@herebedragonflies / herebedragonflies.tumblr.com
You may be fighting gods, but you have gods on your side, too. Three of them to Tcaolin and Kuroyama’s maybe one-and-a-half. Yeah, you have to do the fighting yourself, but everyone seems to have magical weapons, yourself included.
You just hope you manage to win before all hope of future is destroyed for good.
Log:
SC: I don’t know how many monsters, since we haven't seen the main army. They've sent a couple giant creepy dolls so far, and Monster, who was some super-kawaii horror who kept chasing us until she died.
SC: But she stayed dead. And didn't smell like barbecue. Doesn't that hurt?
DTG: what are you talking about
SC: You've got to be shitting me. You're dead, you know you're dead, you can't tell me you can't feel the burns all over you. You look like a fucking crime scene photo.
TG: hes saying youre not the hottest dave in the room
TG: need some aloe for that burn
DTG: no thats stupid
DTG: you lose
DTG: obvious attempt is obvious
LOG:
Space Cadet: Right now we think the plan is to fight Kuroyama first, since he’s the one with the army of monsters.
deadTurntechGodhead: army of monsters thats practically our specialty
turntechGodhead: she didnt mention any kuroyama
TG: guess shes not goddess of full disclosure
DTG: gosh really
DTG: i thought she was doing you a favor
DTG: sending you out with no intel
DTG: since you took the job
DTG: looked like that was how you wanted it
DTG: not even knowing if you'd get some lube for this clusterfuck
TG: shut up you werent even there
SC: Are you always like this?
TG: alpha dave gets to give orders
DTG: the rest of us just get to duke it out
DTG: and hes just as dead as i am except still walking around
DTG: ignoring the dead like me rerun waiting for him on the dvr like a puppy thats going to piddle on the carpet if you dont come play with it
DTG: whatever
DTG: its chill
DTG: maybe well find out something about how the game works that we can take back
DTG: except oh wait were not in the game anymore
DTG: were off playing zelda while everyone else is still playing murderfuck apocalypse 2: more death for everyone
TG: were saving the princess
TG: its a bona fido side quest
DTG: yeah sorry dude the princess is in another castle
DTG: so how many monsters are we talking here
DTG: like a couple or whoa fuck thats a lot of monsters or shit yourself and run screaming
DTG: because if its shit yourself and run screaming im gonna probably need backup
DTG: just to move the corpses out of the way
DTG: because tripping on corpses is way old-school and not even post-ironic anymore just sad
TG: and tripping on your own corpse has never been cool
DTG: yeah it takes special strider-powers to stay cool when youre tripping over your own dead body like the sobbing fat kid at the obstacle course in summer camp
SC: You don't ever shut up, do you?
TG: nope
DTG: no
SC: Right.
The redhead twitches his shoulders in what almost looks like a Strider shrug. “She enslaved Tonbo and took her mouth away and apparently eats souls. Turns some poor girl into her meat-puppet every twenty years or something from what Starless said and eats people so she can be a god.” “Huh. Yeah. That kinda sucks. Thing is, she brought me over here because she says you’re holding the current princess hostage in your brain.” “Oh, shit, is that where she is?” You nod slow. “Yeah. You didn’t know? You really are a space cadet, aren’t you?” Another of those twitchy shrugs. “Can’t keep track of everything. I’d let her out if I could.” Your dead self pulls himself onto the platform and strolls over. “So, how’re we taking down this particular goddess?”
Even if he’s had an utterly deprived life, this redhead doesn’t look as much like a space cadet as the one on the outside. “So, you’re Tcaolin’s champion?” Something dark and tight passes over his face, and then he glances at you and his eyes don’t match. “She asked me to be. Didn’t cover the fact that she’s evil in the job description, though, so I’m suing for breach of contract.” He blinks. “You’re not dead.” “Yes I am. You’re still hallucinating.” He blinks, then looks back at the dead you swimming towards you. “Oh, okay then.”
He looks a lot more lucid than he did on the other side, except for the fact that his eyes are glued on broiled-Dave and wide in horror.
So you flashstep over and deadpan at him, “No, wait, let me guess: you see dead people.”
He doesn’t look up at you, but blinks a moment. “I feel like you're making a joke at my expense. I'm just not quite sure what it is.”
When you figure out where the other Dave is headed, your stomach sinks. There’s someone else on the platform, huddled and small and improbably redhaired. Did some other you kill him and you’re now double-useless and doomed?
No, that doesn’t seem right. Usually when you have to go back, you die quickly. Thus why you’re always finding your stupid corpse.
The door that opened into the hallway now opens onto a platform, oppressive heat gusting over you from the dark sky beyond. This looks almost like a real hell, all heat and clockwork and fire beneath you. You’d feel even worse losing time here, because it seems almost a temple to it.
There’s a boy floating in the magma, burning but unconsumed, and it smells a bit like barbecue. You turn to flee, but your door is gone, dissolved in heat and open space.
Oh. Well. It’s not like you’ve not been stuck haunted by the dead before. At least Heyoka can’t see you as you sit crouched in the middle of the platform, chin on your knees and eyes on the corpse.
You slip back out into the hallway, which is different now, covered in posters: most are of shitty movies you remember seeing posters for when they were in theatres, but some look newer than that, and you don’t recognize them at all. That means nothing, though. None of it means anything. You probably wouldn’t recognize a lot of stuff even if you’d starred in it.
You open the next door, and there’s that kid again, but this time in a black suit and not bleeding. “Have we met?”
“Not yet. You might have met another me. There are a lot of us. Even more than there are of you, I think. Depends how many times I’ve died recently.”
Oh hell no.
“Uh, yeah, I’m just gonna, uh, bye.”
You close the door and walk away. There are enough dead people in your life without adding more. You open the next door more cautiously, but the room is empty. You step in, and leave the door open behind you because you’ve seen this horror movie before. Unsurprisingly, it closes with a click. The room doesn’t erupt in zombies and tentacles. You follow the quiet sound of delighted laughter to another door and through to what looks like a tea party.
Everything smells of almonds, and there’s the dead boy from before, this time with his head bashed in. He’s still talking, despite his jaw hanging half off. The one across from him, her long green sleeves wrapped around the cup, is even worse. She hurts to look at, and you want to stop doing so.
You are Kano Jurgen, and your mind has never been a stranger place. Blue-Voice isn’t giving you announcements anymore, so you’re not entirely sure where you are. It looks like a shitty apartment building, cleaner than the last one you lived in but warmer, too. You don’t recognize it, but that’s probably okay because Grey World has been introducing all kinds of new mindscapes to you. The hallway at least doesn’t have tentacles yet. You could really do with a vacation from all the impalings.
You open one of the doors, and it’s a perfectly normal messy room with a kid not too much younger than you lying there in a red suit, bleeding out just darker than his suit and making patterns like Heyoka’s favourite scarf. You don’t recognize him, and you wonder how he got in. You don’t try to start a conversation. If the dying thing wants to talk to you, it’s probably going to be after he dies, and you’re going to hate it.
It’s 5:34am, and you smell blood and fire. You don’t move, in case whatever made your ‘guards’ bleed is still around. You look around without moving your head, eyes safely hidden by your shades. Two are still in camp, sleeping in bedrolls: bedrolls that had been empty when you went to sleep, so these were the night crew. The other five are empty, which might just mean they’re mostly early risers. You’re not good at optimism anymore, so you don’t think so. You stay wrapped up, because you look harmless and sleeping, and wait for what’s going to happen to happen. You’re ready for anything. You’re always ready for anything, because you’re a Strider. You fetch your broken sword from your strife specibus and hold it flat against your leg under the blankets. You hear footsteps, but they could theoretically be your guards.
Except for the part where one of them is stomping. You watch as a scantily clad furry and a spaced-out looking redhead who sort of looks like that asshole come in to camp. The furry’s fist turns black, and she punches right through the head of one of the sleeping guards. Shit. And now, from the opposite corner, comes a chick in a dress, pointing a staff at the other sleeping guard, and he now has blood leaking from his ears. He isn’t getting up. The redhead’s the one you’re supposed to kill, but he looks harmless and only a few years older than you. He’s the one with the captive soul, too, but you have no idea how to rescue that. Maybe it’ll just happen naturally with death, corpse fountaining souls like it’s double rainbow day and he’s the goddamn pot of gold.
