"Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."
"Is this where I say 'shut up'? Not that I expected any useful questions from The Sun, but throwing a random quote at me in lieu of one seems a bit beneath even your standards, Mr Boylen."
"Well, you do have the sword, yes?"
"I do. It being a rather antiquated item, and quite illegal to just stroll about with, no matter the dangers of rabid tabloid reporters, it stays stored safely. I believe that is all the questions I'll accept from you, sir."
"Come now 'King Arthur', I'm just the only one willing to ask the real questions that everyone is thinking. You can't expect us to just swallow this whole thing blind."
"I see you didn't ask anything. And it's Arthur King; I am not royalty in any real sense, and my father's name is not to be dismissed. Anyone else want to have a go? Yes, Ms Clayton."
"Well, Mr King, my question is related. You're seeking a seat in the house of commons. Isn't that... common when you used to be King Arthur, and bear a rather lovely magic sword that by all known information ties you to the land in a way that makes you more than a king?"
"I don't believe so, no. Excalibur does give me great authority in many ways. It most assuredly gives me some power as protector of Great Britain. By extension, some degree of power to also protect the full UK exists, though I am still not certain exactly how or why the old me's realm extended to cover lands quite beyond what he ruled then. My magical advisor has some ideas.
Ms Falcon, care to chime in?"
"NI!"
"Quite good then. Please, ladies and gentlemen, I am pressed for time, so restrain your laughter somewhat."
"If I may have a follow-up then; why not just take power? Reclaim the throne?"
"Because it isn't bloody well my throne to take. Don't forget, until I nearly drowned in Dozmary Pool, I was just Arthur King, a rather humorously named birdwatcher on holiday from his job in an accountancy firm. The sword woke my previous life, but it did not make me him. It also woke several of his associates, those currently incarnated in any case; like my magical advisor here.
This nation is not the kingdom I once ruled and loved. It is an entirely new thing. As am I, I suppose, since I am often unsure where King Arthur ends and Arthur King begins. But one thing I am certain of is that to lead this nation and protect it from the storms coming, attempting to seize power would make that impossible.
No, if we are to survive the coming war, then any position of leadership I have must have, as Mr Boylen so kindly reminded us, the mandate of the masses. Here and now that means a place in the house of commons. A place that I hope to win properly, not by the fact of having a fancy sword.
Next question please."
"Todd Barrett, International Press Association. What happens if you don't win? Then, do you take power by force?"
"Absolutely not. If I don't win, well I shall have to find some other way to defend this land. I suspect that will be with the fancy sword, even if it means my death trying to cleave a magic missile in twain. After all, the fancy magical sword isn't some all powerful artifact. Just damnably difficult to damage and with a degree of that protection extending to its rightful bearer. It certainly didn't save the old me, and i understand that Morgana's forces have vast numbers and a great deal of power of their own.
No, if the people do not wish me to lead, then I shall fight for them anyway; alone if need be."
The concept was that the entire time "Dean" was involved, there were people already there, hidden from him that were using Alvin for bad things, and Alvin made the neighbors have erotic dreams specifically so that the Authority would catch it and investigate.
So Dean screwed up, and left thinking it was an easy case.
It was supposed to hint at a darker world behind the cheery and light one, sort of a subversion. Don't know that it worked as written.
Okay; tie straight. Badge in clear view. Laminate on left pocket. Cuffs in pouch. Lance sheathed loose. Here we go, Dean, first official action. Do I knock? Or ring the bell? Damn, knock it is, I guess.
Thudding footsteps and muted cursing came closer to the door before it was jerked open. "What!?"
"Are you mister Alvin B Pebble?"
"I don't know nothing about nothing. Name's Schultz, call me sarge, then leave."
Great, a smartass. And he's going to try and shut the door.
"Mr Pebble, or Sergeant Schultz, if you really want to stick with a reference that old. I must warn you that if you attempt to flee, I have the authority to turn this very pleasant visit into an arrest. Could you not have this end up with you on the ground screaming? It gives me a horrible headache."
"What do you want, psycop?"
"To speak to mister Alvin B Pebble regarding a violation of telepathic protocols. If you are he, then let's have a chat. If it isn't you, then if you could introduce me to him, that would be lovely."
"Shit. What did he do?"
"I'm afraid that's a private matter until and unless he, or my superiors, give me permission to disclose. Are you his parent?"
"No. Brother. He's in the back. But look, he's a good guy. I know he didn't to anything too bad, because he wouldn't. So don't try and jam him up. I'm calling our lawyer on the way back."
"Perfectly fine, sir. Always nice to have assistance staying fully compliant with someone's rights." Yeah, "always". Like I've done this a hundred times.
"Schultz" led the way through a nice, but slightly disordered home, past a kitchen resplendent with the scent of cinnamon and eyebright. Someone was trying to boost their signal the old fashioned way. That may be what got me sent here. Some baby espers lose control a little when they experiment.
The nice gentleman knocked on a door, behind which was a soft, almost indiscernible song playing. Tickled my ear, and my pineal gland. Yeah, definitely someone that is new trying to get a feel for things. Aural jazz is the gentlest way to open up one's chakras, particularly the third eye.
The music stopped, and a moment later the door opened, "What's... Oh! Ah, hi. I messed up didn't I?"
I looked to Schultzie, "If you could give us some space while you contact your attorney of preference, it would be very helpful. May I come in your room, Alvin? You are Alvin B Pebble, yes?"
"I, uh, yeah, yeah, that's me. C'mon in I guess."
The room was much as you might expect for a young man cohabitating with a brother. Sparsely furnished, but with hobby paraphernalia. Some gaming gear, a small music player, and bed strewn with crystals, bags of herbs, and what looked like a spool of silver wire. Could have been silver coated, or just a different metal, but beginners almost always spring for real silver.
"Do you know why I'm here today, sir?"
"Sir. Heh. Yeah, maybe. I think I messed up and spread some dreams. They were, uh, kinda racy."
"More correctly, you almost spread a wet dream across five blocks. The almost was because I was on duty, and managed to damp you enough that nobody other than me, and your neighbors across the street got hit by it."
"Oh no! Are the Sullivans okay!?"
"That would be one way of putting it, yes. I checked on them first, and they are both safe and unaware of the external source of the dreams.
Alvin. Or do you prefer some other name?"
"Alvin, Al, even Brenner are fine."
"So, you seem very calm about this visit. I take it that means you know what Telepathic Mitigation Authority actually does?"
"Well, yeah. As soon as I first started hearing thoughts, I looked into it, read up on the rules, best practices and such. You guys get called cops, psycops, but it's more like psychic firemen, only you try to keep fires from starting in the first place."
"That is a lovely way of putting it, Alvin. Yes. I am your fire extinguisher in this case. Like you, I am a telepath. Unlike you, I am also a psy tracer, to use the colloquial term. I am sensitive to other psychics, can both detect them when active and when inactive. Hence why I do this job. Oh, regular telepaths can do this part fine, and can mitigate active breaches of protocol as well or better. But a tracer can often get to the offending person faster, and truly mitigate rather than clean up a mess, or worse."
"I'm sorry to put you through this trouble."
"I'm just glad this has all gone quite well. You never know what kind of reception you'll get.
So, tonight, I'll be putting a blinker on you. Tomorrow, you come down to the office on Divisadero, we pull it out and get you some second stage discipline practice in so this doesn't happen again."
"Blinker?"
"Sorry, jargon. A telepathic limiter. Only lets you peek out, but not send. It gets called a blinker because when it takes effect, the recipient blinks heavily for a few minutes. Nothing dangerous at all, I had multiple done during training. It feels a tad restrictive around the third eye and crown chakras, but doesn't interfere in their normal function. Certainly not enough to keep you from sleeping. It never did me, or anyone else in class."
"Oh. I guess that's fine."
"Well, here comes the unpleasant part of things. I have to remind you that if you attempt to bypass it, you will be committing a felony. And, should you succeed, summary judgement is made by the fact of success, and you will be arrested, then psychically neutered. We all make mistakes, it takes time to learn. That's why the Authority exists. As long as you follow the program, you'll be able to pass your independent telepath rating test in a few weeks, no problems, and we won't see each other again unless we happen to share a cab."
"Yeah. I can do that."
Seems like he will, too. No signs of deceit, no surges or buggery. It's really nice to get a simple case my first night out "See you tomorrow, Alvin."
"Yeah, see you as soon as the office opens."
"Well, Alvin, you tried. Can't say I blame you, but we warned you what would happen if you messed with us. Could have been just fine. Now your brother is dead, and you will be too. Shouldn't have snuck under our shield like that. We barely covered it all. Lucky the agent was a noob, or he'd be dead too."
Well, Finale thought that by eliminating predictably that he could bypass Eternus' power. But he was so completely wrong about the power that, until he used a drug to up the stakes, Eternus was essentially yawning at him.
The "boost" gave Finale a random power boost. There's been things like that in comics a good bit, and to interesting effect, so I figured that somebody would eventually try something like that.
The power he got out of it was a time slowing ability.
That bubble of almost frozen time meant that Eternus couldn't actually recycle. Not until that bubble was gone. But because the inside was its own reality to an extent, every attempt to kill him just spawned a "new" him. Basically, every variation of him recycled at once, and at the instant the bubble started. Once started, the process went off the rails and possible versions of him were cycled in. One for every variant where Finale killed one of him, even if it didn't actually happen.
At least, that's where my head was going while I tried to wrangle what I was seeing in my head onto the screen. Sometimes the process of writing is work, craft, where I build words out of an idea and shape them into a story.
Then there's this kind of thing where an idea sorta takes over, and I'm getting flashes of things, images or bits of action. This kind can go off the rails because I'm usually struggling to get it out of my head before I lose the whole thing. It's like when you wake from an intense dream that's fading with every blink, and you want to remember it, but if you don't get it written down or told in time, it just fades into nothing.
I meet a lot of strange folks in my line of work. When you're a journeyman healer, part of your training is a rotation in home health. You go around to the old folks, the hospice patients, people recovering from injuries, and you do the basics.
You'd think that healing magic would have supplanted most medical practice. After all, it is a cure for damn near everything. And the things it can't cure it's really good at helping be bearable. But that "damn near" covers a lot of ground, and Healing isn't easy.
It's possibly the most demanding form of magic for the practitioner. Unlike what elementalists or necromancers or whatever do, the majority of the energy used has to come from yourself, and the person being Healed. Typical magic, you pull up maybe ten percent of your total wellsource for the average high end spell, if you've a good bit of juice to begin with.
A Healer? The master Healers that can do things like genetic repair, they'll use their entire wellsource on one treatment. Cancer eradication can drain your tanks enough that you might be able to swing two or three patients a day.
Journeymen like me end up doing the stuff that's less intensive energetically, but we do a lot of it each day. At my level of training, I can't permanently cure arthritis (which is a very difficult procedure that's actually harder in some ways than a cancer), but I can give a person a week or two of improved movement and reduced or zero pain while they wait for a Master specialist.
That's how I met Millie. She's a crusty old bag. That's not me insulting her, that's how she introduced herself.
"You're the new flunky? I'm Millie, the crusty old bag you're here to keep the crust from turning lethal."
"I didn't know being crusty could kill you."
"Oh, it ain't me it would kill."
That's Millie, summed up in the first few seconds of meeting her. She's in her late sixties, and was a kid during the God Wars. She grew up seeing mountains crumble, the seas boil, and miracles be thrown around like candy. But don't ask her about the God Wars. If you want to keep her crust off of you, it might be wise to not use the term god at all. You might get by with calling them deities, and calling the Wars just that, though she sometimes balks at deity as well.
See, Millie is an atheist. No, not a non worshipper, those are a dime a dozen. An actual atheist. She doesn't believe the gods are real. Oh, she recognises that something did all those horrors during the Wars. And she freely admits that they fill the role of what gods are supposed to be doing.
She just thinks they're a shared hallucination of sorts.
"Glen, right this second, you're channeling your juice into me, strengthening cartilage, scaling back inflammation and selectively tuning my immune system. That's fuckin' magic. You. A human. A regular asshole."
"I'm not a regular asshole, Ms Millie."
"Bull tits you ain't. You're as regular an asshole as anyone. And that's my point. They's what? Four billion of us on this rock?"
"Yes'm, about that, though we're supposedly getting closer to five."
"Well, there you go. Magic came back hard and fast, like my third husband.
You ain't gonna ask about that?"
"No ma'am, you already told me about Lawrence. Big ol' tallywhacker and he could work magic with his hips."
"That's the one! Damn shame healers weren't as established then, I do miss his tallywhacker.
You ain't gonna ask about that?"
"No ma'am, I know that's all you miss about him. He was the one that couldn't keep it to him and your self."
"That's the one!
You see my point though?"
"Lawrence's johnson was god?"
"Smartass. No, magic. It came back first. If the gods were real, why'd they go away in the first place, and why'd they not come back before magic?"
"I'm not a metaphysicist ma'am, I just tune up crusty old bags."
"Well, you oughta think about it. It tells you more about how magic really works than a fancy certificate and being called Master Healer ever will."
"The pay would probably be better too."
"Pssht, ain't no such thing as fair pay. Capitalism sees to that.
Shush and listen boyo.
Magic ain't some kind of woowoo bullshit any more. It's real, I can feel it plumping up my cartilage."
"That's not exactly..."
"I said shush, boy! Magic is just as real as gravity. Shush! Don't you lecture me on inverse cubes and thaums per unit of vaccuum! I'm talking important shit here! Damn over educated whelp!
No, magic is right part of everything. It's like sand in your cooch at the beach. It gets in and it's there to stay. So you might as well just get nekkid and have fun."
"Okay, but what does that have to do with gods?"
"Everything! If we ain't doin' somethin' with it, magic just sits there like gravity or the electromagnetic force.
Gods ain't nothin' but our wet dreams gone wrong."
"Well, Aphrodite is rather dreamy."
"Pull your dick outta your ear and listen, boy.
Humans dream big. We always have, look at all the shit we got that goes back at least thousands of years. Myths and legends, that's what sets us apart from the rest of the animals."
"And animals don't have gods."
"Now you're usin' that brain for somethin' other than a spank bank!
That's exactly right, they ain't got gods. Them assholes in philosophy like to debate about why animals can have souls, but don't always, but everybody knows they don't have gods.
That's cause they ain't got imagination neither. And what's the first rule of magic?"
"Ahhhh, are you talking about Crowley again?"
"Weren't his idea, he just parroted it. And no, I ain't talking about them thelma-ites. I ever tell you about my old hemorrhoid Thelma?"
"You name your hemorrhoids? I can take care of those, by the way."
"No, she was a human. My neighbor, round about thirty years ago. She was a pain in my ass, Glen. Try to keep up."
"You never told me about her, no."
"Oh boy, do I got stories! But that's for later.
Them thelma-ites.. Shush! I know it's Thelema, let a woman have her fun, dammit.
But they have their little "do what thou wilt" thing, with all its corollaries. But them ain't what I'm talking about.
No. The first rule of magic is: magic is the process of altering the universe by harnessing will and thought.
You can't magic completely by accident. There's always a kernel of will behind it. S'why young'ns can sometimes do really scary shit, but cain't repeat it. They want something really bad, and their will shapes the universe. They just ain't trained their will like you have."
"I think I'm starting to see what you're saying."
"Good! Means you ain't hopeless after all! You might even get laid some day!
Shush! I ain't done!
Magic comes back like my Lawrence after a third go-round, hard and fast, but sloppy.
People were like kids. No focus, no training, no way to control their new access to a fundamental force of the universe. And what kind of shit is in human heads?"
"In your case..."
"Shush boy! That were rhetorical!
Myths and legends. That's the shit in our heads. Ain't no surprise a bunch of damn hippies manifested Gaea as the first deific entity. All of them whacked out of their heads, tripping balls on acid and weed, their collective imagination channeling their will go something they thought of as better.
That's why I'm an atheist. Well, that and pure-t stubbornness. I ain't about to believe in any Johnny-come-lately shit like some of them gods. Cthulhu weren't ever a god to begin with! And here he is ruling the ocean deeps and nightmares! Now, how can you think any of the rest are real when Cthulhu is right there among them!?"
"Okay, you've got a point there for sure. But does it matter, if they do the job of gods, and have the power of gods?"
"Of course it fuckin' matters boy! You cain't give them fuckers one more bit of will and power than they already have, or we'll never see the ass end of 'em!
And they can all fuck right back off into the collective unconsciousness, the way they fucked this whole world up when we gave 'em a door into reality."
"Yeah, the Wars sucked. Even the good ones struggled to keep it from being worse."
"Ain't no "Good Ones", Glen. They're all the same one. They're all us. And that's bad enough, Glen, that's bad enough."
I could hear the thumping up the steps again. Fucking Bob, at it again. He was grunting and scrabbling at the pet door to the back entry.
"Mffggin tng wnt fggn ft"
"What?"
"Mffggin tng wnt fggn ft"
"I still can't understand you." Cats.
Bob spat a little, followed by a thick and meaty series of thwaps as what I assumed was another head made its cadaverous journey back to the yard.
"Got dammit, I said the motherfuckin' thang won't fuckin' fit. Ain't you got ears?"
"Bob, watch your shit. I have a double barrel loaded with blessed rock salt and a vial of holy water."
"Ay man, you ain't gonna do shit, and you know it. Come git this damn head out the yard. Damn monkeys and your posable thumbs gotta be good for that at least."
"It's opposable, jackass."
"Your mom's opposable on my cock."
"Blessed rock salt, Bob."
"Yeah, yeah, you and my ass, both spreading shit. Are you gettin' this head or what?"
I sighed and gave a light kick to his ass on my way past, getting a hiss and a flick of claws to my pants hem in return. He knows I'm not going to off him, and I know he's not really going to do a damn thing that might scratch me, but we like to keep our boundaries intact.
I opened the door to see a well chewed face looking up at me, one eye apparently sucked out, or otherwise missing. Whoever she'd been before Bob got ahold of her, she didn't deserve to just lay in my yard among the leaves and windblown detritus of an abandoned neighborhood.
I pulled on some nitrile gloves and snagged the head, tucking it into a grocery bag on my way back in.
"Good job, monkey boy."
"Fuck you, Bob."
Bob sat there, sullen; smelling of corpse, sulphur, blood and a hint of musk. The red glow of his eyes was the least horrible thing about him. Him being more of a courtesy since he prefers those pronouns, but Bob didn't have a cock for my mom to ride, or balls to go without it. Infernals can have genitals, but nothing as lowly as a rabishu ever bothers beyond a vague outline unless you order them to. Their appetites aren't particularly sexual anyway.
For being not much bigger than an unusually large Maine coon, he packed a sense of density that he swung like some greater demons do swing cock. Rabishu can have presence, in the mystical sense, despite being fairly limited in power. Bob has plenty of presence to go with his massive smell. He claims it's a sign of status and power among his kind, that only the really potent rabishu stink. I don't have enough dealings with them to disagree. But he can turn it off, or at least down beyond where I can smell it.
And he has to if he wants to sleep on the pillow in bed.
"What's up with this one?"
"She's got a worm in her."
"Oh, fuck me, Bob, really?"
"Yeah man, I ain't yankin' your chain. Should be just about ripe too."
"Let's work then!"
See, me and Bob don't live in this hellscape of a neighborhood because we have to. It's all about the profit. The portal that makes this place unlivable without some serious defenses and power also brings in some extremely rare things. Cranium worms aren't the rarest, but they are both dangerous and ephemeral. They fight when you try to pull them out, and their psychic scream is a bitch.
Back when things got crazy in the eighties magic was flying around, gods fighting everywhere, and things nobody knows what they were would wreak havoc. That last happened here in a fairly small town; Byford West Virginia. Some kind of interdimensional gate popped up and nobody has ever managed to get rid of it. It's a ghost town now, and mostly contained. But you can slip in, and out. The neighborhood closest to the hot zone sees the most activity, hence us living in this deteriorating single family home.
If you don't mind the risk, some of the stuff that creeps through can be sold or traded for very large profit. But, as the cranium worms prove, it isn't exactly for the weak.
Me and Bob came here and set up shop maybe a year ago. Plan is to bust our asses for a few years, then retire. Less if we get a big score. There aren't many big scores, they're mostly like the cranium worms, you get a bunch of little scores that are still enough to cover expenses and some decent profit.
Cranium worms aren't the only invading brain. . . thing that comes through. I guess there's a lot of shit out in the greater cosmos that likes hijacking or eating brains, because that's what usually kills off people like me, scavengers. That's why I won't actually shoot Bob, he doesn't have a brain at all, or the other organs that some of the parasitic invaders like to infest.
Him? I inherited. My aunt was a big-time spirit summoner back in the god wars. Had dozens of infernals and a handful of other spirits or entities under one pact or another. Bob was her favorite and I was no so much her favorite nephew, as the only person in the family that would visit at all. I still haven't gotten an answer as to why he has a southern accent.
"A'ight, I'll fetch the kit, you use those fancy thumbs to set up in the lab."
We got to work. I got to work. Bob, as previously mentioned, lacks the opposable digit to use tools well. Not that he won't try to stab things with his favorite switchblade anyway. Slice through the skin above the pineal gland, bone saw almost through the skull. Then, hammer time.
I looked to Bob as I raised the mallet to pop the skull open. Enchanted or not, the stun it puts out isn't impossible to resist, and he's not going to get infested by catching the damn things. As soon as I drove the hammer down, the shriek started.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee. . .e
I do love this hammer. Before I finished it, the little fuckers would scream all the way into the containment jars. One more to crate up for delivery at the end of the week.
"Did you check the body for ID or anything?"
"Nah man, I don't give a fuck."
"Cats are assholes. Where is it?"
"Three blocks east. I think she was scouting for a livable spot. Had cases and luggage in a wagon nearby at least."
"Great. That means one of the feds will end up knocking on our door again. Let's head over and save some hassle, pick her stuff up, lay a preserving charm on the body and drag it into the stop n rob with the other two."
"Aw hell, I don't wanna go back out, there's some kitty porn with my name on it."
"Just get your ass ready, Bob."
With that, we were off into the night.
That's what I got. Hope it isn't too disappointing that it cuts off, but the brain fire petered out. But feline rabishu are obstreperous.
I have an ongoing short story collection I intend to eventually call a finished thing and put up on Amazon and the other sites. Most likely, this will be like my other multi-chapter short stories and end up at novella length or shorter, so I think that's where it'll get put long term.
My brain is telling me there's three more shorts in there, plus maybe a few very small scenes to tie things into a package.
I keep editing and piddling with the short story collection and every time I have a couple more to add in lol. The epub has been getting bigger for a couple of years now.
The writingprompts c/ on .world got shuttered in favor of this one, and I switched to this account as well, so not everything is in this account history.
The scene with Tobias has two vampires and Tobias' demon, a canine looking rabishu (a type of spirit with real world mythology, but very different from the fictional version used by me).
That is what he means. If he can't keep her, he doesn't care about the rest of the universe. He'll take whatever they can manage to have until...
It may help to know that the origin of the character was from a previous prompt about a "groundhog day" superhero. I'll copy in the story as a separate response here.
But, originally, he led a fairly linear life. The backward skips were bad, but he didn't lose much. He gained because he could undo the bad.
But then he went waaaay back. And he's been bouncing back and forth through the same span of time ever since.
He had gotten inured to death. He accepted that he was just gloomy to keep going, seeing the death, but apart from it because the only thing that mattered was fixing those deaths.
And then he met her. And his entire universe shifted. He's seen her die. At least once, likely more. That's breaking him. That's shifting his goal from saving the world to just not losing her.
Which is probably a bit spoilerish, but the whole thing is burning in my brain currently, so it needs out
So, a scene popped into my head. One of a handful. I'm not sure how they'll come out, if they ever do, but I reckon that it might be welcome here rather than waiting for a different prompt, or trying to get everything in one place before it does come out.
First draft status, and I'm not sure if the end bit works or not, so it might stand change if I manage to get more out of me.
Heroes Fall, third short.
"Baby, come to bed. It's three in the morning."
"Can't. Don't wanna do it again."
"I wasn't going to jump your bones. C'mon, you've got a ton of ammo already. It'll be enough."
"You still make me laugh, Ms Kincaid. I want spares to give to the national guard this time. Last time, five of them were pinned down and got taken out by Devastation. I gotta try loading them up. They're the only ones that died last pass."
"Shush. You only call me Ms Kincaid when you're feeling nostalgic. How many more do you need?"
"I'm always nostalgic for you. It took a hundred rounds to knock him out last time. Would be easier if I could just kill him. Wanna give them double that."
"Move over 'Eternus', let me help. I'll load powder, you finish, okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's okay love. Thanks Ev."
"You know, one of these days I'm going to retire from the network and turn full time reloader. Any chance we'll be able to get to my parents' this weekend? I want to tell them the news."
"Not sure. I only took a short break after the last run. Two days, then I ate lead salad and came back. But I think things were clear enough that the team didn't need me on the origin cycle. Worst case, it takes me a few weeks to handle whatever might come up and then I'll be able to free it up."
"Have you thought more about the pills?"
"Yeah, a little. Was pondering on it while I was working. I've gotten better control over how far I go back each time. Origin cycle, it was always that same day, or the night before, no more than twenty four hours though. After I cycled back when the Kitain killed me, it was all over the place. Weeks, months, a year in one case. I'm just worried that a suicide pill might fuck things up.
I've been poisoned a few thousand times, and Rabid sure loved to add toxins to his disease aura. Always came through fine But if anything fucks my memory, I don't know what might happen. Maybe voluntary changes things. Can't risk that."
"Donald, you say you blow your brains out often enough that I can't get the image out of my head despite never seeing it."
"Sorry Ev."
"That's not my point. Shush. If your actual brain being shredded doesn't screw your memory, why would a cocktail of gentler things?"
"I don't know. Most of my deaths are sudden, fast. The ones that haven't been were at least with me conscious right until the end. Every cocktail you and the doc have suggested includes something to knock me out, and they're slow so it doesn't hurt. What if that fucks things up? What if I've already tried it, and I'm on a permanent loop that I can't fix unless I don't take them? What if. What if. That should be my fucking call name."
"I wish..."
"Yeah, love?"
"I just wish it was easier. Better. Different."
"I'm used to it now, if I'm being honest. There's times I think about doing repeats for the good things."
"Maybe you should."
"Nah. Don't want to spoil them. Our first date. I had to repeat that once, and I was terrified I'd fuck it up. Trying to navigate the little things that make us us? What if I fucked it up and you hated me?"
"Oh, Don, baby, I'll always love you. I always will have loved you. Whatever it is that makes you recycle, it wouldn't dare try to steal that from us. It would be too cruel."
"I love you Evelyn. More than I love anything in this whole fucking universe. I'd let it all fucking burn for one night with you. Let's get some sleep."
I'll let it all fucking burn if the Kitain take her again. Take her and just run.
I never thought I would dip back into that world again, mainly because the first trip was so specialized. But this prompt made my brain flash hard, and I had to.
And now I've got this idea bubbling around with five others I never get around to expanding lol.
"Nobody gets it. The time, the money, the research that goes into it. That's before the range time, of course.
You see, if you are running into the kind of conflicts our team gets into with no combat powers, and you want to make it long enough to swing the fight, you need something.
Most of the time, I favor a heavily modified .45. My main handgun started life as a Colt, standard seven round magazine, nothing fancy. I inherited it from my grandfather. He was a Naval officer and did competition shooting both for the Navy and as civilian once he retired, and this was his carry, rather than a competition gun.
At first, I just polished everything to make it feed smoother. Then I started tweaking until it's this monster that can take very high powder loads while still cycling with subsonic rounds for poo and giggles. The magazines I make for it hold fourteen, though I had to expand the frame and if a mag gets trashed, it takes a couple of days to replace.
But that's my "oh crap, I gotta run" gun. I keep it on me 24/7 because I never know when the alarm will go off, and Shift has been known to pull people out of bed into the briefing room, or even into the field.
I have the usual assortment of versatile long guns too, plus a modified revolver that can take an assortment of calibers because of some springs and careful machining. I favor 5.56, 12 gauge, .308 and 300 winmag because they're easy to find if I run out of my custom ammo. There's better options, of course, but I can think of a dozen times in the last decade where I had to buy from local stores during extended fights.
But it's the ammo that makes me effective in normal fights. Between knowing some top notch molecular manipulators and inventors, added to my willingness to experiment with propellant and materials, I can usually keep a few magazines in every caliber for common threats.
Like my Ragnarok stuff. All of those villains take unusual gear to even scratch. Nuke can be taken down by depleted uranium in a pinch, but he regenerates so fast, and can use them in his own way to power up his explosive nature. So I have a custom round just for him. Can't share the specs, but it's a laminated round, layers of different materials including some enchanted metals. As the round does its job, it neutralizes parts of his powers.
Back before we had to permanently put Rabid down, I had an exploding round that spread nanobots to counter his infectious range enough to get close and secure him. He hated me something fierce. Not just because I shot him a lot. The nanobots left him weak and confused for weeks after he'd heal up physically.
It's mostly about prep time."
"But, Eternus, the question was how you can survive so well without powers, but let's table that for now. You said no combat powers, does that mean you do have them? What can you do?"
"Well, Ms Kincaid, that's classified. All I can say is that it allows me to have prep time and room to develop both my gear and skills"
"So, time manipulation?"
"That's classified"
"Classified by who?"
"That's classified."
"Eternus, you agreed to this interview, why won't you answer the actual questions?"
"That's classified.
No, contain yourself. That one was a joke. I am answering them. Where operational security allows. But I'm a person. I don't necessarily answer things the way you want because I largely go with the flow of consciousness. I also don't have an obligation to answer things I don't want to. If you ask me boxers or briefs, I'm walking out because it's none of your business, nor anyone else's.
But here, the way I survive without combat powers is trusting my team, and them trusting me to not shoot until I'm certain it will achieve a goal. I only shoot a person if there's no other choice, even with less lethal ammunition. I only shoot animals, or any living thing, as a last resort. I have no issues dumping rounds into machinery, spirits, or other non living, non human entities that are a threat to humanity.
But when I need to shoot? I don't miss, and I use the right tool for the job. Which loops us back around to where this particular subject started. Time, money, research, practice. That's how I do it."
"That is still evasive. What people want to know is how you do it, and now that we know you have some kind of power, they will want to know that too."
"Ms Kincaid. After everything I just said, including that the information is classified, do you really think I chose to say it that way by accident? A slip of the tongue? No, ma'am, it's ammunition being sent to a target. You're the rifle. The information that I do have a non combat power, and that I am a fantastic marksman is the ammunition that will neutralize a target.
This is my first interview, ever. You, of the entire list of journalists that have requested one, got picked because you are the right weapon for the job. So, if you'll be kind enough to help me off with this microphone, I'll be on my way.
Unless you need to be oiled and cleaned."
"Key-rist Eternus, did you really need to add that last part?"
"Well, yeah, General. It wasn't an accident. That was the sixtieth version of things, and I needed something to snap her out of her laser focus on my power. That it also bumped her anger a little, and worked as a pickup line just helps make sure things work this time around. Maybe. I'll have to see.
All I know is that we need to recruit Generator instead of fighting her. Can't do that if her sister gets killed. Can't keep her alive if she doesn't trust me. She hasn't trusted me because she thinks I can't protect her.
So far, even telling her everything hasn't worked. The closest I got was when I lost my temper after the fifth run through and she tore into me after the camera was off, but cooled down enough after an apology to at least listen when I showed up at her door with the usual "come with me if you want to live" bullshit that Streak hates.
So I called an audible. And I think it worked, Max. After the mic was off and I was leaving, her approach was totally different this time. More open, less aggressive. She just asked what I meant by it. I told her "That's classified" and she laughed. I haven't gotten a laugh out of her in, what; a hundred years of subjective time?"
"Eternus, this plan of yours, stopping the Kitain, how many times have you come back? I know I've asked before, but this is the first you mentioned how long you've been at this one step, and you've never even said that much before."
"I don't know. Max, I just don't know. I'm barely hanging on here. Trying to keep track of every fight, every little encounter, pinning down that Generator is the only one that can let future us make the next step. Fuck Max, I think it's maybe a thousand years now? Maybe more. Back and fucking forth, eating a damn bullet every year or two, having to redo every fucking fight, sometimes multiple times to get a different outcome than my first cycle back to see if that works?
I can't even write the shit down because it won't come with me. And I think I love her now."
"Eternus, let it out man, let it out, I got you brother, just cry it out."
Alright. This isn't exactly a proper response to the prompt, but it's either a partial step to one, and/or a way of saying that the answer isn't easy to get, so nobody really knows in that universe. I'm pondering on this being a part one or the totality of it.
"C'mon Rover, there's gotta be more, mate!"
"I still think he was fucking with you."
"You said you were there!"
"No, I said I was an ancient evil that was around when you jumped up monkeys left your planet."
"Doesn't that imply that you were there later too?"
"I wasn't bloody everywhere. You think a shadowy, sulfurous scented demon would be able to just hang around while a crowd watched some guys getting crucified?"
"Not now that you say it, but I'm used to you now."
"Awww, that's sweet! Can I get some belly rubs? Maybe some behind the ear action?"
"You're a bloody menace. If you get horny again, I'm out though, and you'll bloody well spill while I do it."
"Ahhh, yeah! That's the spot!
Tobias mate, you are a product of a culture that lacks the frame of reference for a lot of things. You don't even properly understand what I am, and you're petting me. You need to realize that things were different then. Magic was broken and had been fading for a long time, and by the time Jesus came around, only the most powerful of you generally magically weak apes could even weave a minor illusion, much less open a passage into the planes for something like me.
I wasn't here at that point in time, I was caught up in all the changes and wars that started when magic broke. When you damned monkeys got too big for your britches and did the breaking, rather. I didn't even look like this before! The point I'm making is that the actions of one of you spreading a cult that didn't try to call on my type of thing wasn't important. We only got third and fourth hand rumors.
The whole Jesus thing is like that. By the time I even heard the name Jesus, he'd been dead for a long time. So I don't really know if any of the biblical rigamarole is accurate, or if it was that Jesus was anything other than a really strong magic user pulling off a trick to make people think he was dead after his cult got too much attention."
"What were the rumors then?"
"There weren't many at the time. The only thing I heard was that some obscure god was trying to set itself up to last through the weakened magic by getting everyone too pray to it, playing a long game. You'd have to ask Yahweh if that was actually him or not, I sure don't know.
Hey, do the other ear, yeah?"
"If you don't get to the point, I'm gonna have you neutered!"
"I don't have balls you jackass, I'm a demon. I only look like I have balls because the spiritual matter of me is shaped by the minds of man.
Anyway, the rumor was that this Joshua, or jesu, or yeshua, or whatever variant would get used had been recruited by a god to start a new religion, and hoover up many followers as possible. That the guy did a decent job of it, and had his followers convinced he was demigod or some such. The whole resurrection thing was not a new idea in that regard. Reborn godlings and demigods were a dime a dozen before magic broke and the gods drifted away.
So, yeah, maybe he could have been a vampire. Or he could have been a good faker. Why don't you ask him?"
"How the bloody hell would I do that?"
"He's right behind you."
"What?!
Oh, you fucker. No more scritches for you today. But, really, how would I ask?"
"I dunno, either talk to one of his priests, find a way to the realm of the gods, maybe call in favors with someone that can talk to gods directly."
"A vampire walking into a church seems a rubbish idea."
"Oh, these new Christians aren't that bad. They don't automatically assume your type are evil, and even if they did, the whole forgiveness and kindness thing their deity preaches would give you enough time to start running. Can't guide you to repent if they drive a stake in your heart."
"Good for them, a stake would just piss me off. You think one of the priests would really answer?"
"Maybe, but the real question is if Jesus would give them an answer, or if they'd just give you the soft sell and sucker you in."
"You really think it's a good idea?"
"I'm a demonic creature, I think eating people is a good idea. This just seems entertaining."
Apologies to any brits scrolling through.
"Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."
"Is this where I say 'shut up'? Not that I expected any useful questions from The Sun, but throwing a random quote at me in lieu of one seems a bit beneath even your standards, Mr Boylen."
"Well, you do have the sword, yes?"
"I do. It being a rather antiquated item, and quite illegal to just stroll about with, no matter the dangers of rabid tabloid reporters, it stays stored safely. I believe that is all the questions I'll accept from you, sir."
"Come now 'King Arthur', I'm just the only one willing to ask the real questions that everyone is thinking. You can't expect us to just swallow this whole thing blind."
"I see you didn't ask anything. And it's Arthur King; I am not royalty in any real sense, and my father's name is not to be dismissed. Anyone else want to have a go? Yes, Ms Clayton."
"Well, Mr King, my question is related. You're seeking a seat in the house of commons. Isn't that... common when you used to be King Arthur, and bear a rather lovely magic sword that by all known information ties you to the land in a way that makes you more than a king?"
"I don't believe so, no. Excalibur does give me great authority in many ways. It most assuredly gives me some power as protector of Great Britain. By extension, some degree of power to also protect the full UK exists, though I am still not certain exactly how or why the old me's realm extended to cover lands quite beyond what he ruled then. My magical advisor has some ideas.
Ms Falcon, care to chime in?"
"NI!"
"Quite good then. Please, ladies and gentlemen, I am pressed for time, so restrain your laughter somewhat."
"If I may have a follow-up then; why not just take power? Reclaim the throne?"
"Because it isn't bloody well my throne to take. Don't forget, until I nearly drowned in Dozmary Pool, I was just Arthur King, a rather humorously named birdwatcher on holiday from his job in an accountancy firm. The sword woke my previous life, but it did not make me him. It also woke several of his associates, those currently incarnated in any case; like my magical advisor here.
This nation is not the kingdom I once ruled and loved. It is an entirely new thing. As am I, I suppose, since I am often unsure where King Arthur ends and Arthur King begins. But one thing I am certain of is that to lead this nation and protect it from the storms coming, attempting to seize power would make that impossible.
No, if we are to survive the coming war, then any position of leadership I have must have, as Mr Boylen so kindly reminded us, the mandate of the masses. Here and now that means a place in the house of commons. A place that I hope to win properly, not by the fact of having a fancy sword.
Next question please."
"Todd Barrett, International Press Association. What happens if you don't win? Then, do you take power by force?"
"Absolutely not. If I don't win, well I shall have to find some other way to defend this land. I suspect that will be with the fancy sword, even if it means my death trying to cleave a magic missile in twain. After all, the fancy magical sword isn't some all powerful artifact. Just damnably difficult to damage and with a degree of that protection extending to its rightful bearer. It certainly didn't save the old me, and i understand that Morgana's forces have vast numbers and a great deal of power of their own.
No, if the people do not wish me to lead, then I shall fight for them anyway; alone if need be."
Yeah, it's kinda vague. I need to redo it.
The concept was that the entire time "Dean" was involved, there were people already there, hidden from him that were using Alvin for bad things, and Alvin made the neighbors have erotic dreams specifically so that the Authority would catch it and investigate.
So Dean screwed up, and left thinking it was an easy case.
It was supposed to hint at a darker world behind the cheery and light one, sort of a subversion. Don't know that it worked as written.
Okay; tie straight. Badge in clear view. Laminate on left pocket. Cuffs in pouch. Lance sheathed loose. Here we go, Dean, first official action. Do I knock? Or ring the bell? Damn, knock it is, I guess.
Thudding footsteps and muted cursing came closer to the door before it was jerked open. "What!?"
"Are you mister Alvin B Pebble?"
"I don't know nothing about nothing. Name's Schultz, call me sarge, then leave."
Great, a smartass. And he's going to try and shut the door.
"Mr Pebble, or Sergeant Schultz, if you really want to stick with a reference that old. I must warn you that if you attempt to flee, I have the authority to turn this very pleasant visit into an arrest. Could you not have this end up with you on the ground screaming? It gives me a horrible headache."
"What do you want, psycop?"
"To speak to mister Alvin B Pebble regarding a violation of telepathic protocols. If you are he, then let's have a chat. If it isn't you, then if you could introduce me to him, that would be lovely."
"Shit. What did he do?"
"I'm afraid that's a private matter until and unless he, or my superiors, give me permission to disclose. Are you his parent?"
"No. Brother. He's in the back. But look, he's a good guy. I know he didn't to anything too bad, because he wouldn't. So don't try and jam him up. I'm calling our lawyer on the way back."
"Perfectly fine, sir. Always nice to have assistance staying fully compliant with someone's rights." Yeah, "always". Like I've done this a hundred times.
"Schultz" led the way through a nice, but slightly disordered home, past a kitchen resplendent with the scent of cinnamon and eyebright. Someone was trying to boost their signal the old fashioned way. That may be what got me sent here. Some baby espers lose control a little when they experiment.
The nice gentleman knocked on a door, behind which was a soft, almost indiscernible song playing. Tickled my ear, and my pineal gland. Yeah, definitely someone that is new trying to get a feel for things. Aural jazz is the gentlest way to open up one's chakras, particularly the third eye.
The music stopped, and a moment later the door opened, "What's... Oh! Ah, hi. I messed up didn't I?"
I looked to Schultzie, "If you could give us some space while you contact your attorney of preference, it would be very helpful. May I come in your room, Alvin? You are Alvin B Pebble, yes?"
"I, uh, yeah, yeah, that's me. C'mon in I guess."
The room was much as you might expect for a young man cohabitating with a brother. Sparsely furnished, but with hobby paraphernalia. Some gaming gear, a small music player, and bed strewn with crystals, bags of herbs, and what looked like a spool of silver wire. Could have been silver coated, or just a different metal, but beginners almost always spring for real silver.
"Do you know why I'm here today, sir?"
"Sir. Heh. Yeah, maybe. I think I messed up and spread some dreams. They were, uh, kinda racy."
"More correctly, you almost spread a wet dream across five blocks. The almost was because I was on duty, and managed to damp you enough that nobody other than me, and your neighbors across the street got hit by it."
"Oh no! Are the Sullivans okay!?"
"That would be one way of putting it, yes. I checked on them first, and they are both safe and unaware of the external source of the dreams.
Alvin. Or do you prefer some other name?"
"Alvin, Al, even Brenner are fine."
"So, you seem very calm about this visit. I take it that means you know what Telepathic Mitigation Authority actually does?"
"Well, yeah. As soon as I first started hearing thoughts, I looked into it, read up on the rules, best practices and such. You guys get called cops, psycops, but it's more like psychic firemen, only you try to keep fires from starting in the first place."
"That is a lovely way of putting it, Alvin. Yes. I am your fire extinguisher in this case. Like you, I am a telepath. Unlike you, I am also a psy tracer, to use the colloquial term. I am sensitive to other psychics, can both detect them when active and when inactive. Hence why I do this job. Oh, regular telepaths can do this part fine, and can mitigate active breaches of protocol as well or better. But a tracer can often get to the offending person faster, and truly mitigate rather than clean up a mess, or worse."
"I'm sorry to put you through this trouble."
"I'm just glad this has all gone quite well. You never know what kind of reception you'll get.
So, tonight, I'll be putting a blinker on you. Tomorrow, you come down to the office on Divisadero, we pull it out and get you some second stage discipline practice in so this doesn't happen again."
"Blinker?"
"Sorry, jargon. A telepathic limiter. Only lets you peek out, but not send. It gets called a blinker because when it takes effect, the recipient blinks heavily for a few minutes. Nothing dangerous at all, I had multiple done during training. It feels a tad restrictive around the third eye and crown chakras, but doesn't interfere in their normal function. Certainly not enough to keep you from sleeping. It never did me, or anyone else in class."
"Oh. I guess that's fine."
"Well, here comes the unpleasant part of things. I have to remind you that if you attempt to bypass it, you will be committing a felony. And, should you succeed, summary judgement is made by the fact of success, and you will be arrested, then psychically neutered. We all make mistakes, it takes time to learn. That's why the Authority exists. As long as you follow the program, you'll be able to pass your independent telepath rating test in a few weeks, no problems, and we won't see each other again unless we happen to share a cab."
"Yeah. I can do that."
Seems like he will, too. No signs of deceit, no surges or buggery. It's really nice to get a simple case my first night out "See you tomorrow, Alvin."
"Yeah, see you as soon as the office opens."
"Well, Alvin, you tried. Can't say I blame you, but we warned you what would happen if you messed with us. Could have been just fine. Now your brother is dead, and you will be too. Shouldn't have snuck under our shield like that. We barely covered it all. Lucky the agent was a noob, or he'd be dead too."
I do have a couple more ideas. They're kinda bubbling beneath the surface, waiting for the right time and headspace to work out.
It's enough to give a decent ending to it at least, with some bits in between.
Well, Finale thought that by eliminating predictably that he could bypass Eternus' power. But he was so completely wrong about the power that, until he used a drug to up the stakes, Eternus was essentially yawning at him.
The "boost" gave Finale a random power boost. There's been things like that in comics a good bit, and to interesting effect, so I figured that somebody would eventually try something like that.
The power he got out of it was a time slowing ability.
That bubble of almost frozen time meant that Eternus couldn't actually recycle. Not until that bubble was gone. But because the inside was its own reality to an extent, every attempt to kill him just spawned a "new" him. Basically, every variation of him recycled at once, and at the instant the bubble started. Once started, the process went off the rails and possible versions of him were cycled in. One for every variant where Finale killed one of him, even if it didn't actually happen.
At least, that's where my head was going while I tried to wrangle what I was seeing in my head onto the screen. Sometimes the process of writing is work, craft, where I build words out of an idea and shape them into a story.
Then there's this kind of thing where an idea sorta takes over, and I'm getting flashes of things, images or bits of action. This kind can go off the rails because I'm usually struggling to get it out of my head before I lose the whole thing. It's like when you wake from an intense dream that's fading with every blink, and you want to remember it, but if you don't get it written down or told in time, it just fades into nothing.
I hope that's less confusing than it feels lol
I meet a lot of strange folks in my line of work. When you're a journeyman healer, part of your training is a rotation in home health. You go around to the old folks, the hospice patients, people recovering from injuries, and you do the basics.
You'd think that healing magic would have supplanted most medical practice. After all, it is a cure for damn near everything. And the things it can't cure it's really good at helping be bearable. But that "damn near" covers a lot of ground, and Healing isn't easy.
It's possibly the most demanding form of magic for the practitioner. Unlike what elementalists or necromancers or whatever do, the majority of the energy used has to come from yourself, and the person being Healed. Typical magic, you pull up maybe ten percent of your total wellsource for the average high end spell, if you've a good bit of juice to begin with.
A Healer? The master Healers that can do things like genetic repair, they'll use their entire wellsource on one treatment. Cancer eradication can drain your tanks enough that you might be able to swing two or three patients a day.
Journeymen like me end up doing the stuff that's less intensive energetically, but we do a lot of it each day. At my level of training, I can't permanently cure arthritis (which is a very difficult procedure that's actually harder in some ways than a cancer), but I can give a person a week or two of improved movement and reduced or zero pain while they wait for a Master specialist.
That's how I met Millie. She's a crusty old bag. That's not me insulting her, that's how she introduced herself.
"You're the new flunky? I'm Millie, the crusty old bag you're here to keep the crust from turning lethal."
"I didn't know being crusty could kill you."
"Oh, it ain't me it would kill."
That's Millie, summed up in the first few seconds of meeting her. She's in her late sixties, and was a kid during the God Wars. She grew up seeing mountains crumble, the seas boil, and miracles be thrown around like candy. But don't ask her about the God Wars. If you want to keep her crust off of you, it might be wise to not use the term god at all. You might get by with calling them deities, and calling the Wars just that, though she sometimes balks at deity as well.
See, Millie is an atheist. No, not a non worshipper, those are a dime a dozen. An actual atheist. She doesn't believe the gods are real. Oh, she recognises that something did all those horrors during the Wars. And she freely admits that they fill the role of what gods are supposed to be doing.
She just thinks they're a shared hallucination of sorts.
"Glen, right this second, you're channeling your juice into me, strengthening cartilage, scaling back inflammation and selectively tuning my immune system. That's fuckin' magic. You. A human. A regular asshole."
"I'm not a regular asshole, Ms Millie."
"Bull tits you ain't. You're as regular an asshole as anyone. And that's my point. They's what? Four billion of us on this rock?"
"Yes'm, about that, though we're supposedly getting closer to five."
"Well, there you go. Magic came back hard and fast, like my third husband.
You ain't gonna ask about that?"
"No ma'am, you already told me about Lawrence. Big ol' tallywhacker and he could work magic with his hips."
"That's the one! Damn shame healers weren't as established then, I do miss his tallywhacker.
You ain't gonna ask about that?"
"No ma'am, I know that's all you miss about him. He was the one that couldn't keep it to him and your self."
"That's the one!
You see my point though?"
"Lawrence's johnson was god?"
"Smartass. No, magic. It came back first. If the gods were real, why'd they go away in the first place, and why'd they not come back before magic?"
"I'm not a metaphysicist ma'am, I just tune up crusty old bags."
"Well, you oughta think about it. It tells you more about how magic really works than a fancy certificate and being called Master Healer ever will."
"The pay would probably be better too."
"Pssht, ain't no such thing as fair pay. Capitalism sees to that.
Shush and listen boyo.
Magic ain't some kind of woowoo bullshit any more. It's real, I can feel it plumping up my cartilage."
"That's not exactly..."
"I said shush, boy! Magic is just as real as gravity. Shush! Don't you lecture me on inverse cubes and thaums per unit of vaccuum! I'm talking important shit here! Damn over educated whelp!
No, magic is right part of everything. It's like sand in your cooch at the beach. It gets in and it's there to stay. So you might as well just get nekkid and have fun."
"Okay, but what does that have to do with gods?"
"Everything! If we ain't doin' somethin' with it, magic just sits there like gravity or the electromagnetic force.
Gods ain't nothin' but our wet dreams gone wrong."
"Well, Aphrodite is rather dreamy."
"Pull your dick outta your ear and listen, boy.
Humans dream big. We always have, look at all the shit we got that goes back at least thousands of years. Myths and legends, that's what sets us apart from the rest of the animals."
"And animals don't have gods."
"Now you're usin' that brain for somethin' other than a spank bank!
That's exactly right, they ain't got gods. Them assholes in philosophy like to debate about why animals can have souls, but don't always, but everybody knows they don't have gods.
That's cause they ain't got imagination neither. And what's the first rule of magic?"
"Ahhhh, are you talking about Crowley again?"
"Weren't his idea, he just parroted it. And no, I ain't talking about them thelma-ites. I ever tell you about my old hemorrhoid Thelma?"
"You name your hemorrhoids? I can take care of those, by the way."
"No, she was a human. My neighbor, round about thirty years ago. She was a pain in my ass, Glen. Try to keep up."
"You never told me about her, no."
"Oh boy, do I got stories! But that's for later.
Them thelma-ites.. Shush! I know it's Thelema, let a woman have her fun, dammit.
But they have their little "do what thou wilt" thing, with all its corollaries. But them ain't what I'm talking about.
No. The first rule of magic is: magic is the process of altering the universe by harnessing will and thought.
You can't magic completely by accident. There's always a kernel of will behind it. S'why young'ns can sometimes do really scary shit, but cain't repeat it. They want something really bad, and their will shapes the universe. They just ain't trained their will like you have."
"I think I'm starting to see what you're saying."
"Good! Means you ain't hopeless after all! You might even get laid some day!
Shush! I ain't done!
Magic comes back like my Lawrence after a third go-round, hard and fast, but sloppy.
People were like kids. No focus, no training, no way to control their new access to a fundamental force of the universe. And what kind of shit is in human heads?"
"In your case..."
"Shush boy! That were rhetorical!
Myths and legends. That's the shit in our heads. Ain't no surprise a bunch of damn hippies manifested Gaea as the first deific entity. All of them whacked out of their heads, tripping balls on acid and weed, their collective imagination channeling their will go something they thought of as better.
That's why I'm an atheist. Well, that and pure-t stubbornness. I ain't about to believe in any Johnny-come-lately shit like some of them gods. Cthulhu weren't ever a god to begin with! And here he is ruling the ocean deeps and nightmares! Now, how can you think any of the rest are real when Cthulhu is right there among them!?"
"Okay, you've got a point there for sure. But does it matter, if they do the job of gods, and have the power of gods?"
"Of course it fuckin' matters boy! You cain't give them fuckers one more bit of will and power than they already have, or we'll never see the ass end of 'em!
And they can all fuck right back off into the collective unconsciousness, the way they fucked this whole world up when we gave 'em a door into reality."
"Yeah, the Wars sucked. Even the good ones struggled to keep it from being worse."
"Ain't no "Good Ones", Glen. They're all the same one. They're all us. And that's bad enough, Glen, that's bad enough."
I could hear the thumping up the steps again. Fucking Bob, at it again. He was grunting and scrabbling at the pet door to the back entry.
"Mffggin tng wnt fggn ft"
"What?"
"Mffggin tng wnt fggn ft"
"I still can't understand you." Cats.
Bob spat a little, followed by a thick and meaty series of thwaps as what I assumed was another head made its cadaverous journey back to the yard.
"Got dammit, I said the motherfuckin' thang won't fuckin' fit. Ain't you got ears?"
"Bob, watch your shit. I have a double barrel loaded with blessed rock salt and a vial of holy water."
"Ay man, you ain't gonna do shit, and you know it. Come git this damn head out the yard. Damn monkeys and your posable thumbs gotta be good for that at least."
"It's opposable, jackass."
"Your mom's opposable on my cock."
"Blessed rock salt, Bob."
"Yeah, yeah, you and my ass, both spreading shit. Are you gettin' this head or what?"
I sighed and gave a light kick to his ass on my way past, getting a hiss and a flick of claws to my pants hem in return. He knows I'm not going to off him, and I know he's not really going to do a damn thing that might scratch me, but we like to keep our boundaries intact.
I opened the door to see a well chewed face looking up at me, one eye apparently sucked out, or otherwise missing. Whoever she'd been before Bob got ahold of her, she didn't deserve to just lay in my yard among the leaves and windblown detritus of an abandoned neighborhood.
I pulled on some nitrile gloves and snagged the head, tucking it into a grocery bag on my way back in.
"Good job, monkey boy."
"Fuck you, Bob."
Bob sat there, sullen; smelling of corpse, sulphur, blood and a hint of musk. The red glow of his eyes was the least horrible thing about him. Him being more of a courtesy since he prefers those pronouns, but Bob didn't have a cock for my mom to ride, or balls to go without it. Infernals can have genitals, but nothing as lowly as a rabishu ever bothers beyond a vague outline unless you order them to. Their appetites aren't particularly sexual anyway.
For being not much bigger than an unusually large Maine coon, he packed a sense of density that he swung like some greater demons do swing cock. Rabishu can have presence, in the mystical sense, despite being fairly limited in power. Bob has plenty of presence to go with his massive smell. He claims it's a sign of status and power among his kind, that only the really potent rabishu stink. I don't have enough dealings with them to disagree. But he can turn it off, or at least down beyond where I can smell it.
And he has to if he wants to sleep on the pillow in bed.
"What's up with this one?"
"She's got a worm in her."
"Oh, fuck me, Bob, really?"
"Yeah man, I ain't yankin' your chain. Should be just about ripe too."
"Let's work then!"
See, me and Bob don't live in this hellscape of a neighborhood because we have to. It's all about the profit. The portal that makes this place unlivable without some serious defenses and power also brings in some extremely rare things. Cranium worms aren't the rarest, but they are both dangerous and ephemeral. They fight when you try to pull them out, and their psychic scream is a bitch.
Back when things got crazy in the eighties magic was flying around, gods fighting everywhere, and things nobody knows what they were would wreak havoc. That last happened here in a fairly small town; Byford West Virginia. Some kind of interdimensional gate popped up and nobody has ever managed to get rid of it. It's a ghost town now, and mostly contained. But you can slip in, and out. The neighborhood closest to the hot zone sees the most activity, hence us living in this deteriorating single family home.
If you don't mind the risk, some of the stuff that creeps through can be sold or traded for very large profit. But, as the cranium worms prove, it isn't exactly for the weak.
Me and Bob came here and set up shop maybe a year ago. Plan is to bust our asses for a few years, then retire. Less if we get a big score. There aren't many big scores, they're mostly like the cranium worms, you get a bunch of little scores that are still enough to cover expenses and some decent profit.
Cranium worms aren't the only invading brain. . . thing that comes through. I guess there's a lot of shit out in the greater cosmos that likes hijacking or eating brains, because that's what usually kills off people like me, scavengers. That's why I won't actually shoot Bob, he doesn't have a brain at all, or the other organs that some of the parasitic invaders like to infest.
Him? I inherited. My aunt was a big-time spirit summoner back in the god wars. Had dozens of infernals and a handful of other spirits or entities under one pact or another. Bob was her favorite and I was no so much her favorite nephew, as the only person in the family that would visit at all. I still haven't gotten an answer as to why he has a southern accent.
"A'ight, I'll fetch the kit, you use those fancy thumbs to set up in the lab."
We got to work. I got to work. Bob, as previously mentioned, lacks the opposable digit to use tools well. Not that he won't try to stab things with his favorite switchblade anyway. Slice through the skin above the pineal gland, bone saw almost through the skull. Then, hammer time.
I looked to Bob as I raised the mallet to pop the skull open. Enchanted or not, the stun it puts out isn't impossible to resist, and he's not going to get infested by catching the damn things. As soon as I drove the hammer down, the shriek started.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee. . .e
I do love this hammer. Before I finished it, the little fuckers would scream all the way into the containment jars. One more to crate up for delivery at the end of the week.
"Did you check the body for ID or anything?"
"Nah man, I don't give a fuck."
"Cats are assholes. Where is it?"
"Three blocks east. I think she was scouting for a livable spot. Had cases and luggage in a wagon nearby at least."
"Great. That means one of the feds will end up knocking on our door again. Let's head over and save some hassle, pick her stuff up, lay a preserving charm on the body and drag it into the stop n rob with the other two."
"Aw hell, I don't wanna go back out, there's some kitty porn with my name on it."
"Just get your ass ready, Bob."
With that, we were off into the night.
That's what I got. Hope it isn't too disappointing that it cuts off, but the brain fire petered out. But feline rabishu are obstreperous.
I have an ongoing short story collection I intend to eventually call a finished thing and put up on Amazon and the other sites. Most likely, this will be like my other multi-chapter short stories and end up at novella length or shorter, so I think that's where it'll get put long term.
My brain is telling me there's three more shorts in there, plus maybe a few very small scenes to tie things into a package.
I keep editing and piddling with the short story collection and every time I have a couple more to add in lol. The epub has been getting bigger for a couple of years now.
Glad you enjoyed :)
The original heroes fall is too long to repost in one comment.
But the link is https://lemmy.world/comment/16264684
The writingprompts c/ on .world got shuttered in favor of this one, and I switched to this account as well, so not everything is in this account history.
The scene with Tobias has two vampires and Tobias' demon, a canine looking rabishu (a type of spirit with real world mythology, but very different from the fictional version used by me).
That is what he means. If he can't keep her, he doesn't care about the rest of the universe. He'll take whatever they can manage to have until...
It may help to know that the origin of the character was from a previous prompt about a "groundhog day" superhero. I'll copy in the story as a separate response here.
But, originally, he led a fairly linear life. The backward skips were bad, but he didn't lose much. He gained because he could undo the bad.
But then he went waaaay back. And he's been bouncing back and forth through the same span of time ever since.
He had gotten inured to death. He accepted that he was just gloomy to keep going, seeing the death, but apart from it because the only thing that mattered was fixing those deaths.
And then he met her. And his entire universe shifted. He's seen her die. At least once, likely more. That's breaking him. That's shifting his goal from saving the world to just not losing her.
Which is probably a bit spoilerish, but the whole thing is burning in my brain currently, so it needs out
Don't know if you're interested, but I had another scene work it's way out of my head, and posted it here as a second comment
So, a scene popped into my head. One of a handful. I'm not sure how they'll come out, if they ever do, but I reckon that it might be welcome here rather than waiting for a different prompt, or trying to get everything in one place before it does come out.
First draft status, and I'm not sure if the end bit works or not, so it might stand change if I manage to get more out of me.
Heroes Fall, third short.
"Baby, come to bed. It's three in the morning."
"Can't. Don't wanna do it again."
"I wasn't going to jump your bones. C'mon, you've got a ton of ammo already. It'll be enough."
"You still make me laugh, Ms Kincaid. I want spares to give to the national guard this time. Last time, five of them were pinned down and got taken out by Devastation. I gotta try loading them up. They're the only ones that died last pass."
"Shush. You only call me Ms Kincaid when you're feeling nostalgic. How many more do you need?"
"I'm always nostalgic for you. It took a hundred rounds to knock him out last time. Would be easier if I could just kill him. Wanna give them double that."
"Move over 'Eternus', let me help. I'll load powder, you finish, okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's okay love. Thanks Ev."
"You know, one of these days I'm going to retire from the network and turn full time reloader. Any chance we'll be able to get to my parents' this weekend? I want to tell them the news."
"Not sure. I only took a short break after the last run. Two days, then I ate lead salad and came back. But I think things were clear enough that the team didn't need me on the origin cycle. Worst case, it takes me a few weeks to handle whatever might come up and then I'll be able to free it up."
"Have you thought more about the pills?"
"Yeah, a little. Was pondering on it while I was working. I've gotten better control over how far I go back each time. Origin cycle, it was always that same day, or the night before, no more than twenty four hours though. After I cycled back when the Kitain killed me, it was all over the place. Weeks, months, a year in one case. I'm just worried that a suicide pill might fuck things up.
I've been poisoned a few thousand times, and Rabid sure loved to add toxins to his disease aura. Always came through fine But if anything fucks my memory, I don't know what might happen. Maybe voluntary changes things. Can't risk that."
"Donald, you say you blow your brains out often enough that I can't get the image out of my head despite never seeing it."
"Sorry Ev."
"That's not my point. Shush. If your actual brain being shredded doesn't screw your memory, why would a cocktail of gentler things?"
"I don't know. Most of my deaths are sudden, fast. The ones that haven't been were at least with me conscious right until the end. Every cocktail you and the doc have suggested includes something to knock me out, and they're slow so it doesn't hurt. What if that fucks things up? What if I've already tried it, and I'm on a permanent loop that I can't fix unless I don't take them? What if. What if. That should be my fucking call name."
"I wish..."
"Yeah, love?"
"I just wish it was easier. Better. Different."
"I'm used to it now, if I'm being honest. There's times I think about doing repeats for the good things."
"Maybe you should."
"Nah. Don't want to spoil them. Our first date. I had to repeat that once, and I was terrified I'd fuck it up. Trying to navigate the little things that make us us? What if I fucked it up and you hated me?"
"Oh, Don, baby, I'll always love you. I always will have loved you. Whatever it is that makes you recycle, it wouldn't dare try to steal that from us. It would be too cruel."
"I love you Evelyn. More than I love anything in this whole fucking universe. I'd let it all fucking burn for one night with you. Let's get some sleep."
I'll let it all fucking burn if the Kitain take her again. Take her and just run.
Thanks :)
I never thought I would dip back into that world again, mainly because the first trip was so specialized. But this prompt made my brain flash hard, and I had to.
And now I've got this idea bubbling around with five others I never get around to expanding lol.
"Nobody gets it. The time, the money, the research that goes into it. That's before the range time, of course.
You see, if you are running into the kind of conflicts our team gets into with no combat powers, and you want to make it long enough to swing the fight, you need something.
Most of the time, I favor a heavily modified .45. My main handgun started life as a Colt, standard seven round magazine, nothing fancy. I inherited it from my grandfather. He was a Naval officer and did competition shooting both for the Navy and as civilian once he retired, and this was his carry, rather than a competition gun.
At first, I just polished everything to make it feed smoother. Then I started tweaking until it's this monster that can take very high powder loads while still cycling with subsonic rounds for poo and giggles. The magazines I make for it hold fourteen, though I had to expand the frame and if a mag gets trashed, it takes a couple of days to replace.
But that's my "oh crap, I gotta run" gun. I keep it on me 24/7 because I never know when the alarm will go off, and Shift has been known to pull people out of bed into the briefing room, or even into the field.
I have the usual assortment of versatile long guns too, plus a modified revolver that can take an assortment of calibers because of some springs and careful machining. I favor 5.56, 12 gauge, .308 and 300 winmag because they're easy to find if I run out of my custom ammo. There's better options, of course, but I can think of a dozen times in the last decade where I had to buy from local stores during extended fights.
But it's the ammo that makes me effective in normal fights. Between knowing some top notch molecular manipulators and inventors, added to my willingness to experiment with propellant and materials, I can usually keep a few magazines in every caliber for common threats.
Like my Ragnarok stuff. All of those villains take unusual gear to even scratch. Nuke can be taken down by depleted uranium in a pinch, but he regenerates so fast, and can use them in his own way to power up his explosive nature. So I have a custom round just for him. Can't share the specs, but it's a laminated round, layers of different materials including some enchanted metals. As the round does its job, it neutralizes parts of his powers.
Back before we had to permanently put Rabid down, I had an exploding round that spread nanobots to counter his infectious range enough to get close and secure him. He hated me something fierce. Not just because I shot him a lot. The nanobots left him weak and confused for weeks after he'd heal up physically.
It's mostly about prep time."
"But, Eternus, the question was how you can survive so well without powers, but let's table that for now. You said no combat powers, does that mean you do have them? What can you do?"
"Well, Ms Kincaid, that's classified. All I can say is that it allows me to have prep time and room to develop both my gear and skills"
"So, time manipulation?"
"That's classified"
"Classified by who?"
"That's classified."
"Eternus, you agreed to this interview, why won't you answer the actual questions?"
"That's classified.
No, contain yourself. That one was a joke. I am answering them. Where operational security allows. But I'm a person. I don't necessarily answer things the way you want because I largely go with the flow of consciousness. I also don't have an obligation to answer things I don't want to. If you ask me boxers or briefs, I'm walking out because it's none of your business, nor anyone else's.
But here, the way I survive without combat powers is trusting my team, and them trusting me to not shoot until I'm certain it will achieve a goal. I only shoot a person if there's no other choice, even with less lethal ammunition. I only shoot animals, or any living thing, as a last resort. I have no issues dumping rounds into machinery, spirits, or other non living, non human entities that are a threat to humanity.
But when I need to shoot? I don't miss, and I use the right tool for the job. Which loops us back around to where this particular subject started. Time, money, research, practice. That's how I do it."
"That is still evasive. What people want to know is how you do it, and now that we know you have some kind of power, they will want to know that too."
"Ms Kincaid. After everything I just said, including that the information is classified, do you really think I chose to say it that way by accident? A slip of the tongue? No, ma'am, it's ammunition being sent to a target. You're the rifle. The information that I do have a non combat power, and that I am a fantastic marksman is the ammunition that will neutralize a target.
This is my first interview, ever. You, of the entire list of journalists that have requested one, got picked because you are the right weapon for the job. So, if you'll be kind enough to help me off with this microphone, I'll be on my way.
Unless you need to be oiled and cleaned."
"Key-rist Eternus, did you really need to add that last part?"
"Well, yeah, General. It wasn't an accident. That was the sixtieth version of things, and I needed something to snap her out of her laser focus on my power. That it also bumped her anger a little, and worked as a pickup line just helps make sure things work this time around. Maybe. I'll have to see.
All I know is that we need to recruit Generator instead of fighting her. Can't do that if her sister gets killed. Can't keep her alive if she doesn't trust me. She hasn't trusted me because she thinks I can't protect her.
So far, even telling her everything hasn't worked. The closest I got was when I lost my temper after the fifth run through and she tore into me after the camera was off, but cooled down enough after an apology to at least listen when I showed up at her door with the usual "come with me if you want to live" bullshit that Streak hates.
So I called an audible. And I think it worked, Max. After the mic was off and I was leaving, her approach was totally different this time. More open, less aggressive. She just asked what I meant by it. I told her "That's classified" and she laughed. I haven't gotten a laugh out of her in, what; a hundred years of subjective time?"
"Eternus, this plan of yours, stopping the Kitain, how many times have you come back? I know I've asked before, but this is the first you mentioned how long you've been at this one step, and you've never even said that much before."
"I don't know. Max, I just don't know. I'm barely hanging on here. Trying to keep track of every fight, every little encounter, pinning down that Generator is the only one that can let future us make the next step. Fuck Max, I think it's maybe a thousand years now? Maybe more. Back and fucking forth, eating a damn bullet every year or two, having to redo every fucking fight, sometimes multiple times to get a different outcome than my first cycle back to see if that works?
I can't even write the shit down because it won't come with me. And I think I love her now."
"Eternus, let it out man, let it out, I got you brother, just cry it out."
I'm fine either way, though a warning to folks that not all apps support piefed would not go amiss if you decide to do the swap
Thanks a lot :)
Alright. This isn't exactly a proper response to the prompt, but it's either a partial step to one, and/or a way of saying that the answer isn't easy to get, so nobody really knows in that universe. I'm pondering on this being a part one or the totality of it.
"C'mon Rover, there's gotta be more, mate!"
"I still think he was fucking with you."
"You said you were there!"
"No, I said I was an ancient evil that was around when you jumped up monkeys left your planet."
"Doesn't that imply that you were there later too?"
"I wasn't bloody everywhere. You think a shadowy, sulfurous scented demon would be able to just hang around while a crowd watched some guys getting crucified?"
"Not now that you say it, but I'm used to you now."
"Awww, that's sweet! Can I get some belly rubs? Maybe some behind the ear action?"
"You're a bloody menace. If you get horny again, I'm out though, and you'll bloody well spill while I do it."
"Ahhh, yeah! That's the spot!
Tobias mate, you are a product of a culture that lacks the frame of reference for a lot of things. You don't even properly understand what I am, and you're petting me. You need to realize that things were different then. Magic was broken and had been fading for a long time, and by the time Jesus came around, only the most powerful of you generally magically weak apes could even weave a minor illusion, much less open a passage into the planes for something like me.
I wasn't here at that point in time, I was caught up in all the changes and wars that started when magic broke. When you damned monkeys got too big for your britches and did the breaking, rather. I didn't even look like this before! The point I'm making is that the actions of one of you spreading a cult that didn't try to call on my type of thing wasn't important. We only got third and fourth hand rumors.
The whole Jesus thing is like that. By the time I even heard the name Jesus, he'd been dead for a long time. So I don't really know if any of the biblical rigamarole is accurate, or if it was that Jesus was anything other than a really strong magic user pulling off a trick to make people think he was dead after his cult got too much attention."
"What were the rumors then?"
"There weren't many at the time. The only thing I heard was that some obscure god was trying to set itself up to last through the weakened magic by getting everyone too pray to it, playing a long game. You'd have to ask Yahweh if that was actually him or not, I sure don't know.
Hey, do the other ear, yeah?"
"If you don't get to the point, I'm gonna have you neutered!"
"I don't have balls you jackass, I'm a demon. I only look like I have balls because the spiritual matter of me is shaped by the minds of man.
Anyway, the rumor was that this Joshua, or jesu, or yeshua, or whatever variant would get used had been recruited by a god to start a new religion, and hoover up many followers as possible. That the guy did a decent job of it, and had his followers convinced he was demigod or some such. The whole resurrection thing was not a new idea in that regard. Reborn godlings and demigods were a dime a dozen before magic broke and the gods drifted away.
So, yeah, maybe he could have been a vampire. Or he could have been a good faker. Why don't you ask him?"
"How the bloody hell would I do that?"
"He's right behind you."
"What?!
Oh, you fucker. No more scritches for you today. But, really, how would I ask?"
"I dunno, either talk to one of his priests, find a way to the realm of the gods, maybe call in favors with someone that can talk to gods directly."
"A vampire walking into a church seems a rubbish idea."
"Oh, these new Christians aren't that bad. They don't automatically assume your type are evil, and even if they did, the whole forgiveness and kindness thing their deity preaches would give you enough time to start running. Can't guide you to repent if they drive a stake in your heart."
"Good for them, a stake would just piss me off. You think one of the priests would really answer?"
"Maybe, but the real question is if Jesus would give them an answer, or if they'd just give you the soft sell and sucker you in."
"You really think it's a good idea?"
"I'm a demonic creature, I think eating people is a good idea. This just seems entertaining."
"Fuck it then, let's off!"