Storm chaser

You are anon, a simple man, a man that just wants some peace and quiet once and a while, and apparently that’s a hard concept for people around you to digest. You booked this vacation awhile back and it couldn’t have come at a better time, you just broke up with you girlfriend, you had a falling out with a few friends of yours, and frankly your just glad that you got some time to yourself. You’ve powered off your phone so no one can call you on your break from life, and the location is three states away from where you live so no one can come and see you, cause they don’t know where you are and you like it that way.

You sit on a recliner chair watching cartoons... bored out of you fucking mind. You groan in immense boredom and try to think of something to do. “I think I might just go for a bit of a swim.” You say out loud, you make your way up the stairs of your vacation apartment and get undressed and redressed in swim trunks. You look into the mirror and appreciate your decently we’ll toned body, you started to workout and eat healthier when you, now ex girlfriend told you that where getting fat, which, you weren’t just a little pudgy that’s all, but hey look at you, you look better than ever, probably the only good thing she ever made you do, but enough of that you’re supposed to be relaxing.

You head out of the apartment and make your way down to the pool, you open the gate surrounding the deck of the pool and don’t waste any time and jump straight in. It was cold, like really cold, in hindsight probably not a good idea. You emerge from the depths of the pool water “OHH FUCKIN HELL!” You yell from the sudden temperature change and have your head and shoulders stick above the water until your body gets used to temperature of the pool. Luckily nobody was there to see or hear that, that would’ve been embarrassing.

You swim around for a couple minutes, close to a half an hour, you then decide to go back up to your apartment, you exit the pool and, shit you forgot to bring a towel “perfect.” You grumble to yourself. As you exit the gate Surrounding the pool you start to feel a bit dizzy, and think you need have a little Lie down, as you get closer to the apartment the pain in your head only grows, by the time you make it to the door it feels like someone is bashing your head in with the back end of a hammer. You stammer into the apartment, clutching your head pleading to whatever is out there that the pain stops. It seem like someone answered your plead because the pain subdued just enough for you to get up off the floor and get redressed not even bothering to dry off, it hurts way to much to do that. You lower yourself on the bed and try to get some shut eye, you’re still soaking wet, your shirts not even put on correctly, one arm isn’t even though the sleeve, but finally it feels like the pain is fading so now you can get some rest and maybe go into the hospital to see what this headache is all about.

you wake up feeling pretty good considering why you went to sleep in the first place, one thing is kinda weird the sheets are not wet, mostly because there are no more sheets, or bed for that matter, no floor, no walls, no apartment, no nothing, just this intensely hot sun beating down on your face that’s all.

You jolt up when you realize this, and confusion and panic soon are the only things swirling through your mind. You Survey the surrounding area and find yourself staring at sand, sand, and more sand for as long as the eye can see.

“How the fuck... did I end up... in the mother... fucking... DESERT!” You yell panic starting to envelop you as you try to compose yourself and think of what to do next. You finally start to Cope with the fact that you’re stuck here for the time being, good thing your headache is gone or else you probably would’ve had a stroke from all the activity going on in your head trying to figure out how you got here, there’s no desert in close proximity to your vacation spot, so the fact you even ended up here is confusing on its own, also no way you walked or drove out, there’s no tire tracks, no car, no footprints, no nothing just your body imprint in the sand. Did somebody drop you here? No, that wouldn’t make sense either, nobody that knows you personally knew you were in that apartment, you didn’t talk much with the neighbors at the vacation sweep either, was somebody at the pool when you jumped in, did they really not like The way you reacted to the cold water that much instead of confronting you at the pool, or just ignore it, they rather kidnap you and throw you in the middle of the Sahara desert to die, without you waking up, no that’s too convoluted. there’s no real logical reason for why the hell you're in the desert, you get up realizing you’ll never find out why you ended up here, and pick a direction and walk.

You’ve been walking and walking and fucking walking for what felt like hours, and for all you know it has been hours and you’re heading the wrong way, you consider turning around and trying a new direction, but then you hear something that makes you stop dead in your tracks. It sounded like propellers, not like helicopter propellers though, more like propellers on a small plane, you look at the place in which the sound is coming from and are in awe at what you saw.

“Holy shit,” you say with astonishment as your eyes lay upon something like you never seen before. They looked like blimps in shape, but instead of a small tiny cockpit for like three people like a blimp, it had a hole deck it it looked to have multiple floors to it, there was also five of them you could see, one big one up front and two trailing parallel to each other just behind the big one, with two other in way distance. These airships or whatever they are are pretty cool, as they get closer you notice a symbol on the side of the airships, it resembles a lightning bolt in a way, it’s comprised of two bolts of electricity with a single bend in them and are mirrored to each other. It doesn’t look like any faction you know of, is it a new one? Are they friend or foe? Well maybe if you don’t fuck with them they won’t fuck with you. You look back at where there coming from and can kinda make out, a tower? Or it’s another airships, either way it good because you at least know there’s an origin place for these sky beasts. So you start heading in that direction hoping to reach some sort of civilization, and also hoping that whatever you see is not a mirage.

as you get closer you feel like passing out from the intense heat, but you’re so close, your panting Heavily and stumbling over yourself, your vision is getting blurry and it’s getting hard to stay awake, but your so close, close enough to read the sound of the town.

“Klugetown, huh?” You say to you self as you start to take in the “town” you find yourself at, the surrounding area consists of broken or the skeleton of what used to be, what you could only guess is wagons, the town it’s self was built on a mountain and it wasn’t a gentle incline either, it was a jagged rough incline with large flat surfaces where buildings were placed stemming off of the largest and middle part of the mountain, at the top there looked to be a port for the airships (an airport if you will.) you make your way inside and already you seemed to be cooled off, weird. There is a path of building that wrap up the main mountain in a spiral, you walk up that path and it seem that this place is doing pretty well for its self, although looking pretty poor and war devastated, you wonder what could have happened here, also your sun baked mind didn’t register at first the fact your surrounded by anthropomorphic rats, fish, sharks, weasels, snapping turtles, snakes with arms and legs, moles, rats, mole rats, porcupines and you swear you saw a anthro cat as well.

“Hey! hey you, with the red face!” A voice with a gross gurgle to it calls out to, who your assuming would only be you. You turn around to look at this, ugly bokoblin lookin ass creature.

“Wha-“ you try to say before getting into a coughing fit, that somewhat floors you with how intense it got, if the coughing went on for just a little longer you might’ve thrown up. Why you started to cough uncontrollably, you have no clue you could only guess it was because you were heavily breathing in sand from the air earlier.

Once you recover, and start to breath normally again that same voice calls out “you ok?” Sounding very disingenuous and sounding like you owe him money.

“Yeah,” you say as you get up from the floor “peachy keen.” You say sarcastically.

“Good,” the creature says, brushing off your sarcasm “so, buying or selling?”

You grew a face of discussed and offense by him assuming you’re just there to give him money, but then you realize how scratchy your throat has gotten “some water would be nice.” You say with a bit of a strained voice.

“Oh yeah, I have some, it’s some of the storm kings finest, and refreshing beverage on the market!” He says confidently as he pulled out a slightly bigger and longer than average water bottle, with a picture of an ape with what looks like a black spiked crown, you assume that’s the storm king.

“Sound good, how much do I... oh shit,” You say in a panic as you realize you don’t have your wallet, or phone, which didn’t matter considering you obviously were not on earth anymore, just a major inconvenience “I kinda can’t pay for that, I don’t have any money.” You explain.

“Well, sucks to be you.” The creature says blankly as he put away the water bottle.

“W-w-w-wait!” You Scream in a desperate panic, and Survey his small shopping stand and see a bunch of weird looking birds, there beaks sharp like fangs, and sporting odd solid colors like purple, green or Blue. Guess you gotta do some odd jobs to get some water. “What if I help you sell these birds?” You ask hoping to earn some money from this.

The creature thinks about it, rubbing his chin with his claw. He finally answers “sure, why not I need these sold anyways.” He says with a shrug.

“Great,” you internally celebrate “so what’s the deal? We split what I earn from the bird?” You ask almost knowing he’s going to negotiate it down to 70% to him and 30% to you, Surprisingly, he doesn’t.

“Yeah that sounds good, make sure you fetch a good price.” He requests.

“How much do they sell for?” You ask.

“The minimum is 15 stormbucks, the maximum, I heard could sell for is 75 stormbucks.” He says with a Hint of wonder at possibly getting that high price.

“Ok, ok, and how much does the water cost?” You ask reaching for the bird cage.

“Five stormbucks.” He says holding up five fingers.

“Alright, I’ll be back.” You say as you take the bird and walk to a cross section and start to trying to sell the bird.

You stood there like a traveling salesmen in the wild west trying to sell this stupid ass bird. You’re getting sick and tired of standing not making a sale, your about to sit down when a porcupine woman comes up to you.

“How much you sellin dat ting fo.” She says not wasting any time.

“Um, 70.” You say, offering a negotiation price.

“50!” She counters.

“65.” You offer again.

“DEAL!” She says, a little to excited as she eagerly hands you her stormbucks. You grab them and and here the bird, and she run off cackling to herself along the way. God knows what she’s going to do with that bird, and you don’t even think god wants to know either. You shiver at the thought and head back to boar you gonna buy water from, and that’s when it hits you “all this... for a bottle of goddamn water.” You grown as you head back to the boar.

As you walk up to him, you wave the money in the air to indicate that you have indeed sold the bird.

“Oh man thanks, um, wait what are you?” The boar asks with interest as you split the money plus the money to buy the water.

“Im a human... I think I’m the only one.” You say realizing that you very much are alone here, no one to vent to, nobody that know what you are and nobody that understands what you’re going through. No human beings, just ugly, untrustworthy, anthro animals. Your eyes start to water but you’re snapped out of it when the water is shoved in your face.

“Here you go, sorry your going extinct.” He says bluntly.

“Yeah... me too.” You say under your breath then take a swig if the water, and he wasn’t lying, it’s pretty refreshing. You wonder around klugetown some more you bought some meat that was for sale. At this point you’re getting tired and so is everybody else considering the shops around you have closed for the day, you eventually found a clock that read 8:57.

“What the hell, the sun should be set by now?” You say confusion settling in, also you didn’t notice it before but the sun hasn’t moved sense you came close to klugetown. “Weird.” You say shrugging this off for now and continue to walk and try to find a place to sleep.

You eventually find an ally by what you could assume is a hotel of sorts, you duck in the ally way and find some old ass mattress with a spring sticking out of it and and a yellow pillow you’re pretty sure used to be white at one point in its life.

“Well, they definitely didn’t throw these away for no reason, but it’s better that nothing.” You say as you move everything to your liking and use a curtain with a big hole in it as a blanket and try to get some shut eye.