#thesisgarroted

Dove's Hell Bubble isn't quite what you expected it to be. For one, it looks kind of sketchy, but no worse than some of the Lands you've seen - though, the sky does look like Halloween threw up all over it. Since that's kind of a gross description, you turn your gaze back to the desolate landscape itself. You sure hope this isn't what Earth looked like before the floods, because yuck.

Finding it had at least been easy, except that nobody's actually here, directly in front of you, which kind of makes the whole journey a moot point. You can't rescue people you can't find. You've gotten lost in worse places than a Hell Bubble, though, so you crack your knuckles and let Mutini jump down out of your arms. First things first, any good super secret spy agent needs a good Secret Base, and since there's no time like the present there's probably no better place than the current one.

"One sweet ass escape route coming riiiight up. Stand back, Mutini, I'm gonna need some room for this one - you play lookout." Stealing nothing from nothing to create something has gotten a little bit easier - kind of. You can actually make stuff now, but it's not quite as easy as wiggling your nose and snapping your fingers yet (you know because you've tried). Trying to apply that to another thing you haven't quite gotten a handle on yet - traversing the void - is asking for trouble. But the power of friendship overcomes all odds, right? It works. Sort of. It looks very typically like a bad SciFi CG portal, but when you lower your hands and look at your creation all you feel is pride. That is a damn good SciFi CG portal if you do say so yourself. So good, in fact, that you don't even notice that something is going wrong until you physically feel the gateway jerk out of your control.

The weird Doctor Who-esque cracks that are fracturing through Dove's weird ass bubble are rooting themselves into the portal...and you don't know what they are, but you know you don't want them getting into your Void. You don't really know how to go about getting control of the portal again, but your best guess is to just funnel more of the Void into it, trying to push the fractures out - more, and more, and more, until finally - 000 The portal gives no warning before it bursts like a popped balloon, pushing Roxy back a few very large steps. There's only enough time to realize that her portal has become many before the cracks being to absorb them, and one decides to plant roots beneath Roxy's feet with a flash of eerie light.

...Ugh...

Huh?

Why are you in the lab? You were just trying to move over a bit--

~Time has passed and you weren't present during it~

GT confirms your suspicions by saying he hasn't heard from you in a while.

...Dammit.

You boot up Pesterchum. Predictably, there's a series of messages from Akeela waiting for you-- the oldest are upset, of course, but once she realized you'd just fucked up again and were probably fine, she calmed down and switched to leaving status updates. Apparently she's off hunting with Satin. Even as the teeny little void-cat it is, the adorable enigma-being has no trouble keeping up with her.

You make sure to include Dove and Roxy in your list of people to send to 

((You asked for Nora but wanted all three, soooo~!))

Your earliest memory is of words. You'd been too young to open your eyes, but you still understood the language, if not the meaning. You certainly understand it now. Sometimes you wonder what it would have been like to have a red-blooded troll as your charge instead of Norrha. You were made for it, after all.

Each time, you can't help but think you still would choose her. The mere idea that you wouldn't is simply amusing-- Norrha is your charge and you are her Lusus. You wouldn't have it any other way.

"What the bulgefondling fuck is THAT?! It- it has FEATHERS! We're breeding a Lusus worthy of the Sufferer Reborn, not an omen of the apocalypse!"

"Isn't it terrifying? No one will dare touch the Second Signless with a Lusus like this!"

"It's tiny and hideous. Get rid of it."

"Wh-?"

"Now, before I cull you for sheer stupidity!"

Your second-earliest memory is of pain.

It's hot. Scorchingly, boilingly, tortuously hot. The heat is making you dizzy. You've just landed on another platform of shifting gears, your ears ringing from the latest strike of Norrha's Denizen against the last one you were on.

...That's strange. This engraving looks like the one on a Quest Mortuary slab--

("LOOK OUT!")

Norrha's warm little hands are suddenly shoving you backwards, cloaked in her familiar, sparkling red and white Psionics-- what is she saying? You can't hear...!--, and her eyes are panicked, terrified--

("NOT THIS TIME NOT THIS TIME NOT THIS FUCKING TIME HE IS NOT GETTING YOU THIS TIME DAMMIT NOT THIS TIME...!!!")

The Psionic cradle carrying you abruptly fizzles out and you slam onto a new, momentarily safe platform just in time to watch the Denizen's massive hammer slam down onto your coplayer in a shower of blood.

Later, you swear you'd been able to hear the crunch through the ringing in your ears.

You'd known you would die, and that it would be Heroic. You'd tried everything else, looping over and over again as Hephaestus kept on killing her. What a sick Choice...!

But if that's the way it has to be, the only way to keep him from killing her, then so be it.

You push her aside and let the hammer fall--

(ASCEND, SCRIBE)

--...huh...?

There was the pain, and the darkness, and you KNOW that was Heroic, but... this isn't a dreambubble, you're still in--

--Hephaestus's palace.

Hephaestus. The Choice. Her or you.

Did that-- no, he couldn't have, the Choice is the Player's to make, he couldn't have Chosen for you...!

Where is she? Where's--

"MUSE AND LORD; NORRHA YOU CRAZY, PAN-ROTTED WIGGLER! DON'T SCARE ME LIKE XAT!"

She tackles you before you can turn around, and you realize you're crying with the force of your relief.

And if there are jade-toned tears joining your clear ones, well, it's not like you'll ever tell.