Brent Stinebaker
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15-9 Bonding IV: First Massacre
🕑 Added 2023-08-25 20:32:17 +0000 UTCI don’t remember the first person I killed. Or the second. Or, well, most of them really. Look, I snuff lots of people and I’m old, so you can’t blame me. The ultimate point to this conversation remains the same, however: somewhere, sometime, some unlucky fucker’s gonna get it at your hands, and they’re going to be the ones that do it to you.
“Oh, shit. That person was alive. That person had a life. I have a life. Oh, Jaus. Oh, gods.”
Yeah, all you nova-hot snuffers with ice in your veins can laugh it up. You don’t feel emotions when you have to kill, right? Nothing affects you, right?
Wrong. Bullshit. I wasn’t shaken for shit when my youngest got done beside me during a run, so my competition for the “stone-cold sow” awards is in the low thousands at best. But it’s not the big dramatic moments that fuck you up while fighting. It’s the little things. A little detail or a crack that slips through all that scar tissue you got layered over your psyche and into the soft, quivering meat on the inside.
Let me tell you about a guy I do remember killing: a managerial type for a defunct Omnitech under-corp we don’t talk about. Real soft meat. Cornered the poor half-strand on the shitter and plugged him twice with an organic neuro-tox pick I had planted beneath my nail.
Man did the guy shit himself hard after that. Must’ve cleared up whatever congestion he had with that Sang nerve agent, but while he was doing leg-spasms, something strange happened to me.
I found myself… feeling bad. Real bad. My hands started shaking. I had my tear ducts wired away at the time so I probably couldn’t have cried if I wanted to, but there I was having a panic attack across from a dying man shitting the last and hardest shit of his life.
The whole thing was just ridiculous. I saw myself where he was–wondered how I would take just getting killed when I thought I was safe and something inside me just… couldn’t handle it. My wards rattled then. Shook me out of that mess and I pulled a runner before anyone else came.
I still remember the way his eyes rolled, and how he blinked. Confusion at first and terror all the way at the end. The terror didn’t go away either. It lingered until everything just… stopped.
There’s a crack inside all of us is what I’m saying, and if you keep living this life, you’ll find it someday.
Well. Most of you. The honest truth is that only ghouls, Regs, and the mentally warped can keep killing forever without suffering a price, but honestly, we can call anyone in these three categories “people”?
-Quail Tavers, The School of the Warrens
15-9
Bonding IV: First Massacre
+I didn’t expect her to just… burst,+ Kae cried as she surged out from the mangled husk of twisted metal that once stood a Sangeist.
She felt the immensity of her weight most of all as she flowed through the world. Water was hers to shape and command—a fluid wall rising high to drink in lancing flechettes and stinging beams. The Aegis of Tides was a Heaven long popular among the lowest of Highflame’s Godclads, and Kae thought herself totally versed in its canons and hubrises.
Practice, however, revealed the depths of her inconsideration. For too long had she considered her new abilities in the confines of a “white room,” delving into what she could do in the broadest of circumstances while ignorant to the minutiae.
Small things like funneling oneself into a person and then rapidly expanding thereafter. The mutilated pulp of her victim oozed still within, making Kae’s spirit quiver, and she found herself desperately yearning for a shower despite being water incarnate.
A missile streaked out down from atop one of the slanting structures beside her, loosed from with a sparking flash from a linear-acceleration launcher. It splashed into her form like a comet, plunging deep but striking at nothing. Her canon activated. Fluid swirled and unraveled the projectile. Flicking droplets back toward a mob of disorganized Three-Fingers, the flecks reached out and formed glinting streams that stitched the missile back into existence.
Strands of viscera clung in clumps to the payload as well.
Kae mentally gagged as she worked to funnel more of the organic detritus out from inside her.
+I know, pretty sick right?+ Chambers said. The echo of his thoughts intruded into her overwhelmed mind. Excitement rode from his every word in contrast to her horror, and as she swatted crowds of fleeing enforcers with her tidal waves–causing herself further distress as their little bodies tore open like wet sacks of flesh graced by the weight of a falling hammer. A brightness crowned the space above her while a piercing shriek forced reality to shiver.
The Lushburner greeted the battlefield as a streak of fire and flora. Arcs of rising flame tore through fading silhouettes like spreading roots, and from the inferno erupted sky-coating swarms of buzzing bodies. Larger aero-sized bioforms splattered through fleeing figures like artillery while their diminutive counterparts buried their victims from sheer mass alone. The plaza where the Three Fingers held was now choked with fire, flesh, and roaring tides. Beside her, Lushburner’s crucified visage bled dolloping tumors out made from hives of flesh-woven people seeking a final escape.
COG-CAP: 22%
Kae staggered and directed her perception elsewhere. Though she herself was a Godclad, her acclimation had not yet set in. Gazing upon a naked Heaven so brazenly still reaped considerable cost.
A spear of discomfort lodged itself through her being. Her focus split. Her Frame, confused by the input of her mind, flickered as the subreality manifested and deloaded, causing her physical form to shutter across existence with a rushing tsunami. Kae’s mind spun. Her cog-feed screamed with threats and icons and warnings and a metal fragment sliced both her cheeks open and the pain made her scream–
She inhaled. Water flooded her lungs and panic consumed her mind. Instinct took hold and she manifested her Heaven anew. She felt the losing tide condense back into the shape of a fortress. Thought lost its grip on her and she plunged through the mob in a mindless charge.
Pop. Crack. Pop.
Such was the percussive repetition that formed the background to Chambers’ crackling assembly as he laughed and jeered and hurled slurs at his foes.
The world was spinning.
She felt herself wash over another two half-liquefied effigies of bone and metal and wondered where the other golems had gone. Gunfire prickled her “skin” in random increments but she paid the sensation no heed. Too busy was her mind drifting, watching the slaughter unfold as if a third party to her own body.
Pop. Crack. Pop.
They didn’t scream when they came apart against her. Not physically, anyhow. The way their death would tremor through the entirety of her ontology made her cringe. Again, she looked upon flame-spawned bugs she found herself comrades with, and an intrusive envy took hold. They had the decency to crack once and die. Humans rattled and twitched and jerked even past the very end.
Her perspective reeled out further as everything became like colors to her, dappled and blurry, shades and hues…
+Kae? Kae? In you in there?+ Chambers’ voice suddenly boomed in her skull again. Everything snapped back and recentered, perception and sound jolting back into her own being as the discord shattered her focus anew.
She pawed at the path ahead but found herself alternating between Heaven and person. The tides parted as she pried at the world, but between the instants she found herself tumbling out from the separating waves as she slammed and slid upon a carpet of sloughed gore.
The world blurred around her for but a moment before she struck what felt to be a dense post with her shoulder. A final pop snatched her drifting mind from dissociation, and Kae choked as feeling vanished from her right arm.
The thud of a heavy boot landed next to her as she opened her eyes to see an armored enforcer toppling toward her. Motes of ebbing crimson cascaded through reality. What should have been a ton of alloy and person spilled over her in a wash of warm blood.
+Holy shit, he’s been keeping all the good canons for himself. Look at that.+ Chambers' chuckle of glee willed her to tilt her gaze toward the sides, and she found herself beholding evaporating mists of rising red and distant detonations folding in around the corner.
The courtyard was a triangular space with five or so buildings, but the gaps in between left the streets and skyrises visible. Pipes and bridges ran everywhere, and along an extended Hypertube tunnel flashed reflections of a distant engagement.
Ghosts sailed through the Nether from Chambers and requested her Meta to grant access. Staggering awkwardly to her feet, she found herself regarding the massacre that just took place–that she just took part in with numbness.
Her right arm swung like a pendulum and with each shift of her bodyweight her collarbones snapped loud and deep. No pain followed, just a cold absence.
Somehow, that just made her feel worse.
As a thin film of blood settled atop the waters she controlled, a half-crushed helmet drifted by filled with chittering wasp-like creatures and strange skin-tag looking organisms meshed between enamel, bone, and pinkish meat.
Her stomach groaned. The smell hit her as coppery sweetness mingled with the stench of death while winds brought her faint whiffs of… lobster?
Noises escaped her person. She volunteered for this. It was her decision to be a Godclad. While Avo was absent, she dove into vicarities to prime her mind and test her spirit. She experienced moments from both spectrums, and dream in the flesh of slayer and slain.
Here and now, though? None of this felt real. All the lives she and Chambers just took with their Heavens alone… the way the innards clung to her waters… She could still remember it. Feel it stuck inside her like a hair on her tongue or a string she just couldn’t pull out from inside herself.
An great heat sank down upon her for a moment before it suddenly vanished. Darkness swallowed her surroundings, and heavy footsteps squelched across the sodden death-caked ground. As Chambers strode up to her, she could offer but a blank stare to his broad smirk.
He noted her discomfort with a laugh. “First massacre?” He asked.
She looked by to the strips and sinews leftover from all the hundreds that had once been alive just moments prior. Thunderous impacts shook the waters at her feet and wails of horror and fear whispered through the Nether from afar.
“First time I killed anyone, I think,” Kae said, spitting the words out as fast as she could. “They popped a lot. So much. I didn’t think about how the bones would feel under all that water–why didn’t I think of that? I could have prepared better–”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chambers said, holding up his hands and redirecting her attention. “Stop right there. What we’re doing here is some fucked up shit. I doubt there’s a vicarity in this city that would get you really ready for this.” Then, he pressed his lips together and his eyes swiveled to the accompaniment of a hum. “Well, maybe Steelhard’s Heaven of Hard Fucks special, but that was a wet mess in a different way. Ahem. Anyway, he just just gotta let those icks run through you, you know?”
Kae blinked. “Icks.”
“Yeah. Everyone has ‘em and you can have a Necro wire them away, but there will always be another thing to make you all grossed about killing. Just the way it goes.” He looked around and the ground beneath him answered his feet in squicks and splashes. “Did pretty good if I do say so. We basically mauled a knot.” A broad smile spread across his face as his eyes glinted with eye. “Fuck yeah. Two against hundreds and the hundreds got shit on. Tell me that isn’t awesome.”
His exciting wasn’t contagious. Kae touched her disabled arm and felt a spreading emptinessness deep inside her chest. “I’m still stuck on the… ‘icks,’ I think. Maybe it will come to be later.”
Chambers opened his mouth to say something, but he paused. And thought. Something in the back of her mind wondered if he was going to talk about some other disturbing neuro-porn he liked indulging in but from him came only a grunt. “Or maybe not. You’re a… shiny person, Agnos.”
She blinked. “Shiny?”
“Yeah,” he said, waving his hand animated as he searched for the right words. “You seem real nice and you smell good and all that other Tiers stuff, you know?”
“Smelling good is a Tiers thing?” Kae asked.
He held up a hand to quiet her. “That’s not the point. The point is that… fuck, what were we talkin–oh, some people don’t like killing and that’s okay.”
“I know,” Kae said. “I don’t like killing. I’m just a bit…” She looked down at her shaking hand and winced. “Stuck on how they pop. And the awful smells.”
Chambers sneered. “You’re telling me? I’m the one with the dogshit Cooking Heaven. Could’ve given me the cool Omnitech thing, but no–Chambers gets shit. Anway, innards are all kinds of gassy sometime. You know, most of snuffers usually get a second lung or a UTL-breather just for that.”
“UTL?” Kae said.
“Utility breather. Cheap gutterware olfactory implants. They slid them under your nose and helps you filter some minor toxins, or smell whatever you want to smell. The Maw-divers pretty much all got one of those because of all the waste so… yeah. You know, gotta adapt to the environment.”
“Oh. You know, the Purgatories usually filter the smells you encounter based on your Metamind’s listed preferences. I miss that right now.”
“Yeah, me too, and I’ve never even been there before,” Chambers said.
Kae chirped a soft laugh.
“Well. Rich or poor, I suppose that what makes us both New Vultunites is how often the city gets to ram fist deep into our asses and tug, right?”
Her chirp turned to a frown of disgust. “You really like disgusting imagery, don’t you?” Kae asked.
“It leaves an impression,” Chambers said. “Makes people remember me.”
Kae considered consider his words and offered a quick nod. “I guess, but how are you remembered?”
“ Don't really matter. It’s just about… making people think of you like you’re human. Like they can’t just shoot you without something leaving the world for good.”
Again, his words spurred her to look at all the remains staining the urban swamp around her.
“Yeah, like those poor half-strands.” Chambers sniffed. “I don’t even know most of their names. Listen, I felt real fucking bad about an NecroI fed to the ghoul earlier.” An awkward silence followed, and he drew out his Woundhound injection and motioned for her to approach. “Come on, let’s get that arm of yours fixed up before the other two get back.”
“Do you think they’re already done?” Kae asked.
“Eh, probably,” Chambers said. “Wouldn’tve melted our problems if they weren’t, right?”
The blood riding the water called out to her. “Ri–”
+Kae. Chambers. Still one more active knot left. Dropping you two a marker so we can square up and fight this one out.+ Draus words echoed through the session and Kae sighed as a market flashed into her DeepNav not a few miles away.”
Chambers promptly jabbed the Woundhound into her and she barely winced. “Come on, Agnos. Let’s get a dog out of you so we can end this Crucible give these ‘fugee murdering half-strands the what for.”
Exhaustion crept into her bones as something began to twitch from the epicenter of her injury. “Right. Just have to get used to this.”
But the twist in her gut as she spoke those words made her wonder if she ever could.
Comments
Arcane
forever without suffering a price, but honestly, we can call anyone in these three categories “people”? > "...can we call anyone..." +Kae? Kae? In you in there?+ > +Kae? Kae? Are you in there?+ Thanks for the chapter.
Jack Smith
Great to see a different point of view! Great chapter!
