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miridiums-writing · 3 years

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Squid x Miridium

Miridium = she/he. Short as shit, I am 5’1 irl soooooo, miniture, I accidentally turned into a flustered mess who can’t deal with any compliments but the dynamic works

Squid = they/them. The taller one, I didn’t specify height because brain went no, squid kinda turned into a mysterious flirty advisory and I’m not complaining

Summary ; squid and Miridium have been enemies for years, battle after battle they have fought with no clear winner, but this time squid is determined to finally win

Warnings; blood, gore, fighting

Tag list : @squid-god-supreme since it's literally about you

Miridium crashed into the large oak door, his breaths laboured from running so far after them. Without considering what he was running into, he roughly pulled the door open. “Come on squid, stop playing this ridiculous game with me.” She heard a chuckle near the back of the room, Miridium looked around the room, quickly observing this is what looked like a theatre, with a large stage near the back. Just like squid to choose something like this to run to, they were always one for dramatics. Miridium crept forward through the pews, listening out for any other movement in the room, by the time he had reached the stage he had still heard nothing at all other than their own footsteps against the polished wood floor.

Squid was crouched at the back of the stage, their sword resting against their leg. Their own breathing wasn’t quite as haggard as Miridium’s, though in comparison they had had more time to rest. They smirked to themselves as they heard his footsteps get closer to their hiding place. Squid could distinctly remember from all the other times they had fought how easy it was to fluster Miridium, and pushing his buttons was squid’s most favourite past time. They could hear him hesitate at the stage stairs, come on Miri just a little further and this battle is mine for the winning.

Both got poised and ready to attack the other, their swords twitching to get unsheathed. With a shout squid jumped out from their crouched position, pouncing onto Miri, thankfully Miri had unsheathed his sword just in time and both swords crashed against each other, then the true fight began, each blocking and attacking the other with immense speed and agility, the only sound surrounding the room was metal against metal, and slight grunts at both ends as they battled for the win. Squid pushed their sword against Miri’s, their faces close together now, squid smirked down at Miri, seeing his face of concentration and rage. “Why don’t you just let me win for once shortcake?” Miri glared up at Squid at the nickname, every time without fail Squid had somehow managed to get under her skin and annoy the hell out of her. “Shut up!” she yelled, finally pushing squid back, causing them to stumble slightly before they inevitably regained their balance, their smirk only growing larger. “Fine, guess ill just have to be more persuasive!” They ran back at Miri, sword raise ready to attack her. Miri, quickly jumped out of the way of the dangerous blow. Though he misjudged his landing and felt himself starting to fall from the stage. In a blind state of panic for their wellbeing squid grabbed a-hold of her hand and pulled her towards themselves, their arms circling protectively around her body.

When the adrenaline on both sides starts to dull down is, they realized the position they were in. squid pulled their arms away from her and took a step back, giving them the space, they assumed Miri would want. “Just, don’t do that shortcake, you’ll take a nasty fall.” Miri had still yet to say a word to squid, her own brain had short-circuited slightly, and she had no idea what to do, her emotions going haywire. Her head repeating the same sentence again and again as it tried to understand the events that had just taken place. It meant nothing. “Lets just pretend that never happened. Besides,” she picked up her sword from the ground. “I was about to win.” Squids usual signature smirk etched back onto their face. “Oh yeah, lets see about that.” Both fighters raised their swords once more before a gut retching wail sounded from outside. Miri’s face turned white as she looked up at squid. Squid’s eyes hardened as they turned their gaze to the door, waiting for one of those things to enter. “How many do you think there are” Miri said quietly, afraid making too loud a noise would attract those things to them. “Can’t believe I’m saying this,” squid said, tucking their sword under their arm and putting the left hand out to Miri. “Let’s fight together for once and get the hell out of here, then we go on like nothing happened. Its my fault this happened, I drew us too far away from the circle” Miri considered their offer for a moment before she nodded to herself and put her hand in theirs. “Just this once, then we forget.” They shook hands before they turned to the door, swords raised once more and ready to fight it.

The door was smashed open off its hinges as the thing pushed its way through the door, it didn’t really have a name other than the thing, it didn’t seem to resemble anything anyone had seen before the worlds fall. It was a grotesque creature with horns along its back, its skin a pale off-white colour covered in a clear slime, it a rather rotund body, with small stubby legs, 10 in all. Its mouth was the worst. Closed it just look like a creepy smile, but as its moth opened, they could see its rows and rows of teeth, with a hole that went straight down to its stomach. It made a wailing noise as it slugged across the floor into the room. The things weren’t incredibly fast, but they didn’t need to be. They always came in large packs, and both Squid and Miri knew the others weren’t far behind, if they both wanted to make it out alive, they were going to need to work together.

Squid and Miri glanced at each other, nodding in a reassuring way at the other and turned their gaze to the thing, both ready to fight for not only their own survival, but the others too

Both Squid and Miri were drenched in the disgusting slime now, wounds adorned both their bodies. They had fought long and hard, a pack of 20 of them had surrounded the building and had taken over 2 hours to kill them all. Miri wasn’t quite as badly wounded as Squid as they had a bad habit of swooping in at the last moment and stopping him from getting hurt. Miri trudged over to Squid, putting an arm around them and helping them up, they both hobbled away from the carnage. While scoping out the area earlier Miri had noticed a first aid stand not too far from the building as it looked like an old run-down amusement park. Squid’s body weight leaned heavily onto Miri, causing them to struggle to pull them along, but knowing that he owed them his life. Squid tried to keep their groans of pain to themselves, trying to be as helpful as possible, so Miri didn’t feel like she was doing all the work.

Miri kicked the door down of the broken building, pulling Squid inside with her and placing them onto a seat in the corner before searching through all the drawers and cupboards for some kind of assistance. In her panic she then realized how disgusting her hands and clothing was, she rushed to the sink and thanked god that the water still ran before removing her top layer of armour and setting it aside, leaving him in a black shirt and leggings. Once he had cleaned himself up, he collected up bandages, sterilised wipes and anything else he felt might be needed. Squid had toppled over now, their wounds beginning to take a real tole on them. With quick precision and fluidity Miri removed Squid’s armour and set it beside her own before carefully pealing away Squid’s shirt. Their wound was rather deep, one of the things must have managed to bite them at some point. It was oozing blood and looked rather agitated. Miri was no medical professional, but even she knew this was way above her. The only thing she could thing to do was to clean it, sew it as best she could, bandage it and Squid back to the Circle quickly before they died.

Squid was starting to lose consciousness now and if they fell asleep, they wouldn’t be moving anytime soon. Miri tired to keep Squid awake, even at one point hitting them, but nothing seemed to work. Setting his resolve, he lay squid down across multiple chairs, and got to work cleaning their wounds.

Squid’s eyes started to open, the pain in their chest being much worse than they remembered, and much worse than any wound they had received before. Squid looked around the room, trying to get their bearings before their eyes landed on the figure slumped and asleep in a crumpled heap against the counter on the floor. Squid could recognize the curly green hair from anywhere, and a soft smile fell onto their face. Miri had dragged them here and had even fixed them up. If Squid didn’t know any better, they would think she went soft. Squid carefully pulled themself up from the chair and hobbled over to her side. Squid let their arm drape over their body, and they settled themself against the counter. Without even thinking twice about it they set a kiss against Miri’s forehead.

Its funny to think all of these years they had fought and battled one another, and one afternoon everything had changed. It squid was honesty with themself, and they often weren’t, being here like this with Miri was nice, it felt natural, it felt right. As squid passed out once more, they only hoped that Miri would feel the same

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU ENJOYED!!

#miridium x squid #squid x miridium #miri x squid #squid x miri #squidium #idk i got bored #please love me #that sounded desperate ignore me

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phoenotopia · 4 years

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2019 December Update

The game is officially playable from beginning to end!

That battle has concluded...

Soon begins the war! But first, a brief reprieve for the holidays.

And I must throw in the usual caveats. We're still playtesting, we're still polishing, we still gotta get age ratings, more red tape, etc etc. And most importantly, we need to figure out the launch strategy. Think Megaman, charging his shot for 5 and a half years... We're not allowed to miss at this point. It has to HIT.

Luckily, we're in a relatively stable position where we don't have to rush the game out immediately. It's not LAUNCH or STARVE - it's... take some time to aim a little. We don't want to launch in the shadow of a bigger behemoth game, and we don't want to launch completely unknown either. We have to build up the game's media presence, which has been neglected so far. I know it's annoying to have to continue to wait... but please bear with us a little longer!

Here's what we've been doing for the past couple months.

---------- THE SCRIPT ----------

The script sits at over 80,000 words. I didn't realize the significance until a teammate told me that that's actually as long as a novel! I looked it up, and sure enough, it's a little longer than the first Harry Potter. But unlike Harry Potter, hardly any of these words are wasted on, pffft, narration. It's all juicy dialogue!

(Some of the game's golden nuggets of dialogue)

There was actually a lot of mundanity getting to the end. Pirate, acting as my editor, caught tons of errors and inconsistencies. One of the most recurring issues had to do with capitalization. I like to capitalize things, often inconsistently. Some common questions that arose:

Why is this text highlighted yellow, and this one highlighted blue?

Why is this monster name capitalized, but this monster not?

Why is this item capitalized, and this one not?

... and so on!

All very mundane issues, but all very necessary to tackle. And there was a TON of 'em. (em vs 'em was another thing we had to make consistent). I actually did some research to see what capitalization rules Zelda had. From what I could tell, when it comes to animals and monsters in the Zelda universe:

All monsters are capitalized

All regular animals are not capitalized

The Cuccos are special, and ARE capitalized

(a collage of Zelda pictures I assembled to study)

In the Zelda universe, all regular items are lowercase, but highlighted blue when mentioned in a quest context (e.g. "butter", "hylian wheat"). Items can be uppercase, if they are special named items (e.g. "Sheikah Slate"). We adopted similar rules as Zelda in some cases, and deviated in others. For instance, in the Phoenotopia universe, there isn't a clear distinction between animals and monsters - that fish monster is really just an animal that happens to be the alpha predator in its natural habitat. So most entities are lowercase, but "big deal" entities can be uppercase.

(we made a formal document to consult whenever a question regarding capitalization arises)

---------- A SAMPLING of QUEST AND CHARACTERS ----------

A lot of new quests have arisen in our great writing effort extending over the past several months. And with it, new characters, big and small. I'll tease a sampling of some of them here (warning: some light spoilers ahead):

My favorite new quest is undoubtedly our game's new "Trading Quest". This one takes inspiration from the Zelda series - the trading quest similarly has you roaming the world and its towns in search of needy people who desire a particular item. Deliver them the item they desire, and get a new item. Do this 10 times, and the ultimate weapon awaits you at the end.

I tried some things to vary up the formula. Some NPCs don't reveal what they need right away - steps have to be taken to get them there. It's also possible to go down the wrong route in the sequence, and have to double-back. We try to keep it interesting.

---------- LOOT PLACEMENTS & GAME BALANCING ----------

A great effort was also spent towards balancing the game this past 2 months. Because even one good healing item, easily obtained, can throw the game's whole difficulty off-kilter. And this same principle applies to other areas, like the money economy and player powerup options. Altogether, they form a very delicate ecosystem for enjoyment.

One of the recent things I did for this game was put down exactly where each heart ruby, energy gem, and moonstone could be found. And this was actually a rather involved process because you have a limited number of rewards to distribute (you wouldn't want the final max HP count to be a weird number like 297). Put too many rewards in the beginning, and the late dungeons would have no rewards to offer. Put too much in the end, and the inverse happens.

I found myself going back into earlier areas and plundering their rewards to fill the later areas. And then to ensure a relatively even spread of rewards within each area themselves, I drew crude maps of the dungeons & their reward spots, so that they could be studied from a bird's eye perspective.

But it was still not enough. With NPC quests and towns also taking up their own allotment of the rewards, I found myself running low on things to distribute. So I went back to the books and upped the number of rewards across the board. Before there were 44 Heart Rubies to collect - there are now 55. Before each Heart Ruby boosted your max HP by 5, but now each one now boosts your max HP by 4, so your final max HP count would still end up the same. It's kinda similar to what happened with Twilight Princess, where they broke with tradition and made 5 heart containers required to gain a new heart instead of the usual 4. Overall, the final tally for treasure to find is:

55 heart pieces

30 energy gems

108 moon stones

Who's crazy enough to collect them all?

---------- BADGES / ACHIEVEMENTS ----------

As one of the game's finishing touches, there's a menu for BADGES - they're this game's version of achievements. This is an ongoing task that we hope to stamp out this December. A few favorites of mine from the original flash game will return ("Pillow Connoisseur" is among them).

(The menu looks like this before any badges are earned)

I allocated slots for just 33 badges, so we're selecting the badges very carefully. We got rid of most of the fluffy ones that appeared in the flash game - we wanted to reduce the number of badges that you would earn automatically for just playing the game (so no more "1st boss", "2nd boss", "3rd boss" achievements). We're aiming for a healthy mix of easily earned badges, hard earned badges, collectathon badges, secret fun badges, and so on.

The badges have another twist - they bear miniaturized portraits of characters from the game! In the initial brainstorm mockup phase, I wasn't really fond of the badge designs. You got a medal of a heart because you collected some hearts, and you got the medal of a moonstone for collecting moonstones, etc. It just seemed so... expected.

(various badge mockups)

How could we engage the players on a more fun and deep level? The idea came - what if we attached pictures of the people you meet on your journey? And these people's stories and character would have a connection with the achievement? That could keep the player guessing which character would come attached with an achievement, or even reveal a hidden detail about the character you didn't know.

---------- MUSIC ----------

Will has just one more task to do. And that's to recut the song for the trailer. One of our other goals for this December is to make a really good trailer... again. There's actually 2 other trailers we cut and never made public for reasons. Maybe I'll talk about them one day in the post-mortem.

Since this may be the last conventional update, we wondered with which song to best leave the audience. And we decided that the most suitable song is "Sanctuary". It's a song that the player will often encounter often when they happen upon a quiet resting place in the world.

There's a little story behind this song. Two and a half years ago, I linked Will the Earthbound song, "Buzz buzz's prophecy", and told him, make a song like that!

In response, Will made "Sanctuary".

Give it a listen HERE. What do you think? Did Will hit close to the greats?

---------- FAN ART ----------

Three fan arts have come in the last couple months. I display them here proudly:

Another submission by Cody G! Gale looking shy as she flashes the V sign for the camera. I like how Cody G's art is continually evolving. Note the additional detail on her eye, and how her hair is drawn extra fluffy. Very nice!

Shafiyahh is another consistent contributor, and made one in the spirit of Halloween. I really like their costumes! Gale as an angel, and Lisa as a demon, fittingly captures their relationship, since Gale is the responsible one and Lisa is the troublemaker. So cute!

A contribution from a new artist, Negativus Core! Wow, Gale looks so bada-- here! We often forget about Gale's tough side due to the cutesy graphics. This is probably how her enemies see her. And the gummy (slime) is a cute touch!

---------- FINAL NOTES ----------

Similar to last year, this will be the last update for a while. If things run too slow, I'll post a status update come end of February 2020.

It's possible, and this is a BIG IF, that something notable happens sooner than expected - like we're going to a con or we have reason to drop the trailer sooner than later. If so, this blog will update earlier than expected. BIG IF. Otherwise, it's end of February till next you hear of us.

The game's development has reached a new uncharted territory. We're going to take the time and figure out exactly what our next steps are. In addition, we'll still be doing some playtesting and script polishing. And we'll be taking a break too. It is the holiday season, things move kind of slow around this time of year. We'll enjoy the company of our family and friends.

Until then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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whetstonefires · 5 years

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Earth-3

Characters: Owlman, Talon, Superwoman, Orin of Atlantis, Donna Troy, Garth

Warnings: Dehumanization, vague sleazing at 13yo, brief mention of past eye trauma, villains

Words: ~4,500

For Sheillagh O., who has been very very patient about something that in theory was going to be done by the end of January.

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Talon ducked under his master’s elbow and slid the knife in where it belonged, at the base of Owlman’s spine.

It was one of three blades that slotted invisibly into the armor plates along his torso, to serve as additional rigid protection as long as they were in place and, when necessary, to offer an extra edge.

Not that the Owl ever even looked unarmed, nor would be harmless if he were. But there was a difference between the menace of jet claws, and the sharp point that could be made with five inches of steel.

Talon ducked back out again, lifted the left gauntlet from its stand and waited for the matching hand to be held out, that he might slide it on. This might take some space of seconds, as Owlman was flipping through the day’s reports on an obsidian clipboard, inset with faceted beads of smoky quartz forming the shape of the feather tattoo he gave his fully initiated followers, the footsoldiers of his Court.

(There had been a lecture last month, when the clipboard was delivered, about the choice of materials, and the balance between useful opulence and absurd ostentation. The latter, it seemed, would have been using actual gemstones in the decoration, rather than mere quartz.

Talon was glad it wasn’t set with diamonds. Inevitably one would have fallen out and gotten lost, and Owlman would have been in a temper.)

Without looking up from whatever document was making him frown so thunderously, the Owl extended his left hand. Gauntlet on. Flex, to make sure it had settled correctly. Pass the clipboard into that hand, obsidian impervious to the bite of claws, as Talon circled silently around his back.

It was important not to keep his master waiting, but neither could he distract him with haste and rush. There was a balance in this, as in all things. Perfection must brush the fingertips with every movement, though it might never alight within the palm. This was attainable. He had been well taught.

The old Talons had not been trained as squires. He’d been told that by one of the round white masks, old blood who had known Talons before him, in feathered armor, and trained them too. White circle inset with great dark eyes looking down, thinking little of him, in his ragged grey and scarlet. White mask and the voice that issued from behind it familiar, from times when he had been in error, and required punishment.

But the Court had changed, since the days when Talon wore the armor. And the King who ruled it now preferred the personal touch.

He didn’t need help arming up, of course. The entirety of the royal raiment was very particularly designed to be manageable by the wearer, without assistance, because Owlman felt that trust was a negotiable commodity but not one he preferred ever to have to rely upon.

A second pair of hands saved time and trouble, however, and the more height Talon put on, the more often it was his service that was called for, rather than that of the old man. He could almost reach the top of the Owl’s head now, if he stretched.

Clipboard transferred, the second powerful hand stretched out, and Talon slid the gauntlet onto it. Another flex of claws. Testing articulation. It was unthinkable that this armor could be neglected enough to rust, but something could always have gone wrong. Never assume.

The claws dove toward his neck, and Talon froze. What mistake had he made?

But his throat was not opened. One great knuckle hooked carefully under the edge of his jaw. The armored inner pad of the vast thumb pressed against his lower left bicuspid, through the thin flesh of his face. The very end of the thumb’s black claw pricked at the corner of his mouth.

Firmly, the heavy hand turned his face up, into Owlman’s where he knew better than to look unless instructed. Pale blue eyes punched into his own sharply enough it felt they should have punctured, and oozed down his face blindly. (He hated when that happened. The slime stayed even after he recovered, and blindness in the interim was awful.)

“Talon,” said his king, as softly as he ever said anything that was not a threat. Deep, smooth, and just a step shy of gloating. None of the cool sharp edges of his anger. Talon had done nothing wrong. The band around his heart loosened. “Focus.”

The hand withdrew from his chin, and Talon dipped his head in contrition. How could he always tell, somehow. What carelessness crept into his movements, when his mind began to spin away behind his eyes?

"Good." The Owl reached out and lifted the feathered mantle from its stand himself, swinging its weight around his shoulders to settle there, doubling his already great size and casting shadow over the gleaming-dark surface of his breastplate.

Reached up to draw the mask down over his face, and tipped his chin back as he did, throat bared, so that Talon knew to step close, reach up, and hook carefully along the the gorget the row of fastenings that kept the great cloak in place.

A twitch of broad armored shoulders brought the feathers into line, and they were ready to depart.

The meeting was on an island in international waters. Waters, however, that were within a convenient distance of Gotham by small watercraft, a thing ensured by the simple expedient of Owlman having donated the location to the cause.

Not that he didn't still own it, technically speaking, through a network of shells. (Talon knew vaguely that these were legal entities, but always pictured tiny curling conches and delicate oyster-carapaces strung on chains, swinging with every breeze.) But it was used for only this, and was treated for Society purposes as common ground.

The other members maintained just the narrowest thread of awareness that they were on his territory—enough to incline them to defer, but not enough to make them feel trapped.

It was a careful balance his lord maintained, over these titans of the world. Talon knew the delicate power of it because he was one of the most mobile weights on the scales, but also because he imagined anyone would, watching power flow back and forth amongst the mighty. The unstoppable force of alien or amazon curbed and redirected to a common purpose.

Or was that only anyone who had been watching Owlman all their life. Talon could not say.

The Court had been this restive, once. When Talon was new. Had still required delicacy, though never quite so much, because no one in it had had a fraction of the strength gathered here. Now all the Courtiers had learned to bow their round white faces and avert their staring Tyton eyes, and the King had turned his gaze beyond Gotham, into the greater world.

The waves broke black about them as they raced eastward, leaving the lights of Gotham far behind. It was low in the water, this small vessel, but fast and quiet as the wings of owls in the night air. Owlman steered, very upright in the only seat.

Talon crouched at his left hand, one bare knee steadying him against the inside of the hull. It was cold. Thin steel between him and the ocean’s depth.

He could drown for a very long time, before he stopped waking up again.

Sometimes when the boat was caught by a rise, he jostled against his lord’s knee. The Owl took no notice.

“Listen closely to the others,” he instructed, at length, as the shore of the little island and the tower’s height came into view. As though Talon might have forgotten. “I will be expecting a detailed report at the end of the evening.”

He didn’t glance toward Talon. Verbal confirmation was required. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good. I intend to avoid conflict tonight, and in addition to the question of expanded membership, the political situation has expanded the agenda, so we may run late. You may speak to whatever hangers-on the rest have brought as necessary to extract information, but be subtle.”

“…yes, my lord.”

“You have doubts?”

“No, my lord.”

“Obviously they’ll be suspicious if you act out of character.” Yes, exactly. “Don’t.”

Well. That limited the options. A challenge, but the better kind. The more choices he was given, after all, the more likely it was he would make one that was wrong.

Talon tipped his head back a little to catch the flash of the stars. They said you could use them in place of a clock, if you knew them well enough. There would be a clock in the meeting-hall, to time his mission by. Owlman always made sure that business could be conducted according to schedule, so that if it was departed from it would be a conscious decision, and not the careless creep of accidental waste.

There were few worse things than error.

The ocean spoke, and the stars were silent, and he understood neither.

The prince of Atlantis was leaping lightly up onto the dock when they drew alongside it, casting the reins that bound his dolphin mounts aside into the cold March water. He had no need to hitch them in place; they would come when he called.

Careless, artless display of power. All the more effective for its lack of calculation.

"Orin," Owlman inclined his head minutely as he stepped across from vessel to pier. Talon knelt at his heel, lashing the boat in place against the dock—unliving things could not be counted upon to remain obediently where they were left, if something wished to carry them away, nor to come back when called upon, and the ocean did not bow to the Owl-king's will.

"Owl," the prince replied, return nod almost lost in the way he swept his pale hair back, scattering salt droplets against the rising moon, glittering even brighter than the golden scales of his armor. "Lovely night."

"Mm." Disinterested agreement. Claws loose. No offense taken. The embossed patterns of his armor caught the moon in them far more subtly, a spider's web over polished night. "Shall we go up?"

"You take the open sky too much for granted, my good bird," smiled His Highness, voice light as sun on water. "But surely. I sent my squire ahead to ensure the provisions would be suitable, today."

No staff was kept on the secret island, for security reasons, and thus catering was limited. The speedster Dash had been in charge of the food at the previous meeting a month ago, and his contribution had been dozens of cheeseburgers in paper sacks, whose scent had made Talon's idiot mouth water, even though last time he'd eaten anything of the kind (spoils from a target’s home) it had sat in his stomach like stone, until he lost it into a gutter.

Superwoman had been entirely amused by the cheeseburgers, and Ultraman had only gotten annoyed once he saw that Owlman was, and realized his own standards should be higher. Atom, who was the most recent addition to the cohort, had seemed indifferent, as much as the mood of a man six inches high could be read from any distance.

But Hydrolord had almost walked out in offense. Surface dweller food, he said, was suspicious to begin with, fast food was beneath his royal dignity, and cattle were disgusting.

The fact that he'd known what it was at a glance had not gone unnoticed, even by Talon. His Highness went ashore incognito; this was known. Whether he'd eaten Burger King before or only seen it, or watched the advertisements, had mattered less however than the general calumny cast by all upon Dash's entirely unconcerned head. It had been hypnotic, that unconcern. The fragile mortal man with nothing but speed to protect him, surrounded by the most dangerous people on Earth, so sure he could not be touched that a mocking smile played at the corner of his mouth even as Ultraman fumed and Owlman's lip curled in disgust; as Hydrolord made the sea crash against the rocks outside as though it would swallow the fortress whole.

Dash was terribly powerful or very foolish, and either way he was brave.

Perhaps he had given the offense purposely, to show how little he cared for his colleagues’ anger, or perhaps he hadn’t cared enough to concern himself with what they might want. He had simply sat back in his chair at the high council table and eaten cheeseburgers almost too quickly to see the motion of hand to mouth, and yet with no great hurry, and smiled, and let the empty paper wrappers pile up at his elbow.

The meeting had ended early and with everyone but Dash in ill temper, even Superwoman, who’d gotten fed up by then with Atlantean and Kryptonian sulking.

If the Dash had been waging some kind of war that day, Talon thought he might have won.

But this was a new night, and the ocean prince seemed in good spirits as he led the way up the winding gravel path, toward the stone turrets of the refurbished old fort. Pirate-hunters had sailed from this island, once. Never pirates.

The Superwoman intercepted them all in the entry annex. “Orin! Owlman! Just barely on time!” She was wearing a cape today, a great billow of cloth-of-gold that trailed behind her like smoke as she swept forward across black tile, but still fell heavy about her whenever it hung still.

“Diana,” the prince greeted the princess, all careful courtesy. His armor glimmered a slightly paler shade than her mantle. “A fair moon for you?”

“Lovely. I fought some sort of prehistoric flightless dragon in a magical cavern. It was delicious. Have you bested that Kraken yet?”

“It’s learning to fear me.”

She leaned in and patted his cheek, a condescension he accepted with a tight-lipped smile. “Well done,” she said.

“Thank you.” His bow was stiff. “Excuse me.” Prince Orin stalked off toward where his squire was carefully adjusting the placement of silver domes over platters on the long sideboard, his good mood dispelled.

Silver corroded rapidly in seawater. Those domes were not an Atlantean affectation. Talon had seen something similar in Owlman’s home. Wondered if asking about them would be a believable opening to conversation.

“Oh, and you brought your cupbearer again, I see!” Superwoman exclaimed to the King of Owls, the full weight of her attention falling onto Talon, and immediately claiming the whole of his focus. (Not quite the whole; some was still reserved for his king.) “I like this one,” she announced, tapping a thumb against the bronze armor plating along her upper arm with a noise like rain on tin roofing, mouth curling up. “He doesn’t flinch.”

Flinch? Well. No. It wasn't that she wasn't terrifying, of course. Talon simply had very little energy to waste on feelings like fear. He'd been trained better than that.

"Your Highness," he murmured, ducking his head. A hand came down upon it. Not quite as large as Owlman’s, and bare.

"Hm," she hummed. "Courteous little creature you've trained, Bruce. Your way is so dismally slow, though." Long fingers that could crunch bone like dry leaves toyed with his hair.

Owlman's hand clamped down on Talon's shoulder. "But effective."

"I think you'll find my methods are entirely efficacious, thank you." The sharp note in her voice promised pain, but the hand that slipped from his hair, curled down his face and under his chin was merely firm.

Talon's breath threatened to stutter in his chest. He was supposed to defer to her. He was not supposed to allow liberties. How to resolve these dictates. Was this a test.

If Owlman objected to having his right hand pawed at, he would say something. The hand on his shoulder had tightened, but not in threat. Not as a message. There would be claws in that. Talon submitted to the touch.

The Superwoman's skin against his face seemed to burn. As though with perpetual fever. They said she had been created in divine fire. Talon knew his own body temperature was low. A side effect of the electrum in his bones.

Owlman touched him barehanded, sometimes. That was never so hot as this.

She tilted his head up with a firm pressure, and he stared vacantly into her forehead.

"Why the mask?" she murmured.

"That intangible mystique." The Owlman's voice was heavy with impatient sarcasm. "Diana, if you're finished inspecting my possessions..."

Superwoman swiped the pad of her thumb over Talon's lips. The pressure struck like a bolt of lightning, raced up and down his spine, wrenched at his gut and left his whole skin tingling, chilled. He didn't quite manage to suppress all reaction; his master certainly felt the twitch through the hand still clasped tight around his shoulder. It tightened.

"Chapped," she observed. "You should look into an oil or wax for that, boy."

"Diana." Exasperation. There were very few beings in the world Owlman would bother to show exasperation without menace, but the Superwoman was beyond his power to control, or to readily annihilate. He seemed almost a man, with her. Merely mortal.

The Owl would not let the Superwoman take Talon. He would not. It was too great a loss of face. The practical inconvenience of losing him could be weathered, if necessary, but politically—

"Oh, very well." The Superwoman took her hand away. Talon had never been so grateful to belong to Owlman. "Do drop fifty cents on a tube of chapstick for the boy, though; it can't be efficient for his lips to be constantly splitting, no matter how fast they heal, and it's poor aesthetics."

"Thank you," Owlman said, withering. "For your input."

"Always happy to help, Bruce." She winked at Talon. "See you around, pretty boy."

“Isn’t he too young for you?” the Owl grumbled, falling into step with Superwoman and leaving Talon where he stood, the turn of his head and slope of his shoulder indicating absent dismissal. The edges of their capes brushed together, hard sunlight and soft shadow.

“But showing such potential. You do have nice taste, and they’re so delightfully moldable at that age.”

“Must you always interfere with my things.”

“You’re so generous with them. I only trashed your beach house a little, and I took care of the bodies myself. Anyway, I’ll let you play with my next acquisition if you like.”

“I’m not much for games.”

They were out of earshot, then, and approaching the great oval table that took up one whole end of the hall, raised up on a dais with a single beam of light pouring down onto the center, reflecting from the polished surface enough to light the faces seated around it, though the spotlight did not quite reach them.

Ultraman was already in his chair, its high winged back blazoned with the crest of his house on a gilded field. In the smaller chair facing his, Dash sprawled comfortably back against his sigil of lightning.

As he, Superwoman, and Hydrolord all reached their places, Owlman flicked the particular sign of dismissal that meant commence duties toward Talon. At the table, Atom expanded abruptly into being to fill his seat, and in the shadowed hall beyond, Talon fell away toward the lesser table that lay along the far wall.

Where Garth of Atlantis had, in his master’s absence, been cornered by Donna of Themiscyra.

She loomed over him with only a slight advantage in height, and though she seemed unarmed but for the coiled whip stored on one hip, and was smiling, the threat implied in the way she stood far too close for courtesy was very clear.

Prince Orin’s squire was his master’s opposite: stockily built, and thus solid even for an Atlantean, but only half a head taller than Talon despite being the eldest of the three, with ringlets of dark hair and purple eyes, and in place of the broad smile or frothing rage most common on His Highness of the Seas, Garth’s expression alternated between brusque bare-courtesy and poorly hidden resentment.

He seemed a very poor courtier and was a mess of defensive vulnerabilities, but had clearly been selected for his loyalty over all other concerns.

The Superwoman's right hand, in contrast, was her mirror image—"My sister, Donna," she had said absently the first time she brought the girl with her, and the resemblance was strong; stronger than his had ever been to the Owl, and they’d been mistaken for blood relations more than once, the few times he’d been deployed at his master’s side outside of uniform. And yet there were differences, ones Talon had catalogued at once, and watched still for any change.

Her balance was less perfect, and when she lashed out the loss of control was far less calculated, far likelier to leave her vulnerable. The fire in her stare was different, full of sparks and a snapping pride that spoke to doubts which could undoubtedly be targeted, if it came to a fight. Owlman had estimated her age at fourteen, with the caveat that Amazons did not age at the usual human rate.

Talon had spent three meetings with them already, without having been forced to fight. He was sure it was only a matter of time.

Today seemed likely to be the day, by the set of each of their shoulders. He might welcome it—pain was a small sacrifice for the clean certainty of violence, even against those he must not kill without a clear command. Certainly it would be easier than any other interaction.

But in combat he would have no luck subtly extracting information from their conversation. No good. He had a mission to complete. And Owlman planned to avoid conflict tonight.

“Careful, Amazon,” Garth cautioned, as Talon drew near. “To insult me is to insult my master.”

Superwoman’s protégée flicked the long tail of her hair out dismissively. “And I should be scared of your prince? What power does he have, besides the right to go crying to his mommy?”

“He is knight of the seven seas and the prince of Atlantis, who holds the trident of Neptune.”

“And what is that to the Queen of the Cats? Face it, he’s only here to pretend to be relevant outside his goldfish bowl.”

Garth’s hand strayed toward his waist, though there was no visible weapon there. “You insolent—”

His teeth snapped shut on word and possibly tongue as the heel of Donna Troy’s hand slammed up under his chin.

In the disorientation this created she yanked his gut onto her fist with a handful of curls, then flipped the triple human weight of an Atlantean’s dense muscle and bone casually over her shoulder.

He hit the ground on his face and had only time to break the fall before she was on him again, twisting his arm tight against his spine so that any struggle might tear it from its moorings—an even more serious injury for a boy who swam everywhere than it would be on the surface.

She dragged his head back with a loop of silver whip around his throat.

“Insolent,” she said, her face hanging just above the back of his ear, though she spoke loud and clear enough that Talon had no struggle to hear, “is a word for your inferiors. I am no such thing.

“I am the Lady of Ilium, carrying the legacy of the Titans that stand beyond the world. Troy fell because it trusted too well in the guardianship of Poseidon. Learn from them.

“Because if you continue to cross me I will challenge you to a duel of honor, and throw you down again with my lady and the gods to witness, and shackle your will to mine. And do you think your prince will still value your service, if he can’t trust you not to obey me, instead?”

The squire’s short breath and silence were answer enough, and Donna Troy smirked and let him go, standing up and not offering to help him to his feet. The long half-second it took him to rise spoke volumes to those who knew how to look, and the Amazon flicked the long tail of her hair again in scorn.

She flicked her eyes toward Talon with the gesture, and he realized she was gauging his opinion, his reaction to her violence and her successful threat. She wanted his approval? Or his respect. Or his fear.

He didn't fear her. Genuinely. There was...very little she could do that could threaten him, really. Up at the high table, her mistress was smiling sharkishly at his master, looking for a weakness. She would not find it. She would never find it.

Lady Ilium dismissed the squire of Atlantis and tried her own sharkish smile out on Talon, assured of his attention. He showed his teeth in return. It was not a comforting expression, but he didn't think it would be taken as a threat.

Could she break his will, with her magic? What would that be like?

"Anything to say, Birdie-bye?" she asked him.

Perfect. An opening.

He tilted his head. "Your queens don't know about this meeting, do they?" It was a question for both, if Garth wanted to seize the floor.

"Tch." Donna rolled her eyes and looked away, up at the table where the adults were indulging in intrigue. "Hippolyta will come around." She shot him a look. "Anyway it's not as though your government approves."

Owlman owned the city and state governments. The federal was proving a little more challenging. Talon shrugged one shoulder in carefully calculated indifference. It wasn’t the same thing. “My king,” he said, “is here.”

“And you think being the lord of a made-up Court with no realm of his own is somehow of more account than heir to an empire covering two thirds of the world?” Garth demanded.

Talon regarded him without expression, and the Lady Ilium burst into snorting laughter at the sight, and leaned forward to backhand Talon’s arm—a gesture that seemed almost friendly meant, though he felt blood vessels burst at the impact, and immediately begin to mend. “You’re chatty today, aren’t you shorty? Don’t worry about Diana, she knows what’s up. Her mom’s old-fashioned, we just have to work around her for now.

"Lots of Amazons want in on the outside world, letting you men control it just because it would be a huge chore to change things is such a drag.”

She wrapped an arm around Garth’s neck, too quick for him to evade, but rather than choking or cracking his spine she just dragged him sideways, until his head was conveniently positioned to violently tousle his curls. “And don’t worry about Atlantis, gillsy. We’re not gonna mess with your soggy system, that’s what allies is all about. You’re getting us onside, Atalanta’s gonna owe you.”

Donna Troy, Talon decided, was not originally from Themiscyra. Valuable intelligence, if he could support it with evidence. As a first step he would have to find a way to get her to touch him again, and confirm the impression of a hand far too cool to be a thing like her sister-mistress, of earth and holy fire.

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fromthedeskpile · 7 years

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From The Desk Pile #9 - Venom In Vision

From The Desk Pile intends to be a place for my more off-beat writings, allowing for people to become more aware of my work and giving this Tumblr more relevance regarding the theme.

In the city of Scanton (where everyone is bizarre in some manner), we follow Charlotte Driefer, a near-human assassin, is after the mysterious Detective Smith and seeks the help of a mystic to find him after the chase has gone cold. Her visit results in the killing of the mystic and obtaining the location of Smith. However, as she continues on her chase, she finds that her reality, her sense of normal, begins to collide with our own.

In the city of freaks, no one is peculiar. Not the homeless unhinged loner nor the billionaire celebrity mogul. For everyone has their oddities in the city of Scanton; a city whose population varies from transdimensional beings, to robots made of scrap metal, to monsters made of slime. Even those most human have certain abnormal features, for some people have eyeballs for heads, others heads for eyeballs. The closest one can find to mirror our image is those like Charlotte Driefer.

On this afternoon, Driefer was in the waiting room of Ößbuten, a famous mystic who resides in the west of the city. There, she read a book by Luke Rhinehart, glancing at the number after each page turn that was given to her by the clerk at the front. When a number was called, she would look at the others shaking in anticipation and then go back to her book, turning the next page. Despite Driefer’s mostly natural appearance and black cocktail dress invoking the standard we know, she was very much a citizen of Scanton. Her eyes, the left crimson red and the right royal blue, were piercing and uninviting. As was the revolver strapped to her leg to be drawn quickly at any sign of conflict. There was far more trouble in her being with her pincers clutching the book harder with each number and her scorpion tail looming over her like a vulture biding its time.

She was known in the underground of Scanton as someone that could take care of business. Lately though, that assumption has been challenged with the emergence of Detective Smith. Smith, who barely had any presence of humanity, evaded Driefer at every turn, leaving no trace behind that she could use. Ever so often his appearance would reappear on her monitor, and his blank visage grew a mouth that cackled at her failure. Now at this moment she sees nothing, and only a third eye could provide her the information that can allow her own eyes to rest easy and leave it all behind.

Two hours passed and then her number was called. An old lady with serpentine features directed her to the hall to Ößbuten, which extended far longer than the building could allow. Her heels echoed with each step, punctuating the eerie stillness of the institution. The hall grew darker as she ventured forward, becoming illuminated further down with a blue and violet aura surrounding the door at the end. On it was a plaque, which read in hieroglyphics:

Ößbuten is the man with the dice of the circumstances that befall all those in the universe. His soul is filled with the danger of probability. His suit is of cards, his eyes of roulettes. Do not be worried, for he is merely knowing of the world in its chaos.

“Come in, Ms. Driver,” a voice reverberated. Driefer entered, seeing the mystic in front of her. His spectral body, oozing with clouds of dark celestial matter filled the space around and inside his suit. Driefer stood there, staring at the mystic’s jellyfish-like movements. “Take a seat right over there,” he pointed to a violet chair in between of two others, spinning his eyes, analyzing Driefer.

“You’re not much of a mystic if you can’t get my name right.”

“Trust me, Ms. Driver. I may have difficulty with names, but I know of your intentions.”

“And what might they be?” she said with a bemused chuckle.

“You’re in search of a target, a detective.”

“Precisely.”

“A detective by the name of Smith, correct?”

“Of course,” she replied, comforted in Ößbuten’s ability but nervous of what he had in store. “His name is John P.I Smith. A surprisingly elusive fellow. With a name like that I expected to catch him sooner. But he’s evaded me at every turn. It’s getting to be humiliating at work.”

“I see,” Ößbuten pulled out a jar from underneath the table by surrounding it with a cloud and moving it to the top. “You are aware such requests are not cheap, Ms. Driver.”

“Believe me, I’ve done all sorts of things to afford your services,” she pinched a heavy wad of bills from her purse and tossed it onto the middle of the table. The dollar bills sunk into the table, swallowed whole. Ößbuten unscrewed the top of the jar and dimmed the lights in his room. The same auras from before now appeared behind him and a woodwind instrument began to play. The instrument became muffled by the sounds of the walls pulsating and the floor creaking, with spirits crawling out.

“I must advise you to not touch the stones which I throw. They are imbued with power that only one who mastered the mystical arts is able to handle. Their power is so great that if you touch them, they will cause a great instability not only in your being, but in mine as well.” Driefer nodded, putting her pincers on her lap.

He began to chant as part of his spiritual ritual and the auras grew brighter as they mixed together. Out of the jar came a fistful of dice, insofar as a celestial being has hands. The hums of his voice made Driefer dizzy as he rose the dice into the air and had them float there for a while with the spirits taking charge of them. His eyes spun clockwise and then counter at ridiculous speeds. She held her breath as the woodwind instrument formed strings, the walls closed in, the floors cracked and his chants enveloped the room, closing in on her. Then, with a mighty strike down, the dice fell to the table and scattered about.

Ößbuten telepathically gathered the dice and leered over them as Driefer awaited his observation. She couldn’t help but notice the variety in the dice, ranging from their colors, to their materials, to the symbols engraved on them and the amount of sides each had. With every die that he observed, he moved it back into the jar, and acknowledged the result grimly. Meanwhile, Driefer tapped her pincer each time, knowing that each second that went by gave Smith more chance to disappear completely. When he dropped the last one in, Driefer leaned in as his eyes stopped spinning, remaining hauntingly static.

“I’m afraid I can not help you.”

“Why not?! You clearly saw something in those results, didn’t you?”

“That is true. But nonetheless, I can not help you. It would not be of any benefit.”

“Are you serious?”

“Ms. Driver, I would not say something so dire without good reason.”

“Well, I don’t know,” she reached for her gun, “maybe you have a dark sense of humor.”

“A mystic has no time for humor. They also don’t have time to be assaulted.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to waste your time like you wasted mine,” she slyly remarked as she drew her gun and pointed it between Ößbuten’s eyes. With his psychic force, he snatched the weapon away and slammed against the wall. He directed his force towards her, but his reflexes weren’t fast enough from preventing her grabbing the jar and reaching in. The magical energy from the dice rattled the jar and shook the room with its might. In all her fury, Driefer threw a couple at Ößbuten’s eyes, with the power knocking her back into her chair. The dice broke his eyes, having his suit of cards fall apart and his celestial matter dissipate into the room. Driefer took a deep breath after what had happened.

With that inhale, a strand of Ößbuten’s matter entered her body and she immediately ran from the mystic’s room, now aware of where her target resided.

At the Grand Scanton Hotel, she sat at the bar, ordering cocktail after cocktail. She thought about her deed, about Ößbuten’s warning, how him and Detective Smith were connected. Everyday, Smith contradicted himself, as she previously assumed that he was a man of logic. Yet what logic would lead her to the mystic? She figured that following logic would lead him there, but clearly logic is but a word with no concrete meaning in this chase. Now she could hear the cackles of Ößbuten, whose laughter was drowned out by an ominous hum.

That was what was most irritating about it all. The tedium of her pursuit. Smith was a blank slate with no real drive. His investigations do nothing but create trouble in Scanton, particularly the underground. Reality was constantly changing with him and he seems to have no response to such chaos. It was that empty profile of his made him so dangerous. It was what infuriated Driefer the most, since her other associates couldn’t stop to remind her of him and what he had done.

After her fifth drink, she saw him through the corner of her eye, walking out of the bar after talking to a slime monster. She wondered how she hadn’t spot him before, but quickly went to follow him. Without hesitation, she paid her tab and shadowed Smith. Smith turned around and was unable to see Driefer. His lack of sight didn’t stop him from investigating further as he closed in on her hiding spot. She maintained her silence, which turned him away towards the elevators.

Smith entered an elevator, pressing the close button rapidly. She saw that it stopped at the fourth floor and rushed upstairs. With luck she was able to see Detective Smith going into his room. She walked silently towards it, pulling out the gun from underneath her dress and adding the silencer she kept in her purse. The hall was empty – it was perfect.

Getting closer to his door, her head started to feel light. Her vision was out of sync, a VHS tape with off tracking. Static fuzz formed in the corner of her eyes. An array of colors flashed frantically in front of her. Her balance deteriorated, but her energy did not. She got closer and closer to the door, struggling harder with each step. She saw the number on his door, 404. The door was open and she went in, aiming her gun at the window and an empty bed. She tried to turn to the bathroom, but by then her vision was out of control, blinding in its confusion. She ended up turning to the other side and tripping over a suitcase, later landing on the bed where darkness took over her sight.

There in the darkness, she found herself chasing the detective. The detective who continued to burden her career. The detective who was so completely void of anything yet was the most persistent thing on her mind. The detective that made her feel as empty as he was. She wanted to rid herself of this detective who poisoned her sight every chance he could get and never seemed to go away no matter how much she chased.

She awoke with the sun piercing through her eyelids. The night’s events took their toll with her vision blurry and a massive headache lingering. Going to the bathroom sink, she washed up and looked at the mirror. Horror struck her as her eyes were now green, her pincers now hands, her tail now gone and her cocktail dress and heels now a white tank top, brown shorts and green sandals. She burst out of the room, aghast at how weird everything was. What was normal to us became abominations to her and they stared at her. To her, it meant death, but to them, it was just crazy. She couldn’t let this nightmarish reality distract her from finding Smith, so she headed down the stairs in search of the receptionist.

The receptionist was talking on the phone to a friend of his, telling him to be safe when visiting the west city. Charlotte came around as soon as he cautioned him, and was startled by the red diamond pin on his lapel. He hung up and then addressed the fraught Charlotte. “Hello, welcome to the Grand Scanton Hotel. How may I help you?”

“Yeah, hi…I have a question to ask…”

“I’m sure you do, ma’am!” he chirped.

“Heh, uh…you see I was wondering if you’ve seen my...uh…husband, John. He was the one who booked our room.”

“What room are you?”

“Room 404.”

“Alright, I’ll check,” the receptionist began typing on his computer to look at some information. The sound of the keys began reminding Charlotte of the mystic’s chants and she began to feel restless as the receptionist dragged out his research. “Hmm…this is odd. Says here that you were the one who booked the room. There’s no record of a John there.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Seems like the only one who’s joking is you!” he laughed. She reached for her gun out of reflex, wishing that it was there. Swallowing her anger, she maintained her act.

“That bastard! He just ran off on me.”

“Oh, what a shame. If I were you, I’d drop him.”

“I’d love to, but I’ve got to keep my eye on him.”

“Well it seems like you’re not doing a good job of that.”

“I’m aware of that, thank you.”

“I’m not sure you are. You seem out of it. Maybe you should just let it go.”

“Let it go?”, she cocked an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” the receptionist said smarmily, “Just let it go.”

“…Is there anything else for me?”

“Yes. There’s a package here for you,” he went to a shelf behind him and pulled out a tiny box from the 404 slot. He handed it over to her and then left to the backroom with a half-smile and a chuckle. She opened the box and found a small cube inside. In place of numbers were colored circles, red and blue. On one side there was the logo of the Scanton Art Gallery. It was hard to tell if it was taunting her or just helping, but it certainly felt more like the former.

Over in the east of Scanton, Charlotte wandered around the art gallery feigning interest in the postmodernist works. A part of her had adjusted to the abnormally normal world she was now in, finding solace in no longer seeing Detective Smith. Things looked clearer and calmer. However, her anger towards Smith was still aggressively pulsating in her mind, motivating every step she took. She wanted to return to her normally abnormal reality with his death assured. She couldn’t stand to be looked as deranged. Derangement was something that was so foreign a concept in her Scanton. Even those unhinged were not deranged. There were seen as sane, and treated as such too. Being in this Scanton just didn’t reflect that.

Minutes passed on and she had already looked over most of the exhibits. There were two remaining, and she found that one of them was under construction, which left the one that was farthest away from her. As she walked towards the exhibit, she could feel her head going limp again, her vision poisoned once more by the interference of static and colors switching rapidly. She fought harder against its warping, refusing to let it weaken her. Its intensity grew, with the images spinning like a loose film reel. She marched on, entering back to the familiar reality of hers which returned her scorpion features and let her feel the weight of the gun pressing against her leg once more.

She rushed to the exhibit’s entrance and saw Smith at the far end. As fast as she could, she went after him, witnessing his vacant face passing through the wall with his body fading into it. The wall was solid when she attempted to do the same – her head now bruised by the force of her desperation to catch him. As she recovered, she looked at a short junkyard android standing right next to the wall, trying to hide its snickering by turning its volume knob lower.

“Hey, you!”

“Yes?”

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Do you know how he walked through that wall?”

“Nah. I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“Sure you don’t,” she said suspiciously, walking towards the android who looked at her with a dirty smile.

“Listen, lady, I know nothing about how that guy did that. Far as I’m concerned, it’s just part of the exhibit.”

“You’re such a filthy liar, it’s deplorable,” Driefer sneered, stiffening her tail and pointing the stinger directly at it. “Now, I’m going to ask you again…how did he walk through the wall?”

“Lady, I don’t know how he walked through the wall,” its voice shook. The stinger reached closer to it, quickly scraping its chest. “I swear to Gott-I mean God!”

“Ohohoho, now you’re really just trying to get on my nerves,” she went to pull out her gun and aimed it at the android. Her vision broke once again and she shook her head as it toyed with her mind. A wave of different images (some not even relevant to the place she was in) were spliced together into a collage that could very well hang in this gallery. It brought her away from the android, making her pace backwards. She broke free from its chaos and aimed her gun at the android only to find instead a hand pointing an invisible firearm at a trash can, and others witnessing her crazy.

Her reality was absent once again, with our reality imposing on her and Scanton. The faces of passersby creeped her out as she couldn’t bear to see her green eyes reflecting on the window, drowning in emotion. She forcefully sat down on the bench, covering her quivering expression.

All that could pass through her mind was how Smith slipped away yet again. If her perceptional abilities were damaged or the world was changing irrationally then so be it. What was more haunting was knowing that she couldn’t capture this so-called detective, this white space of a being.

She revealed her face once more and sighed, seeing the painting in front of her. It was by William Shayer. There, a group of Victorian men were staring tentatively at three cubes that were on the table, thrown by one of them. The cubes shared a striking resemblance to the stones that the mystic had used. It was those stones that had brought her here. More specifically, it was a stone. And if this stone and the stones before had led her down this path, then surely the stones in front of her would lead somewhere else. Her sadness channeled to rage and determination as she went to see the name of the exhibit, which was on a sign at the end of the hall. There, in bold lettering read SPONSORED BY SCANTON FINANCIAL.

It took her a while to find the office of Scanton Financial, with her search taking hour upon hour. She missed the accessibility of her reality, how she didn’t have to be so frantic in locating places. All of this felt so tedious. Eventually it led her to the west of the city where the tower eclipsed the sun with its might. It was said to have the tallest floors of any building. What purpose that served didn’t matter to her. She knew there was no way to escape this time.

She began to open the doors, but her vision problems came again, aggressively striking her. They snapped her back to her reality, whereupon the building was filled with creatures of all sorts and sizes menacingly looming over her. Detective Smith was at the far end of the building, his gaze still as vacant as ever. Driefer lunged forward but the others pushed back on her, trying to cloud her. She didn’t take their abuse and used her scorpion features to get them away so she could get to Smith. Charlotte however found herself fighting the air, unable to see where John went. She had not seen the threats that she had seen before. Though Driefer would come back and encounter the monsters and the abstract characters that kept getting in her way.

Her vision grew worse in its distortion, and Smith furthered away. Driefer drew her gun and fired in the air to disperse the crowd that blocked her. The shots seemed to have worked in her favor as Charlotte saw that they disappeared from her sight. She got closer to Smith, who had now gone up the elevator. She didn’t need to wait to see where the elevator would go. She went in the other one, having successfully passed through the turmoil of the first floor.

The elevator slowly rose up each floor, getting closer to her destination and her target. In the faint distance, she could hear Kay Starr crooning about fortune and fame from a radio above. Charlotte couldn’t maintain her composure, and neither could Driefer. Each ding from the elevator exacerbated the madness of her sight. “Just get to the floor already,” she growled on the 3rd floor. It seemed there that it took far longer than necessary to get to the fourth.

With no time to waste, Driefer immediately burst through when the doors gave her enough space. Charlotte looked around to find room 404 but instead was succumbing further to the glitches and the static and the collage and the chaos. The music became muffled as Driefer shouted madly. The echoes slammed back at Charlotte and magnified the distortion even further. Driefer fired frantically, eventually running out of bullets. Everything was collapsing in front of Charlotte, yet she remained stable miraculously. Driefer tried as hard as she could to see past the visual noise and decipher the numbers on the doors that were around her. Finally, there it was. Room 404. The mess in Charlotte’s eyes were at a fever pitch, the music was now the only thing she could hear. With a loud scream, Driefer charged at the door and broke it down, collapsing on the floor.

Her vision returned and Smith was nowhere to be seen. She got up, now bruised and bloody from her attempt. He had evaded her once again. And in that evasion she could no longer muster the hate that she had for Smith. She cared no more that this man treated her like a top. That this man persistently appeared in the corner of her eye, eroding any joy she had left. Oh, she would have loved to see him squirm for all the venom that he pumped into her. But it was clear that the mystic was right. And she was tired.

Everything was hurting, not only physically but mentally. The building was empty, not a soul present. She must’ve imagined all that transpired. How else could she explain the detective, the mystic or anything really to anyone. It all seemed so odd. It was all over now, she was completely out of it and no longer felt it necessary to return to the underground. She felt that no one would accept her now in this Scanton. Not after all she’s done. All Charlotte Driefer could do was grab a cigarette from the desk and light it with a match she held in her pincers. Her crimson iris blended in with the broken vessels of her eyeball. Her tail now broken and limp, rested on the desk. Perhaps all of this now made her peculiar. But maybe it didn’t. For in the city of freaks, no one is peculiar.

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