Tag Archives: android

Project: AKRA pt 9

by tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

(The team has landed but due to a malfunction were all separated and trying to find each other)

“How the hell can they see us!?” Raist shouted over the burst of gunfire.  Another Plaz-Shot shell from Philira’s weapon exploded the creature apart as the remnants of the super heated bolts tore through parts of the forest.

The silence of the forest during the day was a complete juxtaposition of the chaos of night with its endless howls, shadows, and attacks.

One beast that had finished goring another swung its huge tusked head towards the two of them and started charging.  Raist lifted the Limiter rifle to it, and the soft ‘zzzt’ sound hid the fact that hundreds of sonic rounds were electro-magnetically being discharged out of the rifle.  The spray tore into the creature, rendering its millions of generations of evolution for naught as the rounds blasted through it and the trees beyond.  It skidded to a stop not far from the two of them, and was rapidly being cut down by the strange ground under it.

“They have to be sensing us some other way…thermally possibly,” Philira suggested as she rapidly rotated her head around every side of them, pumping a round into things Raist didn’t even know was there, only occasionally seeing the burning creature falling out of a tree or fall over from behind an alcove.  She danced in front of him always making sure to stay between him and any danger.

‘DADADA!’ A loud, fast retort of a Close-Support-Weapon came from somewhere fairly close to them; they knew they were closing in on the other member of their group.  But every step was a battle.  Even the ‘grass’ had become even more alive, slicing back and forth greedily for something to fall onto the cleaving surface.

“How close?!” he shouted to Philira.

“Not far.”  She quickly bent down, her hands rapidly flying over the Scatter gun as she threw the empty energy clip to the ground, reaching to her hip for another, slapping it in and triggering the toggle.  The green neon lights on the transductor rails came back on as she jumped backwards shooting a creature that had closed on her quickly in that short time.

“It has to be thermally!”  Raist shouted.  It made sense why everything was out at night: heat would show up better.  Unfortunately, their advanced weaponry probably was a beacon in the night with the hot barrels and explosive plasma blasts.

“Get down.”  Philira dashed backwards, tackling Raist to the ground.  In front of them the huge tree was sawed through by a barrage of rounds as it swayed in one direction, its structure cracking.  Its mass swayed the other direction as its crystal structure started breaking, falling towards them as the base exploded apart.  The razor branches came crashing down around them.  They scrambled to their feet, pausing for only a moment as the tree grew closer and closer.  They escaped being crushed, but not all damage as the sharp crystals shot-gunning around them as the branches of the tree fell everywhere.

“Gaaaa…!” Raist let out a groan as he felt something slip right through his right side, passing through the armor like nothing.  The tree had come to a crashing end and Philira jumped up.  Raist was slower and she grabbed his wrist and hauled him up.

He put a glove on his right side and it came back red; he had been sliced through by one of the branches of the tree that had crashed around them.

“Shit, I’m hit.”  Philira looked at him with her cold eyes, trying to decide what she was going to do.

“I’m going for whoever that is.  We need to unify our force immediately,” she started leaving.

Raist grabbed her wrist, pulling her back.  “No, I am going with you.  This is nothing.”  A warning in the corner of his eye warned that the expected healing would reduce his total combat healing potential down to 73%.

The first few steps were painful until the chemicals were sufficiently pumping through him and he forgot about the pain completely, focused on gunning down the further away creatures while Philira focused on those close ones.

‘Dadada!’ Shots boomed across the forest, drowning out anything else.

“Ziko!”  Philira tried yelling between the fire.  “Ziko!”

“Holy shit, Philira!?  Raist!?” The three of them ran closer to each other, but the reunion was short-lived as the battle was far from over.  Ziko had racked up a large amount of kills as the forest had been cut through here.  Even the razor grass had been blown away, leaving much safer soft rock under them.

 

Project: AKRA pt 8

by tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Keep a ping going so we can find the range of the ICS here – he sent to her, but when she didn’t respond he felt alone again.  He backed up a bit as small bits of the plant fell out of the sky from her ascent, turning his own cloaking field back on.  He picked one of the branches up, from where it had broken off was a liquid leaking out from the middle.  Though the branch was colored purple, he thought the similarity to obsidian was strong.  Was this really a plant, or maybe a symbiotic amalgamation of plant and geologic processes?  They looked a lot like Daijin Star plants, if they had plants.  Hmm…did they have plants?

‘Thinking too much…’

He shook his head and pulled the Gauss-Limiter up to his shoulder and looked around at the silent forest around him.  Really the forest was rather beautiful with its soft reflections of the light far above.  There appeared to only be two major life forms: the huge trees and the sharp ‘grass’ underneath.

The terrain wasn’t that hard to cross; compared to some the going would have been fairly fast.  But the problem was the extreme diligence required of being aware where every hand and every foot was going to ensure no slipping into a razor tree happened.  Strengthening just the feet or hands as Philira suggested was a good way to save suit material, but at the risk of injury in an accident.

The visibility was fairly good. Sight lines were about average, blocked only by the big pyramidal trunks or the eventual even dispersion of the trees filling in every sight line.

“Haaaauuuuuuu!” a strange call from somewhere up in the air came, making Raist realize how close to dusk it was now becoming.  The call also indicated there was something here other than the two plants types.  In the setting sun the purple color of the plants was even more obvious, and that made him remember the fact that from space the landscape looked green.  But from here, there was definitely nothing green around.

The branches falling off the tree then took on a different touch from their completely purple obsidian nature beforehand.  They were the crystal branches, but with leaves on them.  Green leaves.

“What?”  He picked up one from the pile forming and sure enough the leaves looked similar enough to Terrestrial leaves, barring the strange branch.  Something else caught his eye even more though, and it was that this pile was softly moving.  He backed up out of caution and slowly watched it vibrate.

‘This grass is alive…’ He looked down at his boots, grateful the advanced alloy was protecting him from this alien world.  He dropped the leafed branch to the grass, in which the razor grass slowly swayed back and forth.  It cleaved the glass-like branch apart and leaving a strange liquid inside the crystal branch similar to sap that was dripping out, as well as the valuable, soft leaves.  Raist knelt down to see that between the blades of grass was a small pool of liquid, which the remnants of the sliced branch fell into and were systematically dissolved in what appeared to be an acid.

This was a hostile planet, and with each step he took he could imagine the alien grass trying to cleave bits of his boot off to get to his own ‘juices’ inside.  It disgusted him imagining the grass as millions of worms swaying back and forth to eat him.  He wanted to shoot them for a moment if it would have at all mattered.

“Raist?” a soft female voice called to him.

“Philira?”

“Yeah.”  She jumped out of the tree and turned off her cloak.  Her cold eyes and bright hair still affected Raist every time; Scouts were a very enigmatic class of soldier.  Given his past with Laiun, the previous Scout he had fallen for, added to the forced distance in his heart he had to maintain with Philira.

“Four things,” she started.  “One, there appears to be creatures that live here and only come out at night, and they put this plant life to shame in terms of danger.  Two, that way,” she pointed, “is the way towards our goal.  Three, there are robot sentries in the air, possibly of Daijin Star origin, but heavily armed.  Lastly, there is at least one person alive, and they are that way.”

“Well, then we are going that way,” pointing towards the unknown team member.

“Of course, Leader.”

“Raist is fine, don’t talk differently just because we are on a mission now.”

“Of course, Raist.”  He liked the way she said his name.

***

Split my main book? Art work!

by tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hey guys, been silent for a while but still busy at it.  The main thing I am working on is my main book ‘VayneLine’ and as of right now it is 500 pg ms word pages big – huge in other words.  I am considering splitting it to make it more manageable for readers.

Here is the cover art I drew for it once, you might recognize my avatar in there!

Make sure you click for high res!

Proud Infinity pt 33

by tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

2nd to last post for the story, I hope you guys are enjoying it.

“The ship’s security card is over there.” She pointed to a building that we walked towards.

“How the hell are you doing this?”

“You remember asking about my Chrono Psionics?  Well, even the most developed on the physical plane fall fairly flat with ours.  Now that the time fracture is gone, all the various pathways in front of us are clear.  I am just choosing, and telling you, the correct ones.”

“Isn’t that kind of powerful if you can see all the options time could take, and I am able to act on it?”

“Quite so.”  She nodded turning around to look at me for a moment.

“A limitless actor, who is given perfect information…”

A guard had opened a door in the back of the building and turned away from us, propping the door open with his foot while he went to the bathroom.

Proud nodded to me. “It’s the red one with an orange stripe.”  I slipped in behind the guy, hoping I could see the card easily, which I did, and grabbed it painfully in my mouth, slipping back out and around the corner.

“Unbelievable,” I said between closed teeth, shaking my head, holding the exact card she said I would find.

I was about to walk in front of the guard’s shack when she grabbed my arm, shaking her head.  “He is going to see this regardless, and a lot of other paths are converging here.  We just have to run now.  The ship is the silver one with the red trim on its tail fin.  I gave you enough energy that you should be able to manage it.”

I nodded and we started running.  A bit later I heard yelling and a few shots exploded across the pad.  Twice Proud physically pushed me to one side or another while a round hit exactly where I once was.  I held the card up and the ship responded, then we both jumped in as the door closed.  I was breathing hard, holding the ground, then lifted my body up and started laughing before she joined in on my jubilation.

“We did it!”

“Not yet,” she said coldly.  I looked at her with worry.  “Start the ship, then we will be okay!” She laughed at what was probably a joke to her.

“Right.”  I nodded and went to the bridge, starting the ship with a few pushes of my chin and hitting a random coordinate in it.  Suddenly the ship was taking off.  The ruins of the ReCorp building were visible as we gained altitude. “Do time fractures happen often?”

She shook her head, frowning. “Unbelievably often.  Just about every space faring race runs into this at least once through their various particle accelerators trying to ‘understand’ the universe.  They never realize they will not understand anything that way.  It only leads to destruction.”

“Thanks for coming to save me.  Seriously.” My head went back and forth a bit, maybe trying to shake itself free of everything going on in it.  “But now, is that it?  You are off to stop another time fracture?  Are you going to leave me?”

“Only if you want me to.”

“Hardly.  I’d love you to stay with me.  If I could be so selfish to request it.”

“Well, then I will!” she stated loudly, hugging me.

“Isn’t it your job to stop the fractures?”

“It was.  Perhaps you do not understand.  I was created to stop that fracture, and now it is stopped.  So in a way, I am without a purpose.  You felt purposeless, but I am much more so.  You were born, in the physical sense, and I was born in a different sense, with my sole purpose being to pair with the most responsive physical element, that’s you, and stop this local time fracture.  So now my purpose is complete.  It is like the immune system of your body, the task is complete now I am adrift.”

Proud Infinity pt 28

by tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

We are getting close to the end, how is it going to resolve!?

 

The cute girl of the space port leaned far forward as she dashed inhumanly fast at the other man on the ship.  He barely had time to look surprised before she punched him in the stomach, and slipped behind him, her arms going around his neck.  For a moment I thought she was going to kill him, but he simply fell to the ground unconscious from being choked out.  I threw their two bodies out of the way of the truck and we hopped in.  I hit a string of button prompts on the screen before it went to flashing ‘Ready?’ and we were off.  I remember how many times I had died trying to get the damn truck moving.

“Am I crazy?” I asked to the two woman with me.  Mitreah shrugged, saying probably, but she wasn’t one to judge.  Proud said no.  If I was crazy, at least it was fun.

We rumbled through the streets, passing by the millions of places I had seen so carefully in the scope of a single cycle.  I was shot there, I killed someone there…  We came now to the single road into ReCorp.  The gate opened for our vehicle, and on both sides the ground fell away into the huge pit.  I hoped this controlled vehicle wouldn’t decide to spill us over the edge.

“In case you are wondering, we are taking out the particle accelerator or disabling it in some other way to stop it from causing the creation of a dangerous particle.”

“You don’t need to justify anything to me,” Mitreah said.  “I am simply happy to be back to my old self.”

“I thought you might like to know.  Do you really not care what I tell you to do?”

“Often it is only our Creators that know our override, and no, you do not possess complete control over me, in case someone was thinking of doing something perverted.”  She smiled slyly at me. “Though to you, I might do things willingly…”

I shook my head only once. “No, I outgrew that a long time ago.”

“You seem sincere.  But my Creator died, and you seem fun enough, so I might have done this mission anyway if you asked.  This is what I truly enjoy; not sitting in an empty room people rarely come to.”  I had asked before, she only came if I knew her code word, she was too loyal to the nearly defunct spaceport.

Damn, this was scary; I had rarely made it this far before.  Everything I had done had been to bring me to this position, and now, well, now it was time.

In my hand was my Liner pistol, and a small satchel of high explosives from an ex-special operative.  I had long ago in all my annihilations gotten over the idea or revulsion of killing.  If I could spare them like at the dock I would.  This was too important even if they were innocent.  I was not convinced of their innocence or not, but it did not matter to me anymore.

The vehicle stopped, and some guy opened the door.  “Hey.”

“Hi,” I said, lifting my pistol and plugging him right in the chest.  I turned back to the two girls. “Let’s go.”  Proud jumped out gracefully, landing and walking behind me.  Mitreah jumped out, dashed across the room insanely fast, slashing a man who was standing there.  The only thing I saw was a spray across the wall behind him.

“Any idea where to go?” I asked the two of them.  I had not been inside here for a long time, and this one the first where I had my skills and the two women with me.  They responded ‘no’.  “Well, let’s see if we can’t get lucky this time.  We can always try again,” I said as I started laughing at my own joke.  Turning to my left I ran through a door shaped like a circular portal that opened as we got close.  If it was an accelerator, I only had to work my way to the middle where the core would be, so that seemed a good place to start heading.

We were running down a hallway, eerily empty, with Proud behind me and Mitreah the combat android in front of me.  Some guy stepped out from a corner, and before I even realized he was there, he was dead at her feet.  She crouched back down in a scary combat stance.

“Hey, this way,” I said to her as I took to the right as we headed a new way, and within seconds she caught up with us and was back on vanguard.  There was a sign warning about having protective suits on and I figured we might be getting close.  My fear of dying was long since gone; I had done it so many times.  I neared the portal, but it didn’t open.  I tried the handle and it was locked.

“Damn it!”  I pulled my pistol towards it, firing some rounds into the locking mechanism and front kicked the door, but it remained solid.  “No way.  A damn door is going to stop us?”

Proud Infinity pt 21

by tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Never seeing her proved okay for a while, but then the regret grew, and with no counter to my dark thoughts, they surged endlessly.  My thoughts turned back towards something I had fallen into early in the loops: could I kill myself out of this nightmare?  I tried…oh god, I tried.  But no.  I would die, and then the universe would later in the cycle, the time fracture traveling backwards past the point of my own death to the morning as it always did.  Each cycle, wake up, grab the pistol, pull the trigger.  Instantly wake back up in the same room, but dealing with the emotional fallout of ‘surviving’ a suicide.

I felt my body shaking from the fear of itself from the horror I had inflicted on it in the name of escaping.  Or trying to anyway.  I could not get out.

“I’m so so sorry…” I whimpered to myself, hugging myself to try to believe it.  My eyes were watering.  This was so painful, so confusing.

I was shaking hard at the overwhelming memories.  ‘The positive, just focus on it.  Just focus…’ But all I could do was grit my teeth at yet more regret.  How the hatred I felt at myself for taking advantage of Proud that turned to suicide, then to unrequited rage at the girl who was the singular cause of the nightmare I was in.

I was on this endless rollercoaster of extreme emotions throughout the loops.  Even after all the regret towards Proud, it then turned to anger.  Blaming her for somehow involving me in all this.  I didn’t want any of this, I didn’t want this nightmare.

My teeth hurt from how hard I was biting down, trying to not remember the time I tried killing her.  Despite the slow learner I seemed to be with everything else, I only did this once.

I leveled the Liner pistol right at her.  ‘Die bitch’ I had said to her confused face.  I pulled the trigger, unloading half the clip into her, but…but it went right through her.  I fell to my knees.  ‘You really are just a figment of my imagination,’ crying at how crazy I was.

‘Would it make you feel better to actually let you shoot me?  Try it Trego, if you really want, as dark as this path has become.’  To which my teary face pulled the trigger again at her, and was shocked when he body recoiled away, blood, or something similar, exploding out the backside.  ‘Proud?’  I asked to her dead body, the bloody ribbon covering a massive crater in her head.  The shock was so severe I turned the pistol on myself, and the darkness only crept on.

“No!”  I shouted, trying to forget.  Just remember the good, the times I actually was productive, not lost in despair or hatred.  “It was not always bad!  That was when I started changing!”  I yelled to the world, trying to make it real.

Yes, focus on how during my self-killing spree, Proud came to me one trigger pull away and asked if there was anything she could do.  I had not seen her since the crime of killing her, or perhaps crimes, I committed against her, and her innocent appearance before me nearly caused me to follow through yet again with the trigger.  But I stopped long enough for her to tell me it pained her to see me this way, and ask why I was like this.  She was here to help if I would only ask.

I told her reluctantly a big part of it was how bad I felt for taking advantage of her when so much was at stake, both having sex with her, and later shooting her in another iteration.  When she laughed loudly, I lowered the pistol out of confusion.  ‘How did you take advantage of me, if we both wanted it?’ she asked.  She did not even mention the time when I had shot her because to her it was nothing.  She said she was entirely joyful for the experience, and did not regret anything and wondered why I did.  She said that the physical plane was overwhelming in its feelings, and to have experienced something like that with me, well, she’d remember forever.  She said she loved me and hoped I would have asked earlier, or again.  She lowered my pistol and we held hands, me crying for hours in her simple embrace until the end came again.

Proud Infinity pt 20

by tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The killing sprees honed my abilities.  I learned to fight with my fists, knives, my Liner pistol.  Each cycle was a new challenge.  How many could I kill with just my hands, or could I beat my score using my gun?  It became this dark abyss where others only existed to see how many I could blow through.  It didn’t matter when I was maimed, shot or imprisoned, I was reset every morning.

With women it was another challenge and at this point I no longer cared about ‘knowing them’ as it was pointless.  It was easy at gunpoint but didn’t stimulate me the same way of manipulating their minds with perfect words and actions.  My respect for them tanked down to zero.  I could get any girl to be with me, it didn’t matter how loyal or pure she was.  Enough predictive power or perfect words and they all melted.  Eventually that game grew boring as well.

By the way, Proud?  It was easy.  I only had to ask.  She was more than happy for the overwhelming feelings of the physical realm, and indeed it was quite amazing from my end; but that was the largest regret I had.  Amidst my absolute depravity she represented perhaps the one untainted thing in this fractured world I inhabited, and I proceeded to destroy that as well.

My curiosities turned to sorrow and anguish.  The hedonism left me cold and empty, the shallowness overwhelming that I had given in to.  Soon it became a burden, thinking of all the crimes I had committed, even if they were not longer ‘actually done’.  The pointlessness of everything amplified by a thousand experiences I had now come to hate.  Especially what I did with Proud…or maybe it’d be better to say ‘what I did to Proud’.

We had come to love each other through the circumstance we were now in, a deep friendship from the stories we shared.  Our friendship was not one of two different races of a physical being and a near-energy being creating a physical body, but of two consciousnesses that liked each other from so much time together.

Then I had sex with her simply to satisfy a burning question of if she would.  And she did, and she loved it.  As soon as it was over, I started crying.  I was so stupid, so shallow.  Defiling the last totem of sanity in this world left me broken and under no more delusions of how messed up I had become.

What the fuck was wrong with me?  The universe was counting on my freewill to prevent this time fracture, and I was doing this to its incarnation?  I was murdering people, manipulating every woman I could into sex, and fucking LineGod Proud instead of doing anything productive.  I felt endlessly evil for taking advantage of her which I did many times ‘just to make sure’.  That sent me on an even darker spiral for many, many time fractures.

I swung my arm around, trying to grab something else.  I grabbed something soft, pulling it towards me; it was my white shirt.  On the floor, holding the white shirt and the desk brought forth more grim memories of the even further pits I fell into.

‘But she was the sensual one, she wanted it!’  I would lie to myself, trying to justify the single action I hated myself the most for.  My personal best for kills was over a thousand using just a pistol, most women was over ten, and that was due to my own physical limitation, but none of those compared to the final break in sanity by using Proud.

Her name was ‘Proud’ and that was nowhere near what I felt about my actions, only all-consuming regret and self-hatred.  The shame was overwhelming, and then it was eventually mixed with hopelessness of my position.  I had forsaken seeing Proud again because I felt so bad for what I did for so many times before I finally snapped.

Proud Infinity pt 17

by tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The story has Trego talking to proud and at this point he is realizing he is stuck in a time loop , and she is the only one who realizes it.  Make sure to check out the past posts if you missed a section!  If you want the entire book it is available on Amazon for 3$ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MTB19WD?pldnSite=1

pt 17:

“So the base plane, this plane,” I slapped the ground hard to feel the pain, “is not only destroyed, but somehow affects everything else and consequently is prevented from coming to conclusion?”

“That is essentially it.”

“And for all intents, you cannot change anything, because this is not your actual realm.  You have to have a physical being do it because we are not bound by the ripple effects of our actions.  Any choice we make in this realm is the same regardless of what consequences might arise.  This seems to imply you are someone bound by the pathing of events: bound by what happens in the future, rather than just the now.”

She grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly.  “Exactly.”  Her hand went to my leg and she started gripping it sensually; I stood up away from her.

“Are bodies really that interesting?!  Damn.”  She was pissing me off switching between her preaching, her innocence, and now trying to feel me up.

She nodded innocently. “You have no idea how amazing this feels.”

“Anyway, what if I don’t do it?” I asked.

“You will, eventually.  You have to.  A million to one probability comes out sooner or later.”

“I hate when people tell me what to do.”

“I am sorry; I don’t mean it like that.”  Her facial features dropped a bit, the outside part of her eyebrows angled downwards.  “I thought we were getting somewhere…This rebellious part of your persona is the one major negative that nearly ruled you out.”  She kind of shrugged to herself.  “It is what it is I suppose, I will try to be better.”

I really felt my anger rising at all of this but tried to stay calm because I hated making her sad.  “Can’t you just mind control me, or teleport my body into the reactor?”

“I cannot.  Why can you not realize that?”  Her eyes looked moist.

“What if I don’t?  What if I can’t?”

“Trego…” Her down turned face hid her soft voice coming from it

“You are asking me to deny everything I’ve known in my life to trust some crazy girl who shows me some tricks and makes me seriously consider she might be some god.  That thought alone makes me think I am the crazy one.”

She lifted her face up and her blue eyes were watering hard.  I was surprised how hard she was crying but how focused she still looked.  “These types of resets are always the hardest to endure.  So painful…it physically hurts when you don’t trust me.” She squinted her eyes closed; a burst of tears fell out as she shook her head a bit to regain her composure.  “We can be so close, yet so often you choose distance and anger.”

“Look, I’m sorry.”  Seeing my anger do this to the sad beautiful girl made my anger drain away.  “But you don’t seem too worried about all of this succeeding.”

“It already has,” she stated evenly as she wiped her eyes with the black cloth of her bodysuit.  She then bent down to rub her fingers on some different colored rocks that had caught her attention.  “It already has because it already will.”

“What?” I asked.  I had no idea what she meant.

“Not in a way you would understand due to your thoughts occurring linearly.  But it cannot be allowed to be brought to completion, therefore in the final loop it does not truly occur.  Because We will not let it happen, it will not occur on the true time path.”  Was I included in the ‘we’?  I was not sure.

I was legitimately confused if she was talking about victory but we had not done anything.  “To be clear, we are still stuck in this time fracture right?”

“Unfortunately yes and it will keep occurring until you stop it.  So in a way, your hand is indeed forced because the reset will occur until you decide, and figure out how to stop it.”

“Is this kind of like you know the ending, but you still have to get through the book first right?  You know the destination, but still have to make the journey.”

“Fairly accurate.”  She was colder now.  Women were really good at this kind of stuff, and unfortunately it worked.  I regretted making this playful girl act in this way.  I wanted her to go back to being friendly, even though it was me who was yelling at her.

“So what do I have to do?  How can I stop something that destroys everything?”

“It sounds much harder than it is.  It simple is a complex machine that is creating it.  Simply disable it and reality will march on.”

“Shoot someone, or drop a tool and that’s it?  And then what, reality goes forward and I end up in jail for the rest of my life?”

“I do not know.  We have never made it past today.  I cannot promise anything for you, that is the truth.  The other truth is that I will do everything in my power to help you and would not abandon you.”

The color of her bright ribbon and hair started draining.  The color of the world was disappearing.  “Damn, looks like it is starting.  I thought I might be prepared for this, but…nothing but fear.  When I died once, you said you would protect me.  Was that true?”  I asked her.

“It was.  To the best of my power I will.”

“Uh…so this actually is reality, right?” I asked her.  “I actually die here?”

“Unfortunately, it is.”

“Well I guess this is good-bye.”  This time it was my eyes watering, from a subconscious terror of my soon-death.  Now I really wanted to hold her.

“For now,” she stated.

“For now,” I agreed.  I stepped forward to hug her.  We held each other tight.  Part of my grip was based on fear, and that maybe getting as close as I could to her would somehow save me.  At the least she felt very good.  Warm.  Real.

“Save me, Prou…”

Proud Infinity pt 15

by tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

“Quite so.”  Her hand went up to her hair and began twirling the long ribbon with her fingers.  The girlish behavior was oddly endearing given the heavy conversation.  “There has been a reality fracture so strong – perhaps you might understand given your background – created by a particle that might be capable of creating a new universe, but definitely destroying this one in the process.  It seems like it was a particle like this that indeed created Us,” she seemed to put emphasis on ‘Us’, “but a new one cannot be allowed to exist.  It destroys the very essences of reality, of which I told you the physical plane is a few planes, annihilating everything in a rapidly spreading wave.  This wave is initially only on the base plane, that’s yours, but intertwines all the others in its destruction.  This is so devastating that time fractures backwards to ensure it never happens.”

“Ok, I have no idea what you just said.”  I massaged my eyes a moment.  “I really need to take a walk.  Want to go outside?”

She twirled her ribbon one more time, lowering her hand to the table.  “Sure.”  We stood up, and walked out.  I left a handful of drinks I had paid for but at this point didn’t care.  As we were walking out she continued, “A particle that rips apart reality is created very soon here, and it is so damaging, time fractures backwards to prevent it from occurring.”

“And according to you, I am stuck in this fracture.  Or I mean we all are.”

“Yes, but I am here to help you.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.  I had a lot of thoughts going through my head.  My pink shirt told me there was a good chance I was still crazy.  If this was a trap, she was very committed to it, at the very least she had a pretty crazy story she kept straight.

She claimed no one could see her because if affected something.  Yet here she was in front of me.  I definitely had felt her so on some level she was corporeal.  There was someone walking the other way when I had an idea.

Without any warning I dashed at her, going to shoulder ram her into the guy.  Without even looking at me she took an effortless step back.  Her move left me way off balance and I almost hit the guy myself.

I rapidly turned to her, with perhaps a glare in my eyes.  She had a sly look on before she laughed.  “Nice try.  If you believed what I was saying, you wouldn’t have bothered trying.  I already told you, I can read your upper level thoughts, plus I can see the Chrono lines.  You had two things against you that were impossible to surmount.”

I didn’t respond, feeling a twinge of embarrassment that she outplayed me.

The fact we were able to walk outside at all was a bit reassuring as I thought Proud might be a hologram confined to that bar.  She was quite capable of walking.  There were two options left: she was a thought implant, or everyone was in on some experiment I was the victim of.  Eventually we ended up over by the fence overlooking ReCorp.

It was only after I walked here that I thought about the subconscious draw that brought me back here.  Maybe I was distracted by walking with Proud.  In fact it was almost like having a child with me with how excited and energetic she was at everything.

“The physical plane is really amazing you know that?”  Her crouched form was bent over to a small flower growing out of a crack.  She smelled it, then jumped out of her crouch and trotted over to me with her hands laced behind her back.  “We view it as perhaps the biggest irony that those inhabiting this plane tend to not fully enjoy its pleasures or its extra joy.”  She kept her hand behind her back as she leaned on the balls of her feet next to the fence and was humming something.

“It’s probably natural, it’s all we have known.  We don’t know what we are missing, or how much we have.”

“It’s not all you have known, but your point is close enough.”

“Careful.” I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back from the thin fence separating her from the massive fall.  “I’d hate to see ‘God’ take an early exit out of here.  So evidently you can influence reality as you dropped that guy’s screen, and you are quite destructive if you want to be, so why don’t you just fly in there and rock out whatever is creating this fracture and everything will be okay?”  This seemed like a pretty logical flaw in her whole story.