Chapter 15-9 Bonding IV: First Massacre

Chapter 15-9 Bonding IV: First Massacre

I dont remember the first person I killed. Or the second. Or, well, most of them really. Look, I snuff lots of people and Im old, so you cant blame me. The ultimate point to this conversation remains the same, however: somewhere, sometime, some unlucky fuckers gonna get it at your hands, and theyre going to be the ones that do it to you.

Oh, shit. That person was alive. That person had a life. I have a life. Oh, Jaus. Oh, gods.



Yeah, all you nova-hot snuffers with ice in your veins can laugh it up. You dont feel emotions when you have to kill, right? Nothing affects you, right?

Wrong. Bullshit. I wasnt shaken for shit when my youngest got done beside me during a run, so my competition for the stone-cold sow awards is in the low thousands at best. But its not the big dramatic moments that fuck you up while fighting. Its the little things. A little detail or a crack that slips through all that scar tissue you got layered over your psyche and into the soft, quivering meat on the inside.

Let me tell you about a guy I do remember killing: a managerial type for a defunct Omnitech under-corp we dont talk about. Real soft meat. Cornered the poor half-strand on the shitter and plugged him twice with an organic neuro-tox pick I had planted beneath my nail.

Man did the guy shit himself hard after that. Mustve cleared up whatever congestion he had with that Sang nerve agent, but while he was doing leg-spasms, something strange happened to me.

I found myself feeling bad. Real bad. My hands started shaking. I had my tear ducts wired away at the time so I probably couldnt have cried if I wanted to, but there I was having a panic attack across from a dying man shitting the last and hardest shit of his life.

The whole thing was just ridiculous. I saw myself where he waswondered how I would take just getting killed when I thought I was safe and something inside me just couldnt handle it. My wards rattled then. Shook me out of that mess and I pulled a runner before anyone else came.

I still remember the way his eyes rolled, and how he blinked. Confusion at first and terror all the way at the end. The terror didnt go away either. It lingered until everything just stopped.

Theres a crack inside all of us is what Im saying, and if you keep living this life, youll find it someday.

Well. Most of you. The honest truth is that only ghouls, Regs, and the mentally warped can keep killing forever without suffering a price, but honestly, we can call anyone in these three categories people?

-Quail Tavers, The School of the Warrens

15-9

Bonding IV: First Massacre

+I didnt expect her to just burst,+ Kae cried as she surged out from the mangled husk of twisted metal that once stood a Sangeist.

She felt the immensity of her weight most of all as she flowed through the world. Water was hers to shape and commanda fluid wall rising high to drink in lancing flechettes and stinging beams. The Aegis of Tides was a Heaven long popular among the lowest of Highflames Godclads, and Kae thought herself totally versed in its canons and hubrises.

Practice, however, revealed the depths of her inconsideration. For too long had she considered her new abilities in the confines of a white room, delving into what she could do in the broadest of circumstances while ignorant to the minutiae.

Small things like funneling oneself into a person and then rapidly expanding thereafter. The mutilated pulp of her victim oozed still within, making Kaes spirit quiver, and she found herself desperately yearning for a shower despite being water incarnate.

A missile streaked out down from atop one of the slanting structures beside her, loosed from with a sparking flash from a linear-acceleration launcher. It splashed into her form like a comet, plunging deep but striking at nothing. Her canon activated. Fluid swirled and unraveled the projectile. Flicking droplets back toward a mob of disorganized Three-Fingers, the flecks reached out and formed glinting streams that stitched the missile back into existence.

Strands of viscera clung in clumps to the payload as well.

Kae mentally gagged as she worked to funnel more of the organic detritus out from inside her.

+I know, pretty sick right?+ Chambers said. The echo of his thoughts intruded into her overwhelmed mind. Excitement rode from his every word in contrast to her horror, and as she swatted crowds of fleeing enforcers with her tidal wavescausing herself further distress as their little bodies tore open like wet sacks of flesh graced by the weight of a falling hammer. A brightness crowned the space above her while a piercing shriek forced reality to shiver.

The Lushburner greeted the battlefield as a streak of fire and flora. Arcs of rising flame tore through fading silhouettes like spreading roots, and from the inferno erupted sky-coating swarms of buzzing bodies. Larger aero-sized bioforms splattered through fleeing figures like artillery while their diminutive counterparts buried their victims from sheer mass alone. The plaza where the Three Fingers held was now choked with fire, flesh, and roaring tides. Beside her, Lushburners crucified visage bled dolloping tumors out made from hives of flesh-woven people seeking a final escape.

COG-CAP: 22%

Kae staggered and directed her perception elsewhere. Though she herself was a Godclad, her acclimation had not yet set in. Gazing upon a naked Heaven so brazenly still reaped considerable cost.

A spear of discomfort lodged itself through her being. Her focus split. Her Frame, confused by the input of her mind, flickered as the subreality manifested and deloaded, causing her physical form to shutter across existence with a rushing tsunami. Kaes mind spun. Her cog-feed screamed with threats and icons and warnings and a metal fragment sliced both her cheeks open and the pain made her scream

His exciting wasnt contagious. Kae touched her disabled arm and felt a spreading emptinessness deep inside her chest. Im still stuck on the icks, I think. Maybe it will come to be later.

Chambers opened his mouth to say something, but he paused. And thought. Something in the back of her mind wondered if he was going to talk about some other disturbing neuro-porn he liked indulging in but from him came only a grunt. Or maybe not. Youre a shiny person, Agnos.

She blinked. Shiny?

Yeah, he said, waving his hand animated as he searched for the right words. You seem real nice and you smell good and all that other Tiers stuff, you know?

Smelling good is a Tiers thing? Kae asked.

He held up a hand to quiet her. Thats not the point. The point is that fuck, what were we talkinoh, some people dont like killing and thats okay.

I know, Kae said. I dont like killing. Im just a bit She looked down at her shaking hand and winced. Stuck on how they pop. And the awful smells.

Chambers sneered. Youre telling me? Im the one with the dogshit Cooking Heaven. Couldve given me the cool Omnitech thing, but noChambers gets shit. Anway, innards are all kinds of gassy sometime. You know, most of snuffers usually get a second lung or a UTL-breather just for that.

UTL? Kae said.

Utility breather. Cheap gutterware olfactory implants. They slid them under your nose and helps you filter some minor toxins, or smell whatever you want to smell. The Maw-divers pretty much all got one of those because of all the waste so yeah. You know, gotta adapt to the environment.

Oh. You know, the Purgatories usually filter the smells you encounter based on your Metaminds listed preferences. I miss that right now.

Yeah, me too, and Ive never even been there before, Chambers said.

Kae chirped a soft laugh.

Well. Rich or poor, I suppose that what makes us both New Vultunites is how often the city gets to ram fist deep into our asses and tug, right?

Her chirp turned to a frown of disgust. You really like disgusting imagery, dont you? Kae asked.

It leaves an impression, Chambers said. Makes people remember me.

Kae considered consider his words and offered a quick nod. I guess, but how are you remembered?

Don't really matter. Its just about making people think of you like youre human. Like they cant just shoot you without something leaving the world for good.

Again, his words spurred her to look at all the remains staining the urban swamp around her.

Yeah, like those poor half-strands. Chambers sniffed. I dont even know most of their names. Listen, I felt real fucking bad about an Agnos I fed to the ghoul earlier. An awkward silence followed, and he drew out his Woundhound injection and motioned for her to approach. Come on, lets get that arm of yours fixed up before the other two get back.

Do you think theyre already done? Kae asked.

Eh, probably, Chambers said. Wouldntve melted our problems if they werent, right?

The blood riding the water called out to her. Ri

+Kae. Chambers. Still one more active knot left. Dropping you two a marker so we can square up and fight this one out.+ Draus words echoed through the session and Kae sighed as a market flashed into her DeepNav not a few miles away.

Chambers promptly jabbed the Woundhound into her and she barely winced. Come on, Agnos. Lets get a dog out of you so we can end this Crucible give these fugee murdering half-strands the what for.

Exhaustion crept into her bones as something began to twitch from the epicenter of her injury. Right. Just have to get used to this.

But the twist in her gut as she spoke those words made her wonder if she ever could.