Chapter 1: Intro
Start up sequence: mode reboot
Question would you like to start up in safe mode? [Y/N]
[N]
Loading last memory files…
Run Stop_Memory_File_Execution.exe
Reason?...
Last memory files are too painful
Next course of action?
Very funny brain, can we stop this now?
As you wish. So let us find out where we are now.
What are you talking about? We are in our stupid ass wrecked apartment in the god damned city that hates us and is run by the criminal underground. We have next to no money left and no friends or family left to turn to. Damn it I hate this place so much. What is the point of fighting it anymore. I should just-
WILL YOU SHUT UP WITH THE BITCHING AND MOANING AND OPEN OUR GODDAMN EYES ALREADY!!!
As you open your eyes, what you see doesn’t make any sense to you. Instead of being in the city and inside your wrecked apartment home on the bad side of an even worse town, you find yourself curled up at the base of a tree overlooking a small grassy field in the middle of what looks to be a forest of some kind. The sun is shining and there is a gentle breeze blowing and you can see wild flowers scattered across the landscape before you. It’s their smell that fills your nostrils rather than the normal smell of fresh vomit and stale garbage from the alley next to your room. And rather than the couple upstairs arguing about who cares what and the sounds of early morning traffic, it is the singing of the birds and the buzzing of the bees that makes up the background noise. The total result of this scene is like a reawakening for your down and beaten soul. You take a moment to just stare in wonder, taking it all in.
What…but…how…where…brain where are we?
How the hell should I know? This is what you get for making choices without me. Why don’t you ask blood pumping organ since you seem to value him more than me!
Heart… Why is brain so mad at me? Where are we? What is going on?
Who cares, man? Everything is alright and we are back on the right path, man. Brain just needs to, you know, like chill out man. So Like man,we don’t need to worry because, like man, from here on out everything is going to be like totally groovy, man.
Right, forgot Heart was a hippy. Am I going to get any answers out of the rest of you guys or am I on my own here for now?
Sex drive: you’re on your own here, and don’t bug me unless you see a cutie!
Instinct: ….safe….
Morality: I got nothing, but you know what is right and what is wrong.
Logic: I need more information to go on before I can make a reasonable guess about our surroundings and how we might have endeavored to come to them at this here place in time.
Yep, fat lot of good you all are right now. Ok brain lets have that last memory file.
No.
What?
No, you do not get to see that last memory file, this is what your get for not including me in your life choices.
What why you-
“SNAP”
You shake yourself out of your inner agreement and look around. …. There in the bushes you see it, low and near the ground, a pair of large yellow silted pupils and they looked…hungry.
Danger…Feline….Flight
Don’t Leave Backpack!
Backpack? You glance around and resting on the side of the tree just out of reach is your old boy scout camping backpack. It looks like it has some stuff in it as well. Ok….need a plan here. Large feline cat looks hungry and might want to eat me; I have no clue where I am other than that I am in a forest with no sense of direction and no idea where the nearest safe place is.
When in doubt act like you own the joint, if they think you’re the head boss then that is enough to make you the head boss.
Thanks brain but this is a panther or a tiger or something not a bunch of stupid bounces at a club or a gang on the street.
You have a better idea? Look, grab your pack and pull out Snaxe and then try to walk calmly away. See if we can’t avoid getting into a fight with this thing.
Fine but if I get killed because of this then I am blaming you.
You try to rise calmly to your feet; you even think you manage to do a pretty good job at playing the part, a slight bit of trouble when you first take a knee to push yourself up though. You can feel Snaxe’s comforting weight in your coat pocket. You can feel those eyes watching every movement you make as you raise to your full height of five feet and six inches and in one swift smooth practiced action you pivot on your right heel, bringing your left leg back into defensive position and draw Snaxe out of your pocket, turning to directly face the bush and those eyes.
Quite…you stare directly into those eyes and the stare out at you. This standoff goes on for several moments as you manage to hold eye contact with that feline beast in the bushes, all the while instinct is yelling at you to turn and run as fast as you can and your brain is telling him to shut up.
And then it happens, those damn eyes glance down, turn away, and you can see the rustle of the undergrowth as that predator goes off to look something that won’t put up as much of a fight.
You let out a deep sigh. “Well that was something, looks like this place is not quite so peaceful as it first looks to be. All right let’s see what I decided to pack for myself and then on to figuring out where the hell I am.”
You take a moment to empty out your coat and your backpack onto the ground to see just what you had, and as it turns out it looks like you had all your earthly procession into your backpack or on your person. A depressing statement considering that your backpack was not even half full.
You had two 50 yard coils of rope, a box of orange peanut butter crackers, two changes of clothes, three water bottles and your canteen all full, your meditation mat, a bed roll and blanket, a pocket knife and a Swiss army knife, a flint and steel, a drill bit set and an interchangeable screwdriver, three different sizes of pliers, a small wrench and a large one that you sometimes used in combo with Snaxe, a lighter, your lucky leprechaun hat, two fake snakes that you had used many times over the years to prank people with, a yo-yo, three rolls of duck tape, two- 100 yard rolls of rebar ties, a rain coat, flashlight with a set of batteries, car keys, cell phone (dead of course you never kept the damn thing charged), your wide brimmed hat that you used for hiking, your wallet with 26.53$ in it mostly in ones with a five and a bunch of change, your normal everyday shoes (you where wearing your steel toe work boots currently), a pair of sunglasses, a book on survival from back in your years as a boy scout, your favorite book series of all times Dragon Joust, a first aid kit, and lastly a group picture of all your friends from college.
You stop and stare at the picture for a bit letting the memories of a happier time in your life wash over you. There were not that many people in the picture, including yourself, there were five people. In the picture you saw Tim and Jim hanging off each other with that big stupid grin they both had shared. They had gone off to join the military during college and you never heard from Jim again, Tim had sent you a few texts every now and then. However, you stopped getting messages from him about four years ago and in his the last message you had gotten, he told you that Jim had been KIA.
Right next to you in the picture was your best friend David and you were giving each other a fist bump. David had been your buddy since before you could remember and he was the only constant friend you had as you grew up. You two used to get into so much trouble together from rigging the school intercom system to play Baby Baby anytime someone tried to use it to getting into fights with the local gang of bullies. You two were going to be best friends for life if it had not been for the fact David had been killed in a car crash shortly after you both had graduated from college.
His death had hit you hard since he did not die in the car crash but due to the fact that help had not managed to reach him in time, the emergency response person at the scene had told you that he had passed away just before they had finished using the jaws of life to get the roof of the car off. You had spent the next half a year re-inventing the jaws of life and when success was finally achieved you were able to sell your invention for enough cash to life well on for a while.
The last person in the group and the only female was Amber. You had known her since high school; she was cute with blonde hair and brown eyes, more than willing to kick your ass for you whenever you messed up, and absolutely obsessed with dragons. You had liked her for a while but did not know if you liked LIKED her, however you were content with your friendship and didn’t want to mess that up.
After David’s death and downward inventing spiral into reclusiveness she was one of the few people who bother to make sure you at least saw the light of day on a weekly basis. With your invention complete you were feeling close to her and since you were stable cash wise you thought you would try and take your relationship with her to the next level.
To this day you could still not figure out what had happened next. You went to her house with a box of chocolate and some flowers like you had seen in all the romance movies, knocked on her door and presented her with your gifts and asked her out. Instead of saying yes or no she asked for your phone and when you gave it to her she deleted herself from your contacts list and asked you to go home.
The next day you went to see her and her house had been boarded up and all her stuff was gone. Not knowing what had happened to your friend you chased down every lead you could think of, her family, her friends, the other tenets of her apartment, local gangs, the Police. You had even hired a professional detective to search for her and even he came back with nothing. Everything had been a dead end; it was like she had utterly disappeared from the face of the planet.
Hey, now is not the time to be lost in memories like that. In case you forgot we are in the middle of the woods here and we know there are at least some creatures in here which are big enough to consider us to be something that should go good with an order of fries.
Yah kid, don’t keep pinning after some pair of legs. She made her choice now you had to get over it.
Thank you brain. Thank you sex drive. Anyone else want to point out how I am fucking up right now?
….
No? Ok, good, so which direction should we head in?
….
Prefect, well it is good to see our 11 or so odd years in the boy scouts is being put to such great uses. Ok, first rule find a river and follow it most civilizations cannot exist without a ready source of water and will build near such a source or least manipulate it in some way that we can follow back to civilization.
You pack up most of your belongings into your backpack; however you put Snaxe and your large wrench into your inner coat pockets along with a packet of crackers for a meal later and sling your canteen over round your neck. You heft on your backpack, put on your wide brim hat, and throw on your sunglasses. At this point you stop and stand absolutely still, focusing all of your energy on your ears and even going so far as to close your eyes.
Water, the sound of rushing water is what you were looking for. Slowly turn in place straining your ears for that sound…is that?...yes, yes it is…gotcha. You let a small smile cross your features and open your eyes. How long had it been since even such a small smile could be seen on your face, you wonder. Meh, not the time. You had found running water now it was time to see just how much you had found.
=====================================
Unseen by you as you exit the clearing two sets of eyes slowly turn away and retreat into the forest.
“well Ice, do you think we should tell the boss about this creature?”
Ice, or Ice Chile, a powdery blue Pegasus, put his hoof to his chin in thought. The creature he had seen did not look all that impressive but it had managed to stare down that wild cat. Still compared to the other creatures that the group had been gathering that was not a big deal. It didn’t show any outward signs of special abilities and considering how small it was compared to most of the beasts it would likely end up as a snack for one of them.
“nah, lets leave it GJ, it would likely just get eaten by one of the bosses other pets.” he said to his earth pony partner.
“aww, that’s no fun. I was hoping to watch them tear that thing apart bit by bit,” she whined at him.
“GJ….” Ice said in a warning tone, “ you know that these creature are part of the bosses plans and not for your personal-”
“Ya, ya, I know, I know. Boss has his plans to overthrow bla bla bla.” she had heard this lecture before, most recently after she had put the popping cat in the same cage as the hydra to watch the bloody carnage. “Hey if we hurry maybe we can catch ‘Scout’ and hear the news before he makes it back to the camp.” she says bound off into the forest before her partner can stop her.
“GJ! get back here,” Ice calls out after his partner.
======================================================
(back at the base camp)
“ ‘Scout’ what do you have to report.”
“ Yes sir, it is as you suspected sir. The target is indeed currently living in Ponyville. I also confirmed the presences of one of the secondary targets as well. A miss Twilight Sparkle is currently running the local library.” ‘Scout’ said, careful to never look up from his kneeling position. The last ‘Scout that had done that had been butcher and orders had been left behind to feed the remains to the hydra along with his own promotion.
“Perfect. Have the teams increase the number of captures creatures and to make ready for phase two. That is all, you are dismissed.”
“Yes sir. ALL HAIL BLACK FATHER SIR”
“yes all hail black father.”
Author's Note
it is a bit in the making spelling errors, writers block, life in general, and teacher doing a major homework dump but the first chapter is finally up. just a bit about the character and introducing a villain will get to some real story shortly
Chapter 2: First Contact
You have been walking for what must to be close to two hours and had maybe gone half a mile. The undergrowth in this part of the woods was thick and looked like it had never been touched by man before. In fact, it was so thick in places that you were forced to change directions, but finally it seemed you were getting close. The sound of rushing water was now filling your ears.
“Must be a pretty big set of rapids nearby for the river to be making this much noise.” You say to yourself more to break the dullness then anything. “Looks like my hopes of find civilization right off the bat are not going to happen, not unless I run into some extreme dare devils.”
Before you stands what you guess to be the last wall of vines, the air is positively soaked with water and you can hear the roar of the rushing water just on the other side of these vines.
So rather than try and circle around this wall of vines like you had with so many other obstacles before you decide to pull out Snaxe’s and just hack your way through. With one good swipe the heavy hand axe blade slices through most of the vines. Another chop and a little shoving and your past the wall.
Before you lay the river like you had guessed, it is positively a monster, at least 50 feet wide and man was it violent. Waves all over the place sending spray into the air up to the leaf line, maybe a good 15 ft high and who knows how deep. There was no way you were crossing that river.
As you stand there and watch the river you catch something on the wind. What was it? The noise, whatever it is seems to just be out of your hearing range. You perk up your ears trying to catch it…what was that noise? You take a few steps towards where you think you hear the noise. Moaning?
Watch out!
Huh…What?
Not alone…..look left
Looking to your left, you don’t make out anything at first. Slowly and carefully you scan the area to your left trying to make sure you don’t miss a thing. Your instincts were never wrong and if they said someone was there then someone was there.
….Nothing….No wait there. Whatever had been hiding moved and now you could pick out its shape. It was odd, the creature looked to be wearing a cloak in a mottled forest pattern and was standing next to a bush which you guess had been the reason you had not seen the creature in the first place.
You must have thought it was part of the bush. The cloak covered most of the creature from head to toe, it was longer than it was tall and you guessed it had to walk on four legs. Looking downward you saw you were right and that its feet ended in hoofs. Maybe it was a small horse you thought, but then who would put a camo cloak on a horse?
The small horse stiffened up, the cloaked head turns towards you. Underneath the cloak you can see a set of huge exotic looking sea green eyes and the end of its snout. The eyes grow wide as it looks at you standing there.
Crap you still had Snaxe out; you must look like a sight. Careful don’t want to scare the horse and don’t want to make the owner mad, let’s calmly put away Snaxe so that the owner does not think I am trying to kill his animal. Ok now if only I could get the owner to show me the way back to town I will be set for- crap the horse is leaving.
The horse upon seeing you put Snaxe away turned around and started walking away. You take a few steps after it, the horse picks up the pace a bit, it is heading back into the tree line. If it gets into the tree line you will lose it for sure, you crank yourself into full gear and hit your top speed in three steps, but that horse easily matches you diving head long into the tree line.
You head after it, keeping track of it mainly through sound rather than sight. You keep up the chase from maybe 15 minutes, but finally you have to admit that you have lost it completely.
Giving up the chase you slow down and stop taking a rest by a tree, taking a look at where you are now. Turns out you’re in a grove of tree and something odd that sticks out is that from the right angle these trees look to have some sort of face on then.
How strange?
Mean looking faces, I know right. Hey we had better get back to the river the sun is starting to set and these are not the faces that I want staring at me in my sleep What, you’re scared brain?
Sorry but don’t see you giggling at no ghosties here pal.
Glancing up at the sky you can see your brain is right and that the sun is starting to dip low into the sky, and those faces were starting to give you the heebie jeebies. So you set off back towards the river…again.
Why did you spend so much energy chasing that horse? It was not like it could have helped you get back to civilization really, the thought that it still had an owner in this forest that you could get help from was a long stretch, right? Logic what do you think?
Well it was a bit of a stretch to think to that yes. The fact you thought you could catch that horse was almost as long. That horse obviously knew its way around this forest and was strong enough to defend itself the local predators. So no I don’t think you could have gotten any help from that horse. That cloak it was wearing though, that is a mystery.
….You're wrong…
Instinct whatever do you mean. It was a horse man; it is not like they can talk you know?
….
Well the past is the past might as well try and make as much time downstream as we can before we have to take shelter.
Why downstream logic?
Because man those rapid where too powerful, the only people who would be likely to bother with that section of the river would be adrenaline junkies, upstream past the rivers will we many different water sources flowing in that river which means choices about which branch we follow and if we pick the wrong one it means we wasted both time and resources first exploring and then backtracking. If we head downstream then water sources will be joining up with our river and making the chances of a town or something being built on it and as bonus if this river has any traffic on it going either way then we are likely to see if coming up stream if downstream and with those speeds any traffic going downstream will likely pass up. On top of that—
OK, OK I get it, thank you logic for your input. Hey, looks like we made it almost all the way back to the river after that explanation.
Indeed after you edge around a dense clump of trees you spot the river again though something seems to be off about it. The water is a lot calmer than it was before. Had you managed to get to another section of the river?
No, because over there you could see where you had used Snaxe to cut open that wall of vine. They hung loosely between the two trees. Odd so why had the river become so still? You strain your ears listing for that sound you heard before.
Nope that was gone too. Maybe the two events had been related? Maybe you had been hearing a old tree coming down and it blocked the flow of the water a bit? Yeah, that would explain both the noise and why the river was not so violent any more.
A quick glance at the sky told you, you had maybe three hours of daylight left before sunset and a quick growl from your stomach told you it was snack time. “Ok quick and easy plan time,” you say, again talking to yourself to break the silence. Pulling out the pack of crackers you open it and pop one into your mouth. This was followed shortly by a swig of water from your canteen.
”Ah, that hits the spot. Ok the plan, walk until sunset, if I find civilization-win, if not take shelter in a tree for the night. The fact that I am following the river bank should mean I have an easy walk ahead of me. Right?” first talking to yourself and now asking questions of no one, might want to curve that behavior or someone is likely to think that you have gone crazy, you think to yourself as you head down stream.
Boy you could not have been more wrong thinking you were going to have an easy time on this walk. You followed that river for the next three days and the easiest time you had on that “little” walk of yours was those first three hours until sunset on the first day. You finished up you first pack of crackers right as night was falling and debating getting another pack out before or after you took shelter when you felt eyes on the back of your neck. Someone was watching you….
DUDE
….what….
A little warning please
….no danger….
We are in the middle of the woods and someone or something is watch us! Oh please tell me how we are not in any danger here.
….not hostile…..
And how do you know that, hermmmm?
…..
Like man, because you know, he just like does man. It is his thing dude, you feel me.
Heart not helping.
Well then look at it from this point of view, we are lost in the woods, we have no clue where we are going and no clue what to expect, therefore anyone wishing us harm would have a multitude of opportunities to do so. They could easily move ahead of us and set a trap or using the natural terrain ambush us. The fact that they have been following us since we got back to the river means that they at the very least intend us harm in the near future.
Logic you have a way of making me feel so comfortable sometimes, now I am going to be looking for traps and guys with blow darts all day.
But he does have a point and you know it. Now, let us get to bed, we might have woken up late in the day but we have been walking for most of that time.
Fine.
You make your way over to a tree with branches fairly low to the ground. Some jumping, a scrapped set of palms, and a little effort later sees you up the tree. You decide that it will be safest towards the top of the tree because the branches will not support the weight of the bigger predators. You also tie yourself to the tree not wanting to fall out of it like the last time you slept in one.
As a last bit of precaution you make a little bubble around yourself out of the branches binding them together with the rebar ties for that little be of extra protection from a predator that did decide to get you in your sleep. And with that you settle in for a not so restful sleep in the tree.
(several hours later in the dead of night)
THUMP splish splash
THUMP splish splash
“wha…”
THUMP splish splash
Something was moving about near your nest. And that something was Big. There was no need for rubbing the sleep out of your eyes. You were fully awake with that thought. One of your hands was already reaching for Snaxe when you saw it.
YEP, I am dead, Clearly Dead, no doubt about I am dead, I am dead, I am oh so god dead.
Before you waddling out of the forest was a creature you had only read about in myth, a hydra. seven long scaly head came forth from a barrel chest of a body, a long thick tail shot out from its backside and it stomped around on two stubby front feet.
You could make it out by the light of the full moon, it was a sickly looking mud brown color and it’s white fangs shown in the dark, you could see in its eyes a glint of light, the glint of a predator on the prowl and worst of all it was heading your way.
THUMP splish splash
Ok maybe if I say very, very quiet and remain still it might not notice-
One of the hydra’s heads turns to look directly at your little nest bubble in the tree. The head snakes its way closer to the nest, closer and closer it comes, curios about the little deformation.
Ok new plan….I’m so dead.
Well you the plan when we are dead right?
Fuck everything, and make you’re the grim reaper has a huge mess on his hands?
That’s the one!
Heart why are you like this?
Who knows, now is not the time for questions solder now is the time for violence like this world has only seen in a Freddy Krueger meets Hartsfield meets Hulk Hogan mix and match.
With that You heart rate slows, acceptance is one thing that will let you stare death straight in the eye and say fuck it, but a goal work that you set your whole heart on is a whole other matter. If you were going to die then you going take this hydra with you.
Yea that’s right the hydra that was easily over three stories tall, a plethora of heads filled to the brim with sharp point teeth, whose body was about as thick as a semi, and….ya maybe you were shooting a little high there, BUT fuck it you could at least make it work for its human burger.
The head was still coming closer towards your little hiding place. However now that you're looked at it something seemed…off. Compared to the other heads you saw on the hydra this one looked…well, it almost looked kind of….
Oh from crying out loud, we are not about to be eaten by the retarded head are we! Oh the cruel irony that one as logical as I should be eaten by a retarded beast like that. Surely this world we live in is a harsh chaotic one.
And it looks like logic is up. HEY GUYs, nap time is over. Time to get your butts in gear!
….
Great, abandoned by my own self. You know would bet normal people don’t have to put up with as much internal shit as I do.
At this point in time the hydra’s retarded head is less than ten feet away, You can feel its sickly warm breath on you face as it exhales. Exactly what hydra breath smelled like is something you really did not need to know, needless to be said it smelled awful.
Its nostrils start to flair. Did it smell you?
It starts to open its mouth wide and you get a good look down its maw. Your death will apparently involve sliding down this saliva soaked pink fleshy tunnel for a splashdown finish into a pool of acid. Oh joy, maybe if you can cut its neck open with Snaxe you might be able to dilute the acid enough to die of suffocation or even to be crushed to death by its internal muscles.
The jaw just seems to keep opening wider and wider. Why was it not making with the swallowing whole part?
Then its face seems to contract a bit.
What the…? That jester seemed familiar to you but on the face of a 3 story tall giant monster you could not quite place it. Just what on earth was it doing?
It starts to inhale deeply, causing a vacuum to suck in any of the loose leaves. “AHa…AHa”
You did not need any more clue as to what it was about to do. Screw this tree, screw the 30 foot drop, screw the fact that if you did run now the other heads where sure to spot you. You were not about to let yourself be covered in hydra buggers.
You try and make a break for it but as you leap you are brought up short by something around your waste. You turn angrily to the offending object to find it is the rope you had used earlier to tie yourself to this tree. Shit
Shit, shit, shit, Ok Snaxe to the rescue.
You raise Snaxe up high planning to chop the rope in one swing and then make a jump for the river, but it too late.
“AH…AHCHOOOOOOO” and with that the hydra lets out a sneeze with the force of a hurricane. We are talking about 120mph winds blowing you and the tree and all your stuff about.
If it had not been for that rope, you would have been blown out of your tree and who knows how far. But this sneeze was not just air, oh no it just had to be accompanied by globs of buggers the size of soft balls. You tried to do your best to avoid most of them but there was only so much you could do hanging by a rope, you ended up taking a glob of hydra buggers to the face, you felt a similar impact on your leg and on your back.
They hurt, not enough that you feared breaking bones but enough so that you knew that you would be walking funny the next day and that you might have a black eye.
One of the other hydra heads look this way at the sneeze and it lets out a loud piercing screech that wobbles in tone. This noise hurts enough to make you try and cover your ears. The retarded head looks up at this noise. It too makes this wobbly high pitched screeching noise and moves back to rejoin the rest of the heads. The retarded head is still sniffling as the hydra moves off back to wherever it came from.
Ok the hydra is gone it is now time to truly panic and then figure out what the hell just happened. The short version goes a little something like this:
Brain…What the fuck just happened
i…i…I don’t know.
Morality was that a fucking hydra just now. A beast out of the very god damned myths and legends. The beast that if you cut off it’s head it will grow two more in its place?
Uhh…it might have been.
There is no might have been that was a goddamn fucking hydra. A... FUCK…ING…HY...DRA…and you Heart you had us already to go ape shit banana on it.
You know the deal solder, all’s fair in love and war. And son let me tell you if in fighting your very life ain't love then it sure as hell be war. And when we go to war, ain't nothing being left at that damn door You hear. NOW AS FOR OUR DESERTERS, BRAIN, SEX DRIVE, AND MORALITY you sick lily livered cowards. I should have you strung up and Flogged for being late to you posts.
Hey Heart that is being a bit unfair, what use is there for morality in a fight with a monster?
I’LL HAVE NONE OF YOUR BACK TALK. YOU ABANDONED US I WILL SEE YOU HANGED FOR INSUBORDINATION YOU YELLOW BELLIED TWO TIMING DONKEY ASS LICKING DIRT MUNCHING COWARD! (This rant at morality goes on for a bit)
Hey bud, sorry for not being there you know it takes a bit to get me going in the morning.
It was a god dam hydra, Hercules fought it and here it is and I am covered in its buggers. I am covered in hydra buggers. What the hell is wrong with this place? Where the hell am I? Clearly I am not on earth anymore because there are no hydras on earth.
Bub you're having a break down like a-
Unless I am in some secret military base or something
Bub you need to stop your acting like a-
AND YOU SEX DRIVE, MORALITY MIGHT NOT BE OF MUCH USE, BUT YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF ENERGY MANAGEMENT, IT IS YOUR JOB TO MAKE YOU WE KEEP OUR STAMINA UP IN A FIGHT. I WILL HAVE NO MORE OF THIS FORAGING WITH THE LADIES OR THIS SLOW TO START BULL CRAP ANY MORE. DO YOU HEAR ME!!!
Hey bub, you know the deal and no one talks to me like that, got it.
In short, you end up spending the next hour or so having a mental breakdown while Heart yells at everyone and Brain is just drawing a blank. What finally brings you out of this is Logic for the first time speaking up since the hydra sneezed all over you.
We need a bath.
The simplicity of this statement seems to shock your whole inner group into stunned silence. It even brought you back from your mental break down a bit. Good old logic could always be trusted to put things into perspective.
Getting out of your tree you make your way down to the river where you clean yourself and your clothes as best you can without any bathroom supplies.
Now, from your time in the boy scouts you knew that you should never bath alone or in unknown waters unless you had but seeing as people where unkindly enough to vagabonds and hitch hikers who were not covered in buggers you did not think being covered in them would improve your chances of getting help so it looked like bath time for you.
You did take the precaution of bathing only in running water to reduce the chance of blood suckers and other undesirables. During your lovely mountain spring cold bath that your learned so many new and wonderful things about hydra buggers that you decided you could have happily sent the rest of your next ten lives not knowing.
They were easy to wash out of your hair but were they came into contact with your skin or your cloths it they stuck fast and harden into a tough shell. Getting the bugger shell thing off was like pulling off super glue, it took a lot of skin with it. Your face was left red raw after the huge amount of effort it took to pull the glob off. You had to use wrench and a nearby rock to crack the globs of buggers that had gotten stuck to your clothing.
All in all bath time took your about 45 minutes about 40 minutes longer than you normally would take for a bath and 43 minutes long then you would have liked in this freezing cold mountain river. You use your blanket to drive off, not having a proper towel to do so, and change into a dry set of cloths. Checking the time, the moon is high in the sky plenty of night left to sleep to but did you really want to do that in this forest with big cats and sneezing hydras?
The sooner we are out of here the better if you ask me
Yah, I think so.
Oh course you do because I just told you what you think silly
Ignoring your brain you start following the river again. You walked from the time you stared almost until nightfall and your feet where letting you know just what they thought about that life choice. It was a mostly uneventful day all things told, you only had to hide from the relatively normal look predators like panthers, lions, and even a bear.
Seriously how could one forest hold so many different apex predators? Other than that one horse you saw yesterday all you had seen where meat eaters. It puzzled you enough that you were able to keep you mind busy most of the day coming up with theories about the food chain here and how other creatures of myths and legends might fit into it.
So barring the 3 times you had to hide from these predators you thought you were making relatively good time and even during those times you sought to use your time effectively writing the off as resting periods.
Half a pack of crackers when the panther has chased me up a tree, rest of that pack of crackers when the lion as me trapped behind some rock cover, back up the tree to rest your feet when the bear takes interest and a whole wonderful pack of crackers for dinner yum. After last night’s encounter with the hydra nothing much about these real predators was phasing you.
That night you made your nest in a tree again this time choosing to include a floor and more solid walls and roof so that if you needed to you could beat a hasty escape by jumping out of said tree. Luckily you had managed to find a tree leaning over the river so you would not risk breaking your leg in such a stunt. So with a feeling of self accomplishment you nod off to sleep.
And of course with the falling of the sun and the raising of the moon all the monster decided to come out to play. This night instead of being visited by your hydra friend from last night you are instead awoken to the sound of some dandy complaining over his hair.
Actually, when you are first woken up to this noise you're still thinking like you're back home and the upstairs couple is going at it again. You try to turn over in your sleep and yell at them to shut up.
The dandy pauses at this noise and you wake up fully remembering that you are not in fact back at your apartment but instead lost in the woods looking for a way back to civilization. And here was another civilized being just outside of your nest making a fuss.
OH, what luck I have, here is someone who can lead me out of these woods, yes, sweet, awesome, ok first apologizes for telling them to shut up and then-
What are you going on about now man.
Oh hey brain, good news someone is outside the nest.
Umm what?
Yah, some sort of dandy is out there in there right now, they can lead us out of here, don’t you get it brain.
Yah, I think I do.
OK great so let’s go out there and see them.
Right lets go out there into these monster filled woods and meet not a woodsman or other wilderness type folk but someone who described as a dandy.
Ok, we will check first to see if it is safe, then we will go see if the wonderful person who likely knows where we are.
That is all I am asking.
Peeking out of your little nest you see not a person, but a purple sea serpent coming out of the river. it takes to a moment to actually figure out what your looking at past that. Said sea serpent has perfect long bouncy golden yellow covered hair that streams from his head.
Its scales are all the same shape and size and even form a perfectly uniform pattern that flows all the way down his body, he also has perfectly manicured nails and a bountiful mustache of which one side matches his hair and the other side is a deep majestic purple.
Odder still was when the sea serpent spoke and the dandy voice issued from its mouth. “What is someone there. AH don’t look at me, I’m positively hideous.”
…umm what…
Ah instinct what is going on?
…umm…
Thought as much.
You decide it is best to remain quiet and not responding to the sea serpent it was big enough to eat you whole and no matter how white those teeth did not negate the fact that they were longer than your arm.
“Odd I thought I had heard someone? Must have been a voice in my head caused by all this stress I am under. IF ONLY I could find something to fix these eyelashes of mine. They just don’t flutter right and they are full of cropped ends. OH WHOA IS ME, WHATEVER SHALL I DO?” that last line is accompanied by the sea serpent putting the back of his wrist to his forehead and taking an overly dramatic pose.
Surely this guy is not for real right?
The sea serpent keeps going on and on about how horrible his eyelashes are and even managed to bring himself to tears and as he starts crying, his body is quivering with his built up frustration. This causes the whole river to become a mass of violently churning waters just like how you had first seen it.
Oh come on this has to be some kind of trick right?
We should go help him out.
What are you crazy, he is a sea serpent, sea serpents eat people, as for proof of this fact his teeth are longer than my arm and likely as sharp as one of my knifes.
You know we can’t stand to see someone crying and more importantly it is the right thing to do. What kind of man of honor would we be if we could just past by someone so obviously in distress.
Need I remind you what happened last time we helped out someone in distress and how we spent the next three years paying for it.
Did you regret taking that action?
....Well no, not really, even if my life was hell. I think I would still do what I did.
And the fact that we are already climbing down the tree means..?
Shut up morality I hate you so much sometimes.
You know you would hate yourself without me.
And it was true, you were proud in the fact that even in this day and age you felt that you could hold yourself to the higher standards of yesteryear. I had made this vow as a little kid not even realizing what it would mean at the time or the amount of trouble it would cause you down the road but the act of doing what was right, noble and just always gave you that warm feeling inside. Still what you’re sense of justice was telling you to do right now had to rank up there among the stupidest things you had ever done in your life.
“Umm, excuse me, but I could not help but notice you crying there. This there anything I can do to help you out.”
“Hmm, oh so someone was there after all.” The sea serpent says as he tries to wipe the tears away.
“Yah sorry about not speaking up before, I was just…..taken in by your regal appearance.”
Thank you brain for that one.
Welcome, but you know morality is going to win us a very odd and painful death.
The sea serpent seems to cheer up a bit at your words though and flattery never hurt anyone, so…
“Oh yes. You have quite the look of a gentleperson about you. It is clear to see that you take a lot of care in your personal look. Your nails are pristine and I have to ask how in the world you got your hair to have so much bounce in it. It looks amazing.” You say in almost sing song manner, while mentally you are thanking your high school drama teacher for forcing you to work part time at the local theater doing make-up and costume.
The sea serpent is…well the only word you can think of is preening under your compliments. “Yes it is true, my nails are fabulous I spend 2 hours every morning shaping them on the rocks at the bottom the river. As for my hair,” he leans in secretive like,” would you believe me if I told you I used hydra snot to give it its life. Oh wait, yes, yes you would I can see it in your hair now. Isn’t if just the most wonderful thing in the world.”
After all those hours helping the girl actor get ready you knew just how to deal with this kind of person. Miss Stewart if I ever see you again I am going to give you the biggest dam hug ever.
“Yes it is quite enchanting isn’t it? But ho, what have we here,” pause for dramatic effect, “Oh my your eyelashes what have you done to them, they are all wrong.” Yeah, this was the same old game even if it was with a sea serpent. A round of complements, a bit of gossip, a slight slip about ones of the other persons shortcomings, giving the other person the excuse to be all overly dramatic like they wanted to be. Cue dramatic sea serpent in 3…2…1.
The sea serpent launched itself away from the shore, “oh it’s true, it’s true. My eyelashes are the ruin of my glorious face. Whatever shall I do, oh whatever shall I do?” yep exactly the same, except for the part where the sea serpents dramatics caused a tidal wave that almost drowned you and knocked you off your feet.
Spitting out water and regaining your foot you declare, “Oh my, now this cannot stand, this will not stand, not if I can fix it.”
Being a bit over dramatic there pal don’t you think?
Shut up, sea serpent, you have to play to the crowd remember.
The sea serpent scoops you up and gives you a great big hug. “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you again.” He was careful about that action but that did not stop you from seeing a few bits of your life flash before your eyes. He is just as careful when he sets you back down on the shore.
Ok now time for the small chat if we are following the pattern. “So I have never seen a creature quite like you before,” the sea serpent says in an offhand manner as you go and collect your bags.
“oh really, that seems kind of odd considering to my knowledge humans cover the entire surface of the planet, well short of a few isolated spots that is. But I guess fair is fair since I have never seen a creature like you before either.” You reply offhand, while you are pulling out one of your pocket knives. His eyelashes were huge, they were about as thick as our pinky finger; you needed the knife to cut them straight.
“strange, I did a lot of traveling when I was younger, went around the whole world in fact, oh the fun I had in Great Bridal when I met the Queen, and after that was a quite hop and a skip across the pond to the fabulous city of Fillyris where I got the most exquisite facial, the one and only place for fashion you know, but my point is I never saw a human in all my travels.”
Ok beyond weird, just where were you? A world without humans apparently. Ok that is a fail at small talk if you had ever heard of one. Ok so what did that mean, no humans means something else had to take their spot right? Could be the monsters from your earth myths?
Were you on a different world in the same universe, a parallel world, maybe a different plane of existence, or maybe you had somehow managed to slip onto the anti-matter mirror version of your world. Either way time to chat up your new friend and see what you could learn about this place.
Oddly enough you were not able to get any real useful info out of him. Ok so maybe it had been a few years since you had played the social game, come on you had stuff like college and what not to deal with right. So what if you were a little rusty at this, that or he was purposefully dodging the questions you were asking because he seem to always either turn the question back on itself to you or link it to some sort of fashion related topic.
By the end of your little chat you had learned way more than you needed to know about his personal grooming techniques, the names of 98 different salons that could cater to oversized customers, who owned those salons and who to ask for when you went to them for what kind of treatment, and that the reason for his two toned mustache was because a very generous friend gave him her tail after part of it had been ripped out by this lands princess.
However useless this information seemed now Brain dutifully filled it all away. Though you really had to wonder what kind of situation would require you to know to ask for someone called Gewn at the hoof and claw salon on south baker street in some place called Hoofington, if you needed a facial made with only herbal ingredients.
Something a bit more useful was that this friend of William’s (the sea serpent) lived not too far from here in a town just outside of the forest in fact. Her name was Rarity and he had nothing but praise about her sense of fashion and her generosity.
Pity he didn’t have more to say about what she looked like.
Be nice you.
During this entire chit chatting process, you managed to trim his eyelashes to what he called a dashing look and even helped with their fluttering issue thanks to the simple application of rebar ties and Duck tape. Ah duck tape, in the hands of an engineer is there no problem you can’t fix. When you finished he took a moment to stare at his reflection in the river and the declared your work to be “other worldly.”
IF ANYONE MAKES A GODDAMN COMMENT ABOUT THAT LINE YOU WILL BE IN FOR THE WORST PUNISHMENT OF A LIFE TIME.
Luckily your inner group thought better then to test you on that end.
“So Elag, where are you heading, there HAS to be some way I can repay you from saving me from that awful crisis.”
“Well after such a rave review I am quite interested in meeting this Rarity. If you would be so kind as to show me the way to her place that would be great.”
“oh absolutely, why don’t you hop on and I will give you a ride there.” More than grateful for the offer you accept the ride from your new friend. No walking and you had a giant sea serpent to scare off anything that might want to try and make a meal out of you, it sounded too good to be true.
What did I tell you?
Yah, ok you were right.
(next day around about noon)
Yeah you told me alright thanks a lot morality.
It was raining heavy, and when I say heavy we are talking the rain is coming sideways with a good sized helping of cats and dogs to boot. You sea serpent friend had left you at the first signs of rain. He simply had to go take shelter from this awful rain or else it would mess up his bangs. So he dropped you off on the side of the shore and told you that you should be out of the forest by night fall.
With giant serpent buddy gone and with rain on the way you debated maybe finding shelter until the storm passed. On the one hand if you took cover now it would mean dry cloths and you would not risk the storm and the dangers that came with that but it would mean spending another night in these woods.
On the other hand you could risk the storm deal with wet cloths and likely end up sleeping wet that night but you would be out of these woods. That was a tough one and you were to have to think on it. Or at least you would have if something hadn’t just sent a cold chill down your spine. Someone was watching you again.
Uh guys?
Oh hey look morality he noticed them again looks like I win the pool Bubs.
Dam you sex drive, you had to have helped him out. Dam it five more minutes and we would have been on my time slot.
….wow….
Har har, well, gents that is what you get when you bet against my solder. Still son, don’t tell you only just noticed them. They have been following us since we chased that horse. If you’re ever going to be a dependable man you’re going to have to work on your non-sensory based perception skills.
Yah? And just how am I supposed to do that?
Well the solution to that is quite simple really, all you have to do is hang out with Instinct more of course.
Let's chalk that up and the to do later list, whoever is watching me is really starting to creep me out. Can one of you at least tell me where they are watching me from?
…ghost…
Instinct is right man. Whoever is watching you is not showing any signs of physically being here. Or if they are then they are surely the best damn woodsmen in any world and we should really be trying to copy them. But for now lets just get out of these woods.
Brain had a point, so for now you start walking. Whoever was watching you would either act and you would handle the situation when they did so or they wouldn’t. The ball was in their park and there was nothing you could really do without seriously tripping up your sense of right and wrong.
You might as well try and keep calm. That was a task easier said than done since you hated when other people full control of your near future options. Got to get your mind onto a different topic.
Uhg, you really hated wet cloths, wet socks being the worst they made your feet uncomfortable in your shoes and let out that really annoying sound every time you took a step.
Speaking of your feet they decided to let you know that they had liked the rest they had gotten during your ride on William. They were also demanding to know why you were walking again. Yep this was going to be a wonderfully fun day.
Well it seemed like someone up there was at least looking out for you because as you exit the forest proper around about dark you spot a travelers willow. Its long drooping branches dip all the way to the ground and its dome interior is nice and dry. You even found some firewood let there by a previous traveler and enough sticks to get a fire going.
It was simply the most beautiful sight you had seen all day. You vowed to find out which god/deity/nature sprite/ or whatever that had lead you to this find and you were you going to shout their praise until you were blue in the face.
Getting the fire going you set your damp cloths out to dry by it you take inventory of your stuff. Everything thing seems fine the knives needed to be taken care of so they didn’t lose their edge or rust. The box of crackers had somehow managed not to get wet from the drenching, but you had to set out you blanket and bed roll to dry by the fire with your cloths. Rolling out your meditation mat, to give you some protection from the ground, you set about taking care of your knives and other tools.
The knives had to be sharpened but you didn’t have your wet stone. A dull knife was a dangerous knife your grandpa had always told you, glancing at your stuff your eyes fall on Snaxe. Trying to use a metal wet stone to sharpen another piece of metal was not going to be a fun task but the principle was sound.
Rub one hard object across an even harder object at an angle to produce and edge and Snaxe was made out a very hard bit of unknown metal your dad had brought from his government work job as a birthday gift when you turned 21.
Ah good old dad, you missed him so much. He was the only one in your family that even tried to keep you in the loop about what was going on with your family. Not that you were on bad terms with your family. You loved them very much and would do anything for any of them, it was just they never seemed to have time for you.
You had always been told that it was the price of being the oldest kid, you got to do everything first but were always ignored because everyone wanted to play with your baby brother and sister. Honestly, you felt like you had been forgotten when you were in a kind mood, when you were in a bad one you felt like they were trying to bribe you with toys and responsibility and other fancy big words just to get you to shut up and go play by yourself in the corner like a good unwanted child so that the adults could play peek-a-boo with the baby.
But the babies grow up and then became the terrible teen minces that got into trouble at every turn, getting into fights at school, getting expelled, hanging out with the wrong crowd, bring drugs into the home and stinking up the entire place with their smell. And again you were left in the corner to do your own thing because mommy and daddy had to deal with delinquent son and just really didn’t have any time for you and your AB honor roll party.
At least you and your sister could get alone but with an age gap of 8 years and with her being a completely different gender you two didn't really have too much in common growing up, hell she didn't even face the same social issues as you so you couldn't fill the role of helpful older sib. As for your mom she always had something from work on her plate it seemed, looking back you had to admit you hardly knew her, she was a feature in your life but not really as a mom or not as what you saw as a mom.
And that was your direct family life though college, hell you couldn’t complain and likely you didn’t have a right to complain, you had been friends with a lot of kids who had it way worse off then you did, still you thought the biggest reason for you inability to complain about the situation was that if you did, you would be getting in someone’s way and bothering them with your problems something you had been taught never to do.
Not to say it was all like that, visits with your indirect family was great, you loved seeing them and each time you did they would teach you something brand new or introduce you to a new side of life you had never consider before.
From Grandpa, you learned how to fight and about the military. He taught you to value your honor and was the one who introduced you to the martial arts. You were hooked instantly partly because you were an easy target for bullies and partly because something just clicked. Considering this happened when you were about 5 and had no clue about the different styles and disciplines you thought that they where all the same thing and tried to study everything from Chinese kung fu to Irish brawling to judo. Ancient or brand new, armed or unarmed, stances or free flowing you wanted to learn it all. The bookkeeper got so used to you coming in almost every weekend with some sort of cut or bruise that he started to give you packs of band aids with each book on martial arts you bought.
Your other Grandpa, Grandpa Lou, had introduced you to the advanced levels of thinking and problem solving and reasoning skills about this time as well, mostly in the form of college level math and physics not that it seems like that to you Grandpa Lou just want you to tell him where you basketball would land if he bounced it off each wall in the back yard or some other such thing.
Your uncle taught you about firearms and you learned about machines and robotics form one of your cousins. Your aunts and grandma taught you about baking, cooking, sewing, knitting and other very useful skills normally passed on from mother to daughter.
Again you had nothing in your life you had a right to complain about up until college, during one of your few father son fishing trips with just your dad. He said something that really hurt. You had gotten up the nerve to ask him about your delinquent brother this time.
There had been a huge fight upstairs last night and you had been wondering what had happened. He had let out a heavy sigh, and ask you where he had gone wrong. You never had seem him look so browbeaten before, you looked up to your dad he was strong and kind and always could make you or anyone laugh, he was also not a guy you want to get on the wrong side of because if you did his determination to do what was right could just as easily be used to make sure you tried to wrong him again.
You asked him what he meant and he told you that out of all three of the kids brother delinquent was by far the smartest one of the bunch… Brother….brother was the smartest in your father’s eyes…you had worked your butt off day and night at school…you had made at least AB honor roll 90% of the time and unless you were so sick that someone forced you stay in bed you would be at school or wherever you need to be. In your spare time you studied everything you could get your hands on and you had even got the hang of seeing things from other peoples point of view and thinking five steps ahead with their mind.
But it was your brother, the kid who was to stupid to consider jumping out a window as a bad idea just because he was told he could do, the kid currently in danger of failing a grade and being held back, and even worse the kid who wasn’t in jevie right now only because the judge had let his parents handle the matter privately so long as he submitted to drug tests regularly, he was the smart one in your dads eyes. It had not been a fun fishing trip after that to say the least.
A few years after that trip the man you knew as your father died, he slowly started to forget stuff, dates and meetings and other small stuff like that, but it just kept getting worse and worse. He was eventually bed ridden and everyone in the family seemed too pulled together, setting aside all our other baggage just for dad.
You wished you could have visited him more then you where able to but because of your job being a couple states away and being topic secret government work, you where limited in how often you could see him. And with each visit his just kept getting worse. Sister ended up moving back in with mom to help her out and you even saw brother now and again. He wasn’t even baked a few of those times.
Then that visit happened, you opened the door to his room, ready to spend the whole afternoon trying to get him interested in this new breakthrough in electrical design and failing that just sit and watch the fishing network with him, when he looked up from his bed, looked you straight in the eyes and said,” oh hello, who are you?”
It was too much, you could not handle it so you did the only thing that came to mind at the time, you fled. Out of the room, down the hall, out the door, got in your car and just drove. You just drove not know for how long and with no direction in mind you just simply drove away from that house with the bed that held that thing that had used to be your father.
Eventually the ringing of your cell phone awoke you from the state you where in. it was sister trying to find out what had happened and why I had left the house in such a rush almost three days ago. No one had heard anything from you in the time and everyone was really worried. You had stopped and asked the clerk at the gas station just where you were only to find out you had manage to most of the way across the country in that state of mind.
So after that visit, the number of trips you made to see dad became less and less, sometimes he would be better and recognize you on sight and other times he would stare at the wall or whatever someone put him in front of last or yet still there were times like that visit.
Those times hurt the worse, but each time you visited it felt like someone was plunging a dagger into your heart and slowly twisting it in deeper and deeper as your visit with dad went on. After all the funeral was almost a mixed blessing, freeing the wonderful memories you had of your father from that utterly stark grim fate that had befallen such a towering figure in your life.
Your family just kind of drifted apart after that. You hadn’t seen your mom or your brother since the funeral and as for your sister you two tried to keep in touch with each other over emails and the like but even those messages started to become few and far between. At least you knew you was doing well and was happy since she had sent you pictures of her at her wedding with her new husband.
And that seemed to really strike home that you had lost almost contact with your family since you hadn’t even know that she was seeing anyone in the first place.
Suddenly you feel something plop onto your lap.
You practically spring into the upper branches of the traveler’s willow. Heart is trying to beat right out of your chest. What the hell just happened. you look down from your preach some 15 feet off the ground to see that in the middle of your campsite is a pretty big tortoise with a set helicopter blades attached to its shell.
It was currently digging around inside your backpack looking for something. Had you really been that deeply lost in thought to not only not noticed the thing enter your camp but to allow it to walk right up to and try to use you as a footstool to get at your backpack? The tortoise stopped digging around in your pack and started to drag your box of peanut butter crackers out.
“Hey there fellow, would you like some crackers?” you say to your unexpected dinner guest as you climb down the tree. Why is getting up a tree always so much easier then getting back down. You manage to get down the tree and over to your new pal just in time to stop him from getting into trouble with the plastic packaging. Counting the remaining mini packages quickly you find that you have 7 left.
Saving three of those as a just in case ration you split the remaining four packs between you and the tortoise and pull out your bowl and will it with water for him. Man you had been on a downward depression spiral there, providing a meal for the guy who snapped you out of it, was the least you could do you thought. That and watching the tortoise eat those crackers was entertaining on some primal level.
So after tending to the fire, it had gotten dangerously close to burning out during your trip down memory lane, you settle you back up against the tree open up your two packs of food. To be honest thought you were not to happy at the sight of crackers as a meal again maybe you had something you could use to spice this meal up a bit, ok for food you had water and crackers….not a how lot there.
Ok around you was; some dirt, fire, the tortoise, your gear, and this tree. Again not a lot…that is when an idea struck you. Maybe you could get some sap from this tree to go with the crackers so you pulled out the bit set and attached a boring head and got to work tapping the tree for some sweat delouses sap. And so about about 10 minutes of work and another 10 minutes after that you can see little droplets of sap coming out of the hole you made.
You swipe these drops up with your finger and spread them over one of your crackers and pop it into your mouth. Not bad, not great and it leaves a earthy bitter after taste in your mouth but by god it is not orange peanut butter crackers and for right now that is more then enough for you.
The tortoise looks up at you from its meal. Even after all this time it still had three crackers left, man this guy was slow. “hey you want one with sap on it buddy?” it oh so slowly nods its head yes. You pick up a cracker and repeat the process of applying sap to cracker and then out it out the tortoise. It slowly extends its long neck opening its mouth wide as it does so, grabs the cracker from you and retract its next.
It was utterly comical, you could almost swear that the tortoise was making a joke about its own slowness. Glancing over at your new pal he looks very please with himself. And then you spot something else, his helicopter unit looks a bit off, it was covered in quite a few dents and you could even see a few loose wires sticking out of the bottom. You reach over to the unit and give it a little shake and hear parts rattling around inside. The Tortoise looks you directly in the eyes at this.
“Ops sorry about that, may I take a look? I might be able to fix it.” The tortoise nods its head giving you permission to remove the unit. You unbuckle it from his back and take a closer look at it. Nothing really distracts you more then something broken or when something someone has clearly put a lot of time, effort, and love into doesn’t make since. This is doubly so when the item in question falls under both categories.
This helicopter until looked like it was cobbled together out of kitchen supplies once you got its vanity cover off. The wiring looks like a bird’s nest and…is that supposed to be a gyro stabilizer in the bottom section, where on earth is the battery pack for this thing? You give the device a little shake and hear something rattling near the top of the unit. You shake it a little harder and out pops a glowing pink crystal.
Picking this new piece to this puzzle up to examine it closer you can see it giving off a soft pulse of light at somewhat odd intervals. “Hey what is this?” you ask the tortoise holding the crystal up.
For its part it stops eating, takes a look at it, and goes back to eating. As if to say, “I have no clue.”
Ok so time to revise engineer this oddity. You break down the helicopter unit into the basic systems and pieces, the “gyro disk,” fan blades, vanity cover, motor, wires, etc. the only thing missing from what you could figure was the power source so either that had fallen out or the crystal was the power source.
Either way you now had the thing figured out, time to get to work fixing it. You take your hammer to dents and bang them out first and then it on to that gyro disk. The thing had to have been made out of the bottoms of a couple frying pans they were horribly misaligned and so badly miss balanced you had to wonder why who ever built this thing had put it in there.
Throwing a few more logs on to the fire you stroke it a fairly hot flame, then you put this “thing” into those flames and go get you wrench from your pack. Once you see that the piece has gotten a nice cherry red you pull it out and start working it into a more suitable shape using Snaxe’s surface in place of an anvil. Forming those pan bottoms in to a more reasonable shape it was not perfect but it was leaps and bounds better than what it had been before.
Next you tackled the motor, it was not that badly damaged so you did your best to clean it and realign the piece that had become off center. After that it was the blades themselves who ever have made this unit had used flat and level strips of metal to make them, this would work but it was really poor power to lift ratio, with your tools you bent them into a slight angle so that would they would better scoop the air up as the spun. Then on to the little bits on odds that normally came with such devices which took you all of about 5 minutes to check them out.
Leaving only that birds nest of a wiring system, there was easily 4 or 5 times as much wire than there needed to be and so you began cutting it back and cutting it down until the system was all nice and neat. Which left that crystal it had some power left you could tell that much thanks to the pulse but it looked almost dead so how to charge it?
You pull out your extra set of batteries for your flashlight and using some of the extra wires you rig up a short circuit between the battery and the crystal. The crystal started to glow a bit brighter so you assumed that it was charging and started putting the whole thing back together while you waited. Picking up the one of the last pieces, the vanity cover, you notice some writing on the inside, however it seems to be written in another tongue.
No help there so you finish putting that unit back together the crystal is now shinnying very bright to your guessing that means it is fully charged and slot it into place. The tortoise seeing the helicopter pack nearly put back in one piece, heads over to your backpack and starts rummaging through it.
“hey pal what you looking for?” it withdraws its head and has a sharpie in its mouth….had that been in there this whole time? The tortoise starts making its way over to you and in the effort to save time you meet him halfway. He wanted you to do something with that pen for him so what was it?
The tortoise bumped the end of the pen against the vanity plate and this started shaking its head in a weird pattern, which made it look like it was drawing on the vanity plate. “You want me to sign it?” the tortoise nodes its head yes. But, if you signed it you doubted the people here would be able read anything written in English since you could not read their writing, what to do?
Finally after a bit of thought you go with a simple cartoon strip about the events that had happened to the helicopter unit. You showed the tortoise your masterful stick figure art work and it simply nodded again. Then you scraped the unit back onto the tortoise and stepped back.
Success the whole thing worked and the tortoise was hovering in the air about you. It nods goodbye to you and you wave back before it flies away.
“Nice guy but I wonder who would build a helicopter pack for a tortoise?” you tummy let a large rumble, in the interest of invention you had totally forgotten about your crackers. Looking around you spot the packs on the flood empty…That flying tortoise had snatched your dinner….that little sneaky thief.
“Well that was bemusing to say the least” you say as you pull out another pack and eat it. You spend the next few minutes cleaning up your camp and storing the scrap material you had gotten from the machine before noticing how late it had gotten. “Oh well time for bed,” and with that you unroll you bed mat and lay down it covering yourself with the blanket.
Author's Note
And Chapter 2 is done. fair warning i write only in my free time and between my work load, school, and insane family that does not leave a whole lot of time to write so the time in between chapters might be a bit long. This chapter i had to get some things off my chest so no real story development yet but i promise that the next chapter will have action and more ponies in it. by the by anyone guess at whole made an appearance in this chapter.
Chapter 3: Wolves and Hunters
Chapter 3 - wolves and hunters
“BOOOM”
You are suddenly awakened by a loud noise outside your traveler’s willow. You get to your feet and peer outside of the little tree’s sheltering leaves that block most of the view of the outside world.
Nothing seems to be out of place to you though as you look around the area and as you scan farther away from your shelter you notice a rainbow in the sky.
“Nice to see some things are still the same.” You say as a slight smile crosses your face. You had always liked seeing
rainbows and they always reminded you of those carefree times in your life. So you stood there and watched as the rainbow slowly faded into the morning light, reflecting on those happy memories.
”Honestly what has gotten into me I have been to depressed of late. It’s a new day, on a new world, time to make a fresh start here and see what I can make of it….life goes on I guess…..Time to meet the locals,” and with that the rainbow has faded away from sight and you turn around to start packing up camp.
=============
“SPIKE!!!”
“mehhanda.”
“SPIKE!!! WAKE UP!”
“mehhen, Twilight what is it.”
“Spike we need to send a letter to Princess Celestia, Zecora spotted some strange looking creature heading towards Ponyville.”
Spike, finally awoken by Twilight’s statement got out of his bed, stretched, yawned, and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes as he thought to himself. *Great it’s one of those days, so much for hoping for a nice nap in this afternoon while Twilight was off with the Rainbow and Pinkie Pie.*
The little dragon hoped out of his bed and made his way downstairs to find the main area of the library, now a literal whirlwind of books, papers and scrolls with the offending unicorn sitting in this magic made tornado. *Great Twilight is at it again. I wonder what it is this…WHOA* the little dragon’s thoughts are interrupted as he had to dive for cover to avoid being hit by a particularly large reference book as it went zipping by.
“TWILIGHT!!!”
“Oh good you’re up,” she said, the books and scrolls coming to a rest as she turned her attention away from them. “I need you to send this letter to the Princess. It is a request for a detachment of royal guards to come here at once. This time we will be ready for whatever this creature is.”
Spike took the letter that floated over to him from her magical grasp and with a quick bit of flame the letter was on its way. The job taken care of, Spike turned his attention back to Twilight, “alright so what is the big deal with this creature. Is it big with giant claws and why is the library a mess?”
“What well umm I was trying to find a match for the creature Zecora described in when she came over last night. As for what it looks like Zecora said…” Twilight floated a scroll over to her and opened her mouth to start reading it, but spike quickly waved her down.
“The translated version please, I have a hard time following her with all her rhyming.”
“Right, well from her description the creature is about twice as tall as a pony, it walked on its back two hooves most of the time, slept in the top parts of the trees and seemed able to climb fairly well, it had a little mane on its head and he seems to have a multicolored body that changed color from day to day, but it’s face and lower forelegs were furless. She first saw it deep in the Everfree Forest in a practically dangerous part she says is a host to many apex predators like packs of Manticores, timber wolves, and hydras. She was near a river when she saw it and it spotted her and started to chase her but luckily she lost it in the woods by using a potion to hide herself and her presence from the creature. She followed the creature for a bit before coming to inform me about it since it seemed to making a bee line for Ponyville.”
“Ah uh, so why the letter?”
“Well I figured that since this creature came from such a dangerous area that it must be able to survive well enough against those kinds of creatures it might even be a predator itself since it chased after Zecora, so I am taking the precaution of having some extra hooves around to help us deal with it if it is a problem. I just wish I could figure out what kind of creature it is, there is nothing in these books that matches its description. Oh maybe it is in…” and with that the whirlwind of books and scrolls started back up.
At this Spike rolled his eyes at this. Twilight was his best friend and loved her dearly but did she really have to wreck the library each time she had to look something up?
He let out a very tired sounding sigh and got to work trying to at least maintain some semblance order in the library.
==============
Lopping along at a steady pace across a grassy field, you enjoy the warmth of the sun as it shines down on you. Deciding to take William’s advice you had left the river you had been following thus far and instead had kept to following the tree line of the forest.
*Now Elag there is this path that will lead you straight into town and if you follow it further you will find yourself on the front porch of Rarity’s wonderful dress shop. All you have to do is once you leave the forest follow the tree line east until you find a huge pile rocks the path is a stone’s throw past that mound.*
A large pile of rocks….sounds like a quarry to me, which means that if they have a quarry then that means that they have some form of mining, which would suggest metal, if they have metal then that means we can apply one of our trades like blacksmithing or one of our engineering disciplines. I think we have our “in” for the society.
Logic don’t you think that might be a little bit of a stretch? I mean he just said it was a pile of rocks.
True but he also said front porch, dress shop, and town which means buildings and constructions we can at least do.
Logic, I get that having a plan is nice, in fact always having a plan and a back-up plan is a great idea but we don’t even know what the locals look like or if we will fit in. I mean for all we know they could be flying pigs or something----
“AH SAY SOMEPONY, HELP ME!!!!!!” a southern female voice drawls out, breaking your inner dialog.
“Wha…..” looking around it is clear you have walked a fair ways, but not the point right now.
She sounded like she was in some major trouble. We have to go help her.
Shut up, I know that! Look, where is she?
Quite….listen for her.
Closing your eye and focusing your ears, you change how you perceive the world around you. Without the visual cues from your eyes you see the world like a blank read out map of what it is. A slight breeze blowing brings the rustling of the grass and the trees into display, the soft splashing of a nearby creek then reveals itself.
Then you notice two things the first being a creaking noise similar to the swaying of the trees in high winds mixed with the noise found when wood is rubbed against wood and the second being the absence of the sounds of small animals. There are no birds cheeping or rodents chattering away.
“Come on where are you? Call out again,” you whisper.
“HELP!!!”
Zeroing in on the call for help, you start to run. The voice was coming from just over the next hill
“HOLD ON, I’M COMING,” You bellow out in a deep voice as you reach the top of the hill, “What the….”
You pause at the sight before you. About fity feet way and emerging from the tree line stands what looks to be massive wood wolf. It had huge wooden stakes for teeth and its fur looked to be made of dark bark and most startling of all were its eyes.
The eyes on this thing glow a sickly yellow green color. Looking at the thing sent shivers down your spine. The thing had an aura of fear radiating from it and you turn on your heel your only though was of running. You had to put as much distance between you and whatever that thing was as fast as you could. Step back turn and---
“Oh sweet Celestia, HEEEEELLLLP!!!!!”
WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING!!! WE HAVE TO SAVE HER
But…I….
NO BUTS!!! GET GOING
What can I even do against something like that?
And what kind of man would you be if your abandoned a helpless girl to a beast like that?
I….I….Fine, get the others and if we die fuck you morality.
Turning back around you charge forward.
Like hey man, what is going on, man?
Is it not obvious heart, morality has yet again gotten us into a severally one sided fight thanks to his code of ethics.
A fight yer say, givme givme givme. What are we going up against…OH SWEET MOTHER OF CALZOO!!! What is that thing?
Don’t look at me nothing we have ever heard about even comes close to matching that thing.
Bub, are we really going to fight that thing? The Dame had better be at least god dam eight that puts out!
GUYS NOT HELPING!!! ABOUT TO GET INTO FIGHT FOR LIFE HERE!!
RIGHT, battle stations everyone. Instinct I want you at secondary controls, SD keep us at adrenaline level one, brain and logic I want a full tactical analysis of that thing and a battle plan yesterday. Morality help SD maintain energy levels and we better get that dam you did the right thing feeling after this fight or SO HELP ME I AM GOING TO…
Drowning them out as you race towards what was an unquestionable death; you feel the adrenaline start to kick in as time seems to slow down. Your mind clears of all inner turmoil as everyone takes their position, and a small smile comes to your face. It felt good when your mind was all working together.
Ok my goal is to save that girl from whatever that thing is. Where is she?
Your eyes scan the ground until coming to rest on the rock pile were you see a cowboy hat, some orange colored thing and the orange colored thing looks to be pinned under a large rock
…Forty feet away…
You shed your backpack; it was heavy and would slow you down too much for the protection it provided.
…Thirty feet away…
Reaching into your coat you draw out Snaxe and the large wrench
…Twenty feet away…
You can now see clearly what that thing trapped by the rock is. It looks to be a horse wearing a hat. That can’t be the girl calling for help can it?
The orange horse opens its mouth and yells, “HHEEEELLLPPP!”
Guess it is. Ask questions later if still alive. Plan: free the girl, cover her retreat, drive off or kill the monster or die trying.
…Ten feet away…
The horse girl seems to notice you. A look of terror comes to her eyes as she sees you charging her. The wolf monster has noticed your presence, its face taking on an evil looking grins at the sight of another prey rushing into its trap.
…Five feet away…
Leaping the last few feet with flying front kick at the boulder pinning her leg, you manage to knock the boulder over. The girl just stairs in stunned silence, while seeing that its prey is free the wolf monster changes from the calm lope to a ground eating rush.
“What are you waiting for?!?! RUN DAMN IT!!” you bellow at her as you turn to face the oncoming beast. This galvanizes her into action. She takes a few steps before turning around.
“What about ya’ll?!” she asks concern clear in her voice.
“I’ll be behind you!” you try to reassure her, “NOW, GO ON GET GOING!!” With that she nods and finally takes off heading down the dirt path.
The wolf seeing this alters it course to chase after her. In a clean swift motion you slide your right hand to the bottom of the wrench hang your arm low and raise you left knee high before whipping body forward in a high step and slinging the wrench in a full body overhead throw.
The moment the wrench flies from your finger tips you know the throw is good. You had only hoped to get a good hit on the beast and draw its attention onto yourself; however, the wrench soars right into the monster’s ear with the audible sound of metal on wood.
The wooden wolf lets out a yelp of pain, spinning to face you. Its glowing green eyes seem to burn with hate for you. From your position you can see the horse girl round a small hill and disappear from view. The wolf looks over its shoulder and sees the same thing before looking back at you.
Wiggling Snaxe at the monster and trying to sound as intimidating as you could, “It is just you and me pal. I am giving you one chance leave or I am going to mess you up and build my next shelter out of your skin.”
As predictable this threat really does not work considering that the wolf is six times your size and who know how much heavier. In fact the wolf does the complete opposite of running away, it starts to approach. The thing has an evil smile on its face as if it was thinking about the most painful way to kill you.
Taking a defensive stance you try to find some weak point. Something that would cause this thing enough pain to drive it off because between its natural armor and the size put most of its vital out of reach, the chances of you killing it were slim at best.
Your best bet would either be in between the toes or the underside of the paws.
The wolf pauses a bit off from and crouches down and lets out a low growl that sends small vibrations that you can actually feel. It is like being next to jerks with the muscle cars at the stoplight that have the base on their stereo cranked up to the max. The posture seems familiar to you.
It is about to pounce!
ALL RIGHT ALL TOGETHER NOW!!! SD, go to adrenaline level two when that thing jumps.
The wolf leap launches itself into the air and time goes from a crawl to almost standing completely still. The wolf’s body seems to just hang in the air to your heighten sense from the adrenaline level two rush. The wolf’s body eclipses the sun and its deadly sharp claws are coming down directly at you and yet the fear you felt moments ago seems to have vanished.
Leading with your right shoulder, you springing forward into a rolling dive under the wolf’s paw. With Instinct guiding your actions you bring Snaxe up and feel the weight of the strike at you drag it along the bottom of the paw above you. Completing the roll by slapping your open right hand on the ground brings you to your feet under the belly of the beast.
Capitalizing on your actions you plant your left foot doing a hard pivot and grab Snaxe with both hands for a powerful blow aimed at its equivalent of the Achilles tendon. Snaxe’s blade edge cuts deep in to the beast sending wood chips flying leaving an impressively large cut behind. The blow jars both of your hands as Snaxe comes to a stop with the top five inches of Snake in buried in the beast’s hide.
The wolf yelps and leaps backward away from the pain and the worst happens as Snaxe is torn out of your grip leaving you unarmed. The weight of its body landing sends a shockwave through the ground, staggering you. The wolf holds up its paw and a look of confusion comes to its face as it tries figure out what just happened. As it examines Snaxe sticking out of its paw you can clearly see the wound you inflicted on it.
Clearly it will not be putting much weight on that leg without risking the tendon being severed completely. Hopefully might just decide continuing this fight is not worth the risk. However, that does mean we would end up losing Snake which would be a shame, still it looks like this fight just might be an easy one for------
You stare in horror at what’s happening before you. The wound you dealt takes on a green glow and nearby twigs and sticks fly towards it. In less than a second the wound is gone. Snaxe is pushed out and drops to the ground as the wound closes. The look on the wolves face seems to say 'Who is going to mess who up now!'
Really logic, you had to say that is was an easy fight!
This time instead of pouncing, the wolf comes right up to you swing a paw out so fast at you that you are barely able to duck under. It rains blow after blow mixing in side swipes, stomps, and jabs with its claws. For your part you duck, jump, dodge and wave under this hail of blows, putting your flex ability to good use and trying your best get out of range of its paws. It almost seemed like it was playing with you with the way it was acting like how a cat plays with a mouse that it has captured before eating it.
Despite it only ‘playing’ with you were not able to completely dodge each attack. You had several cuts all over your body, including a pretty nasty one on your upper thigh that was bleeding pretty badly. You can feel the warm blood from it start soak your pants.
Finally the wolf’s attacks stop. Panting heavily and with pain starting dull your mind, you look up and can see a smirk on its face is clear as day. It was having fun, it was going to uses you as some sort of toy for its amusement until it got bored with you and then after that it was going to eat you. It was so dam confidante in this outcome it was giving you a bit of a rest before it started to play again.
“That’s it!!....hahh…..You bastard you die!!!.....hahh….Even if that means that I have choke you to death from the inside! ON MY WORD I SWEAR THIS!!” You angrily declare. Your blood boils and you push through the pain of your injuries. No idea how to accomplish that feat but you’d be damned if you broke your word.
Then something odd happens. The color of the world flickers gray and then takes on a red tint to it. Not the blood red tint that massive amounts of pain can bring on but a sort of cherry red tint that outlines objects rather than colors them.
You don’t get to die just yet whittle baby.
Energy fills your body, the fog of pain and the fatigue seems to dim slightly, your ability to think clearly seems to return. The red tint to the world is fading away and normal colors are returning. The last things to return to its normal color are the sickly green-yellow eyes of the wolf.
What just happened?
STAY FOCUSED DAMN IT; WE CAN WORRY ABOUT IT AFTER THE FIGHT! Any of you mutt heads have a plan of attack?
Guys, I have a plan, a crazy stupid plan but it might just work.
Deciding you have rested long enough decides it’s time for some more fun. It swings it paw in low and along ground much like how a cat would bat at a toy.
This time however instead of trying to dodge to huge paw coming at you, you turn to face it head on. Standing up on your toes and placing your hand out in front of you as if to block the attack.
You don’t even make an attempt to move out of the way. Instead, the moment your hands make contact with the paw, you jump backward for all your worth using your arms and the momentum from the jump to cushion the blow.
Even with all of that the paw was still the size of your whole upper body and it hit like a freight train.
To say that it hurt would be an understatement but now however you were trailing with the paw and as the wolf reaches the limit of its range of motion the paw you’re riding on does a little flick upwards.
Now thanks to Newton’s First Law, this means that you are sent skyward. You pull your pocket knife out and into your hand in an instant as you hold it out in front of you, flying directly at your target. The wolf, still looking at the spot you had been standing trying to figure out where you disappeared to, never saw you coming as you plunge the knife and a good bit of your arm into its eye. Your arm feels as if it is being torn from its socket as the force from your impact runs through it.
The wolf jerked its head violently sending you flying again. And so with what goes up has to come down, so while you don’t crater into the ground you are sent bouncing along the ground. You can feel your ribs break on the first impact and the scent of blood fills your nose and your vision turns red from this new pain.
The next impact brings the feeling of a white hot piece of iron is being pressed into your back. You close your eyes and try to seal off your mind in an attempt to shield yourself from the pain and eventually you come to a stop, face down in the dirt.
“Worst idea ever!” You manage to mumble to yourself as you open your eyes. You’re having a hard time focusing. The world seems to be spinning and everything is seen through blurry red cover. Even with that you can still see the massive form of the wolf moving towards you with some sort of green gas flowing from its mouth now. The look in its eyes are clear day, they say ‘You are so dead now’. Your plan to stab it in the brain had failed and it had taken the kiddy gloves off.
With a lot pain you raise to your feet. You had gambled with that last attack and lost you were going to die if just from your injuries alone. You were determined to face death standing, fighting to keep your promise.
The gas billowing from its mouth starts to blanket the ground around it and spread outward. The wolf starts to expand its chest and before you can get your sluggish body to react it launches a huge jet of whatever that green stuff at you engulfing you in it.
The an odd odor fills the air becomes to breath, your lungs and nose feel like they are on fire and your eye feel like they are burning in hell.
Unable to keep your footing as you lose your scenes of balance, you fall to your knees. Your life flashes before your eyes. You see flashes of your 5th grade graduation followed by a bad date a friend had set your with. One particular memory however plays all the way through.
=======================
You are maybe 6 or 7 and have wondered into grandpa’s workshop. You smelled something coming from it and had gone in to investigate. You found grandpa working on a pile of lumber.
“Grandpa, what-ca doing?”
“Oh, hello Elag, I am just weather proofing some of this wood. I am going to use it to rebuild the deck.” He says turning towards you with a good natured smile on his face.
“Is that why is it so smelly in here, grandpa?”
“Smelly, it is not smelly in here Elag.” He says with a twinkle in his eye. He was trying to mess with you and both of you knew it.
“Grandpa, it stinks in here. My nose feels like it is on fire.” You whine at him not wanting to play his game.
“Well, yes Elag that is the reason why it is smell in here, your likely smelling the terpene I am using on the wood.” He says giving in and giving you a straight answer for once.
“Why is terpene so smelly grandpa?”
“Well Elag, pine tree make it to keep bugs and insects from eating them all up.”
“But pine trees aren’t smelly grandpa.”
“Well that is because they don’t have as much terpene in them as what I am using. That is why I am adding some to make sure those nasty bugs stay far away.”
“Well I guess that makes since.” Nodding to yourself.
“Hey you want to see something cool?” Grandpa asks in a secretive tone with a mischievous glint in his eye. You knew the look well, it was the one that lead to stuff that if mommy found out about she would yell at you and grandpa.
“I won’t tell mommy.” You say eagerly to find out what he had planned.
“That is my grandson,” he says proudly bringing a smile to your face in pride. He grabs an empty water jug, the kind that they use in offices, and the can of liquid paint he had been using. Going back behind the workshop so what we were doing couldn’t be seen from the living room window where mom likely was talking with Grandma, he empty half the can into the jug and pulls out a lighter. “Now Elag, terpene as you pointed out is very smelly and that is a good thing because it is a warning sign. If you are going to be working with wood you will want to memorize its smell for your own safety.”
“Why is that grandpa?” curiosity etched into your face wondering what grandpa was up to.
“Well Elag…” a huge grin on his face as he holds the lighter over the opening of the jug and clicks it. A huge jet of flames shoots out of the jug, taller than the workshop, “terpene gas is highly flammable.”
You have a huge smile plastered to your face.
“DAD WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW!!! IF ELAG IS OUT THERE SO HELP ME I AM GOING TO!!!!!!”
You and grandpa share a look before both of you making a break to his truck. Pealing out of the drive way the two of you spend the rest of the day at your favorite sweet shop knowing you where coming back to an angry mom.
======================
As the memory fades away you reach into your pocket and pull out your lighter.
“Thanks grandpa, see you soon.”
*Click*
FFHHHHOOOOOMMMMMMM
Author's Note
Chapter 3 everybody. an action scene that kicked my butt. it and a gang of school work, job work, insane family, a mental breakdown of a friend, and of course writer's block all tried their damn-est to prevent it's creation. hope you all enjoy it. chapter 4 is looking to be just as hard to write as this one was thought for the complete opposite reasons.
i would like to thank you all who are trying to read through my horrible grammar and let you know that hope is on the way as i have taken up an online grammar course.
