said firmly. “This was a rescue mission.” Ripper only laughed.

“T'were never a rescue mission.” She said. “Yer so called daughter were always plunder.” All eyes were locked upon the pirate and the mother and daughter, all eyes except for those of Sammy Therion.

“Uhhh.” He rumbled in a low monotone. “What that?” Suddenly all eyes were on Hector, and a swarm of angry chittering insects that just kept expanding.

Show Content

Spoiler#800000 for Ripper, #FF88FF for Fiona and indigo for Sammy though I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't be bothered with all these damn colours.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Wow, there were a lot of these things. And their legs were moving so fast. Some of them seemed to want to crawl up his calf. Hector’s hand twitched as a reflex that had lied dormant in his species for millennia was overcome with the urge to swat the thing out of existence.

”Aaaaaaah! Bugs!” shrieked Helen. Okay, thought Hector, Bugs. He sort of moved his eyes and the mass of bugs diverted from Helen, though he couldn’t really determine what was so scary about these things. They were so tiny. What could be the harm?

The savvy-looking woman who’d been giving Helen an odd look ever since bursting through the wall took an aerosol can out of her coat and started spraying at the floor. The bugs backed away, or else rolled over and died on the spot, creating a neat radius around the girl. ”Hold your breath, guys, this stuff’s so poison you can treat cancer with it! Helen! Baby! Come here!”

”…Mom?” Helen looked back and forth between the various parties attempting to kidnap her for the moment, feeling some serious mixed signals, and then decided to go with family, running through the bug-spray to embrace her mother. Hector tried to pretend to be happy for her, but was distracted as he watched his bugs rush over Anarchy Omega and skeletonize the poor chinchilla within a few seconds. Huh. Hector had never heard the term “the circle of life;” life in his world had been more of a steadily ascending line graph. Still, it occurred to him that there was a kind of tidiness to the idea of something he’d created subsisting off of something else he’d created, even if the one thing was cute and the other thing was murderous and kind of gross.

Hector was too introspective and kind of thoughtless to see what kind of damage he’d been wreaking. Saint Timothy and Panthar had already gone the way of the poor chinchilla. Ripper, Helen and Fiona were protected by bug-spray, and Sammy Therion was stomping on bugs by the dozen, gradually becoming grosser and more durable as he did so.

The only one Hector actually did notice was the shapeshifter, who had learned that the bugs paid her no heed when she turned into a duplicate of Hector himself. This snapped him out of his general bewilderment and replaced it with an equally debilitating misplaced anger. “Hey, you!” he shouted. “That’s my appearance!” He marched forwards and made a fist.

Hector had never been in a fight before. Pha had.

The original and the duplicate wrestled for a bit before Pha executed some rather simplistic principles of leverage and the like, turning his knee into the fulcrum and the floor into a very large gravity-powered fist. ”Ow.”

”Yeah, you stay down,” said Pha, feeling pretty masculine. Being fundamentally an agent of chaos, Pha had no particular goals for this venture; she sort of wished at that moment that she had enough of an opinion to take a side in the increasingly heated debate between the chick and the pirate.

She was spared from boredom by the giant chinchilla that leapt into the fray, wearing a blob for a hat.

This came as a great surprise both for Helen, who shouted, ”Anarchy Alpha! Praetorian! You’re back!” and for Hector, who found the massive furball grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him.

”YOURS IS THE FACE THAT HAUNTS ME IN MY DREAMS,” shouted Anarchy Alpha. ”I HAVE SUCH DISTANT RECOLLECTIONS… I HAD A HOME ONCE! I HAD A FRIEND! WE WOULD… WE WOULD PUNCH OUT TIGERS AND RAD SHIT…” Anarchy Alpha cried and gave Hector a hug. ”ARE YOU MY FATHER?”

Hector did not know how to respond to that. For one thing, he wasn’t quite sure whether it was technically true. The chinchilla saved him the trouble, though. ”NO, FATHER, DO NOT SPEAK! ONLY… TELL ME WHAT HAS BECOME OF MY MOTHER.”

”I lost a mother, once,” coughed Helen, as her mother futilely kneeing Ripper’s crotch in an attempt to find the pirate’s testicles. ”It was horrible. I would never inflict that upon… upon my own child.” She nodded reverently. ”Yes, Anarchy Alpha. Hector and I created you together. You were born of our love.”

Hector was definitely sure that that wasn’t true, at least in a literal sense. His head was starting to get a bit fuzzy, but he would have remembered that. Still, the revelation seemed to have the desired effect of drawing all the attention in the room back to Helen. Anarchy Alpha began crying on the girl’s shoulder, Sammy Therion stopped his bug-massacre, Ripper sighed impatiently, Pha turned into a giant question mark, and even the bugs seemed to crowd around, unsure whether now was an appriopriate time to be getting something to eat.

Fiona’s reaction was perhaps the most sensible. She put her hands on her hips. ”…Well, you little slut.”

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

So many colours! So much excitement! Obfuscation wasn’t really aware of what was going on around it; that said the blob often had trouble processing all of what was going on around it while alone in a perfectly empty room. The main thing that was occupying its attention at the moment was the massive furry thing upon which it appeared to be getting a ride. It had no idea what the thing in question was, despite having seen Anarchy Alpha when the chinchilla had picked him up. That was minutes ago, time immemorial for Obfuscation.

Obfuscation suddenly remembered that it didn’t like heights and slithered off the chinchilla’s head. Nobody noticed as the blob plopped to the floor, they were all too wrapped up in the massive argument that was commencing. Obfuscation for its part didn’t notice them either. Obfuscation wondered for a couple of minutes why it was stuck to the ceiling before being a prod from a wandering insect caused it to roll until it was the right way up. Obfuscation quickly forgot that it had ever been upside down and began wondering what this mysterious red and yellow insect with hundreds of little legs was. As it scurried away Obfuscation idly followed it, dodging through the towering obstacles that Obfuscation would have been hard pressed to identify as people.

After a little while Obfuscation forgot he was following the insect and spotted a weird looking black blob with a purple badge. It made its way to the blob which to its surprise mimicked its actions perfectly. Staring into a fallen polished gold tea tray at its own reflection, this was perhaps the first time the blob had ever really wanted to communicate with another being. It came to the realization that it didn’t know how, that it had never been taught or it had simply forgotten. For a moment it felt sad and then surprised, by one of the humans being thrown in its direction, it forgot. Panicked by what it perceived as a bombardment Obfuscation slid off to hide.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

"I guess this is what happens when you hang around with treasures and prisoners all your life, outside of your mother's arms," chided Fiona. "I would have made sure you were introduced to boys in a proper manner. Supervised dates. Oral examinations on the contents of Madame Dextrousse's Fifty-One Elementary Hand-Holds, in Order of Lasciviousness. Then, when you're sixteen years old, we would have a conversation about reaching into the evolutionary aether to produce chinchillas, and when you're twenty-one, we could have... a different conversation. That one's still coming up. Boy, can you, I don't know, make these bugs go away?"

"I don't know, I think it's only a one-way thing. Let me try." Hector concentrated. Nothing happened. "Huh," he mused, then shrugged and turned back to Fiona. "So these are 'Bugs?'"

At the word "Bugs," the thousands of bugs crawling all over the Vault turned to face him, standing at attention. "Huh," Hector repeated. Apparently knowing the names helped. "Bugs, go away."

All but about twelve of the bugs vanished.* Hector seemed pleased with himself. Anarchy Alpha gleefully stomped on those remaining.**

Fiona sighed. ”Well, I suppose there’s nothing to be done,” she said, grabbing Helen with one arm and Hector with the other. ”Ripper, you’re a captain, would you do the honors?”

The pirate looked almost as confused as Hector was. It was Helen who broke the silence. ”Mom, what are you—“

”I think I’ve an idea,” interjected the pirate. ”And it’s not happenin’. The only home yer daughter’s ever buildin’ is in my Endorphic Core!”

”Oh, give me that, you silly little man,” Helen ripped the Core in question from out of Ripper’s hands, tucking it under one arm. ”You’ll have it back when you do what my mother says and let up all this nonsense about converting me into power.”

Ripper looked around the room. Helen was not happy with her. Fiona was not happy with her. Hector seemed indifferent. The chinchilla especially did not look happy with her. She sighed. ”Oh, alright. Though I’m not a holy man… and that’s true in more ways than one.” Winking behind her mask, Ripper took Helen and Hector’s hands. ”Let’s make an honest pair out of ye, and no turning back, now.”

Hector snapped to attention. “Wait, you don’t mean—“

”Hector, do you take Helen to be yer lawfully wedded wife?”

Hector looked at the pirate and at the girl and at the mother and at the chinchilla who apparently was their baby and back at the girl. “I do,” he said.

”Helen, do you take Hector to be yer lawfully wedded husband?”

A single tear was rolling down Helen’s cheek. ”I do.”

”Well then. I s’pose in the absence of prepared vows I ought to say somethin’.” Ripper took a moment to collect her thoughts. ”Ahem. With this marriage, y’are to be each other’s greatest treasures. Sail one another through stormy seas, and uh, stick t’yer proscribed gender roles, and… in sickness or in health, ‘til death do ye part. There. D’we have a ring?”

Hector reached into a pocket and pulled out a tiny, wriggling snake, curled into a ring as it constantly devoured its own tail. He had a brief flashback of Jastra Juggs, and made an earnest attempt to put the past behind him, to mixed results. He held the ring up to Ripper, who appraised it greedily. “Will this do?”

”Hmm. I would have preferred gold, but ‘tis for the lady’s hand, not my coinpurse.”

Hector shrugged and presented the ring to Helen, sliding it onto her finger. ”’Tis done,” declared the pirate. ”Kiss ‘er an’ be done with it.”

Anarchy Alpha broke into manly, manly sobs.

When the kiss broke, Fiona and the chinchilla rushed to embrace the newlyweds. Helen was crying, and the Endorphic Core was crackling. ”I’m sorry,” she choked, caressing Hector’s cheek. ”I just… I never thought I could experience so much… so much joy… so much… POWER.”

There was a burst of searing golden light.


*Sammy Therion, the lives he'd absorbed suddenly becoming immaterial, had a metabolic crisis and flopped onto the ground, his heart exploded. Nobody noticed.

**At which point they reverted into the gooey corpse of Pha. Nobody noticed.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

The golden glow expanded, filling the entire room and somehow growing brighter and brighter. Hector recoiled from the glow, squeezing his eyes shut had no effect, Helen’s glow burned straight through his eyelids.

--------

Hector awoke with a start, sitting up in bed.

“What’s wrong?” Helen sat up and took Hector’s hand in her own. He glanced around their bedroom; a distressed group of creatures scurried around on the floor around the bed. The window was open, letting in the cool early morning air. He turned to look at his wife. Her beautiful golden skin, her long silver hair, her ample bosom; she was, as ever, perfect.

“I just had the weirdest dream.” He said. He hesitated as he attempted to recount the dream but found it was no more than a distant murky memory.

“A nightmare?” Helen asked. Hector just shrugged. Helen leaned over and kissed her husband. All thoughts of the dream were quickly forgotten. Hector ran his hands down her naked back and pulled her close. Helen pressed herself tightly against him, causing a cat and a rooster to materialise at the foot of the bed. It was an involuntary reaction and it never failed to amuse Helen. Giggling immaturely, she pushed Hector down onto his back and climbed on top of him.

--------

Several minutes later a flock of doves flew from the bedroom window of the Metah household.

--------

It was near enough time to wake up anyway, so they decided to do so. One quick shower and a shave later Hector was dressed and ready to face the day. Strangely he’d had trouble tying his tie, after a fruitless five minutes he had given up and opted to go without. So, looking slightly more casual than usual, he made his way downstairs. Helen was making breakfast.

She was wearing a plain dress that upon someone else would have looked unflattering, but a simple dress could not hide her beauty. Hector walked up behind her, brushed her hair to one side and kissed her upon the neck.

“Not now dear.” Helen said playfully.

“But I can’t help myself…” Hector mock-whined. Helen turned around, gave him a quick good morning kiss and shooed him away, did he want his pancakes to get burnt? Hector replied that no he did not and Helen dished up. She poured a generous helping of some kind of brown syrup over the pancakes.

“This is…?” Hector asked warily.

“Maple syrup.” Helen replied patiently.

“Ahh.” Hector said and paused. “Is that the one made from…” He struggled to find the correct word, “…a tree?”

“Yes love.” Helen said not breaking her stride as she walked into the hallway. “Kids! Breakfast time!” she yelled. Within moments there was the pounding of heavy feet as Anarchy Alpha and Chin-Killa X-Treme rushed downstairs. They rushed past their mother without saying a word. They sat down and quickly started munching their breakfast, every now and again pausing to whisper something to one another or make silly faces.

“Don’t forget that my mother is coming around for dinner tonight.” Helen said. Hector almost choked upon his coffee. He never really got along with Fiona, he always got the impression that she had never approved of them. From the fact that they’d had the kids before they’d married and that they’d married straight out of high school, Fiona believed that he was a bad influence. “Do you think we could have one nice meal without you and her getting into a fight about something or other?”

“I doubt it.” Hector said. “Your mother always starts it!” Helen frowned at him. “Okay.” He said. “For you, I will do my utmost not to be baited into an argument with that ice queen.”

“Thank you dear.” Helen said, planting a kiss upon his cheek. Breakfast finished pretty uneventfully. Hector had a hard time remembering where he had left his briefcase and was still looking for it when the school bus pulled up for Anarchy Alpha and Chin-Killa X-Treme.

“Behave you two!” he yelled after them as they darted out of the door. Eventually Helen found his briefcase, and since he was already running late, he gave her a quick peck on the cheek before rushing off to work.

Helen watched from the kitchen window as he drove away. She smiled happily. Everything was perfect, just as she had intended. She whistled a happy tune as she did the washing up, tidied up after Hector and the kids, and finally with its purple leash in hand she called for Praetorian to come for its walk.

--------

Work was by and large pretty uneventful. Gretalis had once again misfiled a whole bunch of papers so most of Hector’s morning was spent fixing the demon’s fuckup. He had no idea why they didn’t just fire that guy; whenever he walked past his cubicle the demon had his feet up on the desk and was chatting away on his iphone.

Just as he was heading out to lunch Jastra stuck her head and captivating bosom over the walls of his cubicle and started filling him in on the latest gossip of the day. Apparently Noel Gagford, the big boss of 5104Corp, had had a nervous breakdown in the night. He turned up that morning ranting and raving that none of this was real, all the time spewing vitriolic bile upon anyone who tried to insist otherwise. Jastra said that he’d had to be forcibly restrained and this guy, The Superintendant, was taking over in the meantime.

At lunch he grabbed a bite to eat at a local café with Jastra and James Pilgrim. The fishman was pretty dull company, but he was a straight talker and he didn’t make extra work for Hector. Sometimes he’d swing by Hector’s cubicle and insist on helping out, as though someone somewhere was keeping karmic score.

That afternoon Visyvia, his supervisor, cautioned him once again about bringing animals into the workplace, and once again he explained that it wasn’t actually his fault. Technically there wasn’t really anything she could do, but she never seemed to let that deter her.

Eventually it was time to go home; Hector did so with a smile upon his face and a spring in his step.

--------

Hector pushed open the front door and stopped dead. There was something wrong, something he couldn’t put his finger upon. He put down his briefcase and dropped his car keys into the bowl.

“Honey I’m home.” He said uncertainly. All was silent, eerily so. The house was dark, he went to flick the lights on and nothing happened. There must be a… uh… a power cut, he reasoned. “Helen?” he called nervously, as he walked to the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight from beneath the sink. He clicked it on, but it did nothing. Anxiously he guessed the battery must be dead. The darkness felt oppressive, like a shroud over him.

“Helen!?” He called again, the panic audible in his voice. “Kids!?” There was a noise in the silence; the sound of something falling to the ground and shattering. Hector’s heart leapt to his throat. He grabbed the heaviest thing he could find in the dark, a rolling pin, and stalked towards the lounge.

The floor was tacky. On the floor lay the lifeless corpses of Anarchy Alpha and Chin-Killa X-Treme. Without even realising he had done it Hector was suddenly kneeling by their side, weeping over their bodies. Part of him couldn’t process it, couldn’t believe that his beloved children were dead. All the good times they had shared cut tragically short, his hopes and dreams for their futures never to be realised. Helen was going to be devastated… Helen!

“Helen!” he yelled desperately, grabbing hold of the rolling pin again. He stood up and quickly ran into the hall, ran up those stairs, tears streaming down his face. A dim light shone from beneath the bathroom door. Without slowing down, without taking a second to think he shoved the door open and was confronted by his wife; bloodstained and weeping, a bloody knife in her hands.

“Hector!” She sobbed. “What’s going on?” His heart felt like it had been torn out.

“What did you do!” he asked, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

“There were things in my house!” She wept. “I was defending myself!”

“Helen how could you do that?!” Hector fell to his knees at her feet and grabbed her by the shoulders. “How could you do that to our kids?”

“They weren’t our kids!” She cried. “How could they be? They weren’t even human!” There was nothing but silence. Hector’s face hardened, he stood up and stepped back from his wife.

“Hector!” she cried, suddenly stumbling forwards on her knees and clutching at his shirt, leaving bloody handprints where she grasped. “Don’t leave me Hector. I don’t understand.”

“You killed our children.” Hector said coldly. “That’s all there is to understand.”

“No my love.” Helen cried. “Nothing makes sense. Why are our children not human? Why when we had them so young, are they still in school? What do you even do at that job you go to?” Hector was for a moment speechless; as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he had no answer to her questions.

“Shut up!” He snapped instinctively.

“Hector… why do you not understand plants and animals? If you were born here in this world then it doesn’t make sense.”

“SHUT UP!” he yelled, unwilling to hear that what he had no answer to. He turned and fled the bathroom, stormed down the stairs and almost out of the front door. He came to a stop in the open doorway and stared out into the endless blackness that lay beyond.

Show Content

SpoilerDouble length post! woo!

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Game Face

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

Hector’s earliest memory was of the emptiness of space.

The grass brushed against his cheek and his… his cat was tucked in between his legs. He couldn’t have been more than four. In a world where there was so much to look at right in front of his face, this was the first time the young Hector had ever bothered to look up and consider that which lay beyond.

“Hector!” Mom called from indoors. “Bedtime in five minutes!”

The idea of bedtime seemed silly and insignificant to Hector, who felt like he was already dreaming. “Mom,” he said. “Can you come out here?”

“Of course, honey.” Hector’s mother was a, uh… a veterinarian, all smiles and caring. She shut the screen door behind her and lay down behind Hector.

“Mom,” Hector said softly. “What’s out there?”

Mom turned on her side to face Hector (she was young and had enormous breasts, which on a psychological level did a lot to explain several of Hector’s later choices). “I don’t know, honey,” she said warmly. “Lots of amazing things, I’m sure. Maybe you’ll be the one to go out there and find out.”

And Hector had smiled at that. Of course, later in life his priorities had changed. Because he’d found Helen out there, and that was all he needed.

* * * * *

The emptiness beyond the front door of Hector’s house was different. There was nothing out there and nowhere he wanted to go. He shut the door and turned to face his wife.

”Hector,” she said, still holding the knife. ”Hector, I’m not happy.”

”Oh, is that right? I wouldn’t have guessed!”

”No, Hector. I’m not happy, and the Core… everything’s going to shit. I’m sorry.” She began to cry. The front door slammed open, as though the void were pushing to get into the house.

Hector ran to embrace his wife. She pushed him away with the flat of the knife. ”Stay away!”

”No, Helen, I’m not going to stay away.” He couldn’t see the floor anymore. “What went wrong between us?”

”First the fake memories go,” said Helen, as though that explained anything. ”Then the real ones. I don’t remember either of our weddings anymore…”

And Helen cut her own throat. It wasn’t until she fell to the floor dead that Hector noticed the blob attached to the back of her skull.

* * * * *

Obfuscation got the idea that something great had just happened! He didn’t remember what but now there was a dead body and everyone was screaming and it was like a party. There was a shiny thing falling out of the dead lady’s hands and it went over to the shiny thing and saw its reflection in the shiny bits. Obfuscation had forgotten what it looked like, so this was a really big moment for the blob! It reached for its reflection and suddenly felt really really powerful. What a wonderful day.

* * * * *

It was almost a mercy to Hector that the first thing he forgot was her dying. The Obfuscation’s effect was more focused then it had been before; it started from the top and radiated outwards like a mushroom cloud, reducing all before it to oblivion. Within ten seconds Hector had forgotten about the Grand Battle entirely.

* * * * *

Memories dash against each other and annihilate like atomic dominos:

-Hector sits alone in his room watching vines grow all around the walls, taking root under his bed. He’s not afraid. His friends have been wondering where he’s been of late.

-Hector locks himself up in the locker room of the gym to stop his coach from finding the Italian Greyhound he’d just created. In the end he is forced to vent the dog out the airlock; later he’s unable to explain what he’d been doing in there or why he’s crying, leading the family psychiatrist to come to some conclusions of his own.

-Hector is on a date with a long-time friend, walking through a factory floor. She’s trying to engage eye contact, but he keeps looking over at the machines, the way they move. He notices several seagulls perched up on the rafters, staring down at the young couple. He makes an excuse to leave, which his friend sees through immediately. She asks if she’s done something wrong, but he only says “goodbye.”

-Hector’s friend Michael catches a cold, baffling the medical staff. After watching him sneeze for six hours they vacuum his entire body and place him in a mental asylum for six weeks; Hector knows it’s his fault. A lot of things have been his fault lately.

-Hector watches a bird impale a cockroach upon its beak. He is confused and horrified until he sees the thing eat its prey, after which he is confused and horrified with a little context.

-There’s a flower blooming on Hector’s desk. He’s afraid.

-Before his power (now forgotten) emerges. Linda, a young woman Hector’s age, asks for a kiss. The notion of a girl being interested in him is so strange to him that he declines before giving it any real thought. Later, he decides it is just as well; he probably couldn’t have gone through with it anyway.

-A younger-still Hector wins a local Young Writers’ contest with a poem he’d spent weeks meticulously editing. When his parents get the news, he refuses to let them see what he’d written.

-Hector is dragged along to visit his great-great-grandfather, a rare case of untreatable senility at one hundred and fifty years old. The elder Metah beckons his great-great-grandson close and whispers in his ear, “The fox may be smarter than the hounds, but the hounds still find their mark nine times out of ten.” Correctly assuming this to be mere nonsense, Hector never repeats this to anybody.

-Hector’s earliest memory was of the emptiness of space.

Walking through the corridors with his family, the boy (he couldn’t be more than four) spies a rare transparent pane on the exterior wall of the worldship. He wrests himself away from his mother’s grip and runs over to touch the glass, staring outside. In a world with so little to look at, this is the first time he has had the opportunity to consider that what lies beyond.

“Mom,” Hector says softly. “What’s out there?”

Hector’s mother is a psychiatrist, sly smiles and empathy. She takes her son’s hand and pulls him away. “There’s nothing out there, sweetener,” she says. “Nothing.”

* * * * *

First the fake memories go, then the real ones…

Underneath the mind that is Hector, there is a garden.

Everything in the garden has a name, and Adam is pleased. The garden is a part of him, as much as he is a part of the garden. It grew around him, grew from his love and his desire, grew the food he eats and the earth on which he rests. All his life, all his knowledge, stand as two trees amongst his creation.

His greatest creations, he thinks, are the names. But he is not done yet. He whispers the name of the serpent, and the serpent comes.

At his command, the serpent coils itself around Adam’s leg, climbing over his hips and abdomen to rest on his ribcage. Adam braces himself against the Tree of Life and issues another command, and the serpent bites.

Adam grimaces in pain. The poison cannot harm him—especially not while he grips the Tree of Life with one hand—but he cannot avoid the pain as the serpent clamps its fangs around his rib and begins to pull. It is several hours before the bone comes free; a stream of blood has sprouted into a field of roses around his feet. A stray millipede has made its home inside the incision, and as Adam’s body begins to heal itself, it narrowly scurries out before the regrowing skin seals it inside. Adam issues a word of thanks to the serpent, removing the bone from its mouth.

Adam contemplates his rib in the sunlight, studying it from all angles. However, it is not until the sun has set and the moon has risen that he seems to come to a decision. Setting the rib on the ground in front of him beneath the stars, he whispers her name.

This memory, too, is swept away the moment it is unburied.

* * * * *

There’s nothing out there. Nothing.

Two years later.

Hector’s face was barely visible beneath the bark of the tree. His mind had grown into the wood; hard and thoughtless, but content, slow-growing. Around him were a few scattered corpses, the nutrients of their bodies having long since been broken apart to support the ecosystem. Where once there had been a vault, now there was a jungle, and those who have wandered in since have forgotten that there was ever anything but a jungle.

On the very top of the highest branch of the tree where Hector now lived, Obfuscation remained wrapped around the Endorphic Core, happy as it ever had been. A sudden gust of wind caused the Core to totter and then fall to the ground, dislodging its passenger in its fall.

The feeling of continuity and thought returning to the world was like someone exhaling after holding his breath for two years. Hector’s eyes opened. He perceived (“he perceived” here being distinct from “there was”) a woman standing before him. She was naked, very pregnant, and nibbling about the edges of an apple, smiling as though savoring both the fruit and its implications. She noticed Hector looking at her. ”Hello, Hector,” she said. ”Do you know who I am?”

Hector nodded, his face gradually becoming distinct from the tree behind him. “You’re Eve,” he said. “Everyone’s mom. The first woman.”

”My husband used to call me the platonic form of femininity,” giggled Eve. ”He was better with women than you are, of course. ‘Women’ was his idea to begin with, you understand.”

Hector found that he did understand. “How long have I been—Helen!” He dislodged an arm from the wood around him and put it forth as though grabbing at something just out of reach.

”If you’re looking to get the girl back, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Eve. ”This is the other one. The Tree of Knowledge. You created it as a defense mechanism to keep you alive and hold your memories in place until you were in a position to get them back.”

Hector nodded absently. “I forgot.”

”You have a whole world inside of you, Hector. You have the power to never forget. What never forgets, Hector?”

Hector pulled a foot out from under a root. “Is this a riddle?” he asked.

”What never forgets? Here, try an apple.” Eve tossed her fruit at Hector. Hector looked at it for a moment as though it were a bomb, then bit into it.

He knew the answer immediately. “An elephant. An elephant never forgets. But… a goldfish only has seven seconds of memory. In a sane world I would have learned these things in second grade.”

”The sane world, like I said, is inside of you. But it’s not doing anyone much good here. You need to bring it home and let it out. If you can make things green again, eventually you can track down your own Tree of Life and bring her back. But to do that, you need to get home, Hector. And to get home, you need to win.”

By the time the words broached the distance from the woman’s mouth to Hector’s ears, Eve was already gone. Hector took another bite from the apple, and suddenly found his eyes drawn to the little blob lying in the grass not ten feet away.

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

---

Amidst the tall grass there laid precious golden trinkets. A golden tea-tray shone from a thicket of bushes. In this beautiful forest, here and there were hints of what had been before. If you really hunted you could amongst the wild growing grass find the bones of those who had been there at the time; those whose minds had been blanked by the failed experiment's influence. It was not just the thieves that had been in the vault, or the guards that had been advancing upon the security breach. Obfuscation's influence had extended farther than the prison that held a collection of people imprisoned for their parts in grand battles. Throughout the entire complex people slumped to the ground, thoughtless, and waited to starve to death. This scene was at once a scene of remarkable beauty, and of a profound tragedy.

Obfuscation could see neither.

Its short life had been a happy one, full of joyful exploits and interesting things that were forgotten minutes later; mysteries to be discovered again and again, time after time. In some ways it was infuriating that the cause of so much pain should be so innocent, so hopelessly incapable of comprehending what it had done.

If it had been some kind of evil mastermind that would be one thing. It would have been possible to hate it for what it had done, but as Hector prepared to kill the creature, all he could see in its eyes was honest confusion; an awful sense of distress at a new sensation it didn't understand. It tried to wriggle free from Hector's grip, a low-pitched plaintive squeal somehow emerging from its featureless body.

Hector hardened his heart to its plight. Obfuscation had taken his Helen away. Even if it had not Obfuscation was a danger to the world. It had to be killed, if not for his revenge then for everyone who would have had the misfortune to encounter the experiment in the future.

Trying hard not to look the innocent creature in the eyes, Hector dug his nails into Obfuscation's soft body. It squealed in pain as Hector's fingers sunk into its fragile body, and were at once silenced as Hector tore it apart. His mood was far from triumphant as he cast the remains of the blob to the forest floor.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

"Well done, Hector Metah. You have defeated the pathetic beings chosen as your opponents and emerged victorious. You will be returned home now. Enjoy your time there.

You should have an opportunity to relax before the championship, after all."

Storing Victor for 51A1... Done.

Archiving Administration Personality... Done.

Concluding Records of Battle... Done.

Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.

---

The unicorn was so purely white as to defy texture and shadow; it seemed to have no depth as it galloped through the halls, like a shape cut out of the world. Its hooves hitting the steel floor made a sound like a calm sea lapping at the sands. It was three hours past midnight, and the worldship was dark; where the unicorn passed, the motion-sensing lights winked on, so that a trail of incandescence followed the unicorn as it ran.

Doors began to open. The inhabitants of this wing, prodded by telecalls and newscasts or else simply compelled, were walking out into the hall to catch a glimpse of the unicorn as it passed. They were aware, in an impotently cerebral way, that they should be afraid. None of them were afraid. Most of them were crying.

Fearless though they were, no one on the worldship stepped directly in the unicorn’s path, either out of pragmatic concern for their own safety or a healthy sense of the sacred or dramatic. The only person standing right in the center of the hall had been planted there by a higher power more than of his own volition.

As the unicorn approached Hector, it slowed to a trot, then to a walk, then knelt beside the young man and offered its neck to his embrace. As Hector stroked the softest white fur in the universe, the taste of the Fruit of Knowledge lingered on his tongue, and he understood the implication.

Hector sighed. There were a lot of things about this world that needed changing.